End of the Line - Aimee Bender

The unique writing style that Aimee Bender uses is that of fabulism and magical realism. These modern day fairy tales with a touch of magical elements makes the reading experience more enjoyable for me. The "End of the Line" was fun to read and easy to understand. However, it still allowed for the thought process that these stories are not literal and it allows the reader to determine the moral of the story. The magical element in this story is that people can buy little people to have as their pets. The big man is quite opposite from the little man that he purchases and seems to only have purchased him to torture him. The big man is lonely, controlling, and uneducated whereas the little man has a family, is educated, and is very polite. These differences only seem to add to the controlling nature of the big man. The big man starts to torture the little man by drugging him, throwing him around, and flicking him across the room. When the big man started to see how much of a good life the little man had, he played the torturing up to humiliating and made the little man take off his clothes so he could laugh at him.

The big man feels that the little man can't feel pain because he is so small. The little man in the story can be compared to Julia by Wendy Rose and the Venus Hottentot by Elizabeth Alexandra. Likewise, the big man can be compared to Julia's husband and to Hottentot's scientist. In these examples, it is shown that humans see people that look differently and automatically treat them differently. They believe that because they are different, they don't have the same feelings and therefore bully/abuse them. These men feel that they have the power and they want to have all of the control. They resort to bullying/abuse to make themselves feel better. However, the big man reverses roles with the little man in the end. The big man realizes that he is not a part of normal society anymore and he doesn't know where he fits in. The little people become the bigger man and let him know that they can't help him. He needs to find where he fits in on his own without the help of those he has hurt. The little people believe he is not genuine due to his drastic change in mind. Therefore, he is on his own to find where he fits in and to prove he has had a change in heart.

Bethany Davis (Post #6)