ANALYSIS: Story 1: The Lord moves us Forward, Forward

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Farcically extreme.

Outlines the traditional familial roles - Men are traditionally favoured outright with no duty to do chores. The youngest girl stereotypically stays at home to work and clean until the previous matriarch dies.

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Tells the story of the family's matriarch - the grandmother and her eccentric ways of manipulating her family to do her bidding. She repeatedly and purposefully throws herself down the stairs in order to prevent the enjoyment of other members of the family. She is selfish in order to manoeuvre and entrap family members within her reach, the stairs were her implement of external manipulation. Her methods of madness verge on being ​comic in their childlike petulance yet digresses to black humour due its shocking extremity + misguided/malicious provenance/intent.

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Utilises her acumen and art of manipulation with these stairs to her advantage -her own instrument not to cause herself pain (too egocentric for that) but to orchestrate + mould the lifestyles + choices of those around her.

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The conclusion provides the ultimate finale of epicaricacy (schadenfreude). Grandmother Selma's departure epitomises irony and vindication by dying on the day of Aunty Annis' wedding mainly due to her strong aversion to her relationship and outright avowal to bury Annis alive is she ever lost her virginity or got into a relationship. In dying on the same day as the wedding she fiercely objected to from the outset allows her to even posthumously mar the happiness of a day by imbuing it with a sense of culpability for her death and dark poeticism.

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Also explores the heritability of psychological traits - Annis later divorcing from her taboo husband points the focus on her as being identified as Selma's protege - continuing the legacy of the the marginally unhinged.

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However, in revealing the bathetic ending to her forbidden romance fairytale the author provides the usually undisclosed 'what happens next' portion to the fairy tale exposing how, instead of riding off into the sunset, unencumbered by the guilt of the past, the magic dissipates and the image of perfection dissolves.

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​Story 2: See me​

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Tells the story of a nondescript barber, Calust, whose greater definition/description is provided by others and his obnoxious nephew Hal and his wholehearted and steamrollered acquisition of American culture.

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Foregrounds the prevalence of language snobbery and the unarticulated agreement that languages such as Armenian and its ilk have been designated/relegated to the role of secondary languages and how English supposedly embodies modernism.  Instead of imparting new cultures and languages on the westernised paradigm - there is a common trend of americanising middle Eastern cultures and eradicating niche elements of heritage. Often unconsciously done by the host country, this act of self-moulding and self-mitigation is even consciously done by native speakers so as to assimilate with ease and avoid further prejudice and preconceptions.

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Describes Calust' difficulty with being left alone with his thoughts and feelings.

Is about the next generation of American-Armenian children unwittingly sloughing their cultural treats and traditions for a standardised American one. Examples as insignificant as Armenian candy (traditionally sesame based) are superseded by American ones unthinkingly but is this at the expense of culture long-term?

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Antithetically - where the new generations are subsumed by an all encompassing culture that is American - older generations and migrant parents in some cases find it difficult to learn English or are reluctant to learn the language  - which creates perhaps a discordancy between generations - a disharmony impeding the assimilative process.

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Describes how some immigrants or migrants are haunted by memories whereas their children can sometimes be almost deprecatingly bereft of a knowledge of struggle or hardship - the kind that their parents underwent.

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Flickers abruptly between flashbacks of the past and present day - immersed in an assimilation of post + present as though the two are inextricable. It is also clear that the protagonist has experienced loss in his life and perhaps as a result is lost and 'anchorless'.

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He talks often of his past, such as living in what appears to be an Armenian ghetto in Bucharest, from which his uncle was taken away by the authorities. The error of his monodimensional childish perception of the incident led to much bitterness and pent-up frustration at his parents for letting it occur, only to be proven wrong upon learning the truth. However, his indignation about his uncle was due to his unprejudiced faith in his innocence- as a child it was at the fault of others that he was taken away not his uncle's own culpability-but he later discovered he was dealing + taking morphine which shattered his childish purview. It shows how steadfast and unequivocal children's belief can be.

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Describes an individuals' experience of the communist regime in Romania which appeared to have cultivated a hostility bred by informants and family being pitted against family.

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Story Three: At the Bottom of the pool: Point Dume, CA

From the outset there is a definitive sense of farcicality and absurdity with the prosaic nature of the protagonist' tone as he openly and unapologetically attempts to poison a cat aptly named Shitball. Yet this tale is from an unusual perspective - instead of following the victim, it follows the escapades of the wayward villain and yet despite his, by all accounts, immoral behaviour, as he is progressively brutalised and polarised his misery is tangible and the potential for pathos, undeniable.

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Its also describes the man's difficulty with handling his emotions and even his morality - upon the blurring of love and hate engendered by his infidelity and his break up love and hate become indistinguishable and he seems unstable. His lack of clarity or perception of relativity leads to an escalation of hateful acts - despite his acknowledgement of his infidelity he is frustrated at Gerald for kicking him out and wrongly perceives himself the victim, feeling justified in killing Madame Butterly. Things escalate with him smashing mail boxes, stalking and eventually attempted murder.

Interestingly the narrative perspective is inverted, instead of choosing a character the reader can empathise with, the author perhaps purposefully chose a character deserving of readers' aversion - he is not the victim but the aggressor, the harasser and such a unique perspective, subverting trope writing. This provides an insight into the mindset of people that do in actuality perform acts such as these and how they are motivated by a true senselessness.

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His ties to Armenia are briefly mentioned yet seems relatively irrelevant to the plot of the story with them appearing to be the crystal healing, self-discovery kind of 'hippie' parents.

In spite of Sasha's clearly hyperbolic retaliation - to be fair to him and to play Devil's advocate, Gerald definitely had an unhealthy relationship with the cat, comically prioritising it over Sasha's severe allergies.

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Upon discovery in the garden holding the incriminating poison his characterisation as the crazed ex is solidified with his outburst of deranged laughter, yet his character is jarring in his lack of cognisance of his own immorality, continuously protesting the wrongness of his actions.

Despite my strong dislike for such a jarring character it forcibly made me reflect on the aftermath for a person who has committed the offence and how human error and how people respond to it can be equally as devastating or more so for the offender's ultimate mental health. Much like the untold story of the stepsisters after they cant fit into the shoe and they get their comeuppance it satiated my curiosity to discover the alternative ending - the outcome for bad guy. Not only is he immediately ostracised, leaving him pathetically bereft of a person to call once arrested, he is beaten, transient and utterly lost due to a catalytic act of misconduct. This torrent of misfortune which could be said to karmically befall him after his transgression in my eyes somehow warrants him sympathy due to the unrelenting scale of it.

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Also perhaps alludes to the heritability of traits; some of his eccentric behaviours were possibly cultivated by a haphazard parenting. Instead of his transient parents providing him with fundamental stability he was forced to glean lessons from a series of pseudo aunties and uncles.

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The tone or effect of the narratorial voice makes it so the entire narrative appears to be a hallucination due to the essence of surrealism throughout and the senselessness of his actions. This is further evidenced by the stream of consciousness prose, the flickering concentration, impulsive/compulsive behaviours and the intrusive immoral thoughts.

Story 4: Clean:

Sufferer of ADD, he is methodical and organised, yet procrastinates. He appears to have a lack of social skills, and overactive mind and perhaps a difficulty with social interaction and interpretation.

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Gives an insight into the cultural gender dynamic as well as the parenting ideals - there appears to be a socialised stigma surrounding medicating children for mental health issues as though it represents artificially aided nurturing. Drugs seems to be a slight against his parents with healthiness perhaps equating to good parenting.

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It is a age-old human behaviour for minority groups to accrue habitually in groups for perhaps protection, security, similarity or solidarity - which appears the case with the prominent presence of Armenian gangs in the protagonist's life. One aspect however which reaffirms the stigma surrounding gang violence is the firsthand affirmation of the brutality involved within the gang initiation process essentially involving getting beaten to a pulp. Also exposes the truth behind gun toting individuals and the true volatility of guns and the empowerment they provide just in the possession of them until someone is willing to fire it which changes things.

Again has a stream of consciousness almost style writing. Initially the plot is provided with chronology through the use of subtitles but both the trajectory and the protagonist appear to lose direction after high school and afterwards the subtitles are no longer time based.

Story 5: Bringing Ararat.

This is the eponymous tale of the story, set in Beirut in a small establishment in 1964

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Gives an insight into gender/cultural familial dynamics during the era in the familial hierarchy - women, for example couldn't travel alone out of safety and a respect for tradition. However, when such regulations on women were disregarded it appeared to come with a sense of shame imposed on the woman. Roles for men and women are very much delineated and adhered to; these rules are even verbalised on several occasions, his sister would help in the house and he would earn the money and this 'was understood'. His interactions with his girlfriend reaffirms this with her incarnating passivity and conformity even during kissing; 'she opened herself to the kiss in'  which is deemed 'the proper response'

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The family dynamic is extremely ingrained and almost rigid - family appears to consign to a debt system which, albeit unspoken, means almost that you always owe your family something unquantifiable, negotiable and inarticulable which you are born unable to pay. Whether this is a cultural fact or merely a facet of this family remains to be seen. Furthermore there appears to be a sense of shame at not being a contributing member of the family society.

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Describes the inevitable and steely persistence of the people who have endured genuine hardship and warfare. Talks of how some of the Armenian people were forced into being a nomadic group yet the mountain was consistently viewed as an anchorage for the people when they were 'forced into transit' be that socially, hierarchically or geographically.

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The protagonist's somewhat taboo relationship with a Lebanese woman is rather interesting in its composition; his attraction to her empirically boils down to her compilation of femininity or attributes that confirm her beauty.

Sadly my knowledge of the troubles in Armenia before reading this book was poor to say the least which is why it is valuable to complete this challenge as I value even the smallest insight it can provide me into the history and experience of each community. For example the genocide in Armenia seems to be the prevailing event against which things are deemed before + after. It appears that the epoch of warfare orientates the chronology of Armenian history. However, merely from this glimpse into Armenian history it is impossible to derail entirely the complexity of the Armenian tale which is very difficult yet interesting to follow.

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Father and son relationships are also foregrounded and how, from a very young age, a sense of formality is established (perhaps indicating the pressure on Armenian men to continue a legacy and mimic their predecessors). The protagonists' relationship with his father resembles that of 2 businessmen which summarises a deeply complex understanding encouraging hardiness and a lack of embarrassment. Traits of these men are emblazoned in the character, they are visible and worn as badges of honour.

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Story 6: Strength Training:

The author chooses to write a stream of unfiltered thoughts which is refreshing against normal literary censorship. This story describes the story of a gym trainer who works with a disabled boy but clearly not for altruistic reasons (it appears to be at great inconvenience to him). Diverts from the stereotypical perception of people who work with certain societal groups and presents him instead as a bit of a hypocrite who is extremely susceptible to the idiosyncrasies of little children. He is especially triggered by the boy's lack of social cues despite his own lack of them.

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Very profound awareness of shame and abjection - it is at the forefront of select mentalities and the idea that 'sick children should not be let out unsupervised'

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The characterisation, like many in this novel is somewhat removed, detached and even volatile. He appears detached from concepts of morality with no filter to censor his thoughts from his speech.

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Furthermore a prominent underlying sub plot is the schism between father and son and how meanness and violence was accepted and understood as a mode of education in his personal experience.

Story 7: The Rat King​

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This story explores infidelity, sanity, guilt and morality. The protagonist is in a difficult situation with his sick wife which has meant that the moniker of husband in his mind has been supplanted/subsumed by his new role as primary caregiver and explores his struggle with this.

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The protagonist in this series is perhaps the most disturbed with perhaps psychotic tendencies induced by his lifelong hallucinations which have multi-sensual tangibility manifesting the dark figure that is the Rat King from the Nutcracker. The protagonist, upon first viewing the Nutcracker appeared to feel greater affinity for the Rat King hence his appearance in spectral form perhaps.

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Throughout the novel, The rat king appears to play devils advocate for each illicit act he commits and his reluctant acquaintance appears to be the scapegoat when he commits them (hints at Jekyll and Hyde).

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I am by no means a psychologist but the disorganisation and the manifestations he experiences appears to suggest derealisation in that it is hard to distinguish between man and manifestation as he even undergoes a dissociative fugue. He is consumed by this character and his suggestions and it is quite a difficult read.