Heather Chau on "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water"

I found the way the author wrote this story very interesting. Despite this story being about 18 pages long, the most significant passage for me was the last paragraph on the last page. There weren't many metaphors throughout the story and as I was reading it the story didn't feel like it had much of a purpose other than to tell a story about two families in the South in the 1930s.
But then, towards the end, the reader is struck by the revelation that Ras had already been mutilated. Because it's revealed so suddenly, it hits the reader very hard. Thee scenic paragraph afterward gives us a little time to digest, but that feeling after the reveal stays with us as we head to the last paragraph, which tells us nonchalantly that this story was 60 years in the past. In the present, the story says, such bad things no longer happen, but xoninues with, if you believe that you'll believe anything. In the end, the story, even though it takes place 60 years in the past, is a commentary about the present. We currently live in a world where bad things don't really happen to people who read stories, the ones who have the time and education to, and so setting the story in the past and in a place pretty culturally removed from where we live is fitting-- because the bad things are so far removed from us that it can feel like another time period entirely (but at the same time it is geographically close and so we can identify with it, at least a little). However, with the last paragraph the author grounds the story to us, brings the awful feeling you had after reading what happened to Ras with you to your world, and it makes you feel and think and wonder where, what, and how do things like happen so close to our world.