Nina Godridge's Review Oct.30

Hello it's Nina Godridge with another review of this week's readings. Each story has a common theme to which the narrator realizes what choice they should make to live their life. A lot of what I noticed between the two is the use of descriptions and very vivid imagery. This plays as a key figure to reading each stories as it composes a lot of what the stories convey.
In Ralph Lombreglia's Men Under Water, it opens up with the scene of the two men eating and discussing their movie. The movie they have been trying to make has been going through a lot of trial and error as the narrator, Ricardo, is the sidekick (practically) to Gunther. Gunther knows what he wants to do, he wants to make a movie, but he needs Ricardo to create the vision he has. Ricardo is the writer. The setting is in Cleveland, where that world does influence the movie they end up creating. What I liked about the dynamic of characters is that Ricardo is clearly the lost-boy trying to find his trade, even though he has found it, and Gunther is the mature man who knows what to do to get what he wants. The two compliment each other in the end when Ricardo is describing his swim in the water, picturing the American Rock-n-Roll before him on the glittering water surface. On aspect of the story I liked is how Gunther has affected Ricardo's marriage. They would have to go to couples counseling if he works on the movie, like that's how much his marriage is on the line but then at the end Ricardo says, " Why shouldn't it be me?" Ricardo has found something he wants to do with his life and he's ready to start that new chapter, even if it means ending his own marriage for the sake of making it "big" in Hollywood.
Then in Amy Tan's Rules of the Game we see how a girl named Waverly Place Jong, or Meimei, becomes a national champion of chess. I loved reading the process of what brought her to be the chess player she is at the end of the story. The successful girl, who at the same time is going through some drama of her own. It all started when her brother Vincent got a chess set at Christmas from their local church. From there she learns how to play from him, and a man by the name of Lau Po in an alley. She learns so much for Po and uses what she learned to win her first chess tournament. Watching her excel and succeed in chess reminded me when I was in middle school trying to learn as much as a could. I wish I had gotten to learn chess the way she did. Anyway, the most powerful scene about the narrator is at the end when she runs away from her mother and the people around her once she feels embarrassed. Meimei notices how her mother is using her and she doesn't like it. One thing you do notice while reading it is her mother's broken English. I really got a sense of the narrator's lifestyle from her mother's language and how she was raised with her brothers once she became noticed for her chess playing. In the end it was a great story to read, especially at the end when she's playing against the player in her mind - pondering what her next move is.