Sixth Writing Assignment

For this assignment we were given the task at looking at Karen Russell's novella, Sleep Donation. The story is connected to today's society in many different ways. In some ways, one can read the story and get the idea that Karen may have been saying something about corporate companies. Some may read the story and think that she may be saying something about how we are being consumed by technology. Another person can look and make the connection that it is saying something about how the news tends to blow things way out of proportion. Another interesting theory is that the story can be connected with what is going on at this very moment, and that is the major outbreak of the Ebola virus than has been coming up in the news lately. Two things that I chose to take from the story that seem to be in many different works these days is the fact that technology is all over the place and the recent rise of female protagonists in many recent types of media. Though this story is the not the first, it does takes some jabs at the fact that we may be going down the wrong path with our use of technology. This especially starts to get scary when you think about the headset that the characters wear. It seems like every day we get slightly closer to something very similar. The only thing that kept popping into my head was the new Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. It is like having a whole new world being created right before your eyes. And it seems like that is going to be the future of video games. Even some new stories and films have been playing around with the idea. Another interesting aspect of the story is that the protagonist is a female. This seems to be a popular trend in new books and films. Even video games have started jumping on the band wagon. Some good examples are Katniss from Hunger Games, and Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. It is actually kind of refreshing to see these kind of characters break free from being a typical damsel in distress. They seem to be tough so that both genders can relate to them which makes a nice interesting balance. It also makes for some interesting scenes if there is a strong male lead character in the mix. Stories like this seem to be saying that there shouldn't be such a huge divide between genders. One can get as many things done as the other.