Kimos Essay #7

Kimo Gray
11.04.08
English 9
Mr. Salsich

I am the type of person who relishes the sigh of relief I get when I finish a good book or story. I’m not one to go back and re-read the same story and study it closely. The Garden Party, by Katherine Mansfield, is a simple story about a girl named Laura that comes face to face with the harsh reality of life when forced by society to value a silly garden party more than the death of a man lesser than her. Though re-reading stories and such is unusual to me, The Garden Party featured many subtle techniques and sentences that I had carelessly overlooked on my first reading.
On my re-reading of the Garden Party, I found certain things that I had failed to overlook before. One example is the function of class distinctions throughout the story. Laura states, that she feels as if she had a choice, she would socialize with all the people she could, she would have fun with these men rather than the boys, she would be herself, no matter what social status society gave them. But later in the story, immediately after learning the news of the man’s death, Jose, Laura’s sister, instantaneously accused the man, who was of lower class than them, of being a drunk, without even giving him a chance. Along with that, another overlooked example would be the distinct change in Laura’s appreciation of life. From the beginning, where her greatest worry was a silly little garden party, to the fretted prevention of the party in order to honor this unknown man, to her confrontation with the unanticipated. Laura faced her true initiation in this short story; her initiation into appreciating life. Furthermore, my third example of the success of re-reading would lie on page 6, where little Laura, still concerned about this garden party, sang a song. But this song spoke of the difficulty life trusts upon us, and how we all wish, sometimes, to just die. This superb act of foreshadowing that I missed in my first reading propels what seems to be a simple tale into a grand adventure through life’s biggest questions. Even though Garden Party may not have been my favorite piece ever, I think I have shown what a good re-reading can do; reveal truths, raise more questions and paint the picture a little bit clearer for next time you read it.
I don’t like to be proven wrong. Before given the assignment I would have stated that to go and re-read a whole story just to find information would be a useless waste of time. But given the large amount of detail I found in Ms. Mansfield’s writing, I now can say that I have been proven wrong. While it may not be the most ideal thing to do, the best way to enjoy a story is to go back and reveal the detail that makes it even better.