Skunk Dreams

First off, I liked how Louise Erdrich opened the story. Her description of the field and the encounter with the skunk was very detailed and I could picture it in my mind. I also liked how she transitioned from the skunk into different topics, a nice connection with the introduction. The only problem I have with the beginning is the "life after death" part. There is a tiniest bit of connection between the dream-life state and the life after death, but it isn't as apparent as I would like it to be. The skunk doesn't really match this part of the essay, and by putting the skunk section in the beginning, it makes me feel like that is what the whole essay should be about.

Reading the second page, I was confused about her mood swings. I wanted to know how they started, or if some particular thing had caused them. Before I could get an answer, Erdrich switched to a completely different topic--best dreams in motels. Her flow of the paper is a bit confusing and jumps around a lot. Why Erdrich is talking about dreams is also confusing. Is she trying to make a point about the random paragraph of life after death? Or is she still talking about the skunk and elaborating on dreams?

One thing I absolutely hate about this article is when Erdrich writes about falling in love. Does she try to tie it in to the woods she was previously talking about? No. Her sentence is, "...I fell in love." I think this was a poor attempt to just get a point in the story across. This is just my opinion, but I like a background of a blunt fact. The sentence also makes you feel like she fell in love with a person, when really she just keeps talking about the landscape of New England and North Dakota.

While some people might like how Erdrich forms her dreams and obstacles into inanimate objects, I do not. The paragraphs of the paper when she talks about the fence surrounding the game land being an obstacle were hard for me to read. I just really could not connect with her style and the way she wrote the paper.