Nozomi's Third Piece "Reading Reflections on "The Annointed""

This is a reading reflections on the short story, "The Anointed" written by Dr. Kathleen Hill

This story is about a girl’s recollection on her early teenage with her main focus on a boy, Norman. Norman, her classmate is a silent boy, whose father eventually commits suicide. She observes Norman, at school, mainly in music class, and also at her aunt’s house’s neighborhood, where Norman often came to visit his father who never responded to his visits.

It was really interesting to me, the way Miss Hughes, the music teacher was depicted in the story. The descriptions on various expression that she bears on her face made me really think of what she would be like if she were in front of me. "The silent mask"really made me think of what was really inside her mind, when she assumed that on her face.

Norman was also really interesting to me, although I could hardly grasp what kind of person he really is, reading the story. I also wondered what has happened already to Norman and his family at the point where the story started since, aside from his father, his mother never appeared in the story.

There are many factors in the story, that made me really curious about, at the same time I also enjoyed the uncertainty, or the mystery there. I also played the music as I read the story and it was the most fascinating thing to listen and read the depiction of the piece at the same time. I also thought it was wonderful to feel the dynamics of music contributing to the development of the story bringing me to a much closer sense of actually being there.

I found Miss Hughes comment on Mozart's Lacrimosa at the end of the story really interesting.

"If you listen closely, I know you cannot fail to hear something else: the tale of how our grief; the desire for what we do not have, the desire for what is forever denied us, may at length—when embraced as our destiny—become indistinguishable from our joy."

I found this comment really profound and pondered over what this really means to Norman, or further to myself.

The story ends, but there remains the uncertainty. What was the expression on Normans face that nobody has seen before, that looks into
"the eternity"? "What has happened to him after that?"
I think the latter one might be the feeling that Ms. Hill was talking about in our class, why she started to write this story. I thought, what Ms. Hill tried to do through writing this was not to create Norman's story that followed the incident, but a retrospective, creative, re-construction of her memory she had with Norman and her surrounding environment during that time of her age.

I would like to thank Ms. Hill for giving me this opportunity to read her story and, If I have any chance sharing my thoughts with you on this, that would be most wonderful.