"An Once of Cure"

The response to Alice Munro’s “An Ounce of Cure"
The title of the story isn't an expression in the same meaning as it is always used ( it means that it is better to try to stop potential problems before they occur, rather than trying to fix them once they are problems). It is a literally expression too. "An ounce of cure" is two glasses of whiskey that the girl stole from the Berrymans. She had a lot of problems at that moment and she was trying to solve them, and all that she actually needed is to get wasted from two glasses of whiskey, be ashamed of the consequences and settle down with her life. The "once of cure" helped the girl to realize what is really important in her life. After the incident she had with alcohol, her eyes seem to be open to a lot of things. At that point the alcohol was her only hope. To my mind teenagers who are reading about this incident are going to open their eyes and they will learn from the girl's mistake that the only way to deal with their problems is to first acknowledge that there is a problem and then openly confronting it.
The story is really smart and shows the problems of a usual teenager life.

"Happy Ending"

The story of Margaret Atwood “Happy Ending” is a very ironic and witty story. While reading it, the reader realized that the author is a very smart woman who is not scared of satirizing other authors and their story lines. She shows the readers that in general, the plots of romantic fiction are pretty much all the same, romantic and non true. She is saying that the authors are sometimes too plot-driven. They forget about the characters and their development and focus on the plot, and the ends are always the same. Atwood says that it is only how we get to the ending part that differentiates the skills of authors-the end is always the same-they both die. The authors use different ways to get to that point but in the end it is all the same. Atwood isn’t even close to be sarcastic when she says “The only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die”, she is just being honest and says what others won’t say. Her story and her ending make people actually think about the common topics and same stories. It makes readers change their minds about something you wouldn’t usually think.

“The Management of Grief”

The scene with roses and Dr. Ranganathan.
Dr. Ranganathan already knows that his relatives are dead and there is no hope for him. He might look a little bit of a tough guy in the scene, but he is just that kind of person that keep his problems bottled up. He is a man from another religion background, he is absolutely different from what Shaila is used to. He doesn’t really know what to say and how to make her feel better, he knows that it is worse to not know anything. The expression “No news is good news” doesn’t work when your close and beloved people are in the middle of nowhere and you have no idea what is going to happen with them. Dr. Ranganathan tries to comfort Shaila and offers her roses. In that situation, it actually means a lot. He is very careful with his answers and his questions: “Vinod is how old?”-he didn’t use the past tense, he thinks before he says something. He knows he can hurt Shaila a lot now and ruin her hope just by one little word. He can’t hold his feelings when they look at the pictures though. He can’t handle even more dead people around him, who he used to know. He apologized afterwards and ran out of the room. Situations like this are always terrible and difficult for everyone. People don’t know what to say and how to react, they try to help others too, but they are also being selfish and nobody blames them for that. Dr. Ranganathan is an amazing man, who was trying really hard to help someone else, knowing already that his relatives are dead.