The Knife Thrower

It's been quite some time. So what brings me to blog today? My English 1102 assignment. Let me point out, I do not like this class. I dread it every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Through high school I was a pretty good english student. I like to read, and I like to write, so it all worked. For this class, however, I do the absolute minimum. I'm sorry, but writing "at least 350 words" about dull topics about the same short stories I've been reading over and over for the past four years doesn't exactly spark my interest. Throw me something creative, however, and you might have given me something to work with.

As soon as I got my second essay assignment of the semester, it sparked my interest. I'm not going to lie, it worried me, it's challenging, but I was also excited to get to work, in a totally nerdy, weird way.

The first part of our assignment was to choose any short story we've read thus far and edit one element of it to create a meaningful change in the theme. I chose "The Knife Thrower" but Steven Millhauser because the story peaked my interest to begin with. Unfortunately, I can't give you guys a link or anything to the story, I tried. You could look it up though! It's worth your time.

Anyways, I just finished my change, and I'm getting restless. Here's what I ended up with:

I decided to make my change to “The Knife Thrower” by Steven Millhauser. My change takes place in Paragraph 38, which begins with, “She led the girl to the black wooden partition”.

The dark woman led the girl to the black wooden partition and then walked back to the table at the rear of the stage and removed the same object that she had used to hold Thomas' arm in place, two of them this time. She then walked back to the girl and began to work slowly and gently at fastening both of her wrists to the wood, confining her, as if she may change her mind and decide to run away. She had made her choice. The dark woman stepped back and appeared to assess her arrangement, after which she crossed to the back of the stage. At this point some of us had confused thoughts of calling out, of demanding an explanation, but we didn't know what it was we might be protesting, and in any case the thought of distracting Hensch's throw, of perhaps causing an injury, was repellent to us, for we saw that already he had selected a knife. It was a new kind of knife, or so we thought, a longer and thinner knife. And it seemed to us that things were happening in slow motion, up there on the stage, as if Hensch was teasing us with the suspense. It was as if the master was giving us time to think about whether or not we really wanted to see what we had all come to see. Now that is was time for him to live up to his reputation, he seemed to beg us to stop him, knowing that we would say nothing. We all sat completely still, not even breathing, our eyes glued to the master. The dark woman was no longer in sight. The lights had slowly began to dim, it was almost completely dark. Finally, we could see nothing at all. The vividly white spotlight shone on the girl, positioned exactly the way that the dark woman had left her. None of us knew how long ago that had been. Laura stood out, pale as chalk, staring straight ahead. Slowly, the reddish spotlight shone on Hensch. Slowly, Hensch drew back his hand. For one last moment, we all thought about stopping him, about yelling out, but then it was too late. In one lightning fast motion, Hensch threw the final knife of the show and the reddish spotlight disappeared, leaving only Laura for our eyes to focus on.

Some of us heard the girl cry out, others were struck by her silence, but what stayed with all of us was the absence of the sound of the knife striking wood. Instead there was a softer sound, a more disturbing sound, a sound almost like silence, and some said the girl looked down, as if in the same stupid surprise we were all in. Others claimed to see in her face, in the expression of her eyes, a look of rapture. As her head hung forward, the lights came on, and once again the whole stage was in view. The girl was left, crucified, on the black wooden partition as we all stared in dumb horror. The dark woman stepped forward and swept her arm toward the knife thrower, who for the first time turned to acknowledge us. And now he bowed: a deep, slow, graceful bow, the bow of a master, down to his knees. Slowly the dark red curtain began to fall.