Free Write- Anastasia Kishiniovski - AP Lit - 3rd Period

    Since we can write about anything for this post and I've only recently been switched into your class, I decided to write my blog on the short story that I read over the weekend. I chose to read "Hairball" by Margaret Atwood because the title seemed engaging to me. The story is very well written and every passage comes off as fresh and appealing, however, I found the material to be quite depressing. I suppose it's from a realistic point of view as people are trying to "find themselves" everyday, but I feel like the main subject of this story is striving to be someone who she isn't and chasing after a life that she doesn't want. I believe that this is true of everyone at some point in their lives. People envision who they want to be and attempt to alter who they really are in order to achieve that vision. Kat realizes too late that what she really wanted was what she was hiding from: a sense of stability. Her life had been centered around change and individualism for so long that she had a void that needed filling, what she really yearned for was consistency and a family. Kat comes off as a "wannabe hipster" to me. She tries so hard to be unique, but in reality she is just like everyone else. Her sense of individuality throughout her life has been change; when she bored of one persona, she moved on to the next. This lifestyle gave her a distorted view of reality and led her to believe that what she really wanted was always somewhere else. The ending of this short story especially depressed me as I realized that Kat was right back to where she started; looking for somewhere to belong. The circular element of this story did however give closure to the "Hairball" object that was mentioned in the introduction. Kat felt that Hairball was a part of her and Ger, so she sent that package to Ger's house on the night of their party. While she admits that she has done a horrible thing, she expresses no guilt, just as Ger had expressed little remorse for firing Kat and basically exiling her from his life. This story, to me, is similar to The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian lived a similar lifestyle to that of Kat's: a selfish pursuit of pleasure in which moral consequences were not important. In the end, both Kat and Dorian's lifestyles destroy them as they lose sense of themselves and who they want to be. Margaret Atwood's "Hairball" is a piece that made me contemplate what defines an individual and what makes us complete. It also made me realize that what is most important in our lives is staying true to ourselves and not attempting to be someone that we are not.