Question 1: Make a thesis-driven argument, rooted in the close reading of texts, that comes to term with The Chattahoochee Review's tagline. How do the stories you've read this term speak to this...

Exploring the South within us
Literature brings us various insights, sometimes strange enough to invoke thoughts that we may not have consciously built. The stories that we have read this term, even though diverse and different, have a common streak of underlying want and desperateness that forces the reader to believe that the authors have an unfulfilled desire and are seeking fulfilment in some form or another. This unfulfilled desire or need for fulfilment is what reminds us of how the world sees the South and how the South wishes the world to see it. The global South as well as the American South desire to be seen as a part of the world, just not the unfortunate part (Holland). It wants to be seen for what it is and not what it was or what the world has designated it to be (Bibler).
The treasures of life are not in the luxurious living and comfort the city life has offered the one that the world is so proud of. It is present, in the little things that we end up missing as we walk away from nature, from the roots of natural life. This is what the South symbolizes to the world. What the world and the North call the relics of the past, is what the South boldly calls “Sab” as mentioned in the story of “Sab” by Ann Pancake. Throughout the story we are kept in the dark regarding what the author and Sull are actually searching for. In the process, we start to search our own lives for what is missing. The author ends the story with the discovery of that “Sab”, which would heal the wounds she has endured throughout her life (Pancake, 8).
The story “Snake life” by David Bajo, takes us on another stride through the wilderness. While we know that no world is free of dangers, nature reveals a little pain in this story. However, the pain that Aaron undergoes is not the focus of the story; the focus is the way he recovers. The story goes on to reveal how we have an innate ability to heal ourselves- an ability that the grown man’s world makes us forget we have. Even though Aaron, recovers through what one can call a dream, the world the author is trying to reveal to us is the one we have buried in us (Bajo, 84). The South that we consider only a dream and mystery may actually be the healing power within all of us that we look down upon.
Evil is definitely not inherent in anyone, anything or any place, like the South is being viewed by the world. Phong Nguyen makes an attempt to refute this myth that surrounds the South through his story, “Hush please”. The story is featured in a war-torn land, yet even in this grieved land, grieved people and among the lost lot, there is survival, hope and scope for something beyond humanity. The role reversed here, we see the sceptic way in which the South views the world and that there is good beyond limits, beyond what we perceive, even in a war-torn land embodied in the form of Sen (Nguyen, 46).
Perhaps, “The Rat” has the most moving story that we have read this term and it relates to the story of the South in a very unique way. The central character or “The Rat” seems to represent the South to us. Herbert is the rest of the world. While we find the South intriguing and...