Today our group did a review on a short story, "The Bear Got Me" by Matthew Licht. The story is about a Military Engineer who was hired to check all the weapons to see if they are working normally. On the way to the Military base, he was trespassing an Alaskan forest when he noticed something trailing his jeep. He looked at his side mirror and was shocked. A big, black bear was racing after him! His fear quickly turned into curiosity and became fascinated at how fast it can go and for how long. He slowed down the jeep and kept watching from his side mirror. Suddenly, he started to have weird visions of the bear racing up to his window, proceeding to slash at him ferociously and brutally. He panicked and picked up speed again, but the bear was still trailing him without fail. Just when he was completely devastated, he saw a light up ahead. It was the Military base he was heading to! He sighed with relief, but remembered the bear behind him again. Due to the fear of being caught up, he didn't stop even when the security soldiers were telling him to. Without any choice, they shot the wheels of his jeep in order to prevent him from breaking in to the base. When they went to his window to interrogate him, he had a strange vision again of the bear slaughtering all three of them in an even more brutal way than before. After the two security soldiers listened to his story, they claimed that there was no such bear following the jeep in the first place, and that maybe he had a bit too much to drink. The story ends there.
This was a very weird and strange story to me, and nobody knows whether the Engineer was actually hallucinating for sure. Maybe it was a spirit that only he can see? Maybe he was drunk? I think that's up to our imaginations to decide. The story starts really suddenly without a proper introduction and ends as fast as it started. Honestly, I had a pretty hard time taking in the plot of the story myself.
The characters are portrayed really well though. The Engineer is an impatient and grumpy man, and swears whenever things don't go his way, but he is also very curious at strange happenings, seeing how he tested the bear's speed and stamina by slowing down his jeep. On the other hand, the security soldiers may seem strict since that's their job, but judging from how they suggested that the Engineer had too much to drink when he claimed he saw a bear, we can tell that they like to joke around.
The genre of this book is suspense, because at the part where the bear is chasing him, he panics that he will get caught up by it, and makes the reader nervous and tense, urging us to read on to see what happens. But, in the end, the story ends with the soldiers claiming they have not seen any bears around the area. Was it just a hallucination, was it a spirit, or was he simply crazy? That was what generated the most discussion in today's literature circle. We agreed that there was no actual proof of the bear being non-existent, so we decided to let our imaginations conclude the story. I thought the bear was actually a spirit who had a grudge on human beings for killing them years ago before the incident in the book.
I would recommend this book to older people because of the complicated language as well as the various swearing used in it. The plot is pretty confusing too as I mentioned above , so it will be a very difficult read for a young audience. Nonetheless, for mature people who love suspense stories, this one's for you!
No comments:
Post a Comment