"Let me see, what stories should I choose to discuss in my response paper?" I asked myself. "Well, all stories we came across were very interesting and worth reading, maybe except one or two that were painfully long. So I really ought to pick the ones that caught my attention the most and the ones that I could closely relate my own experiences to." As this thought went across my mind, three stories came right out of my head without even allowing me several more minutes to give a more thorough consideration over some of other pieces we had studied. My selections are "Seventeen Syllables", "The White Stocking", and "A & P". These three stories were well written. It was a real pleasure reading them, therefore, I developed a strong urge to dig into the stories and analyze them. I wanted to discover every single idea the authors tried to bring across in those stories and understand it as if I was the writer. I hope my response paper will bring readers a deeper understanding of these three stories and help them develop their own personal insights towards them.
             In the story "Seventeen Syllables" written by Hisaye Yamamoto, a mother with newly developed passion for creativity is Tome Hayashi, a Japanese woman who had come to the States to escape the traditional role and identity prescribed to her by the Japanese society. She now lives in a farm with her husband and Japanese-America daughter, Rosie, where they pick tomatoes for a living. The creativity of this woman, however, has not rested on how to be a loving and caring wife, but rather on writing Haiku, which she sees as a better way to reject the memories of a once unhappy life and a motivation to move on and lead a new and more fulfilling life.
             Hayashi's life was not a happy one. She had been through so much, borne the things that were unbearable, and possibly had been hurt so very deeply that she almost c...