Thursday, December 5, 2013

Water by the Spoonful Response


I chose the moment where Elliot is talking to Orangutan to show the two realities crossing.  There are two main story lines, that of the actual world and then the online world.  Yaz and Elliot appear in the actual world story line, while Haikumom and Orangutan make up most of the online world’s story.  These two worlds intersect when Elliot logs onto his mother’s, Odessa’s, computer.  She is logged onto a site entitled “RecoverTogether”.  He begins talking to a person with the name of Orangutan.  Elliot reveals his identity to the other online user saying that he is not Haikumom, but instead her son.  Orangutan goes on to say she knows about his struggles with addiction, even though it is not the same as his mother’s.  Throughout their conversation, Yaz is reading over Elliot’s shoulder.  As they continue chatting, facts are revealed to Yaz about Elliot’s past.  She learns that he overdosed three times.  This throws the two into a heated talk.  Yaz learns so much about Elliot in such a small amount of time.  I think this interaction of the worlds brings focus to the problems the characters have.  They are recovering but they have troubles talking about.  Elliot cannot tell Yaz about what truly haunts him, but he has no problem with an unknown online person knowing about his life.  It is hard to let the people you really know in sometimes.  This interaction emphasizes that.  It also reveals important things to all characters in the scene.      

2 comments:

  1. I agree with Morgan, that this is a very noteworthy moment in the story. It does show the online world and the real world crossing, but beyond that this is the first time that the audience hers Elliot is still struggling with addiction. We find out that he's had issues with painkillers, and is probably struggling with more than we think. I think it's interesting that Hudes chooses to have the audience find out on the recovery chatroom, rather than just having Elliot do drugs at some point. It makes it seems harder on Elliot, because these people that are also addicts are just calling him out on a webpage. Even though it's an online world, it's still a conversation between real people and i think the addiction reveal makes this moment even more poignant.

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  2. I like how this moment allows the online world to provoke the actual world. It shows that you can hide behind a mask in the online world and the actual world. It is easy to hide behind a computer in the online world and tell all your deepest secrets without no one knowing who they are and what they really look like without affecting some one close. Then there is a contrast when we she how Yaz gets affected by Elliot's deepest secret.

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