Close Reading #1: "The Egg" by Andy Weir

 Click here to read this awesome story!

Alright. I have to admit that I did find this story whilst stumbling on StumbleUpon BUT I do not regret choosing to write about it for my close reading. Although this piece comes across as short and could be considered as an easy read, the message that Andy Weir tried to portray through this read had quite an impact on how I viewed life. Needless to say, it blew my mind. Okay, I'm going to stop rambling now and actually start with the analysis.

Diction/Imagery:
          One of the factors that makes this piece so interesting is the style of writing that Weir has. The sentences that he composes tend to be quite short and extremely straightforward yet it still holds the capability to catch the reader's attention. Unlike most writers, who enjoy using over two pages just to elaborate the description of a pineapple, Weir gets straight to the point by including a sentence like "Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me" which paints a perfectly clear picture for the reader in a single twelve worded sentence. In other words, this is not the type of story that plays mind games with the reader and makes it unnecessarily difficult for them to picture the scenario. Weir also puts an emphasize on dialect, which composes roughly 95% of the story. This plays a significant role in the story because Weir is not trying to focus on specific descriptions of the characters, but he wants the reader to analyze them through their words and provide a different point of view between two people.
          By beginning his story with the sentence,"You were on your way home when you died", Weir successfully initiates the curiosity within the reader's mind to wonder about who exactly is dead, or how they died, and why did this person even die in the first place. The story then continues in the perspective of "God" and  progresses through mostly dialect between two mysterious beings. I quote God because the one in the story does not specifically mean the god that's in the Christian faith. The God Weir's trying to portray is of the generalization, or combination of all the religions within the world, an ultimate power that wields supernatural qualities that people hold faith in. This can be seen through the section when God explains to the dead man that “All religions are right in their own way,”. The man that has just died represents humanity as a whole, and his confusion in the beginning symbolizes (like it is said in the story) the fact that mankind is not yet "mature" and in need of guidance of a god to help enlighten him of his bewilderment. Weir's usage of simple sentence structures and word choice shows that his motive in writing this short story is not to specifically target any kind of age group, or class, but to allow the readers to reflect upon the relationship between humanity and religion.

Details:
Of course, one of the most significant elements of a story is detail. Weir, in this case, did not fail to describe things ranging from a "congratulatory slap on the back"  to specific people of history such as Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, and Hitler. These details are not included within the story just for a brief history lesson, but to prove a point. The God of the story tells the dead man that he represents everything in the universe, that he is the universe and the only one that has ever existed. The dead man, who is obviously astonished, questions this fact by using historical figures such as Hitler and the thousands he killed, Abraham and John Wilkes Boothe, and Jesus and those who followed him, to show the contrast between good and evil which can ultimately be concluded that humanity is composed of both these elements.