Text 2: Blood Drive

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When the good weather of spring hit, people got giddy and tense. There were accidents. In homeroom one bright morning, Darcy dropped her bag on her desk, and the derringer inside went off and took out Ralph Babb’s right eye. He lived, but when he came back to school his head was kind of caved in and he had a bad fake eye that looked like a kid drew it. It only stared straight ahead. Another was when Mr.Hallibet got angry because everybody got into the habit of challenging his current events lectures after seeing Constance in action. He yelled for us all to shut up and accidently squeezed off a round. Luckily for us the gun was pointed at the ceiling. Mr.Gosh, though, who was sitting in the room a floor above, directly over Hallibet, had to have buckshot taken out of his ass. When he returned to school from a week off. He was sweating more than ever.  

            Mixed in with the unusual spring fever, there was all kinds of drama over who was going to the prom with who. Fist fights, girl fights, plenty of drawn guns but not for comedy. I noticed that the Kind of Vermont was getting wackier the more people refused to notice him. When I left my sixth-period class to use the bathroom, I saw him out on the soccer field from the upstairs hallway window. He turned the stun gun on himself and shot the two darts with wires into his own chest. It knocked him down fast, and he was twitching on the ground. I went and took a piss. When I passed the window again, he was gone. He’d started bringing alcohol to school, and at lunch, where we were back by the woods hanging out, he’d drink a Red Bull and a half pint of vodka.

            Right around that time, I met Constance at the town library one night. I had nothing to do, but she had to write a paper. When I arrived, she put the paper away and was reading. I asked her what the book was. She told me, “Pluto”

            “Good Story?” I asked.

            She explained it wasn’t a novel, but a book about ideas. “You see,” she said, “there’s a cave and this guy gets chained up inside so that he can’t turn around or move but only stare at the back wall. There’s a fire in the cave behind him and it cast his shadow on the wall his faces. That play of light and shadow is the sum total of his reality. “ 
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Blood Drive is a short story by Jeffery Ford. Throughout this short story the author plays with time making it hard for the reader to know what time period this story is taking part in. It also plays with the plot setting.The audience couldn't tell if the main characters lived in the country side or in the city. The author does this to show that the issue on guns is not just localized in the country but is a problem in the city as well. This style is one of the characteristics of post-modernism. Also the author uses juxtaposition of certain events at the main characters school and her reactions. For example the main character is looking out the window and watches a class mate shoot himself with a stunt gun and she just continuous walking down the hall to go to the bathroom. To the audience this is something that is disturbing and shocking and we expect the character to have the same reaction but she doesn't. This is done to reveal this reality that we almost treat this gun incident as normal and makes us question whether we want this to be "normal". Then the author reveals the ugly truth as the message in the end of the story. The title blood drive is an indication of this. In the end all the classmates went against one another and began to shoot each other. The main character was the only one was not shot and killed in the classroom. She was also the only one in the classroom that didn't pull out her gun. This shows the truth that gun can cause a mass destruction and doesn't really protect you from others.