In the Wine Shop- Shawn Bendeck

1. The story’s narrator is revisiting a place he once lived.  Explain the significance that this “revisiting” has in relation to the themes of the story.

In search of fellow colleagues and later realizing that the school once taught at hadn’t looked the same no more or even had the same name to it, the narrator has come face to face with change. In hopes of potentially fulfilling some type of nostalgia the narrator is clearly let down once analyzing the small town and his current surroundings. Imagine coming back to the neighborhood in which you had grown up your whole life after a period in time only to feel like a stranger in your own home. When you revisit a place you wouldn’t revisit somewhere you hadn’t bad experiences with so when the narrator is displeased with what he is seeing this comes as a shock to them. Revisiting and not expecting what you though you were going to expect also relates to the old friend the narrator meets when he goes to give the flowers only to find out that the girl had been dead. The man also resisted the boy only to find out his body had been washed away. In revisiting you don’t come with a negative mindset as this man only wanted to do good for the young girl and boy only to find out times have changed significantly. 

3)   Describe an instance of Filial Piety in the story. What is its significance?

An instance in where Filial Piety is displayed in the text is when Weifu returns to move his brothers grave and purchased a small coffin for the once living three year old. His mother had been upset of the grave becoming swamped so to make his mother happier he wanted to rebury his brother. Of course he was later disappointed to find everything gone. He still ordered the men to continue digging at this point not only wanting to please his mother but himself as all he wanted to do was just see his little brother. I really feel for this man and the scenarios he has been through, but times do change drastically as we get older sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.