CONCLUSION:
Finally,
I have finished doing my work. To begin with, I dare say I thought it
would be
less time-consuming: it was a long work and not only a reading activity.
Furthermore, I could not make a diary on my blog, as I would like to
have done,
because when I knew there was the blog option, and hence the
possibility of
doing this daily task, I had already begun to read and analyze my
hypertext so
I have tried to upload comments I had on Microsoft Word Documents to
the blog
in more or less the same order and date as I read and wrote them.
Moreover,
I would like to say that this new experience, that of dealing with
hypertexts,
has been an interesting one: I have always liked writing short stories,
but I
could never have imagined of writing them as “Websites”: with links with
different paths to follow by each reader and with different endings
that your
own choices lead you.
The point I have liked the most is the
way the
author has to let us know everything, from the actions to the spaces or
the
same characters. She does not narrate every single fact in a logical
order, nor
does she a description of the characters: It is the reader who has to
take out
who these people are, where they are, what is happening and when it is
taking
place by means of what s/he is reading. While s/he advances through the
reading, s/he will discover why something happened and only when s/he
finishes
reading it the reader would be aware of the hypertext as meaningful
unit.
Also,
now I have read it several times, and I have analyzed some aspects I
think I
can say that the whole story happened on summer time, maybe during
summer
holidays: There were some clues from the very beginning (even the
title, ‘Winter
Break’, was a good one) but I did not realize until I read the last
node: ‘Back
to school’. It seems to me that the story started when she took a plane
to L.
A., to pass some time with his boyfriend, who lived there. After having
eaten
lots of ice-creams -an action which is not done in winter-, and gone to
the
beach, Andy and she split up, and then she came back to her town, to
pass there
the winter- and then the school year started again-
.
But
after reading the whole work, I have reached the same conclusion I had
at the
introduction: In order to make good use of the great possibility
hypertexts
have opened (that one of choosing your own way) I think the author
should think
about including more new and completely different links so that it
would be ‘more
original’ each time it is read.
Last
but not least, I think the author could have included other kind of
materials
to link text which would have made the work even more attractive: some
photos
or images, use of different colour letters…
Anyway,
I found ‘Winter Break’ is simple in structure but, at the same time, it
is an
amazing, funny, entertaining and enjoyable hypertext which reflects our
current
society: short relationships, feelings misunderstandings, a selfish
society in
which responsibility seems to have vanished.
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Laura Pons Fernández