"Wait"

Looking at the story of wait, I thought that the story was trying to use this airport terminal as a means to look at the whole world. The story shows a variety of different people all in different situations. The businessman, the girl from Ghana, the Bulgarian man, and the Honduran women, all represent different cultures as well as socioeconomic classes. I felt like the description of the Olympics is the strongest evidence for the idea that the airport terminal is a representation of the rest for the world. The people in the terminal just like in the world are in conflict they are plagued with disease, hunger, and scarcity of resources but, they are able to put this aside and have what begins as a friendly completion, between the different groups of people. Just like in the real Olympics there are political implications represented by the argument over Cyprus. The characters are stereotyped by their sports that they play, The Americans are good at baseball, the Chinese are good at table tennis, and the Kenyans sweep the marathon. Before long they begging making actuations about the other groups of people taking drugs and cheating When the Olympics are over they go back to fighting just as in the real world counties often stop fighting for the duration of the Olympics and then continue once they are over.
The juxtaposition at the ending of the story serves to make the imagery more powerful. By setting this fairytale ending of the man, women and child flying away in the hot air balloon, with that of a warlord shooting into the air, gives us a heightened sense of the turmoil that the man women and child are leaving.