Bored. The teacher’s voice drones on as I stare out of the window, captured in a mesmerising daydream on whether simultaneous events really do occur simultaneously, accounting for light’s speed. Which is something I would say if it was a normal school day. It’s funny how fast things change. It used to be intelligence and determination that mattered in school, but now it’s hair & eye colour. I guess that comes later. I might as well start from the beginning.
I guess it started with the politics. When that man on the posters with the tidy hair and neatly cut moustache got elected as chancellor and appointed himself as Führer of the country. Fervent rallies quickly turned to doctrine as the people’s fear was turned against them. My country was used to flawed policies so I saw this as something that would pass in time, but the banners that adorned my city did not.
Mrs Gottschalk did not arrive. Another teacher strolled in, confidence in his stride. “Welcome” he said, an icy coldness in his voice, “Starting from today, every person in this class will have a new timetable”. He read out a list of everyone in the class. Almost everyone. All except David. I tried to catch his eye. The teacher continued, “The ones called out are to report to me to collect their new timetables.” David put his hand up. The teacher shot him a mere glance of disgust before disregarding David. He lowered his hand and called out, “But what about me, sir?” A bird flied past the window. The teacher turned his full attention onto David and repeated “Starting from today, every person in this class will have a new lesson plan.” David looked puzzled, “I don’t understand sir…” A quick hand movement beckoned David to the front.
The teacher inspected David. “Boys and girls, let’s have a quick Biology lesson before second period” announced the teacher. “The Jew doesn’t understand, allow me to explain” David shuffles his feet. “This disgusting specimen is an example of the sub-human species trashing and corrupting our perfect society. Who else would be responsible for the unfair terms that the treaty was agreed upon? It was all of the lower life scum polluting our culture.” I felt a flare in my chest. Anger.
David looked down, ashamed. “And those things come by many different names, Jewish, Gypsies, Pacifists, the list is endle-” My legs moved before my mind commanded them. My knees wre trembling, I couldn’t look him in the eye. The teacher took three steps towards me, grabs my collar, hissing like a Kreuzotter “It seems some must be disciplined”. David looked shrunken, smaller. The air whistled through the classroom and the cane struck my flesh. I jerked, the instrument brings about a new wave of pain. I felt reality slipping into darkness. It wasn’t the pain that haunted my dreams.
It was his smirk.
January 10, 2015 at 10:09 am
This final line is excellent – ‘It wasn’t the pain that haunted my dreams, it was his smirk.’ You have created a remorseless villain and given us a clear identification point through the eyes of a child – allowing sympathy.
Targets:
This still requires a little proof reading – look at this sentence: ‘little was I aware that these were the moments that were to shape out my whole life.’ What word needs to be removed? Where else do similar errors need to be corrected? How about this: ‘I am a fifteen year old male’ What other instances has Klaus used vocabulary like this? If this is a conscious decision, the vocabulary needs to be made consistent and amplified.
This reads as one long paragraph – please correct it.
February 6, 2015 at 10:30 pm
Remember to use paragraphs! Your final one is far too long.
March 13, 2015 at 11:33 am
Here’s an excerpt from Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas to exemplify the conversation we just had about language effects in descriptive writing. It’s an extreme example, but it might help shift you away from your current overly didactic style.
To begin at the beginning:
It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters’-and- rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows’ weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.
Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.
You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.
Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.
And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before- dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.
Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.
Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, suckling mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman’s lofts like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread’s bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.
Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding though the Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed; tumbling by the Sailors Arms.
Time passes. Listen. Time passes.
Come closer now.
Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you can see in the blinded bedrooms, the combs and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing, dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.
From where you are, you can hear their dreams.
April 14, 2015 at 10:56 pm
Daniel,
Your paragraph lengths are still too long in the lady two paragraphs – please amend this.
There is also some work to do with proof-reading and editing sentence structures and spelling (look at your use of homophones – past vs passed).
Look at your paragraph that describes the assault by the teacher and the lead up to this. How often have you repeated ‘the teacher’ or ‘shot a look/glance’ – how might you make this more engaging, descriptive and less didactic?