The Brains Behind “There Will Come Soft Rains”

A presentation on Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Lakshmi Sunder, Heather Smith, and Chanice Posada

Summary Part 1: Lakshmi

The story takes place in an empty, robot-run house, the only house left standing in the city of Allendale, California after an apparent human disaster. The story starts out with a wake-up call from a voice-clock. However, it’s apparent by the fact that no one woke up, ate breakfast, or left the house that it was devoid of people. We see the house as it progresses through the morning, doing all the things one would expect a human to do. This includes making breakfast, cleaning the dishes, and using tiny robot mice to clean the house. The house’s entire west side was burned except for five places, in which there were pictures of what is assumed to be the family that resided there. The house is often frequented by animals, like stray cats and dogs and birds. However, the house closes itself off to any visitors.

Summary Part 2: Heather

A dog shows up at the house, and is recognized by the house. It is let in, with sores and mud all over. The cleaning mice trail after it. The dog runs around the house, looking for people, but not finding any. Eventually, the dog starts running around rabid in circles, and dies. The house takes care of the decay. At 2:35, the house sets out a table of cards and food, but nobody is there to eat it. A 4:00, the table is put away. 4:30, the nursery walls start glowing, creating a sensory experience of animals in the jungle, running around and living in their habitat. At 5, a bath fills with water; 6, 7, and 8, dinner is put away (?), and a relaxing area is set up in the study. 9, the beds warm themselves up, and at 9:05, a voice from the house asks what poem their owner would like to hear. They get no response, so the house selects a poem entitled There will come soft rains by Sara Teasdale. It is about how, when mankind is gone, nature will continue going on, because they will not care.

Summary Part 3: Chanice

AT the end of the story, we see that the house begins to die and deteriorate at 10 clock. When the wind blew, a tree fell down onto the house and set the kitchen ablaze with the cleaning solvent that had ignited the flames. The house rang alarm immediately as it proceeded to try and salvage itself.  It has water mice that try and extinguish the fire, they failed and the flames continued to travel up the stairs and into the rooms. This prompted the time to release robots to put the fire out, but the fore was clever and it spread outside. The house kept malfunctioning and recounting the times and emergency protocols. A crash, which was the house finally collapsing sent he house to be flattened and imploded. The house was flattened and the last words were “ its August 5th 2026..”

Analysis Part 1: Lakshmi

An element of fiction that Bradbury uses often throughout the story is setting. Because the story is set in a futuristic house and world, his descriptions of the setting must be that much more detailed in order to paint a picture in the reader’s mind that otherwise would be difficult to visualize.

What can I learn from Bradbury’s use of setting that I can use in my own writing? Bradbury does an excellent job of using the motif of time to take his story along in an efficient and effective manner. While I don’t think time has to be the method of moving the story along, I can learn from his use of a specific tool to help distinguish the setting and scenes. Something else I can learn from Bradbury’s setting depiction is his use of imagery and sensory details. A paragraph that really struck out to me was the one about the nursery in the house. Bradbury did an excellent job of allowing the readers to picture an otherwise alien situation in their minds:

Four-thirty… Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance… The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp, cereal meadow.

Especially with science fiction and fantasy, setting conveyance is critical to engaging the reader and making them experience what the characters are experiencing. Bradbury’s description allowed me to feel the virtual reality of the meadow. Using his techniques of simple but vivid imagery and his use of sensory detail to engage the reader, I can improve my own setting description and world-building.

Annotations:

In the living room the voice-clock sang…

– This first sentence of the story describes where we are starting out in the house and what is happening.

Seven o’clock, time to get up…The morning house lay empty…seven-nine, breakfast time!

– These phrases in the first paragraph all help the reader understand the time and condition of the house.

In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh

– This sentence transitions the setting from the living room to the kitchen and sets a scene of what is happening the kitchen.

“Today is August 4, 2026,” said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, “in the city of Allendale, California.”

– Bradbury not only tells us that this scene is taking place in the kitchen, he even uses dialogue to tell us the exact date and city in which the story occurs.

“Eight-one, tick tock, eight-one o’clock… It was raining outside.” ­

– This paragraph describes the time this is taking place and the weather in the outside world (separate from the setting where most of the story takes place, the house).

Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean.

– This small line of dialogue coming from the voice-clock transitions the reader to a new time period and lets the reader know what is about to happen.

Ten o’clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes.

– This excerpt from a paragraph details the change in time and the weather of the outside world. Bradbury also describes the setting of the house my comparing it to the greater setting off the city it is in.

Ten-fifteen … The water pelted windowpanes, running down the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint…

– This paragraph describes the time as well as the current condition of the house, allowing the readers to visualize the setting in their minds.

Twelve noon. A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch.

– These two sentences allow Bradbury to transition using the time change. He uses that segue to introduce a new character (the dog).

“Two o’clock,” sang a voice. Delicately sensing decay at last, the regiments of mice hummed out as softly as blown gray leaves in an electrical wind. Two-fifteen. The dog was gone.

– As has been done previously, Bradbury uses time as a method of moving the story along and setting the scene. Telling the time gives the reader a good idea of when this scene is taking place and what exactly is happening.

Two thirty-five. Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower of pips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches. Music played.

– Again, Bradbury mentions the time to tell us when this particular scene is happening. Beyond that, Bradbury uses a mix of imagery and sensory detail to help the reader visualize this scene and what exactly the house is “doing” and for whom.

Four-thirty… Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance… The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp, cereal meadow.

– Bradbury uses excellent imagery to depict this surreal scene and transition to a different place in the house, the nursery.

Five o’clock. The bath filled with clear hot water. Six, seven, eight o’clock… and in the study a click.

– Bradbury tells the reader the time to move us to a different setting in the overall setting of the house. He uses “Six, seven, eight o’clock” consecutively to demonstrate that no scene changes or important occurrences happened within those hours. Finally, Bradbury mentions the study to transition us to where the next scene will be taking place.

Nine o’clock. The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here. Nine-five. A voice spoke from the study ceiling:

– Time is used as means of transitioning from the bedroom back to the study.

At ten o’clock the house began to die.

– This is a very important sentence. While Bradbury uses time once more it is to transition to the start of the climax/crisis of the story,

The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings. Now the fire lay in beds, stood in windows…

– Bradbury uses imagery to help the reader “track” the fire as it moves through different settings/rooms in the overall setting of the house.

From attic trapdoors, blind robot faces peered down with faucet mouths gushing green chemical.

– This sentence moves the setting into the attic and depicts what is happening in this new setting.

It had sent flames outside the house, up through the attic to the pumps there…The fire rushed back into every closet…In the nursery, the jungle burned.

– These three lines describe the movement of the fire throughout the setting and moves us from the attic to the closets and finally to the nursery.

The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke. In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen making breakfasts at a psychopathic rate…

– These two paragraphs help the reader visualize the newly transformed setting. However, at the same time, it focuses the story back to a smaller part of the overall setting, the kitchen, to show the readers that the house is still trying to “stay alive”.

The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlor. The parlor into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar.

– This paragraph pictures the final collapse of the house. Its “last breaths”, one could say. This marks the end of the crisis as the “battle” between the house and fire has ended in the fire’s favor. The paragraph shows the change in the main setting of the story (the house) and thus makes the plot shift from crisis to resolution more defined.

Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone.

– Bradbury most likely described the setting of the outside world after the fire to show that it had remained relatively unchanged. He also uses this as an opportunity to describe the condition of the now demolished house.

“Today is August 5, 2026,”

– This final line of the story finally brings it to an end by describing the setting once more using the date. One could say it represents a “new day”.

There are many overarching themes in “There Will Come Soft Rains”, all involving the advancement of technology and the ethical implications of that, as well as the Machine Age’s impact on humanity as a whole. Robots can be both a help and a hindrance.

What can I learn from Bradbury’s use of theme that I can use in my own writing? One thing I learned from Bradbury is his use of subtlety when it comes to themes. He doesn’t tell the reader the relevance of the story. That makes it more informative and expository and less creative. Instead, he alludes certain themes (such as the persistence of machines and artificial aliveness) using the plot and his description of characters and setting. One example of this that I noticed was

The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores … Behind it whirred angry mice….

Bradbury describes two characters in the story, the dog and the robot mice, and compares them. By doing so, I noticed that he conveyed the actual living dog as weak and dying but the mechanical mice as more energetic and alive. Thus, I was able to recognize this pattern in the story (another example would be his description of the virtual meadow in the nursery) to notice the theme of artificial aliveness. This use of subtle hints and suggestions for subthemes keeps the reader on their toes and makes them dig a little deeper, rather than just being fed the information. Another thing I can learn from Bradbury is his use of metaphor and symbolism to help convey certain themes. For example, in the sentence:

But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

Bradbury conveys the theme of humanity’s self-destruction by comparing humans to gods and the house to worshipers. This conveys the theme in a more interesting and vivid way, allowing the reader to compare a fictional (at least, back then) idea to something they are more informed about.

Annotation:

An aluminum wedge scraped them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.

– This represents the theme that machines have replaced human duties. In this example, the house washes and dries the dishes itself, which used to be a chore for humans.

Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their mustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust … The house was clean.

– In this example of the theme of robots replacing “the help”, robot mice are the ones cleaning the house. They’re doing it well and efficiently.

This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.

–Not only does “There Will come Soft Rains” touch on the idea that robots are both a help and a hindrance, it also implies the effects of humanity on itself and the world around us.

The five spots of paint—the man, the woman, the children, the ball—remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer.

– A kind of subtheme involving humanity’s impacts are the “remnants of humanity”, what is left behind. Bradbury suggests that only small evidences of humanity remain after whatever disaster wiped out the population.

But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

– Bradbury uses the symbol of humans as gods to show the theme of humanity’s self-destruction. At least in the house, the robots tried to serve their “gods” although there were none left.

The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores … Behind it whirred angry mice…

– This is a subtle theme that I noticed repeated throughout the story. It’s the idea that the robotic house is depicted as alive, but the actual living beings (like the dog), are weak and dying.

They looked out upon color and fantasy. Hidden films docked through well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived. The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp, cereal meadow.

– This is yet another example of the theme of “artificial aliveness”, in which the nursery of the house has a virtual reality of being in a meadow. In the actual world where the story takes place, such places are implied to be nonexistent.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground…And not one will know of the war, not one – Will care at last when it is done. – Not one would mind… if mankind perished utterly; – And Spring herself … Would scarcely know that we were gone.

– The poem placed in the story plays on the theme that life will go one even when humanity ceases to exist.

At ten o’clock the house began to die…The house tried to save itself.

– This yet another example of the theme of “machines being artificially alive”. Using words like “die” and “safe itself” to describe the machine-run house, Bradbury hints at this theme.

The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings.

– Bradbury includes the detail of the fire devouring the paintings to show an example of the traces of humanity slowly fading. Art is a very human thing, and the idea that it is being burned goes to show that humanity is fading away.

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air.

– Bradbury compare the house to the human body, using words like “bone”, “skeleton”, “nerves”, “skin”, and “veins and capillaries”. Such personification helps convey the repeated theme of the house seen as alive.

A scene of maniac confusion, yet unity; singing, screaming, a few last cleaning mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away!

– A theme I noticed conveyed was the “persistence of robots”. Here, the robot-run house works in harmony to stay alive.

Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam:

– This sentence is written towards the end of the story. This again is showing that life will go on despite the disappearance of humans (“even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam”). It also shows the repeated theme of artificial aliveness and the persistence of machines.

Discussion Questions:

1. In the story there is a recurring idea of time. For example, “Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o’clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one!” or “Nine-fifteen, time to clean!” Do Bradbury’s frequent mentions of time hold a deeper meaning or symbolize something? Or are they simply a vehicle to take the story along?
2. Why did Bradbury include the poem in his short story? In your own writing, would you switch styles/genres the way he did or do prefer to keep it consistent?

 

Analysis Part 2: Heather

What can I learn from this story that will help me write my own stories?

‘August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains’ by Ray Bradbury was a wonderful story. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, for a plethora of reasons. For one, the dystopian, futuristic tone is already set by the title, but the first paragraph of the story truly cements it, which I believe all good stories should (set the tone, that is).

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!

From this alone, the reader can tell that this story will go over science fiction type themes (Well, maybe not so science fiction anymore!). The details put into the story were truly captivating and really immersed me in the setting. Such as,

The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted windowpanes, running down the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint.

Or,

Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower of pips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches. Music played.

Just the little things Bradbury planted in his writing really had an impact on me, I would like to add the same little things to my writing as well. The way that Bradbury addressed the effect of the absence of the owners on the house, just–oh, I loved it.

The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

That passage, I loved it so much! Religion impacts my life a great deal, and I loved how Bradbury inserted that into his story. It made complete sense to me. I would love to mention such topics like this in my writing.

Analysis Part 3: Chanice

Style and Character:  Ray Bradbury has an interesting way of writing. He uses concrete images to build images in your mind, and he challenges modern ideas.  He wrote this story in a futuristic place, in August of 2026. He included detailing like the setting and actions of the house and the remaining outside world. Details like the line,

From attic trapdoors, blind robot faces peered down with faucet mouths gushing green chemical.

show that Bradbury built a futuristic world and used images helo the reader picture it in their mind.

Discussion questions:

What does the element of the abandonment of the machine symbolize?

…as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness.

Does the date hold a hidden underlying meaning? Is it just there for detailed purposes?

Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…

“Revenge of the Lawn” Write Up by Sophie Walker

Richard Brautigan’s “Revenge of the Lawn” begins with the narrator describing his grandmother, who in the ‘20s was a bootlegger in the state of Washington who had the entire county under her control. But this story isn’t about her. The narrator goes on to describe his grandmother’s lawn, or rather lack thereof, and then Jack, an Italian real estate agent who lived with the grandmother. He was responsible for letting the lawn die, and he hated the lawn, which would always put nails in his car. The narrator then explains that the lawn was the pride and joy of his grandfather, a psychic who correctly predicted the date World War I would begin but was shipped off to an insane asylum a year before he got to see his prediction come true. He believed the lawn was the source of his powers, but Jack didn’t take care of it and let it die. The narrator then tells three stories about times the lawn, or rather the creatures in it, wreaked havoc upon Jack. In the first story, one of the bees that swarmed the pears that would fall of the tree and rot in the yard crawled into Jack’s wallet and stung him when he tried to pay for food at the store. In the second story, a bee crawled down Jack’s cigar and stung him on the mouth, causing Jack to drive the car into the house. And in the third story, the grandmother discarded some mash (which is used to make alcohol; evidently this was part of her bootlegging business) in the yard, and the geese who lived in the garage started eating it and got blackout drunk. The grandmother, thinking they were dead, de-feathered them and put them in the basement to sell and eat; the geese were actually not dead, and they woke up and went outside into the yard just as Jack pulled in. He was so disturbed by the sight of the de-feathered geese that he drove the car into the house again. The narrator ends describing his earliest memory, which is of Jack cutting down the pear tree that the bees gathered around and burning it.

The chronic tension of the story is that the narrator’s grandfather, who is in an insane asylum, cared deeply for the lawn, while Jack does not and let it die. The acute tension is that the lawn and the creatures who live in it are now tormenting (sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally) Jack as revenge for letting it die (hence the title).

The first thing I tracked was personification of the lawn, beginning with the very title, “Revenge of the Lawn,” which implies that the lawn has some sort of sentience. When the lawn is first introduced, the ground itself seems to be alive:

Jack hated the front yard because he thought it was against him. There had been a beautiful lawn there when Jack came along, but he had let it wander off into nothing. He refused to water it or take care of it in any way.

Now the ground was so hard that it gave his car flat tires in the summer. The yard was always finding nails to put in one of his tires or the car was always sinking out of sight in the winter when the rains come on.

But, as the story progresses, it becomes not the ground but the animals who live in it who are enacting their revenge:

The bees somewhere along the line had picked up the habit of stinging Jack two or three times a year. They would sting him in the most ingenious ways.

And the drunken geese are written so much like people, it’s easy to forget that they’re birds and not humans:

I guess they came to a mutually agreeable decision because they all started eating the mash. As they ate the mash their eyes got brighter and brighter and their voices, in appreciation of the mash, got louder and louder.

And in the end, Jack ends up cutting down and burning the pear tree. The pear tree’s tormented Jack only tangentially, by producing the rotting pears that attracted the bees. But it’s either what Jack feels is tormenting him the most—or perhaps a final attack against the lawn.

This personification is what makes the entire plot work. I would consider this to be a magical realism story, and the very premise is that the lawn enacts revenge against the man who let it die. Were it just a normal lawn, it wouldn’t be able to enact its revenge, and so there would be no story.

The other technique I tracked was the use of anecdotes to tell us about the story’s characters. This story is told entirely through anecdotes, as if the narrator is stream-of-consciously telling some of the stories he’s heard at family reunions. But highlighting the entire story wouldn’t make much sense, so I zeroed in on anecdotes that are used specifically for the purpose of characterization. Each major player in the story—the grandmother, Jack, and the grandfather—are introduced with anecdotes:

[My grandmother] of course was no female Al Capone, but her bootleg­ging feats were the cornucopia of legend in her neck of the woods, as they say. She had the county in her pocket for years. The sheriff used to call her up every morning and give her the weather report and tell her how the chickens were laying.

[Jack] was not my grandfather, but an Italian who came down the road one day selling lots in Florida.

He was selling a vision of eternal oranges and sunshine door to door in a land where people ate apples and it rained a lot.

Jack stopped at my grandmother’s house to sell her a lot just a stone’s throw from downtown Miami, and he was de­livering her whiskey a week later. He stayed for thirty years and Florida went on without him.

My grandfather was a minor Washington mystic who in 1911 prophesied the exact date when World War I would start: June 28, 1914, but it had been too much for him. He never got to enjoy the fruit of his labor because they had to put him away in 1913 and he spent seventeen years in the state insane asylum believing he was a child and it was actually May 3, 1872.

He believed that he was six years old and it was a cloudy day about to rain and his mother was baking a chocolate cake. It stayed May 3, 1872 for my grandfather until he died in 1930. It took seventeen years for that chocolate cake to be baked.

These anecdotes have no connection to the main plot, but they give the reader insight on the characters. They are the closest we ever get to an actual description of them (the one exception being the mention that the grandfather was short, which then leads to an anecdote about how he believed being short made him closer to the lawn and therefore able to absorb its psychic powers). We never know what the characters look like (aside from the aforementioned shortness), and the narrator never takes the time to tell us the character’s traits directly. And yet, through these stories we know quite a bit about who they are as people. The grandmother, as a bootlegger with the whole county under her control, is probably pretty tough and not to be messed with. Jack, as a door-to-door real estate salesman, is probably pretty sketchy and sleazy. And the grandfather, as an insane psychic, is probably, well, pretty weird, and possibly rather morbid as well, if his idea of “dreams coming true” is a bloody war.

In my own writing, I might want to imitate this story’s anecdotal structure. Instead of having a linear plot, “Revenge of the Lawn” is just a series of anecdotes to combine to form a larger storyline. This allows the narrator to talk about quirky details that have little or no effect on the plot itself but help give the reader a greater sense of this absurd family.

Writing Exercise: Write a story consisting of several small anecdotes revolving around a central idea (a location, a set of characters, etc.) that have similar themes.

Questions:

1. Does Jack have a character arc? Does he change throughout the story, or have an opportunity to but choose not to?
2. Is this more Jack’s story or the lawn’s?
3. Are the acute and/or chronic tensions truly resolved?

Story of a Ritual Long Forgotten And Yet Continued: “The Lottery” Write Up by Ishika Dube

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson begins on the morning of June 27th when people gather around the square at 10. Children gather piles of stone in a heap, the boys are rambunctious while the girls talk among themselves. The men soon begin to gather and women share gossip. The women soon stand next to their husbands and the children reluctantly join their parents. The process for the lottery by Mr Summers who conducted the various activities for the own. It describes the box for the lottery as shabby. Soon, Mr Summer swirls the paper slips that had replaced the wooden chips. The narrator describes the various procedures of the lottery as performed in the village and how some of it had been lost through the ages and some of it was confused. Just before the lottery shortly begins, Mrs Hutchinson comes in late, having forgotten that it was the day for the lottery. She talks with Mrs Delacroix for a while and joins her family. Mr Summer jokes about her coming late and the crowd had a moment of laughter. Mr Summer soon calls on some families asking about who is drawing for them. After they settle everything, the lottery begins. Mr Summer gives his orders, and he calls on the head of the families to draw on the strips and not open them until he’s done. As the lottery progresses Mr Adam talks with Old Man Warner about how some villages had stopped the lottery. Warner condemns them and says that it is the younger generation that is enforcing the change and that they would now like to live in caves. It soon comes out that the Hutchinson’s have got the blackened strip. Mrs Hutchinson yells at Mr Summers for not letting him get enough time to choose. The process goes on and the officiant asks about the members of the family and if they have any other households. Tessie insists that their daughter and her husband should join in. But, Mr Summer objects saying that they with the husband’s family. The lottery is now conducted with the individual members of the family and this time, Tessie gets the paper. She bemoans her faith. The officiant asks them to make it quick. The villagers gather their stones from the piles made by the boys or the ones on the ground and start hitting Tessie. Someone even gives her younger son some pebbles to aim at her. Stones start hitting her and Tessie keeps on yelling that “it isn’t fair”. 

The chronic tension of the story would be the beginning of the lottery itself. The acute tension would be the Hutchinson’s being selected in the lottery. 

The first technique that I tracked would be the reaction of Tessie and others towards her throughout the story. (In purple) It is interesting to see the change of emotions mainly in Tessie but also in others around her through the process of the lottery. They begin from being friendly and good-natured and then to Tessie loudly yelling about how it isn’t fair and her friends and even her son picking up or being given pebbles and stones to stone her to death with no consequences. The author does an interesting job of portraying emotions of a character not unlike when faced with situations of life and literal death even though it is the third person. The tone goes from the jovial nature in joining in community activities to the morbid participation in stone a person to death as a community for a ritual that has been held on so tightly that it had lost its meaning. 

At first, when Tessie comes in late for the lottery she is greeted with goodwill and is joked about. She talks to Mrs Delacroix about why she was late in the first place and people let her in good-naturedly and alert about her presence to her husband. Even Mr Summer cheerfully jokes about her coming later and Tessie replies in similar nature. 

The people separated good-humoredly to let her through; two or three people said, in voices just loud enough to be heard across the crowd, “Here comes your Mrs., Hutchinson,” and “Bill, she made it after all.” Mrs. Hutchinson reached her husband, and Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said cheerfully, “Thought we were going to have to get on without you, Tessie.” Mrs. Hutchinson said, grinning, “Wouldn’t have had me leave m’dishes in the sink, now, would you, Joe?,” and soft laughter ran through the crowd as the people stirred back into position after Mrs. Hutchinson’s arrival.

Tessie herself is very cheerful all throughout the lottery whilst the other women appear to be more nervous than her. She playfully orders her husband to go up there. Some chuckled at her tone. 

As the lottery commences and the Hutchinson’s get chosen, Tessie good-humoredness changes and she accuses of Mr Summer not letting her husband have more time in choosing the strips which led him to take the blackened strip. The surrounding others remain apathetic to her cause and call her out on being a spoil-sport and that they had almost chance as her. They show her no sympathy even her husband tells her to shut up. Tessie displays the emotions of a caged creature getting enclosed and frightened by the narrow lines drawn by chance holding her. 

“Be a good sport, Tessie.” Mrs Delacroix called, and Mrs Graves said, “All of us took the same chance.”

The lottery goes on and Mr Summer asks if they have any other households under their family. Tessie becoming more and more desperate yells about their daughter and her husband to improve the odds. But, the officiant refuses her request by saying that their daughter goes with her husband’s family. Now even Bill is regretful and says that there are only the two of them and only their children. The process begins again and Tessie quietly says that the process should be started over again as it wasn’t fair, her husband hadn’t been given enough time to choose. As the drawing begins again, Tessie loudly calls onto to everyone around her trying to get their attention. Even when she is called, she thinks about a moment of defiance but, ultimately submits. 

She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly, and then set her lips and went up to the box. She snatched a paper out and held it behind her.

Tessie is forceful and Bill has to take her slip and shows it to the people that hers is the one with the mark. 

Although the others around Tessie have a similar attitude all throughout, it is interesting to see how they are quick to pick up rocks to stone her with no regret even though they were literally talking to her moments ago. They turn a deaf ear to Tessie’s protests and advance forward with stones. They even go as forward as to arm her youngest son with pebbles to presumably her with them. The ending is the most accurate depiction of mob mentality and mass hysteria in the sense that a group of people become so wrapped up with an idea or a tradition that they refuse to look beyond it. 

Mrs Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs Dunbar. “Come on,” she said. “Hurry up.”

Mrs Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said, gasping for breath. “I can’t run at all. You’ll have to go ahead and I’ll catch up with you.”

The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles.

Tessie’s own attitude is interesting as it is almost presented as if she doesn’t care if somebody else is chosen even from her own family. She tries to denounce the lottery as not being fair or even trying to put her children’s name to improve her chances of not getting selected even though she willing joins it. 

Shirley Jackson provides an insight into the inner workings of a person who believes they are trapped and have no escape and tries every trick in the book to secure themselves out of the situation even though it might harm others. 

The other technique that I tracked was the descriptions of the lottery itself. (In red).  And how Jackson makes it appear so normalized until the end where Tessie gets stoned to death. She also foreshadows through the hesitance and Tessie’s scared attitude. She takes something that is a common event to get something as a prize to making it into something morbid. The events into itself link the holding onto traditions that have lost their meaning and use, distorting it until it is shapeless and then calling it a tradition instead of changing it. Shirley Jackson has also weighed into the meaning of her story and has said that she hoped that graphic dramatization of such a ritual would show as to pointless violence and general inhumanity in people’s life. Such can also be seen in some of the morbid received by Jackson where people had asked whether it was real and if they could go and watch it. 

The story begins with giving the feel that the lottery itself is a community event where people gather with their families to draw. 

The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock.

It is also remarked that many villages had the tradition of the lottery and it generally varied from one to two days. All the people in the families gathered together waiting for it to start. The children often collected the stones in advance for an advantage to start the stoning quickly. And just like any community event, the people jovially talked together. 

The ritual began as soon as Mr Summer walked onto the square. Although the original paraphernalia had been lost, the box for the ritual had been in use for a long time. It was said to be made of all the old pieces of the lottery. It is almost symbolic of the ritual itself as most of traditions centred around it were forgotten but, it was still used as the gory ritual of stoning. A ritual which had lost its meaning but, held onto in the name of tradition. Mr Summer had though been successful in bringing change by putting in use paper slips instead of wood chips as the population was growing and they needed something that would fit in the box. 

Mr Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box.

The night before the lottery, Mr Summers and Mr Graves made the slips and then the box was kept in the former’s coal company for security and then taken to the village square. Other times of the year, it was kept in different places every year. 

The rest of the year, the box was put away, sometimes one place, sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr Graves’ barn and another year underfoot in the post office, and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there.

There were even more procedures to go through before it officially started. The heads of the family had to be counted, then the members themselves and Mr Summer had to be sworn in as officiant of the event by the postmaster. There also used to be a recital of some sort wherein the officiant went around chanting but, only a few remembered. This muddled recollection of the tradition made up most of the ceremony. There was also a ritual salute which was deemed unnecessary and was toned down to the officiant greeting each person as they went to collect the slips. 

there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory, tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse.

People who were absent had to be drawn in by someone. Mr Summer went around asking people who were drawing for some respective families. Mr Summer explained the rules of the people although only very few listened properly as they were fully versed with the ceremony. The lottery began with people picking up strips for their family from the box and the family with blackened strip was chosen for the next round. 

After that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr Summers, holding his slip of paper in the air, said, “All right, fellows.” For a minute, no one moved, and then all the slips of paper were opened. Suddenly, all the women began to speak at once, saying. “Who is it?,” “Who’s got it?,” “Is it the Dunbars?,” “Is it the Watsons?” Then the voices began to say, “It’s Hutchinson. It’s Bill,” “Bill Hutchinson’s got it.”

Then the family was asked about the number of its members and if they had any other household. Married daughters were not counted under their father’s family but under their husbands. Then slips of paper were in the box from which the drawing began from each member of the chosen family. 

The one with the blackened strip was the chosen one. The others gather stones and surrounding the chosen person. They aim at the people until they die. Everyone takes part in as a community. 

Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box. Mrs Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs Dunbar. “Come on,” she said. “Hurry up.”

Old Man Warner was saying, “Come on, come on, everyone.” 

Shirley Jackson portrays various things in this story perfectly. She underlines in themes of violence in people, willingness to take part, the inhumanity, holding onto to a tradition of no meaning and the behaviour of a person caged by circumstances and chance. The normalisation of the tradition itself lends onto the morbid ending and shock experienced by the reader. 

Writing exercise: Write a story about a ritual that has been in a culture for a long time and give it a surprise/morbid/grotesque twist.

Discussion questions:

1. Why does Tessie at first seem to be willing to participate in the ritual until it narrows down upon her?
2. Why do you think a tradition such as the “Lottery” been taken so seriously and guarded in the community?
3. What do you think about the mob mentality that springs up among the people when Tessie gets selected and the way they advance onto to her with no regret?
4. Why do you think Tessie wanted to include their daughter and her husband? 

Miss Sidley’s Twelve Dead Children

A presentation on Stephen King’s “Suffer the Little Children” by Benjamin Azencott, Caroline Anthony, and Gryphon Alhonti

Summary part 1: Benjamin

At the beginning of the story, we are presented to Miss Sidley, a very old school teacher, who has to wear a brace because of her bad back. She keeps her classroom in check with an iron fist, due to a trick with her glasses that allows her to view their actions even when she has her back to them. This leads to all of her students fearing her, not daring to do anything mischievous. One day, she sees that one of her students, Robert, is no longer afraid of her, and when she asks him to answer a question, his words are ominous and give her a bad feeling. She then, out of the corner of her eye, watches him transform into a monster, but he is completely normal when she turns back around. He also gives her a strange look as he heads out of the classroom, and his face haunts her when she tries to go to sleep later that night.

Summary part 2: Caroline A.

After catching a glimpse of Robert’s changed form, Miss Sidley struggles to cope with the image and becomes less focused on teaching and more on what she saw. Mr. Hanning asks her to go inspect the girl’s bathroom, and she agrees, still theorizing on what she’d seen until she overheard two girls talking about her. Suddenly, the two girls changed into monsters, and Miss Sidley presumably fainted, waking up to see Mr. Hanning and Mrs. Crossen, who offer her help. Miss Sidley refuses both of them and continues as usual, though now even more perturbed as to what she’d seen. Her confusion doesn’t last for long, however, because the next day after school, Robert changes before her eyes, causing her to run away and almost get run over by a bus. This incident leads to her taking a break from teaching for about a month. One week after she returns, she brings her brother’s gun with her to school. She decides to put Robert out of his misery and gives the students a Test, asking Robert to accompany her first.

Summary part 3: Gryphon

During the beginning of the end, Miss Sidley has now taken Robert into the mimeograph room and has shot him. She then realizes that Robert, was, in fact, human and not a demon. Despite what the reader may have expected, Miss Sidley does not stop. She takes eleven more students, one by one, and murders all of them. As she’s leading the thirteenth child, Mrs. Crossen catches her in the act. She horrified and screaming. Mrs. Crossen attacks Miss Sidley and she is arrested. There is no trial for Miss Sidley, although the public was hysterical and demanded one. One year later, Miss Sidley is put into a controlled environment with a group of children. At first, all is well. Then, after a bit of time, Miss Sidley becomes upset and requests to be taken away. That night, she committed suicide.

Analysis part 1: Benjamin

Artistic Purpose

The first craft I had to look for was “Artistic Purpose”, which is the message or the reason that the author wrote their story in the first place. In the case of Stephen King’s “Suffer the Little Children”, his artistic purpose for writing the short story was to scare the reader with his vivid descriptions of the horrifying monsters who took over the children at Mrs. Sidley’s school. Each time Robert, the main monster, or any other of the children change, he employs this technique. At the start of the story, when Mrs. Sidley is thinking over what she saw in her dream, King writes:

 What was it I saw when he changed? Something bulbous. Something that shimmered. Something that stared at me, yes, stared and grinned and wasn’t a child at all. It was old and it was evil.

 He is hinting at what the monsters look like. Giving the readers a little bit of information so that they can imagine in their heads what Robert really is, so that when he reveals it, the impact will be even scarier. The next occurrence where a child, in this case two of them, changes, is the scene where she goes to check on the toilet paper in the girls lavatory, and overhear two girls talking about her, and then subsequently turning into monsters. King describes:

They seemed to elongate, to flow like dripping tallow, taking on strange hunched shapes.

He is continuing to build the reader’s image of these alien creatures, each time giving small pieces, so that they fear continues to build up inside of them, and then have it reach its maximum when he finally completes it. The most prominent scene in the story where he uses this technique is when Mrs. Sidley decides to keep Robert after school, and he morphs in front of her into his true form. King writes:

Robert changed. His face suddenly ran together like melting wax, the eyes flattening and spreading like knife-struck egg yolks, nose widening and yawning, mouth disappearing. The head elongated, and the hair was suddenly not hair but straggling, twitching growths. Robert began to chuckle. The slow, cavernous sound came from what had been his nose, but the nose was eating into the lower half of his face, nostrils meeting and merging into a central blackness like a huge, shouting mouth.

Here he now has completely finished revealing the terrifying appearance of the monsters that have taken over the students. The long path he has taken to get there, revealing, bit by bit, small pieces of their physique, and then finally showing the final product, terrifies the reader to an extreme, and hits them much harder than if he had shown the change at once. In the end, Stephen King fully fulfills his artistic purpose, leaving the reader confused and scared, and using a great array of vivid descriptions to accomplish this goal.

Plot and Action

The second writing craft I had to look for was “Plot and Action”, which is the sequences of action that move the plot or storyline in a story forward, from start to finish. There is an abundant amount of action in this short story, taking the reader from Mrs. Sidley’s first glance of Robert, the only student in her classroom unafraid of her, to the climax, where she brutally murders twelve young children in cold blood. The first important piece of action that sets the story rolling is when she notices Robert isn’t afraid of her like normal, and then she catches a glimpse of Robert changing, but not enough to see his true form, flustering and terrifying her. King writes:

Now she saw a phantomish, distorted Robert in the first row wrinkle his nose. […] Robert changed. She caught just a flicker of it, just a frightening glimpse of Robert’s face changing into something … different. She whirled around, face white, barely noticing the protesting stab of pain in her back.

This is the inciting incident. Because he wasn’t afraid, this led to Mrs. Sidley paying close attention to him and eventually seeing a small part of his transformation into a monster. This makes her scared and frustrated, which will affect all of her choices later on in the story. The next important action is when she sees him transform completely and runs outside, falling right outside of a school bus. King writes:

She ran. She fled screaming down the corridor […] . She clattered down the steps and across the sidewalk and into the street with her screams trailing behind her.

This second event of seeing one of the children fully transform is so terrifying to her that she blindly runs away, going so far as to run in front of traffic, almost dying to an incoming school bus. The fear and frustration she had been building up throughout the last two days is now fully maxed out, and she has to take a month off of school to cope with all of it. When she returns however, she is determined to put a stop to all of this, and brings her brother’s gun with her to school, inciting the clmax of the story, where she murders twelve children, and would have killed more if she wasn’t stopped by fellow teacher Mrs. Crossen. King writes:

She killed twelve of them and would have killed them all.

This action is extremely important to the plot and is the culmination of all the other actions taken before in the story, all leading up to this one point. All in all, Stephen King does a great job of using action in important parts of the story to push the plot forward.

What can be taken from this piece

In the short story, Suffer the Little Children, by Stephen King, there are many great techniques that can be imitated or taken to improve one’s one writing, but the main and most important one is his way of describing the monsters. When he describes their transformation, he uses unconventional words that give the reader a good image of what he is talking about. For example, when he uses the words “flowing like tallow” to describe the transformation process of the monsters, and the words “knife-struck egg yolks” to describe their eyes.

Discussion Questions

1. Artistic Purpose: What do you think was Stephen King’s purpose for writing this short story?

2. Plot and Action: How does Stephen King use action to advance the plot?

Analysis Part 2: Caroline A

Point of View

Stephen King’s “Suffer the Little Children” is told mostly in a third person limited point of view through Miss Sidley. Miss Sidley is a stiff and old schoolteacher who presumably works with young children, judging on the content that she is teaching them, as referenced in this quotation, where she is teaching the children in her class how to pronounce the word vacation.

“Vacation,” she said, pronouncing the word as she wrote it in her firm, no-nonsense script. “Edward, please use the word vacation in a sentence.”

“I went on a vacation to New York City,” Edward piped. Then, as Miss Sidley had taught, he repeated the word carefully. “Vay-cay-shun.”

“Very good, Edward.” She began on the next word.

King uses details such as her “firm, no-nonsense script” to help convey her personality and feelings towards the children in her class. He also does this by indirectly revealing her thoughts to us, as he did when showing us her glasses trick.

One of her little tricks was the careful use of her glasses. The whole class was reflected in their thick lenses and she had always been thinly amused by their guilty, frightened faces when she caught them at their nasty little games.

This also shows us how Miss Sidley does not seem to like teaching very much, or at least she enjoys it for the wrong reasons. This is all shown to us within the first page of the short story, providing us with concrete information as to what Miss Sidley’s personality is. As we continue on through the story and strange things begin to happen, the limited point of view allows us to experience the fear she is feeling.

That was when the shadows changed. They seemed to elongate, to flow like dripping tallow, taking on strange hunched shapes that made Miss Sidley cringe back against the porcelain washstands, her heart swelling in her chest.

But they went on giggling.

The voices changed, no longer girlish, now sexless and soulless, and quite, quite evil. A slow, turgid sound of mindless humor that flowed around the corner to her like sewage.

She stared at the hunched shadows and suddenly screamed at them. The scream went on and on, swelling in her head until it attained a pitch of lunacy. And then she fainted. The giggling, like the laughter of demons, followed her down into darkness.

King’s masterful use of imagery and point of view portray the fear Miss Sidley was feeling almost effortlessly. As the story progresses even more, we follow Miss Sidley’s slow devolve into madness:

She felt no qualms; he was a monster, not a little boy. She must make him admit it.

Miss Sidley neither heard nor saw. She clattered down the steps and across the sidewalk and into the street with her screams trailing behind her. There was a huge, blatting horn and then the bus was looming over her, the bus driver’s face a plaster mask of fear. Air brakes whined and hissed like angry dragons.

Miss Sidley stared at the children. Their shadows covered her. Their faces were impassive. Some of them were smiling little secret smiles, and Miss Sidley knew that soon she would begin to scream again.

Until finally Miss Sidley feels the only thing she can do to rid herself of this monster that is eating away at her mind is through violence.

Miss Sidley brought the gun to school in her handbag.

And, after killing eleven children and finally getting caught, she even goes so far as to try and force the child she was going to kill next to change, commanding her, saying things like

“It had to be done, Margaret,” she told the screaming Mrs Crossen. “It’s terrible, but it had to. They are all monsters.”

 “Change,” Miss Sidley said. “Change for Mrs Crossen. Show her it had to be done.”

“Damn you, change!” Miss Sidley screamed. “Dirty bitch, dirty crawling, filthy unnatural bitch! Change! God damn you, change!”

By this point in the story however, the third person limited point of view seems to be slowly dissociating, until the narrator is not narrating Miss Sidley anymore, but a different man named Buddy Jenkins. I believe King uses this sudden change in point of view as a way to show the reader Miss Sidley’s deterioration in mental state; from hearing her thoughts, to showing her actions, to a while new person entirely.

King’s use of point of view is quite masterful in this short story, and he uses it both to tell the story and as a method of developing character and story arc.

 Style

Stephen King’s use of wording and style of writing in “Suffer the Little Children” is unique and excellent at getting the feelings that Miss Sidley is feeling across. He uses a simple yet very effective way of description when writing scenes, such as when we see Robert change fully for the first time:

Robert changed.

His face suddenly ran together like melting wax, the eyes flattening and spreading like knife -struck egg yolks, nose widening and yawning, mouth disappearing. The head elongated, and the hair was suddenly not hair but straggling, twitching growths.

Robert began to chuckle.

The slow, cavernous sound came from what had been his nose, but the nose was eating into the lower half of his face, nostrils meeting and merging into a central blackness like a huge, shouting mouth.

Robert got up, still chuckling, and behind it all she could see the last shattered remains of the other Robert, the real little boy this alien thing had usurped, howling in maniac terror, screeching to be let out.

The language is easy to understand and visualize, yet the image that is conjured in the reader’s mind is quite unusual and terrifying. King uses these details throughout the story, yet it is the most noticeable in other moments similar to this one, where something out of the ordinary and surprising happens. For another example, take the scene during which Miss Sidley finally shoots Robert:

Before she could speak, Robert’s face began to shimmer into the grotesqueness beneath and Miss Sidley shot him. Once. In the head. He fell back against the paper-lined shelves and slid down to the floor, a little dead boy with a round black hole above his right eye.

He looked very pathetic.

Miss Sidley stood over him, panting. Her cheeks were pale.

The huddled figure didn’t move. It was human.

It was Robert.

The scene is clearly described and simple, yet it portrays a young boy being shot in the head, and also Miss Sidley’s crushing realization that this boy was just that, a human child. However, this scene is immediately followed by

No!

It was all in your mind, Emily. All in your mind.

No! No, no, no!

She went back up to the room and began to lead them down, one by one. She killed twelve of them and would have killed them all if Mrs Crossen hadn’t come down for a package of composition paper.

Which describes Miss Sidley’s final fall into madness.

King’s use of style in this short story is quite skillful in its simplicity, yet complex in what it is actually describing.

What can I learn from this story that will help me write my own stories?

There are most certainly many things that I can learn from this story that can help me write my own in the future. The way King built up tension throughout the story and the little part where he foreshadows Robert’s changing in the beginning

The reflection was small, ghostly, and distorted. And she had all but the barest comer of her eye on the word she was writing.

Robert changed.

She caught just a flicker of it, just a frightening glimpse of Robert’s face changing into something … different.

She whirled around, face white, barely noticing the protesting stab of pain in her back.

Robert looked at her blandly, questioningly. His hands were neatly folded. The first signs of an afternoon cowlick showed at the back of his head. He did not look frightened.

I imagined it, she thought. I was looking for something, and when there was nothing, my mind just made something up. Very cooperative of it.

… made the scene where Miss Sidley finally begins to shoot and kill the children all the more exciting yet still almost surprising. Even after it is revealed that Miss Sidley had brought her brother’s gun to school that day, presumably to put an end to this whole affair through murder, the day continues eerily normally, creating a false sense of normalcy in the reader, until the action picks up again and she begins to slaughter the children.

I also really admire King’s simple descriptiveness when he’s writing. The description of Robert changing full the first time

Robert changed.

His face suddenly ran together like melting wax, the eyes flattening and spreading like knife -struck egg yolks, nose widening and yawning, mouth disappearing. The head elongated, and the hair was suddenly not hair but straggling, twitching growths.

Robert began to chuckle.

The slow, cavernous sound came from what had been his nose, but the nose was eating into the lower half of his face, nostrils meeting and merging into a central blackness like a huge, shouting mouth.

Robert got up, still chuckling, and behind it all she could see the last shattered remains of the other Robert, the real little boy this alien thing had usurped, howling in maniac terror, screeching to be let out.

… was very easy to understand and visualize in my head, despite it being very disturbing and unnatural. This, along with many other important moments in the story, like the bathroom scene where Miss Sidley first sees the children change, help build tension and conflict. None of the words he used were out of place, and each one worked to move the story along.

Another aspect of King’s writing that I aspire to learn is his use of dialogue. Through each of Miss Sidley’s encounters, whether it be with fellow teachers or with demonic melting children, we learn more about her character, and each interaction feels very human and natural despite the unnatural and unsettling circumstances. Miss Sidley’s conversations with “Robert,” even though he was inherently possessed, seemed like perfectly normal conversations a perturbed adult may have with a mischievous young child. Even once Miss Sidley returned back to school after her first incident with Robert, their first encounter seemed so normal yet cold, and once Miss Sidley led him to the back room to kill him and he began to speak as the demon again, the dialogue still fit so perfectly for the situation I couldn’t imagine a better way of writing it.

All in all, I admire King’s pacing throughout the story, as well as his phenomenal dialogue and simple yet complex descriptions.

Discussion Questions

1. How does the structure of this story help it build tension?
2. How does the point of view affect how the story is told, and if it were told from a different point of view, how would it change.

Analysis Part 3: Gryphon

Stephen King does a great job in developing Miss Sidley’s character in “Suffer the Little Children”. You get a good sense of the evil she senses from Robert and the other children, and you almost begin to sympathize with her when others tell her that she’s being outrageous. You get a sense of the doubt she’s feeling without even knowing that. For example,

Very well, she would keep their secret. For awhile. She would not have people thinking her insane, or that the first feelers of senility had touched her early. She would play their game. Until she could expose their nastiness and rip it out by the roots.

She knows that the children are hiding something from her, but she is willing to let it play out for a bit more. At first, it’s innocent and she suspects that they know of her trick with the glasses, but it begins turning into a much darker story.

He also does a good job of giving you an idea of the time and place that this story is set in. The children are allowed to go home by themselves, and it is completely acceptable for a teacher to hold a child back after class without notifying the parents. Miss Sidley is also allowed to tell Robert (a young child) that

..little boys who tell stories go to hell..

That would’ve never been okay in today’s world. This gives the idea that this story is set in the 60s, maybe early 70s.

What can I use in my writing?

There’s a lot we can learn from Stephen King. From how to tell horror stories the correct way, to making you sympathize with a psychopath. There’s not a lot of people that can say they’ve successfully been able to do that. The way King gives you a dark story from a light perspective of a scared old woman is absolutely incredible. In “Suffer the Little Children,” he says

She would shake them. Shake them until their teeth rattled and their giggles turned to wails, she would thump their heads against the tile walls and she would make them admit that they knew.

which gives you a clear idea that Miss Sidley is ruthless. At this point in the story, she only suspects that the little girls knew about her trick with her glasses, not that they were possessed by demons. You feel both uncomfortable and empathetic for Miss Sidley. She’s lost her power, but she’s threatening to hurt small children. Simply despicable, you could argue. He also manages to show, not tell very well. For example,

A slow, turgid sound of mindless humor that flowed around the corner to her like sewage.

You can feel Miss Sidley’s anger without being directly told that she’s angry. At the beginning of the story, you are impressed by Miss Sidley. She’s managed to scare her students enough to respect her, and that’s not an easy task to ask of a third grade teacher. However, as the story goes on, you feel a sense of uncomfort and at times, disgust, at what she plans to do, and even more disgust when she actually goes through with it. On the second to last page, Miss Sidley says

“No one can hear you,” she said calmly. She took the gun from her bag. “You or this.”

When she insinuates to a nine year old boy that she’s going to shoot him, you lose all sympathy for her. That type of character development characterization is, as aforementioned, not an easy task to accomplish. It takes skill, and believing in your characters, which isn’t something that’s easy. That’s something a lot of writers⁠—including myself⁠—can improve upon.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why does Miss Sidley just now notice this behavior? Is it a recent development, or has it been occurring for some time? Why?

2. Why was there no trial after this absolutely horrific event? Are the demons real? Does the court believe in their existence? Were there previous incidents?

“Miriam” Write Up by Angela, Elissa, and Quentin

A presentation on Truman Capote’s “Miriam” by Angela Mercado, Elissa Parker, and Quentin Pham

Summary Part 1: Quentin

Mrs. Miller is a widow who lives alone in her rustic apartment. She lives a very dull life following the same routine and doesn’t really have any friends or family members. One snowy day, while she’s feeling herself, she decides to view a picture playing at a theater and she meets a strange girl named Miriam. Miriam from the start gives an offsetting vibe from both her physical appearance and her personality. Miriam asks Mrs. Miller to buy her a ticket and Mrs. Miller, being the kind woman, she is, buys her one. After having a rather odd conversation in the theater, Mrs. Miller decides to go home and go back to her stale life which continues for a few days until one day as she’s doing her night routine, her doorbell rings and at her front door is Miriam.

Summary Part 2: Elissa

Mrs Miller finds Miriam on her doorstep late at night but is hesitant to let her in, Miriam immediately starts acting as if she owns the house, asking if she can wake up Mrs. Miller’s canary, insisting Mrs. Miller make her something to eat, refusing to leave, breaking her vase, and even stealing Mrs. Miller’s gift from her late husband. The following day, Mrs. Miller stays in bed all day, dreaming eerie dreams about Miriam.   Two days after Miriam’s visit, Mrs. Miller feels compelled to buy all the things Miriam commented about her household lacking and notices a strange old man following her.

Summary Part 3: Angela

While shopping around one day, Mrs. Miller impulsively buys some sweets and cakes that Miriam had been wanting. After arriving at home, Mrs. Miller arranges the flowers and serves the desserts at her table, when Miriam rings the bell, demanding to be let in. Mrs. Miller refuses to open the door, but Miriam tricks her into opening the door, forcing herself into the apartment, where Miriam reveals that she’s moving in with Mrs. Miller and has brought box full of clothes and dolls. Mrs. Miller, shocked and upset, runs down to her neighbors to ask them for help. They search her apartment for the girl, but there’s no sign that she was ever there, everything left like Miriam was never there. Mrs. Miller, questioning Miriam’s existence, closed her eyes to think, and began hearing a strange noise moving towards her. She opens her eyes to see Miriam, standing right in front of her.

Analysis Part 1: Quentin

This story teaches many things ranging from the style of writing to the way you can present ideas. Starting with the conflict, the author makes it clear that the conflict can be presented in a way that’s not just a character encountering something so unknown and plot twisting but rather something we already knew that just clicks. To put it in simpler words, most conflicts are a problem that the character must deal with, then when the climax hits, it’s extremely crazy and something we’re not expecting. However, in this story, we meet Miriam and from the start we know something is wrong with. The audience was probably even predicting that she was going to do something crazy that would make the story so remarkable and that she was the major problem. This isn’t the case. Miriam is rather just strange when appearing at Mrs. Miller’s door and continues to act stranger, but it’s not her increasing level of weirdness that makes the conflict, but actually Mrs.  Miller realizing that she’s alone and she has nobody to turn to. This is presented from the start of the story when the author is describing Mrs. Miller’s lifestyle but it’s not till the climax when she realizes she actually had an internal problem she’s been hiding that she finally recognizes. Sure, some might argue that Miriam was the conflict, but Miriam just played a major factor that helped the character and the audience realize what the conflict really was. One line that really sticks out is

“she was alone; a fact that had not been among her thoughts for a long time”.

This is the realizing factor.

Another craft element of the story was its concrete details. These details used the five senses to describe the characters in a way that gave them life and let the audience know the intensity of the situations. It makes the story so great by first characterizing Miriam. Rather than just talking about the abstract details of her, the author uses lines like “silver-white, like an albino’s” to describe her hair and shed light on the beginning of her strangeness (since that type of hair color is rare and unique). It also works to describe the setting of the story by talking about Mrs. Miller’s dull apartment and the boring life she lives ultimately giving off the vibe and structure of the overall story. It also intensifies situations, using the line,

“and swelling in intensity till the walls trembled with the vibration and the room was caving under a wave of whispers”,

to describe Miriam’s appearance as opposed to just telling us she was standing in the room. That level of description appears very attractive and pulls the reader’s attention.

Questions:

How do the sensory details help present the ideas in the story more clearly?

How does the conflict of the story build up to the climax?

 

Analysis Part 2: Elissa

Techniques Tracked:

The Way Mrs. Miller Sees Miriam

Climax

Throughout Truman Capote’s Miriam, the main character, Mrs. Miller gains a different view of Miriam every time she sees her. When she first sees Miriam, Mrs. Miller is captivated and intrigued.

Her hair was the longest and strangest Mrs. Miller had ever seen: absolutely silver-white, like an albino’s. It flowed waist-length in smooth, loose lines. She was thin and fragilely constructed. There was a simple, special elegance in the way she stood with her thumbs in the pockets of a tailored plum-velvet coat.

Mrs. Miller felt oddly excited, and when the little girl glanced toward her, she smiled warmly.

She welcomes Miriam into her quiet and lonely life, if only for a second. Miriam piques Mrs. Miller’s interest even more when she finds out they have the same first name and considres meeting Miriam somewhat pleasant.

However, when Miriam shows up on Mrs. Miller’s doorstep late at night, Mrs. Miller is more than annoyed at this girl inviting herself into her home. Notice how there is always attention to detail on what Miriam is wearing.

“Stop it,” she cried. The bolt gave way and she opened the door an inch. “What in heaven’s name?”

 “Hello,” said Miriam.

 “Oh…why, hello,” said Mrs. Miller, stepping hesitantly into the hall. “You’re that little girl.”

 “I thought you’d never answer, but I kept my finger on the button; I knew you were home. Aren’t you glad to see me?”

 Mrs. Miller did not know what to say. Miriam, she saw, wore the same plum velvet coat and now she had also a beret to match; her white hair was braided in two shining plaits and looped at the ends with enormous white ribbon.

Miriam immediately starts disturbing Mrs. Miller’s typically calm household by insisting upon things that are not part of routine, and makes off with Mrs. Miller’s brooch, and for some reason, Mrs. Miller is unable to tell Miriam that she cannot take the brooch as she is overcome by how alone is. Mrs. Miller has become angry and annoyed with Miriam, but Miriam is her only companion.

When Miriam returns for the third time, Mrs. Miller refuses to let her in, only to let her in by accident. This time, there is no description of how Miriam looks, showing how Mrs. Miller is no longer awestruck or compassionate towards Miriam. Mrs. Miller completely breaks down when Miriam announces her moving in.

“Because I’ve come to live with you,” said Miriam, twisting a cherry stem. “Wasn’t it nice of you to buy me the cherries…?” 

“But you can’t! For God’s sake go away—go away and leave me alone!”

 Mrs. Miller’s face dissolved into a mask of ugly red lines; she began to cry, and it was an unnatural, tearless sort of weeping, as though, not having wept for a long time, she had forgotten how. Carefully she edged backward till she touched the door.

Mrs. Miller is now terrified of Miriam and no longer sees her as a companion, but more of a presence put there to haunt her.

The climax/conflict of the story is when Miriam visits Ms. Miller for the first time and keeps coming over afterwards. She continues to refuse to leave, practically driving Mrs. Miller insane.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why are Miriam’s clothes described visibly every time except for the last?
2. Who is the real Miriam?

Analysis Part 3: Angela

The first craft element I chose to analyze was Capote’s use of characterization. Miriam’s character is a very unsettling and creepy girl, that is very good at putting on the appearance of a normal and innocent child. She always gets away with what she wants and seems to have a natural ability to manipulate people in her favor. Mrs. Miller is an older woman who lives alone, the perfect victim for Miriam. She lives a very plain and routine life and is very much a creature of habit. When she first met Miriam, she was very nice to her and only wanted to help her, and then when Miriam showed up at her apartment, she was being polite to her, despite being confused and upset. Mrs. Miller is a very non confrontational person, as shown in this paragraph:

He was standing next to an El pillar, and as she crossed the street he turned and followed. He kept quite close; from the corner of her eye she watched his reflection wavering on the shop windows. Then in the middle of the block she stopped and faced him. He stopped also and coded his head, grinning. But what could she say? Do? Here, in broad daylight, on Eighty-sixth Street? It was useless and, despising her own helplessness, she quickened her steps.

She felt scared and uncomfortable, and wanted to say something to the strange man to defend herself, but in the end decided not to, and was ashamed of herself for being so vulnerable and helpless. Miriam and Mrs. Miller have very different and opposing personalities, which to me, is a part of what makes the story’s plot even more rich. Miriam is a strange girl, not like someone her age, as we can see in this paragraph:

Miriam lifted a shoulder, arched an eyebrow. “As you like,” she said, and went directly to the coffee table, seized the vase containing the paper roses, carried it to where the hard surface of the floor lay bare and hurled it downward. Glass sprayed in all directions, and she stamped her foot on the bouquet. Then slowly she walked to the door, but before closing it she looked back at Mrs. Miller with a slyly innocent curiosity.

Miriam knew that she could do whatever she wanted without Mrs. Miller getting angry at her or saying anything and seemed to be testing her limits in this scene. Whenever Mrs. Miller finally gets fed up and tries to stand up to Miriam, Miriam simply ignores her and laughs it all off.

‘”….and the roses and the almond cakes? How really wonderfully generous. You know, these cherries are delicious. The last place I lived was with an old man; he was terribly poor and we never had good things to eat. But I think I’ll be happy here.” She paused to snuggle her doll closer. “Now, if you’ll just show me where to put my things….”’

The characterization of Miriam and Mrs. Miller are an important part of the story that tie into the plot and conflict of this piece. I loved how Capote used dialogue, as well as physical descriptions and vivid language to develop and build up his characters in a very realistic and intriguing way.

Analysis 2-

The other craft element I analyzed was the dialogue used in the story. The author mainly used dialogue to show the relationship between Miriam and Mrs. Miller, and to show how it got progressively more manipulative and how Mrs. Miller’s meek personality was being abused of and taken advantage of by Miriam. Most of their relationship and interactions with each other are shown through dialogue, but Capote keeps it reserved for that, and doesn’t use it unnecessarily to tell the rest of the story, focusing more on using details for that. Since he only uses dialogue sparingly, it has a stronger effect and helps carry across the more off-putting nature of Miriam and Mrs. Miller’s interactions.

“But isn’t that funny?”

“Moderately,” said Miriam, and rolled the peppermint on her tongue.

Mrs. Miller flushed and shifted uncomfortably. “You have such a large vocabulary for such a little girl.”

“Do l?”

“Well, yes,” said Mrs. Miller…

The author also relies on dialogue tags to enhance the effect of the dialogue, adding detail about where the character was looking or what facial expressions they may have made. The exchanges between the two characters weren’t like normal conversations between a little girl and an older woman, who at first seems to take almost a maternal approach to her interactions with Miriam. They are much more complex and advanced, especially coming from a child, and Mrs. Miller is surprised and almost intimidated by this, as we can see from this quote, because she seems to back down and let Miriam control her and take the lead:

“Suppose—perhaps you’d better put it back,” said Mrs. Miller, feeling suddenly the need of some support. She leaned against the door frame; her head was unbearably heavy; a pressure weighted the rhythm of her heartbeat. The light seemed to flutter defectively. “Please, child—a gift from my husband….”

“But it’s beautiful and I want it,” said Miriam. “Give it to me.”

As she stood, striving to shape a sentence which would somehow save the brooch, it came to Mrs. Miller there was no one to whom she might turn; she was alone; a fact that had not been among her thoughts for a long time. Its sheer emphasis was stunning. But here in her own room in the hushed snow city were evidence she could not ignore or, she knew with startling clarity, resist.

Using dialogue and physical expressions of the characters, rather than internal thoughts, the author develops the characters, showing distinct personality traits and their characterization, mainly through the words that they speak. This all shows how powerful dialogue can be, and how, when used correctly, can push a story forward and explore the characters further for the reader.

Discussion Questions-

–          Is there any way of reading and interpreting this story in which Mrs. Miller could be seen as the ‘villain’?

–          What other methods did the author use to characterize Miriam and Mrs. Miller apart from their dialogue?

Interior Deterioration: “The Yellow Wallpaper” Write Up by Caroline Paden

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the story of an unnamed mentally ill narrator whose husband, a physician named John, has rented a summer home for them as part of her treatment. She is deprived of all stimulation except for the ugly yellow wallpaper that coats her bedroom, only able to write when she is sure no one (either John or his sister, Jennie) will catch her. John is incredibly dismissive of his wife, insisting that her condition is a “temporary nervous depression”, and that after some rest and fresh air, she’ll be as good as new. The months pass, and the narrator is continually agitated by the wallpaper, spending hours at a time examining it as her condition worsens—she claims it shifts depending on the time of day, and eventually asserts that it does this because there is a woman trapped inside who comes out at night to creep around. The last day of their stay, the narrator peels off the yellow wallpaper to trap the woman in the walls, arming herself with a rope and locking out everyone else by throwing the room key out the window. When John returns, the narrator tells him where the key is. When he unlocks the door, he faints—the narrator is creeping around the room on all fours, believing herself to be the woman in the walls.

The chronic tension is the narrator’s mental illness, and the acute tension is the narrator being trapped in a room with nothing except ugly yellow wallpaper to look at.

The first technique I tracked was plot progression as shown through the writer’s personal opinions (in pink on the highlights). Since the story is in first-person, obviously a large portion of the story is the narrator’s inner monologue; however, I restricted my highlights to thoughts the narrator would want to conceal or descriptions of her worsening condition, specifically. The narrator leads a very restricted life to treat her illness, the theory being that rest and fresh air could cure her nervous troubles. This under-stimulation and forced rest was a real treatment many women in the nineteenth century went through, including the author, Charlotte Gilman—this story is based in part on her experience. Because the narrator is so closely monitored for signs of progress, it is only in her journal that she can safely express her feelings about her condition and her husband’s ideas. At first, her disagreements are with her husband concerning the efficacy of her treatment:

Personally I disagree with their ideas. Personally I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do? I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal— having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition. I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus— but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it  always makes me feel bad.

The narrator longs to write and meet with other people, but her husband refuses. As the narrator is more and more upset by and fixated on the wallpaper, however, her private thoughts focus more on the wallpaper than her treatment—she believes she is improving, despite the fact that she doesn’t sleep at night and is seeing people walking through the grounds where there are none. She views John with more suspicion (that’s focused on in the next section) and guards her observations about her room very closely for fear of institutionalization. Bluntly, her private thoughts become much more paranoid and delusional as the story progresses.

I’m feeling ever so much better! I don’t sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments[.]

I don’t like the look in [John’s] eyes.

But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me—not alive!

The second technique I tracked was the characterization of the narrator’s husband, John, through her descriptions of him—and how that characterization changes throughout the piece (in green on the highlights). At first, the narrator is incredibly deferential to John (even if she does disagree with his ideas), refusing to contradict him or acknowledge her own resentment of him as valid. She sees him as her knight in shining, pragmatic armor.

He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. […] he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.

John is incredibly controlling of his wife, all in the name of treating her illness. He uses his authority as a physician to prevent his wife from getting what she wants, and she has no way to combat this due to her condition and her place as a subservient wife. One of the reasons I tracked this technique was because it struck me as odd my first read-through that this narrator, who seems so confident (at least at the start of the story), would be so deferential towards someone who obviously never takes her seriously. John treats his wife like a petulant child instead of a grown woman, going so far as to call her a little girl at one point

“What is it, little girl?” he said. “Don’t go walking about like that— you’ll get cold.”

Ironically, this militant you’re-going-to-get-better-because-I-say-so attitude leads directly to the narrator’s deterioration—he ignores his wife’s pleas to get rid of the wallpaper, and she ends up fixating on it to the point of insanity.

At first he meant to re paper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.

As the narrator grows more paranoid because of the wallpaper, she is more suspicious of John’s intentions, though he is ostensibly the same skeptical pragmatist he was at the start of the story. The more the narrator hides from her husband, the less she trusts his judgment.

I believe John is beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his eyes.

He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind. As if I couldn’t see through him!

I think Gilman’s use of her protagonist’s relationships to other people, as well as her relationship to herself, is a brilliant way to subtly guide the reader through the story without overloading them with exposition or heavy-handed dialogue. By the time the narrator states her mistrust of John outright, the reader is already primed to agree with her because of Gilman’s skillful characterization. The narrator’s whimsical, willful personality is apparent from paragraph one, which is what led me to pick this story in the first place—a cursory glance at the first page completely drew me into the story. I love it when narrators talk directly to the reader (probably a byproduct of my being raised on several Snicket-esque children’s series), and Gilman also used it as a way to explain the narrator’s secrecy around writing—in a way, the reader becomes the narrator’s confidant.

Writing exercise: Write a story using a narrator who believes that they’re something they actually aren’t.

Discussion Questions

1. Is John written more as a misguided physician or an abusive husband?
2. How does Jennie serve the story? Is she more or less sympathetic than John or the narrator?
3. Why did the writer make a point to mention John and Jennie examining the wallpaper, too?

“Today is August 4, 2026 . . . “

A presentation on Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Natalie Hampton, Athena Haq, and Deonna Ford

Summary Part 1: Natalie

A voice echoes throughout the house, saying the date and time. The house is run by technology; the stove makes breakfast and voices continuing to repeat the date, time, and events happening that day. The garage door opens but shuts when no one comes. The untouched food is scraped away. Robot mice come out of the walls, clean, and disappear again. The house, standing alone in a city of rubble and ashes, is cleaned by technology on the outside. On a black wall, there are the silhouettes of a family of five.

Summary Part 2: Athena

At noon, a skinny, bruised dog walks into the house, looking for his owners, but realized they are gone. It died, and the cleaning robot mice cleaned up its body. As time passed the house was still silent, and everything the house prepared for whoever lived there was untouched. Some parts of the house were pretty broken down, including the nursery. A radioactive glow hung over it. From five to nine o’clock, the house continued with its nightly routine. Then, it asked Mrs. McClellan what poem she would like to hear that night. When there is no response, the house recited her favorite one. The poem, There Will Come Soft Rains, is about how when man destroys itself with war, nature will go on happily without it.

Summary Part 3: Deonna

It’s 10PM after the house recites the poem. The wind picks up, knocking a tree branch into the hearth and setting the house on fire. The house spirals into a frenzy. It sends various robots to try and extinguish the fire – a bevy of mice spewing water, robots spitting a green fluid, mechanical snakes batting the flames with their tail – none of which seem to work and, in fact, make the house more hysterical. All the house’s functions switch on at an insanely rapid rate as the house continues to burn. By the next morning’s sunrise, a voice is heard repeating, “Today is August 5, 2026” through the mass of burnt rubble.

Natalie’s Analysis

The first craft element I identified was sensory detail. Sensory detail was used to convey how dependent the house was on technology and the ruins it was left in, building setting. The lines,

The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave of a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles,

illustrate the state of this dystopian world.

The story was mainly visual sensory details. While the characters were limited as it was a setting driven story, the dog contributed to building the backstory of the world.

The dog, once large and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud.

These lines demonstrate the change from a luxurious and joyful life, to an empty one with no humans around. The description of the dog also is used to invoke emotion in the reader, as many people have personal connections with pets and imagine the dog as their own.

Use of visual and sound sensory detail is especially evident as the house is dying and technology is failing.

Ten more voices died. In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses, oblivious, could be heard announcing the time, playing music, cutting the lawn by remote-control mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out and in the slamming and opening front door, a thousand things happening, like a clock shop when each clock strikes the hour insanely before or after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity; singing, screaming, a few last cleaning mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away! And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud all in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.

The detail there is a sharp contrast to the calmer beginning, with lines such as, “In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.” These lines show how the house is surviving, while the above paragraph from the end shows how it is dying.

By using sensory detail in my pieces, I can illustrate setting, evoke emotion in readers, and contrast the beginning of my story to the end.

The second craft element I identified was similes. Similarly to sensory details, by using similes in my writing, I can illustrate setting, character, and set the tone/mood of a piece. Similes also engage the reader and help the flow of a story.

There Will Come Soft Rains was rich in similes, several in particular standing out to me.

There, down tubes which fed into the cellar, it was dropped like evil Baal in a dark corner.

This line unique and I’ve never heard it before, immediately drawing my attention and perfectly describing the situation. It fit the overall vibe of the story and added just another layer to the plot.

Another specific line that stood out was,

At four o’clock the tables folded like great butterflies back through the paneled walls.

A lot of the story was spent building a world of ruins with more depressing imagery, but just the word butterfly has a positive connotation and the contrast between a butterfly and ruins is beautiful.

The entire paragraph where the house was burning was filled with similes.

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the first brittle winter ice. And the voices wailed Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts.

It both personifies the house and uses similes to illustrate as it loses its life and the last home in this area is destroyed. Throughout the story, the house has almost been a character, and the image of it being burned is painted perfectly and the paragraph reads poetically.

Discussion Questions:

1. How does the use of sensory details and similes affect the tone and mood of the story?
2. How does the use of sensory details and similes build a backstory and develop setting?

Athena’s Analysis

One craft element Bradbury used was the passing of time. First, there were voices in the house announcing the hours and what needs to be done throughout the day, such as waking up at seven o’clock,  eating breakfast at seven-nine, and filling the bath at five. The time passing throughout the day also shows the mechanics in the house. No people are left, but no nature is left either. All the “nature” is technology and machines, such as the cleaning mice. He also began the story with, “Today is August 4, 2026”, and ended it with, “Today is August 5, 2026.” This implies that this cycle of destruction is never-ending.

This brings me to the next craft element Bradbury used, irony. The poem that the house recites, There Will Come Soft Rains, is about how nature will live on and thrive when mankind has destroyed itself. For example, this is shown when the poem says,

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, if mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone.

But throughout the story, it is shown that even with man gone, war has destroyed nature. One sign of this is the dog, who is skinny and bruised but was once healthy and plump, dying. Furthermore, nature is almost nonexistent. There’s a radioactive glow hanging in the air, and the closest thing to “soft rains” is the sprinkler running in the backyard.

This story was also very interesting to read because of its progression from the beginning to the resolution. In the beginning, I mostly just got the impression that humans had destroyed themselves, and this is what was left. From the automated house running by itself, to the various robots helping out, to the dog coming in and dying, I learned that in the story man destroyed itself and nature. The way all this was revealed was very compelling, especially with the use of a poem inside of a story. The poem really enhanced it because it revealed the prominent theme of irony with its contrast to what was really happening in that world. As I mentioned when explaining the craft element of time, the resolution of the story is that there isn’t really a resolution, and the last voice of the house repeatedly recites the date, as it will likely do for a long time.

Discussion Questions:

1. How did the use of the craft element of time passing help shape the resolution?
2. How did the use of the poem in the story reveal the theme of irony?

Deonna’s Analysis

Techniques tracked:

Metaphor

Text-within-the-text

When people in the 1950s spoke of the future, it was always with a hopeful glint in their eyes, dreams of fast-flying cars and robot maids quick to heed to your beck and call. In Ray Bradbury’s case, however, he sees our heavy reliance on technology as a ball-and-chain to society. In his short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains,” Bradbury follows a house that is the last house in some unknown war that destroyed everything else in the city, people included.

The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles. Ten-fifteen.

Though there are no people in the house, it continues to function as it normally would; it prepares breakfast, it powers up a play area for the children, it washes dishes, and even recites a poem, the story’s namesake, “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale for its past owner. After the poem, the house catches fire, and though the houses tries its hardest to douse the fire, the attempts come to no avail, and the house is destroyed.

Bradbury’s story is itself extended metaphor for the dangerous, cold, and apathetic nature of technology. Early in the story it’s evident that the house is only doing what it was programmed to do – daily, routinely activities such as preparing food, for instance. It can’t detect that it’s doing all of this for no one. On top of this, these are all things that an adult should easily be able to do.

Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!

In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior  eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.

Bradbury highlights that our society is one of convenience. Technology is something we use to make our lives easier and, in this story, it has gotten to the point where even the most menial of tasks are performed by robots.

Later in the story, as the house lights on fire, it’s clearly not well-trained on handling a situation like this, seeing as the house burns down after many miserable attempts to extinguish it.

The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.

In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen   making breakfasts at a psychopathic rate, ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, twenty dozen bacon strips, which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again, hysterically hissing!

This may be part of the reason the family living in the house was killed – expecting that technology was going to save them, which didn’t happen to be the case.

The poem included in the story, There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale, adds to the theme of non-human things going forth without us. It describes a landscape, still growing and blossoming with beauty even after humanity was wiped out by war, presumed to be World War I as the poem was originally published in 1918, the year the war ended. Lines 10 through 12, in particular, contribute to this:

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone

A relationship between these three lines can be drawn back to the house still running even though the owners are not there. However, where Earth’s actions are graceful and natural, the technology’s whirring out of control straight after the poem is read can be perceived as a bastardization of this scene.

In summary, the short story There Will Come Soft Rains is a lengthened metaphor of technology’s repetitive, rehearsed, yet dangerous tendencies. The addition of the Teasdale’s poem of the same name flavors the story’s message by describing a landscape of Earth continuing forth even without the presence of man, a nod to the story’s post-apocalyptic premise of a technology-heavy house going through its routine without its owners being there.

DISCUSSION Q’S:

1. Many of the actions from objects in the story are described with human/”living” verbs – such as sighing, shrugging, and dying. Why is that?
2. How does the author use imagery of an altar to illustrate the functions of the house?

 

Faith and Rage: “The Murder” Write Up by Miguel Hugetz

“The Murder” opens with an orthodox religous service at a train station, where Matvey Terehov participates joyfully in the church choir, singing with great enthusiasm. When the service is over, Terehov, a middle aged man, goes to the station’s bar and tells the waiter, Sergey Nikanoritch, about his old tile factory’s choir and their skill. He reminisces about days gone and reflects on the current state of his current household, where he lives with his older cousins Yakov Ivanitch and Aglaia, as well as Ivanitch’s daughter Dashutka. Terehov laments that Ivanitch has taken to prayer and religious service with his sister only at home, scorning the clergy and involvement in the church. Terehov sees this isolation as a prideful sin, and tells his cousins to repent daily. Terehov goes home and reads a book borrowed from his police friend, Zhukov, before going to sleep. In the morning of Annunciation Day, Terehov returns to the station bar and tells Zhukov and Nikanoritch of his earlier religious experiences, where he strayed from normal church attendance and entered extreme piety until he was rebuked for becoming prideful and being a backslider from the church. Terehov describes Ivanitch as being in a similar state right now, despite his repeated attempts to get him to call off that way of life. Zhukov and Nikanortitch mostly ignore this and discuss how Ivanitch is rich and has screwed Terehov out of some inheritance. Meanwhile, Ivanitch reflects on his misery and troubles since Terehov returned from the factory and the way his cousin’s repeated insistences are beginning to undermine his thoughts and faith. Terehov is rebuked by Aglai for sending what money he had after leaving the factory to his former lover. Ivanitch calls her away to pray with him, and while they are praying Zhukov and Nikanoritch come to visit Terehov. Nikanoritch asks a baffled Terehov for money, prompting him to ask his cousin for money and a horse to leave town. Ivanitch considers it but decides that his money, wrapped up in banking and merchantism, is not available to him to lend. Ivanitch continues to question his religious faith while Nikanoritch and Zhukov continue to visit Terehov for money. After one visit ends and Ivanitch presumes Nikanoritch to have left, he begins his personal religious services but is interrupted by Terehov. This encounter causes Ivanitch to leave the room in anger. Terehov eats oil on a fasting day while the rest of the family watches, causing Ivanitch to angrily yell at him. In response, Terehov loses his cool and declares Ivanitch a heretic and backslider from God. Ivanitch and Agaila physically assault Terehov, accidentally killing him while Nikanoritch, revealed to still be in the house, witnesses. He initially flees the house but is bribed by Ivanitch to go along with the murder coverup. Ivanitch and Dashutka take his body away from the village and dump it on the road. Soon enough, the police catch up with the culprits and arrest them. At trial, the murderers are subjected to variously lengthening sentences of prison in labor camps. Ivanitch is sent to East Siberia, where after misery and a brief lack of faith he discovers what he believes is true faith and reflects tragically that he wishes he was able to attain it without so much early suffering. The story ends as Ivanitch works with other convicts in Siberia.

The acute tension is the increasing conflict between cousins Yakov and Matvey, while the chronic tension is the two’s majorly divergent religious practices which operate at the cores of their self-identities and internal struggles.

While on the surface Chekhov’s narrative is about a family feud that leads to a tragic death and its consequences, “The Murder” is a story that concerns itself with religious faith. Matvey and Yakov’s disparate religions drive the two cousins to deep conflict with each other, as the former’s persistent attack on Yakov’s beliefs drive him to fundamentally question his personal values and identity. 

Chekhov uses this internal confusion to build tension as the story escalates, raising the reader’s anticipation of violence with each detailing of Yakov’s declining mental state and faith. This tension works in tandem with the story’s title- “The Murder” is a clear declaration of what the reader ought to expect, and as the story progresses, our anticipation of it grows higher.

When Chekhov begins to show the reader Yakov’s perspective, he reveals his religious perspective early on. Faith is central to Yakov’s identity and belief about the world, as is shown by this passage:

Man cannot live without religion, and religion ought to be expressed from year to year and from day to day in a certain order, so that every morning and every evening a man might turn to God with exactly those words and thoughts that were befitting that special day and hour. One must live, and, therefore, also pray as is pleasing to God, and so every day one must read and sing what is pleasing to God–that is, what is laid down in the rule of the church.

Yakov’s faith is extremely strong, but he commits to it on his own terms, viewing the local clergy and church as improperly devoted to God and sinful. Unfortunately for Yakov, his views closely mirror those that his cousin once held dearly but has since given up. Matvey’s own personal experiences cause him to have a particularly strong view of Yakov’s relationship with God, which he sees as inherently prideful and thus full of sin. Matvey acknowledges Yakov’s criticisms of the church, but views those flaws as being aspects of human nature, and thus part of God’s intended life. His cousin’s adherence to strict regimen alienates him to other members of the community, which to Matvey is far more dangerous and against god then drinking milk on fasting days. Matvey’s continual needling of Yakov leads to ruptures opening up in the latter’s mind, as his internal devotion to faith proves less firm then he thought.

But yet he was troubled and could not pray as before. As soon as he went into the prayer-room and opened the book he began to be afraid his cousin would come in and hinder him; and, in fact, Matvey did soon appear and cry in a trembling voice: “Think what you are doing, brother! Repent, brother!”

Though he regarded his cousin’s words as nonsense, yet for some reason it had of late haunted his memory that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, that the year before last he had made a very good bargain over buying a stolen horse, that one day when his wife was alive a drunkard had died of vodka in his tavern…

Matvey’s continued assaults on Yakov’s faith take their toll on him. And as Yakov’s mental state declines, the tension of the story rises.

…little by little the broodings settled like a burden on his mind, his head burned and he could not sleep.

Yakov begins to question his own religious beliefs when he witnesses his own daughter and neighbors’ lack of faith, but this questioning does not lead to positive revaluation of his own belief, but instead shakes him to his core.

He kept shaking his head, as though there were something weighing upon his head and shoulders, as though devils were sitting on them; and it seemed to him that it was not himself walking about, but some wild beast, a huge terrible beast, and that if he were to cry out his voice would be a roar that would sound all over the forest and the plain, and would frighten everyone.

Yakov’s deep faith is replaced by deep anger, mainly directed against his cousin and the doubts his presence has engendered within him. Tension is now reaching its critical boiling point.

He was afraid Matvey would come in, and was certain that he would come in, and felt an anger against him which he could overcome neither by prayer nor by continually bowing down to the ground.

It was clear to him now that he was himself dissatisfied with his religion, ant could not pray as he used to do. He must repent, he must think things over, reconsider, live and pray in some other way. But how pray? And perhaps all this was a temptation of the devil, and nothing of this was necessary? . . . How was it to be? What was he to do? Who could guide him? What helplessness! He stopped and, clutching at his head, began to think, but Matvey’s being near him prevented him from reflecting calmly.

Yakov’s anger eventually spills out into physical violence, leading to tragedy and tearing his family apart. Tension breaks with his religion, and as the story comes to rest at a less agitated tempo, Yakov loses and then rediscovers comfortable faith. Religion in Chekhov’s story is tied not only to its characters and themes, but to the pace of the narrative itself. 

If Yakov’s primary conflict comes from his struggle with religious faith, Matvey’s comes from a more general dissatisfaction with his life. He constantly yearns for his former life at the factory, laments his inability to change his cousin’s ways, and feels constrained by illness and malady. Matvey reminisces on his former factory life often, and wishes to return to it.

“It is true we began St. Andrey’s prayers and the Praises between six and seven, and it was past eleven when we finished, so that it was sometimes after midnight when we got home to the factory. It was good,” sighed Matvey. “Very good it was, indeed, Sergey Nikanoritch.”

…he could hear that Matvey, too, was awake, and continually sighing and pining for his tile factory.

Matvey, hungry and melancholy, sat reading, or went up to the Dutch stove and slowly scrutinized the tiles which reminded him of the factory.

This attachment to his former life is noticed by the other members of his family, and Aglaia often attacks him with his factory experiences as the main subject of her bitter mockery.

Matvey wishes greatly to escape his living situation, believing his home to be a miserable place of resentment and anger. He asks Yakov for a horse so he can get away, which Yakov himself desires, but is unable- or possibly just unwilling- to spare the materials that will make that possible.

“Brother,” said Matvey, “I am a sick man. I don’t want possession — let them go; you have them, but give me a small share to keep me in my illness. Give it me and I’ll go away.”

Matvey’s dissatisfaction brings him into conflict with his cousin, as it partially motivates him to attack his cousin’s more rooted and sustained lifestyle and religion.

As far as what I’d like to learn from Chekhov’s writing and this story in particular, I think his method of building tension through internal reflection and a character’s crisis of faith is extremely skillful. The story builds and builds without much even happening for most of it, as most of the conflict occurs within Yakov’s and to a lesser extent Matvey’s minds. It is on the abstract level that most of the thematic and narrative events occur until Matvey’s murder, and even this viscerally physical act is only a final expression of Yakov’s previous internal problems. Chekhov’s dialogue is also very good, and his style of short but narratively important character discourse is something I’d very much like to take from. Hardly a word is ever wasted or expended pointlessly, and it creates a very sharp flow between characters that moves the story along effortlessly while still being captivating on its own merits.

Questions:

• Why do you think Chekhov choses to open the story with two sections exclusively from the point of view of Matvey, leaving Yakov for later?
• Who do you think Chekhov places primacy on as the main character- Matvey or Yakov? Does the story end with either of their religious perspectives as triumphant?
• Does the story portray Matvey and his actions in a positive light? Do you think he’s any better than his cousin, or is he a hypocrite?

The Cowboy’s Unknowing

A presentation on Stephen King’s “A Death” by Sebastian Kiteka, Gabriela Mejia, and Isabella Jimenez

Summary Part 1: Sebastian

In the beginning of the story, page one says, “Jim Trusdale had a shack on the west side of his father’s gone-to-seed ranch, and that was where he was when Sheriff Barclay and half a dozen deputized townsmen found him,”. This is where Trusdale is confronted and thought to have been the murderer in the story. Throughout the story the question “Where is your hat, Jim?” is mentioned, and Trusdale says back things like I don’t know but on this page (1) he answers, “‘I might have lost it.’” This is his common excuse, but later on in the story it is revealed it is near the dead girl he has killed. King states that the men had gone to town. There intention was to search and jail Trusdale for the time until he went to court. On page 3 it says,“They went to town. It was four miles. Trusdale rode in the back of the mortuary wagon, shivering against the cold. Without turning around, the man holding the reins said, ‘Did you rape her as well as steal her dollar, you hound?’”. This explains why Trusdale is being jailed, and they believe it is him who has killed and possibly raped her because of the evidence of Trusdale’s hat. The townspeople are obviously angered at Trusdale who they think (and know) is the killer of a 10-year old girl. This is mentioned on page 4, “‘Hang that baby killer!’ a man shouted, and someone threw a rock. It flew past Trusdale’s head and clattered on the board sidewalk.” This man has most likely heard the news and I would infer that all of the townspeople think that Trusdale is the murderer. Trusdale is also searched for the silver dollar on page 5, “Trusdale turned, grabbed his buttocks, and pulled them apart. Sheriff Barclay winced, sighed, and poked a finger into Trusdale’s anus. Trusdale groaned. Barclay removed his finger, wincing again at the soft pop, and wiped his finger on Trusdale’s undershirt.” Though it is disgusting for both, Sheriff Barclay wants to find justice in the Rebecca Cline case and he is willing to do it at any cost. On the same page, 5, the sheriff arrests Trusdale and locks him up in a cell,  “‘I’m arresting you for the murder of Rebecca Cline.’” The 5th page ends with Sheriff Barclay saying, “‘I feel sorry for you, Jim. Hell ain’t too hot for a man who’d do such a thing.’” and then walking away, leaving Trusdale “questioning” the situation. I interpreted Barclay’s quote as him feeling “sorry” for Trusdale, and there are a lot of criminals in Hell, and it’s willing to add another one.

Summary Part 2: Gabi

Jim Trusdale has been led to jail with mocking accusation of him committing unspeakable crimes. Sheriff Barclay leads him to jail where he then searches every part of Jim for evidence. Time passes with more mocking’s and threats of death. The trial finally arrives where he is prosecuted and judged in process that questions his morality. This section is closed with the meeting hinting at the possibilities of a slow death because of established evidence which involves stealing money and killing a girl.

Summary Part 3: Isabella

The execution has been set for the next day and Sheriff Barclay tells Trusdale he can have anything for his last meal, which leads to a conversation between the both of them to try and help Trusdale remember if he recognized anybody’s face at the bar. Trusdale can’t, and the Sheriff takes his dishes and leaves. The next day, the day the hanging takes place, Trusdale is hysterical and tries to fight back, saying he’ll be good if he can see the mountains one last time. The crowd watching jeers and insults him for being pathetic and horrible even after he is hung. The sheriff goes back to the cell, then his office, until the next morning he is called to the mortuary and sees Trusdale’s underwear on the ground covered in feces, and he and his colleague spot the silver dollar that the little girl had presumably been killed for. The sheriff questions his judgement for thinking the man was innocent and thinks himself a fool for being the only one in the town who believed the murderer.

Analysis Part 1: Sebastian

Character- A figure in a literary work (personality, gender, age, etc). Flat characters are types of caricatures defined by a single idea of quality, whereas round characters have the three-dimensional complexity of real people.

There were many flat characters in the story, “A Death” by Stephan King, including the citizens of the town and Trusdale. The main flat character, Trusdale was shown to be flat, because of his personality never changing. He was confused, “‘What thing?’” meaning that he was unsure of whether he did the crime, and he believed it fullheartally until his death:

Barclay nodded to House. House pulled the lever. The greased beam retracted and the trap dropped. So did Trusdale. There was a crack when his neck broke. His legs drew up almost to his chin, then fell back limp. Yellow drops stained the snow under his feet.

This shows in the ending of Trusdale’s life, and the townspeople are happy he has finally died, which is what they wanted, “The spectators stayed until Trusdale’s corpse, still wearing the black hood, was laid in the same hurry-up wagon he’d ridden to town in. Then they dispersed.” Another quote adding on to the previous is the one on page 14, “Because the Clines knew all along. Everyone in town knew all along. He was the only one who hadn’t known.” The round character in this story is Sheriff Barclay. He is skeptical whether or not Trusdale has committed the crime, unlike his fellow policemen. On page 14,

”You believed him,” Hines said at last.

“Fool that I am, I did.”

“Maybe that says more about you than it does about him.”

This shows that the sheriff was very wrong in believing the murderer to be a freeman, which a fellow sheriff’s deputy tells him.

Plot- The major events that move the action in a narrative. It is the sequence of major events in a story, usually in a cause-effect relation.

The plot in the story is finding out who the girl killer is. Stephan King has convinced his readers that Trusdale is innocent, (along with the Sheriff and the killer himself) yet the town believes (and knows) that Trusdale is the person who should be convicted of being a child murderer. The first major event to the story is taking Trusdale into custody, page 2,

“You need to get in the back of the wagon,” the sheriff said.

This is the beginning to the story. The second major event is searching and convicting Trusdale, page 5,

“Where is it, Jim?”

“My hat?”

“You think I went up your ass looking for your hat? Or through the ashes in your stove? Are you being smart?”

and,

“I’m arresting you for the murder of Rebecca Cline.”

This signifies the only suspect who is at fault for murdering Rebecca Cline. The 3rd major event to the story is the trial of Trusdale, on page 10,

“The jury will retire to consider a verdict. You have three choices, gentlemen—innocent, manslaughter, or murder in the first degree.”

This ends the decision for an execution to Trusdale. The next major event to the story is after Trusdale has died and the men find the silver dollar in Trusdale’s feces. On page 13,

They lay on the floor, mostly turned inside out. Something gleamed in the mess. Barclay leaned closer and saw it was a silver dollar. He reached down and plucked it from the crap.

This indicates when Trusdale has finally been proven guilty.

And the final major event in the story is when the sheriff is looking back on how wrong he really was in thinking that Trusdale was actually innocent. On page 14,

He was the only one who hadn’t known. Fool that he was.

Sheriff Barclay truly feels bad and foolish to believe that Trusdale could’ve actually been innocent instead of guilty.

Discussion questions 1, and 2:

I believe Stephan King used a lot of flat characters because his dynamic, round characters represented the sheriff, and us the readers. Many people thought that Trusdale was actually going to be innocent but instead we were proven wrong as long as the Sheriff. I think the story was a little shorter compared to his longer stories like “It” or “The Shining” because he was going for a shorter, straight to the point kind of story. I like many of his stories, and this story was a pretty horrific story. He did use a little less diction compared to his more spooky or horrid novels, but this story had its own vibe, and was very scary, because we thought Trusdale was innocent, and the way he died, and other factors like that were involved. I believed he did this because when he used more diction it was because of the vile things happening in the story.

Analysis Part 2: Gabi

Point of view: The story “A Death” by Stephen King is written in 3rd person point of view. 3rd person point of view is when the narrator is telling us what is going on in the story. The story shows more of an omniscient 3rd person point of view which is when the narrator knows or has the knowledge of all the feelings or desires of the characters in the book. “A Death” by Stephen King falls under these guidelines because it never mentions the main character referencing throughout the story as if he was telling it. The reader is considered as a spectator and is only filled in with information that the narrator delivers it to us, even though he knows the thoughts and feelings of all characters it does not mean that the narrator has to expose all of them. We can prove this hypothesis with a quote from the beginning of the story stating

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Trusdale said.

This shows the reader the main character Jim is feeling confused, but we don’t have more information to conclude anything else about his feelings. This proves the story is written in a 3rd person omniscient point of view because the narrator is informing us with textual evidence that shows emotions and story plot but not the eternity of the picture.

Style: The story “A Death” by Stephen King is written in a horror/realistic style. When referring to style in a book or novel it means the specific way an author uses diction, use of vocabulary, figurative language and words to immerse the reader scenes in the story. Style also helps portray the mood of the book and helps the reader foreshadow future events because of tension or other created situations. One great example of this in “A Death” by Stephen king is towards the end of the story when it states,

“Let me look at the mountains!” Trusdale bellowed. Runners of snot hung from his nostrils. “I’ll be good if you let me look at the mountains one more time!”

This shows the author’s use of the word mountain to describe life and to continue it instead of dying. Another great example of the diction Stephen King uses use is at the beginning where it states

Trusdale turned, grabbed his buttocks, and pulled them apart. Sheriff Barclay winced, sighed, and poked a finger into Trusdale’s anus. Trusdale groaned. Barclay removed his finger, wincing again at the soft pop, and wiped his finger on Trusdale’s undershirt.

Although this is gruesome it shows the reader how eager the sheriff is to find justice or at least evidence in and “inside” of Jim.

Two discussion questions: 1. The hat is used as a specific piece of evidence in Jim’s trail making him come back to the restaurant in look of it but, why did Stephen King choose a hat, and does it symbolize something more?  2.At the end of the story it is mentioned when Jim dies that he expels all the liquid and bodily fluids in his body. They then find the missing coin in his bodily fluids but earlier in the text  it states “There was a bunk and a stool and a waste bucket.” this proves that Jim could have used the restroom and probably did because of the amount of time he was in jail for. So, did Jim must hide the coin during the inspection of evidence and then eat it before the trial?

Analysis Part 3: Isabella

My two craft elements were theme and setting. First, a couple themes I noticed were prevalent throughout the story; Justice and self importance/rationalization.

Justice- the sense of justice is definitely not the same as we think of it now, as in the 19th century the system and process is incredibly fast, rushed to the point of not being thorough or caring about the wellbeing of the suspect- the suspects are practically guilty till proven innocent. This is reiterated at several points in the story that I will mentioned later. The story deals with a horrible crime; the murder and robbery of a 10-year-old girl and starts off by telling the reader exactly who is suspected to have done it, which has the reader thinking that it can’t be him, it’s too obvious and sudden. (which also goes along with the rationalization theme) The entire time law enforcement (mostly Sheriff Barclay) and people of the town argue over justice and making things right for the poor little girl- even though I personally doubt a 10-year-old girl would want the man hung.  It’s a battle of right and wrong and he hurt her, so we better hurt him back. There are several moments that show how biased the law system is against the defendant/suspect, such as when on page 6 it says

There was no lawyer in town to serve as Trusdale’s defense, so Mizell called on George Andrews, owner of the mercantile, the hostelry, and the Good Rest Hotel. Andrews had got two years of higher education at a business school back East. He said he would serve as Trusdale’s attorney only if Mr. and Mrs. Cline agreed.

This is just the first of a series of events that prove the messy justice and legal process in this town and time. There are also quotes such as;

Roger Mizell, who had familiarized himself with the case, served as prosecuting attorney as well as judge.

..no one suggested that it was a bad idea. It had a certain economy, after all.

And

Prosecutor Mizell called half a dozen witnesses, and Judge Mizell never objected once to his line of questioning.

Rationalization/Self Importance; as the reader, and as human beings, we often think (unconsciously or not) that we know best and our opinions are irrefutable. So, of course, since the reader is pushed to believe Trusdale is innocent, he must be, and all the gathered evidence and jury ruling are wrong. Stephen King plays on the idea the reader will make up in their head that all the townsmen are vicious, that everyone is mad at a man who did nothing but be uneducated and simple minded. By the end, there is a conclusion, that no, somehow the reader was incorrect (unless you’re one of the few that believed he was a criminal the whole way through) and we see how being in our own minds constantly leads us to think our thoughts and ideas can’t possibly be wrong. Stephen king is trying to prove a point here about people’s self-importance and how it leads to rationalizing facts that were proved wrong with just our human emotion. The lines

“You believed him,” Hines said at last. ‘Fool that I am, I did.”

“Maybe that says more about you than it does about him.””

are all reminiscent of what I imagine King is trying to tell the reader. Most of the story is making fun of the human species’ long-time conflict starter- pride, haughtiness, and self-importance. I rather enjoyed the way Stephen King subtly introduced the theme, and very quickly had the reader feeling sorry for the criminal of the story. I’d like to be able to develop complex character’s or at least quick attachment and intelligent storylines and underlying themes and concepts in my writing.

Two things I’d like to know about Stephen King’s thought and writing decisions/process (discussion questions)

1. How did he come up with the idea/concept for the story and what spurred him to implant the theme of self-importance?
2. Did King have the idea in his head that Trusdale was going to be guilty the entire time? Was there a point in the story that he realized that would make sense and wrote it, or did he plan it all out/have an idea of the ending he wanted to build up to?