Published August 29, 2011
I saw a girl cry today. In my third period English. She came in late, her face red and crinkled. She sat at the edge of the classroom, trying to cover her face, sloppy tears falling on her thin white blouse. No one did anything. No one did a fucking thing. She had no friends in the class, no one was there to comfort her. People were repelled by that much raw emotion. I sat across from her, drifting in and out of focus of what the teachers was saying. Watching her like a hawk. But I never said anything. I don’t quite know why. Maybe I was scared to get tangled up in a stranger’s pain.
The class ended and she stormed out, headed to the bathrooms. No one followed her, no one at all. What does this say about us? Ever since we are born we are taught to cover our real emotions. Our automatic response if someone asks us how we are is to say “fine thanks”. It is considered rude to say, “awful” or “horrible” or “angry” , people don’t want to know that much. So what’s the outcome of all this repressed emotion? Order, I guess, and quiet. People go along with what they are meant to do. I won’t tell you that I love you, because I am afraid you won’t love me back. You won’t tell me your upset because I might think your strange. That is the way it is, the way it has always been.
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
137,793 Literary Works • 672,067 Reviews
Hey, Gracie, Isha here to review. ^.^
First of all, I'm going to say something quick about the idea you have going here: I like it. Mostly. The fact that society has pushed this sort of thing on us is an accurate observation, of course, but to say that everybody falls into what society wants us to fall into isn't so accurate. I know the point you're trying to get acros here, but there are people who aren't quite as cowardly as others. To say that all people are like this isn't really fair, and you were probably just going for a generalization, but you have to make it clear.
Anyway, I still really appreciate what you're trying to get across here. I'm just as cowardly as most are, an it's something that I've been trying to break out of, especially lately, and so the piece also relates to me, and it probably relates to a lot of other people as well.
Now, although the point an the relativity was good, the actual 'getting it across' part was somewhat iffy. The piece seemed jumpy, and the writing itself just wasn't all that intriguing. It was short and choppy and a little messy rather than short and to-the-point. There is a lot of expansion that you can do here. Explain things a bit more, carry on and elaborate on your point of view. Rather than pug a bunch of little points into the last paragraph, puck three or four of them and take your time explaining. One or two paragraphs and a way to run between them smoothly would add length, depth and interest to your piece. And then your closer- it was a decent closer, so keep it. But if there's more to the piece itself, then the ending will pack more of a punch.
Elaborate a little, and let the reader know exactly where you stand and how you think about all of this.
Keep writing,
~~Ish.
I just have this to say.. I am not promoting my stuff or what
http://r2square.wordpress.com/2011/07/1 ... ing-glass/
People around here.. we all.. potentially are cowards. We are born and bred this way...
Or so I assume..
In general, I did definitely think this was interesting. My biggest problem with this was actually that I wanted you to expand on this, because right now it feels incomplete. Continue to dwell on how you feel about this, and bring this opinion full-circle, and then I think you could have a really interesting piece of writing.
Keep writing,
StoryWeaver