The dominance never went away.
Haris forced himself to listen to his father's words or else escaping the living room or covering his ears would be deemed as rebellious. Derhaka, as the Malay language termed it. A most unforgivable sin committed by a child to his parents; the word was hundred-folds more potent than disobedience due to its connection to religion and its effectiveness to demonize those who committed it.
He was staring at the carpet at which his feet rested. Six months ago, starting from the moment he had to rip his job as a a cashier away from him and let his father’s assigned job leeched him, he couldn’t look at his father straight in the eyes. He was afraid that if he did, his father would only see the defiance in them. That Haris couldn’t control. If not words, actions would betray his feelings.
Every time Father spoke, anger crept into his body.
Haikal’s hands were restless. Here he was, besides his brother Haris, forced to listen his father’s lecture. He wanted to look up - to stare straight at his father - and say his mind. He didn’t care whether Father liked it or not.
‘Why the hell should I go to the tahfiz school?’ said Haikal, his voice matching the loudness of Father’s. Father was loud, and that made him thought Father was angry, but if Mother was here, she would say this was Father’s casual volume. What a terrible loud speaking Father was, never failed to suppress him without - allegedly - intending to.
‘I want to go to the sports school!’
They, instead of attempting to understand, always argued.
Haikal couldn’t see why he should enter that kind of school, Father thought. He wasn’t aware that every time someone said something disagreeable to him, he always talked back. Sometimes, a word was replied with ten sentences. No matter how wrong he was that others had pointed out, he always had something to talk back. He was Father’s most vexing child, so unlike his older brothers, Haris and the absentee Hafiz. Where was Hafiz, anyway? Going out with his useless friends, most likely.
The school could fix him.
Haris once said Haikal ought to be an athlete, but Hashim had another plan for him.
Mother was in the kitchen, busy preparing the food. Fried chickens and soup for today, because there was still yesterday’s leftover. She looked at the boiling saucepan while her ears caught their argument.
Mother didn’t know what to do. She didn’t have the authority to decide what was best for her children, despite being the more knowing parent. Hashim was the head of the family. From Monday to Friday, she woke Haikal, prepared him for school, and sent him to there. She washed all his clothes - as well as his brothers’ as father’s - and dried them under the sun, cooked foods for the family that lasted until the next few days, and carried out other house chores. She was a mother for twenty years, and a wife for a couple of years longer than that.
And yet, she didn’t know what to do.
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.
139,784 Literary Works • 672,764 Reviews
I'm a bit of an opponent when it comes to Set Pieces, or short stories/books that present a scene that has conflict without actually resolving it. Basically, wordy paintings, where there's not really much of a story going on as much as just a scene that hints at a story. It's not entirely interesting, and most of the time the scene itself isn't nearly good enough to warrant a 500 word description of it.
However, I think you're the rare case where it actually works. I'm not entirely sure why, of course, but I think I'll figure it out by the end of my infamous reviews (I usually do, anyway).
So I'm not using my usual schtick this time. I will divide my review up to two things, all the things you need to fix and all the things you've done right and hope for the best.
Firstly, let's start with the things you need to fix.
Problems
Grammar and Awkward Sentence Structures
I will admit, I don't touch upon this as often nowadays, but I feel like you could improve in this department and I wouldn't have any problem with this work. I'm being serious.
Technically this isn't incorrect, but it just sounds better to say a hundred-fold.
Again, technically not incorrect, but it's better to say 'speak' than 'say'.
It's 'what a terribly loud speaker', not 'what a terrible loud speaking father'.
And other small mistakes like that ultimately drags the story downwards a bit, because while the scene itself is beautifully messed up, how you describe that scene definitely plays a part in how the audience will see it.
Which leads me to,
Voice
Your voice is also a big player in how your audience will look at your story. This is an incredibly emotional, very close work detailing the intimate and harsh moments of a family's life--and it's spoken in this very professional, very robotic manner. I don't blame you for this. This occurs in all your works, and most of the time that's because that's just how you write. However, my voice is the reason why I don't write comedies, because I'm too grim to be anything but dark. If you want to write a work like this, you have to make it work for your voice, which is a little like a clever essayist from an Ivy League college trying to describe a literary book he's read.
Key Point: That's not a bad thing, it just doesn't fit with such an emotional work. You want the audience to feel for these characters, but you're the all-knowing third person narrator, the most distant sounding voice there is. You may remain the third person, but you have to be a third person that sympathizes with these characters, rather than just telling what these characters are going through. You're almost there, especially with the mother part, but ultimately it still feels like we're too distant to know what's going on.
Regarding the Things You Did Right
And you did quite a few of them.
Your Conflicts
This is my biggest beef with Set Piece works, because most pretty picture works don't necessariy have a conflict. They have two or three characters meeting in a scene, but they don't give the reader a reason why they're in the scene or hint at what's happening between them. It all feels shallow under the pretty words, as if nothing is going to happen.
You went the other route. You made a picture made entirely of unresolved conflicts, and while that has its problems, I think it actually makes an interesting picture to draw. We know where everybody stands in this portrait, and we can only guess what happens next, but at the very least it's a very clear, very poignant picture of current society.
Which reminds me,
Your Commentary
Not a lot of work out here actually has any deeper meaning behind it, and rightly so. I'm not judging people because they have nothing deep to say, because you don't have to make deep meanings all the time. Stories are meant to be enjoyed, it just so happens that deep meanings are also a factor in that enjoyment.
But don't get me wrong, I prefer commentary. I prefer to see perspectives on current problems, and I like it when the author can pass judgment without being preachy. You know how to show the difficult sides of every conversation, and you don't limit it to just the sons and the mother--the father gets a say too, and I think it shows that you have a good handle of perspective. Perspective is definitely something a writer ought to have, so that's mostly why I'm glad I've read this.
Humbly,
--Elliot.
Thanks for the review! <3
I like the concept behind this story. I love the first line, it immediately gives the reader an idea of what the story is about. I can see little aspects of the Malaysian culture spread out through the story. The social norms that have been embedded into the older generation (Father and Mother both).
Although I feel like the shift of the POVs is a little abrupt, especially when you shift from Haikal's POV to Mother's. There are quite a few grammartical mistakes as well, making it hard to understand what some of the sentences mean.
"If not words, actions would betray his feelings."
This sentence seems to contradict the fact that Haris was still standing there obediently. He did nothing that would actually show his anger. Rephrasing it might help.
I hope I was helpful!
Thought I was dead? Think again.
Let's get right into the news.
A few noteworthy things.
-Classic intriguing starting line that young writers love to do so much
-Malaysian setting. Something closer to home, I suppose. A hint of patriotism?
-Grammatical errors. This is the most basic (and overlooked) foundation of good writing and should be fixed before anything else.
-Switch of POV, the italic one-liners signal each switch.
-YEEEEEEE SMASH THAT PATRIARCHY UHHHHHHH WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I personally don't think these passages express the feelings of the characters well enough. All it does is inform the reader, but it doesn't match the intensity of the situation.
Take the last paragraph. for example. The dominant impression in this passage about Mother is helplessness/powerlessness, even if it isn't implied. However, only a few of these sentences here actually point to that dominant impression. To make things a little worse, they don't really dig so deep into it.
This paragraph's pretty much an information dump. A few sentences dig a little, but the rest is just info. I guess that this info is supposed to make the impression that Mother is someone who is experienced, but the information here just doesn't make it work so well. I mean, how does doing chores fully reflect a person who is supposed to know how to break family fights? Maybe it would have worked if she was a diplomat or something closer to peacemaking.
This paragraph reflects the rest of the story as well.
The story keeps throwing information the reader's way in order to build the world the characters live in, but it forgets something important: emotion. I've been at that spot. I've talked back, looked my dad in the eye, and fought him. I know how intense and furious and emotional family fights are. Unfortunately, this short story is more informative than descriptive. This short story spends more words reciting information rather than making the reader feel something.
Sure, it does give the info in order to justify each character's feelings, but it doesn't focus on the emotion itself. It doesn't intensify the thoughts and feelings of each character.
Here's how I'd do the last paragraph:
Mother didn't know what to do. She thought of intervening, but she didn't have the authority to decide what what was best for her children.
Should I step in? No, that isn't right. Wives have to be faithful to their husbands. I should intervene. I know Haikal better than anyone. I wake him up in the morning and prepare him for school from Monday to Friday. I spend more time with him than Hashim does. He's a good boy; his father just doesn't know it. But Hashim! He's so short-tempered; something as slight as stepping on his foot would set him off! And the neighbors! What would they think of me if they heard about me being disloyal to my husband?
Mother was the more knowing parent. And yet, she didn't know what to do.
Hopefully you get the idea. This window into Mother's thoughts describes how Mother feels and creates the impression/emotion of helplessness and internal conflict.
TL;DR, evoke emotions in your reader by making the emotions of each character clear to the reader.
Despite all this, it's a decent short story that uses interesting tactics and is worth a read. It also talks about a relevant social issue, and boy do I love myself some fiction talking about social issues.
I'm out. Good night.
Aww, awtbeyder, you're back! <333 Thanks for the review. :3