Published July 2, 2010
Any critique is welcome
What do people think about the moment before they die? What thoughts ran through the mind during that second they straddled the thin line between existence and non-existence, the moment they were simultaneously alive and dead? More importantly, what was dad’s final thought?
Did he think of me? Of us? About the life I would be forced to live in his absence. Did he think of molly? Did he think of her uneven teeth which she tried to hide in photos? Or did he reminisce about her laugh? Did he foresee the absence of laughter in our lives?
In that moment of overwhelming adrenalin, who was the last person my dad thought of? As selfish as it sounds, I couldn’t bare to imagine anyone but me. At that fatal moment were his lungs expanded and contracted for the last time, it was my name that I wanted at the tip of his tongue. My voice ringing in his ear. My face blurring his vision as death hurdled towards him. And as odd as it sounds, I would have broken into more pieces than I am made of if my dad’s final thought were about my mother. But if one was to know my mother, than this would not sound as odd.
Out of all the emotions that could have crippled my dad, I know fear was not one of them. This I am certain of. In seventeen years, I have never met a man more prepared for death than my dad. Maybe he wasn’t more prepared, but more aware. Human’s extraordinary ability to ignore their impending death is one of the many man flaws I learnt from my dad. With each breath I die a little, but I used to simply choose to ignore this fact. The one thing I could be sure of in life was death, but I simply ignored death. It could not touch me, I used to think but by touching dad it has gotten me worse than I could have ever imagined.
Since dad’s murder, others call it an accident which I do not understand as Dad was killed by a hit and run driver, I was surrounded by death. I reeked of it. My voice was clouded by death. I heard sounds with the undertone of death. I saw the world as a person touched by death only could.
Soon I will be able to overcome the man flaw of ignorance to death. How could I not?
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140,812 Literary Works • 673,694 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
Anyway let's get right to it,
This is a pretty attention grabby start here. Its the sort of start that tends to immediately make you take notice and also feel for the characters because it is pretty clear we've got a situation where the main character has lost their father here, which certainly is not a good situation by any sort of definition here. The questions there also have an odd tinge of some sort of innocence to them which somehow make things feel even more painful here. All in all though, a solid start.
Hmm, well this dives rather deep into some proper mental gymnastics here. You can see the effects that such a death can really have on a person and it lends itself to creating a very powerful moment here for the reader as well cause you can see the effects this is really having on the protagonist and those emotions they are feeling. The light touch of mystery behind this death also adds wonderfully to that effect I think.
Alright, well that ending certainly makes you think there is a lot more to come here in this tale. If these are going to be the actual first five hundred words, I think they'd do their job really well here. We've got a pretty solid scene here that's kicking things off and I think it does a wonderful job really pulling you in as a reader.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hello, wariofart here for a review. I'm learning how to write just like everyone here, so please take my critics with a grain of salt!
You changed tenses here from present to past. So change "ran" to "run".
CAPITALIZE names.
I liked this section a lot.
Try and rephrase this sentence, it sounds odd and choppy.
Try and rephrase this. Perheap like "...is one of the many flaws of man that I learned from my dad."
(add a comma)
This sentence feels choppy, and it is a run-on sentence. Split it into two sentences.
Overall, this story has some really nice and philosophical moments in it. But you have to work on phrasing sentences better. The flow of a story is very important, and to me this was a bit too choppy.
Also, capitalize "Dad" as that is his name. If you say "my dad", you don't have to capitalize it. Keep going, I'd like to see how this continues!
This is very deep. Your main character is unusually thoughtful and is also human. Your writing is descriptive without going overboard or losing the reader in long paragraphs. You offer a good set up for the rest of the story.
My only suggestion is to make your last sentence say "human flaw" instead of "man flaw". It just seems to read more smoothly. Nice job.