Justice at Night-Joe’s Diary
“Some goddam nigger, name of Hyancith”...
Those words have played on my mind from last night. How uncompassionate of those men to refer to Hyancith in such a manner. Southerners!
I still cannot gather why such a crime is allowed and tolerated in a world where social integration should be embraced. When times are rapidly moving along and individuals should be noticed.
What a ‘gathering’, the murder of an innocent was a gathering for these Southerners. At night they mingle and marvel at the sight of an innocent being hanged for an act that was ridiculously believed. An old woman in her forty’s or fifty’s is no one to get excited about and being a young man Hyancith could have never tried a thing with her. Anyone could have seen that...
The fear and pity Hyancith showed, never again do I want to experience such sympathy. Brutality at the first degree- Dragged and hanged....
I feel like I participated by witnessing such an act of barbarism and certain crude. If only I could have helped, stopped, changed the whole situation and sighting. Looking at that poor boy...
The causality of murdering a ‘negro’ in the middle of nowhere, under a massive tree should be alarming to each and every one of those spectators. But noooooo! They stand and chant and extremely ridicule this young man.
The image still flames in my head. The burning of human flesh, the tugging, dragging, hatred towards this boy is definitely a scene that will imprint my mind....
If only I could change what happened, helped him, even not look.
If only
Commentary
I began with a quotation from the book to emphasis the ‘trauma’ that Joe experiences from watching the scene. I repeated a lot of ellipses to show that Joe could not construct his words and really felt what happened. Also, I used adjectives to describe the exact feelings of Joe and the night before. I repeated the noun Southerners to re-enforce that it was a new surrounding for Joe and that he disliked where he was. I put a few spaces to show that the subject was a difficult one for Joe to write in his diary.
www an honourable attempt with some strong features, you clearly show engagement with the subject and an ability to put yourself into the mind of the witness, Joe. You write in a diary form which has some traces of the archaic 1930s style of writing and certainly captures the sense of helplessness and impotence that Joe feels. The brief (rather too brief!) commentary shows some awareness of the techniques you are employing and a little use of terminology.
ReplyDeleteebi occasionally the fluency of the writing isn't what it might be and this reduces the overall mark. The effort to give it an archaic feel has to be balanced with the emotional response; the anger, the fear, the guilt. I'm not quite sure that the balance is right. The commentary needs to be spare and very direct in its identification of the techniques you have used. Use an almost annotative form of PEE if this allows you to express more points.
WWW- related to the character of Joe well. Used strong emotive language to express how the character of Joe felt.
ReplyDeleteEBI- Longer commentary.