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Robert Hudgens Professor Martin Lammon Creative Writing Seminar March 12th, 2013 The Journey So Far When I was fifteen, a carefree sophomore in a private Christian high school, I was given a writing assignment from my English teacher concerning the epic Beowulf that we had just finished reading. The task was to write up a short story using various elements of the epic (tragic/ flawed protagonist, presence of a mentor, the undertaking of a long journey, etc.) and to present the story in front of the class. My little epic told the tale of a noble warrior cast out from his home, losing his kingdom and parents to a jealous and greedy warlord. He is found by an old martial arts sensei in the cold capped mountains and is taught how to fight and take his revenge with honor. The young lad returns to the capital city where he engages the warlord in pitched combat and, through the sacrifice of the mentor, finds the strength to defeat his arch nemesis and reclaim his throne before he succumbs to his wounds. My English teacher, whose name I remember fondly as Mrs. Barnwell, said that I would not receive an A on the paper unless I promised to write future stories for the world to enjoy. Looking back on that particular story makes me cringe; I cannot say that I am proud of how it is structured or proud of how the story and theme it presents is clich. Still, what I do remember about that story was that it gave me a direction to take all of the creativity that had been building inside me, waiting for purpose. I knew that I wanted to write stories. In the latter

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years of my high school education, I was introduced to several writers of the past who belonged in various and differentiating genres of literature. Some of my favorites included: Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment) and William Golding (Lord of the Flies). Georgia College and State Universitys creative writing program also introduced me to more current but still brilliant writers such as Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men) and Tobias Wolff (Our Story Begins). Taking influences from these various writers and using certain traits from their work to craft my own stories with the most successful being Lone Wolf Living, I have come to recognize myself as a Neo-Realist. I believe in the use of depictions of everyday activities and experiences in conveying powerful stories of the human condition, instead of relying on romantic, surrealist, or even post-modern approaches. My realistic themes are inspired from the messages in Crime and Punishment and No Country for Old Men, my story structures and tools (dialogue, action, and description) are related to the short story structures in Our Story Begins, and use of animal stereotypes as a metaphor of characteristics seen in people as used in Lord of the Flies is where the Neo part of my genre surfaces. There are stories that attempt to enlighten their reader while others seek only to entertain. A good story is one that can be read over and over again without succumbing to the test of time and in order to achieve that level, there must be a balance. Themes allow an exciting journey to commence for the main character and the reader while providing an enlightened message to be applied in the readers life. Realistic themes enlighten and entertain me more than others because they are easy to grasp; however that does not mean that realism provides basic ideologies that do not require the reader to think in order to understand them. In other words, realistic themes come home to me like truth once I figure out what the author of a story was trying to convey; they are easy to apply because they concern everyday thoughts or temptations a reader has.

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Dostoyevskys Crime and Punishment contains several prime examples of subtly but at the same time easily portraying these themes. In chapter one, the protagonist Raskolnikov is contemplating killing an old pawnbroker lady for her money. He stresses that he would have to throw away his morals in order to accomplish the deed but then he undergoes a change in mood. But in spite of this scornful spitting, he already looked cheerful, as if he had freed himself all at once of some terrible burden, and cast an amiable glance around at the people there, (Dostoyevsky 10). Dostoyevsky is writing his book against nihilism which dictates that a man throws away his emotions and rises to the state of a superman. Realistically speaking, humans are driven by logic and emotion; we cannot live our lives properly without a balance. More importantly, Dostoyevsky makes his theme clear and present in the first chapter of the novel and thereby not confusing the reader as to what the subject matter is about. Dostoyevskys thematic process is one I reflect in Lone Wolf Living. In the first page of the short story I establish a theme that I believe has crossed several individuals minds that work hard and do not even receive a thank you. The main character Ryan works at a fast food joint where the hours are long and the payoff does not seem to be in sight. I once had a little old lady scold me like I was her neighborhood tramp getting caught scavenging through her garbage can, looking for a midnight morsel. She called me a mother fucker, cocker sucker asshole, (Hudgens 1). This treatment fills Ryan up with dread to the point where he is debating over whether or not to quit his job and face the consequences. My theme conveys the ideology that sometimes people need a little encouragement, people need to be told what they are doing right rather than everything that they are doing wrong with their lives. If they do not get that kind of support, then the consequences that Ryan realistically does not want to think about will surface and bite them in the rear.

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This is also where I knew that I had to bring in a friend of Ryans (John) who is going through the same conflict that Ryan is but at a much higher level. The use of John in my story to further develop Ryan and the theme is a tactic that Dostoyevsky uses in the second chapter of Crime and Punishment. He writes Raskolnikov meeting a man named Marmeladov who looks like an old government official and who is drinking himself away at a tavern. His wife hates Marmeladov for losing every job that he graciously receives and his daughter Sophia must engage in prostitution in order to support the family. This shame present in the family drives Raskolnikov to uncalculatedly act. As he was leaving, Raskolnikov managed to thrust his hand into his pocket, rake whatever coppers he happened to find from the rouble he had changed in the tavern, and put them unobserved on the windowsill. Afterwards, on the stairs, he thought better of it and wanted to go back, (Dostoyevsky 27). I appreciate how Dostoyevsky brings his theme full circle by the end of the book but I also enjoy how Raskolnikovs interaction with these characters magnifies Dostoyevskys critique of nihilism. The protagonist cannot escape emotions no matter what he tries or how calculated and cold his attempts are and this relates to my character Ryan who cannot face suicide because of John. He recognizes how Johns community and family have been going at John much of his adult life and how he has really not come to that point of desperation. People learn a lot from their daily interactions with others and I found that there was no other way of ending my short story. Ryan had to keep going as I illustrated in the last few lines of my story. Maybe Ill show up at work tomorrow. Maybe Ill put off quitting for another month. A year. Maybe I wont quit. This is all still in my mind, but, maybe Ill raise some money. Ill send out another application, get accepted to another school, (Hudgens 12). I believe that my ending delivers the theme home

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for the reader just as Dostoyevskys theme gets driven home whether it is in the end of the story or a chapter. With Dostoyevsky, the reader learns about why humans are the way they are in a realistic fashion and readers can also discover something about the human condition in Lone Wolf Living. When I read works of realism or works that impose realistic techniques, I find myself gripped by the attention of detail in their descriptions and dialogue. Contemporary short story and memoir author Tobias Wolff frequently captures my attention with his specificity especially at the beginning of the story where making the reader invested is a top priority. An example of this can be found in one of his short stories titled The Chain. Brain Gold was at the top of the hill when the dog attacked. A big black wolflike animal attached to a chain, it came flying off a back porch and tore through its yard into the park, moving easily in spite of the deep snow, (Wolff 199). From these first two sentences, the reader discovers a lot of context. The reader is aware that the main character is a father named Brian Gold whose daughter is the subject of an attack. The dog is also not one of average size or manner but more like a monster from some dark wood. The actual setting is a suburb in winter time with the snow indicating a sense of disturbance when the dog breaks through it. Brain and the dog also work together, in this description, to create excitement for the reader and an outline of the future conflict to come. When I first read the beginning of the story I knew that, even though Brain saves his daughter and the dog runs back to its house, Brian would want revenge and the story would take the reader in that direction. It is that level of context that I work to convey upon the reader with my own level of specificity in my descriptions which can be read in the first two sentences of Lone Wolf Living. I work at a fast food joint, some miles south down the highway, past my old high school in Jonesborough

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county. I work forty hours a week, sometimes fifty, up on the front lines as a cashier taking peoples orders, money, and crap, (Hudgens 1). My generation, along with several older ones, has had to work in mediocre jobs or positions that we forever determined would be part time in order to pay for gasoline and school. By placing Ryan in that kind if realistic setting, the reader immediately feels a pull towards the familiar. The reader also gets a sense that Ryan has not gone anywhere with his life and that he is miserable from the long hours of work. Understandably so, it is due to the mistreatment from the customers that has helped put Ryan in a bad mood. Still, the reader will be questioning whether there is more to Ryans depression than just what is occurring at the fast food restaurant. A character having a bad day at work is not enough to make the descriptions worthwhile. Still, my descriptions along with their level of specificity and familiarity give the reader an urge to continue reading and to continue enjoying the world that they have come to rediscover with my story. Like his descriptions, Tobias Wolff crafts believable dialogue that is simple but at the same time deep in helping to flush out the themes of his short stories. One of my favorite examples comes from his short story Say Yes. Throughout the pages, the main character and his wife are debating about whether or not people should engage in mixed racial marriages. The main character has the statistics (and he claims that marrying someone of a different color would be like marrying a complete stranger) on his side but the wife has put her heart into the argument by setting up a hypothetical situation where she is black and wanting to marry the main character who is still white. The husband says that he would not marry her and she walks off to be alone. The main character receives some time to think things over and he approaches his wife in the bathroom to apologize. He waits for her in the bathroom and they share the following lines. Turn off the light, she said from the hallway. What? Turn off the light, (Wolff 134).

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These lines are very speakable; it is dialogue written on behalf of the contemporary individuals speaking it and it is believable to the readers reading it. This dialogue exchange also dives deeper into what is going on in the story and what the characters are feeling. The wife of Say Yess main character wants to see if her husband will love her when the lights are off and he cannot see her. This allows her to take on the guise of a complete stranger and to put the husband to the test making for an incredibly exciting climax. It is this kind of deep simplicity present in Wolffs realistic dialogue that I write to capture for my own stories. In the later pages of Lone Wolf Living, after John learns that Ryan wants to quit his fast food job, John breaks down revealing that his own mother threw a lamp at his head, wounding him and provoking him to say the following words. John ends up being the one who breaks the silence, having now gained complete control of himself, and says, Im quitting too. What? Im quitting everything, he replies, (Hudgens 9). While the main character Ryan interprets Johns words as only quitting college, the reader feels a deeper crafting here, as if Im starting to suggest that John is in a worse position than Ryan is. That line of thinking is true. Dialogue is a huge part of the everyday life of the average human being and taking that something that people call familiar and using it to convey something deeper brings excitement and enjoyment to the readers mind and emotions. My last inspiration for writing the way I write determines why I call myself a Neo-Realist rather than just a Realist. A trend with my stories involves the use of animal stereotypes to portray a realistic element of the human condition. I first picked up on this tactic when I read William Goldings Lord of the Flies. Goldings novel comes off as extremely realistic with its themes, descriptions, and character development but it is also an allegorical piece with its use of animal symbolism. In chapter eight of the novel, the Christ figure Simon stumbles upon the head

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of a pig that the other boys have stuck on top a wooden pole as an offering for the beast. The pig head comes alive and reveals itself to Simon as the beast. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. You knew, didnt you? Im part of you? Close, close, close! Im the reason why its no go. Why things are the way they are, (Golding 172). The Jewish faith portrays pigs as being unclean and something that corrupts. Realistically speaking, they are unclean animals rolling in the dirt and the mud, building body fat with their gluttonous appetite. They are also commonly compared to humans who eat, live, and act like them. With this in mind, Golding has cleverly written the pigs head to represent not a demon nor Satan but the entire entity of sin in all human beings. He has not written a romantic representation of the pig itself or how the pigs power in nature brings out majesty for people to awe at. Instead, Golding has taken religious traits of the pig and combined it with realistic stereotypes as a deep metaphor of the human condition. I have never been an animal person; not in the present and not while I was growing up. Since the Bible does not give explicit details to prove my line of thinking wrong, I do not believe that animals have emotions nor do I believe that they go to a place like heaven or hell when they die. The Lord put them on this earth to serve and provide for our needs which gives me no remorse when I hunt deer in the back woods of Georgia or fish for Marlins in the Florida Everglades. Still, I have come to believe that God works in mysterious ways and that he has given animals their stereotypical traits to teach us more about ourselves than we as humans have come to discover. The titles of my short stories are the first indication of this metaphorical pattern (Lone Wolf Living, Rouge Lion Loving, etc.). With Lone Wolf Living, the subject matter deals with characters who have been made out to be lone wolfs; everyone has outcasted them through various actions. A wolf that has been kicked out of his or her pack and never rejoins

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with another typically ends up dead without any offspring. A life alone is too difficult for an animal and it is the same way with a person as indicated by Johns dialogue. You cant survive as the lone wolf, Ryan. Nobody will let you. You know theres only one thing you can do when youre given that label, (Hudgens 10). The title of my story, however, is not Lone Wolf Dying but Lone Wolf Living. Ryan decides to go on with his life because he recognizes that there is still hope for him. Not every lone wolf stays a lone wolf. They sometimes join another pack and remain happy until they die. I believe, through my Christian faith, that hope is real and that every human can achieve the everlasting happiness they were deprived of during life after they move on. This is the kind of realism that I want to convey to the readers of my stories. While I have come a long way since my little epic in high school and have learned a lot from all the authors I have been introduced to, I continue to discover that writing is a serious dedication with serious work. I am always learning something new from someone else and I imagine that someone else is learning something from me too. I plan to continue my writing after I graduate from college and plan to stay dedicated even when everybody around me is critical of my work. I have studied, what feels like, countless literary genres and stories but I do believe that writing as a Neo-Realist will help me achieve my goal of publishing developed stories for all to enjoy.

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Works Cited Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. New York: Everyman's Library, 1992. Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1962. Wolff, Tobias. Our Story Begins: New and Selected Short Stories. New York: First Vintage Contemporaries, 2008.