English 1121, OL41

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essay 2 draft completed

Marcus Robinson 

Essay one Draft two

English 1121

This short story is inspired by  “The Money” by Junot Diaz, The story can be seen from many different views and be interpreted differently. The two styles that you will see are from the thieves’ view and from the fathers.The family in the story, even most of the neighborhood was depicted as poor and without money. Even considering that the family in the story was honest and truthful. So in my essay I made my own perspective of “The Money” while still keeping the main points from the original story.

The Thief’s Perspective 

After an exhausting day of staying home sick my sister finally returns home with dinner. A pound of potatoes and a half dozen eggs. I usually eat this meal a lot because of our family’s minimum funds to spend. To others that’s a poor taste but in this family it is everything we have to eat. It’s only my father, sister and myself;  My mom passed a year after I was born, doctors said she had a rare  heart condition. At that time my sister was only four and my dad worked an amazing job and had more than enough money to support our family. For years  he continued to strive and make a living for himself until unfortunately someone totaled his car leaving him disabled. Lost his job and wife but at least he has his children to take care of him. Without the help of my sister we would probably be living under a bridge right about  now.  My sister decides to work long hours everyday instead of attending  school so I could get an education. Most days my father can’t help himself around so we would take turns helping,  growing up my sister and father are the only two people that always have my back. Now i’m seventeen and my sister is twenty one years old. 

An hour after my sister made it home from work, dinner was surely made and my sister tells me at the diner table  “ Please don’t get in any fights on your first day tomorrow! I don’t want you getting kicked out of another school”. I promise tomorrow will be different, I replied back quickly. In my old high school I would always cut class to go chill at the park with my best friends Andree and Andrea. On top of that my grades were horrible but what got me out was fighting some kid who looked at me the wrong way. My sister was always going out of her way to correct my mistakes and make sure there is a roof over my head. “ Don’t let the hard work your sister does for you go to waste”, said my father to me at the diner table. He’s right, It’s time to make a good reputation for myself and become a wonderful person just like my father and sister. Even though we don’t have any money to live a normal life, we all have each other.

    DING-DONG DING-DONG DING-DONG… I jumped out of my bed thinking why couldn’t I stay sick one more day, it’s too early in the morning to start my new school. DING-DONG.. I jumped out of my bed again then finally I shut my alarm off. Even though I didn’t get rest last night I still got up and ready myself for school. My father even made me an egg sandwich on my first day just like elementary school and wished me good luck son. My new school is only ten minutes away so luckily it’s easy to take myself to and from school. My sister was still asleep so I headed out for my day in the hope to make something good for my family. An hour after arriving at school everything’s going great. I even made my first friend Samuael in my first period of science class. Samuel nugged me afterwards  and said “ What are you doing for lunch”, I told him that I have an egg sandwich for lunch I will eat. Now everything was going fine at school until my first lunch period. Samuel went to buy lunch on the line and that’s when I saw my perfect opportunity to help my family.

Two hundred something dollars fell out of his bag while he was on line getting lunch and I only have a few seconds to decide if I should do the wrong thing for a better outcome. I know in my heart stealing is something you should never do, however in my situation two hundred dollars is like the jackpot to us. Should I just go back into my egg sandwich? My heart races and beats faster every second, I can’t disappoint my sister again in school i think to myself.  Most importantly Samuel is one of the good people we need more of in life. With no more thought and just action I took his money and never told anyone about what I just did. I don’t feel so bad because I think in the back of my head I do it for my loved ones not myself. Later on in the day at 3pm my sister came to walk me home from school. Of course she said “ I hope you didn’t run into trouble bro, don’t make me find out.” You know that feeling of guilt you have when someone asks you something and you lie to their face. Well that’s all I can feel right now on this walk home. I say nothing to my family  when I get home then lock myself in my room. Now it would be right to give it back but money is hard to come by in my life, in fact this is the most I’ve ever had in my hand before. Maybe I can return it when I get a job but jobs are hard to come by as well for me and my family. My father and sister would both be angry if I told them my secret anyway so I kept the money to myself.

The next day there was no school and I couldn’t take  the guilt of what I had done so I went to his house to return the money. I open the door and no one is there, I walk a few feet further and I notice money hidden in his house. Knowing it’s not right I was already too deep in, I took everything valuable in the house thinking of the good I’m doing to help out my bad situation. I guess his family was on a vacation because he did say he was going away this weekend. I quickly and quietly leave with another two hundred dollars and a few other values. All of the goods that I took from his house were kept underneath my bed. My family must not find this because it will lead to too many questions I’m not ready to answer. All I can do now is wait and hope no one saw me go inside that house.  

A few days later and I hadn’t seen Samuel not once in school. I wonder if he has caught on to me yet or if I’m okay. Whatever the cause is, I need to make sure no one finds what I took. Because that’s the only thing on my mind I head home, walk to my room and make sure no one is watching me. Only to find my window open and  nothing left, I ran to my father and sister and they didn’t seem to know about the money so there was only one person who could have taken the money. I wanted to help my sister and father with that money, even though it’s a wrong thing to do.  I can’t even get mad that someone robbed what I took from them, I learned a lesson that day and took a loss at the same time.

The Fathers Perspective 

I’m so happy that after a year I can finally afford to send my family and myself on a family vacation. Our favorite place to go  is up north to vermont every year. It doesn’t matter how much money we have, sometimes having a piece of mind is worth more than a dollar. I work long hours in a meat packing warehouse making just enough to support my kids and wife. My wife usually stays home most days in the week and works sometimes to take care of our young ones at home, except our son who goes to school everyday. I try to help out all family members I possibly can because as a poor middle class family we understand how rough it can be.  Our neighborhoods even aren’t safe to raise children in or yet even live in.My biggest hope, my son Alexander has dreams to have a career and help this family financially.  That’s a long time from now so all I’m excited for is another family vacation this year.

After I get home from work the next day no time is wasted telling my wife and kids “We can afford to go away on another family vacation.”  Everyone is excited to be going away this year again even though we will be broke again. I tell all of my children because we are going away we need to keep this house safe. There are many people who get robbed or hurt where I am. Crime is at its peak so I need to make sure we are not gone for too long. The last thing I need is for someone to take the last of what we had. The only thing we have left is a money box that me and my wife contribute to daily. I make sure to tell my kids all the time to say nothing about our family to friends. I made sure my son got a week off school and a week off of work for myself. A week later It was time to go on vacation. It’s good to see all of us have something to be happy about. Moments don’t come often for people like us.

As i’m driving to where we will be staying, all I worry about is the event of someone actually robbing my house. However the drive is nice and only hits a little traffic going up. I Reminisce  back on past memories my family has shared and think about how I never want this feeling to end. We were gone for five and returned back home for the weekend. It would be an amazing thing if I could just go home and straight to sleep.  Instead I came home to a warm welcoming surprise of a half empty house. My heart dropped, the kids started crying, and my wife cursed all of us out. “This is your fault, it was probably your so called friends” “We should have never left for vacation” said my mother. I calm her down and call the cops to find out what happened.and of course they can’t find anything. Were all doomed, our savings and that money are all gone. What am I to do now with no way of supporting my family.  The least I can do is ask around my neighborhood if they have seen or heard anything. Almost everyone didn’t see anything, just the mailman they told me.  Cops never got back to us about the burglary on our house. At this point It’s best to just go back to work and work more hours so we won’t get evicted. My wife still goes rampage after rampage everyday because that’s all we had. My son is the only quiet one in this situation so I guess he is shooken up about the whole thing. Days pass and still no word from aanone, it’s time to just accept defeat and head back to a normal life. For sure this time there won’t be any family vacations before. Today I’m home from work so I walked to the living to take a nap and then woke up to my wife screaming at the top of her lungs, so loud that it even woke the kids up. I run upstairs and she is thanking my son like there is no tomorrow. I ask what  just happened? My wife replies our son found our stolen money. At first I thought she was lying but it turned out to be true. I felt relieved that we still had something. I thanked my son for what he did and decided to give him some for what he did. I wasn’t going to ask  how he did It, I’m just thankful that I have someone in my life who is truthful. 

This assignment required me to be creative in making a story. It also taught me how to see from different peoples perspectives, there are just simply too many sides to a story. Just like In Raymond Queneau, Exercises in Style the same story was told in multiple perspectives of people that were on the bus. That is how I structured my essay based on “The Money”. One from the thieves’ view  and another from the father’s view.  What I learned from writing and revising my first  essay compared to the second is  language that you can use to determine the way people interpret your story. Language can be soft, visual, loud etc.. to get the reader to interpret a story.  Secondly this assignment opened my eyes to the fact of how I can start to look at not just what a text is about but all the things that make up that text. For example in Queneau, Exercises in Style  from the bus, outside, people, weather, language, etc.. are all different components that make up an interpretation. So it’s not just about someone who got into an allertaction on a bus, but everything around makes uo as well. Personally the hardest part for me is developing my own style of writing for this assignment. I feel like I stuck too close to the text and didn’t make my own unique style of writing on the first draft. So for this draft I gave more detail to my story that aligns with “The Money.”

Crispin Thys (Final draft)

Intro

I chose to write about the story, which depicts a man having a friend fix the button on his coat after a fight ensues on a bus. In Queneau’s stories he uses great detail to explain the story from that specific perspective. Oftentimes his depiction relies on a lot of sensory detail. Each of the perspectives that I wrote about, come from a place of vulnerability, a place of helplessness. The first perspective is that of the bus itself. I chose to write about this point of view because I felt that the interpretation from the point of view of the bus itself would be an interesting viewpoint, which would emphasize the damage done to our surroundings that might occur when a fight ensues. This damage is often done with little regard to the property itself. The bus could not do anything other than accept the beating it was taking, and was forced to watch from a submissive position. The second interpretation of the story that I wrote about was that of the bus driver. I also interpreted his viewpoint to be from a position of desperation because he normally has control of his bus, and takes great pride in its efficient functionality, but during this scenario he lost control and could not calm the raucous on the back of the bus. The third interpretation of the story that I wrote about was that of a fellow passenger. I chose to use a passenger who does not normally take the bus, but was forced to do so today to ensure that all three perspectives shared similarities in that they came from a helpless, desperate point of view, but the details were unique to their situation.

The Bus driver

They fill me up as they always have. I sit in the hot sun as they load more and more bodies onto me. They cram more and more people into my seats, without regard for the work I do to transport them. Expressing little appreciation for my hard work, they focus more on each other and how they are inconvenienced. Each person is different, one in particular with a long neck, more into himself than the rest. Another one of them, less appreciative of me, but more angry at his situation. Their pain felt by all, they broke up into arguments against each other. Me, and all of my parts, the last thing on their mind. After the fight, they look disheveled with their clothing all misaligned. They express no sympathy for the damage they have done to me. Seats torn. Window scratched. Focused on himself, the man has a friend fixing the button on his coat. Nobody fixes the damage, which has been handed to me.

You usually have the regulars, but today was different. Strangers alike, they each get on my bus giving me a nod as they walk up the steps. I take good care of my bus. It serves the community well, and it provides me a lifestyle. Hot from the body heat of everyone on board, I do my best to open the windows to provide a little bit of comfort to my passengers. A tall man with his chin pointed towards the clouds enters the bus. He doesn’t seem like my normal passengers. He has a bow on his hat. The bodies and the heat inconvenienced another passenger, an older fellow. Neither recognizes that we all share the same conditions. The older gentleman explodes in anger, only to be met with disdain from the fancy fellow in the back. A fight ensues. I try my best to reintroduce peace into the situation, but like the little regard they have for my bus, little regard they have for my voice. I no longer have control. The damage is unavoidable, but it is fixable, just as the button was fixable on the one man’s coat.

I never take the bus. I hate the crowds. I hate the smell. I hate the traffic. I hate the jerky movements. But my car broke down, and I had to take the bus today. I went in with an open mind, hoping to be pleasantly surprised, but I quickly recalled exactly how much I hate the bus. The bus was hot and humid. The sun shined down on the bus, and bodies seemed to radiate steam. Everyone was frustrated as more bodies crowded on the bus, but most people managed to keep calm enough. One crotchety old man caused a raucous expressing his dissatisfaction only to be met with the force of another passenger. What was already an uncomfortable situation for me, quickly escalated into my worst nightmare. More heat. More energy. More noise. More being pushed around. More arguing. The bus ride from hell continued, but I couldn’t get off. I had to take the bus today, and I had no other option. After the fight I noticed a man out the window having the button on his shirt fixed. This is the last time that I will ever take the bus.

Conclusion

This assignment required a great deal of creative writing. I think what I struggled with most was thinking of different perspectives from which to write. It initially seemed that Queneau used every possible style and interpretation imaginable. After I thought about all of the players involved, however, I realized that there was great potential to write with a unique style, taking the perspective of innocent, passive, members of the story. This allowed me to see that there are always multiple sides to a story. A story is told by one individual, but the story might come across entirely different from the perspective of someone, or in the case of the bus above, something, else. This assignment allowed me to realize that an interpretation can really be very diverse. It can focus on sensory details like Queneau’s examples writing from an olfactory or visual sense. An interpretation can also focus on other physical details or even mental details, as can be done by approaching the scenario considering the unique situation of everyone involved. I think that this assignment translates quite nicely to the outside world where it is important to consider that every situation has multiple interpretations. It is important for us to consider each interpretation of events, and not focus solely on a single interpretation or a single report of the events.

Crispin Thys essay 1 final draft

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