ENG1141
Creative Writing
Formal Critique
Reviewer’s Name: Amna Ahmed
Title of Piece : The First Day   Author’s Name: Edward P. Jones
Plot: The story is about the gradual change in the wife’s husband. The husband started out as a good husband and a good father. However, things changed one year into their marriage where the husband would leave for long period of times coming back different. Eventually, the wife caught him in his true form.
Question: If the wife can also transform, then why did she get scared when her husband transformed?
Characters: The way the wife talks about her husband seems like she is completely in love with him. She continues to point out his good qualities without once mentioning something negative. The wife chooses specific words like “gentle”, “hardworking”, and “fine-looking”. These words made the husband seem like a normal husband.
Question: If the wife were to say something negative about her husband, would it be about him transforming?
Point of View: The story was told from the point of the wife. The story starts with her describing her husband as a good person. Then the wife goes into detail about how he disappears often, eventually seeing the husband transform. I thought that the husband would be the one to transform into a werewolf not the wife.
Question: How would the husband describe his werewolf wife?
Setting & Context: The story takes place in Spring Lake. The author mentions the woods several times throughout the story. Thus, the family lives in an open area. The family must live near the woods to accommodate for their transformations.
Question: If where the family lives has werewolves, then how did a human come to live there?
Hi Amna, about your question under plot I don’t think the wife can transform otherwise she wouldn’t have been so surprised and scared of him. The only reason the husband was able to transform was because of his father and the wife mentioned that at the end, that it was something in the blood that made them go out trying to find those like them.