ENG1141
Creative Writing
Formal Critique
Reviewer’s Name: Nickay Green
Title of Piece: The water dancer
Author’s Name: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Plot:Â The water dancer is about two brothers who ended up in the river on a rainy night while traveling alone a riverbank in Virginia.
Question-What happen to the horse?
Characters: The main character of the story is the author and his Maynard. The author also mentioned the spirit of his mother.
Point of View: The author uses first person POV which was his prospective.
Setting & Context:Â the story took place on a rainy night in Virginia while traveling in a horse carriage along a bridge that leads to the riverbank. In the later chapters, the story took place in the river where the author and Maynard were fighting for survival.
Voice and style: The story is a bit confusing at first. I was not sure if the story was about the author and his brother fighting for survival or of his mother’s spirit. The author uses words such as “slavery” and “rein” to create a timeline in the reader’s mind of when the story was taking place without saying when it actually took place.
Dialogue: The author used some dialogue throughout the story to share memories and conversations with the main character and Maynard.
Hey Nickay, I also found the story a bit all over the place and messy for a first chapter, it started of roughly. But, as I read deeper I started to drown in the emotions that the author was expressing with the words with his skills. The author did a good of making a reader picture a scene with his words, even if he was indirect about it.