ENG1141
Creative Writing
Formal Critique
Reviewer’s Name: Luz Mery Felipe
Title of Piece: The water dancer
Author’s Name: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Plot: the story is about two brothers who fall into the River Goose after one of them has a vision of his mother dancing in the water while he is on his horse, causing him to accidentally pull the carriage off the road.
Characters: The two main characters are the author and his brother Maynard. I feel the mother could also be a character since the author mentions her a lot. What was their mother’s cause of dead?
Point of View: The author uses his perspective to tell the story.
Setting & Context: its very clear that the story takes place in Virginia on the Goose bridge and on a rainy night while the author and his brother are on their way home.
Voice and style: The story is a little bit confusing, there were words I did not understand, which is why I had to read it twice. The author made use of words like “slavery” which helped me understand the time frame he was talking about, he also used the word “blue” and I would like to know what it represents to him in the story?
Dialogue: The author made use of some dialogues throughout the story but the most important was when he and his brother were drowning and Maynard kept asking for help since he did not know how to swim and the author told him that he couldn’t because they were under the ox which in other words means they were near death. If Maynard had let his brother teach him how to swim, maybe they could have saved each other.
The author knew how to swim but still drowned, did he decide to give up and be with his loved ones, or was he really unable to save himself?
hi Luz Mery, I agree with you the author did tell the story in his point of view, he does a good job in telling the story with suspense. Regarding your question under dialogue I think that Hiram was tired of having to always do others bidding, him drowning felt like the perfect way to end it.