Creative response b.

~As in most of your stories, you have a passage that suggests something about the character or about yourself. what are some of the subtle messages in this passage and what do they signify?
-One "subtle passage" that i put into my story was about perfection. Matt Fowler's life was quite normal up until the death of his son, Frank. So this passage was added to show the perfection in his life that had, for the most part, gone down the drain. "The grave was on a hill and overlooked the Merrimack, which he could not see from where he stood; he looked at the opposite bank, at the apple orchard with its symmetrically planted trees going up hill. As Matt was walking away from the symmetrically planted tree's, he was walking away from the "orderliness" in his life.
- Another is subtly emphasizing the reality of life when Matt is about to shoot Richard. Matt realizes the things around him more than ever. Life is so real to him right now ad he does not know what to do with himself. "The turned west, drove past the Dairy Queen closed until spring, and the two lobster restauranst that faced each oher and were crowded all summer and were now also closed, onto the short bridge crossing the tidal stream, and over the engine Matt could through his open window the water rushig inland under the bridge; looking to his left he saw its swift moonlit current going back into the marsh which, leaving the bridge, they entered.
~ Why would you make Matt's character someone who is not necessarily afraid to speak his mind but a character who is not compelled to speak his mind?
Matt was made a quiet character because it goes along with the story. His son was murdered and although he is a fearful father, he takes the initiative to do something about his son, which was not the best idea. When Matt's children were young, he always feared that they would get hurt, but in reality nothing happened to them when they were young. After a while he started to worry about them less and less and in an unexpected way Frank, his youngest son, gets shot. By making Matt a private character, the story is more dramatic for Matt and the reader.
~Why did you make Matt a character that keeps to himself and then at the end, suggest to the reader that nothing has changed in his personality?
-The last sentence of the story is the line that pulls the story together in a way. "He saw Frank and Mary Ann making love in her bed, their eyes closed, their bodies brown and smelling of the sea;the other firl was faceless, bodiless, but he felt her sleeping now; and he saw Frank and Strout, thei faces alive;he saw red and yellow leaves falling to the earth, then snow: falling and freesing and falling; and holding Ruth, his cheek touching her breast, he shuddered with a sob that he kept silent in his heart." I love this line because it has so much symbolism within it and its another one of my "subtle passages." First of all it brings Matt back to when his son and Richard Strout were alive. Memories rush through his head like he rushed to "get rid of" Richard. The snow is like Matt; he is falling in life freezing for a second and then falling. In other words, he is not changing very much. He falls, then maybe contemplates his fall, but then begins to fall again. He has yet to have a revelation. In the last line I chose for Matt not to change because not everyone in life learns a lesson or forgives people, the easiest solution for people is to get rid of the harm and animosity surrounding their life. Everyone wants to be happy, but they do not want to pay the price or realize some of the most important things in life that they are surrounded with.