Reaping
Posted on May 15, 2014 | By brad4 | 3 responses
Silence, A complete and total blanket enveloping all inside, a crushing weight seemingly bearing down on your shoulders. As I stood in line I could feel this silence, a thousand kids in line and you could hear a pin drop. A group of flies buzzed around my head. I could feel the sickening touch of their hairy black legs. The whine of the microphone turning on snapped me to attention. A woman wearing heavy white makeup and a green wig walked up to the stand. She put her hand in the bowl with all our names and I felt my stomach drop. Thousands of names were entered. The chances of me becoming a tribute in the 80th hunger games were almost mathematically impossible. The first name was pulled an uneasiness swept through the crowd she called the name. I felt as though my ears were turned off, I could not hear anything but the beat of my own blood in my ears. The name was not mine. A sigh of relief left my lips. Yet for the next ten minutes that feeling of nervousness and relief came and passed. I felt beads of sweat roll down my neck and knew the fly’s legs were soon to follow. She announced that the last name was about to be pulled. A wave of happiness bubbled up inside me like a geyser. She pulled the little slip of paper.
“Gerome Washingbeard the VII”
A cry escaped my lips unwillingly unseeingly I was screaming, a cry for my little brother, my widowed mother, and my baby sister. I turned looking to hold on to someone anyone. I looked for any family in the crowd yet I knew no one would be there. My mother has never left the house ever since the accident. And I told my brother to stay home and pray for me today. I apologize silently to my family which im leaving and I silently take my place with the other tributes.
Wow! What a great piece of intellectual writing. Great descriptive language and vivid vocabulary. Only suggestion would be to proofread to fix the punctuation mistakes. Other than that, you really had me interested and engaged throughout.
I thought this was well structured and it was proofread fairly well. My only thing I believe you should critique is that it feels…. incomplete somehow. It seems like the whole thing has an abrupt ending and I wish it would end with something a little more satisfying, instead of just ending with an apology to his family.
This was a great essay. I really enjoyed reading it. You went into good detail about what was happening and how you were feeling. The only thing you should do differently is proofread again. You have some capitalization errors, which is a very easy fix. But, other then that job well done!