Writing Monophobia: The Tale of an Emotional Pariah

[Jabberwocky]

[FONT="Palatino Linotype"][COLOR="DarkOrchid"]For English class we currently have an assignment where we must choose to write a myth, parable or a fable. I chose a parable, as it seemed the most interesting to me. We read one in class and it's meaning was odd, our English teacher couldn't understand it either. Anyhow, this is my attempt at a parable.

This is going towards the definition of Parable we were given. The lesson or theme of the story is that even if you go from loneliness and emptiness to a feeling of purpose, you can be put back in the situation you were in even if the person putting you back there is yourself.

I'd be glad to see what you all think of this, I personally liked it rather well.[/COLOR][/FONT]

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[SIZE="1"]There was once a white room, absent from it?s plain linoleum were the marks of furnishings. There were no windows, no doors and no ceiling. The room didn?t make noise in the night, as there was no night or day to grace the room. Alone in the center of the white room was a man, dressed in all white, his face pale and his hair gray. He understood nothing, not even his loneliness. He didn?t worry about anything, as he had nothing to care for.

The man walked around the room aimlessly, stopping only to rest and contemplate his seemingly meaningless existence. The man had no signs of any happiness, yet showed no struggle against himself that led to any sorrow or agony. Rarely would he sit, even if he was too tired to stand he remained straight. However, when he did sit, he sat for days.

He didn?t eat, he didn?t sleep and he didn?t breath. It was odd that he could live this way so calmly, surely the anonymity of the room around him would drive him crazy.
Yet, it did not as he wasn?t bothered by anything.

One day, as the man turned twenty-five, a window opened in the middle of the room. No breeze rolled in, and nothing entered the room that was unwanted. For days the window began to bother the man, he began to think about it?s purpose. Eventually he sat in front of the window and gazed out, intent set to find it?s purpose in his empty white room. Outside the window was nothing but a light blue color, with random white blobs moving by.

[B]?What does this mean?? [/B]The man said, his first words ever to be muttered, and the first words to ever be said in the white room. Suddenly, he heard a loud crack behind him, the sound emanating to every corner of the room. A new feeling, surprise, overcame him and he shot up and turned behind him. He let out a curse as he turned around, which was followed by another crack to his right. He turned to his right too, yet this time said nothing. He rushed over to the crack, thus marking his first hasty movement.

The crack ran up the wall and stopped at the ceiling. The crack was straight, not zigzag in any way. It showed no harm, so the man shrugged it off and went back to the window. As he walked over he noticed a dark spot on the ground that moved fluidly. As he looked back at the window he noticed too lace sheets moving around. Soon, he felt a breeze flow into the room from the window. He walked cautiously to the window. When he arrived, he felt nothing but a calming and gentle breeze slide by his body.

As time went by and a few months came and went, the room began to change. Three wooden chairs appeared in the room, and even a few stands as well as a bed. The man began to feel different things he never felt. One day he even felt tired and decided to sleep on the bed. He felt the most comforting feeling ever laying on the bed. Soon he felt loneliness. It scared him how he had no one around him to confide in.

The man was beginning to enter insanity?s threshold when he turned thirty. Now, the walls were wooden and the ceiling remained white. There were a few more windows around the room, and a tree branch extended into the room from the first window that had appeared when he was twenty-five. The tree was full of fruits like apples, bananas and oranges, even fruits like grapes and cherry?s were available from the tree.

The man was now eating for the first time, another thing that felt odd at first, but became comfortable. The loneliness, however, remained a curse. The man often cried in one of his chairs. He wanted someone, or something, to relieve his sorrows. The saying ?time heals all wounds? came to his mind from nowhere, but he didn?t question it. He wallowed in his despair for three more years.

The floor was now hardwood, and cold beneath his feet. The man was losing more of his sanity, and eventually couldn?t take anymore loneliness. It was the turn of his 34th year when he lost it. He ran to the crack in the back of the room that was made from him uttering his first words. He punched the crack, only to break his hands. It was the first time he felt physical pain. He didn?t holler, he only kicked the crack in return. When he felt no pain from this, he continued to hit the crack.

Finally, after hours of pointless kicking, the wall shattered. He stepped back, shocked by the sound of the wall turning into glass as it came in contact with the ground. After it settled, and the man returned to his state of anger. The wall that had fallen even began to reassemble itself. When it finally was rebuilt, there was a door in place of the large crack. The door was eight feet tall, two feet taller than the man. It had no windows, but a golden doorknob.

The man put his hand on the doorknob, he knew now what he could do. As his hand came into contact with the golden handle, his head shook and he heaved, his body trembling. When the man came out of his shaking fit his life came into his mind. He had a home, he had people, and he had a world to live in. He opened the door with a smile on his face.

[B]?I?m going home!? [/B]He reveled as he opened the door. [B]?And I can remember my name!?[/B] He shouted as the door reached the side of the man. [B]?It?s?? [/B]The man stopped, his mouth dropping wide open. He felt a sharp pain in his chest, an unbearable pain. In a few seconds he slumped over, dead, stabbed by a kitchen knife.

In front of the door stood the man, holding a knife over his own lifeless body. He wasn?t smiling, nor was he showing any remorse. He just stepped over his dead clone and walked into the room. Everything in the room faded, even the body that lay at the door. His clothes turned white and his memories and experiences disappeared into the abyss of amnesia. Everything was now as it was thirty-four years before.

The room became white. There were no windows, no doors and no ceiling. The room didn?t make noise in the night, as there was no night or day to grace the room. Alone, walking towards the center of the room was a man dressed in all white, his face pale and his hair gray. He understood nothing, not even his loneliness. He didn?t worry about anything, as he had nothing to care for.

Now, he lived in anonymity once more.[/SIZE]

[Kei]

[color=darkblue][size=1]What you have here is a good start.

In the first paragraph, there are things that make the reader question the basis of the "world" in which the story takes place. If there's a completely sterile room, there can't be a sense of day or night in any way, since there is a complete deprevation of time. At the same token, later in the story, you mention the man's age, but since time is virtually negligent, this is a fact that can't be stated, only described, which you did in the first paragraph.

At the end of the first paragraph, it is written that the man understood nothing. If that were the case, he would not have a reason to contemplate his existence, as is mentioned in the second paragraph. To him, that room is his world. Everything in it is as it should be. He wouldn't have need to think of anything (including the tiredness that is mentioned; he doesn't know what it means to be tired, nor does he understand the concept of rest. Mind over matter and whatnot.)

Once the window comes into play is where things would actually start to change. That presents something new that wasn't there before: it is something that should not be. That's technically where the questions are supposed to start. The touch of dialouge is appropriate, so I'll leave that be.

However, once you get to the crack, that's a bit iffy. He wouldn't know what a crack is, much less what one sounds like, so it would be something entirely new and possibly frightening to him. It's another thing that should not be.

This kind of keeps going on throughout the story with the things he's experiencing, which is the hitch with blank-slate characters that are the only characters in the whole story. In order to completely sympathize with the character, we have to look at things completely from their prespectives. We have to feel the confusion that they feel and experience new things with them. While that leads to vague terminology on the page, it lends itself well to the story as a whole, since we as the reader can form ideas of what is going on since we're -not- blank slates and can gather from context clues and whatnot.

There is also a twist present at the end, what with him suddenly gaining memories and whatnot. Since I see generally what you're trying to do with the repeated cycle, I can somewhat understand that. The part that bothers me is the actually stabbing. Someone stabbed in the back doesn't necessarily feel pain in the front. More of a general back pain than anything until bleeding out happens. Or worse if the attacker actually has the strength to send a similarly strong blade through the spinal cord.

But, as I said, it's a decent shell. It just needs tweaking. =)[/color][/size]

[Jabberwocky]

[FONT="Palatino Linotype"]Thanks for the input. Personally, I was more focused with the moral of the story, rather than the most sensible details. Killing someone so simply with a kitchen knife, I doubt anyone could do it so easily, unless they're experts. lol Now the knife went for the heart, not the spine, I should have been more clear about that. (As well as other things)

The things that randomly appear in the room, I guess could be considered the hurdles we face in life, that make the moral a bit more deep, which I didn't think about until now. But, the man has basic understandings of things such as language, his body functions, but not his emotions. I think this story is a bit more confusing than I wanted it to be, which I think lessens the effect. As things appear in the room such as the fruit bearing tree in the window, those needs started to exist inside of him as well, which I thought the reader could understand.

So, I think I was waaaaaaay to vague with this. And you've helped me realize that. I thank you a lot, since this was actually the rough draft, I can use this inf to help imrove for the final product. It may just be a school essay, but I like to have my essay's sound good, not like "Hey, it's an english assigment, who cares?" When I redo this for the final copy, I'm going to fix these things and repost the story to see if its imrpoved at all.[/FONT]