Journal #5

Pastiche

But Suzanne began to dwell on Sympathy. Sympathy, that yellow-bellied monster that is met too often by those blessed with things out of their control. The powerful monster that can overtake a man like a parasite that cannot be killed. Why does He need a host to survive, what protection does man offer him? He travels the world incognito, as if his identity is more important than what He actually does. He observes the daily lives of people, waiting for the time when He is summoned to spread his terrible guilt. He often times wondered the who, what, when, where, and why of his next victim, it pleased him. She knew that her son would soon be met with these troubles, that her son would soon be invaded by this parasite. She was scared and alone. My dear sweet Henry! Why must the world be so cruel as to create such differences between social classes? She sent his father, Rodger, to warn him, but Henry was playing with toys and wouldn’t pay attention. The teachers at school were good at educating without regard for social class, but they couldn’t help Henry with what he was about to experienceL. He knew all he had to do was to look past material goods and find what’s on the inside of people. He would be alright. The first day of school wouldn’t be that bad he thought. But Rodger remembered his first day of school, and shared this with Suzanne, so they both knew the inequality Henry might face. Even if he hadn’t, she would have found out the next day because all of the other parents mobbed the parking lot of the school to see their children off. People, who under normal circumstances would have never approached Suzanne, judged her. They just sat in their cars and stared. Doubt, that infectious disease, had planted it’s seeds in Suzanne’s mind.

Decisions

1. In the passage on page 84, Hurston provides several links in that passage to contrast the two scenarios easier, so in this passage I made sympathy like a parasite and then near the end of the pastiche used the word infectious in the hope that the link would make the connection easier to make

2. In the passage on page 84, Hurston had the narrator use the dialect of one the characters, I would guess as a tool to reconnect the reader to the characters while in an emotional scene while still having the narrator speak, and in my pastiche I added a smiley face which is part of my dialect so that the reader knows what the character is feeling and they can connect better to the character.