Lesson 3 - Review Assignment

The Pit  (GC) One boy's search for truth. #1218966 by SonofDrogo

Hi SonofDrogo . This is a review from jadelette!
After reading "The Pit"  I have the following comments to offer, I hope you find them useful:

Overall Impression:
I loved reading this story; it is brilliantly written, insightful, profound and revealing.

The tone used throughout the piece manages to be both reflective and suspensful. By tone I mean the specific words and phrases used, or the style in which you write. Your use of the past tense and first person perspective are incredibly effective in creating this reflective tone. The events that the character recounts seem timeless. This account could be written the evening after, or many years in the future. The mood created by this is quite profound. There are so many things to think on in this piece, and the way it's written bought them into my mind and had me pondering them for a long while afterwards (this could have something to do with my being a philosophy major, but I love sotries that make me think).

Specifics:
The plot is fairly simple and I feel it is mainly a device used to convey the ideas about truth, perception and character, which seem central to the story. This is not a negative comment in any way. On the contrary, I think that keeping the plot simple is by far the best way to show how skillfull a writer you are. The plot was developed brilliantly throughout the piece. I was immediately hooked by the mystery of the pit introduced in the opening paragraph. Though intriguing clues were given, the full nature of the pit and the adventure the boys had planned was revealed piece by piece, really building suspense well and keeping the reader interested.

The plot was interspersed with wonderful passages of description. I particularly love the following passage:
"The forest path was one of my favorite places in the world. All around me stood mammoth oak, heavy with acorns, stately, elegant elm, gnarled beech, silvery-white birch, and sugar maple. Some were tall and majestic; others, huge and imposing. All stretched their limbs upward toward the late-summer sky. A light breeze gently stirred the highest branches, causing the current generation of leaves to mingle quietly with each other. In another month or so they would fall to the earth and die, their essence returned to the sandy soil. Their image as leaves would cease; their essence would continue."
I don't think this description could be improved upon at all. I fell straight into Luke's shoes, walking down the path and drinking in the sensations as vividly as if I was really there. The descriptions of the Vinegar House and the Pit are similarly vivid and affecting.

The absolute crowning gem of this piece for me though, was your characterisation. It is perfect. You have managed to make all of your characters incredibly real and beliavable, as well as showing real insight into people's nature in general. Using the first person POV and giving us acess to Luke's thoughts and perceptions throughout the sotry, you have shown him to be imaginative, thoughtful and intelligent. He obviously has an appreciation for the beauty of the world around him and is able to think both deeply and analytically. This is given to us through your wonderful descriptive prose, and the insights we are privy to about Doc and Thump. I particularly like the paragraph in which Luke describes Doc's poker face and how this allows hm to see that his friend is unsure of himself. This little snippet of knowledge really helps to create mmultidimensional characters, in both Luke and Doc.

When Luke meets his friends, a whole other dimension is added to his character through the magnificent use of dialogue. Though I'm not a fan of strong language when used just for the sake of it, here it fitted perfectly. Luke immediately switched into an utterly convincing young boy persona on encoutering his friends. They all swore like troopers and called each other by crude names. Though in a sense this may seem out of keeping with the polite young alter boy we first meet conversing pleasantly with the priest and taking in the wonder of the world around him, it is completely accurate. It serves to demonstrate a side of human nature which I'm sure would be apparent in all of us to an omniscient observer. That is, we change our personalitiy to suit social situations. It is unlikely that Luke and the other boys would have remained friends for long if he acted too pious, polite and sensitive in their company. At the end of the day, they are young boys and this is exactly how young boys interact when out on their own. The underlying, sensitive nature we are first aware of in Luke is preserved in his protest against Doc crushing the cocoon; it's a tiny detail which acheives wonderful consistency.

It is rare to read such effective and entertaining dialogue. The characters are drawn vividly throught their teasing and scoffing, yet at the same time deep and prevailing ideas about the nature of truth and perception are introduced. The thread of the conversation is picked up perfectly at the end, resulting in Doc's acceptance of the 'objective truth'. I can't commend this highly enough and feel it must have taken some hard work to perfect. Fantastically done!


Suggestions:
I'm afraid that I cannot offer any suggestion for improvement of this piece. I'm sorry that that is not very helpful of me, in that it may make this review seem a little redundant. However, I hope that you can take great encouragment from my review, and also that I have specified what I love about your writing clearly enough to help you know what will work well in future pieces. I would tell you honestly if there was anything I saw that could do with a little tweaking, so you can take my lack of suggestions as a the compliment you deserve.


Punctuation/Spelling/Grammar:
There was very little wrong in regard to punctuation and grammar that I noted. The only incidence of punctation used a little wrongly was your use of colons in the following two sentences:

"And the truth is: there is a bottom, and I'm gonna prove it to you."

"He says that truth is whatever I decide is true for me, and my truth is: there ain't no fucking bottom."

Colons should always follow a complete sentence. To correct this you could either write "The truth is this:..." This would be correct as "The truth is this" could be a snetence on its own (it has a subject and a verb). Also, a colon can correctly be used to set off an appositive. This is where you give an alternate phrase to name something just mentioned. In this case the appositive would be formed by 'this' and 'there is a bottom/there ain't no fucking bottom" in the respective sentences. In other words 'this' and the following phrase both refer to the same thing.

Adding 'this' however, may not be the best way to correct these particualr sentences, as it wouldn't sound as natural in the dialogue. It may be better to replace the colon with a dash. This would still show emphasis, and it would be correct punctuation since a dash can replace a comma.


What I Like:
I love how this story really made me stop and consider my position on truth. I have been playing around with my ideas of objective truth and the world as a creation of our perception since I finished reading it. I love how these ideas were fitted neatly into a story brimming with amazing description and characterisation that really bought them to life. I hope to come back and read more of your work in future as I think you did a really marvellous job. This story is entirely deserving of the first place ribbon that adorns it!

My rating would be 5 stars.