"A Fresh Start" Response

         Jake is a dissatisfied and disgruntled employee at a major corporation, his job hanging on tenterhooks. While contemplating his life on a park bench, he is invited into a nearby barbershop by a friendly, but strange, barber to unburden himself and describe his troubled life and past. 

Looking back over the story, I can see how elements in Jake’s childhood manifest themselves in his adult life and struggles. For instance, it is clear that the constant bullying he suffered in middle and high school affected his self-esteem, so it follows that he wouldn’t think he knew “how to go about being extraordinary,” like his boss demands. I like the in media res style of the opening paragraph, and how immediately it intrigues the reader. I also like the narrative risk you took with incorporating such a unique story structure, when I’m sure most of our classmates will go for a traditional narrative, for comfort’s sake. 

However, I found this story to have some significant flaws. I have no idea what Jake wants in this story. He seems easygoing and subdued at the beginning, not really caring at the thought of losing his job. If his goal is to relieve his inner pain by sharing it with someone, this is not communicated, as the reader has no idea of his feelings after telling his story or the barber’s reaction to it. His thoughts, such as feeling creeped out by the man’s friendliness and scanning the room for a possible weapon, don’t match his action of completely unburdening the story of his childhood past, without reservation or hesitation. The extremely long passages of dialogue uninterrupted by description or action seem unrealistic, and the lack of dialogue tags most everywhere else is distracting. This story seems to include several extraneous details, like the posters on the barbershop wall and the two pit bulls. These inclusions feel like they should be symbolic of something, but the symbolism isn't clear. If these are meant to be symbolic, I would suggest strengthening those connections, perhaps by incorporating them into the later narrative pieces. For their starkness, these separate pieces of a story that come close to the end don’t seem connected, and appear disjointed and random. I think they could be connected, if aspects of the war scene were incorporated or foreshadowed in the first narrative portion.