Short Story Prompt

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Brainstorm/Outline

After I was Thrown in the River & Before I Drowned

In the passage below from Dave Egger’s, After I was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned, Steven the dog is engaged in a race with Edward the bull terrier.  Consider how the two dogs confront their emotions concerning this race and the norms of competition.  Analyze how the narrator explores the complex interplay between emotions and social norms in this passage.  You may wish to consider such literary techniques as narrative pace, dialogue, and tone.  (Write only an introduction & 1-2 SAS-y paragraphs)

1) Poetic Elements?

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• Diction
• Imagery
• Metaphor
• Secondary Characters
• Conflict
• Antagonist(s)
• Conflict
• Asides
• Anaphora
• Symbol/Metaphor
• Juxtaposition
• Tone/Tone Shift
• Point of View
• Setting
• Etc.

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2) Analyze the narrator’s complex interplay between his emotions and social norms of competition.

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1. Complex emotions of Stephen & Edward

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• Social norms of competition

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• In the woods we have races and we jump. We run from the entrance to the woods, where the trail starts, through the black-dark interior and out to the meadow and across the meadow and into the next woods, over the creek and then along the creek until the highway. Tonight is cool, almost cold. There are no stars or clouds. We're all-impotent but there is running. I jog down the trail and see the others. Six of them tonight-Edward, Franklin, Susan, Mary, Robert, and Victoria. When I see them I want to be in love with all of them at once. I want us all to be together; I feel so good to be near them. Some sort of marriage. We talk about it getting cooler. We talk about it being warm in these woods when we're close together. I know all these dogs but a few.

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• Tonight I race Edward. Edward is a bull terrier and he is fast and strong but his eyes want to win too much; he scares us. We don't know him well and he laughs too loud and only at his own jokes. He doesn't listen; he waits. The course is a simple one. We run from the entrance through the black-dark interior and out to the meadow and across the meadow and into the next woods, along the creek, then the over the gap over the drainpipe and then along the creek until the highway. The jump over the drainpipe is the hard part. We run along the creek and then the riverbank above it rises so we're ten, fifteen feet above the creek and then almost twenty. Then the bank is interrupted by a drainpipe, about four feet high, so the bank at eighteen feet has a twelve-foot gap and we have to run and jump to clear it. We have to feel strong to make it.

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On the banks of the creek, near the drainpipe, on the dirt and in the weeds and on the branches of the rough gray trees are the squirrels. The squirrels have things to say; they talk before and after we jump. Sometimes while we're jumping they talk.

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• "He is running funny.”
• "She will not make it across."
• When we land they say things.
• "He did not land as well as I wanted him to."
• "She made a bad landing. Because her landing was bad I am angry."
• When we do not make it across the gap, and instead fall into the sandy bank, the squirrels say other things, their eyes full of glee.
• "It makes me laugh that she did not make it across the gap.
• "I am very happy that he fell and seems to be in pain."

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• I don't know why the squirrels watch us, or why they talk to us. They do not try to jump the gap. The running and jumping feels so good even when we don't win or fall into the gap it feels so good when we run and jump-and when we are done the squirrels are talking to us, to each other in their small jittery voices.

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• We look at the squirrels and we wonder why they are there. We want them to run and jump with us but they do not. They sit and talk about the things we do. Sometimes one of the dogs, annoyed past tolerance, catches a squirrel in his mouth and crushes him. But then the next night they are back, all the squirrels, more of them. Always more.

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• Tonight I am to race Edward and I feel good. My eyes feel good, like I will see everything before I have to. I see colors like you hear jet planes. When we run on the side of the creek I feel strong and feel fast. There is room for both of us to run and I want to run along the creek, want to run alongside Edward and then jump. That's all I can see, the jump, the distance below us, the momentum taking me over the gap. Goddamn sometimes I only want this feeling to stay and last. Tonight I run and Edward runs, and I see him pushing hard, and his claws grabbing, and it seems like we're both grabbing at the same thing, that we're both grabbing for the same thing. But we keep grabbing and grabbing and there is enough for both of us to grab, and after us there will be others who grab from this dirt on the creek bed and it will always be here.

• Edward is nudging me as I run. Edward is pushing me, bumping into me. All I want is to run but he is yelling and bumping me, trying to bite me. All I want is to run and then jump. I am telling him that if we both just run and jump without bumping or biting we will run faster and jump farther. We will be stronger and do more beautiful things. He bites me and bumps me and yells things at me as we run. When we come to the bend he tries to bump me into the tree. I skid and then find my footing and keep running. I catch up to him quickly and because I am faster I catch him and overtake him and we are on the straightaway and I gain my speed, I muster it from everywhere, I attract the energy of everything living around me, it conducts through the soil through my claws while I grab and grab and I gain all the speed and then I see the gap. Two more strides and I jump.

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• You should do this sometime. I am a rocket. My time over the gap is a life. I am a cloud, so slow, for an instant I am a slow-moving cloud whose movement is elegant, cavalier, like steep. Then it speeds up and the leaves and black dirt come to me and I land and skid, my claws filling with soil and sand. I clear the gap by two feet and turn to see Edward jumping, and Edward's face looking across the gap, looking at my side of the gap, and his eyes still on the grass, exploding for it, and then he is falling, and only his front paws, claws, land above the bank. He yells something as he grabs, his eyes trying to pull the rest of him up, but he slides down the bank.
• He is fine but in the past others have been hurt. One dog, Wolfgang, died here, years ago. The other dogs and I jump down to help Edward up. He is moaning but he is happy that we were running together and that he jumped.

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• The squirrels say things.
• "That wasn't such a good jump.
• "That was a terrible jump."
• "He wasn't trying hard enough when he jumped."
• "Bad landing."
• "Awful landing."
• "His bad landing makes me very angry."
• I run the rest of the race alone. I finish and come back and watch the other races. I watch and like to watch them run and jump. We are lucky to have these legs and this ground, and that our muscles work with speed and the blood surges and that we can see everything.

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Competition is typically viewed as an extremely positive facet of our society. Competition means growth—sparks innovation—we’ve all heard these capitalistic clichés myriad times over. However, competition is often misplaced and viewed as external rather than what it really is—an internal conflict with oneself prominently staring as both the protagonist and antagonist. In Dave Eggers’ “After I Was Thrown in the River, Before I Drowned” Mr. Eggers employs the repetition device, anaphora, using the word “tonight” to denote the emotion of urgency and the invitation for the reader to become truly aware and present in each moment. Furthermore, Eggers uses the symbolism of Edward to elucidate the reader to the complex concept that in a society which embraces hard-set “eyes [that] want to win too much” the end result is sadly we miss the universal truth that “there is room for [all] of us to run…[and] jump…the distance”—the distance between one another and the distance we tragically keep from taking risks due to one’s fear of failure.

Checklist

• Author & Title

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• 1-2 Literary Devices

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• Analyze the speaker’s complex interplay between emotions and social norms of competition.

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• Collegiate Diction

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• Pithy Quotes—Own your quotes!!!

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• Watch your pronouns—avoid “you”.

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• HTS (Hook/Thesis/So What?

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• ATDS (Author/Title/Device(s)/So What?)

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• SAS-y (Summarize—Analyze—So What?)

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