review

Alsaddah 1

Thabet Alsaddah

Professor’s name

Eng 1002

29 January 2016

Essay 1: Fiction

This essay analyzes “The Only Way Is Through”, a short story about a teenager, Derek who is portrayed to be a bothered and rebellious child up to a point where his parents had given up on him. In this story, different elements of fiction have been used. Elements of fiction are used to help writers create legitimate truths since the characters portrayed in the stories never existed in real life and neither did the events in the story happen in real life. Plot is one of the elements of fiction that has been used in this story. Plot is how ideas and events in a story are organized, including what happens in a story, its design and timeline. The five main elements of plot include, hook, back story, subplots, conflicts and climax.

The hook is the time a writer takes to capture the reader’s attention. It is what gets the readers interested in the story and normally occurs in the first paragraph or somewhere in the middle of the story. In this story, the hook is found in the first paragraph, where the writer explains about a camp for rebellious teens and where he talks about Derek’s mother, Carla getting at the end of her rope months before and tried to find Derek a hardcore rebellious-teen boot camp (Black 28). This part gets the reader interested as it piques curiosity as to why his parents wanted to find him such a camp.

Back story is the second element of plot used in this story. It is used to show that the characters have a past and helps the readers understand the story since everything in it does not happen in the present. Some events took place before the story itself but they drive action to the story. Back story is seen in different parts. One such instance is seen when Fetterman and Derek were driving to the camp site. The writer portrays Fetterman as a person who hated the outdoors and was already wondering whether the trip was a mistake (Black 32). Another instance that shows the use of back story as an element of plot is the point where Fetterman was looking at Derek in the car and compared his face then to how he looked when he was a child. “It was not an attractive face. As an infant, Derek had been the most beautiful baby” (Black 31). A little later, back story is used to show the reader how Fetterman was a wayward teenager and how distant he was with his father, which contributed much to the kind of person he was as an adult. After Derek locked his dad out of the car, Fetterman realized that he had a communication problem with his son. “Part of Fetterman’s brain tried to come up with ways to figure out the communication problem” (Black 37). A better part of the story tells the readers about Fetterman’s past, the comparison between the two wives he had in his life, which is a major use of back story.

Another element of plot that has been used in the story is sub-plots. A sub-plot is a story within a story. They happen in the background and make the main story more interesting because they give the reader something to think about. There are a number of instances of a story within a story in the reading. One is where Fetterman decided to confide in his ex wife about the troubles he and Carla were having with Derek (Black 28). He also elaborates on how his previous marriage ended. He confided in her because she was a psychoanalyst who always made her patients feel like she was on their side even when she disagreed with them (Black 29). The writer has also used sub plot in the story where he gives the readers a glimpse of how Derek was when he was a child (Black 31). Sub plot is also used by the writer to explain Fetterman’s regret for choosing the outdoors as a way to reach out for his son. Black states that Fetterman was already wondering if the trip was a mistake (32). It has also been used to elaborate Fetterman’s life a teenager. According to Black, he had been a wayward teenager himself and had never really connected with his father (33). There is a part in the story that narrates about the only one time Fetterman had felt really close to his father; on a summer afternoon in 1977 when Elvis, one of his father’s role models died (Black 33). Another instance when the writer uses sub plot giving the reader something to think about was when Fetterman found Derek pointing a gun to his head and was pleading with him not to shoot himself. Fetterman’s confession to his son about how they were unprepared for him is an example of a sub plot. Fetterman told his son that they were unprepared for almost everything that had to with him, from his conception to his birth (Black 41).

Conflict is another element of plot. A story is never complete without a conflict. The writer uses conflict to portray disagreement between the characters in the story. They are meant to portray how a character in the story overcame something. First, conflict is seen at the beginning of the story when Fetterman confides in his ex wife Sonya about their struggle with Derek. Sonya disagrees with how they handle the situation and says “when correcting others, you don’t humiliate them” (Black 29). Another conflict in the story was between Derek and his father when he locks him out of the car. Fetterman was frustrated about his son’s adamant refusal to unlock the door even though they had a long drive to the camp site. We see him trying to overcome the situation by convincing Derek to open up and him calling Tripple A services (Black 37).

The fifth element of plot is climax occurs right before the resolution of the main conflict of a story. In this case, the main conflict of the story was trying to get Derek to open up about his problems and him being very stubborn, adamant and unresponsive to any of his father’s attempts. The climax of this story is when Derek tries to shoot himself. This happened when they reached the camping site while his father was searching for the perfect spot to pitch the tent. Fetterman turned around to find Derek holding a gun and the barrel pointed to his temple (Black 40). It keeps the readers’ curiosity piqued as they wonder what will happen next. There is a nasty exchange between Derek and his father until the time when he gets him to lower his gun and the conflict is resolved. The father reached for the car, Derek broke down and gave the gun to him ( Black 40).

Works cited

Black, Alethea. The Only Way Is Through. Title of book. Editor. City of publication: Publisher, year of publication. Print.