Creative Writing : A Short Story

You can tell by this sentence that Paul is truly scared by

After confronting Erik, Paul finally bursts. All of the police are at Paul’s house, and he tells the police about Luis Cruz, saying “I saw- I heard Erik Fisher tell him to do it.” (284) Paul let go of all of his fear right then. His fear to let others, mostly Erik, gain power because of him.For once in his life, Erik is going to get what he

In the novel Tangerine, the main character Paul helped Tino and Victor escaped after getting revenge.Everyone knows Paul as a cordial person and he hasn’t done anything bad. Paul faced a conflict and he was smart and knew he had to tell someone.Paul saw Tino and Victor doing something bad and Coach Warner witnessed them. Coach Warner was trying to stop Tino and Victor but Paul tackled Coach and he got caught. They didn’t know what happened, but Paul was smart enough and told the truth. Paul knew if he told a lie , he would deal with it his whole life so he knew if he told the truth, he would have freedom that he is not telling a lie. This proves later on, Paul won’t have to deal with this.

Paul has constructed more self confidence to speak the truth compared to his antecedent self. When Paul first meets Tino, Victor and Hernando, on page 108 he states “My stomach started to knot again.” This reveals that Paul is obviously terrified of them because he's the reason for their suspension. In Paul’s mind, if he tells the truth they will tear him apart in millions of pieces, which makes Paul refuse to speak the truth. Later, Paul finally had the courage to admit that he was the one who ratted them out, however Tino reacted surprisingly calm about it. Paul realizes that they are actually really great people, once you get to know them. After Paul took the truth off of his chest, their relationship

He realizes just like his father and his mother he is using drug and alcohol to cope with his pain is slowly killing them. Paul still didn’t know if he wants to live or die so he flirts with the idea of death, but he stops himself at the last second.

Paul doesn’t feel comfortable living in his hometown due to his mother's illness(from the snowball incident) and her choices of actions. His guilt from his youth, causes him to leave town, become a magician and join the carnival. Paul started feeling guilty as he grew older, when he could finally understand what happened, and he believes and from what he understands he blames his mother's illness on himself. "... it was my birth that made her like that. My father thought it was his duty to tell me, so that I could do whatever was possible to make it up to her. My birth robbed her of her sanity... I was too young for the kind of guilt my father wanted me to feel. I couldn't stand it." (Davies, p.261) Due to his father being unable to care for his mother's illness, Paul is lead to believe more into his guilt that his mother's illness is all caused by him. “Paul was not a village favourite, and the dislike so many people felt for his mother–dislike for the queer and persistently unfortunate–they attached to the unoffending son.”(Fifth Business. page 32) " I can call up in an instant what it felt like to be the child of a woman everybody jeered at and thought a dirty Joke." (Davies p.261) These two quotes lead to Paul being frowned upon in the town. Many take second guesses to talk to Paul because of the direction of Mrs. Dempster losing her

However, Paul does not show any emotion in his description of his experience. Instead, he plainly tells about the incident. Paul has become indifferent to the threat of being killed by a shell because he is faced with this threat quite often.

Therefore, after the Cruz family and Paul near the end of fighting “The Freeze”, Luis tell Paul, “‘I’m just telling you this so you’ll know. You seem kinda scared of Erik and Arthur Bauer.’ ‘Yeah. I am. Who wouldn’t be?’... Luis’s uncle walked up and started talking to him, so I drifted back inside, thinking about my fear of Erik. How could I be so totally afraid, and Luis not be the slightest bit afraid, of the exact same thing?’(229) Paul becomes aware that not everyone is afraid of Erik and he begins to question his own beliefs about his feelings towards his brother. It puts into perspective that his “big and scary” problems are not such great conflicts when one takes the initiative to stand up to them. This influences Paul to lose his trepidation for when he confronts Erik. It reduces Erik’s power over keeping Paul silent when he witnesses his older brother committing something unlawful. Adding to that, after being reminded of a familiar name, Castor, and white spray paint, Paul analyzes what really led to the beginning of his terrible eyesight. He confronts his parents and they say, “‘You were five years old, Paul. There was only so much you could understand. All you could understand was that something bad had happened… I was so terrified that you would

Paul made that decision because he does not like his brother because he was bullying his friends. Paul started to gain confidence from that moment. Paul shows the confidence he gains when he helps Tino and Victor escape from the gym by standing up to Arthur and Erik when they meet when Paul was running away from the gym. He does what Luis did to confront Erik and Arthur by saying he is not scared. Then, Erik has had it so the drove away.

It was his anger about Luis’ death that enabled Paul to make this confession. When the cops came to arrest Arthur for being linked to the death of Luis, “[Paul] stood up straight and faced them all, like [he] had seen Luis do. ‘I saw-I heard Erik Fisher tell him to do it’”(276). The guilt inside Paul over Luis’ death quickly turned into anger when Arthur’s father tried to convince the cops that Arthur was innocent. Paul gained this courage because of the presence of the many adults and officers who were around, making sure that Erik could not get revenge on Paul. The book implied that Erik was going to jail when the officer said “You keep this young man in the house-not in the neighborhood, not in the yard-in the house. I may call or come back at any time and I expect him to be here”(276). When Paul confessed, he changed his entire life, because his parents would no longer act as if Erik were the standard that Paul had to meet. This also helped Paul prove to his parents that Erik was a terrible person deep down and not destined for greatness the way his parents thought. Paul was brave for standing up to Erik in front of his family and the police. Most importantly, Paul exposed Erik for what he really was-a cold-hearted person who didn’t deserve all the attention that he received for being a great football

“But anyone with a Jew in the family will soon be out of business so.... . I suppose I should talk to the good Reverend. about that.”

When he is reunited with his mother "[they] say very little," but when she finally asks him if it was "very bad out there" Paul lies. In trying to protect her by lying, Paul creates a separation between his mother and himself. As Paul sees it, the tragedies and horrors of war are not for the uninitiated. Sadly, the true nature of war further separates the two generations.

They are engaged in deep conversation all night even though they speak only broken French. Paul’s conscious tells us, “How different this is from the conditions in the soldiers’ brothels… then I feel the lips of the little brunette and press myself against them… for a moment, my life depends on winning her.” (7. 150) All that Paul really yearns for is to regain his innocence, to be that young innocent schoolboy again. He wants to return to the time before the war, when he still had hope and promise of becoming a writer or

“When I came out of the exhibit, I saw a bunch of guys from Tangerine Middle going in.”(78) Paul’s choice is to tell on Victor and Tino. The consequence of Paul’s choice is the he goes to school with Victor and Tino. Tino find out and Paul gets kicked in the back by Tino. “Suddenly I felt a swift kick in my back side.”

Again, the dark laughter echoed in her head. Shit, shit, shit. She was so damn stupid, so bloody arrogant. In spite of the sunglasses she wore to lessen the risk of overstimulation to her senses, the lenses were no safeguards against the weighted stares of the people on the bus, and Tung wasn’t here acting as a buffer.