Thoughts sprout from my head like wispy hair, slowly, insistently. They buzz in a whirling cloud around me, wavering in the wind. Perhaps, I should seek a barber of cerebration and get a short back and sides.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
Stories are about individuals, the challenges they face, and how they cope. There’s a protagonist (which come from the Greek for first struggler) and an antagonist (which means opposing struggler). Right?
Wrong. Or, at least, it’s right for contemporary Western literature, but not true of all places and all times. It wasn’t always so in the West either. Different cultures use very different ideas of the individual.
That idea seems so natural to us that it’s hard to imagine an alternative. But, in fact, we invented the individual only quite recently.
As a way of explaining this odd suggestion, let me tell you a true story. I used to be involved with aid projects in Latin America. One of the projects we supported was psychotherapy for indigenous women fleeing the civil war in Guatemala. The therapists, who were from North America, would say to the women “tell me about yourself.” The women would describe their villages, and where the maize fields were, and their community, and so on. And the therapist would say, “Yes, but tell me about you.” And the women would look puzzled and say “But I just did.”
The therapists and the refugee women had different understandings of what a self was. Obviously, if we can have different understandings view of the self, there will be correspondingly different forms of story-making.
Let’s take, for example, the ancient Greek story of Antigone, famously dramatized by Sophocles. The events of the play follow an unsuccessful invasion of Thebes by Polynices to oust his brother from the throne. Both brothers are killed in the battle. Their uncle, Creon, ascends the throne, and decrees that no burial rites should be performed for Polynices. Antigone, sibling to the brothers, defies the order, arguing that the religious duty to honour the dead overrides human law. Creon orders her buried alive.
What does this story mean? It depends on whether you are an ancient Greek. Berthold Brecht staged a performance in 1948, when the crimes of the Second World War were still raw in memory. He set it in a Berlin air raid shelter. Brecht’s Antigone is a heroine, standing up to the cruelty and tyranny of Creon.
But this is not how Sophocles understood her, as Kenan Malik argues. Though Antigone is championing religious duty, Creon defends the safety of the people. Antigone is guilty of what the Greeks knew as hubris, overweening pride that sets the individual above the law. Her unswerving confidence that she is right causes her to go too far. For Sophocles, this was her tragedy. For the Greeks, heroes embody the best values of the community. They do not stand against the community.
The Greeks were more like the Guatemalan refugees in this than like the therapists. In the more communitarian cultures of Asia, stories today still often focus less on changes in the protagonist than on the unfolding of events.
The change in thinking in the West was quite recent. Malik argues that, until the sixteenth century, most Europeans would have readily understood Sophocles’ original intention. The individual had no meaning, except as a member of a community. It is a person’s actions rather than their thoughts or intentions, which are important.
According to a fascinating essay by Laura Ashe, modern Western fiction could only come into being when it became culturally meaningful and interesting to wonder what was going on in someone else’s head. She argues that it was the development of the troubadours’ tales of courtly love that spearheaded this change in the twelfth century.
Though love has always been a feature of stories throughout ages and cultures, the idea of romantic love, which sprang from the troubadour tradition, is distinctly different. Before this, in great love tales such as Tristan and Isolde, love was a devastating destructive force.. There is no room for the modern idea of the protagonist who has a desire and struggles to achieve it. So a “happy ever after” ending is not available. Love is independent of the wills of the lovers, is incompatible with everyday life, and its proper end is death. Even in the sixteenth century, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet embodies this older understanding of love.
It took the historical uproar of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the rise of mercantile and industrial capitalism to create a world in which modern Western fiction, particularly the novel, could exist. A world which created the ideas that individuals matter, and that they can have agency outside of fate and social station.
This little romp through a couple of thousand years of Western history tells us how important culture is. What we can imagine depends on the resources our culture gives us. People in Sophocles’ day were probably much the same as they are now. There simply hasn’t been enough time for evolution to have made us biologically different to the ancient Greeks. And people in London or Los Angeles have pretty much the same dreams as people in Lagos or Lima. But all of us live in worlds shaped by the societies we live in. The ancient Greeks lived in a world shaped by fate. The power today of possessive individualism is probably more marked in Los Angeles than in Lima. As they say in Southern Africa, “Motho ke motho ka batho” (people become people through other people).
We can, perhaps, investigate through different stories different ways of being people.
It felt nice. Generous. Whimsical. Someone had left a Christmas decoration on the tree by the fence. This brightened my morning, and I smiled, giving a little skip in the snow.
The next day, a stocking hung beside the shiny orb. I searched inside for chocolates, nuts and tangerines. But it was empty. That disappointed, and my heart sank.
A day later, and they’d tacked a sign on the stocking. “Fill me, cheapskate.” Now my environment was making demands with menaces. Fear squeezed, and I gulped in a breath of air.
After that, I followed a different route to work.
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Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
The motor coughs and stutters. The engineers, with wrenches and oil cans, crowd round in agitation. Stern sentinels patrol the city walls and, beyond, a dark beast bays in the night.
“All will be as it was,” the engineers promise. “in the eternal city.”
“Build back better,” the citizens beseech.
“We are of nature,” says the seer. Crowds gather round. “But not everything we choose to do is natural.”
“What must we do?” asks a woman.
“Go back,” some scream. Others yell, “Go forward.” A chant begins, “String up the engineers.”
Down the plaza, a crack dances like lightning and widens.
Me, I wonder what might be coming for us. And whether we will recognise it as kin.
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
They cut the head off to make her fit. My fridge is small.
For six days, grief ravaged me. On the seventh, I grabbed my Desert Tech MDR and fitted the clip. In my head, music played. I knew this story. I was this story.
There would be blood. There would be vengeance for my wounded masculinity. There would be congratulations.
But reality’s not like that. The black dude dies first. Do it by the book: the book of law, not the fictional one.
I wish I’d known Mary better before they killed her.
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
I am not here now. I serve the future. We are making memories. One day, Mary, we’ll look back and see how happy we were today: the freedom of the open road in our campervan; the exotic food we ate; the carefree way we ran into the breakers and embraced.
Such memories!
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
Do you enjoy cracking codes? I’ve been fascinated by codes and ciphers since I was a kid. Now, I have the chance to include a cipher in the novel I’m working on, Boundarising. Here it is:
1455 2324 1341 5115 3224 2345 2543 1351 1221 5231 4324 5434
3415 5333 3324 1455 1521 2433 4145 5322 5333 2324 4115 3335
2423 1431 2532 2544 3321 4324 4135 5333 2133 2111 3323 3313
2433 4415 4433 2423 4135 3442 4411 4145 2454 3335 1251 3135
2324 4423 1513 4531 4234 4235 3135 5545 1223 1221 4135 3313
2433 2513 5314 5544 3321 3531 4324 5132 3353 2153 3353 5322
1242 4134 5545 3545 1431 2442 3255 3335 2123 3442 2531 4223
1431 2322 3135 3424 4234 3135 5534 1254 4222 1332 3531 5312
2443 4135 3255 5545 4415 4433 4135 3442 5545 3415 4113 2152
1431 4115 2124 1415 4235 4145 3313 2513 4254 2443 3231 1513
2142 1544 1213 1322 2354 2534 4441 5444 3255 3335 5545 2341
2113 4235 3524 1441 5545 4453 4135 1541 3442 2341 2423 3312
1322 1431 2312 1441 2423 3135 5321 4233 2234 1214 1322 1415
4415 3533 1145 3345 4115 3544 2114 2541 5322 1112 5214 1541
3353 4324 1333 3242 3224 3152 3353 4234 3135 4114 3224 2324
2224 4241 3331 4454 3135 1541 4555 1213 1452 4321 4445 3135
1213 3531 4325 4211 2113 4324 1532 3134 1421 4325 4445 3215
3321 3442 1214 4233 2135 4315 3455 1415 4125 1431 2333 3242
2354 2234 2411 1542 1431 3212 4222 1432 3313 2423 3321 1142
5545 4324 4355 4215 2233 3114 1352 1311 5214 3155 3323 4222
1452
Can you crack this? This isn’t just an empty challenge. I need to be able to demonstrate that a teenage boy, armed only with paper and pencil could do it, so I really need to know how easy this is to solve.
My protagonist, Sol, has been dispatched by his parents to live during wartime with his uncle, Zand in the countryside where he should be safe from enemy bombing, Many children were sent out of danger in this way in Britain during the second world war.
Just before he gets on the train, Sol’s father, William, presses an envelope into his hands and asks him to give it to Zand.
But Sol is a curious boy, opens the envelope and discovers the coded message. He spend many months trying to crack it. To give you a running start, Sol, recognizes that because there are no numbers greater than five, this code is probably created in a 5×5 grid. This would be sufficient to store all the letters of the alphabet, if two (such as I and J) are doubled up.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 | A | B | C | D | E |
| 2 | F | G | H | I/J | K |
| 3 | L | M | N | O | P |
| 4 | Q | R | S | T | U |
| 5 | V | W | X | Y | Z |
So, Sol reasons that the numbers code for letters (where 11 is A, 12 is B and so on). But, there are groups of four numbers, while two would be sufficient to code for a letter. So, Sol thinks the code involves pairs of letters. There must be some coding rules for relating the members of the pair to each other.
He readily sees that the grid above doesn’t decode the message, so he decides the letters cannot be arranged simply from A to Z. He thinks it’s unlikely the arrangement is random. That’s as far as he gets for some time.
You’re right, of course. I should have seen the tree. But I didn’t. Not with him here, in our restaurant, and at my table. Imagine. My hands shook as I took his order. He chose chilli. Not pâté de foie gras, not lobster and truffle sauce, not ambrosia and nectar. Chilli, and a small beer. Like a regular person. It was uplifting. Heavenly choirs sang. Gentle waves caressed the shore.
What do you mean, there’s nobody at the table? Fair enough, I missed the tree. But, really, you can’t see him? Seems we all have our areas of blindness.
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
I’m a hero, me. They oughta give me a bleedin’ medal for what I done, mate; saved the country, din’t I? Sat on me arse for fourteen months, never going out, never letting any bugger in; it was hard, I can tell you; but I stuck it out, ‘cause that’s what an Englishman does.
Fourteen months! That was my war. Double vaccinated, I am. Stopped the virus in its tracks, so we did. So where’s me bleedin’ medal now, and me war pension from a grateful nation?
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
Phineas crossed his arms. He didn’t look convinced. This one was slipping away from me.
I made my mouth smile. “Your decision, man. Of course it is. Sure. Turn your back on the future. Perhaps, I’ll offer it to your neighbours. They seem like forward-looking folk.”
For the first time, he looked unsure. I pressed my advantage. “A home nuclear reactor isn’t for everyone. Free power for life—that could be too much responsibility.”
The big play now. Turning, I headed across the road to number 10.
“Wait,” Phineas called.
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
