English- Island-The Vastness of the Dark- Creative opening

[zhangvivian]

PROMPT 1: Change is both inevitable and painful.
PROMPT 2: Memory and tradition are of central importance to people’s lives.

The Vastness of the Dark

Change is both inevitable and painful.

I sat alone in my bare room, missing the warmth of my family as I write this letter. I look around and I see a bare room, with a bed, sink and table, void of any personal effects.One year ago today, I had left our coal mining town with hope and aspiration of getting out of a coal-mining town that I was a prisoner in. One year of self exploration, leaving Cape Breton hoping to not mine for a living, yet here I am in another similarly grimy town mining to earn my living. Believe me, i had tried my luck in those big cities that you dreamed about going after learning about them in school, but they were different. They were not the same, they saw the world differently and behaved in different ways. They didn’t chew tobacco, but lighted it and smoked it, did they want to die? I had expected that the tobacco would explode in their faces but no, they simply went about their daily lives. Even I had tried to change, giving up my tobacco chewing and my Gaelic way of speak, I yielded no results like the times when the men had wandered down into an already derelict mine. Not only had i had gained no results, I was mocked by these people for imitating them. Even if I was “uncivilised,” I was not duff, even I could tell that I would never be accepted here, it was surprisingly not painful. Maybe I knew then, that deep in my heart that I didn’t belong in that sort of environment. It is much more painful now trying to survive without the warmth of my family, emotionally knowing that these letters could change our future. Just like the letter I received earlier this week, I would have to return. I had to return to that coal-mining town and remain a prisoner, giving up on my freedom forever. Even if my experiences were bittersweet like the days the rain pelted down and flooded the mines we painstaking dug and mined, I was still free.

Life continues, and I have returned to the little mine with bad air and no light, coughing up the rock particles I inhale. I have drunk the underground water in many places, Springhill, Britannia , Virginia but I still ended up returning to our mine. Would my James be drinking underground water here or somewhere else, maybe not drinking underground water at all. I don't know.

[OZLexico]

I'm not sure that you've really nailed it yet - it isn't clear who the narrator is (James? James' father?) and the narrator mentions a letter but this is not a letter but a personal reflective piece.  From James' perspective, he understands that his father was obligated to stay with James mother when she became pregnant. The letters shown to James by his grandmother show that James' father was well travelled and that his birthplace was just one of many where his father worked in mining (not just coal but other minerals too). There's a sort of frame to the story - James' birth tying James' father to his new father-in-law and James departure from the family home (as an eighteen year old) signalling the end of school as well as the end of the mine worked by James' father and grandfather. There are some powerful images you could draw on in your writing e.g. the blind pit ponies on p 34, the father's scarred hands and damaged lungs, his restlessness when he has no work, the mine rescue and the idea that outsiders can never understand the "near death and pain" of the lives of miners.  You are trying to show the loneliness of the narrator and his efforts to discover the other world he's learned about in school and his disappointment that he cannot feel comfortable there. Maybe give some more thought about what he actually misses about his family.  Decide if you want your reader to see him as a failure if he returns, or strong-willed for continuing to discover the world outside the Cape Breton mining communities.

I've also attached some other comments on your work.