"Freeman"

“Freeman” is a very realistic short story about a man who is content with just getting by in life. Caleb’s life changes when he breaks free of his mediocrity to help his brother clean up a trailer park hit by a tornado. The reader can tell a noticeable difference in the character: at first, he regrets coming to help his brother, is bothered by the heat, etc. Toward the end of the story, however, Caleb takes a leadership position to find what could possibly be a dead body. A man later finds one, however, and Caleb’s life changes. To me, the best line of the story is the last one. After all he has seen and been through the past couple of days, the image of the trailer stands for everything: death, destruction, broken life. The last line of the story adds not only comic relief, but a realization by the main character. The back story of Caleb’s lack of motivation adds more emphasis on his initiative in the clean-up towards the end of the story. There were a few slight errors in the story. A couple of shift tenses occur; the story is written in the near past, but some verbs are in the present tense. The writer used “there” and “they” many times; I realize this might be unavoidable in some cases, but others can have more specific words to convey the same idea. The story had a good pace, I never got completely bored reading it and there was good progression leading up to the climax. I especially liked the daydream Caleb has of the sunlight illuminating the smiling face of a person rescued. This was cleverly paralleled at the end when the sunlight illuminates a decaying face. The parallel adds to the disgust and shock of finding the dead body. Well done.