Pastiche Attempt Duex

Dekel Efraim bought a piece of challah and left the air conditioned haven of the convenience store. Dekel stumbled along a dusty street filled with playing children, honking cars, and under the sun drenched Jerusalem sky. Reaching the his apartment building, he prepared himself for battle.

He stared at the first step. Cane. Foot. Foot. Cane. Foot. Foot. He mumbled at himself encouraging words to take his mind off the pain. "You can do it, just take another step. This is it, just another steps to go. Great job, five stairs, time for a rest. One day I'll get a better apartment." Anything to numb the pain.

He opened the door to his apartment and welcomed the familiar scent of books. The apartment was filled with shelves overflowing with books. Most days, Dekel spent his time with his books, making friends with Chaucer, Kerouac, and Wilde.

Occasionally he was interrupted by the landlady, or other people who thought their job was to give him advice.

Alte, the landlady, would come to his apartment with the occasional homentashn or tzimmes. They would pleasantly chat for a while until she brought up the subject of work. Alte would ask something like, "Have you been getting out of the house lately? You know, a man like you should get out more often."
"Well, I haven't, but honestly I sometimes don't feel like going out."
"You know what? My nephew works as a diamond cutter. You should be a diamond cutter -- I hear they make great money. I'm sure he can get you a job. They always need more diamond cutters. Plus, you don't need to walk to cut diamonds. I'll get him to come one of these days."
"Um, thanks. I'll be sure to look into that."

He used get out of the house more. His parents always told him to go to college and find a job as a software engineer or chemist. He used to go to Bar-Ilan University, but he never fit in. He always loved books and the way they beckoned him to explore their pages.

He never really enjoyed books until he picked up Atlas Shrugged in the hospital. Then began a yearlong love affair with books of every kind. He fought four flights of stairs to go to the bookstore looking for the next novel to devour. He lost his worries when he opened the covers of a new book.

He plopped down on his favorite armchair and opened the newest addition to his library, A Hundred Years of Solitude, and dove into the book. To his surprise, a newspaper clipping fell out. It was an advertisement for a teaching position in Bat Yam fell out. They needed a language arts teacher. He looked at the ad, then the books, and picked up the phone.


How I imitated Hurston.
The main theme I followed was: "you have to be able to understand your goals in life in order to make decisions, otherwise you risk allowing others to dictate how you live your life."

So I wrote about a unmotivated man who loved books and didn't know what to do. People constantly talked to him about colleges and job offerings. Through luck he realizes he wants to teach his love for literature. To mimick Hurston's stylistic choices, I used an apostrophe when Dekel walks up the stairs. I used this because I wanted the reader to understand how difficult it was for Dekel to walk without saying he was crippled. This leads me to the next style, atmosphere. Describing Dekel, I used lots of imagery and verbs to drop hints to the reader that Dekel is crippled, without telling the audience. It mimic's Hurston's ambiguity. The last stylistic choice I used was loose sentences in Alte's dialogue to make it seem like she was not very subtle when talking to Dekel. Presenting the main idea upfront makes the sentences very blunt.