Mitty stares at the fading stars

Michael Wilkinson                        The Landing
Block D
English 11

Mitty sneered and looked deeply into the eyes of each and everyone one of the members of the firing squad Mitty noticed something in the soldiers eyes, they were scared of him. Power surged through Mitty’s body he knew he had them by the neck, “what do I do now?” he thought. Then it came too him he started to laugh, the soldiers all looked at him with confusion but Mitty laughed and laughed until Smack! “Well I didn’t know you found the recent passing of my mother that funny?”. Mrs Mitty was looking at Walter with furious red bulging eyes. “Oh I’m…… I’m really sorry, I was thinking of something else”. “What on God’s green earth is that damn funny Walter?” Walter put his head down and tried to block out his wife’s constant yelling, “when will she ever stop”, Walter thought to himself. It was dark now and Walter found himself staring at the night sky, he could hardly make any stars out due to the city lights. Walter gazed into the night sky and realized he liked the stars better this way, they didn’t shine too bright and that reminded Walter of himself a “dying star”. “Where did you park the damn car Walter!” Mrs Mitty yelled with a disdainful look on her face. Walter Mitty did not reply for he was lost, lost in the most beautiful sight he had ever seen, the moon.

(…)”One small step for man” Mitty’s heart was pounding “was this a dream?” He thought. “Two small steps for man” he had many dreams of this very moment, he was the first person to ever walk on the moon. The feeling was inscrutable he had never imagined this day would ever come, for the first time in his life Walter was happy. “Walter we have a problem”, the voice beamed into Mitty’s ear from the radio, “an unidentified object has landed very close to you, we have absolutely no clue what it is”. Pandemonium ensued, Mitty could hear what seemed like thousands of of voices yelling from his radio in his helmet. “Maybe it’s the Russians!” He could hear someone yell. “Those damn Chinese they beat us”, another voice bellowed. “It’s aliens I’m telling you, aliens!”. Mitty needed to put an end to all this, he could see the dim figure of a round circular object in the distance. “I’m going!” Mitty’s said this with a confidence that even he didn’t know existed . “Don’t do it Walter you’ll die” it was the voice of Susie Blaine the prettiest girl in all of NASA. “I need to do it Susie, for you”, Walter said this with a sheepish grin on his face. “You’re such a brave man Walter”. He grew closer and closer to the unidentified object until he could make out what it was, a small dying star had crashed into the side of a giant crater and beside it stood a small boy who was crying. “Walter what the hell is going on out there”, Mitty switched off the radio he didn’t need their constant yelling in is ear. Mitty approached the boy “why are you crying? The boy looked at Walter and pointed to the crashed star. “Was this you’re home?” Mitty asked, the boy shook his head. “Then why are you crying?”, the boy looked up at Mitty there was an uncanny resemblance to himself. The boy finally spoke “that was my father, he didn’t want me anymore so he left”.

“Jesus Walter, could you stop grabbing my stomach you’re going to hurt the baby.” Mitty looked at his wife with tears in his eyes, “what’s you’re problem Walter? ever since we found out I was pregnant you’ve been acting strange”. Mitty kissed his wife and said “I’m ready”.

Character Sketch” based on Michael Foster from “Two Fishermen”
Michael is a young up-and-coming journalist who works for his small town newspaper “The Examiner”. Michael is educated man with knack for covering stories. Michael is a skilled journalist and he desperately wants to move up in his line of profession and work for a big time journalist company in the city. Michael is well known in the town and is genuinely well liked, Michael is someone who wants other people to like him and he will change his personality depending on the people he is with. Michael is also a dishonest man, who is willing to lie for his job and is very good at manipulating others.

Throughout The story we see that Michael is shameful towards himself. After he betrays Smitty he feels shame, not enough to act on his feelings but he will have to live with his own shame. Michael knows that what he did was wrong and that, makes it harder for him to deal with. He feels that he was forced into a fake friendship but he knows that everything that was given to was given to him was out of kindness. Michael feels his own shame, but he also tries to force his shame on to Smitty, he feels that Smitty should feel ashamed of his job. Michael doesn’t try hard enough to look from both sides the argument, and forces his shame onto others .
“Michael will have to live with his shame for the rest of his life”.