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Senior Writing

Various —

In two frantic days the Logan Park English Department read over fifty entries for this year's Senior Writing Competition!

The quality of writing across all genres in the school was superb. Thank you to all who took part. It is good to see the writing culture at Logan Park is alive and thriving.

The results of our 2015 competition are as follows:  

Poetry

1. First – Frances Barnett for 'A Confession' and  'Puddles'

2. Second – Bruno Willis for So Don’t Run

3. Third – Catherine Cadzow for 'The Aftertaste of Us' and 'Hindsight'

4. Highly Commended – William Kilgour-Hand for The Wanderer

Non Fiction

1. First – Isla Benham for 'Contested History: Explaining the Indescribable' and 'A Presentation of Conformity and Alienation in 1950’s and 1960’s Literature'

2. Second - Emma O’Malley for Ninteen Eighty Four Into the Modern Day

3. Third - Pippi Miller for Hamlet; a Critical Reading

4. Highly Commended – Carmen Heinze Farrington for The Crucible a discussion of setting.

Prose

1. First – Emily Newton for Marianne

2. Second – Ella Yianette for The Sweeper

3. Third Equal – Alesha-Jane Bowen for The Fox in Sheep’s Clothing

4. Third Equal – Charlotte Dickie for The Last Winter Rose

5. Highly Commended – Clair Caird for Rotting Hearts

The winning pieces from each section are published below:


puddles - Frances Barnett

each day after the clouds have let themselves go

i take you outside to look in the puddles

your brother and sister stay inside

too cold too wet too just - yuck -

they exclaim

but you come

bundled up in jacket and scarf

to see the new world

it is a new world (says you)

you say that only when

the leaves have caught the droplets and the puddles

finally lay still and only then

when you look hard enough can you see

what really lies beneath the still sheets of water

you say that

with your face pressed to the ground

that water elephants live beneath them

and so do clowns

and there’s ice-cream that never melts

and and and you say

its perfect

as we walk back

i search for this other world in every reflection i see

i do not dream of

animals and clowns

but instead of a grown up you

who is still able to find the joy

in a puddle


a confession

did i tell you that i entered this poem i wrote into a competition at my school? and

did i tell you that i won?

i told your wife;

she smiled, asked to read it, expectant.

i mumbled, weaseled, did all i could till i think she forgot about it.

it’s online now, but she doesn't need to know.

it’s not that i didn’t want her to read it, no, but rather

i didn’t want her to read it. i didn’t want

her to make sense of it, to understand what was going on,

to see that really, really, it was about you. you

with slippers and trackpants, mumbled words and

spoonfed dinners. you, yes, who had picked me up and laughed and

had snuck me lollies before tea time (don’t tell mum). i didn’t want

her to see that my memories of you were of a man, a beautiful,

beautiful man, now unable to remember my name.

i won’t tell her this, of course. but i’ll sneak in,

up the stairs, along the hall (yes, i’ll remember to sanitise my hands) and

whisper it to you between spoons of (i think) an egg mixture.

you do not know whether i speak of the weather or my family or the colour

of the dress i wore for the formal but i think, i hope,

i know, that you know, i speak of love.

i remember you.

i do i do.

i do remember you.


Isla Benham 1st – Non Fiction Writing

Contested History: Explaining the Indescribable

How can we explain the causes of the Holocaust?

The desire to explain the Holocaust is in large part due to its unique significance in the long dire history of genocidal acts. However, firstly what we need to do is to describe what makes the Holocaust unique and the questions that remain about its causes. One of the first things people notice about the Holocaust is its systematic nature. The Holocaust was not a spontaneous occurrence that became something much larger, but it was in fact, a meticulous and minutely planned mass murder. The Holocaust stands alone in genocidal acts because of the sheer size and scale of murder that was committed. In August 1944, Adolf Eichmann revealed to an SS officer that approximately four million Jews had been killed in the extermination camps and another two million had died in other ways, principally as victims of the Einsatzgruppen. Eichmann’s initial estimate of six million victims remains seventy years later, the figure most popularly accepted and quoted in accounts of the Holocaust.[1] It is important to remember, that it was not only the Jews who were the tragic victims of the Holocaust. Many thousands of Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, political prisoners, along with Russian and Polish prisoners of war were also killed in the Holocaust. One of the other striking factors of the Holocaust was the industrialisation of death conjured up by the Nazis in the form of the death camps and infamously characterised in popular imagination by the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.

Yet questions remain. Principal amongst these are the following; did Hitler specifically order these mass killings? Was he completely in charge? Was it always intended, or did it evolve from ad hoc policies? It is not clear how long the Nazis were in a search for a solution for the ‘Jewish question’. However, the title the ‘Final Solution’ suggests the Nazis were in search of a solution for a long time. These questions fall into two camps which have characterised studies of the Holocaust: Intentionalism and Functionalism. Historians that support the intentionalist explanation state that it was always Hitler’s intent to commit genocide and that he was the main driver behind the process establishing a ‘top down’ approach to the Holocaust. Conversely, historians who support the functionalist explanation maintain that the Holocaust was a process that developed over time through increasingly radical policies and was not necessarily directed from above.[2] What frustrates many historians who study the Holocaust is that the title ‘The Final Solution’ can apply to both schools of thought.

The Intentionalist Argument:

The Intentionalists’ argument is that Hitler along with other high-ranking Nazi officials drove the process of the Holocaust. Intentionalists argue that the Holocaust was a ‘top down’ process with Hitler as the prime instigator. Most argue ‘that a man with Hitler’s history of anti-Semitism must undoubtedly have developed the requisite intention for genocide’. [3] The intentionalist argument supports the idea that the obliteration of the Jewish people was fuelled by Nazi racial ideology. Intentionalists also state that the Holocaust was an evolving process driven by Hitler’s highly anti-Semitic Weltanschauung (worldview).[4] Intentionalists maintain that these views both stem from Hitler’s intentional actions. Thus, intentionalists focus on Hitler as the most important figure in the initiation of the Holocaust. [5]

We can trace Hitler’s intent to commit genocide, from as early as 1922. In his infamous book Mein Kampf, Hitler identified Jews as a target by suggesting that, had thousands of them been killed during the First World War, lives of German soldiers could have been saved. [6] This suggests that from the very beginnings of his political career, Hitler hoped to destroy the Jews in Europe. Adolf Hitler as an Anti-Semite was a product of his time and place. Anti-Semitism was an endemic part of the European cultural landscape in the late Nineteenth Century. Hitler’s views were shared by many on the far right of the political spectrum in Germany and throughout Europe. When Hitler joined what would become the Nazi Party in 1919 he was joining just one of the many small right wing parties that existed at the time. Virtually all of them shared the view that the Jews of Germany and indeed the world were at the heart of a grand conspiracy. This conspiracy, they believed, had led to Germany’s defeat in World War One and to the rise of Bolshevik Russia. If left unchecked the conspiracy would work to spread Bolshevism and Judaism worldwide.[7] Hitler’s response to this belief was to advocate the destruction of the Jews. What he actually meant by this in his early political career has always been hard to ascertain. If he is taken at his word then the Holocaust can be seen as a natural result of such views. This view of Hitler would strongly support an intentionalist interpretation of the Holocaust.

To fully examine an intentionalist argument one must examine the events leading up to the Holocaust from their perspective. It is important to acknowledge that although Hitler’s intent may always have been genocidal he could not immediately embark on such a programme. This was because it would have been politically and publically unacceptable. Hitler needed to wait for circumstances that would allow him to act on his genocidal intent. In this context the gradual radicalisation of Nazi Anti-Semitism can be seen a series of steps towards an always clear intent.

The growing radicalisation of the Nazis’ can be clearly seen in the course of events after the Nazi takeover in 1933. Measures against the Jews in Germany were intensified as the Nazis’ grip on the control of the country strengthened. By 1938 the Nazis had any real opposition firmly under control in the concentration camps. Hitler had also had a string of foreign policy coups that bolstered his popularity. Hitler now felt confident enough to launch a wave of highly vicious physical attacks against the Jews of Germany.

‘Kristallnact’ (‘Night of Broken Glass’) was a series of coordinated and brutal attacks against the Jews of Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. The attacks were carried out by the SA paramilitary forces and non-Jewish civilians. These attacks were a public display of the Nazi Regime’s Anti-Semitism. The attacks were planned by Hitler and Goebbels. The attacks were supposedly in retaliation for the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a young Jewish man, Herschel Grynszpan, in Paris. The Nazis’ denied any real ownership of the pogrom. However, the actual orders for the attack were given by Goebbels and other top Nazis. This allowed Hitler who remained publicly silent on the matter to appear unconnected to the pogrom. The overall thrust and direction of the pogrom was in Goebbels’ hands. Local Nazi bosses were given a great deal of individual freedom of action as long as they followed the general thrust of the orders and followed Hitler’s general intent.

Hitler began preparing for war against Russians early as 1936 in order to eradicate the “250 million Jews”.[8] This figure arose because Hitler equated Judaism and Bolshevism as the same thing. Indeed the Nazis gave the war the title the ‘Great Race War’. The very title ‘Great Race War’ points at a war bent on eliminating an entire race of people. This further reinforces the intentionalist argument as it shows there was clear desire and intention on Hitler’s part to eliminate the Jews.

Hitler’s most direct statement of intent was his famous prophecy speech to the Reichstag in January 1939 where he stated that “If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and this the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”.[9] This suggests that from the outset Hitler intended to carry out genocide. The prophesy seems to have been both a heartfelt statement of intent and a signal to the world about the nature of the war he wished to pursue in the East. From the very beginning the invasion of Poland was characterised by its brutality and the deliberate targeting of the Jewish population. Executions were common in the early stages. This progressed to the forcible resettlement of the Jewish population in Ghettos. Here the Jews were expected to live in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions on starvation rations.[10] Nazi planners were aware that the deportation of millions of Jews to conditions that could not possibly support them would involve the deaths of thousands of deportees either during the process or on arrival. It is therefore clearly apparent that in any deportation the idea that there would be a considerable loss of life was an accepted fact. The genocidal nature of these deportation plans and ghettoization clearly points to Hitler’s intentions to commit mass murder one way or another.

Other evidence for Hitler’s intent comes from indirect sources as no written evidence survives. Key amongst the surviving evidence are reports of Hitler’s secret revelations of plans to start the Final Solution to Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu in June 1941.[11] Hitler wanted Romanian military assistance and Antonescu wanted rid of his Jews. This revelation however, remained a secret and did not appear in either transcript of the June 12, 1941 conversations. The clues, however, appear in other sources. In August 1941, believing that Germany was on the verge of victory, the Romanian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mihai Antonescu, notified the Romanian Cabinet that he had discussed the “solution” of the ‘Jewish Question’ with a representative of the Reich. “I can report to you that I have already conducted intensive negotiations with high-ranking German representative of…organisations from Germany with regard to the Jewish problem. (The Germans) understand that the Jewish problem will ultimately require an international solution and they wish to help us prepare this international solution.”[12] Another key piece of evidence was Himmler’s report of 1941 in which Himmler reported that in 1941 Hitler made an order “regarding the irretrievable resolution of the ‘Jewish question’ saying that ‘every Jew that we can lay our hands on is to be destroyed’ “. [13] Himmler and Hitler’s interactions are held to be significant in demonstrating the progression of Hitler’s intentions. Being the head of the SS, Himmler greatly helped it to become a ‘racial-ideological elite’. He aided in promoting racial supremacy throughout Germany by implementing ‘racial entrance requirements’ prior to World War II, which shows that from the beginning of Hitler’s political career he intended on racial discrimination within Germany. [14] Indeed historian Gerald Fleming argues that, Hitler expressed his wish for destruction of the Jews to Himmler, who given his role in the part was then able to ‘set in motion the machinery of death’.[15] Another piece of evidence that points to Hitler’s intentions was the fact that the SS Einsatzgruppen were formed and active from June 1941. This is unthinkable in a regime like the Nazi dictatorship without Hitler’s prior knowledge and approval.

To add to this Goebbels and other top Nazis many public announcements speak of a programme to destroy the Jews. Goebbels and other high-ranking Nazis were using language in their speeches like, vernichten and ausrotten, which are synonyms for “annihilate”, “exterminate” “totally destroy” and “kill”.[16] Typical of these was the Nazi politician and head of the German Labour Front, Robert Ley’s speech to German and Dutch workers in Amsterdam on May 10, 1942. “Comrades, believe me. I’m not painting too grim a picture. It is bitter for me, bitterly serious. The Jew is the great danger to humanity. If we don’t succeed in exterminating him (ihn auszurotten) then we will lose the war. It’s not enough to bring him someplace (ihn irgend wohin zu bringen). That would be as if one wanted to lock up a louse somewhere in a cage. (Laughter) They would find a way out and again they come from under and make you itch again. (Laughter) You have to annihilate (vernichten) them you have to exterminate them (for what) they have done to humanity… (Interrupted by on-going applause).”[17] It is unthinkable that he could say this without Hitler’s knowledge and direction of the programme. The final evidence to support an intentionalist explanation of the Holocaust is that Hitler’s style of government was to outline his goals and then let others find ways to achieve them. This clearly gels with the intentionalist view.

Functionalist Argument:

The functionalist view is that the Nazis and particularly Hitler had not made any decision on how to deal with the ‘Jewish Problem’ prior to World War II, and that they made up policies on an ad hoc basis without following any coherent or clear course of action. According to the functionalist explanation, policy is the key to understanding the unfolding of the Holocaust. Examining original Nazi policy, it can be determined that fundamentally the leadership in the Third Reich ‘strove towards politics without administration.’[18] Hitler and top Nazi leaders like Himmler and Goebbels saw the features of administratively focused politics as ‘constraints on their power’.[19] To avoid this sort of politics, the leaders sought to initiate policies as was deemed necessary. This can be seen through the increasingly radical treatment of the Jews. In which Nazi policy moves from harassment in 1933, to open brutality in 1938, to deportation and ghettoization in 1939 and 1940, and finally to mass murder in 1941. The functionalists argue that the very term ‘Final Solution’ reveals the fact that the Nazis did not have a clear destination for the Jews in mind. Functionalists see the Holocaust as a result of competing Nazi functionaries seeking Hitler’s approval and to solve local problems. Their methods became increasingly radical as restrains were removed by distance and war.

Functionalists maintain that it is necessary to analyse the factors in the development of the Holocaust on a broader scale, starting with Germany’s volatile economic situation of the early 1930’s. Functionalists argue that multiple social and economic factors led to an increasingly chaotic political atmosphere, in which opportunists seized the opportunity to instigate genocidal programmes. In this context, functionalists place a great deal of emphasis on the ‘machinery of government and its effect upon decision making in the Third Reich’. [20]

Functionalists also place emphasis on the idea of Hitler as a weak leader. They maintain that Hitler’s weakness as a leader added to the toxic political situation in Germany prior to WWII. Functionalists argue that this weakness constricted ‘the regimes freedom of action’ which led to other top Nazi leaders adopting excessively powerful positions within the party. Hitler’s fear of weakening his popularity through unpopular decisions led to the government’s inaction in respect to policy-making. Hitler’s attitude towards other leaders within the party further weakened his leadership powers. Hitler’s deference to other senior leaders along with his unrelenting trust of their political instincts was vital in aggravating his inability to effectively exercise ‘government policy procedures’. [21] Therefore, space was open for high-ranking Nazi party officials to influence many political decisions. Hitler tended to encourage this power, as he often gave them significant free reign regarding political decisions.

This leads to the notion that the weakness of Hitler’s power meant that those who were primarily responsible for the Holocaust’s initiation (other high-ranking Nazi party officials) acted independently of Hitler. [22] These leaders would have been guided mainly by their racial ideology and only saw the Jews as an enemy in a practical sense, in terms of an enemy who was preventing them from attaining their goals. These powerful officials along with the provincial Nazi leaders were not an organised or united group of politicians with common goals in sight. Alternately, there existed substantial internal tension within the Nazi government with major leaders focusing only on their respective jurisdictions. However, the numerous officials were united in one crucial aspect ‘Making Germany… more National Socialist’. [23] This meant that each official was trying to out-compete the others in an attempt to appear more ‘National Socialist’. This frequently led to issues being dealt with in the most radical of ways as this was seen as being more ‘National Socialist’. In such an environment, it is unsurprising that policies became more, and more radical as party leaders attempted to be the most ‘National Socialist’. This radicalisation of policies would of course, inevitably lead to genocide.

Another key functionalist argument is that sporadic events in the field often led to new policies surrounding the treatment of ‘undesirables’, being initiated. The most prominent examples of this occurring are in the events in the German-Lithuanian border region during the summer of 1941. These events along the border region where the first mass executions took place, ‘demonstrate that Himmler and his leading officers contributed decisively to the escalation of German violence by sanctioning ex post facto the actions of local commanders’.[24] A key example of this is the events that took place on June 23, 1941 in the town of Garsden. The leader of the Stapostelle Tilsit, Han-Joachim Bohme, and the Tilsit SD-Leader Werner Hersmann arrested 201 Jews-including a woman and 12 year old child for “crimes against the Wehrmacht”. [25] The next day these Jews were executed by an Order Police unit from Memel. In this town, the standard operating procedure for the interaction between the centre and periphery of the SS and police apparatus took shape. Bohme’s report to headquarters date July 1, 1941, shows how the centre and periphery of the SS and police apparatus interacted in these critical weeks: “The Reichsfuhrer-SS (Himmler) and the Gruppenfuhrer (Heydrich), who by coincidence were present (in Agustowo), received information from me on the measures initiated by the Stapostelle Tilsit and sanctioned them completely.”[26] The beginnings of the Holocaust in Lithuania suggest that the “push” for these extreme “measures” came from the officers in the field, who at the time offered several justifications for their actions; references to specific orders are noticeably absent.[27] On July 11, 1941, possibly in reaction to further massacres in Bialystok, Montua transmitted a formal order from HSSPF Bach-Zelewski ordering that Jews aged 17-45 who had been “convicted” of plunder were to be shot. This order transmitted through Montua was significant beyond the instance at hand in that it provided an appearance of formal procedure for what had started as random killings. Here as elsewhere, the presence of the Reichsfuhrer-SS and his other top officers was not necessary to initiate the massacres of the Jews, but it did help to establish this form of killing as a standard operating procedure.[28] This definitely supports a functionalist view of the Holocaust.

Personal Viewpoint:

Both the Functionalist and Intentionalist perspectives on the Holocaust offer insight and explanation into the causes’ and inner workings of the Holocaust. However the one I support most is the intentionalist viewpoint. Although some believe it suffers from a lack of evidence, I believe that it is the perspective that is the most credible and consistent, based upon the evidence provided for both functionalist and intentionalist perspectives. I feel that it is the most convincing because it includes the most feasible evidence for the possible causes of the Holocaust as it reinforces most of what we know about the inner workings of the Nazi regime. The Nazi regime was obsessed with a millenarian utopian vision that could only be realised, in their view, through the destruction of the Jews. In the light of this a key function of the very existence of the Nazi Party and the regime it established was the destruction of the Jews. This view of the world had been explicitly voiced as far back as Hitler’s ramblings in Mein Kampf and never changed in intent only in their expression. It may be possible that Hitler had weaknesses as a leader, but in a totalitarian state like the Nazi dictatorship, there is no way that any decisions as major as the Holocaust would have been implemented without Hitler’s direct intent, input and explicit say-so. I also believe that the intentionalist view of the Holocaust is the most valid as it takes into account the numerous speeches given by high-ranking Nazi officials, such as Goebbels and Ley. These speeches clearly outline the Nazi intent to destroy the Jews of Europe with language such as “annihilate” “totally destroy” and “exterminate”. Again in an authoritarian state like the Third Reich, they were views that could only ever have been expressed if they had been sanctioned by Hitler. I also believe that the intentionalist argument is the most convincing because of the military groups such as the ‘Einzatsgruppen’ that were created with the specific purpose of killing the Jews, as early as 1941. I feel that this supports an intentionalist view because in a regime like the Nazis, it is entirely unthinkable that this would have happened without Hitler’s express wish. For these reasons I believe that the intentionalist perspective on the Holocaust is the most convincing and the one I most believe in, and that the Holocaust could not possibly have happened without Hitler’s prior intent and desire to commit mass-genocide one way or another as he saw fit.

Conclusion:

The Holocaust was one of the defining events that shaped the twentieth century. The twentieth century was the century of industrialisation. Unfortunately, what the Holocaust gave us was the large scale industrialisation of death. As a species, we humans are blessed with prodigious intelligence and an audacious ingenuity. However, these both come at cost and what we now know as the Holocaust is proof of this cost. The Holocaust remains historically significant as it irreversibly changed the world in the years after its end. On the 24th of October 1945, the United Nations was formed. It was established as a replacement for the inept League of Nations, almost immediately after the Second World War to prevent another such conflict. The forming of the United Nations (UN) can be seen as a direct result of the Holocaust’s significance because of the world’s horror at the failed Nazi experiment. New Zealand’s own Prime Minister Peter Fraser was fundamental in the drafting of the UN constitution and he along with so many others was motivated at least in part by the thought of “never again”. Another key event that happened almost immediately after the end of WWII was the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948. In large part the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ can be directly linked to the atrocities of the Holocaust. This again establishes the Holocaust’s continuing historical significance, as articles in the declaration can be clearly linked back to the events that occurred in the Holocaust such as “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”, perhaps the most telling article is “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.”[29] The ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ is a founding document that every nation is bound to adhere to, to prevent the brutalities of the Holocaust from ever occurring again. The Holocaust remains significant to New Zealand to this day as it has a small but important Jewish community. Many of the New Zealand Jewish community’s founding members were people who fled the terrors of the Nazis before, during and after the Second World War.


Marianne by Emily Newton

Marianne Heat filled the room. Silent, weighty. It rose softly from the tips of the fire flames and spilled out of the grate in rounded puffs. As the small fire grew in confidence heat began to flood further, curling around chair legs and dresser drawers; up to the ceiling and down to the ground. It bred in darkness and swirled in merriment in all corners of the room but one. In this corner was another source of heat. A girl. She lay in the window seat with her face and left arm pressed up against the cold window, eyes staring at nothing as her thoughts coiled and swirled around within her. 

Rain fell in thick, heavy straight lines down the window pane. They held no joy, no tumbling spirit. Banished were the tear shaped droplets that yesterday bowled and raced. They had been succeeded by mourning. Had the tiny drops died? Surely something, here, had died. Those immovable rills of water obscured her view of the outside world ­ its stars and early morning glory ­ and divided her from life and the living. Like iron bars they were permanent fixtures of her world. Through the bars of water slipped free her wandering, seeking mind. 

But her body remained behind, in a nightgown and shawl. Unable to sleep, the stars had called her up out of her bed and to the window; there she had sat for hours. Numbness, both of body and spirit had sunk her down into a blank emptiness of loss. Crushed against the dark, shining pane she waited anxiously. For what? The man. 

Tucked quietly away in the crook of the window seat she cried, breath and steam mingling. She stared out through the bars. As the small hours of the morning passed, the heat began to build up about her; smothering layers that endeavoured to warm her. Against her back the aged wood was solid and comforting, offering a staid, sure existence in her world. At the girl’s feet lay an edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets, small and well worn. 

The room was modest in size, square, save for the small pocket of a window seat in which the girl sat. The window and fire were the only sources of light, no candle having been lit since first the girl had moved to her seat from her bed. The bed, large and puffy squatted between its four wooden posts and dominated the room beside her. At the foot of the bed was an old, polished ottoman of a plain dark chestnut colour, that gleamed like the centre of an eye as the fire­light and polish flickered against one another. 

The worn wooden floor was concealed in three places by well­cared for knotted rugs of warm, naval blue. The waxy remains of a candle, which had expired without replacement, lay in a set pool on the mantle in a small metal candlestick holder: an area which it shared only with a long broken hat feather of black and white. 

Her back was now to the increasing light, and on the floor was the silhouette of her body and three panes of glass with endlessly renewing rain tears running down them. Her face was darkened in early morning shadow, but streaks also ran down it. Pain for her wait. But she was sure of a coming joy. 

Oh, where is Willoughby? Her hands pushed her finally up from the window seat, and she stood, trembling, alone, unaided by hand or object. As the call of the new day of endurance, and perhaps distant promise lured her to movement, she drew herself up to the fire to huddle before it. Fire light flashed and reached for her skin, stopping short but still pawing up towards her. 

The heat was harsh and breathed over her skin: cooled by contact with the frozen window. The reverie she had entered began to burn away as her skin warmed and regained feeling. The lone feather saddened her again, and taking it up, she threw it into the fire. There it collapsed in on itself, morphing and writhing before being assimilated into the ash of the fire. The feather had been embraced, welcomed; had met its final end. She had not, she still waited. Hanging before her fate as the feather had hung in her hand before the fire. 

Everywhere was silence. No; no silence. Now that she listened, the fire was growling, the house was awakening, and everything was as normal; but yet not. She turned from the fire to her vanity and stared at herself in the reflection. Her eyes were full of wait, too afraid to close should they miss him. Even as she stared her eyes began to droop in weariness, succumbing to the sadness of days. 

Time passed. 

Deep in the house a bell rung. It’s faint metal ring pierced the room: interrupted her unquenched and encouraged tears. Tentatively, she raised herself up from her arms which leaned on the dresser with her damp eyes and sad face to listen again. Was it what she hoped? Had it come? 

Dressed, she crept out of her room, leaving behind the warmth and entering a cold hallway. It was large and strange to her, thin gaps of air on either side of her looming up to meet above her head in a chill smothering cloud. Fluctuating feelings of coming joy and the fear of repeated disappointment moved within her spurring her on with small tentative footsteps. The closer she came to the front door the warmer the air around her became as she entered the wing of the house where the resident family lived. The hallway expanded out into a foyer of white­stone, thin bright light filtering in from grilled windows above the great wooden doors.

In the breakfast room she found the cause of the bell. A letter. She choked as excitement and shock overcame her, flushing her pale cheeks with fire and causing her hands to shake in anticipation. He has not forgotten me! He has written, and now all will be right. Joy lifted her up and she smiled as she reached for the letter on the tray. 

It was a small white square on a silver tray. So small, and yet so potent.

The windows of the breakfast room were large, spanning from floor to ceiling. Condensation on the window rained down the inside of the pane in silent streamlets which quietly evaporated in the warmth from the fireplace. Heat had slithered out of its grate and was peacefully invading the room. In the centre of the floor was a table laden with breakfast dishes and cutlery; at the end a newspaper; encircled by chairs in which were sitting men and women at breakfast. Chatter of the family and their guests flowed about through the warmth and contributed to the atmosphere of the late morning. Chatter, cheer. Heat warmed and enlivened the breakfasters, save for one girl. She sat silent and staring, in her hands an unfolded letter, on her lap several sealed letters and a curl of snipped hair: in her eyes tears. 

Statement of Intention: 

The character of Marianne Dashwood comes from the novel Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. In the book Marianne is waiting for correspondence from Willoughby, and being a dramatic character I want to write about her and her environment as she is waiting, and how she is feeling. Because I want to assume that the readers are familiar with the story of the novel, I will use third person to add distance between reader and Marianne.