Friday, February 1, 2013

Critique of Shelby’s “The Hand of Justice”



As a transcription of a found artifact, the story is told predominantly through Douglas G. Sheridan as he explains the motivations for his crimes on tape.  The fragmented sentences and stuttered speech successfully capture D.S.’s insanity and the anxiety that one trying to convey an important message in limited time would feel.  Though he claims to be telling the truth, D.S. is an unreliable narrator from the beginning, unable to recall his own middle name or what relative he was named after.  It would be reasonable to assume that his recapitulation of events will be skewed.  Also, for a man trying to preserve chastity, D.S. uses some rather impious language, even if he is outraged by his victims’ lewd conduct.  D.S. recognizes that his condition was caused in part by a history of violence in his family, starting with his drunken grandfather.  I feel that there is room for more back story to explain why he was provoked to kill lustful women as opposed to violent drunks.  

I commend your creativity in modeling your story after an official federal document.  I could see this piece as a series of transcriptions pulled from artifacts that D.S. has left behind to play with the authorities or to more fully impart his lesson.  I am reminded of Kevin Spacey’s role in Seven. 

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