Jorge Castro

Writing 39B
24 February 2018
Writing RIP Project Proposal: How Far Will You for the A?
Plot:

 The short story focus on the struggling mind and view of Jeffery Smith, a Freshman
Anatomy major at Linux Medical School. He attends this University with his capricious
girlfriend, Elizabeth Miller and is supported by his parents Mara Smith and Spencer Smith,
with his mother being a renowned and respected surgeon in the field and a strict role model
in his life. What seems like the picture perfect and positive imaged set by Jeffery as he
interacts with others about his life, it masks his dark tempting and alluring thoughts: to kill
his mother and girlfriend. Jeffery may smile and show a bubbly personality, but it hides the
mental, physical, and emotional scars made by his mother who he is always seeking approval
from and make happy. Elizabeth Miller, a pre-med/psychology major, uses various
techniques to ridicule and belittle Jeffery in privacy while acting innocent and sweet in
public with him. Elizabeth takes advantage of Jeffery’s weakness and uses him to get
associative recognition and favouritism with his mother. She herself is liked by the Mrs.
Smith and thus forces Jeffery to stay with her to please his mother. With the final project
coming up, Jeffery is bombarded with family pressure, relationship commitment and stress
from the workload. Aimlessly following both his mother and girlfriend orders and commands
and the high expectations and work demand from the school, Jeffery will eventually act on
those impulses and decide whether to kill the two people he desperately tries to make
content.
Main Characters:

 Jeffery Smith, the main protagonist with complicated and contradictory issues: been
abused and oppressed by the Mother and is facing the same, to a lesser degree by his
girlfriend. Learns to fear and respect the authority of women and seeks approval from both.
18 years old and majors in Human Anatomy, wants to follow in the footsteps of the mother
and has a strange fascination with the insides of a body.

 Mara Smith, Jeffery’s Mother who is retired surgeon and alumni of Linux University.
Constantly pressured and coerced Jeffery to do well in school and punished him severely for
any failure or act of rebelling. Believes in a strong sense of discipline and is the head
authority of the house.

 Spencer Smith, Jeffery’s Father and Mara’s husband, an obscured and quiet man who
works as an ophthalmologist. Meet his wife at the same university. Passive and avoids fights
and arguments with the wife and is sometimes seen as unhappy and weak.
 Elizabeth Miller, Jeffery’s girlfriend. Meet in high school and enjoys taking advantage of
shy and unconfident guys. Takes amusement from hurting and manipulating Jeffery whose
family has an influential reputation and wants the prestige.

 Jonathan Miller, Elizabeth’s Father and a therapist at a local hospital/asylum. Similar

demeanour to Spencer but notices Jeffery tendency and behaviour and tries to help him.

 Elanor Miller, Elizabeth’s mother and who is deceased. Iron-willed and stern, scolded
the daughter to make her do well in school and the death left a permanent impression on the
daughter to succeed and escape the mother’s tyranny.

 Professor Wright Hue, Jeffery’s Professor and in charge of the school’s autopsy room
for medical training.
Central conflict:

 The climatic idea behind this short horror story is that it leads up to the protagonist,
Jeffery Smith, to give into the desire to murder his mother and girlfriend that is in response to
three main factors in the text: the first being his mother, who is pressuring him to do well in
college, setting the expectations high in order to avoid humiliated from her fellow alumni of
the university and antagonizes him for either showing no real effort or bringing out low
results. The second is the girlfriend, who does like him as a person but only because she
thrives and enjoys pranking and joking with spineless guys. She is mostly focused on
obtaining the prestige from his family and getting the mother’s approval. Thus, in a way
she’s competing for Mrs. Smith approval while reminding Jeffery of his youth trauma abuse
by giving him the cold shoulder or being aggravated with him. The third and final factor is
the class final project that will determine whether he can succeed in the course or not;
especially since its design to show whether he has the skill to make it in the school. It
involves him to be able to able to dissect an actual dead human body and name several of the
organs and conduct a sufficient diagnosis of what the patient had died from disease or
irregular bodily function. This all leads him to murder his mother and girlfriend because of
two main reasons: 1. He is pushed to an anxiety level whether all he cares is to do well and
kills the girlfriend first to use her as a “practice” test. 2. The mother has tortured and hurt him
too much that even after doing all this for her, he couldn’t stand anymore and murders her.
Inspirational Source:
Oates C. Joyce. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Celestial Timepiece,
22 Dec. 2016, celestialtimepiece.com/2015/01/21/where-are-you-going-where-
have-you-been/.
Gaitskill, Mary. The Other Place. The New Yorker, 19 Jun. 2017,
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-other-place (Links to an external site.)

 Starting with the first source, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? By Joyce C.
Oates, it gave me tropes that I can utilize and manipulate into my story. Although the
 language and context between mine and Oates will be completely different, the expectations
and concepts she used were ideas that I can shape into my own story to subvert and structure
my message based around the tropes. Further discussion of the tropes will be detailed down
in the next part of the proposal. The second source, The Other Place by Mary Gaitskill, is the
model I am going to follow stylistically in terms of how it is writing out in syntax and tone.
Gaitskill story narrative plot of sequences inside the text and first-person perspective aligns
more how my story can be told and makes more sense to format by for the genre and horror
context to sink into the audience. I will be using that first-person perspective to write a more
interesting casting of my story and it would be more effective to do so since my story does
involve engaging thought-process of the main character that the audience will receive it
better through this style of writing. In sum, Oates provided a nice range of tropes I can use
and Gaitskill uses the best model that would fit how I want to present the genre and message
to the audience.
Tropes:

 Four Central tropes that I am going include into my story are what follows:

1. Affably Evil- “Villains have a personality or manner that underscores how evil they
are…. There is absolutely nothing separating them from being normal, polite people”-
the idea behind this trope is to relate it to the main character, Jeffery, who is put up a front
about being the perfect student and pleasing his mother while at the same time bottles up
emotions of wanting to end her life and his girlfriend.

2. Faux Affably Evil- “A villain whose politeness is an act that only serves to enhance
their evil…. these villains adopt this pleasant persona…. This kind of villain maintains
a friendly, courteous mask even as they commit incredibly heinous acts”- similarly to the
first trope, this one is meant for describing the demeanor of both Elizabeth and Mara, both
who act nice and sweet to continue to control and oppress Jeffery in their hands and make
him meet their expectations.

3. Dysfunctional Family- “maladjusted people who generally don’t get along”- This one
will be more extended where it's not the family gets along but rather the family is abusing
someone in this case the son being “discipline” by the mom.

4. Conditioned to Accept Horror- “A character who is conditioned to accept a rather

horrible disturbing fate in life does so with a smile on their face”- in this case, the son has
been emotionally and physically suppressed by the mother while the father didn’t do
anything came to believe that what she did was normal and necessary. Therefore, he has a
hard time going against his mother and girlfriend and tries any means to satisfy their wishes
or expectations.
Metaphor:

 The intended audience that going to be targeted by this story will be mostly of college
students with genre manipulating what they fear and are uncomfortable with. The message
that I am attempting to get across to the audience is about critiquing and projecting the idea
about stress in college specifically parental expectations- trying to meet up to their what they
want from you- and relationships commitment- how can dating affect you if not mutually
balance in emotion and with the right person. Admittedly, the context is exaggerating the
extent on which any of these might have a negative effect on the individual besides the stress
itself. However, it’s important that I wholly and radically make the extreme about the
consequences when jumbling these critiques together. The point being is to show the
uncomfortableness and uneasiness about the harmful effects of someone in college just being
barraged by a line of different things. One of the thing I plan to manipulate and defy is the
common idea of about relationship- is that we generally rely on our partners for positive
things. However, the case could be made true for only one person in the relationship,
someone who is getting the benefit while the other isn’t. Thus, I am going to extend and
target this idea of how commitment and obligation can be hindered if not addressed or
proper. The other part of the critique would be the idea of how we try to satisfy our parent's
expectation by doing well and we sometimes think they know best. But, what if someone
would go to any lengths in college to get the approval of the parents? What if they cheat, lie,
stay up near exhausted for exams, starve themselves or perhaps murder (again a stretch)?
Would the end justify the means? College is stressful and perhaps some parents know best
but there should be a reasonable limit on how far a student would be pushed to preserve the
burden the parents placed on them and are fearful to admit it. The message I am going to
argue for in the story is about the harmful effects of excessive parental expectations can be
an improper relationship and the commitment to it.