Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/5902
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I've been working for some time on a story about a detective who finds himself alienated, delusional and hopeless while trapped inside a dystopic, postmodern dream. This segment voices some of the sentiments that define the narrator's personality and ego-fixations.

> "Outside my window you can make out the figures of people who have simply given up. Their daily glance in the bathroom mirror is met with an unarticulated notion of defeat, a resignation to the fact that any hope for their brilliant future as the protagonist of a lucid, satisfying destiny was misplaced. They had woefully overestimated themselves. They languished, doing nothing in particular for years, with the quiet promise of self-improvement, the re-imagination of themselves as a success, occurring sometime in the future. They would start their journey towards their patient destiny tomorrow, or the day after. As I move among them, standing beside these shadows on the subway, in the grocery store, I know that I, at some point, suffered the same fate that they did. After Kathy, I could never find a rhythm, a groove to approach life from- something that I could keep private and something that could give me direction, inspiration, meaning. So I withdrew from it. Somebody said that apathy isn’t the same as withdrawing in disgust, but I did it more out of confusion and insecurity.
> 
> Life then came to find me, and by the time it did I had starting losing my hair, grown older and tired, impotent and faded; all the while having loved no one else and nothing else in particular.
> 
> This is what people are most afraid of."

**My goal is** for this passage to be taken "straight" - I want the reader to get a taste of the despair and the alienation my protagonist feels. I want them to buy into his worldview, at least a little.

**My problem is** that I'm worried the piece comes across as simplistic, overwrought and cliched; I'm afraid readers won't take this seriously - they won't sit and think about these musings, and they won't respect my character since he does.

**How can I improve my piece so as to convey the atmosphere and emotions in a powerful, engrossing fashion?**

Original score: 4