Meet Connie. She’s a 26-year-old still coming into her own. In this Ken Rogers piece, we have two stories colliding; or rather, we catch a glimpse into Connie’s family life while observing her navigate parallel adversity in the wider world. What better way to showcase the inner struggle of latent development than plopping the protagonist into a political campaign—specifically, as a congressional campaign volunteer—and making her canvass on behalf of an underdog. Engaging with the public as part of an election campaign is guaranteed to coax even the smallest self-doubt into consciousness.
It’s the concept that kept me reading, not character or action. There is minimal action in the immediate present portion of the narrative. In fact, I find it curious that Rogers chose to place the protagonist in the candidate’s call centre as opposed to having Connie canvass door-to-door. Do congressional campaign workers typically knock on doors? Perhaps the call centre was a choice setting to emphasize distance as a motif. I wonder, however, if there may have been more opportunity for character depth in the present scene if it included face-to-face interactions. I mean, Connie gets off the hook a little too easy at times, “After fifteen seconds of failed communication, Connie apologized and disconnected…” Symbolic elements aside, what about character development? Something to consider for your future writing projects.
Dialogue is the major strength of this piece. Lines like, “Anthony can’t understand what you see in this man either,” are placed in just the right spots to build a mosaic of opinion. Rogers stays true to the concept “show, don’t tell,” by allowing characters to express themselves without added commentary as to a particular viewpoint or ideology. It isn’t that those elements are absent; rather, they aren’t being pushed on the reader. This work of fiction is doing exactly as fiction is intended; build a microcosm of the real world in order to allow the reader to explore. Another writer could have taken this same concept into shaky territory by preaching at the audience. Class act, Rogers.
Source: Rogers, Ken. “Inalienable Rights.” CommuterLit: Fiction on the Go, June 1 2023, https://commuterlit.com/2023/06/thursday-inalienable-rights/
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Pauline Shen 