Here’s my feedback for this student’s Creative Response SAC draft on Joan London’s The Golden Age.
Student draft below:
Sullivan laid in his bed staring at the ceiling trying to finish off his poem even though he felt awfully drained. A warm yellow light shimmered off his rectangular mirror to show a small glowing figure. Sullivan knew who this glowing warm light was. He had read about angels being seen before death in many poems. At that moment he felt relief at the knowledge that he would be free from the disease, the hospital beds and many other things that made him feel lonely. As his eyes began to shut for the last time, he knew this was the moment where he set free.
As the warmth of the sun hit Sullivan’s eyes, he slowly opened them to see him standing in the middle of Perth’s city. The city had disciplined women and hardworking men with horses trotting up and down the streets. While he was looking around, a girl with golden locks had caught his eyes, he said “look I can walk” but she looked right through him. He tried to communicate with many of the citizens who walked by him to only discover that no one could hear or see him. He now had everything he ever wished for but loneliness was slowly making its way back to bay. Step by step Sullivan made his way out of town to the Golden Age.
As night fell at the Golden Age, the corridor was dark, gloomy and hallow reflecting the sickness of the children. He slowly walked around with his fingers brushing along the rough surface of the grey, gloomy, hopeless walls of the hospital and the sight of helpless children laying inside the iron lung made him feel free and thankful that he wasn’t dependent on them to breathe anymore. He had finally made it into his small hospital ward, where he saw his rectangular mirror and his bed with his body laying there with Frank sitting in his wheelchair, holding onto Sullivan’s lifeless hand with a single drop of tear slowly sliding down his cheek. As the sisters came in, Frank rolled himself out quietly with his head looking down, as if he was paying his respect; Sister Olive Penny gently picked up Sullivan’s lifeless body from the creased sheets and laid him on another bed and rolled him away into the mortuary whilst the other sisters stayed back to remove his sheets. Sullivan felt something warm trickling down his face that he hasn’t felt since he was a small child, he was getting his other emotions back which he lost to loneliness.
Sullivan explored the inside of the hospital which he never got to see and ended up at Frank’s ward, where he was laying still in his bed repeating something that he couldn’t hear, so he moved closer and heard Frank sadly repeating “Overnight it must have snowed, this is all I can see now.” He could see Elsa getting closer through the “crack between the hinges,” Elsa quietly rolled into Frank’s room and held his hand and quietly said “he is in a better place now, free from the illness, he will always be here with us.” The soothing words that came out of Elsa’s mouth helped Sullivan add more stanzas in his unfinished poem.
The glowing white light of the moon lit the verandah Sullivan had only heard off, looking into the surroundings of the Golden Age and the Netting Factory, he felt free but still lonely because he had no one to share this moment with. He looked around and let the fresh air fill is lungs for the first time in a very long time. Sullivan walked back to Frank’s ward and saw them sharing a bed, they fit like a puzzle, they were made for each other. While Sullivan was savouring the moment happiness in Frank and Elsa’s face while they were sleeping, he saw a bright white light on the other side of the ward, Sullivan felt a puling towards the light and he knew his time on earth was nearly done.
The next morning when Frank woke up, he saw Elsa’s golden hair gently spread across his pillow, he caressed her face while she still slept. Seeing this moment, Sullivan had finally felt freedom inside him, he felt as if his purpose had been served. While Sullivan was walking towards the bright white light that had reappeared, the rest of his poem flushed through his mind.
“Over Night
It must have snowed
This is all
I can see now
With the bright yellow light
Glimmering through the white snow
Hope.
This was hope”
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