Inmate # 48209 Essay

In the creative writing assignment I decided to explore a narrative that revolves around the idea of a connection between one man and his past. In this story, I created a scenario where two individuals become pen pals with one another and begin to write each other letters. Billy is a young boy who enjoys the simple childish enjoyments of life such as the great outdoors who serves as more of a background role in the tale. The majority of tale, however, focuses on a character of the name inmate #48209. Through his name and a series of references and foreshadowing, the reader learns that this character is incarcerated. The character throughout the story deals with the trouble of wanting to know what lies beyond the horizon. As the tale goes on it is revealed that inmate #48209 is actually Billy in the future who is writing to his

When I first started juggling with this idea of letters being exchanged between a prisoner and a child, I struggled finding the child's role in the tale. My primary focuses was always going to be on the much more complex inmate #48209, so I struggled with the idea of even including the character in the story at all. I struggled throughout this process, and even after, on how I was to handle the writing styles between an educated man in prison and a child that is in grade school. This issue is one of the reasons why the young Billy serves mostly as a means of comparison because it makes it very difficult to create an overly complex character without a lot of the poetic language that I originally intended to use. I originally wanted the child to serve as an example of innocence and to serve as an audience member to the poetic speeches by inmate #48209. I had actually written around half of the story when I noticed the emphasis that I was placing on the similarities between the two character and at that point decided to make them the same