Response: Jeremy Hare's "Dreams"

Dreams is a story about Sora, a young man with a dream of being strong enough to fight his own battles. The narration begins with Hikairi, the vice-captain of the karate club - she has an air of seriousness about her that is challenged by Sora and his dream. She has what she wants and is in a position of power. However, the way she carries herself throughout the piece suggests she is discontent; it is especially evident when she is speaking with Sora that his dream of becoming stronger brings him much more happiness than Hikairi's club and studies bring her.

For a plot like this one, where there are two characters and a lot of dialogue, it's important to have enough difference between the characters that their being together and their conversations highlight the differences between them. This piece does this rather well. Sora laughs often, while Hikairi does so only once, and is surprised to find herself laughing along with the boy. Once the two of them fall into their respective places within their conversation, Sora is more relaxed and carefree, while Hikairi  is constantly trying to goad a negative response out of him. It would be interesting to see exactly why this is - we hear Sora's story and know his motivation for doing what he does, but we don't hear anything about Hikairi's dreams, or what she thinks her dreams are. Does she have any goals? If she does, do they thrill her or is she trudging along trying to meet them?

Something that would very much enhance the story, in my opinion, would be to spend a bit of time working on the syntax of the dialogue. Both characters are meant to be in high school (the setting is, supposedly a Japanese secondary school) but their words are a bit too formal. In Japan, formality is important, especially when speaking to people older than you, but it doesn't really work well that way with dialogue in English. Following that, both Hikairi and Sora are young people - Sora is a "freshman" and it is implied that Hikairi is maybe a year or so older - yet the neither of them use much syntax that is consistent with their age. For Hikairi, this could work because her character is supposedly more rigid and rule driven. Sora, however, is more carefree and disregards rules to a point (he was sleeping in the Karate club's training hall, after all). His words would more than likely be more youthful and less formal and respectful.