The Writer Character Analysis

There was something meek and gentle about those single-lidded half-moon eyes. The traces of infancy still lingered in the soft line of his jaw. It was a face so utterly ordinary you could easily have mistaken it for that of another, a face whose characteristics would be forgotten the moment you turned away from it.

As it turned out, none of my relatives died; none were injured or even arrested. But all through that autumn in 1980, my thoughts returned to that tiny room at one end of the kitchen, where I used to lie on my stomach to do my homework, that room with the cold paper floor—had the boy used it to spread out his homework on its cold paper floor, then lie stomach-down just as I had? The middle-school kid I'd heard the grown-ups whispering about. How had the seasons kept on turning for me, when time had stopped forever for him that May?

Permission? Yes, you have my permission, but only if you do it properly. Please, write your book so that no one will ever be able to desecrate my brother’s memory again […]

Whenever we had a toe war, I always won.

He was really ticklish, you see.

All I had to do was poke his foot with my big toe and he’d start squirming.

At first I couldn’t tell whether he was grimacing like that because he was ticklish, or because it really hurt…

But then he would turn bright red and laugh.

I didn’t pray. I didn't close my eyes, or observe a minute silence. The candles burned steadily. Their orange flames undulating soundlessly, gradually being sucked into the center and hollowed out. Only then did I notice how incredibly cold my ankles were. Without realizing it, I’d been kneeling in a snowdrift that covered Dong-ho’s grave. The snow had soaked through my socks, seeping in right through to my skin. I stared, mute, at that flame’s wavering outline, fluttering like a bird’s translucent wing.

There was something meek and gentle about those single-lidded half-moon eyes. The traces of infancy still lingered in the soft line of his jaw. It was a face so utterly ordinary you could easily have mistaken it for that of another, a face whose characteristics would be forgotten the moment you turned away from it.

As it turned out, none of my relatives died; none were injured or even arrested. But all through that autumn in 1980, my thoughts returned to that tiny room at one end of the kitchen, where I used to lie on my stomach to do my homework, that room with the cold paper floor—had the boy used it to spread out his homework on its cold paper floor, then lie stomach-down just as I had? The middle-school kid I'd heard the grown-ups whispering about. How had the seasons kept on turning for me, when time had stopped forever for him that May?

Permission? Yes, you have my permission, but only if you do it properly. Please, write your book so that no one will ever be able to desecrate my brother’s memory again […]

Whenever we had a toe war, I always won.

He was really ticklish, you see.

All I had to do was poke his foot with my big toe and he’d start squirming.

At first I couldn’t tell whether he was grimacing like that because he was ticklish, or because it really hurt…

But then he would turn bright red and laugh.

I didn’t pray. I didn't close my eyes, or observe a minute silence. The candles burned steadily. Their orange flames undulating soundlessly, gradually being sucked into the center and hollowed out. Only then did I notice how incredibly cold my ankles were. Without realizing it, I’d been kneeling in a snowdrift that covered Dong-ho’s grave. The snow had soaked through my socks, seeping in right through to my skin. I stared, mute, at that flame’s wavering outline, fluttering like a bird’s translucent wing.