War is Upon Us

By: Dylan DeGrood

Chapter 1

I was once an Invisible Man. It is interesting to believe how hard I had to try to

undermine em with yeses, yet it ended up with a giant squeezing me down a hole. Time still

flies as I know since it has already been, I do not even remember how many years since I came

out of that hell hole. I left that room lit, music blasting, and thoughts still bouncing off the

walls in case I must return once more. Now it is almost as if I opened up another book and

jumped inside because things are starting to change.

I tend to walk around a lot just taking in everything around me and experiencing the new

ways of life that have unfolded before me. I walk down the street in New York looking up at the

clouds as if I am sitting upon a hill in France that was once used for the first war, that even might

be in use today. Imagine all those people out there fighting for a cause that might not really mean

anything to the people bumping into me right now but will most likely still go down in history

for making a change. The things I did, events I had to suffer through, just to merely get

recognized in the future by some flimsy pages. Too bad our change is not so sudden as a peace

treaty signed after a war. I hear many many things on this war that is fought all the way across

the atlantic. If only words could solve any problem not no guns. All they gotta do is turn the

corner and BANG theyre dead.

Enough talk on the war, it is not of my interest at least for now. There is this little coffee

shop that I love to go to every weekend. I can almost smell the coffee roasting in house five

blocks away. My legs seem like they arent carrying me and I am just a cloud floating towards
what pleases me. The Usual, my good man? the barista says. It is of course Saturday right? I

ask as we laugh off the pains of the week that are now waiting to be forgotten. The radio

happened to be turned on and I decided to tune in on what the radio host had to say. He mostly

talked about the war efforts and the increase of rationing but that was now everyday talk, just

like saying hello. It still seems as if everyone that listens takes this away as if it is new

information. Although, it is true there are many, many ways of saying hello. I stir my cup of

coffee as I pour in the creamer making the deep black into a light brown. A memory sparks into

my head as if deja vu but sizzles away as if it were a spark that landed itself on the floor. See ya

next week! I say exiting the little hole in the wall with the ring of a bell above my head. I

continue my walk down the sidewalk thinking about the word hello as I see across the street a

white man and black man in working suits having a full fledged smiling conversation, the black

man holding a briefcase. Anger pulses through one vein. Why doesnt my folk understand the

brutality we went through a decade ago. Move along, No worries, Right?

As I was making my way downtown, I happened to bump into my white boss. We got

into a conversation about work and how well I was doing which I knew for a fact he had to be

lying. No one ever compliments me so why my boss? It feels as if he does not care about the

color of my skin but I know from a good friend that you should always play the game which in

fact my boss is most likely doing that now. He ended up leaving in a hurry like most of his

people do, but not without yelling back Your shift starts in an hour!. I work in a small business

that helps to get anyone back on their feet. I see mostly black folk come in all the time that seem

to never leave even after they exit the door. Why can they not get back on their feet anymore?

Havent I? My boss always tells his employees that we will never lose this business because we

will never decline in the number of clients we have. Its funny how no one questions the boss,
especially when every single client comes back with another problem. Its like a poor mechanic

who sends the car off with a different part broken knowing that the client will be back because

the other problem was fixed. I will not say anything because I have gone down that treacherous

road before. Besides my co-workers are worth keeping the job, if their personalities were

different, I probably would be on the street doing nothing once again.

I can not tell if just going through the motions is doing me or anyone any good.

Memories become so distant almost as if the long term memory is wiped every so often. Co-

workers, the barista, and my community have kept me going, giving me those memories that last

longer than I thought they would. This war has been a blur to all of us. Plane has been shot

down *Gasp* We have won a battle *Cheer* Troops might not return home anytime soon

*Cry*. Every part of the war that is heard over here has been turned into a whole new ordeal

that is creating problems not needed within communities. Bringing us together, everyone calls it,

but can it tear us apart too?

Nuclear Bomb? Has anything ever sounded more terrifying?(Rhetorical Question) The

Tortoise and the Hare, 1 on 1, U.S. against the nations. People believe that we can end the war if

only we can win the race. I have heard so many things about the race to create the first atomic

bomb. Apparently the science of fission is behind this death machine that can end everything in

seconds.The radio explains that fission is when a chain reaction builds up so fast that so much

energy is released causing a massive explosion. The news comes in everyday through the radio

and every time the topic is brought up, every face in the room drops. Although, they do not seem

to realize they experience this fission in everyday life, of course it doesnt happen suddenly but

it also doesnt happen in decades. It is such a struggle to experience this idea of fission in lives

first hand. Just by walking down the street everything seems to happen at once creating a blur.
Now I watch the subway flying past me in a blur with a new perspective. This war, its changing

us.

Reflection

First off, the name of my sequel gives the reader a little insight of what the book will

mainly be about. I intend that before reading this chapter that you might understand that it will be

focused on a war and using previous knowledge of the first book know that some type of radical

change will happen within the book about this war. I decided to connect this whole book on the

idea of the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb and the book be based in the time

of World War 2. My narrator starts off with him reflecting back on where he left off in the first

book and describes the scene of being in New York during a war. Throughout the chapter, with

the help of the reader's knowledge of history, the reader should figure out that the specific era is

during World War 2. The narrator goes on to describe his almost daily life making connections

back to the first book but these connections are not exactly realized by the narrator and can not

connect them to the old memories. I hope to symbolize the whole new mindset the narrator has

now and but still keep some characteristics the narrator had before like the anger he gets when

the black businessman talks to the white businessman in this chapter. This chapter sets the stage

for the narrator in this sequel to take the reader through a new society created during the war that

ends up changing the personalities of many people including all skin colors.

I happened to use many stylistic devices that were used by Ralph Ellison to enhance my

chapter for the new sequel. The main ones were Italics, Paradox, Foreshadow, Allusion,

Rhetorical Questions, and Onomatopoeia. I mainly used these to create the tone for the book
which switched a little throughout this chapter. Allusions, I used quite a bit because I wanted to

mostly pull events from Invisible Man to reinstate the narrator's character in order to create

this whole new plotline.