CHAPTER I

Rebecca
Rebecca
Aug 22, 2017 · 2 min read

“If you keep your mouth shut, you’ll be surprised what you can learn.

Plot, setting and characterization:

This first chapter of the story unfolds in a small town in Alabama called Woodstock. It all begins with an e-mail sent by a local resident (John B. McLemore), the radio announcer (Brian Reed), in which he asks him to investigate two crimes that were committed years ago, especially one of them , In which a wealthy family of the town is involved, who seem to have been discarded of any information that could incriminate them.

Essay

Something’s happened. Something has happened in this town. This is how the story begins in S-town, a story that as you can see in the first chapter, will be full of surprises. When you listen to the story instead of reading it, it catches you because you can hear the tones in which the characters speak and say their lines.

The first thing that catches the eye is the crime story, which no one cares about in Woodstock. For some reason these crimes only catch the attention of John, who decides to contact Brian Reed, so that he can reveal those crimes in his radio program.

The most important crime that most worries John is the murder of a village boy at the hands of another boy, from a family with money. Brian decides he can not do anything without having proof of what happened, so he decides to interrogate the boy that John learned of the crime. Everything seems very mysterious at the moment when Brian decides to interrogate him and he does not appear anywhere.

At the beginning of the story one would think that John is a person who cares about the corruption in which his people are involved, however, as history progresses, John begins to act strangely and to speak more about his feelings and problems in Instead of looking for the boy who told him about the murder. At this point Brian doubts the veracity of the crime and suspects that John only wants the attention and company of someone, due to his problem of depression. Here the story gives us a twist and you could think that everything is a farce invented by John, until the boy’s wife appears, which Brian interrogates and he reassumes the story, despite John’s strange behavior.

In conclusion the story is about a crime committed by someone from a family with power, whom the law could not reach and although everyone is aware of who committed the crime, nobody says anything about it. I think the story reflects the harsh reality in which families with money and power are untouchable, perhaps the story of a turn in the next chapters, but in this first chapter this is my point of view.

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Rebecca

Written by

Rebecca

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