Doing Time: John’s Diary
I listened to an audio story titled Doing Time: John’s Diary. The description is what made me decide to listen to this particular story: “As a kid, John dreamed of becoming a police officer, but by the age of 17, he had committed more than 75 armed robberies”. The audio story begins with John saying that he used to want to be a police officer, but now he hates the police. We then hear some loud noises and a prison guard telling the inmates that it is 5:30 and they need to get up. It quickly becomes evident that John is telling his story from prison. John then introduces himself and noises from prison and included in between every few of his sentences.
As he is describing how he ended up in prison and reflecting on pieces of his past, intermittently hear prison guards giving more orders to the inmates. This feature of the audio story gives John’s story a very real feel to it. He is in prison and he cannot control the fact that he is going to be interrupted at times. Rather than being distracting to his story, John uses these interruptions strategically to break up his story into different distinct segments. As John’s day goes on, he describes where he is at and what he is doing and it gives the audience a feel for what prison is like.
John keeps sentences short and concise. This helps the audience follow along with his story and understand what he is saying. What makes his story so compelling is his insights on life in prison along with his reflections on how it affects him. He talks a lot about what he does and what he thinks about while he is locked up. What I thought was one of the most interesting parts of the audio story is when he talks about making an armed robbery towards the end of his story. The inflection in his voice changed drastically when he talked about the feeling of pointing a gun in someones face and seeing their expression when he did it. This inflection gives you the sense that this is something he may truly miss while he is in prison.
After talking about his dreams of living a normal life when he gets out of prison, John ends his audio story with music playing in the background. He talks about how he likes listening to music late at night in his cell. “A lot of places you can go at 1 o’clock in the morning, in here..” This is a moment when his tone is very optimistic. Following that moment, the music becomes gradually louder and then the audio story is over. It was very well done the way the music ended the story.
Views All Time
Views Today