Smyth is a journalism student living in the 21st century. Cooley is a flawed and extremely volatile spirit. Their lives are nothing to brag about. But their shared story is one.
This is a WAKE OF LIBERTY update:
Wake Of Liberty is one of those stories told by one of those characters whose perspective is flawed.
He believes liberty is a white knight in a world of darkness
Smyth, our main character, is a journalism student living in the 21st century. He lives in New York City, one of the grandest cities in the world. His perspective on the world is skewed and sheltered, innocent and biased. He believes liberty is a white knight in a world of darkness. He is living inside a dream world and is in for a rude awakening.
He goes on a journey through time, experiencing the French revolution up close and personal. Through his eyes we get to see the intricacies behind liberty and what it really mean to fight for it, to champion and enforce it.
His innocence is perhaps an attribute to his storytelling abilities, making him the ideal person to tell the tale. Through his shocked and horrified perspective we get to see the raw reality of revolution. The more he sees the more he can’t believe his eyes. Down go the bastions of utopia and up rise the masses, drenched in blood, seething with anguish, seeking justice, to each their own and all together, fighting for freedom as they understand it.
After centuries of oppression and ignorance, it’s not an easy task, or a straightforward one. One man’s deliverance is another’s calamity. Royalists and Republicans, Democrats and Patriots, Girondins and Jacobins, they square up against each other, clashing heads in the name of a free and just France, as they understand it, laying the entire nation to waste in the process. They pave the way for a new beginning and a grand century, dishing out a glorious yet bloody inheritance tax for the French and Europeans alike, to be paid in times to come.
The revolution’s motto, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY rings hauntingly in Smyth’s ears as he witnesses the collapse of one myth after another.
The revolution’s motto, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY rings hauntingly in Smyth’s ears, as he sees one myth after another collapse before his eyes
His shock is in fact so great that he doesn’t acknowledge history. He resists what he sees and criticizes everything that happens, eager to rearrange what is happening through the perspective of a bruised innocence. At times he rationalizes what he sees, other times he rages on about what shoulda, coulda, oughta. He’s a participant observer in a dynamic tale, running the gauntlet and feeling every plot twist and turn. His reactions are visceral and loud, urging him to keep moving.
He has no choice but to keep moving. The only way out of the journey is to complete it. Getting sidetracked at any point in time is not an option. Lose the plot and he’s done for. He becomes history, as his guide, Cooley, continuously reminds him.
It’s through Cooley’s questionable guidance we get to see what is going on
Cooley. Our second narrator. Flawed and unpredictable. A volatile spirit of the times.
It’s through Cooley’s questionable guidance we get to see what is going on. We experience the French revolution as it happened two odd centuries ago through his provocative perspective. His attitude is bad, his words harsh and his stance wicked. He speaks either bluntly or sharply, depending on the situation, in a way that doesn’t display affection for humanity. He’s a reluctant, detached narrator, with no interest in telling the story. He’s been forced to tell it by forces beyond his control so he just spews it out, eager to get it over with and get on with his life.
And there you have it. Two narrators working as one, both of them flawed, both of them unreliable and partial, describing Liberty’s wake from start to finish, sparing no gory and unsettling detail.
When their journey is over, so is life as they knew it. The world has changed forever on account of their actions.
PS – Here’s a list of ten highly unreliable narrators that have charmed audiences with their own stories over the years.