Flashing Back to Your Past

A flashback is a break in a narrative sequence that takes the reader back to a prior event to provide background on a character or a conflict.  Book IX, the first book of The Odyssey that we'll read, starts with a  flashback where Odysseus shares his life since the Trojan War.  Record this definition and example on your reading guide.

Now, in a comment on this post, flash back to an event or a series of events from your past you feel define(s) you.  If you met a stranger and he asked you to tell a story that captured who you are, what would you say?

Here's what I would say.  Use my example below as a model to your flashback story in terms of its length and tone.

Several years ago, I sat at my kitchen table reading Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" on a Saturday evening.  As a twenty-something, I should have been out with my friends or then-boyfriend (now husband); instead, I delighted in Poe's every word, thinking I could reach into my kitchen drawer for a fork and knife, carving out words your "ephemeral" and "epiphany" and eating them they were so delicious.  In this moment, like Roderick, I had an epiphany of my own: I wanted to go back to graduate school.  So began an adventure that came to include many hours or studying, much of it subjects I wasn't interested in and material I found inconsequential, but I continued to apply myself, seeing that end goal in my mind's eye.  After toiling for months, I received a letter saying I wasn't accepted.  The university to which I'd applied was overwhelmed with applicants and underwhelmed with funding, limiting the acceptancies to a mere twelve of its over 100 applicants. I wasn't one of those twelve.  Then, I contemplated my hours of study, tearing up at what felt like wasted effort. Now, I still see that goal in my mind's eye, and slowly the energy toward that goal rekindles.  You see, I love to learn and I'm willing to work hard.  I'm resilient and unwavering in my understanding that if I reach out long enough for long enough, that I'll reach that goal. 

That's my flashback.  Now you go.