Character Exercise 1

What's In a Name?

Luka:

As Luka set the table in the dining room of the two story farmhouse he lived in, he realized how much he was going to miss it. The warm and inviting tones of hardwood table glowed a rich brown in the fading light of one of the last days of fall. The last four plates of china were what the family’s once extravagant table settings had been reduced to. Everything else had been sold in hopes of keeping the small farmhouse and property, but people like his family were no longer allowed to have land of their own, no matter how much they were willing to pay. Luka glanced in sorrow about the room, and realized that in leaving this, he would leave behind his childhood. The black and white pictures on the wall spoke of times when his family had been much better off, and he smiled to think of all the picnics he used to go on with his little sister in the fields. He set down the last silver-plated fork, and adjusted the white laced place-mat, the edges fraying from age, as he frowned at the thought of this table being the source of the money used to transport them and what was left of their personal belongings to the city.

Antje:

It was his second month in the new school. It was much bigger than the last one, with its grey stone walls extending 3 stories, slanting into a black-slate roof that would make the whole schoolhouse unbearably hot in the summer. Increasingly, the number of people grew smaller because many boys were dropping out to fight by Hitler's side for a better Deutchland. It was when his Biologie class consolidated with another for lack of students that he first saw her. She walked into the room and immediately his heart fell silent. The air about her shimmered in the morning light, turning her dark brown curls to a dark auburn red. Her hair in coils like smoke bounced with every step she took, and as she turned to face him, he caught a glimpse of her green eyes. Green as the forest and as the field he once played in, with flecks of gold like the sun. The sight brought back the carelessness and that long lost feeling of the freedom privilaged by naivite and innocence. That sight he would never forget.