Weekly Response

Small Details Count


"He rarely strayed from work or home. On days off he drank a few Budweisers and watched sports, especially his beloved Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots. Rogers wouldn't let him smoke inside, so he sat on the porch with a Marlboro and headphones listening to Aerosmith or Celine Dion.

‘Oh, my gaaahhd, she's the best sinnga on the plaaaahhnet,’ he would say in his New England accent.”

Last week we began discussing which sort of details should we incorporate into our articles. It was said small details allows the readership to identify with the person or people in question in our article pieces. We briefly spoke about the new definition of “who” in the list of “W’s” (“who, what, when, and where”) that is now being defined by some as “a character”. The character(s) featured humanizes an article, and the small details surrounding the protagonist of our piece can either make us empathetic towards them, or feel like we know them better than most people we see everyday.
Earlier this month an obituary was published detailing the death of Neil Alan Smith. A modest middle-aged man employed at the local Crab Shack, who died after being struck by a vehicle on his bike coming home from work. After this appeared online on the St. Petersburg Times website, an offensive off-hand comment was posted declaring, “A man who is working as a dishwasher at the Crab Shack at the age of 48 is surely better off dead.”
The comment was immediately flagged for its inappropriateness, but not without attracting the attention of the Andre Meacham, a Times staff writer, who addressed the comment by writing an incredibly well-done profile on the deceased that can be seen here, http://www.tampabay.com/news/obituaries/hit-and-run-victim-was-quiet-and-dependable-co-workers-say/1124721#tpcccf.
Meacham’s employment of details in this piece is so effective, one feels grief and the sense of loss of this man, who without the tactless feedback of the anonymous poster, whose humble accomplishments would never of been brought to the public’s notice. Meacham portrays him through various lenses of the people who knew him best. Although he was a private man, Meacham is able to depict him with clarity with the usage of anecdotes from neighbors, co-workers, and his roommate.
Details like the descriptions of his hands—“the palms of his hands wrinkled and white”—pays homage to the ten years he served at the Crab Shack working as a dishwasher. The inclusion of his affinity towards Celine Dion and the New England Patriots shows he was a man with diverse tastes that may not be expected of him, and the descriptions of his generosity shines light onto the inner workings of a man who was much more than a dishwasher at the Crab Shack.
Meacham’s profile is exemplary perhaps because of its unexpectedness. He succeeds in creating an emotional piece because it allows the reader a glimpse into a world of a man most would not automatically think to show a pressing interest in (and exactly the falsehood Meacham wished to disprove), and is all the more bitter-sweet because we know from the beginning he has already died, leaving the reader with a haunting sense of the larger picture that lay behind the few lines that comprise an obituary.