Death can be a terrifying thing, especially if you have no idea what comes next. Usually a fear of death is reserved for ourselves and people we know.
That is part of what makes this prompt from Joni Green so interesting. The person in this prompt is saddened by the death of someone, but not by someone they know. They are saddened by the death of someone that as far they know they have never met or at the very least don’t have a strong connection to.
I wonder what lead to this situation. This person is most likely in school. It’s hard to know what level of school, but probably high school, maybe college. Maybe they have just learned that the president was killed, maybe they came to school already knowing that because they didn’t see any other choice.
There is another element to this though.
At the very end of it, the character wishes for the comrades to drop a bomb. This most likely points to how the president died. There was some sort of conflict and the president was killed by the people on the other side. Maybe it is civil war or an insurrection. Maybe it is a foreign power that is trying to take them over. Either way it is most likely someone who is planning on setting up their own person or people as the ruler(s).
There is another possibility about the comrades. They could be on the side of the president. Since we don’t know where this potential bomb would be dropped, it could be that the person wants it dropped on them so they can die or it could be they want it dropped on whomever is behind the death of the president. Either way, it is a wish made out of extreme pain.
We also don’t know if the president was a good person or a bad one. We have no way to know if their policies and rulings helped the people or harmed them. We only know that for this one person, they were important enough that their death has had a profound effect on the person in the prompt.
What do you think is going on in the world of this prompt? What kind of country in what kind of situation is the main character in? And what do you think is going to happen next?
