The story I chose was “Lather and Nothing Else” by Hernando Tellez, Colombian Author.

Throughout the story, we see our protagonist, the barber, consider murdering a general he and many other dislikes, apparently sending many of protagonist’s men to death. The conflict, I believe, is internal, and nothing external actually occurs in the story, although it can be argued that the conflict began due to physical and external conflict in the past of the plot. The entire source of conflict comes from the internal conflict of the protagonist considering whether or not the slit the throat of the antagonist, or the general. The antagonist enters the protagonist’s shop to get a shave, which gives our protagonist many opportunities to murder the general he despises, proposing the conflict and the protagonist fighting with himself to either face the consequences or choose to leave the antagonist alive and clean-shaven.

The poem really accentuates the urge to kill the general from the protagonist’s perspective, displaying his hesitation to slit the throat of the antagonist whilst he shaves him, using emphatic words found in the story, such as mutilated, blood, murderer. In the middle of the story, I could demonstrate his hesitation by including parts such as writing “Am I a murderer?”, showing his hesitation, also parts where he has to choose between his job or what he must do, an example being “Executioner, Barber, One Job, One Job.”, where he chooses between which path he wishes to go down. I found some of the words in the poems goes perfectly to complement the conflict with my poem, such as scarlet river, referring to the blood that would flow as a result of the murder, and most importantly, the ending had a sentence in which the antagonist was talking about how it wasn’t easy to kill people, and how he knew about that. I was incredible as I could take snippet of the text, in this case, where he said “it’s not easy to kill”, and it can perfectly summarize my story, as it concludes with the protagonist choosing not to murder the general, as the benefits would not be worth the consequences or the things our protagonist must sacrifice.

In retrospect, I stand by my choice of color and fonts, as the story itself puts heavy emphasis on blood and the ways ourprotagonist could murder the antagonist. My choice of font was Typewriter, specifically American Typewriter, and I felt that using a typewriter font could invoke the feeling of some sort of old-timey detective film, which I felt fit the story’s conflict and provided an eerie feeling while reading, and I really didn’t put any emphasis on the size of the font. I chose to make some of the words white, therefore standing out from the other text. These chosen words are what I consider quite powerful, such as “Special Customer” and the aforementioned concluding words: “It’s not easy to kill.”. I chose to make the background red due to the story’s heavy use of blood, and the razor, of course, represents the blade or weapon the protagonist was wielding and could have used to kill the antagonist. I will sum up the rest of the images real quick: 

The bullet represents the fact the antagonist is a general and enters the shop with a pistol holster and magazines

The reaper represents death

The river represents the scarlet river of blood stated in the poem

 

Overall, the graphic design of the poem is far below subpar, but it is probably would have been better than a hand drawn version of it.