The Story: "Laura", by Robert O'Neill
Everybody in the crowded restaurant stared when the young woman suddenly threw a glass of wine in the face of the older man sitting opposite her at a table near the window. The young woman was attractive and well dressed. The man was at least twenty years older than she was. He looked shocked. The young woman suddenly stood up and ran towards the door. ”Laura, come back, please,” the older man shouted. But she had already reached the door. The man ran after her. It had started to rain outside. She ran out into the middle of the street. ”For God's sake, give me a chance to explain,” the man shouted. She turned around and stared at him. A car had just turned the corner and was coming towards her very fast. The driver had not turned his windscreen wipers on, and he was talking to someone on his 10 mobile. Then - suddenly - he saw her -directly in front of him, so close that he could see her eyes when she turned her head and looked at him.
My Characterization: The author Robert O’Neill gives us a short story named “Laura”, in our hands without a detailed beginning and a conclusive ending. We can just follow the situation – Laura is sitting in a restaurant with a man, but it seems that he had done something wrong so that whe throws a glass of wine into his face and runs out of the restaurant. The man wanted to explain, but as she just turns around and stares at him, a driver turns into the street where Laura is standing. In the End, we are not know what is happing to her, because it just ends with the fact that the driver was destracted and Laura now turns her head to the driver, while the car is close to her.
So what we can take from the story, especially when it goes around Laura, we can read out, that she seems to be young, around eighteen and above. The fact that she throws a glass of wine in the face of the man, is enough to assume, that she is of age. And this part shows us, that she is impulsive, mean, respectless, but fair enough angry, even if we don’t know what was happening. A Mixture of agressive, confidend and dissapointed. We also don’t know, how she looks like, what for a type of human she is and which thougts in her actions she might have. Anyway, as she runs out and does nothing more, than just turning her head back to the man, while standing in the middle of the street, it is hard to say, how she could actually felt, wheter she is just too desperate to realise, that she is standing on the street or wheter. The situation where Laura turns her head to the driver, in front her, in the car, begs for the same question; Was she just so stressed, dissepointed and desperated and what is the point of the whole story?