A Civilising Influence

Good. Keeps interest till the end. Everything ties up well.

"CAVE" when pronounced in the French language has either a house "basement" conotation but most often used to describe human behaviour as the pure "idiot". Indeed, man the male is constantly present in your thoughts as someone who must regain the other species trust if IT wants to stay alive. Your short story A Civilising Influence has given me hope for a future generation to really come up to terms with each other. The Mother is so lovable youd wish shed be your own mommy. Great thanks for your love of boulders turning into flourescent pebbles onto quiet sandy clean beaches. Hopes the little one might get better respect and resposibility from the other kind of Human Being. Men have still to learn a lot before understanding a womans heart. Anyway, youve done it for me tonight. Stay with us Gerald Brassard

This is a great peice of work. I must say, Ive been reading some things on this web site and this one for sure caught and kept my eyes on the screen. Personally the dark sexual area take some gettin used to but i respect there apperance in the story, its a nice eye opening view of sexual brutality.

Although the plot is not terribly original, the story is nicely written and held my attention easily. The author has used good sentence structure and the language flows very well.

This was a truly thought provoking story. I loved it.

Had my interest, but ended too abruptly.

An excellent story, the writer has put thought into the psycology of her characters. There is not speech taught, so none is used, there is the assumption of things the protagonist sees in the world, a kind of simple inetrpretation. The character has definatly lived her live away from civilisation and thinks and acts in appropriate ways. I really like this aspect of the story.

Good pace and plot and well written. Enjoyable yet simple. The writer overall did a well job of making a quick and interesting read.

"each one in turn attacked me between the legs. I could not see what weapon they used" isnt great this metaphora? great storie , keep the good work Gaye Jee Diogo(Brazil)

Its as good as, and lets face it, a hell of a lot shorter than "Clan of the Cave Bear". Not at all bad.

Simple and direct with the harshness that came with the proper representation of an awareness very different from civilized man. Impressively subtle distinction drawn between the feelings of the mother and the instincts we would expect of a wild animal. This story caught and held me to the end. Very successful.

Interesting story. Very atmospheric, I must say. It kept my attention better than most stories. I thought it was just long enough. I really enjoyed it.

Well, I have read my fair share of sotries before, and to be frank about it most bore me before the end of the first page. But your story was great. Well written. I hope that you dont mind me giving some advice though. Some of the grammar needs correcting on the spelling of some of the words in the story. Great job, keep writing.

I agree that this was a thoughtful, well-written piece. Very realistic background with what you would expect from someone living wild. The Mothers simple thought patterns evoked sympathy and bravery. The story held my attention and was a pleasure to read. I think the details of the sexual rape were necessary in showing the Mothers psychology. It would have been nice though to catch a glimpse of the little ones view of things. This was a good read.

one word Tone, you adresses us liek we were mindless drones. The narraration went on and on with such a dull tone. other than that nice work chap

Nice thought provoking story. There is no pretense. Violence comes, violence goes without obtrusivenss. It evokes a different type of emotion. Well knit sentences. Good work. Hope to see more.

Im sorry but I just dont buy the logical premise here. You mean to tell me that a lone female who survived alone in the wild from an apparently young age (hunting, fishing, using tools, making fire, etc.) has not observed sexual reproduction in nature. She is really so ignorant of this very fact of nature that she doesnt realize what happened to her after she was attacked (i.e. having a child!!!). Sorry, just dont buy it.

This is a good story. It has a nice plot.

The story was great. It captured my attention the way few short stories do. I also think that this story is very identifiable. I was able to empathize with the characters and I think others can too. It was spectabulous!

It was a different way of looking at our lives. each of us has a strange and different story behind us. Abbas Borhan From Iran

COMMENT ON COMMENTS ---------- Ive seen some disparaging remarks about the main characters ignorance of reproduction. May I just make note that theres a basic rule observable in the biology of our world. Survival is key; adaptation is key to survival. Thus, specialization is a dangerous thing. The most adaptive species (least specialized) have the greatest chance for longevity. One of the most dangerous specializations is instinct. Youll find the more adaptive species on earth are also those with the lesser degree of specialized instinct. Where instinct fails to educate, culture is developed. It is obvious that the main character is culture-depraved, but no doubt the mother is contemplating reproduction and may be able to instruct her little one to some extent...viola! Culture! I believe the author has done as good a job as Ive ever seen observing the habits of the conscious, near-instinctless, primal human subsisting without the benefit of a greater human community. Thank you Gaye Jee, it is refreshing!

What a god-awful story. Im very sorry to those of you who love it (and have the perfect right to) but there is really no tactful way to say that I just hated it. The main character is an unbeliveable idiot; I can see how some things might be interpreted differently by more rural people, bit yous think they would get it after a while. Also it is completely unbeliveable that the "little one" would have such a strong tie with civilization that she could aquire knifes and other more modern objects, when her own mother dosent comprehend them.

Wonderful story!! MORE MORE! I would love to see this carried further into a full-length novel. If you are not already a professional writer, you should be! Katherine Rodriguez

This is an excellent peice. The wording is exquisit. Once Ive read it, I could not put it down. It is realistic and understandable.

Simply written,almost devoid of emotion-it succeeds in conveying a "coming of age story." The mother tries to prevent the inevitable, but we must all leave the nest. The end is great but I think there should have been more clues by the narrator with regards to her origin.

...plain...

This is a good story not bad at all .. very nice ..a good read...-X.Q

This story is too long winded. It needs a whole lot of good points and characters. It dosent capture my emotions at all. It is simply too vivid.

This story reads like a piece of drift wood floating in a stream the wrong way. Such an illusionist, the main character, in the woods yet not in the woods, in a cave yet not in a cave, devoid of understanding to her surroundings which, one would have to assume, would be the complete opposite. She is jumped and fertilized and carries upon her shoulders an absurd revenge for man in general. That poor fellow in the end of the story, the one who gives the beads to the little one, he never saw it coming. That fake birth, too, so bland and unnatural—in the face of the wild, a female is a female, a man, a man, both savagely and unquestionably ready to do what it takes to move onward the species at hand. The innate characteristics of propagation will see to this. Moreover, the narration of the story is by the main character!—beyond that jungle else in the midst of some telepathic fiesta, there is, somewhere, one heck of an educational system.

I like the tone and rhythm. Nice work.

Nicely written. -terry-

This story was very thought provoking, but I didnt like it that much. I thought that they story didnt have anything that captured my attention and it didnt have a really good story line. If the story was gone into detail a little better it may have been better but there wasnt a lot of basis for what going on. The story ended very quickly and maybe if it were a little longer there may have been more details gone over.

i did not understand this sotory, what where the transparent stones?

the story is good. there dose seem to be an emotional detachment but i like it because that sort of detachment comes in the face of survival. but it flowers again the little one. the only thing i thought it laked was curiosity. the man didnt have a beard so shouldnt he have gotten a little more study? -g

Just how many ways of spelling "story" are there, people?

Well, coming from a civilized male, my comments
may not be worth much, but here it goes.
I understand the narrative nature of the story due
to the setting and situation of the main character. I
was however a little surprised by the vocabulary
used in the narrative thoughts of the character, the
mother. The vocabulary used isnt consistent. Like
the simple ways to describe the first mothers ankle
bracelet but that her stomach or belly was
"distended"??? How about "bigger"? But its not my
story....
I do have a hard time buying the fact that she hasnt
observed the mating and birthing processes in
nature.
There could have been some existence of her "own"
language, just an idea.
I do have to say that in the end, the story was
rescued from being a feminist story by the
daughters disappearance, perhaps due to the fact
that she saw her mother violently protect her or
because she had sensed genuine care from the
civilised man trying to rescue her from her wild life.
But I dont know why he took off his shirt and my
guess is, neither did her mother, so I might have
crushed his skull too if she were my little girl.
Good creation. Charles O.

A solid, laudable, effort, but still an amateurish piece. Contains some good visuals, and not a bad character development, but portions are confused and contradictory. What I found most disconcerting was stumbling over the gramatical and structural rocks strewn throughout. Still, better than many I have read. Shows hard work, and promise.

l did not like it because it did not make a point

What I liked about this story was that the reader could easily consider the characters and events as symbolic of various ideas, according to the readers interpretation and personal experience. The reader did not have to work at it and the story stayed around long after it was read. I do not know what more someone would require from a short story. As to the comment that the main character should have observed the sexual activity of the animals, there are a lot of people today who truly believe that teenagers are unable to figure sex out on their own. Obviously, thats a little silly. Maybe the story, intentionally or unintentionally, comments on that.

what does the stones stands for and where she gets the shiny stones? modern objects when human are yet fully developed? how does it link together???

I’ve started reading ALL of the stories on this web-site. So far, I’m in the J’s, imagine that. This is a very provocative, and possibly, a controversial story. I can tell by some of the comments that the IQ’s of some are quite low, and they do not understand the philosophy of “CONSTRUCTIVE CRITISISM”.
This story moved well, the narrative did have some complications in flow, like losing a reader in the midst of a trivial time, ie…[”At night the stick people would come to me out of the darkness. They whispered to me of sharpening stones to make a killing stick. Then they showed me handpictures deep in the cave where the sun only licks with its tongue before it sinks behind the trees in the valley. I put my palm against the handpictures and saw that my fingers matched with theirs.”] but all in all, this is a fine piece. This story is very well worth taking the time to read. It’s a story that forces us to think.
Very well done.

^Rob

About the reproduction thing...dont animals do it a little differently than us? And wouldnt SEEING two rabbits going at it be a little different from unwillingly experiencing it yourself? What Im trying to say is that the fact that she didnt know what happened doesnt make her a dummy. Besides, she was tryin to survive...she wasnt studying the critters of the forest.

I enjoyed this story, but disagree with the rigid
logical nature enforced on the main character. I
would imagine that primative women would be
more in tune with their emotions and the joys of
motherhood. Even unaware of what was happening
to her body, I found it hard to believe she would
think of her swelling stomach as poision. Rather,
humanitys instinctual behavior is often motivated
by subjective emotional experiences. It is more
likely that her body with its pregnancy-caused
hormonal fluxuations and emotional cascades
would generate in her awe, wonder, and love for the
life she would start to feel kicking and moving
around in her stomach. To suggest that such
feelings are logic-based and require an
understanding of the process of birth and
procreation lacks credibility to me. We humans like
to think of ourselves as primarily logical creatures,
but it was and is our emotional lives that direct
much of our behavior today and ensured our
survival in earlier times.
Freeman Wicklund, Maryland, USA

How has that got to do with science fiction?

A Civilizing Influence… (I think) this piece is a well written, unique look upon something deemed ugly of civilization, where we can harbor influence. I see a woman lost in a strange world, toiling her resources to eek a life for herself, as she seems so alone. Then she is confronted with a sin, a disease inflicted upon her, but not of her creating. The paintings, perhaps symbolize her family and their comfort, as the story states they speak to her, and she finds likeliness within the images, making her hand like theirs. The ‘poison’, in my opinion, is her first look on the subject. “I’ve been raped my life is over” her mentality is poison, and the object growing in her, initially remains naught but an idol of the plague. Time churns; her mentality follows in the wake and finds a miracle from the curse. Later in the story the woman gets her revenge, killing the same kind of creature that has afflicted her. Her daughter however, perhaps INFLUENCES the biggest lesson of all for the woman, forgiveness. This can be found as the woman returns to the body, finding her daughter has returned the man’s necklace of shiny rocks to his body, despite his actions against her. Its hard to forgive… Good job Gaye Jee

Interpreted by Darron

This one reminded me of something written after
reading a Jean Auel novel -aka- Clan of the Cave Bear.

Fiction is for entertainment. Ive read some of the comments on this tale and have come to realize that some people need to repeat English 101.

Very interesting. Thank you for the story, Gaye!

BR

Hmmm... so this cavewoman has the vocabulary to say, "...my toes braced against the rock floor, poised above the vertical fall..." and "...slavering as they come nearer..." but she doesnt have a word for daughter? And why does she have a name for her mother ("Mama" -- note the capitalization, this isnt just a baby sound but is a proper noun) but does not have a name for her child ("little one" -- NOT capitalized)? That is a major inconsistency in what is otherwise a nice story.

This is my first time on this site and I truly enjoyed this story. I cant tell you how many times over the years I toyed with the idea that humans evolved from a mating of men from outerspace and monkeys.
Great Job! I wish that the story could continue.

I think this story would be better if it was written in
the third person because the main character is telling
the story. She doesnt understand much but can write
a story about her life. Poetic licence maybe but doesnt
work for me. If the language was more like a child it
may have worked and might have been more fitting.
Good idea though and not a bad read.
Lee