What Really Happened

Written in a commanding tone, Madge McKeithen tells you, the reader, what to do. “Find the North Carolina Department of Correction Public Access Information System website. Enter the name of the offender. Write down the seven-digit offender ID number. Click on the box to see the photograph”(137). This was her first step and your first direction in asking the offender the questions she and you had been waiting forever to ask. A mother, wife, and your best friend, had been murdered by this man. This is the moment you have been waiting for, and finally grew the courage to do. Madge walks you through the steps of the entire situation. She connects you to her feelings during the event. You feel puzzled when you receive the answers from the inmate that she received. You have to deal with the struggle of going through life asking yourself, “Why you get to be alive”(139), and not your best friend. Grow up, to see her kids grow up knowing that their mother was not there, and only be able to imagine the love their mother possessed.

The feelings and experience that Madge McKeithen created in What Really Happened are incredible. You feel yourself feeling the pain and emotions that Madge felt when facing the courage to talk to the offender that took her friend’s life. You can feel the struggle Madge had and frustration that was created when the offender did not give her the answer that she wanted to hear. Due to this, Madge achieved her purpose of making the reader feel all of the emotions that she felt. By writing the essay in a commanding tone, the reader is able to feel all of the emotion Madge felt because the reader is following in her footsteps. Madge Mckeithen created an incredible experience for the reader, while achieving her intended purpose in writing, What Really Happened.

The Dream

Sherrydayne Abroad

The white picket fence resembles what every mother dreams of having. A happy, safe and loved family was what Madge wanted her best friend to provide to her family. This was why she felt the need to ask the man who murdered her best friend, why?