The Savages

[tectak]

Thank you for your kind and thoughtful critique tectak Which genre are you are you referring to? I sort of imagined this as a dystopian poem, if there is such a thing.
I wondered about the use of names myself, considering that only Sally has one. I may replace it with something like "the filly", which would tie in with what he calls himself and other family members ("pa", "ma", "lads").

If you sort of imagined that this is a dystopian poem then it is...or of that genre
Dystopian is generally a global description of human planet-wide suffering and as this piece is relatively home based I can only repeat the point about the use of "real" names. To permit the dystopian description to flourish I think you need to fertilise for growth not fruit. The thing is growing but won't go global if you start to pin it down with the fruit of detail, which is what happens once you start naming chracters. Once you name one character you may as well name them all and you woud be left with a Jack and Jill story..........,which this ain't