The Blood Stained Roses
A Historical Tragedy by Ella-Gracin Bennett
Assignment One:
After her father was killed by British Redcoats, seventeen-year-old Karalyna Wilkerson is filled with an unquenchable thirst of rage and revenge. To quench this thirst, she goes on a Redcoat killing spree, constantly fighting between her sanity and insanity while also being in the midst of a love triangle between two men. One man, Orcus Willer, was her friend who told her to go kill the Redcoats. The other, Jude Stanford, is a poet and young war leader in favor of General Washington. Now for the entire story, she’s Schizophrenic; and everything isn’t as it’s perceived in Karalyna’s perspective, yet the reader doesn’t know until the end of the novel.
Assignment Two:
Orcus Willer is a friend to Karalyna, who she met the night before her father’s murder. After her father’s death, Orcus was the one who pushed her to go on a killing spree against the Redcoats as an act of vengeance. Throughout the novel, he starts getting more obsessive over her and jealous when she hangs out with her family and her love interest, Jude. He meets her every night at a Weeping Willow tree, away from everyone so that they can talk alone together. When she’s around Jude, he gets super jealous, and he even retorts to physical violence, manipulation, and screaming at her. Turns out, she’s schizophrenic, and Orcus is actually a figment of her imagination. Orcus represents her constant “falling” into insanity. Karalyna believes she’s falling in love with him when she’s truly just falling deeper and deeper into her insanity.
Assignment Three:
The Blood Stained Roses - Represents the tragedy aspect of the novel. Karalyna also kills herself in a bed of white roses which become bloodied when she stabs herself in the chest. In the epilogue, one of her friends put the bloody roses on her grave. As the roses get bloodier, it represents how her thirst for blood stained her innocence forevermore like, as this title states, blood stained roses.
The Dangerous Minds - Describes Karalyna’s dangerous mind and how it hurts everyone else around her. She even uses the same term to describe her love interest, Jude, after he is brutally tortured. She described them both like this:
“Both of our minds are corrupt now; we are both two broken souls with dangerous minds, wishing that our lives were different.”
Assignment Four:
Martha Peake: A Novel of the Revolution by Patrick McGrath
This novel has a similar insane person during the Revolutionary War feeling that my novel has. This novel has intense psychological elements, psychologically tortured characters, grotesque characters, and a sense of dread throughout the entirety of the book.
The Ninth Daughter by Barbara Hamilton
This book, like my own, is set in Boston during the Revolution (also takes place during Pre-Revolution too which is a difference from my book). It also has a plot where there’s a crazy killer in Boston, killing innocent people.
Assignment Five:
Karalyna Wilkerson, a young girl from Concord, Massachusetts, lives a pretty normal life in colonial America until her father is killed by Redcoats when she’s eleven years old. She is enraged and sad, and is filled with a desire to bring justice to the men that killed her father which she also thinks includes all Redcoats she can get her hands on. Six years later, she finally goes on a killing spree, hunting down these Redcoats to kill. When her three older brothers have to go to a training camp for Yorktown, Karalyna begs to fight. Because no men want to re-enlist, they allow her to fight. She constantly fights between the feeling of falling and floating with her two loves interests. Orcus, a friend from childhood, represents how she falls deeper and deeper into insanity. Jude, the young leader of the training camp, represents how she’s floating out of the pit of insanity she dug for herself. She fights a constant battle in her mind as she fights between her enraged insanity or her moral sanity.
Assignment Six-A:
Behind her infamous yet unknown killing persona, there’s more behind Karalyna than just an angsty teenage girl becoming a murderer. Karalyna was devastated and enraged by the death of her father. She was already upset at everything the Redcoats were doing in the colonies, but she’d never wanted to kill them until they killed her father. She fights her own insanity to get away from her sinful ways, yet she always finds a way back to killing them; and every time she does kill one, she feels a surge of pleasure. She ultimately realizes that she’s schizophrenic, and she ultimately ends up taking her own life.
Assignment Six-B:
Karalyna has three older brothers named Aldwin, Ludwig, and Huckland. She’s the youngest in the family, so they all look out for her and tease her like typical older brothers do. None of them know about Karalyna’s killing spree. Karalyna hides a lot of stuff from them, including the fact that she kills people.
She has two best friends named Adavieve (Ada for short) and Josella. Ada is the daughter of a runaway slave couple who Karalyna’s parents took in when she was around two or three. Josella was a girl who was kidnapped and lost all memories of her past life before she was taken away from her family. She is the reason Karalyna’s father was killed. He protected her because she accidentally stole bread from a Loyalist when she was nine. Karalyna’s father shielded Josella, killing him instantly. Karalyna is super close with both Ada and Josella, yet both girls slowly yet surely figure out that Karalyna is the Redcoat Killer, which they obviously hide from her.
Karalyna grows close with Jude, a boy her age leading the training camp. They quickly fall in love with each other. Jude realizes very quickly that Karalyna is the Redcoat Killer, and he does everything he can to get her away from Orcus, her friend who she made up unknowingly. He wants to help her regain her sanity, but she’s completely oblivious who what he’s doing to help her.
Assignment Seven:
The beginning of the book (before her father is killed) takes place in October 1775, months after Lexington and Concord and the infamous “shot heard ‘round the world”. However, after Karalyna’s father is killed, it timeskips to July 1781. The book ends on October 19, 1781 which is the end of The Battle of Yorktown.
Regarding the places the book takes place, it occurs throughout the thirteen colonies, yet they primarily stay in three cities.
Concord, Massachusetts
Where Karalyna, her family, and friends grew up. The beginning of the story where she starts to lose her sanity takes place here.
Boston, Massachusetts
The town that they visit. It’s about twenty-five miles away from their home town. Where most of the chaos where she murders people, falls in love, falls deeper into insanity, and much more happens here.
Yorktown, Virginia
Where The Battle Of Yorktown of 1781 occurs. This is the place where Karalyna’s fate, and the fate of others in her life, is sealed for the worse.
(My opening scene below basically foreshadows the entire novel, including the murders the main character commits, the antagonist, the death of the love interest, and the suicide of the main character.) There’s a world I like to escape to when I feel out of place. What is that world? I don’t even know myself. Yet, it’s different everyday. And today, like every other day, was a new place. I opened my eyes in the middle of Paris. I don’t know how I got there; I’d never been to France before, and I don’t know how to get there from my house. I didn’t really think about how I got there, but rather the fact that I was in Paris. I was finally here! I’d never seen it outside of paintings of the gorgeous scenery. I always pictured myself there, yet I never imagined the day I’d actually be in the center of the city of love. But something about it seemed off. I hardly noticed anyone who passed me, for they looked like bullets whizzing right by my head. None of them ran into me, thankfully, because I felt like they all despised me for some reason. They all felt like ghosts. Ghosts who sought revenge for something I have no knowledge of. As they passed by me, I felt their frigid arms graze mine. They were cold, cold to the touch like they’d been killed out of spite. “That was her,” One pointed at me, “That was the girl who…” I couldn’t hear the rest of the sentence; he was mumbling now. “I was the first of them.” I looked up to see the face of a soldier in a coat the hue of blood glaring at me intently, “I was the first who was…” He, like the other man, muttered incoherently as a blood-red foam the color of his coat quickly filled his mouth. I looked away to see more and more people talking about me. Though, they were quiet; so that I wouldn’t hear them. What had I done to make grown adults talk about me so horribly? I had to get away, yes, I had to get out of this crowd. I ran, I ran so fast I bet a bullet couldn’t even catch up to me. I refused to look back; I couldn’t look back. I hadn’t done anything wrong, I swear! I’m just an eleven-year-old girl from Concord; I haven’t lived enough life to do anything so sinful! I couldn’t have! I’m only a child! What did I do? What did I do? I ran faster as the sky seemed to change from blue to black. Why? Why? Why? It felt that these phantoms were now chasing me, following me regardless if I tried to lose them. I don’t even know what I’ve done! Why? Why? Why? Abruptly, I ran into a boy. “I am so sorry!” I panted as I felt the weight of hundreds of raging souls latch onto me. “Please ,forgive me!” Oddly enough, I recognized this boy. Even though we’d never met before, I knew him. The first thing I noticed about him was his eyes. He had doe-like eyes that looked like endless pools of dark chocolate that stood out from his pale skin. He also had shaggy yet neat dirty-blond hair that was the color of sand. He was tall, maybe a little over six feet. And he was young. He was merely a teenager, or perhaps he just turned eighteen. “I know you.” I reached out for his hand. “I know you.” He was silent. I stared into his brown eyes, which had to have been the most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen, and saw nothing. No emotions. No hate. No love. No joy. Nothing. Nothing except where his eyes were glazed with tears. Had I hurt him too? Was that why tears were in his eyes? I reached out for his hand again; they were cold to the touch. He was dead. I felt the urge to cry. It was like a piece of me was gone, and I could never get it back. He was gone, gone forever. I fell to my knees and wept as he turned to ash and vanished within the air. I sobbed, “Why you?! Anyone but you!” A wave of anguish washed over me, and I was drowning in it. Someone, who I shouldn’t know but I do, just died in front of me. He was my everything. I was everything to him. I cried out again, “Why him?” I don’t know who I was talking to. “Why would you take him away, you monster!” Then the world went silent, and time seemed to stop. The vibrato of my agony bounced around before slowly, slowly ceasing. And then, another voice arose amongst the silence. “You don’t need him.” One of the spirits whispered, grasping my neck with his free hand. “He was in the way of us.” “No, he wasn’t!” I tried to break free of his grasp, yet my efforts were in vain. This spirit was a piece of me, and I could never make him go away. He was here, here forever. I wanted to scream. Scream so loud that his ears would bleed. Maybe he would bleed out right here on the Paris grass. That seems oddly satisfying to me, watching someone bleed to death. His grip was getting tighter and tighter, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. “Let me go!” I screeched. “Get off of me!” Just out of the corner of my eye, I saw the glimmer of a blade in the iridescent moonlight. I didn’t try looking at it. I knew with one head turn, the phantom could snap my neck. So I gave in. And before long, there was a sharp pain in my left arm. A warm liquid ran down my arm to touch the tips of my fingers. I only grimaced. Even though it stung, I could hardly feel any pain. “Oh, but Karalyna…” He brought the knife towards my throat, slicing it open with a clean cut. I didn’t see much of the world after that. Everything was dark like an abyss that never ended. I felt myself slowly losing consciousness as he whispered in my ear one final time. “I thought you loved me…”