I intend to write a short story (with my eyes on caine) exploring the disillusionment of a people (villagers in Africa) who bought into the teachings of their Marxist intellectual hero who ends up abandoning them, taking up a well paying teaching job in the capital of the capitalist world instead of struggling with the peasants and workers as he has always preached.
I want to contrast these two worlds; of the ardent followers and that of the preacher wallowing in wine. I want to show the hypocrasy behind a man who achieves fame and fortune through painting the white man and capitalism as the enemy of the Africans and now lives very comfortably abroad, charging $22K per lecture to peddle stories of miseries which he does little to alleviate.
At end of the story, I want the "ardent followers" to come to the realization that their allegiance to mere ideology could be misplaced. I want them to see behind the veil of their intellectual hero.
One idea that I think might work is to have them invite the intellectual for an event but he turns it down (for a $22K chat) and instead sends them a written speech. A mistake is then made and the wrong speech, the one worth $22K gets sent out to the ardent followers.
Through the contents of this speech, they get a glimpse of something being amiss with their hero. The problem with this approach is that the speech cannot be expected to reveal the full extent of the intellectual hero's hypocrisy since we would expect him to be still maintaining an impression of being true to the cause; after all therein lies his whole relevance.
To get behind his thoughts, I am thinking of an misaddressed email document to contain the speech and some back and forth conversation, perhaps with his secretary, showing him turning down the invitation by his followers for $22K among other "revelations".
I could also employ magical realism; empower one of the ardent followers with mystical powers that allow him to see what their hero is doing on the other side of the world, perhaps a dream-like revelation?
Any input is welcome.
I want to contrast these two worlds; of the ardent followers and that of the preacher wallowing in wine. I want to show the hypocrasy behind a man who achieves fame and fortune through painting the white man and capitalism as the enemy of the Africans and now lives very comfortably abroad, charging $22K per lecture to peddle stories of miseries which he does little to alleviate.
At end of the story, I want the "ardent followers" to come to the realization that their allegiance to mere ideology could be misplaced. I want them to see behind the veil of their intellectual hero.
One idea that I think might work is to have them invite the intellectual for an event but he turns it down (for a $22K chat) and instead sends them a written speech. A mistake is then made and the wrong speech, the one worth $22K gets sent out to the ardent followers.
Through the contents of this speech, they get a glimpse of something being amiss with their hero. The problem with this approach is that the speech cannot be expected to reveal the full extent of the intellectual hero's hypocrisy since we would expect him to be still maintaining an impression of being true to the cause; after all therein lies his whole relevance.
To get behind his thoughts, I am thinking of an misaddressed email document to contain the speech and some back and forth conversation, perhaps with his secretary, showing him turning down the invitation by his followers for $22K among other "revelations".
I could also employ magical realism; empower one of the ardent followers with mystical powers that allow him to see what their hero is doing on the other side of the world, perhaps a dream-like revelation?
Any input is welcome.
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--but for this story, I didn't see it fitting. I mean, a lot has to do with the overall tone and how you write it, but from your description, I vote for realistic means.