Describing emotion

[Ireth]

I'm having an issue with my new short story idea. My MC is in a bit of emotional turmoil, and I'm not sure how to get across everything he's feeling in a clear and succinct way. Prior to this, the MC stabbed a merman who'd been trying to drown him, and was consequently drowned by the merman's cousin, a mermaid. The mermaid reanimates the MC as a merman, and drags him to where her cousin is being tended by healers. The MC believes merpeople to be no more than demons, little better than beasts. So, he's got to deal with:

1) anger at the mermaid for drowning him, and revulsion at being turned into one of her kind
2) dread and fear at not knowing what they want to do with him next
3) confusion at exactly how his wounding of the merman has affected him (to be brief, the merman is poisoned and dying)
4) more confusion at not being able to understand what the merpeople say (he's deaf, doesn't understand the sign language the deaf mermaid uses, and can't read the others' lips well)
5) still more confusion at seeing how the merpeople care for each other, due to his belief that they're evil demons
6) more revulsion at being around the sick/injured merman

So yes, he has a lot on his mind. I don't want to do a cop-out and just say everything was overwhelmed by confusion, and just listing the emotions like I did above seems tell-y. Any suggestions for alternatives?

 

[Svrtnsse]

I guess the main thing to do is to try and show his actions and reactions - which is of course easier said than done. What I'm getting is that he's scared and confused and angry. These should go fairly well together.

Does he speak? I'm assuming that since he's deaf, he may have issues speaking, or making himself understood. I don't know if that's commonly the case among deaf people or not so it might be incorrect. Not speaking cuts out verbal communications though, which is probably just as well.

Being angry, he'll probably glare, sneer, and snort at people around him.
The confusion will probably show itself in a lot of frowning and in trying to look away from the things that confuse him. It may also cause him to hesitate a lot, like if he starts to say something, he'll stop and interrupt himself, or contradict himself or just not know what to say.
Being scared he'll probably try to avoid touching anyone and he'll keep his eyes off of the things that scare him. He might keep his gaze downcast if there's a person he's intimidated by.

There are a lot of other similar things as well as variations you could make use of, but these are the ones that sprung to mind right now.

 

[Ireth]

Thanks, Svrt. The MC doesn't speak, and I mentioned above that there is a language barrier between him and the main mermaid he interacts with. The merfolk don't understand him, and he doesn't understand them. He's too overwhelmed to sign much or do much glaring or sneering, so lack of eye contact is the most likely -- he's intimidated and afraid of pretty much everyone. At this point his anger is mostly overshadowed by everything else.

I'm trying to kind of lump everything together in a hopefully-brief "he doesn't know what he should be feeling, so as a result he's feeling a bunch of things at once" kind of way, in between characters' actions, but I dunno if that's the wisest course of action.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I think you needn't necessarily be brief about it. I imagine he won't overcome these emotions too quickly (anger first I guess), so you'll have time to show them off. This of course depends on your vision for this particular of the story, but it sounds like something that could be interesting and which might be worth exploring.

 

[Ireth]

Very true. This is a short story for a challenge, though, and I only have a limited amount of words to work with, which makes it all the more tricky. Plus I haven't reached the conclusion of the story yet, and I don't want to have to cut too many things out afterward to get back within the limit.