The Good Thief Blog #6

Ren's family has always been a mystery until these last few chapters of the book. All of a sudden he gets a mother and an uncle, and his real name. One thing that he still doesn't know about his family is who his father is. McGinty, his uncle, wants to find Ren's father, but he wants to find him in order to kill him. Ren is asked who his father is, because McGinty thinks of all people, Ren would know. Ren, thinking that he is gone and can't be hurt, says, "His name,' said Ren, 'is Benjamin Nab'" (Tinti 303). McGinty yells to bring 'him' in, and he reveals that he has been keeping Benjamin locked up and tortured because he was suspicious of him. Ren says he was lying, but Benjamin tells him he wasn't, and that he really is his father. Ren realizes that, "he had already claimed him as a son, long before Ren had claimed him as a father" (Tinti 306). The reason why Benjamin had picked Ren at the orphanage because he knew he was his son. He kept him beside him because he wanted to keep watch over his son. He wasn't able to tell him before because he didn't want Ren to know his father was a criminal and low-life like him. Ren realizes that Benjamin was always there for him, and that they already had a father-son relationship, besides the fact that they were actually conning people instead of going fishing. To Ren who never had a father before or any type of family, Benjamin was the first person to treat him like family and to take him away from the orphanage. Before the book ends, Benjamin and Ren run away from McGinty but Benjamin has to leave. Ren has to deal with this, but then he returns to the boarding house he finds Dolly dead. Benjamin's last con was a gift for Ren. When McGinty was torturing Benjamin, Benjamin wanted to sign a "will", except he knew that McGinty couldn't read. The "will" was actually McGinty's will, which he made him sign without knowing what it was. "Being sound of mind and memory, I do constitute and appoint this my last will and testament revoking all former wills by me made. Imprints, after payments of just debts and funeral charges, I will and bequeath all of my estate both real and personal in manner upon my death, to my nephew, Reginald Edward McGinty" (Tinti 319). The factory and all of the money involved with it now belonged to Ren, and now he could live without having to go back to the orphanage, as Tom said he would do, because he couldn't feed Ren and the twins. This huge gift was what made Ren and everyone else in the book start to lead straighter lives.

The Good Thief Blog #5

One day, Tom went missing. Benjamin and Ren looked in all of the seediest places where he could be, but they couldn't find him. He suddenly came back dragging the twins from the orphanage, Brom and Ichy. He was dead drunk, but he told Ren that he needed to stick with his friends, and then passed out. The twins were immediatly employed in the grave-digging operation they had, but they were still "fresh" from the orphange, so they were sickned and scared as they were forced to dig up a grave. When they had gathered some bodies, they headed back to the doctor but on the way there, the men who were after Dolly appeared again and forcefully made everyone go back to town after they had found the bodies. The men beat them up very badly and took them to the mousetrap factory which the person who hired them owned. McGinty, the owner of the factory wanted to hand Benjamin in to the police because of his various crimes, which McGinty listed from a wanted poster, "Arson, train robbery, bank robbery, horse robbery, and general thieving, desertion from the military, illegal gambling and games of chance, impersonation of an officer of the law...naval captain...minister, claim jumping, vagrancy, disorderly conduct, assault with a deadly weapon, littering, loitering, and the selling of false deeds" (Tinti 236). This long list of crimes just certifies Benjamin as a real criminal. Not all of his stories were lies and he was capable of a lot of bad things, but Ren isn't surprised. He knew some parts and expected others, but he was never taken aback when this was read. He followed Benjamin not because he was a criminal but because he wanted to, but Benjamin betrayed Ren's trust. When the factory's owner offered to let everyone off if they let Ren stay back, Benjamin agreed. "Ren waited for Benjamin to speak. To hear some kind of explanation. Why this was a mistake. Why they couldn't possibly be parted. But Benjamin barely looked at him. 'Good-bye,' he said" (Tinti 239). This hurts Ren so much, that he just stands there after Benjamin leaves. He never thought that Benjamin woul djust leave him behind like he had no value at all to him. McGinty locks Ren up in a storage room within the factory, but all Ren can think about is how Benjamin just left him to this man, to let anything happen to him. But then Ren thinks, "...Benjamin had failed him. It was hard to belive. And then it wasn't" (Tinti 241). Ren convinces himself that Benjamin was just using him in order to gain more money, and wanted to drop him off wherever it helped him the most. Ren convinced himself that no one loved him.
Later on in The Good Thief, we learn the real story of Ren's parents. The man who Dolly was hired to kill was the mousetrap factory's owner, who is revealed to be Ren's uncle. McGinty, Ren's uncle, was Ren's mother's brother. As McGinty explains, Ren's mother was sexually abused by their father, and even though he had taken her away from their father, she still wasn't happy. After a few attempts at suicide and a few years had passed, Margaret, Ren's mother, gave birth to Ren. Later on, we learn that Ren's arm was not cut off by Margaret, but by McGinty, because he wanted to find out who the father was. In order to prove that Ren wasn't actually dead like Margaret said he was, they go to dig up his grave, but what they find inside is, "...a pair of stockings. Someone had taken the time to sew the rocks into a set of baby clothes" (Tinti 249). This proves to McGinty that Ren was his nephew, but he still doesn't accept him into the family. He still had an intense hatred for the man who had made Margaret so sad and eventually die, which carried over into an intense dislike for Ren who he said looked nothing like his sister. In the end though, Ren was happy that he had finally found his place in the world, "All the years spent wondering where he'd come from or who had put him through the gate at Saint Anthony's--none of it mattered anymore. He had a name. He had a mother" (Tinti 251). Ren was so happy to finally be able to say his real name, Reginald Edward McGinty, and to know that he wasn't really alone. All those years at the orphanage where he was passed over and barely glanced at when people came to adopt left Ren to stop hoping and to think that no one wanted to be a part of his family. Without realizing it though, Benjamin, Tom, Brom and Ichy all became a part of a family that I can see him having for the rest of his life.

The Good Thief Blog #4

Ren's team of con-artists increases again one day when Benjamin, Tom and Ren were digging up bodies in order to sell them. They ended up digging up a man in a purple suit who was still alive and breathing. When the man awoke, he called himself Dolly, and for some reason he did whatever Ren told him to do. Like almost all of the other characters in this book, Dolly, turns out to be a killer who was buried alive by the people he was hired to kill. Ren wasn't completely sure of what Dolly could do, or how far he could go, because when they were being chased by the men who had originally buried Dolly, he killed them in a very gruesome way. Ren tries to think that Dolly didn't mean it but, "in his heart Ren knew that Dolly had meant it, and he would have done it again, and again...The lamppost disappeared behind them, and the boy realized that he was sharing a seat with a murderer. There would be no more bargaining with God. He was into hell for sure" (Tinti 177). Ren's religion and upbringing make him think that God was going to punish him and Dolly for killing those men, and all the men he had killed before. Ren really like Dolly, which is why he wants Dolly to confess in order to absolve his sins, but Dolly, who doesn't believe in God, doesn't see the need to do anything because he didn't grow up believing that someone was going to come after him for his sins on judgment day. Ren looks behind them and thinks, "Father John had always told him that the Day of Judgment would come in their lifetime. But when Ren glanced behind, no one was following them and no judgment seemed at hand" (Tinti 179). Ren's belief in God goes downhill after Dolly joins, but he still prays. He becomes more like Benjamin and Tom, people who believed that God was there, maybe, but definitely not looking out for them.

The Good Thief Blog #3

Everywhere Ren goes in The Good Thief, he gets strange looks because of his arm. Living after having your arm cut off from just above your wrist would have been almost impossible, especially if you were just a small child. Ren has had to show his arm to more people because of Benjamin's plans, because an armless child makes people pity him. One instance when Benjamin takes advantage of Ren's arm was when he pushed Ren into the muck beside the road while Benjamin pretended that he was a good samaritan by pointing out Ren's arm while giving him money and asking others to do the same, "What's this?' Benjamin said loudly. He took hold of Ren's left arm and pushed back the sleeve. The boy's wrist was revealed before all of them, a cold and lonely nub...'Here, take something that will help your poor, miserable life. Here, here,' said Benjamin, and he dug into his pocket and held out...five cents" (Tinti 67). After being humiliated like this by Benjamin many more times, Ren starts to see how useful his arm can be. Aside from pity or repulsion, there are also some unique people who saw Ren's arm as well, interesting. The doctor who Benjamin and Tom were dealing in corpses took one look at Ren's arm and said, "The cut is crude, but the arteries were clamped off early. Whoever did this knew what they were doing. You're a lucky boy...Would you mind if I take a sample?" (Tinti 132-133). Despite the fact that the doctor was pretty much only interested in the science behind his arm, the fact that this a fresh and new perspective on whether or not his arm was a disibility deffinitely affected Ren. If you thought you had a disibilty, would you be happy that someone didn't see that as a disibility, even if they were only looking at you as a thing to dissect or a way to earn money?

The Good Thief Blog #2

____Ren, the main character of The Good Thief, is actually very good at slight-of-hand. While he is missing a hand, it doesn't stop him at all when he wants something. When he grew up in the orphanage, though, he was taught that stealing was a sin, but when he was taken in by Benjamin who was a con artist he was praised because of his skill. When he stole a book, The Deerslayer, from a bookstore because Benjamin was trying to sell the book that he got from the orphanage, Ren walked into a pile of books and grabbed the book while the shopkeeper was cleaning up. After he stole the book and went directly against what he was told as he grew up, he thought "It had been easier to take than he had thought"(Tinti 65). When he realized that he could steal things without being punished by God, Ren started to steal more often. The next day, Benjamin and Tom, his partner in crime, went "fishing". But as Ren went with them, he saw them stealing the jewelry and teeth from corpses from the local cemetery. As they were looking over their loot, Ren was asked to see how well he could steal, but "Ren paused for a moment, tensed and ready; then he brought his fist from behind his back, opened his fingers, and showed the ring he had already stolen from the table...Tom and Benjamin moved froward to see, then leaned back and roared with laughter"(Tinti 75). When he was praised instead of being punished, like he expected, his assumptions were thrown off completely, because he realized that sometimes stealing could bring good things to people. Tom, Benjamin, and now Ren have to live off of what they steal and dig up out of graves.

Semester 2 Book: The Good Thief By Hannah Tinti

As you can tell by the title of this blog post, my book for Second Semester is The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti. This book is about a boy named Ren, who had lost his hand from the elbow down. He doesn't remember how he lost it, but ever since he had been at the orphanage, St. Anthony's, he had been without that part of him. Because of his missing apendage, the chances of him getting adopted are very low in the time period this book takes place which is the 19th century. Then, one day, a man comes claiming that his brother was given away by accident. To Ren's surprise, the man, Benjamin as we come to know him as, decides that this cripple is who he wants to adopt. Ren has to leave his friends behind and the orphanage that he had lived in since he could remember, to go to the outside world.
Unfortunately, the man claiming to be Ren's brother reveals himself to be a con artist, and that he isn't actually Ren's brother. The only reason he had picked Ren was because his arm could earn them some more money. As Ren is thrown into the lawless job of a grave-digger and corpse seller for Benjamin, Ren slowly stops praying to God. In the orphanage, Ren had followed the other boys in prayer every night before bed and they had also confessed frequently for every little thing. As soon as Ren meets the real world, though, he stops praying as often, and in time it seems like he stops believing that prayers would help him. This book is so great, I have already read way farther than 1/6 of the book.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places #6

In the end of When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, the author, Le Ly Hayslip, starts to identify an important part of our everyday lives, labels. We put labels on people, places, and feelings without trying to find out what they are behind those labels. Hayslip's family itself is labeling within itself because they had people on both sides of the civil war. "You see, I think we are all used to putting labels on things we don't understand"(340). The labels people all over the world use for things they don't understand have negative and suspicious connotations. Pretty much, people who are different from them are thought of as people to be suspicious of just because they aren't the same. Some labels I can't use on this blog but in Vietnam and in Hayslip's time Communist and Capitalists were labels on opposite sides of the war. Hayslip started a fight with her brother Bon where she said, "...Communists--capitalists--I don't know what these mean anymore. Are they people? Are they enemies? Well, yes and no. Bon Nghe, your a Communist, but your not my enemy. You may call me capitalist, but does that make me your enemy? I don't think so"(340). Hayslip's fight with her brother ended up bringing them closer, erasing the labels both of them had for each other from opposite sides of the ocean and almost 10 years of being sparated.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places #5

Le Ly Hayslip, the author of "When Heaven and Earth Changed Places", returned to Vietnam after she emigrated to America, she faced dangerous speculation because of the circumstances that led to her leaving the country. The Vietnam government thought she was a person who was against communism, so when she decided to come back, she says she was prepared for an interrogation. The interrogations of her past as a teen and child were beatings and spening nights on end in damp cells, but in comaprison, the one she had as an adult was the complete opposite. Hayslip, a local friend, and two officials were in the best restaurant in the city, the Pacific. One official says, "My Goodness...a Viet Kieu who has lived so long in the states and doesn't smoke or drink and acts like a lady! We are very impressed! That's not how we remember most Americans"(264). The questions the officials ask give you a really good look into how Vietnamese people view Americans, mostly as heavy drinkers and smokers and although there are deffinitely people who do live that kind of lifestyle, to know only one type of answer to what an American is probably based on their fear. Later on, the officer says:

You are right about one thing, Miss Ly. Much of what our two peoples know about each other comes only from the war, and that is most sad. I would be discouraged to think Americans believe we are a country full of terror squads, secret police, death camps, and starving peasants (266).

The officer really hits the mark with this comment on the war, and pretty much all wars. Many of our, and their, misconceptions started in wars or similar events were people who knew almost nothing about each other were fighting against each other. Hate for killed friends and other numbers of dead patriots could lead to many wrong ideas about the other side. The wall of undertanding between America and Vietnam seems old, but it is still standing, even after all these years after the war.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places #4

Le Ly Hayslip, the author of the book When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, which is all about Hayslip's journey back home and she also tells us about her life before she left Vietnam. When she comes back, though, she meets changed people who have moved ahead in life, or backwards in some cases. "Although Tinh explained these things calmly, my heart sank at this example of peasant justice--at how grasping and vindictive my family seems to have become since liberation"(206). The changes her country has gone through that now seem normal to Hayslip's family shocked her. When she first sees her older sister in the market, her sister reacted alarmingly for what should have been a happy meeting, saying, "...for god's sake--get out of here! Take pity on us--please! Let us live a little longer!"(218). This is the exact mentality Vietnam had during the war, Hayslip later tells us, and seeing her family being hounded by the shadow of war shocks her, leading her to run back to the house of her niece, Tinh.
She doesn't connect with them anymore after her years in America, and they also see her as an "American" at first and not her for who she really is. Hayslip had not told her brother yet that she was coming and her family said "He'll think she's a spy or saboteur! Maybe even a party agent assigned to ferret out defectors!"(228). That Hayslip's family could think this is mostly because her brother is a person in the government, so if he were to do anything wrong or suspicious, he would suffer. Because of this mentality, that many governemnt officials had, Hayslip's brother doesn't trust her. Her family was right about her brother, and this nearly breaks Hayslip's heart, "Co Bay! He uses the ceremonial form of greeting--one reserved for distant relatives--rather than the familiar em bay for number-six sister. It almost breaks my heart"(229). The gulf between them had changed drastically from when they were children and he would carry her around. Now he is in no position to dote on his youngest sister because of the country he is in.