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.