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.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places #3

Le Ly Hayslip was once a hero in her childhood. The Viet Cong, a group of fighters who were fighting agianst the Republicans who belonged to the north, had adopted Ky La, Hayslip's city as a center for their operations in that area. Ky La had many skirmishes and the people of Ky La were told that if they told the Republicans any secrets they would kill them and all of the people they loved. Already in the book, many people had been killed execution-style for associating with them or just be seeming suspicious. At one point, Hayslip had just come back from a notoriously dangerous prison very fast, and her family was under house-arrest because the Viet Cong thought they were suspicious. The act of seperating them from the rest of the village like that just gave them more reason to be suspicious because since they weren't seen with the obviously guilty villagers, the Republicans treated them better and avoided harming their house. After the house-arrest was lifted, Hayslip did another thing to cause the Viet Cong to suspect her. As she was walking to the field to farm, she accidentaly lead Republican soldiers to a place where two Viet Cong members were hiding, which ended with the two Viet Cong dead and her facing absolute death. After some time, though, she looks back on why she didn't even think of "tattling". She says that "Back then, we didn't even know anything about the world going on beyond our small area, Saigon seemed like a world away to us, never mind America (151)." The people in her village didn't know much else besides farming and the only reason they sided with the Viet Cong was because they had practically brainwashed them with propaganda telling them they were doing something good, so if she had told anybody, she wouldn't have done it because she thought it was "right". What she was doing at that time wasn't something she needed to go against, no matter how bad the treatment became.

Blog Question #3

In the movie On the Waterfront there are mainly two views on "ratting" or being an infomant to the police. The mob members, mostly Johnny Friendly and Charilie think that squeeling is selling out your friends, no matter what excuse you come up with. Terry, on the other hand, thinks that when your "friends" are doing something you need to stop, you need to stop them. In the beginning Terry didn't think like that though. Through the movie all the way until the end Terry is first standing up for himself and then he stands up for the people around him, the dock workers. After Terry testifies against Johnny, the whole mob turns against him because what he did was their idea of a "stool pigeon".
I think that you need to tell the truth when the lies are hurting people. However, there are times when people are cruel and don't try to help anyone and are just looking out for themselves. The mob was like that in the movie. In the end when Johnny took everyone's guns away from them, he didn't do it because he wanted to stop hurting and killing people, he did it all for himself so that the police wouldn't find something incriminating. Tattling and trying to stop something wrong are just points of view. To the people who are exposed, they think its tattling but the people who are doing the "tattling", they are doing it because they feel what they are doing is right. In elementary school, you might remember teasing or being teased for being a "tattle-tale" and when we were kids, there wasn't such a thing as a "moral crusader". Kids think selfishly and that works for them, but we aren't kids anymore.

Blog Question #2

In the play, All My Sons by Arthur Miller, many characters give up their morals in order to give their family a "happy" life. Joe Keller sends cracked cylinder heads to the front lines that ultimately kill 21 men during the war. He does so, and lies about it for three years, later saying, "You're a boy, what could I do! I'm in business, a man is in business...(69)." Providing for his family at the time, the boy who knew nothing of the business and a wife, took precedence over the thought of maybe killing people. Kate Keller also doesn't expose the truth to their son, Chris, and her reason was"You can't bull yourself  through this one , Joe, you better be smart now, This thing-- this thing is not over yet (75)." Kate Keller's determination to not fall and have their most dangerous secret revealed is so strong, she lies to everyone. She lies to her own son, if it meant believing that her other son hadn't died because of her husband. She also puts her family's fragile balance over turning her husband in, and ruining her family for good.

I believe that some things are worth hurting your family, but there are also things that are more important than going along with society. It just depends on how important you think the thing that you have a choice of betraying your family for actually is to you. Peer pressure isn't a very good idea to break apart your family for but for some people their country could be that thing that they would choose.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places #2

For this post about my Outside reading book, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places , the devotion of certain people to others is a big piece that influences how the people Le Ly Hayslip is introducing to us live and their beliefs. She herself has grown up knowing that "The  oldest child in each family was responsible for providing for the family once the parents were gone. Sometimes this responsibility included vengeance for the father's death (69)." The strong connection between parent and child is what their whole society is based on. Young children grow up just to prove their parents proud and to provide for them when they grow old and feeble. Their devotion to their family bonds lasts even beyond death. Another common form of devotion is the kind between wife and husband. When Hayslip's sister's husband was taken away, she waited for 7 years for her husband to come back. Hayslip writes, "Waiting patiently for rice to grow or mountains to fall or lost husbands to come back was also the Vietnamese woman's way (22)." Waiting and holding faith that her husband would come back was the norm for Vietnamese women of that time.

Steady devotion to the people around them, including family and friends, was the principle belief of the people in Ky La, Hayslip's hometown. Unfortunately, as the war progressed, Ky La was engulfed in a power struggle between the North and South forces. "Life in the village had gone from love and distrust of no one to fear and mistrust of everyone...(70)." The change of attitude in a community where people helped each other out became a fragmented group of people, scared to talk to the wrong person or do the wrong thing. If they were caught doing something suspicious, the southern guerillas hiding in their village would execute them. Needless to say, during the tough part of the war, people hardened their hearts and walked softly in order to avoid being killed, and not just by the southern guerillas. The northern people also interrogated and beat the people of Ky La. After being surrounded by people hurting them, I am very interested in how Hayslip survived such a hard time.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places

The book I am reading for outside reading this quarter is When Heaven and Earth Changed Places. It is an autobiography by Le Ly Hayslip that journals her experinces growing up in Vietnam during the Vietnam war. When she was growing up, she was raised with views on life that seem alien to me, like when her mother "...sang heroic songs to her tight belly, ate sparingly, and worked extra hard ...(Hayslip 1)." All so that her baby would be born a healthy and strong person. These kinds of thoughts are very different than the way we normally treat mothers in our society. Being careful and really cautious around expecting mothers is what most people do, and most mothers don't want to risk their child's health. I expect that back then and there, Le Ly's mother didn't have the scary truths that science sometimes bring us. Another custom alien to me was the thing her mother said to her, "When you marry, your mother-in-law will become your second mother--your boss. If you can satisfy her as a maid, she'll think you are a suitable wife for her son (Hayslip 12)."Trying to please your mother-in-law is something most spouses try to do so that they will be accepted, but in Vietnam back then, they see it as a kind of interview with their "boss" and that being accepted is what a young wife is supposed to do, not just highly suggested to do. Doing so will bring honor on your parents, which is the best thing that a child could hope for at that time.
There were also some very down to earth reasonings that Le Ly's family and her community were suprisingly down to earth in a lot of instances. One such moment is when the rice crop fails for some reason or another. When you normally see a society that has so many stories about rice, with rice playing a big role in it, or rice as a role in itself, a speaking role, it kind of struck me when she said " We always blamed crop failures on ourselves -- we had not worked hard enough...(Hayslip 9)." Compared to their stories about how rice had become so hard to prepare, like the story where the bags of a fast-growing plant and a hard to grow plant were mixed up by someone God sent down, so that rice was hard to grow and grass grew everywhere very easily, the fact that they accepted their defeat with such reality. These kinds of moments were rare, but many things in Le Ly's society when she was growing up show how their customs vary from lots of places around the world to make Vietnam a special place, especially to Le Ly.

Poll update: Voters having 'buyer's remorse'?

In the article I read, the latest polls have shown John McCain catching up to Barack Obama's 49-44% lead in the national polls. However, this isn't odd because as the title of the article says, people might be experiencing "buyer's remorse", which is switching candidates because they think the other one might be better. Even with a large difference in popularity, McCain is still in the running, even though the only other person to overcome such a deficit was Ronald Reagan in 1980. I think that this presidential race is still not over, and that nobody should be surprised, no matter what happens, because this is a race that will go down in history.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/30/poll-update-race-may-be-tightening/

Photography

In the article I read, I learned that taking pictures of flowers in full light makes the flowers become lighter and have less contrast than if they were pictured under shadow or on a cloudy day. This kind of application of techniques of shadow and lighting also shows us that even when it is sunny, it doesn't have to be a "happy" picture. If some things are taken in specific lighting, like flowers in shadow it might even be be more artisticly pleasing.

Zuckerman, Jim. "Flower Photography in Good Light." BetterPhoto.com. 23 Oct. 2008 .

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The Best of Satyajit Ray: A Strange Night for Mr. Shasmal

This is a short story about Mr. Shasmal who we find at the beginning of the story in a bungalow he rented for 3 days. He is served dinner by the servant that comes with renting the bungalow and during dinner, they talk about how they are in the middle of the forest and that Mr Shasmal shouldn't leave his door open at night. Just after dinner, though, Mr. Shasmal finds a dog in his room after he leaves the door unattended. He calls the servant but the dog is gone and everybody is thoroughly confused. A little later, the dog appeared in the corner again and he noticed another animal in the opposite corner of the room, a stripped cat. He remembers about one night years ago that he was angry and a cat yowling was really annoying him so he threw a large paperweight at the direction and it ended abruptly. The next day the neighbor's cat was found murdered. At that time he was scornful of people who considered killing animals murderers, like killing ants as a kid. A murdered dog was what he tried to remember now, in 1973 he remembered when he got a new car he was speeding and hit a dog and just kept going. Now, all the animals he had killed showed up in his room; snakes, and birds and cats, whims of cruelty. Soon, he heard footsteps. He knew who they were, they were his business partner who had turned into an enemy because he was against the way Mr. Shasmal ran their business and was going to file a report to the police, so Mr. Shasmal knew he had to take care of him. After he had shot him, he had gone straight to the bungalow. There was a knock on the door and Adheer, the business partner, spoke to him...

In the end, it turned out that Mr. Shasmal had missed when he had shot Adheer and he had brought the police because he "decided this lunatic must be handed over to the police (279)." 

I think that the guilt Mr Shasmal had gathered his whole life and had tried to bury was drawn out by his, what he thought, killing of Adheer. He had lied to himself his whole life that nothing could be earned by stray dogs or annoying cats. He also seems to be a distrubed person in some way because he was able easily revert to violence whenever things weren't going his way. In the beginning of the story, he had asked a funny question, if there were ghosts in the bungalow, but when he heard that there weren't it seemed he was too relieved for it to be a joke, but that was when the author hadn't told us about Adheer, so I wasn't able to understand it until after I had read. Mr Shasmal's guilt really does seem to be the main reason he hallucinated about all of the things he had killed while keeping us in the dark, which made this a very spooky title all the way until the end.

Ray, Satyajit, and Gopa Majumdar. The Best of Satyajit Ray. Trans. Gopa Majumdar. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, 2001.

The Best of Satyajit Ray: Bapin Chwdhury's Lapse of Memory

Bapin Chowdhury was an avid reader and had a responsible job with a very sheltered life, so when a strange person calling himself an old friend from 5-6 years ago approaches him at the bookstore he frequents saying things that repeatedly contradict what he thinks, he starts to doubt his own memories. He visits Ranchil, the city he was supposed to be at and tries to remember since another friend of his said that they were both together there. In the end, it turns out that his old friend Chunilal had planned this whole thing, from the stranger to his other friend giving the same story because Bapin had repeatedly refused to help him find a job when he was on hard times. This story really tells you how easily the most staid person could doubt himself if he is given a few pushes in one direction. I think anybody would be made to believe the plan Chunilal concocted mostly because he covered all bases and also because people are just gulible sometimes.

Blog Question #1

2. I think Homer shows Odysseus as a liar and murderer because he thought that pretty words weren't enough. If you were to find your spouse being courted by suitors who are sucking your wealth dry after you have been gone for 20 years, anybody would be upset. To do justice what brings us to Odysseus' side when he pretty much commits cold-blooded murder. There are probably not many people who read the book thinking that Odysseus should have reasoned with the suitors, revenge is what we would hope for, even today. Today, I think we as a people have gained perspective and have learned that both sides of wars have stories, which means our heroes should be different that Odysseus, but Odysseus still strikes a chord with a lot of us because we still, and probably will always be attracted to the side of humanity that is raw and hasn't changed for thousands of years.

There is also the cunning and always planning side of Odysseus that seems ahead of its time. Smarts are always thought of as a good characteristic for a hero, and Odysseus exemplifies this really well. He is always labeled as the "great tactician" which was definitely good, especially during war-time which meant it was a good characteristic like bravery. Pride, however wasn't so great of a thing to have. Achilles was prideful in The Iliad when he said he wouldn't fight, which ended up killing his best friend. I think Odysseus was more like a real person than an unreachable hero (or superhero) because he had those bad qualities and the great qualities you would expect. I think this causes us to reach out to Odysseus more and makes him seem much more like a hero we like nowadays.