When I was little I remember driving across country, going to Florida, and past neighborhoods that were anything but mine. They had old houses that looked like they were going to fall down any minute, real trashy looking. In Colorado, my house was nice and always kept up. I sat in the car wondering what kind of people lived in those run down places and what they were like. The answers came to me years later when I read the book, Famous All Over Town, by Danny Santiago. The main character, Chato, is a young Hispanic boy living in a neighborhood like the ones I saw when I was little. After reading the book, although I never thought I would have anything in common with people who lived like that, I learned that Chato and I have do have similarities, but we have more differences.
There aren't very many similarities between Chato and I, but there is one, and it's a big one. We both have families that love us. Lena, Chato's sister takes care of him after he gets home from the hospital. Then he begins to think about his family and how glad he is to be home. "Lena loved me, my mom loved me, and my father loved me, it seemed" (45). All of Chato's family loves him and he loves being with them. In my house, you would find the same kind of environment and I can relate to some of Chato's family life. However, Chato's family is not always nice to him. His family has many problems, such as everyone keeping secrets from each other and everyone lieing to each other. For example, Chato's father is having an affair and everyone knows about it, but they all keep it from Chato. When he finds out he is very mad at himself and things he is dumb for not knowing, while everyone else does. "She knew, they knew, the whole damn town knew, except only dumb, stupid me" (l46). In my family, however, everyone is honest and you would never see anyone keeping something that important from the others. Another example of how Chato's family is different, is shown when Chato is having a bellyache and his father things that he is faking it. He tells him, "Shut-up, crybaby-coward" (26). His father is not being very nice to him because he is sick. On the other hand, at my house my parents send me to the doctor every time I get sick. They would have been a lot more considerate of me if I was in that much pain.
Very good paper!
The introduction "grabs the reader's attention" with a personal story (anecdote).
She identifies the literature she will be using and then states the general direction of her paper (thesis).
Her body paragraph is developed with specific evidence from the novel, including direct quotations.
The Writer Goes on to:
write a paragraph about how her friends are different from Chato's, and how she would feel the same way he does if her friends let her down.
write a paragraph about how Chato's neighborhood is different from her's, but how she likes the feeling of community.
write a paragraph about how Chato's school is different from her's and how she would feel just like him if her school was such a bad place.
She concludes with the powerful insight that just because she and Chato come from different environments, that does not make her any better than him. She just feels that she has more advantages and wishes he did too.
The less formal response to literature may use first person more than the more formal one; it often is a reflection on how the writer's life compares to a character(s) in the literature. These papers are fun to read because I get to learn more about the details of the writer's specific lifestyle
