#6 I have a lot of blog posts...

It turns out that Benjamin Nab was wanted for stealing the girl of a higher man. Or at least he got framed for it. Ben gets taken away and the small group breaks up. Ren goes to Ben's captor McGinty and tells a long tale. He has perfected the art of lying. It combines all the adventures he's had. But to no availe McGinty gets Nab up from his torture room, ready to kill him with the gun that killed Margaret, the woman they both loved. The woman who is also Ren's mother. The collar he kept from the beginning was the tie that he used to prove it to McGinty. With that chance Ben signals with his blue bandage from his head and a shot from outside kills McGinty. All hell breaks lose and the two end up running away.

Even after reading the book I can't decide on the purpose of the name. The only connection I see is catholicism. Ren is young, innocent, and catholic: Which I've posted were all recurring themes throughout the book. It seems to be the classic story of a lost past gained back. Ren is never truely bad, but gets by with plenty of sins. The books ends with a cliche life of happiness gained with Ben. The struggle is over.

I see a parallel between Ren and many kids today. Divorce rates are huge now. Kids are born, but then torn by their parents. It is our worlds that we are begining to have to run on our own. With the economy this is also really tough because we are limited financially. Those like me who are lucky enough to have a job, and add in a ton of hours make it ok. But, as with Ren, it has its drawbacks. Sure, I can do what I want, but how much do I really have?

Blog post #5

I will pick up on where I left off last week with the living, dead man. It's hard to pattern him right away because he is still under the effects of being burried for a few hours. He and Ren make few interactions, Ren has a gun leveled at the man, but he suckers the boy in anyway and sweeps him up into a great bear hug. It seemed to signify that the Man had power over the boy because nothing more came of it. The Man turns out to be named Dolly, and works as an assassin. He has a tattoo of a chain around his abdomin, every link represents a man he has killed. Bragging about how many he's killed! For the time, I suppose that's just an occupation, that's how it is. I think about now: What do we brag about? Dolly is very good at killing people, "I was made for killing" (190), so indeed, he brags about it in one way or another. I brag about my car because it is one of my strong-points. What do you brag about?

A recurring theme in the book is faith. Dolly openly kills a friar who prodded into someone else's business, someone else being Dolly. Ren just about faints as he walks outside to see the eyeless man with a crushed face on the pavement. Ren remembers, "Father John always said the Day of Judgement would come during this lifetime. Ren looked behind and saw no one following, and no judgement" (200). Ren is slowly but surely losing his faith. He's realizing it's ok to do these bad things because nothing bad is coming back to haunt him (take that as you will). Its a question I fight with quite often myself. What is the purpose of faith and is it really real? Between AP Euro and looking at the event around me I find it hard to believe in. People seem to turn on faith when their lives suck, they abandon faith when they realize there is nothing to fear. In the book we read, Night, Eliezer turned on his faith because of the terrible things happening. Of course there are many religious explanations for the lack of an active god. It's all opinion.

Post #4

Ren is now growing up and getting used to the scene. Being a theif doesn't bug him as it used. There is a kind of numbness that the reader gets with Ren, as though we're helping with the stealing and yet, we aren't really doing it. This week, the threesome, (Ren, Benjamin, and Tom) settle in an old mine town in the house of Mrs. Sands; who is the widow of one of the many miners buried in the mine on the edge of town due to a freak device explosion. She is described as, "A full head taller then Ben, with great broad shoulders and thick arms" (135). Classic. I'm finding this book to be just a little too cliche; I can see through a lot of it into metaphors and lead offs to other famous works I've read. Once settled in, the three meet with the doctor and arrange the next activitiesl; Grave Digging.

Grave Digging only phases Ren. He doesn't like the thought of it (who would), though Tom and Benjamin don't find it all that great either. To make things weirder, and this is where we're losing reality, one of the corpse bags turns out to contain a living man, wrongly buried, barely alive. They end up taking the man back to Mrs. Sands. This thoroughly freaks out Ren, as it would anyone. Tom kept his cynical grumpy look on it "What are we gonna do with him? (150). The effect on Ben is the expected; he doesn't like it, but he has to do it. There is something behind Ben I am waiting to catch. Why is he a theif? What happened that made him lead this life? What are his plans for Ren? So far Ren has merely got housing and a little money. The book is still lacking significance.