2nd Blog Post

         Dear Reader,

Their devotion to the Catholic Church surprises me.  I knew that the Irish were typically very Catholic, but I never knew that it was to this extent!  It seems to me that only a few of them are really into it (like their grandmother and Fintan).  I think they do it out of pride.  They don’t want to be ridiculed by their neighbors.  It’s like a contest, to see who can be the best church-going Catholic out there.  They want respect for their family name, like when their mom got Frank all ready to go and ask to be an altar boy, and she told him, “‘’Tis a great pity you grew out of your First Communion suit but you have nothing to be ashamed of, you come from good blood, McCourts, Sheehans, or my mother’s family the Guilfoyles that owned acre after acre in County Limerick before the English took it away and gave it to footpads from London.’” (149). It’s so much more different today!

         School is so much more different than I expected it to be too.  I’ve never been to Catholic school before, so it took a while for me to not be totally shocked by the teacher enforcing religion in the classroom.  Their teacher, Mr. O’Neill, seems very odd.  He’s apparently not even teaching his students the right things, as we saw when Mr. O’Dea said, “‘Well then, Mr. O’Halloran, tell him to stop teaching the geometry.  The geometry is for the fifth form and not the fourth.  The geometry is mine.  Tell him to teach the long division and leave Euclid to me.’” (154).  They’ve got a loopy teacher who’s awfully emotional about a Greek mathematician teaching them.  That would never pass today, even if it was in Ireland and not America.  He was simply scolded and sent back to his room.  He didn’t lose his job or anything!  I was shocked! 

         Mr. Timoney is my new favorite character.  This man is great and I think that Frank is very fortunate to have met him.  Frank doesn’t even realize it, but he’s replacing his bum of a dad as the fatherly figure.  He though to himself, “Mr. Timoney is an old man but he talks like a friend and I can say what I feel.  Dad would never talk to me like Mr. Timoney.  He’d say, ‘Och, aye,’ and go for long walk.” (178).  I feel like that’s a sort of repeating thing throughout the novel, where kind people do a simple thing, yet it has a great impact on Frank’s life.  I feel like meeting Mr. Timoney, even if just for a short time, gave him faith in adults again.  They don’t need to be so cranky.  Do you think that he was like this because of his religion?  Perhaps it made him less uptight?  Frank really liked him; he tried to read to him even when he was locked away at the mental hospital.  That poor kid really liked him; I wish that the guard who laughed at him would have had more heart. 

Sincerely,
Emily Botelho