Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Q3 Outside Reading #2

We are once again in Mike's past. He goes into more detail about his childhood, his month in prison and what he did after that. Mike grew up with an older brother, a working father and a mentally unstable mother. He grew up during the debate over the atomic bomb that was released on Hiroshima. He joined a group when he was younger (still in high school) called CND. "Soon I was knocking on doors to tell people about the first strikes and secret NATO exercises, fallout and megatonnage..." was how Mike participated (Kunzru 55).When he was accepted to London School of Economics he joined the protesting and was arrested during a protest. After he got out of jail, he is kicked out of LSE and his roomates boot him out of the apartment.

Back in Mike's present, Miles hasn't given up on getting Mike to talk to him. Miles stops by the house one day and starts talking with Sam (Mike's step daughter) who's home from college. Miles starts to spill some of Mike's past, which Mike has refused to talk about. Miranda says, "Mike never talks about any of this. I had no idea he was so involved in that sixties milieu" (Kunzru 92). Miles doesn't tell that the truly bad things Mike has done, but he told enough to convince Mike to talk with him, as long as Miles would stop spilling his secrets.

2 comments:

Paige J. said...

That new information that you introduced with this blog is very important. Befor we don't know much about his history in Vietnam of his school days, but this part changes the readers point of view on him. Your posts are making me want to read this book! Keep up the great posts!

Spenser said...

Very interesting! I think Miles is going to play a huge factor in Mike healing and moving on in his life. Mike doesn't talk about his past now but I think that through Miles's way of getting information will prove maybe theraputic to Mike adn he will stop living in the past. From your first post we didn't get to learn a lot about the character of Mike earlier but now we see his struggle and fight through life adn it explains to us the person the author gives to us now. GREAT WORK.