Travis

I was struck by Summer's statement from the first chapter that if her near death experience had been with drowning or a car, she wouldn't have become obsessed with water or cars. At first I wasn't sure what to make of it. But as the book continued, I began to feel like she is able to focus on mosquitoes because they're living beings. So much of the book focuses on Summer's relationships and the interrelationships among her family members. All of the relationships Summer describes are inscrutable to her in some way, except perhaps between her and Thunder. She struggles to understand which version of her grandmother she will interact with, as Nicole mentioned. Her brother is a serious child who operates on a different wavelength than most children. Her grandfather is a stoic man who dispenses quasi-zen koans as bedtime stories. In some ways, her relationship to mosquitoes are perhaps the easiest for her to understand. They function as nothing more than a force of nature, one that can be explained in several ways. They have certain physical characteristics that she documents in her notebook. She knows how good their sense of smell is, and how fast they can fly. Though she mentions that there are still things about them that scientists can't explain, in many ways they are more explicable than any of her other relationships. However, even if this weren't the case, she would still be fascinated by the dichotomy between the fragility of their lives and how deadly they almost were to her. Even if that's all she knew about mosquitoes, there would be something straightforward in their very nature that in many ways is something understandable that she can't find anywhere else in her life. I also like the ways they show that relationships cannot be forced. One instance is when the grandparents tried to get Jaz some friends with a party, no one showed up. On one hand, throwing a party is a good way to meet people, but in Jaz's case it was unlikely to work because of his personality. Especially at that age, children don't just show up to parties of other kids they don't have a relationship with. The fallout of no one coming to see her brother brings up another example of this. When Summer tries to be friendly toward Jenson, he rejects her. This is most likely partly because as an outcast, he is immediately suspicious of a change in how someone he knows relates to him. This is why he rejects her initial greeting with a terse "shut up." He makes his feelings more explicit later, when he says that in all the years he's known her, she's never said a word to him, and so he's not willing to accept anything from her. There is perhaps a small indication that something could change with persistence, as he thanks her "for whatever [she's] trying to do," and later we see that he is still on her mind during one point in the harvest. Still, it's something that Summer needs to see, that relationships need to be built on something. This is later contrasted with the boy Jaz finds during the harvest who is like him. They manage to have the beginnings of the friendship, which starts fairly immediately upon their meeting. However, this is not something forced, as both boys have similar personalities and are in similar situations. Furthermore, there is no prior rejection to color the interaction, as there was with the years of Summer not speaking to Jenson. Still, it's destined to be a transient friendship, as both boys are migrant workers. Perhaps the most instructive relationship for Summer is the crush she has on Robbie, as she is able to feel elevated and subsequently rejected, and thus get a small taste of what love looks like. It is through this that she is best able to come to a better understanding of the motivations that the people around her have, like Mick, who is getting over feelings of lost love. It's especially beneficial for her in her understanding of her grandparents relationship, as they have been together for so long. Despite the fact that it was an arranged marriage, Summer can see how they relate to each other in familiar ways. Through the relationships Summer learns about during her year of bad luck, she is able to grow up a little. She sees the people around her in more depth, and comes to her understanding in the end that "you do what you can do." Not only does she come to that realization about herself, it seems that she has begun to understand that about everyone else as well.

Posted : Oct 24, 2014 01:12