Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

The story of This Blessed House really did a great job of pulling me in. I felt like I was their in their house as they found each individual object, I felt like I was watching and even feeling the tension of the fight between Twinkle and Sanjeev. In reading this is when I stated to better understand the difference between something that is plot driven and something that is character driven. I actually started to like it. In class, when we were talking about all the movies that are close to being plot or character driven I pretty much felt like I would never like anything that is character driven, that is until I read this story.

Something we talked about in my group was that many people mentioned how they didn’t like Sanjeev’s attitude. “Would you like it if your spouse stated putting up a bunch of Buddha  statues and pictures?” was one of the questions stated. I thought that was a great point. I wouldn’t like it for sure. Some people didn’t like how he seemed like he didn’t care. But something stood out to me. Something that if I had missed just one sentences my whole perspective would have changed about Sanjeev. It is when she had been taking a bath and he comes in and tells here that he is getting ride of the Mary statue in the lawn, she kind of freaks out and is standing at the door upset and this one special line happens… Here it is… “He went to shut a window, fearing that she would catch cold.” (p.1073) For some reason this just jumped off the page to me. He truly is a caring loving man. Up to this point I really didn’t like his attitude and his leadership as a man. But this one line told me that deep down he cared, he didn’t want her to catch cold and then as soon as he realized that she was crying he cracked.

This taught me that it is so important to read every line of a story or book. I tend to skip some stuff or zone out while reading and could possibly miss something that could change the whole story from the readers point of view. I was once having a conversation with a music teacher about speed reading and he mentioned that it really irritated him when people sped read because he hated the thought that someone could possible skip over a line that the author spent substantial time wrestling over which word would best describe what he was trying to say in that one sentence.  He continued to say that it is dishonoring to the author to speed read. My mind is not sold on that idea but I see where he is coming from. I’m going to keep thinking about that one.