Natalies Blog Post 4

The book is gradually developing and is starting to make much more sense. I like how it is not focused so much on how depressed Tayo is and more on his good memories and how Tayo is dealing with his “illness”. I think the story is easier to follow when they are going from memory to memory, I personally think it is a little more difficult to understand when the book is going back and fourth between present and past. Rocky and Tayo’s relationship is really brought into perspective as well as Tayo’s memories. Tayo reflects that when his mother left him with his Auntie she never fully accepted him. Auntie treated him like a stranger and Rocky was forced to keep his cretin distance. I think it is wrong that when other people were around Auntie treated Tayo as an “equal” but when no one was around he was treated as a stranger again.

Night Swan is introduced as a character and was somewhat of a mystery to me at first. For a while I was very bewildered on who she was, I thought she was Tayo’s mother for the longest time. Now I think I understand Night Swan is a professional dancer (Stripper), “They called me the Night Swan,” she said. “I remember every time I have danced” (pg 84). I don’t think she is a prostitute but I do think she is very loose around men so she has a bad reputation. The relationship Josiah and her have developed over a somewhat short time is very random and strange to me. I think Night Swan ripped Josiah off with the Mexican Cattle and they are just really wild cows that wont stay put and she need someone else to have them as a burden. Night Swan suddenly started a relationship with Josiah after he bought the cattle from her uncle, I wonder if they have true love or if it is just temporary satisfaction? To me the book is getting more and more like a Soap Opera the further I read. All the different scandalous relationships, family drama, and internal conflict really make it seem like it could be a Soap Opera.

My favorite quote in this reading is “It had the clarity of the sky after a summer rainstorm, when the dust was washed away, and the colors of the hills and the shadows of the mesas had an intensity which made everything he saw accessible, as if he could touch all of it, even the little green rabbit weed growing close to the sand, its tiny leaves clustered like stars” (pg. 78-79). I really enjoyed this quote because the way the author explains the imagery makes you feel like you are right there in the book, I like the different similes used in this quote, I think they are very pretty.