*::* Book Report *::*
Pool Boy was a well written story about a 15 year old boy, Brett Gerson, whose life is changed dramatically. Brett is the main character in this novel. The book Pool Boy is set in a rich part of present day California.
Let it be known that the Gerson’s are EXTREMELY rich, not just fairly rich ,extremely rich. One day Brett’s father was taken away and thrown in jail for insider trading. The Gerson family had to sell almost everything that they own to try and pay back the money to the government that they owed. They were forced to move out of their luxurious home to their great aunt Mary’s house on the “other side of the tracks”, which was the poorer side. The house isn’t much, it is filled with dust and dirt balls and the beds aren’t comfortable, but it is somewhere they can live.
The struggle begins. Brett is forced to get a job to help pay for the debt, start saving for college and just for spending money. The first job Brett gets is at a fast food restaurant. This is the kind of place that he would have never gone and ate at let alone work. He is always yelling at the boss and then the boss yelling back. This job does not work out with Brett very well.
After quitting his job flipping burgers, he takes a job with Alfie Moore, the old man that used to clean the pool at his old house. Brett never thought cleaning pools would be this tiring. Worst of all, after a hot summer day of work, Alfie and Brett can’t even take a quick swim in the pool that they just cleaned. At lunch time every day, Alfie would have a new recipe something like “tabbouleh”. He would make Brett try it whether or not he wanted to or didn’t want to. The men became close Brett could talk about his problems mostly with his dad and Alfie wouldn’t judge him, maybe a side comment here or there but not much. Often Alfie would talk about how he left his wife and child and he wishes his daughter would have given him a second chance when she was younger to make up for what he did. While cleaning pools everyday, the men became very close. One morning when Brett went over to Alfie’s house early one morning, as he did everyday, he found Alfie lying on the ground, the door was locked, Brett threw a rock threw the window to brake the glass to get in.
Brett, the 16-year-old protagonist, forms the basis of the novel with his rebellious, arbitrary way of thinking. The scene is set
In many ways, he made his kids’ lives harder than it already was. He was always drunk and spending their money on himself. Rex was also always running from authority. This was one of the reasons they moved around so much. One summer Rose Mary decided to go back to school to get her teaching certification again and leaves Jeannette in charge of the money. After only a week Jeannette has given Rex $30 after being guilted into it. Rex swindles a man in a game of pool and wins back the $30; he does this by using Jeannette as a distraction. After this experience Jeannette feels betrayed and used by her father. When Jeannette explains to her father that the “creep attacked [her] when [she] was upstairs” her dad shrugs it off by saying “I knew you could handle yourself.” (213) After Lori and Rose Mary got home from being away for the summer, Lori and Jeannette decide to start saving money so they can leave their parents and move to New York. One-day Jeannette comes home to find out that their piggy bank had been broken into and all the money was taken. Later they realize that Rex had taken the money and when they confront him about it, he denies it. Out of the four kids, Jeannette was closest to her father, but by the time she moved to New York she didn’t want anything to do with him or her mother. Many events that happened with her father were very hard, but made her stronger and more of an independent woman. Her father
Mary Jane was a woman from California she was married to a man by the name of Dan and they had two children Brad and Stacey. They had to move to Seattle because her husband Dan had gotten a job offer at Microrule. When they moved it wasn't long before when Mary Jane found a job as a supervisor at First Guarantee Financial, this was one of Seattle's largest financial institutions. Everything had been going good for both of them. Then after twelve months of being in Seattle Mary Jane's husband was rushed to the hospital with a burst aneurysm unfortunately he never regained consciousness and then died. It was real tough on Mary Jane but she went on, she had to support her family as a single parent. So three years had gone by when Mary Jane accepted a promotion to move up to the third floor at First Guarantee Financial. The third floor was a place that everyone talked about they basically bad mouthed about them, they did not have a good reputation. They were known as the energy dump. The only reason why Mary Jane was taking this job was because when her husband passed away not all the medical expenses were covered so she had to pay for them and provide for the family. At the same time she wondered what had she gotten into. If she only knew what she had in for her?
The tenement was the biggest hindrance to achieving the American myth of rags to riches. It becomes impossible for one to rise up in the social structure when it can be considered a miracle to live passed the age of five. Children under the age of five living in tenements had a death rate of 139.83 compared to the city’s overall death rate of 26.67. Even if one did live past the age of five it was highly probable he’d become a criminal, since virtually all of them originate from the tenements. They are forced to steal and murder, they’ll do anything to survive, Riis appropriately calls it the “survival of the unfittest”. (Pg.
Gambling addict Connor O’Neil ends up deep in debt after he borrows money from almost every loan shop in town to fuel his addiction. In order to pay the mounds of money that he owes, he is requested to coach a little-league baseball team, the Kekambas. At first, Connor doesn’t start off right with the kids and doesn’t see the point of him being there. Even though Connor paid the kids no attention, they were somehow inspired by his presence. Later, He realizes that he must come to grips at what he wants in his life, and ultimately forms a special bond with the kids on the team.
The first sign of problems begin to immerge when Alice goes out for drinks with a friend after work. Alice doesn’t come home until late that night and she appears to have forgotten that Michael had a trip that he had be on for work that night. Alice is initially irritated with Michael and then breaks down because she misses Michael when he is gone. He attempts to save her and make things better by taking her on trip to Mexico to fix things that are ...
The turning point in Middle School Loneliness is that the boys father got a new job in another city
...bly too young to work becomes an obsessive gambler winning money for his mother to earn income that grown-ups usually do. Poverty is turned to fortune but turns back to poverty as the boy's mother spends the money hastily because of her greed and selfishness. Then tragically the precious life that she had but did not love who brought her luck comes to a sudden end.
After a hard days work, nothing satisfies me like going out to play a few friendly games of pool. Pool itself is supposed to be a gentleman’s game, but many of the people I play against taint the image of the game.
The story opens in modern-day Chicago, where Colin is devastated after he has been broken up with for the nineteenth time. Colin is a child prodigy who has just graduated from high school and only dates girls named Katherine. Hassan, Colin’s best friend, comes into Colin’s room and starts to tell him how he should do something other than moping around all day. Little did Colin know Hassan's idea would change Colin's life forever.
Mr. Woodifield is in the stage of depression, since he may have turned to harmful habits after his son’s death. He leaves the house only on Tuesdays, and his family has no idea what he is doing during this time: “Though what he did there the wife and girls
“The Swimmer” is the short story written by John Cheever and it is considered as one of his best short stories. It was published in the collection of short stories “The Brigadier and the Golf Widow”. This story is regarded as one of the best examples of Cheever's suburban stories. The story follows eight miles long way that Neddy Merrill tries to pass by swimming the pools of Westchester County. Neddy Merrill is represented as the main character of the story, whose retrospective of life is illustrated by swimming through the neighbor's pools. The plot of the story concerns the time passage and the main character's unawareness of the very same. At the begging of the story he is described as a happy, family man who lives the “American dream” but he ends up alone because he disregarded the
A general synopsis of this movie could be that it was about a salesman (Chris Gardner) from San Francisco, California who had big dreams for his family. He adored his son and loved his wife but when Chris could not sale, it led to his family struggling to pay bills, which resulted to his wife being fed up with struggling and decides to walk out on her husband and young son. Not letting that prevent him from continuing to fulfill the dreams he had for his family, he continued to strive (while homeless) and pursue a stockbroker positions (if selected) at Dean Witter af...
"The taxi went up the hill, passed the lighted square, then on into the dark, still climbing, then leveled out onto a dark street behind St. Etienne du Mont, went smoothly down the asphalt, passed the trees and the sanding bus at the Place de la Contrescarpe, then turned onto the cobbles of the Rue Mouffetard. There we lighted bars and late open shops on each side of the street. We were sitting apart and we jolted close together going down the old street. Brett’s hat was off. Her head was back. I saw her face in the lights from the open shops, then it was dark, then I saw her face clearly as we came out on the Avenue de Gobelins. The street was torn up and men were working on the car-tracks by the light of acetylene flares. Brett’s face was white and the long line of her neck showed in the bright light of the flares. The street was dark again and I kissed her. Our lips were tight together and then she turned away and pressed against the corner of the seat, as far away as she could get. Her head was down."
Chris Gardner excels at his stockbroker internship in Dean-Witter, earning the attention and respect from his superiors. However, his personal life plunges exponentially. He loses his money and has to resort to sleeping in homeless shelters and subway station bathrooms. He begins to think that happiness can never really be achieved, but he is proved wrong when he feels happy for the first time in the longest time after he lands a job in Dean Witter.