Thursday, January 19, 2012

Chapter 1: The Water is Wide


“I don’t know if God had anything to do with it, Doctor. I applied for the Peace Corps and haven’t heard. Yamacraw seemed like a viable alternative”

Pat Conroy seems like a man that wants to make a difference in the lives of others. From this statement from the first chapter he was willing to go to the Peace Corps in hopes of putting the needs of others above his own. Rather than helping people in other countries coming to Yamacraw Island was a way to help Americans. He could do more for these children that basically lived inside the world he lived but had no part in it than he could ever do in the Peace Corps. From reading the first chapter I feel that Pat will face some challenges and people will try to come up against him but he will overcome despite it all. Pat will be stepping into a place that isn’t suitable for living and is surrounded by colored people not like him at all. This will be possibly the biggest challenge besides that of the uneducated children that Pat will have to face. He being a white male coming into a place that is poor and filled with people of the inferior race will make it difficult for him to reach these people. Just from the chapter reading I think that Pat might wish he had went to the Peace Corps rather than go to Yamacraw Island but the decision has already been made and he will make the best out of it. Because of his will to help people I think that Pat will be my favorite character in the book because he has put himself in a situation unimaginable to him to change the lives of the people living on this island.

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