week 4- Re-examination of character description

Cloyd still has the same attitude towards Sonny and Silvia, but now it seems like he gets more frustrated and angry with both of them. Now when Silvia goes out, Cloyd gets more upset and he is always asking Sonny all of these questions about where she is. Silvia tells Sonny not to say anything when he does see her leave and Cloyd gets upset every time Sonny replies with i don’t know. When Cloyd gets drunk, he gets angry a lot more, especially when Sonny calls him “man”. For example, “ ‘I dunno, man’...’Don’t call me man!’ Then he punched the wall right next to the door and it left a hole.”(149). In the beginning of the book, when Cloyd was first introduced, he seemed like a nice guy. As we got deeper into the story, he started to become more irritated with Sonny and get more angry about things and we also saw his racist side. Now, we see that when he is drunk, he gets really upset with everything and with everyone. In one part of the book, we see him yell and get angrier than he has before. He is yelling at Sonny and Silvia about Pink and about how he thinks that Pink has a black man living with him in his apartment. The way I see it, Cloyd has an anger problem and it seems like his level of anger is increasing more and more throughout the story. However, the perception of this character has somewhat stayed the same, the only difference now is the level of anger.

Week 4- Prediction

Sonny has mixed feelings about the money he took. Sometimes he is glad he took it and sometimes he feels bad that he did. I think he is going to keep it. The reason I think this is because Cloyd has been getting really angry at everyone lately and I think Sonny feels like taking the money could be a way to kind of get back at him. Also, I think Sonny has been angry with other things too, so stealing the money was a way to let out some of that anger. I think Sonny is probably going to start spending it, maybe on trying to impress Nica or something like that. If he doesn’t do that, I think he might just save it and use it on whats he’s been using it on right now. However, I don’t think he is going to give put it back in the drawer, he said it himself, “ I wished I didn’t take that money. In another way I was like, well,not sorry. Then again, I couldn’t be. Then again, it didn’t matter, it was done”(168). If I were Sonny, I think I would probably do the same that he did. I would have probably taken the money because Cloyd really seems to annoy Sonny and I would have been annoyed with him too. I think taking the money is a good way to get back at Cloyd for the way he’s been yelling at Sonny and also for all if that racist stuff that Cloyd says. 

week 3- themes

One of the themes in the novel, I think, is the importance of family. Sonny is definitely impacted by his family. Now that his mom married Cloyd, it seems like he feels that he doesn’t really have a family because he doesn’t like to be home and he doesn’t even eat dinner at home either. He is always trying to be out of the house in order to avoid his family. He goes and eats at the bowling alley almost every night because, according to him, doesn’t like his mother’s cooking. “ No, really, it is, I do. Over there, where I am living, I don’t like to eat. They got nasty food.” (145) Also, it seems like Sonny has been really annoyed with Cloyd and vise versa because lately, they have really been arguing a lot and Cloyd yelling at Sonny. “ ‘Where’s your mother?’ ‘ I dunno, man.’ ‘Don’t talk to me like that!...You talk to me with respect, you understand?’”(126) Sonny doesn’t yell back at Cloyd, probably because he doesn’t want to upset him even more and probably upset his mom. Instead, Sonny is letting his anger out in different ways like when he’s bowling and when he got in a fight. Sonny got mad while he was bowling and yelled a cuss word and got yelled at by Mr. Zuniga. When Sonny was leaving the bowling alley, he beat up a man and took his wallet after a confrontation. All of this seems like a way for Sonny to let out his anger he has at home towards the way his family relations have changed.

It seems like Silvia is also not happy with the family situation. She doesn’t like having to be at home all day every day. She started going out with her friend, Nelly, in order to get out of the house. She says that shopping makes her happy, but that Cloyd is really strict about his money and he doesn’t like that much getting used on that. It seems like she tries to get out of the house before Cloyd gets home in order to avoid confrontation because she is always telling Sonny to let Cloyd know that she had gone out and how long she’ll be out. She actually admits to not liking being home all day. “ I’m not happy here,...I’m a little bored.” (141) I think she is talking more about the way their lives have changed than actually just being stuck inside all day. 

Cloyd doesn’t seem happy with all of the family situations either. He doesn’t like Silvia going out, he likes to have her inside and clean and cook. He gets mad at Sonny when he doesn’t know where she goes. He sometimes says racist things and sometimes about Mexicans, but then follows it up with a positive comment like it cancels out the bad thing he said. He is mow married to a Mexican and has a Mexican stepson, but it doesn’t seem like it makes a difference to him. It seems like everyone is this family is having negative feeling towards one another, but I think it will change later in the book.

Free Write- My father always

My father always tells my sister and I about his rough childhood. He always tells us stories about how he and his siblings would get made fun of because they couldn't speak English very well and because they didn't have that much money.

week2 character description-Cloyd

Cloyd is Sonny’s new stepdad and also kind of his boss in a way. He makes Sonny do a lot of stuff around the apartment, even though Sonny says it keeps him busy, there are things that he doesn’t like to do, like cutting the weeds. What bothered Sonny was when he found out that Cloyd had said that Sonny was unable to finish cutting the weeds and Sonny got mad because he just didn’t want to finish. Cloyd wants to be a dominant person by having Sonny do what he says and also by having Sonny’s mom always stay home and make the food and clean the house, even though she never cooks. Cloyd is also a jerk because he is racist. For example, “The truth is, I don’t want their problems...It’s not that I don’t work with black people who aint like that too sometimes”. (53) Also, when he saw that Pinkston was selling a car to a black man, he got really mad. All of this racism shows that he is a jerk and he doesn’t respect people. Sonny kind of describes Cloyd as someone who is conceded. For example, “Cloyd was already red-eyed, and he was wearing that hick smile I hated the most and swirling that ice cube. He had on his gray work uniform ,still starched from a laundry, like he hadn’t sweated in it today. His bottle of whiskey was on his office desk like it was the latest trophy, shiny below all of those dead deer with blank marble eyeballs.” (88) Cloyd is really into his trophies and like to brag about them to Sonny. He was an attitude of someone who only cares about himself. I don’t think he really like Sonny, I think he just likes his mom and is just having Sonny do all that stuff around the complex to get in some free labor and also to get Sonny out of the house. Also, I think Sonny’s mom is starting to have second thoughts about her marriage with Cloyd because of the stuff he has been saying. For example, Sonny and his mom always laugh about how Cloyd says that they too much toilet paper. Also, it seems like she is tired of being in the house all day because she has started to go out with her friends. Sonny has also said a lot about his mom and Cloyd arguing. He says he can hear some of the arguments because they’re loud, but some aren’t so he can’t. He usually doesn’t know what they argue about either, he just knows that they do. Also, you can tell that Sonny doesn’t like to be home even when he doesn’t have anymore work to do because he usually goes out to eat. He doesn’t usually eat at home, instead goes to the bowling alley to eat a burger. This could be because of Cloyd being at home, maybe Sonny just doesn’t want to confront him and instead avoids going home all together.

week 1 prompt 1

Sonny is a very smart kid who realizes everything that’s going on around him. I have feeling that he is going to get curious about the other tenants in the apartment, just like he has about Pink and Cindy, and he will probably get into some trouble. Just like when Cloyd got mad when he realized that Pink was selling a car to an African American man, but was kind of getting mad at Sonny like if he was part of it. I think Sonny also might get with Cindy because she seems very flirtatious and Sonny seems to really like her, especially after the way he was talking about her when they had their conversation in her apartment. 

Sonny’s mom and Cloyd don’t seem like the happiest couple in the world. It just seems like Sonny’s mom is just with him for the money because she never talks about him as a husband, but as a person who is getting them stuff that they want. For example, Sonny said he wanted to go to Notre Dame, and even though he doesn’t really want to, it seems like Cloyd wouldn’t mind sending him there. Also, Sonny’s mom doesn’t have to work anymore, all she does now is stay home and “cook” as Sonny would say. For these reasons, I think that Sonny’s mom won’t stay with Cloyd forever. Sonny thinks that this is true also because he is always saying that the reason he isn’t trying to make friends is because he knows that he and his mom won’t be living there for a long time. 

Sonny’s curiosity has almost gotten him into trouble with Cloyd and I think it might get him into more trouble especially now that Cloyd has Sonny going around to all of the apartments to do all of the cleaning on the window screens. I think that as he meets more people in the apartment, he will probably be getting into more trouble. I think that the twins might get him into some trouble too because even though Sonny says that they’re nerds or whatever, i think they are trouble makers just based on the stuff they say, like when they were talking about the girls in Sonny’s apartment and how they were asking Sonny if they had big chests or bottoms and stuff like that. I think that just by the way they have been talking so far, they will probably convince Sonny to do stuff, especially since they are his only friends and probably will be his only ones. I also think that Cindy might get him into some trouble to because she seems like someone without any cares so she might get Sonny to do some things that aren’t necessarily good because in the back of the book it says that Cindy is druggie who is married and bored so there might be some drugs that she’ll tell Sonny to try, especially since Sonny likes her and is a very curious kid.

I am

I am...18 years old and this is my first semester at Gavilan. My favorite thing to do is play sports, especially baseball and basketball.