ipl-logo

The Cut By George Pelecanos

687 Words3 Pages

The Cut, written by George Pelecanos is a book written about a Marine Corps Veteran, Spero Lucas. Spero is having some difficulty adapting to his new “civilian” lifestyle after coming home from Iraq. To help cope with this, he finds himself in an interesting new career. Spero helps people find their “lost” property. He is not picky about who his clients, whether he must recover stolen jewelry or hunt down stolen marijuana, as long as he receives a paycheck. Another twist is that Spero comes from a racially mixed background which both helps and hinders him in is work. Pelecanos creates a character with military background, that comes from a mixed racial family and works the risky business as a private investigator to create a complex mystery …show more content…

With the author, George Pelecanos’s, use of descriptive words and what I know about the Marine Corps, I could create a picture in my mind of what Lucas looked like. He states that Lucas was a white, twenty-nine-year-old male, who stood five-foot and eleven-inches tall with a one hundred eighty-five-pound build. He has short black hair, green eyes and a flat stomach. You can also assume that he was in decent shape, and filled with knowledge. Being a veteran who just returned from Iraq, He was used to being in dangerous and intense situations. Therefore, when the story starts out and Spero is interested in being hired by an imprisoned drug dealer to recover stolen drugs, he of course accepted the job. Because of his service, he felt that he missed out on a great deal of things back home, and thought this was the perfect opportunity to “make up for lost time”, and that cut at the end was just another incentive. Throughout the story, it makes references to his time in Iraq and his complicated …show more content…

His father is dead, and the family does not hear much from the sister. So, it is the mother, and the two brothers. which is where it gets even more complex. Some of his family members are white and others African American. With Lucas’s intense job, it seems that his family and many others that he truly cares about somehow get intertwined with his “business”. Leo, who is African American, is one of Spero’s brothers, is a high school teacher, and is spoken about the most throughout the story. Because, Leo is African American and living in the suburbs, one can imagine the stereotypical comments and situations he encounters. Especially when he is involved with Spero’s job and ends up getting drug into helping Spero get a student of his back from some

Show More
Related

  • Junot Diaz's The Money

    340 Words  | 2 Pages

    The term “diaspora” refers to an individual’s exit from his or her own home. In the story “The Money”, by Junot Diaz, the author describes how his mother sends money back to her parents in the Dominican Republic, where Junot’s lived before their immigration to the United States. His mother sends the money out of guilt for leaving her parents and home country behind, and because Junot’s grandparents need the money in order to survive. Though I lived in the United States for my whole life, my departure from my small suburban town in Ohio and my journey towards established myself in the Bronx, New York City could be considered my own diaspora.

    Read More

  • Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

    167 Words  | 1 Pages

    Bradbury wanted to emphasize the dangerous world of F451. Clarisse was killed by the “normal” people who live without care for others. In the beginning of the book, Clarisse says to Montag, “ I’m afraid of children my own age. They kill each other” (30). Bradbury sets Clarisse apart from the other children.

    Read More

  • The Man I Killed By Tim O Brien

    979 Words  | 4 Pages

    Death will always complement war. This is seen clearly in Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Man I Killed”. In this tale the Main character, Tim, is vividly describing in his mind the enemy Vietcong solider he just killed life story before his death. He details everything, from the visible wounds on the soldier’s body to a fantasy of the man’s life. Meanwhile, to soldiers in Tim’s platoon acknowledge that he killed this man and try to speak to him about it.

    Read More

  • Monster By Walter Dean Harris

    761 Words  | 4 Pages

    Lyniya Davis Mrs. Juhas and Mrs. Mitchell 3rd and 5th 2/10/23 Title: Monstrous People Jared Harris- The scariest monsters are human beings and what we will do to each other. Steve Harmon is a 16 year old boy, who grew up in a bad and harsh environment named Harlem.

    Read More

  • The Soloist Book Analysis

    582 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the words of Steve Lopez, “You're only as good or bad as your latest attempt to make some connection with the world.” The novel, The Soloist, by Steve Lopez is an insight to Lopez’s time helping and connecting with Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless schizophrenic. When Lopez meets Nathaniel he is awed by his musical talent and soon discovers he once attended Julliard, a prestigious school of performing arts. Lopez’s story was transformed into a film produced in 2008. Lopez’s character in the book and film share similarities and differences in his personal life, attitude towards Nathaniel, and struggles that contribute to the overall theme of the novel.

    Read More

  • A Child Called It By Dave Pelzer

    936 Words  | 4 Pages

    My book is called A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer. It has 182 pages, all of which are full of sadness. The genre is an autobiography of Dave Pelzer’s abusive childhood. My book is a terrifying story of a mother who used to be loving, but became abusive because of alcohol. She took out her anger on Dave, her youngest son.

    Read More

  • Masculinity In Ysrael

    732 Words  | 3 Pages

    The stories of Junot Diaz feature various elements of social and personal issues that are highly prevalent in young Latinx men, primarily the compulsion and adverse effect of machismo, the poignancy of being an outcast in one’s community, and the lack of a father figure in a boy’s life. The first set of short stories prominently feature Ysrael, a Dominican boy whose face was disfigured by a pig when he was an infant. In “Ysrael”, he is the object of Yunior’s fascination, and the victim or Rafa’s (Yunior’s brother) torment.

    Read More

  • Jodi Picoult's The Storyteller

    1618 Words  | 7 Pages

    The Past Does Not Define an Individual “Inside each of us is a monster, inside each of us is a saint. The real question is which one we nurture the most, which one will smite the other” (Picoult 111). The only person that can define their own self is the individual alone. The novel The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult is of a baker named Sage Singer with a large scar on her face. When she meets Josef Weber, an elderly man, in her grief support group they start to befriend one another.

    Read More

  • Piri's Double-Sided Identity

    1301 Words  | 6 Pages

    Black and Puerto Rican: Developing Piri’s Double-Sided Identity For centuries, American citizens have possessed a tendency to view ethnicity in black and white. A person without pale skin and smooth hair is characterized as black without regard to his or her self-identification. Given the racism prevalent in society, this black-white paradigm causes difficulty for people who are not comfortable in one or either category. Piri Thomas was one of these children, and his memoir recounts his struggle to understand himself. In Down These Mean Streets, Thomas demonstrates how the protagonist Piri’s confusion with his skin color and Puerto Rican heritage lead him to eventually acknowledge and appreciate his identity as an Afro-Latino man in America.

    Read More

  • Always Running Luis Rodriguez Analysis

    604 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book Always Running by Luis Rodriguez is an autobiography. Luis has been involved with gangs since he was eleven years old. He was attracted to the power he saw when he witnessed a gang burst into his elementary school chasing a guy and noticed everyone ran and hide. His gang involvement was with the Las Lomas barrio during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He grew up in the Hills

    Read More

  • Analysis Of My Bloody Life

    729 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Latin Kings are one of the most violent street gangs in America, “The Latin King gang is one of the most violent gangs in the United States today, with leaders unafraid to order "hits" on correctional officers and followers unashamed to obey their orders” (Knox 2000), and this book is an account of one of its members. At the beginning of My Bloody Life, Reymundo Sanchez the author, is living in Puerto Rico with his mother, who is 16 at the time of his birth and father, who is 74 and passes when Reymundo is five. My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King, is a disturbingly authentic and petrifyingly captivating account of the birth of a Latin King. It follows Reymundo from birth in Puerto Rico until the day he quits the gang at the age

    Read More

  • Kate Choplin's The Story Of An Hour

    635 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the short story “The Story of an Hour”, By Kate Choplin was about a main character named Louise Mallard, who had a tremendous change in her life. The open window and the independence Louise Mallard is experiencing is a forbidden pleasure that represents her way of new life and opportunity. The life of Louise Mallard was always been in control by his husband and she never gets any freedom until the news she receive about the death of his husband Brentley Mallard. Mrs. Mallard reaction to the death of her husband was “She wept at once,” this describe how she felt when they told her about his husband was “killed” (Para 2, Line 6), she felt as she was hopeless and not herself anymore and that she will always be the wife material of Brentley Mallard.

    Read More

  • La Prieta By Gloria Anzaldúa Summary

    749 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gloria Anzaldúa’s “La Prieta” tell her struggles with identity by talking about prejudices she dealt with while growing up. These prejudices, such as colorism, sexism, and heteronormativity, were not only held by people outside her social groups but within them as well. Anzaldúa goes on to explain the way identity is formed by intersecting factors and not only one aspect of someone’s life therefore denying one factor of identity can cause isolation and self-hatred. The fact that Anzaldúa developed faster than is deemed normal the first struggle in forming her identity.

    Read More

  • Aura By Carlos Fuentes: Mexican History

    2044 Words  | 9 Pages

    Marco Pérez Dr. Rony Garrido The short novel, Aura, by Carlos Fuentes creates a mythical reality to reference Mexican history. He uses Aura, Felipe Montero, and Consuelo as a reflection of the past and the present, where for example, Consuelo represents the past and Felipe the present. In this paper I will explain how the love story of Felipe, Aura, and Consuelo represent Mexican history. In addition this paper will explain how myth breaks down into different elements, such as religion, legends, traditions, and beliefs, all of which are manifested in the different characters and their actions within this novel.

    Read More

  • Ecological Systems Theory In The Movie

    2053 Words  | 9 Pages

    INTRODUCTION This course requires an examination of the addicted person in terms of the systems that they interact with. Through the use of the Ecological Systems Theory, an examination will be made of the facets and factors that affect various systems depicted in the film Traffic (2000). For the purpose of this paper a short review of the movie will be depicted.

    Read More

More about The Cut By George Pelecanos

Open Document