Who are the main characters? Charlie Wales (father), Honoria (his daughter), Aunt Marion, Uncle Lincoln, (supporting characters who were old acquaintances of Charlie’s Duncan Schaeffer and Lorraine Quarrles.

What do you know about the topic/story you are reading? This story is set after the New York stock market crashed in 1929. I am familiar with the topic and some of the surface details about how this crash led to the Great Depression, but I do not have an in-depth knowledge of this time.

What can you imagine that is not specifically outlined?  I imagine the highs and lows that were being experienced during this time. I imagine when things were good everyone was your friend and everyone lived life to the fullest. In contrast, I also imagine when things turned south that people who you thought were your friends probably showed their true colors.

What do you think about what you read? I thought about the lavish lifestyle and the wasteful spending that took place when the market was up. How people didn’t plan for a rainy day or worry about tomorrow, instead people were just living for the moment.

How do you feel about what you read? What is your emotional response? Emotionally I connected with Charlie. Probably because I am a father and understood his desire to be reunited with his daughter and to instill a little bit of himself into his daughter’s personality before it is too late. As I read I kept hoping that Charlie would not fall of the wage and start drinking again, I feared the influence his old friends Duncan and Lorraine would have on him. I was really pulling for Charlie to get a second chance in life to right his wrongs and turn himself around to have a positive impact on his daughter’s life. So on one hand I was glad to get to the end and read “he wanted his child, and nothing much was good now, beside the fact” (1039). However, on the other hand I was upset that he had to wait six more months because of Lorraine and Duncan. That is time he cannot get back and Charlie has already lost so much time.  

What do you want to learn more about? I would like to learn more about the stock market crash and the specifics of why and how things got out of control.

Think about the experiences you have just read about. How would you react if these events happened to you? I would react the same way as Charlie. I would want my daughter in my life but I would also understand Marion’s point of view and respect her distrust because Charlie’s actions gave her reason to distrust. So only time can heal Marion’s wounds and actions from Charlie to prove to Marion that he has changed and is capable of properly caring for his daughter.

How does this reading relate to your own life? It really drives home the fact that today’s actions are tomorrow’s consequences. So you have to keep one eye on the past and the other eye on the future because who we are today was influenced by who we were yesterday.