An Unexpected Change

       By the way the novel commenced, I thought it was going to be more about the enjoyment of nature and appreciating what no longer gets its necessary appreciation. Yet with the turn of a few pages, the novel changed to criticism of different people. Through the narrator the author begins criticizing the generation of people who do not appreciate nature but rather, just let it “slip by” them. He says that cars condition us to ignore what nature really is where as motorcycles but us right in the middle of nature and make us appreciate it.

           The author goes on to criticize those people who do not do certain tasks themselves. For instance, he becomes critical of John for not correctly reading the instructions on how to fix a part of his motorcycle. Unlike the narrator, John prefers to give things to a mechanic and the narrator says that they disagree upon this as do Protestants and Catholics on birth-control. I find this comparison between a motorcycle and something so grandiose as religion to be extremely out of proportion. I do not believe that a simple disagreement between friends is a large as that between two religions. The narrator irritates me because he seems to elevate himself and his own beliefs. Upon noticing John’s faucet has been dripping for an extended period of time he goes as far to say that had the faucet not been dripping Sylvia would not have screamed at her kids. He attributes this inability to fix the faucet to John’s neglecting to fix things himself. Of course since the narrator does things himself instead of going to a mechanic something like this would not happen in his home and so I find the novel to be utterly ridiculous in its sayings thus far. 

- Talia Akerman