Crow Lake part 3

Yasmine Rehouma

We had to discuss the third part of the book. In this part, we see a lot of fights between the two brothers, Matt and Luke, about the way Luke takes care of the kids and the house. It makes us see how a couple or a duo can have different points of view on how things should be done. Despite the differences, they need to stick together even if it’s hard. Furthermore, Kate described her dinner with Daniel’s family. His mother talked a lot about his childhood. It makes us realize that we all don’t have the same past, therefore, we can’t judge someone without knowing what he/she went through. We had to ask some questions about this part to a couple of students in our class to figure out the meanings of it.

The first question was “Do you think Matt will quit school for good or change his mind?” We all agreed that Matt will not quit school because of three reasons. The first one is because he’s too rational. He knows that his family’s future depends on him and if he doesn’t go back, they might lose the opportunity to have a normal life without their parents. The second one is because he will lose his only opportunity to have a job that can pay all the bills. Luke gave him his “future” and if he doesn’t go back, it’s as if he didn’t care about his brother’s sacrifice. The last one is that if he stopped going to school, he would have to spend more time at home with Luke, so they would fight more frequently. Matt will now get money so he will have a “reason” to argue with his brother. It will only get worse.

The second question was “Luke was fired from his job by Mr. McLean because he was accused of making advances to Sally even if he didn’t do it. Why do you think Sally decided to invent a story on Luke?” We all think that she was offended that he didn’t want her. We also think that she doesn’t love him for who he is, but for what he’s doing. She’s attracted by him because he takes care of this siblings and it gives him a charm. They don’t even know each other. A student said that she did it by vengeance and by pride. It completes our first supposition. Because she couldn’t have him, she told her parents that he was making advances to her so that he could be fired.

The last question was a second part of the second one. It was “Despite his doubts about the story, is it fair of Mr. McLean to fire Luke knowing his situation?” We didn’t all agree for this question. One student said that it was fair because keeping Luke was like accepting the fact that he tried making advances to his daughter. Even if he wasn’t sure about this confession, he had to do what has to be done. The other students think that he can’t mix family and business. There’s no proof except of his daughter’s testimony to fire him. Furthermore, Mr. McLean knows how much Luke needs the job. Finally, they think that Mr. McLean’s reaction proves that his daughter has “control” on him. She didn’t have to do a lot for Luke to be fired and his father didn’t even ask Luke if it was true or not. They also think that Sally had a bad education because of it. I don’t think that she wasn’t raised right, but that parents didn’t have a choice.

In conclusion, the discussion on part three helped us understand how hard it is to make decisions. We put ourselves in the part of the characters. We can understand now why they make this choice instead of the other one. All the members of my group participated so the discussion was enjoyable and interesting. This activity is to redo.

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