Sunday, January 11, 2009

2 Blog #10

The Pact” by Jodi Picoult
I finished reading the book, pages 315-500, for this blog. A lot of things happened that I didn’t expect. Chris goes to jail and has many troubling encounters with other prisoners. I think it’s because prison is such a different environment than the charmed life he’s used to living. He has to wait around in jail and Jordan, his lawyer, and his mom go to visit him. His dad comes at first, but then stops visiting Chris after he decides not to testify. I think it’s very selfish of Chris’s dad, James, not to testify. James even admits the reason he won’t testify is because he just wants it to go away because he wants his perfect life. He needs to be there for his son. At the trial, Jordan uses the defense of saying that it was going to be a double suicide, even though Chris told Jordan he wasn’t going to kill himself. Jordan said that it was ok and that he didn’t want to know the truth. I think this is a bad way to practice law. You should always want the truth to come out and justice to be served. Jordan uses the suicide defense the whole trial, but Chris unexpectedly demands to take the stand. Jordan doesn’t want him to because then the truth will come out and ruin his defense. Despite this, Chris still takes the stand. He says that he was with Emily and she wanted to kill herself. She took the gun and pointed it at her own head, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Chris said that he could see and feel her pain, so he felt he owed it to her to help put her out of her misery. He took the gun and held it to her head, but he couldn’t shoot her. Emily put her hand up to the gun and the gun went off and killed her. Chris isn’t sure if it was his motion or hers that set off the gun, so he doesn’t know if he killed her. That would be such an awful thing to live with. I think it would be worse than knowing for a fact one way or the other because you would always be wondering. In the end, the jury found Chris not guilty.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

2 Blog #9

“The Pact” by Jodi Picoult
For this blog I’m going to write about a new book called The Pact. So far I’ve read through page 315. The story is about two teenagers who have seemingly perfect lives. They are wealthy, live privileged lives and are in love with each other. The two teens are Chris and Emily. They’ve grown up together and have always been expected to fall in love and get married. They belong together. Everything is going fine until the police find Emily and Chris together. Emily’s dead and Chris was with her with a gun. Now, Chris is in jail awaiting a trial and his lawyer, family, and Emily’s family desperately want to know what happened. Chris first claimed it was a suicide pact, but now the story is changing. There was a huge twist of Emily being pregnant which no one knew about. I’m not sure if Chris did it. I think he might have because that’s what the evidence points to. The gun was at an angle that Emily would not have held it at and he’s the only one who was with her when she died. Also, it’s been revealed to the reader that Emily wasn’t sure she wanted to be with Chris. She knew she was supposed to because that’s what everyone expected and that’s how Chris felt. She didn’t like being with him and felt he was more of a brother than a boyfriend. She felt she couldn’t share this because it would hurt Chris a lot and she didn’t want to. Also, it would shatter everyone’s expectations. I can’t imagine being in her place it would be awful to choose between two awful things: devastating your best friend or living unhappily. I think Chris knew Emily didn’t like him romantically and so he killed her. She was his whole world, but she wasn’t in love with him.