Lit Circles Post 1 !

Book Tittle: Enriquez Journey.
Page: 19 paragraph 6
Dialouge: Between Enrique & his sister, Belky.

Quote: Christmas arrives, and he waits by the door. She does not come. Every year, she promises. Each year, he is disappointed. Confusion finally grows into anger. "I need her. I miss her," he tells his sister."I want to be with my mother. I see so many children with mothers. I want that."

Significance: I think that this quote portrays exactly why Enrique wants to leave Honduras and go to the U.S. He misses his mother,Lourdes, she left him when he was five years old. He is now a teenager and grows angry and falls deeply into drugs. He does not understand why his mother left him. Enrique is separated from his sister, she lives with Aunt Rosa Amalia, Lourdes sister. Enrique is rejected and moved from a relative house to another. HE thinks no one loves him and wonders why his mother left him. He wants to seek his mother at the U.S and hug her. He thinks no one loves him, but many people do. His girlfriend Maria Isabel loves him deeply, he is her first love. His grandma loves him as well and wants him to have a good future. He steals from his family to pay the money he owes for drugs about 400 dollars. He does all this to forget his mother has left him.

At the age of seventeen he has to find a way to get all the way from Honduras to North Carolina. Lourdes lives with her third child, Diana. When Enrique decides to leave he says good-bye to his family members. No one thought it was for real. They wonder where he is in about two or three days. His girlfriend Maria Isabel is worried, she decides to go find him with another friend. Maria Isabel with the possibilities of being pregnant is pretty much risking her life to go find him.

Personal Connection: This is what happened once and it felt horrible a ceremony or a field trip in Elementary School was going on and your parents couldn't make it. You saw everyone else with their parents taking pictures and planning what they were going to be doing after the event ended. But you stood their talking with your friends, wishing you weren't there, but with your parents. I couldn't imagine living without my parents and away from my siblings twelve years. I would feel very lonely, like in 4th grade.


Question: If you were receiving all these really nice stuff from your mother on the other side of the country and you were living a really good life, you had food, you had money, and clothes and were able to study and have a nice education. Will you still leave knowing that you might die, to find your mother or father ?


Page: 66.
Paragraph: 3.
Dialogue: Narrator.

Quote 2 : Enrique always chooses a ladder at the front. If he misses and his feet land on the rails, he still has an instant to jerk them away before the back wheels arrive. But if he runs slowly, the ladder will yank him forward and send him sprawling. Then the front wheels, or the back ones, could take an arm, a leg, perhaps his life.

Significance: This shows how the journey coming to America was. Enrique had to jump from train to train. Enrique tried about seven different times. Every time gaining knowledge of what to do and what not to do. He has fallen down and broken tooth's, has had severe concussions; bruises; and open wounds. As I said Enrique has tried about seven times; risking his life every time; to see his mother. He doesn't have a smuggler, he travels alone. He often gets robbed and beaten. Each attempt he gets further into Mexico. But always get deported back into Guatemala.

He has gotten robbed several times. Enrique never finds a good place to sleep and he often sleeps near where the trains are. Most of the times near cemetery's and the ground. Enrique didn't take anything with him but 57 pesos. The second time he fell, they told him to look for the mayor, the mayor took him to the clinic. People saw how bad he was injured and told him to go back to his home. He replied with a strong "no, I need my mother". This shows he will go through anything to be with Lourdes.

Personal Connection:
There isn't a way I can relate to this. Ive never been beaten nor robbed. But I'm guessing it will feel horrible being robbed, when i read the book, and it mentions how Enrique gets robbed and has no money, which was the only thing he had. Makes me wonder how people have the heart to do that. Robb someone that has fewer money than you do ? Then to end, they beat Enrique. They throw machetes at the immigrants and some immigrants have scars shaped as lines on their hands from trying to stop the machete hurting any other part of their body.

Question: Knowing all the trouble you will go through, will you go through the trains knowing you may get killed or will you raise money even if it will take you longer to pay a smuggler ? Why ?