The Measure Of A Man(1-20)

Summary

The book starts off with the narrator in his home flipping through some channels and he becomes frustrated with technology. He then starts to remember a time when he had no technology around him to irritate him. He starts to recall when he lived on Cat Island with his sister, mother and father. There was no technology to distract anyone from nature. There were no refrigerators or freezers son his mother would preserve the fish traditionally and they would not use the fish for about two months but when they finally did use it, it tasted as fresh as ever. There was another scene where the narrator went into a ditch which was one hundred feet long and six feet deep was dug from the sea to a salt pond. A door was blocking the sea from the ditch when he tried to push it opened. He couldn’t get it opened so he got out of the ditch and looked over the see the level of the water and if he had got the door open, he would have drowned because of the current and the level of the water. When he was fifteen he left for Florida. There he starred in a movie called No Way Out. He went back to Cat Island to show the people of the Island. His family enjoyed it and that moment he saw how much his mother really cared for him. She was happy and very proud of him. At first he thought his mother was just a mother but now he understands that his mother is a mother.

Quote

“The water was up to my neck, and I was scared shitless” (Poitier 11).

Reaction

When I began reading this story I instantly related his view on television to mine. Sometimes I could search through all one thousand channels and still not find anything suitable to watch. I enjoyed this book so far because there are a lot of funny as well as some emotional moments in this book. The author uses some minimum profane language which adds to the humor in this book. When the narrator wanted to go into the ditch, I found that funny as well because it was filled with water. He was a very daring boy at such a young age. I would recommend this book to anyone.