ROAR Blog #3:Rattlebone

Courtney Patterson
ROAR Blog
December 1, 2009

ROAR Blog # 3
Summary: In the book Rattlebone by Maxine Clair, Irene’s father is back in the picture. He has moved back home because his relationship with October Brown is over. James continues to daydream about her, but he then realize that he has to come home to his wife who is now keeping a close eye on her husband. One afternoon after a long day at work James was supposed to go home to his family, but he decided to help Thomas Pemberton who was a friend to James. James was helping Thomas by going down to the river, so they could help put down sandbags because there was a storm coming. While James was down by the river, something went wrong and everyone was beginning to evacuate. This is when James lost his footing and the wind started to pick up because his light went out. James couldn’t see and he ended up falling in the river, this is when he thought that he should try to swim and maybe he would be able to get out of the water. As minutes pasted he didn’t get very far and Thomas finally came to his rescue when he pulled him out and brought he home.
In the next chapter Irene learns about growing up and becoming a woman, when a boy name Nick shows interest in her. Nick is about the same age as Irene, but when he wants to show Irene his love for her, he shows very little maturity. Irene doesn’t want Nick to act like a little kid, so she pretends not to like him, but she does write about him and her life in her diary. Irene writes all of her personal thoughts and feelings about growing up north of Kansas in her diary, but she only shares it with her best friend named Cece who she doesn’t see often because she lives far away.
The readers learn about Eddy who is the younger cousin of Irene. Eddy has a fake eye because one summer he had a cherry bomb and when he went to light it up, it exploded and a piece of metal flew into his eye. Eddy had one last cherry bomb, so he decided to give it to Irene. That was the first gift she ever receive other than Christmas gifts. A few days later when Irene and Wanda was hanging out and Nick and Eddy was down by the river, Wanda told Irene that she became a women. Irene didn’t say much about the topic, but she knew that she was growing and so were the people around her. When Wanda and Irene went down to the river to see the boys, Eddy was sleeping, but Nick was nowhere around. They started to call out to him, but there was not answer. Wanda went to get help and when she returned with Irene’s father, Nick’s mom, and Irene’s mother, James jumped into the water and he found Nick. Nick had drowned and later that night Irene lighted up the last cherry bomb as a way of saying goodbye to her first crush.
*Summarized pages are 41-67.

Quote: “I struck a match and lit the green stem. When it sizzled, I threw it high and far, exploding the whole summer.” (Clair 67)


Reaction: My reaction is that Max Clair’s style continues to show strong writing because she uses the cherry bomb as something more than a firework that the kids play with, it was a metaphor for the last summer of their youth. As the cherry bomb went in to the sky and exploded that was the end of their youth, because the kids lost their innocents as they experience death for the first time.