Defining "Success"

Eureka?

Colin, Lindsey, and Hassan start interviewing residents at Gutshot in order to put the history of the town together, and, Colin and Hassan agree to stay at Hollis`s house in order to complete the job. While working for Hollis, Colin realizes that his theorem doesn`t work but, with the help of Lindsey, he changes the theorem in order for it to work with all of his relationships with the Katherines. Later on, Lindsey, Colin, and Hassan interview people at a nursing home, and are surprised to find out that Hollis (Linsey`s mom) is selling two hundred acres of her property to a guy named Marcus. This shocks Lindsey because she doesn't know any reasons that could justify her mom's need to sell some property. Colin suggests that she might need the money but Lindsey says that they don't need more money since her great-grandpa was the one who funded Gutshot`s biggest factory.

My Thoughts On...

“`She died in 1997. Heart attack. She was nothing but good and I was nothing but bad, but then she died, and I didn`t.` ” (Green, 81)

This quote is said by Starnes, who is the first person that Hassan, Colin, and Lindsey interview to complete with the job that Hollis gave them. While I reread this quote, I kept thinking about the 2011 movie, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which is based in the 2005 novel of the same name by  Jonathan Safran Foer. The movie is about Oskar Schell, a boy whose father dies in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Oskar was very close with his dad, closest than he was with his mom. You could argue that Oskar considered his dad to be good and his mom to be bad (or not as good), but then his dad died and his mom didn`t. Now, back to the book, I think that Starnes feels guilty of being the “bad” one in his relationship with his wife. I think that he wishes that he could've lived a little bit better, for her. The same happens in the movie (kind of), Oskar's mom understands that Oskar had a closer relationship with his dad, and that she is not as close to him as she would like. But, the difference with Starnes, is that, Oskar's mom actually tries to fix this in order to build a better relationship with her son.  

“And yes, again, that was it exactly. A retyper and not a writer. A prodigy and not a genius.” (Green, 91)

This quote is one of the many that explain Colin`s want to become some type of genius and matter to the rest of the world. But this single desire of Colin`s is very different from Lindsey`s. This is later part of a conversation between the two of them, but basically they discuss their opposite perspectives in becoming successful and mattering to the world. I learned from this conversation that Lindsey considers the idea of mattering to the world very absurd, and would much rather have an ordinary life in an ordinary town. This surprised me a lot, I guess I expected Lindsey to be Colin`s other half, which includes agreeing on their perspective of things. So, I guess, Lindsey and Colin would have very different definitions of the word “meaning”. But, this is what makes ultimately different and unique. While Lindsey is outside hanging out with people that she has known all her life in a town that she will probably live in all her life, Colin is inside working in a theorem that he hopes will change the lives of people he has never and will never meet.

"Because we are a cultural species. That

drive is what has made humanity so

powerful."

So, Then What?

The thing about books, is that they start to get really interesting around the middle. Like, just after the characters have been introduced but before they learn something valuable from their experiences. So, I'm currently in that part of the book. I guess that I was kind of waiting for it to happen but it still took me by surprise when it did. In the last few chapters, Colin finally had his “Eureka” moment, but later decided that it was absolute garbage and actually burnt down all of his formulas for his theorem. So, there's that. Also, Hollis is selling a part of her land to some dude no one's ever heard of and, although it shouldn't be that big of a deal, it kind of is (I just haven't figured out why exactly). I just hope that in the next few chapters Colin proves his intelligence to the rest of the world and Hollis stops being so mysterious (but I honestly doubt that will happen).