Chapter 3: Fighter

This chapter focuses around Billy Giles. He is a man with a family to maintain. Unfortunately, he doesn't make a lot. His wife, Johnnie Mae, takes care of their baby. We learn that Billy Giles is a fighter and his wife is 100% percent against it. The book states, "If he'd told her the truth, that he was going to fight again, he knew she would have cried." (27) The chapter starts off with Billy leaving and promising his wife ice cream. He goes to an arena where he meets Manny. Manny is the man Billy fights for. His opponent was Jimmy Walls. Before and during the fight, Billy remembers certain occasions. The narrator goes from the present to memories with Johnnie Mae, indicating that Billy was not there mentally. The first memory was when Billy got dizzy and how she was worried about him. Johnnie Mae suspected it was the boxing and got angry. Billy reasoned with himself that it was about the money. The second memory was during the fight when Jimmy was beating him. It was about when he was with Johnnie Mae. She told him he could go back to school. However, he remember when he was in Junior High School how his counselor basically told him that school is hard. He didn't go back. Then he remembered wasting money on a TV set for Johnnie Mae. Each time he was remembering, he was getting beaten by Jimmy. He lost the fight. After leaving the arena, he went home and Johnnie Mae saw that he had lost. She didn't say anything, but cleaned his face. This chapter talks about Billy and how he deals with situation with his wife and boxing.

Chapter 2: The Baddest Dog in Harlem

The chapter starts off with a cop interrogating the narrator and his friends. Eventually, he finds out that the cops are looking for a person with an automatic weapon in an apartment. Police surrounded their window. Then, an officer slipped on some dog poo and his gun fired against where the narrator was, but not hitting him. People started shouting their conclusions, leading people to scream. Ultimately, the person who lived in the surrounded apartment was Mary Brown. She was not in the apartment at the time. A cop grabbed the narrator's arm and took him up to the apartment. The "terrorist" was Mary's dog, which was killed. As the cops were leaving Mary's apartment, the next aparment caught their eye. It was open. They stepped inside. An innocent little boy was killed.

Chapter 1: Big Joe's Funeral

With a look at the chapter name, you'd expect this book to be all drama, sadness, and ultimately boring. After reading the first few paragraphs, I realized that this book is no melodramatic book. It's rather interesting. The narrator tells us all about Big Joe's funeral. Big Joe was your "go-to" guy. He was well-known and reliable. To prove his popularity, he planned his own funeral. He lay in the coffin, 100% alive, listening to people pay their respects. Almost all the people who attended knew he was alive. After the funeral, Big Joe jumped out of the coffin and the party began. The story ended with a neighbor being taken to jail and Big Joe, being reliable, giving his wife money to bail him out.

145th Street: Short Stories

Walter Dean Myers is a talented author with a thing for short stories. Not many authors can hop from story to story, always shifting focus. Myers was able to do it with facility. Each chapter, or story, had its own purpose, it's own style. This blog is dedicated to highlighting those purposes.