Final Blog post for Q2 reading

In the final blog for the outside reading book "A Few Kind Words and A Loaded Gun" i will be analyzing pages 390-end. Smith Just found out that his son was hung by an unknown group of people and is completly overwhelmed. He blames himself for the death but later realizes that it wasn't his fault and that he is going to try to get back at whoever did it, " I may not have killed him but i will kill whoever did" (Smith 403). This insight to smith's connection to a son he bearly knew shows readers that he is still loyal to his family. This raises my personal level of respect for him because if he still has some of the values he started with he might be able to recover the other ones. Later after he gets off of his sentence a little early for good behavior, (which he didn't think he would get), he trys to make a living writing. However he can only make a gew quid that way so he has to become a street sweeper. He soon gets tired of this job and started doing the occansional job to get some money. Whith this half-crime half-normal life we see a little improvement in smith's character but later it falls apart. He gets some old friends together and they form a professional robberry firm. The "Flying Sqaud" (Bank robber police specialist) soon start to trace the firm's actions and nickname them the laughing bank robbers because on christmas they robbed a bank with santa hats and wished the tellers a merry christmas.
Now smith's thoughts return to his old age (40ish) and his lack of enjoyment from robbing. He realizes again that robbery isn't his game anymore and quits. He manages to get a job brick laying from his brother-in-law and is able to live off of that. However when brick laying isn't needed he does the odd smash and grab to get by. One day when he was getting ready to leave for some laying a bunch of black sedans and a van pulled up in his drive way. Natural instinct told him to speed away and that is exactly what he did. He managed to get the "flying Sqaud" in a high speed pursuit for fifteen minutes but then he is cornered and he is forced out of his car. A dozen armed officers surround him and give him the usual talk smith instantly responds ""#*$& YOU!" on cue as if i were an actor, to old to play the part" (smith 445). Smith finally understands that his life was wasted and now he is to old to do what he should've done, be a father. The book ends with a chapter called regrets and tells readers how he would've lived his life differently. Razor Smith is currently serving a life sentence in the london prison system, where he writes books and columns.

Citation- on prior blogs

Blog post #5 for Q2 outside reading

In this Blog i will be summarizing and anaylzing "A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun" pages 263-390. In the begining of this section Smith was released from prison again and is starting to go into the "heavy" again. He starts off by joining an armed robbery firm, named the little firm. Their jobs consist of hits on grocery stores and the occansional bank. We can see that Smith is comfortable with this because he has a significant amount of money and he can live with his family. He doesn't get into drugs like many of his friends but instead craves the thrill of holding a gun to the cashier, " I never got hooked on skunk, i guess because my fix was the thrill of robbing" (smith 310). Smith clearly knows that he does burgalery not because he has to but because he enjoys the life it produces in him. Smith and the firm do odd jobs and on one of their jobs they were hitting a grocery store and wearing the employees clothing. when the silent alarm hit and they ran away a cashier tried to follow them thinking that they were actual employees. when they turned around and opened fire on him the cashier quickly realizes that they are not real employees. The fact that the little firm opened up on him also depicts the image that smith and his activities have lost the innocence that they once had. Later in the story he gets involved as "muscle" the leader of the little firm, terry. He gets involved in a gunshoot out and is forced to use his gun for the first time against a person. These actions compiled with an assortment of others tell readers that Smith is officialy a man lost in the fires of crime. However later in this segment he is jailed for his activities and sent to the standard crime center. He wittnesses 7 men attempt a mass escape. They try to steal a steam roller and burst out. They manage to get the roller however they do not know how to operate it and are stranded and recieve a brutal beating.
Right after Smith sees this he attempts to try to start a riot and goes after one of the gaurds, but no-one follows him and the screws get their way with him. When he is put into solitary he is unsure whether he will survive the beating because others like him have died from beatings like the one he is recieving. When he is left in the room he feels dead, but he manages to hang on. He recovers from his wounds while in solitary but he starts to think about his life more carefully. He realizes that crime is not the way to go and his whole life has been wasted by simple addictions, "If i could go back and redo my whole life i would have choosen to enter the proffesion of literature" (347). This is the major turning point in smith's moral choices and after being released from solitary he starts a prison newspaper and gets a weekly column in a london paper, (which he writes while in jail). Shortly afterwards the prison he is at gets a new governor and the old one is promoted. The new governor shuts down smith's paper but cannot stop him from writing his columns, (by now he has recieved a hodgepodge of jobs). Then devastating news comes, his son was hanged by unknown culprits.

Blog post #5 for Q2 outside reading