“The dark sky, filled with angry, swirling clouds, reflected Greg Ridley’s mood as he sat on the stoop of his building. His father’s voice came to him again, first reading the letter the principal had sent to the house, then lecturing endlessly about his poor efforts in math.” In this story, “The Treasure of Lemon Brown” Walter Dean Myers talks about how Greg Ridley’s father is disappointed in him because he is getting bad grades in math, and is constantly saying how he had to drop out of school when he was thirteen. He is always lecturing Greg about how many chances he has had to fix things, and how if he only had half the chances when he was in school, he could do so much more. Greg has really wanted to play basketball for a team called the …show more content…
For instance, when Greg had wandered into the house and found Lemon Brown, he had to talk his way out of being hurt by him, when Lemon said “Don’t try nothin’ ‘cause I got a razor sharp enough to cut a week into nine days!” Even after this had happened, Greg talked his way out of it, and ended up forming a small friendship with Lemon. Continuing on, Lemon also shows the theme very well. According to the text, Lemon was with Greg and these men showed up and tried to rob and hurt him, but “Greg saw him hurl his body down the stairs at the men who had come to take his treasure. There was a crashing noise, and then footsteps.” Lemon had successfully defended his treasure, which was a struggle against those men, but he still managed to do it. Lastly, Greg still shows the theme along with Lemon. For example, when the men broke into the house, Greg helped Lemon try to scare them and Greg said “He was an eerie sight, a bundle of rags standing at the top of the stairs, his shadow on the wall looming over him. Maybe, the thought came to Greg, the scene could be even eerier.” So Greg helped him by howling, and they overcame the problem of the bad …show more content…
For instance, part of Lemon’s treasure was jazz music and newspaper articles he had saved for a very long time, and “they told of Sweet Lemon Brown, a blues singer and harmonica player who was appearing at different theaters in the South. One of the clippings said he had been the hit of the show, although not the headliner. All of the clippings were reviews of shows Lemon Brown had been in more than fifty years ago.” This is showing that he had struggled a little before he found music, then music helped put him on a better path. Continuing on, when his son went to war, and didn't come back, he got the harmonica he sent with him, and Lemon recalled that “Anyway, he went off to war, and I went off still playing and singing. ‘Course by then I wasn’t as much as I used to be, not without somebody to make it worth the while.” Even though he was struggling with the fact that his son went to war, music helped him continue on a better path. Lastly, when Lemon was still a musician, he said that “I used to travel around and make money to feed my wife and Jesse—that’s my boy’s name. Used to feed them good, too. Then his mama died, and he stayed with his mama’s sister. He growed up to be a man, and when the war come he saw fit to go off and fight in it. I didn’t have nothing to give him except these things that told him who I was, and what he come from. If you know your pappy did something, you know you can do something too.”