English Essay
“How to be Good” is written by Nick Hornby in 2001, and they store is about an average family.
One day the narrator, whose name is Katie, is in a dilemma. Her husband David has given their son’s computer away to the women’s refuge: without consulting her or their two kids. David thought it was greedy to have two computers in the house when those women and their children didn’t even have one.
This action of David’s has, inevitable, made the children upset, because they now have to share one computer, instead of having their own. Katie ends the argument with the following statement ‘’you can’t blackmail your own children like that’’
In the end all parts calm down, and David manages to see that he has made a mistake and he apologizes. But there is still something that bugs Kate. A part of Katie wants the computer back, because it was a Christmas present to her son and they worked really hard to buy it, but another part of her knows that her husband only did a good deed with good intentions. She is also doing something for the greater good by helping those women and letting them keep Tom’s computer.
This is concluded from the following quotation; “I don’t know what to say (…) What is there for me to be angry about?” (pp. 1, lines 31-33).
Here she asks herself how she can be angry, when David just did a decent thing. This is the first part where you can see she is in a bit of dilemma. Katie is in conflict with herself because she does not know what to do and how much her beliefs really matter, which is conclude from the following quotation; “So what do I believe? Nothing much, apparently. I believe that there shouldn’t be homelessness, (…) that Tom’s Christmas presents are his, and shouldn’t be given away. There you are. That is my manifesto. Vote for me.” (pp. 3, lines 74-78). From this quotation I conclude she asks herself; “How can I do