“And the lovely Maritza Chacon?… Well, before you could say Oh Mighty Isis, Maritza blew up into the flyest guapa in Paterson, one of the Queens of New Peru.” (18)

Here, we can see quite a drastic difference between Maritza and Oscar’s early adolescence. As a result of their “break-up”, Oscar was very hurt. He gained weight, and a developed a face full of acne. This turned him from a ladies’ man into someone who was either ignored by his female peers or downright insulted, his previous reputation was no more. However, as this was happening Maritza had the opposite reaction. Diaz describes her as a very beautiful girl, who had such a nice body that men two to three times her age took interest in her and she had only been in the sixth grade when this started happening. Oscar very often saw Maritza engaging in promiscious behavior from a very young age, and he saw it often considering that they were neighbors and all he had to do was look out of his window. Being able to see her with other guys all the time and with such ease could’ve easily been the cause for Oscar continuing to stay as undesirable as he was. By seeing something that mad him so sad, it probably made it even more difficult for him to get over her, resulting in his sadness to continue to get the best of him. Despite the fact that the two had once been romantically involved (standing next to each other at the bus stop, hand holding and cheek kissing) with each other at such a young age, they both grew up and matured very differently with Oscar becoming a loser and Maritza becoming the “Queen of New Peru”.

“But he came back. He came back all week at breaks, at lunch.”

I think this part of the the book was a particularly interesting seen because we can see Kevin’s relationship with the narrator really begin to flourish. It was kind of strange how they first began interacting at the beginning of the scene, with Kevin just asking the narrator to accompany him to the truck and then surprising her with food. By giving her the food, it opened up a really serious and personal conversation between the two, where they both learned a lot about each other, their jobs as well as interests. We learn that the narrator was in a nursing program, and actually performed pretty well in school but simply didn’t have enough interest to continue on. We learned about her job, and her past jobs. And, I thought it was especially interesting because Kevin would come back whenever he could to see her. This was the start of them developing a potentially very special relationship and it started in such a sort of nonchalant way. It just seemed to be a casual lunch conversation, or Kevin providing the narrator with what he could to feed her and it ended up going significantly deeper than I had originally anticipated. I think this was a very interesting example of character relations growing.

“‘Ban, ‘Ban, Ca-Caliban

Has a new master. Get anew man!

Freedom, high day! High day, freedom! Freedom,

high day, freedom!” (Act? and scene?)

This quote does an important job showing a major shift in character roles. Caliban, who had initially been Prospero’s slave had grown tired and resentful of his role over time. He would often complain, and react very aggressively towards Prospero, however he no longer needs to worry about serving Prospero. Now, Ferdinand is responsible for serving Prospero but he doesn’t seem to take the position with very much animosity. In fact, Ferdinand seems rather eager to serve Prospero. This shows quite an interesting contrast between Caliban and Ferdinand.  This contrast is even more visible towards the end of Act II and the beginning of Act III when both characters are tasked with carrying a log but have entirely different attitudes about it. Caliban does what he usually does, cursing and complaining vowing that one day the island will be his again, while on the other hand Ferdinand has a much more positive attitude because he has Miranda in mind as his motivation. Its also very interesting to see the difference in how both Caliban and Prospero feel about Miranda. One on hand, Caliban wants to rape Miranda so he can populate the land he hopes can be his one day, yet Ferdinand hopes that by serving Prospero he can one day have Miranda’s hand in marriage. It was quite interesting to read about how Caliban and Ferdinand were pretty much exact opposites of one another despite the fact they shared the same role as Prospero’s slave.

“…and great friendship with the king of that land, to such an extent that he took pride in calling me and treating me as brother.” (30)

I found this quote to be particularly important because it really shows the type of relationship Columbus was building with the native people when he initially arrived. It is quite apparent that Columbus is surprised by how amiable the native people are. Columbus building a positive relationship with these people is certainly something he’d want to report back to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella about, to assure them his trip was well worth it. If Columbus was initially sent for trading purposes, and going to India for desirable goods, this new opportunity is definitely going to be something the King and Queen would be interested in. By properly handling his interactions with the Native people, and continuing to befriend them, he could be earning the admiration of the King and Queen. Perhaps Columbus feels motivated to take advantage of his situation, so he can return home to many rewards for his deeds.