The Big Short Story

When I first read "The Laughing Man," I didn't pick up on the possibility of Mary being pregnant and losing the baby. After Michelle explained her theory on the sudden break-up between Mary and Chief in class, I started picking up on the story's little details that could be alluding to a pregnancy. You should read her blogpost about it here , and this blogpost is like a continuation of it with my theories on what really happened. Mary and Chief are two people dating. From the picture of her in the cap and gown hanging in the Chief's bus, I would say that she's about the same age as Chief who's 22-23. She's from Long Island while he's from Staten Island, so they meet up in Manhattan as a halfway point. I think that Mary's dentist appointments are just an excuse for her to see the Chief or even hook up, so I don't believe that she's pregnant at this point. I'm not sure what being pregnant was like in the US during the 1940s, but I d...

Learning that Tim did not have a child named Kathleen, let alone a daughter, was a shock. I had become attached to the character of Kathleen from this quote of Tim's, "I feel guilty sometimes. Forty-three years old and I'm still writing war stories. My daughter Kathleen tells me it's an obsession, that I should write about a little girl who finds a million dollars and spends it all on a Shetland pony." I can relate to Kathleen when she says that Tim writes too much about war, but maybe that's because I'm biased as I dislike war stories and movies. The sentiment of a daughter telling her father to write about a girl who gets a pony resonated with my younger self's wishes. Then there's the cute father-daughter trip to Vietnam in the story "Field Trip." Kathleen's curiosity with the culture and land of Vietnam but disinterest of the significance of the Vietnam War is innocent. After doing some research on Tim to figure out what else ...