In this reading, there are many changes to which direction the story is moving. Keith is sick of being treated like a child and wants to become a man, specifically to use the guns. When he steals one of the guns and disappears one day, his father is very angry and beats him. As a result of the beating, Keith leaves home and goes to live by himself outside of the protective walls of the neighborhood. Eventually, Keith is brutally killed. It is ironic that Keiths desire to be a grown up man was the thing that ended up killing him. The police are interested in his father as a suspect which is interesting because if he never beat Keith, none of this would have happened. I believe that the man Keith shot cam back to kill him. In a way, it is his fathers fault. I also believe that Keiths actions contrast completely with how the narrator would have handled the situation. She was very upset when she learned that Keith killed a man for some money, and would never be able to do that because of her illness.
I believe that this situation, although very scary, will strengthen the narrators desire to leave this walled community. She heard little about the outside world, but from what Keith told her, she can survive with a gun if she doesn't make the wrong people mad. I also think that the drug gangs are significant. They shave all of their hair off and are on some kind of drug that makes them love fire. I think it is possible that the government made this drug in order to shrink or control the population so that society can have a better change at improving. It seems that everybody on it either kills themselves or people around them. It would make sense for the government to want the population to be smaller so that so many people were not living in poverty, but this seems like an inefficient way to go about getting a smaller population, so I am excited to see how it plays out. I think that this new job opportunity will turn out bad. If the narrator can convince her father to take the job, I think something bad will come out of it and they will be stranded outside without a wall protecting them from the savages. The story could go many ways and I am interested to see what happens.
I agree with your statement that Keith's desire to be a man is untimely what led to his demise, however I do not agree with the statement that if Keith's father never would have beaten him none of this would have happened. The minister didn't have to beat Keith for Keith to know that he didn't agree with his actions. Keith would still have been stubborn, wanting to grow up faster to use the guns and wanting to be viewed as a man, not only from his father but from everyone. I believe that it was only a matter of time before Keith left to be on his own, no matter what happened to him. Keith's stubborn-ness is what killed him. He couldn't face the fact of not being an adult, and that others knew better than him.
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