Baca Chapter Summaries

I am reading this piece of text because it looks interesting and I have to read it for English.

The author broke down the book into four sections: the Transfer, the Initiate, the Son, and the Traitor. They all show specific points in Four’s life. The author portrays Four’s perspective to the readers by writing the book in the first person of Four. This made the book seem like a personal journal or diary, with words that show feeling and passion in different emotions. The author not only tells the story in first person, but she had quotes showing a conversation between characters. She then lets readers inside the mind of Four with what he might be thinking about something he or someone else said. The language was perfected to liven up the story.

Mr. Gawande starts his literature on washing hands. He introduces two friends a microbiologist and an infectious disease specialist. Both work hard and diligently against the spread of diseases just like Semmelweis who is mentioned in the chapter. Something I learned, that not many realize, is that each year two million people acquire an infection while they are in the hospital. Mainly because the clinicians only wash their hands one-third to one-half as many times as they should. Semmelweis, mentioned earlier, concluded in 1847 that doctors themselves were to blame for childbed fever, which was the leading cause of

Sampson, George, and Rameck were three kids from the ghetto of Newark, New Jersey. They came from low-income families, and grew up without father figures. All three of them always did well in school, but others around them made a lot of bad choices. This caused many events that them caused them to go to jail. When they met each other in University High School, the three doctors decided to promise to each other that they would all go to college and become doctors. After they made the pact, there were a few problems, but these incidents never stopped them from pursuing their dream of becoming doctors. Today, Dr. Hunt is a Board certified internist at University Medical Center at Princeton

This is a very important part of the book because it shows the reader that the

No two chapters start with the same perspective. One chapter can start off with the evil thoughts of Redd or another chapter may start with our benevolent hero Alyss. The possibilities are endless with all the characters in the book and each and every chapter holds surprises that will force you to read on and hopefully find out what happened to that specific character. Readers find their love towards this book similar to dividing a number by zero, its

This increases the story’s purpose because instead of knowing the plan and thinking of it as comedic, his plan unfolds without us knowing and we see the grief and anger of Mrs. Barrows.

This freedom Baca finds in his memories is contrary to the effect prisons are “supposed to” have on inmates, yet it’s this sense of freedom that saves his mind. He is well aware that isolation causes others to lose their minds, “The numbing effects of isolation time in the hole… numbed a prisoner’s desire to fight to stay human… I didn’t want this to happen to me” (Baca, 149). He hones his abilities as a self-defense mechanism, but in turn, he changes. He wasn’t actively trying to change himself, only stay sane in an insane situation. The mental freedom he obtains releases him from the bondage prison has on his body, and it also helps re-create his identity as a person. On one such escape to his past in Estancia, he is “filled with a serene, communal sense of belonging… lying on my cot in an isolation cell in total darkness... I felt the many lives that had come before me” (Baca, 151-152). This is another pivotal moment in Baca’s life that comes at a time when he is in isolation. Through his mental journeys, he connects in a spiritual way with his ancestors and goes from feeling alone, unwanted, and forgotten to being accepted, loved, and important. He also says, “I felt…my people’s irascible desire to live, which was mine as well. I felt their will was growing inside me and would

Baca witnesses his father physically and verbally abuse his mother, so it leads him to violent behaviors when he grows up. Baca’s father, Damacio, becomes an alcoholic after he loses his job at the DMV and “he is having trouble getting the jobs that the politicians promised him” (11). Even though Baca witnesses his father argues and threatens his mother any time his father gets home, he cannot do anything to help his mother. In chapter one, Baca states, “I would brace myself for a fight”, to show his anger as if he wants to fight to protect his mother whenever he sees his father threatening his mother (12). Additionally, Baca’s father also abuses him. After his father finishes arguing with his mother, he finds Baca, and “[tosses] him in the car and [drives] away”; as a child, Baca is scared and terrified because he never knows where his father is taking him to

The first chapter goes back in history and sets up the story and setting. It was the eighteenth century and the Americans were beginning to invade the lands west of the Mississippi River. This caused problems because even though Americans saw the lands as an unoccupied

the most important literary elements in the story. He takes a young black boy and puts

The reason I think Baca wrote this story was to let the reader know the injustice that this country can put you through in certain cases. In this Hispanic males case he was treated poorly due to the fact that he didn’t know how to read and write in English. He was being accused of a crime with no evidence. With him having no saying because of his lack in English he was thrown in jail unfairly.

because through his first person narrative, the reader is drawn to his sensitive nature, his

As shown above, Baca was showing signs of eagerness of learning to write, he was very intimidated how the prisoners were able to express themselves with such liberty. He was praised with the words of the writers, in which he felt out of place. Even though, Baca emotions were shut, he was able to gain his freedom through words. He stated “through language I was free. I could respond, escape, indulge; embrace or reject earth or the cosmos” (Baca 154). In other words, He was capable of doing anything, even moving galaxies, planets and stars. The power of writing allowed Baca to express himself freely without limitation. He was able to go into another dimension, where only words could make sense. There was no needed of endless emotions to see the

The book had affected the narrator to a great extent. At first he did not care for the book, until the stranger selling Bibles said “the number of pages in this book is literally infinite. No page is the first page; no page is the last”. This intrigued the narrator’s mind. After he had bought the book, he began investigating. He noted down things in the book. He began losing sleep from the investigation and when he actually got sleep, his dreams were about the book. As it states in the short story, “At night, during the rare intervals spared me by insomnia, I dreamed of the book”. He had grown an obsession with the book, which altered his lifestyle and forced him to hide the book in the library.