Quotes From The Bridge 1st Lesson

Eddie steals a purse from an elderly lady. Manny was given a second chance by the black man. “In that instant of trying to call out to Eddie everything changed. It was like I’d seen my own fate.” (210) Manny said this because he realized that he is on the completely wrong path in life. Manny realizes that Eddie is starting to pick up character traits like his father and Manny cannot turn out to be like his own dad. Manny knows that he does not want to throw away his life so he turns it around because he knows what the outcome will be if he does not change.

Eddie’s father influenced Eddie to be the chaperone in the family despite his age. At an early age he felt as though he had a financial responsibility, which influenced him to get a job as both a shoe-shiner and a paperboy. He describes his family’s structure as the father being the head of the family, and the mother as the heart. This helped create a balance within the family, but caused tension between Eddie and his father’s expectations. Eddie experienced two spheres of education, American school and Chinese school. “I loved going to American school, but Chinese school was another matter.” (Yung 25) He disliked the limited exposure of Chinese education, and felt that he had been exposed to a wider world in American school, which eventually led him to flunk out of school. This came as a disappointment to Eddie’s father, and added immense pressure to Eddie. The confinement he felt in Chinatown frustrated him, his overprotective mother crippled his adventurous-ambition and the pressure added by his father to lead the family caused him to runaway when at the age of 13. He

Turning against the world of drugs and violence, Eddie vows to take the straight and narrow path, even if it means struggling at temporary manual labor jobs. So when he takes a landscaping job for a white man across town thinking that god had finally heard him, the man's truck is stolen from the front of Eddie's apartment causing yet another problem to add on. He hid for hours and days drinking because he really liked his job with the white man and was afraid of what might happen to him. Although getting the truck stolen from him kinda seems like a big deal, it is not because that sort of thing happens daily in the streets of fresno that he lived by, it was almost like that was something normal to him. So when his aunt gets home she reminds him yet another time that his cousin died only this time a gun came with the tortillas she would try and persuade him with the avenge the death of her son.

His father on the other hand came from a gang background, and his goal as a father was to have his children learn how to rely on themselves. He did not want his children to live off of his money. Eddie is a mix of his mom’s personality with his dad’s values and character.

Eddie’s Father - Eddie’s father was essential to move the plot along because he made a big impact on Eddie’s life. Eddie’s father

Eddie was born into a broken home without a strong father figure in Harlem on one of the worst streets in the town. There were already so many people judging him because of his race and where he was brought up. For a short time, Eddie chose to fulfill a more meaningful future instead of dwelling on his race, but ultimately, he decided to let the stereotypes of his race define him. As time went on at Exeter, Eddie learned firsthand what others thought of him and his race he quickly learned that “[w]hen you’re black, and you’re in a white prep school, control is the paramount thing in your life. You have to be in control - you can’t give anything away, especially how you are really feeling” (Anson 205).

     The lesson that the Sargent had to teach Eddie was about sacrifice. “Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious you’re not really losing it, you’re just passing it on to someone else.” (94) In other words, the Sargent sacrificed Eddie’s leg to save his life, and he also sacrificed his life in order to preserve the lives of his

Between those three, the least important was the one taught by the Blue Man. Although his lesson was very important it wasn’t the greatest of the three. All of the people who Eddie meets relate to his past in some way, even if he doesn’t know them. By talking to the Blue Man, Eddie learned that

This lesson was taught from Eddies captain who saved his

He sees a diner in the distance and runs to it. Eddie sees his father, who was very cold to Eddie and ruined his childhood. He screams and tried to get his

Throughout the novel, Eddie also can be exemplified as a sympathetic character. sympathetic characters are when readers feel sympathy for throughout a story. The reader can feel empathy for Eddie, when the author describes the pain of Eddie’s gunshot wound. The pain was described to be unbearable and the description of the event of the gunshot pains a morbid picture in the reader’s mind. During Eddie’s time as a soldier in World War II, any reader can feel an astonishing amount of sympathy for Eddie. During, Eddie’s time as a soldier, he experienced, “A piercing pain ripped through Eddie's leg. He screamed a long, hard curse then crumbled to the ground. Blood was spewing below his knee. Plane engines roared. The skies lit in bluish flashes. He lay there, bleeding and burning, his eyes shut against the searing heat, and for the first time in his life, he felt ready to die,” (Albom 84). The reader can comprehend Eddies suffering and pain. Eddie was on the ground, in a war zone hurt and slowly dying. Readers can feel a lot of sympathy for when Eddie wanted to let go of the world and die. Before Eddie’s death, he ran under a falling amusement park ride to save a little girl, Eddie

The Captain explains that although he shot Eddie, he kept his promise by not leaving him behind and even sacrificed his life He also teaches Eddie that when one loses something, they often gain something else. Ruby, the third person he meets, is Ruby Pier's namesake. She teaches Eddie to let go of his anger and to forgive his father for the damage he caused in his life. Marguerite, Eddie’s wife and only true love, is the fourth person he meets. She was the only happiness in Eddie's life. She and Eddie talk for a long while, as this is the first time they have been reunited since her death. Marguerite tells Eddie that she loved him even after her death and that true love endures forever. Her lesson was that love is not lost with death. The final person he meets is Tala. She was the little girl who Eddie saw crawling into the burning fort during the war. Although he lived most of his life in denial, he finds out that he did kill her in the fire. She teaches Eddie that his life did have a purpose which was to keep children safe at the

can see the type of man Eddie is, as when he meets the brothers for

With Eddie being limitless on this drug he gains power over things and makes more money than he ever thought would be possible, which eventually conditions him into becoming even more dependent upon the drug.

You deserve to enjoy your life. You deserve to stop and take time to do the things that make you smile. It doesn 't matter if you enjoy reading a book, taking a walk in the park, or traveling to your favorite spot to relax. Do it! Nobody 's life has to have any regret. If we simply make the choice to do things that we enjoy, that can help us to live a fulfilled life.