Blog 4: Pgs. 296-381

     After reading the fourth and final section of A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly, I cannot help but be a little disappointed.  I was really hoping that Mattie would do something more with the lettters that reveal so much about a tragic event.  In the end she just leaves the letters on her bosse desk and does nothing more with them.  This just bothers me because I wish that Mattie would have told somebody what she knows about the murder instead of simply just letting it go.  She seems irresponsible to me.  She even says, "No one will ever find out that Grace was pregnant or that Chester Gillette was the father of her child.  Her death will be Carl Graham's fault, and Chester will be free to return to Cortland and have a good and dandy time," (379).  She knows that what she does will allow a man to get away with murder, but swhe does it anyway.  I cannot bring myself to like the way that the author handled this part of the story.  I wish it had ended a little differently.  That being said, I couldn't help but feel joy when Mattie finally was able to go to Barnard.  With Mattie's last words of the book, she says, "To Amsterdam and Albany and beyond.  To New York City.  To my future.  My life," (380).  Finally, Mattie gets what she wants.  A shot at her dreams is all she wanted the entire novel and she finally got it.  I thought that in this aspect of the book, the Author ended it perfectly.  It was simple, yet it was powerful in sending a message on not giving up on something you truly believe in and want for yourself.  Despite the odds, Mattie has prevailed and as a reader you cannot feel happier for her.

     Also, it has been mentioned time after time after time, but I cannot seem to get over how different the times are now than they were in 1906 when this novel takes place.  We get yet another example of how just the prices of things were so dramatically different than they are now when Mattie gives Weaver seven dollars.  "What's this for?" Weaver asks, "For your train ticket to New York," (375).  Call the papers!  People are getting great deals on train tickets!  If we saw these prices for train tickets nowadays we'd think it was a huge bargain,  but then we remember that seven dollars was a lot of money for them back then and it's something that we are astonished by.

 

For more info on why prices have changed so dramatically, check out                                             http://www.economist.com/node/457272