Moonlight Nocturne

"...I liked school. What book?"

 

"How can you like spelling homework and book reports?"

She sighs loudly, looking up at the ceiling. "Oliver Twist. Which is about a stupid kid who cries a lot and then gets lots of money for no reason, and I'm pretty sure Fagin is racist, and the writer keeps repeating himself over and over."

 

"Because-"

 

"Nerd!" Miriam and Nick both chorus from where they're going through the kitchen.

 

"......correct. Oliver Twist isn't that bad, anyway."

 

Elena snickers. Nerd.

"Why can't we read about cool stuff, like The Book of the Dead and manitou and forges? Why care about some whiny kid who didn't even exist??"

 

"...because that's not how things work." Lou rests his chin on one hand. "Are you just supposed to write about what you think of the book?"

 

"Why not? If you were my teacher, would you make me write about Oliver Twist?" She frowns. "Niiiick, can Lou be my teacher?"

"We're supposed to write what we can learn from the book, and I'm not allowed to just write that I thought it was stupid over and over until I get to three pages."

 

"...uuuh, if he says sure, yeah."

 

Elena perks up, giving Lou her best puppy eyes. "... I'm sorry for throwing things at you?"

 

Lou tilts his head, thinking quietly. "I'd say... Discuss how... Victorian stereotypes about the poor asserted that poverty and vice were fundamentally connected and that, moreover, both were hereditary traits: the poor were supposedly bad from birth, and how Dickens approaches those stereotypes. This is your test."

(( Rabbit is a woeful beast who hasn't read the book. Here is where the essay question comes from: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/oliver/study.html ))

 

Elena sighs loudly and melodramatically, slumping in her chair.

"Like... he has to make the one good poor kid really a rich kid because all the poor kids are bad. And he talks about Fagin as The Jew and he said outside the book that he's totally not being racist, it's just that the people who are like that are always Jews and that's really gross because... because it's like when cops arrest lots of black people even though white people are doing even more drugs because they're looking for black people doing the drugs. And he has to make the happy ending where the poor kid gets lots of money instead of having him be happy or... or do stuff with his life, he's just rich and that's all that matters and that's stupid!"

"My teacher thinks it's good because the writer shows how bad things were for the poor and made people sympathize with them but that's stupid because they're all jerks and all of the people who were born rich are nice so why should anyone care what happens to a bunch of jerks??"

 

"Keep going."

 

Elena gives a frustrated whine.

"So if you're going to write a book that's supposed to say how poor people aren't all bad, then you should have some poor people who aren't bad, and don't turn out to secretly be rich, because that makes it sound like rich people are just automatically better than poor people or like everybody gets the kind of money they deserve so why should anybody do anything to help if the world is just automatically going to end up the way it's supposed to anyway. You can either have a fairytale or you can talk about how real things work but you can't do both because that's stupid because people don't work like fairytales and if you think they do then you don't do what actually needs to get done. And... and I don't think he knew what rich people were like, they're just a plot device, and that's like... like the thing with crabs trying to claw out of the bucket and they keep stepping on each other so they all fall down, he just writes about poor people and middle class people being jerks to each other while the rich people who read the books sit off being all stupid and superior and they're the ones who should be making change and run things so why doesn't he write about them? And maybe this was better than some of the other stuff that was getting written then but that doesn't mean it's good now, why should we read stuff that sucks just because it used to not suck compared to the stuff that sucked even more??"

 

Lou smiles, then taps her notebook. "Now make that a thesis statement and get it onto the page. You've got your report."

 

Elena stills. Blinking. "... Oh."

"... you tricked me!"

But she'll hop down and try to hug him, before starting to scribble words down.

 

He laughs loudly, grinning from ear to ear. "I used to trick Nick, too."

 

"I just want to learn about cool stuff that matters, and not be stuck doing all this boring stuff that no one even cares about. I'm not going to college anyway, why can't I just learn useful stuff?"

 

"Why aren't you going to college?"

 

... she stiffens, reddening. She didn't... mean to blurt that out.

"Um... we can't afford it. And if anybody's going to college, my brother really, really wants to go, so. And I don't... I like doing other stuff, essays are boring. So if anyone goes to college, he should go, and I'll... stay here."