How to be Good

According to Momaday, a good story should “shake us from complacency”. These stories don’t just hand the reader concrete answers; they make the reader ponder and question the underlying meaning of the novel. While reading one should be completely immersed with every aspect of the novel, not being able to set it down. The story should provoke new thoughts and raise new questions for its audience.
Nick Hornby’s novel How to be Good stimulated me to think about several issues. In the last paragraph Katie finally showed a little bit of contentment with her life. She was just starting to view them as a family again. Unfortunately, this passage foreshadows that an unhappy ending for this family is likely to happen. Katie’s failing marriage is represented by the gutter that David is trying to clean out. This gutter “is rotten, and should have been repaired years ago”(305). David is trying to fix the marriage and clean out the gutter, but he is only taking “wild pokes at the gutter” (305) by doing drastic actions like when he decided to have a complete spiritual make over. However, his extreme behavior change hasn’t made in progress in removing the trash from the gutter or repairing his marriage. Yet, Katie is still tying to maintain a positive attitude when she says, “ I can do this. I can live this life. I can, I can. It’s a spark I want to cherish, a splutter of life in a flat battery”(305). She wants to try to make things work between her and David, but her statement implies a little bit of doubt. Then she says, “I can see that there’s nothing out there at all.”, as she stares out at the sky behind David’s head. For me, this statement proves that Katie knows her marriage will never completely work, and she will never truly be happy, but is willing to give it a chance. In a way this shows Katie is almost over the marriage and lost the emotional connection. I believe that even if later down the road Katie is still unsatisfied with her marriage she will remain in it; its just too hard to start over.
This passage caught my attention because I can directly relate to it. When I was younger my parents were going through a divorce. It was obvious they had lost that spark, and the only reason why they stayed together was to make it easier on my brother and me. It made me think about how people imprisons themselves in situations that they are unhappy with because they don’t want to face their problems and start over. Once my parents got a divorce and remarried it was night and day how better off they were. It was like they were completely different people. If Katie would only take a risk and branch out, I believe she would be able to find happiness in life as well.