James' Homework
Analyze a small scene or action that may have more significance than it would seem at first glance. Explain why it is important to the overall story.
As far as I have read about, I think that the scene in which Christopher opened the mysterious envelope that contained a letter to him, from his mother. When I first believed that this letter was certainly sent to him by his mother, I supposed there might be another fascinating detective story based on the letter. But I was totally disappointed when I just noticed that Christopher had no interest on digging into the origin of the letter.
The story will never go like this. The letter must pull out some significance side-stories.
I think this letter will not just play a simple role in the story because mother was mentioned lots of times in the story before, and the Christopher believed that mother have some connection with Mr. Shears who was suspected of killing Wellington, the dog. The discovery of mother’s letters also revealed that mother didn't die, so there would be lots of questions for the author to answer. It is no doubt that the author mentioned mother’s letters and he was going to tell readers more about mother, or maybe the story of someone else. Anyway, the letters could not just come from air and then disappear.
A very significance role that the letter could play was that it told lots of things about mother and her circle of friends or events. The letters, which were not opened and read, might contain something about Mr. Shears and what happened to mother. Maybe Christopher could find out what kind of the person Mr. Shears really was and it might help his detective career.
It seemed that father always kept something away from Christopher and never wanted him to know a lot. So mother’s letters might help Christopher fulfill his curiosity and find some secrets, which may lead to other new stories that we haven’t gotten a chance to read now.
To draw a conclusion, I strongly believe that mother’s letters must play a significance role than they did at their first appearance.
