The American

The American By Henry James was the book that I chose to read. This book was about a European man that is living in France in the late 1900’s. his passion is to move to America, but he doesn’t have enough money so he try’s to find ways to make money quickly. This book was a bore, I could barely keep my eyes open while reading it. I think that this book is just a bunch of paper that no one wants to read or wants. I admit that it was interesting at first, but got slower, and slower as the book progressed.

Besides from being a boring book it had some important lessons and themes that you would learn from. I found that the most important theme was “to never give up” because in the end he got what he wanted since the beginning of the book. During several of his misadventures. There was one that the author kept going back too. That the main character Newman wanted to marry the secondary character Clair and he asked her to marry him in the 4th or 5th chapter of the book. She said not yet and to wait 6 months. He did wait 6 months and the asked her again if she wanted to marry him. This time she said yes. They scheduled the wedding, but pressure from Clair’s family forces her to stop the wedding and break up with Newman. Newman was sad but he never gave up his dream to move to America.

I think that the main character Newman is very alike to Randall Patrick McMurphy. They are alike in a few ways. For instance in my book Newman is in a duel. The duel was for fun (those idiots) but on the first draw Neman hit’s the other guy in the arm. On the second draw Newman misses the other guy on purpose but the other guy was mad that Newman shot him in the arm that he gave Newman a near fatal wound. The similarity between McMurphy and Newman is that they both will live life to the fullest no matter what the cost.