IRONWEED (Post #2)

Okay, so now in the story, the author has introduced yet another drunken bum, Sandra who is also a full-time prostitute. Rudy and Francis find her lying on the street and assume she is dead. But, when Rudy goes up to her to feel her pulse, she pushes him away. They try to talk to her and tell her to get somewhere warm but she is just mumbling words to them and being rude so they leave to go get her some hot soup to try to sober her up. At the Catholic Church where Francis and Rudy go to get her soup, Francis spots his “lady” of nine years, Helen, who he had been trying to find ever since they got into an argument about Francis spending all of their money and she stormed off. They talked for a while and Helen was very excited to see that Francis was sober and actually had a job.
“When Francis came back to Albany in 1935, he met Pee Wee for the first time and they stayed drunk together for a month. When Francis turned up in Albany only weeks back to register for the Democrats at five dollars a shot, he met Pee Wee again. Francis registered to vote twenty-one times before the state troopers caught up with him and made him an Albany political celebrity. The pols had paid him fifty by then and still owed him fifty-five more that he’d probably never see. Pee Wee was peaceful now, no longer the singing gin-drinker he used to be. Francis still felt good things about him, but now thought of him as an emotional cripple, dry, yeah, but at what cost?”(40).
This quote shows how most of the characters that are or were once a lazy, drunk, bum is actually trying to change and do something with their life. Most of them are trying their hardest to turn their lives around, make money, and go back to how they used to be. I am excited to see what the future holds for characters like Pee Wee, Rudy, and Francis.