IRONWEED (Post #1)

After reading the summary of this book, I imagined it to be a pretty depressing, sad story. But, so far it has actually been kind of funny and interesting at times. First, you meet the main character, Francis Phelan, who is an alcoholic bum and lives under a bridge. Almost living and dead character that has been introduced so far has been an alcoholic. Francis finally finds his first job in years as a gravedigger at the cemetery, where most of his family is buried, so that he can pay off his debt to his lawyer. He is also sober for the first time in many years after the accident with his baby son, Gerald. In chapter two, you find out that in his past, Francis abandoned his family after he accidentally dropped his 13 day old son and hasn’t returned to see them since. In this chapter, you also meet Rudy, another bum who works at the cemetery, has cancer, and was told he only had six months to live. This is kind of ironic because he works in a cemetery. Another interesting fact that is revealed in chapter two is that when Francis used to work on the trolleys at the North Albany car barns, he killed a man over one of the trolleys in the 1901 strike.
In this book, it is actually kind of hard to tell which character is talking, and weather they are alive or not. The dialogue is just there and doesn’t really tell who is talking. Also, the characters are very uneducated and it is hard to understand them at times. “Cowardice.” “Who’s a coward?” “Cowardice.” “I don’t like the coward word. What’re you sayin’ about coward?” (10).This quote shows how uneducated Rudy is.
The author chose to make the dead characters a part of the story too, which makes it even more confusing when people are talking because they can communicate with each other but not the living people. So, sometimes I have to look back in the book and make sure who is alive and dead. The way that the author chose how the characters died in this book is pretty interesting. One guy inhaled his own vomit and the other punched his own horse and it stomped him to death. I’m interested to see what other ways people die in this story. So far, the book is really interesting.