1.  Find two quotations that portray the character of the protagonist.  Explain what the quotation reveals about the main character and the meaning of the work.
Quote 1: “Xavier wasn't put on earth to witness the bad things like Jules and I were. He has been put here to notice lovely things, things that God had created and no one had any complaints about. The leaves turning red in autumn.  How when the tide goes out, the shells are left on the shore.  I was put here - Jules was put here - to see sadder things.  We had to stand in the rain and explain why the world was a lovely place.” (pg 246)

Xavier is a wealthy, innocent, and naive boy who Baby starts spending time with him when they are paired together for a school project.  She enjoys hanging out with him because he makes her forget about her life of drugs and prostitution and focus on things children should be thinking about like skipping stones, playing games, or doing schoolwork. This quote is showing her view on Xavier’s life compared to her own; How Xavier was put on the earth to have a good life and notice the happy things when she and her father were put there to experience the harder side of it and strive to make the best out of a seemingly unending amount of horrible situations. This quote shows Baby’s character because it reveals some of her traits including perseverance, acceptance, and observation skills.  She recognises that she was put on the earth to be handed one bad situation after another and continuously overcome them, which she definitely accomplishes in the book. Baby deals with disrespectful pimps, violent customers, foster homes and faces abuse both mentally and physically from her father, yet she always finds a way to come out on top, no matter how horrible and impossible the situation may be.  She is always able to accept other people, which is also shown in this quote. Throughout the book, Baby is accepting of her dad’s drug dealing friends, other children at the foster home and anyone else she comes into contact with. This quote reveals her accepting attitude because she knows she was put on the earth to to overcome these tough obstacles and she accepts that fact. It reveals the meaning of the work, which is perseverance, because of Baby’s outlook on the situations handed to her and the ways she deals with each one.


Quote 2: “He thought he had chosen the perfect girl when he had seen me in the park with a black eye.  He must have thought I was so mature.  He must have thought I was sad and sweet and vulnerable. But he had chosen wrong. I wasn't like that at all. There was a part of me that was smart and original and nerdy too.” (pg 266)


This quote is describing the first  time Baby met her pimp, Alphonse. He saw her sitting in the park after being beaten by her father and approached her with these prejudices in mind. The reason he was able to convince her to start prostitution and heroin was for these specific reasons, yet Baby still feels like she is not this person Alphonse sees. Baby knows she is intelligent and unique, two things he did not see at first.  Although Baby may have portrayed the personality traits that Alphonse saw at first, she is in fact someone very special. Baby is continually able to persevere through hard situations and provide for herself what others could not. She is a very strong person who can make it through anything and can achieve more than he probably knows. It angers Baby that Alphonse does not understand this.  Baby is capable of a lot more than she ends up achieving in Lullabies for Little Criminals mostly because of Alphonse and the labels he puts onto her. He slowly makes her believe she is vulnerable, which destroys the vision she has of herself at the time of this quote and enables him to take advantage of her and destroy the potential she might have had. This quote shows the meaning of the work because in the end, Baby leaves Alphonse proving she in fact is a strong person, smart, and able to persevere. Qualities she always knew she possessed but maybe never fully realised until this point.


2.  Create a personalized license plate for the protagonist, which may contain no punctuation marks or symbols and which consists of no more than seven letters, seven numbers, or a combination thereof.  Explain why your license plate is apt for the character.

AD1C T3D

I chose this licence plate because Baby is in a way addicted to the life she has in Montreal . She knows it is bad for her and the people surrounding her influence her to do things she normally wouldn't, yet she stays and sussumbs to many individual addictions while living in Montreal. Baby becomes addicted to Alphonse, her pimp, because she cannot live without him. He is her source of food, shelter, and money, so she feels she cannot leave his care because she wouldn't have anywhere  to go. Living with him leads her to becoming addicted to heroin and prostitution in the process. The heroin addiction started slowly with one hit here and there to calm her down, but she became dependant on it quite quickly as evidenced by her withdrawal symptoms in the end of the novel. She is also addicted to prostitution because she feels she has no other option to support her heroin addiction and her rocky relationship with Alphonse; once  she entered that world she quickly became more involved and it was harder and harder for her to leave. The only reason she was able to be free of all three of these addictions was Alphonse’s death, which prompted her to find her father who then forced her to leave Montreal and be free of her addiction to that lifestyle.




 
1.      
 Quote 1: “It had the same smell of wet clothes and pot that our last apartment had. It smelled as if a florist shop had caught on fire and all the flowers were burning.  I didn't mind any apartment as long as there weren't any tiny amber-colored cockroaches that disappeared into holes.” (pg 2)

This quote reveals the setting by describing in depth the smell of her new apartment. Through this, we can infer a lot of the other aspects of it and possibly even the area of town it would be located in. It suggests all of her previous apartments also had issues like smell and cockroaches which shows the poverty they have been enthralled in throughout her life.  Although this quote shows the depressing aspects, it also reveals that the protagonist, Baby, is used to it all and doesn't know anything else. Since she says that as long as there aren't cockroaches she is happy, we can deduce that she isn't impacted by the fact that this apartment is also not very nice. The meaning of this book is, put simply, that she is always able to persevere through the worst of situations and this quote shows this by the fact that even though she is living in yet another dingy apartment, she doesn't mind as long as she can still be with her Dad.

Quote 2: “St. Laurent street wasn't an ideal place to raise a kid. It ran right through Montreal, dividing its east and west sections.  It was also the red-light district and, to me, the most beautiful section of town. There were always prostitutes around. They made me feel bad when I was little because they always had beautiful high-heeled boots, while I had to wear ugly galoshes. I closed my eyes when I passed them. In general, everyone looked like they hadn't gone home from a wedding the night before.  You could go to the Salvation Army, buy a pin-striped jacket and stick a plastic flower on the lapel, and call yourself an aristocrat - everyone was living a sort of fictional existence.” (pg 5-6)

This quote reveals that the book is set in the red-light district of Montreal and that the people surrounding Baby in her life are those of prostitutes, drug users, and unsuccessful people. This shows the social environment she is surrounded by and also the cultural values that this sort of activity is accepted.  The fact that she is interested and somewhat fascinated by the lives of the prostitutes shows that their impact on her life has already begun. It is a form of foreshadowing and reveals that she might become a part of their world later in the book.  They also have another impact on her at that specific moment in the book, making her feel less special and perhaps less confident and sure of herself. This low self esteem can also be foreshadowing in the fact that she might be taken advantage of at some point.  

2.    
Object 1: Jules’ Record Player

His record player is seen a lot throughout Lullabies for Little Criminals and is a symbol for their happiness. It is also an object that is essential to the setting by giving the reader a glimpse into the time period in which the story takes place. There are many other objects and descriptions that give rise to this conclusion, but I think the story takes place in the mid-70’s, a time when record players were one of the most used ways to listen to music.

Object 2: Baby’s Little White Fur Hat

This object shows the setting by describing the daily manner of living of the characters as well as their financial situation.  Baby says “I could tell it was secondhand because the care instructions had worn right off the inside tag. Jules had a gift for finding wonderful garbage at the thrift store.” (pg 9).  This shows that she is used to receiving these kinds of gifts and  that their everyday life is a struggle to have enough money for the simple things.  Baby is still grateful, however, because she is used to this and is not phased by the lack of funds her father put into this gift, showing the fact that they have never had much money and why they are living in worn-down apartments all the time.I

Object 3: Jules’ Tattoo of a Swallow

When Jules got his tattoo of the swallow and wore it out into the town, he got stopped by the cops for looking “ludacris”. This shows that although the social attitudes  towards tattoos and those kinds of people in their home and neighborhood might be accepted, but a mere few blocks away the morals are different and he was stopped.  His and Baby’s attitude towards the idea of a tattoo was  that it was a nice birthday gift to himself, whereas society saw it as uncomfortable.  This shows that the area of town they were living in was very different from what surrounded it in the neighboring parts of Montreal.This might also reaffirm the time period, showing tattoos were a relatively new idea for a lot of people to accept.

Object 4: The Cassette Tape

The landlord gifted this cassette tape of a Russian singer to Baby and it is seen as a symbol of their happiness throughout the novel. It shows the setting by describing atmosphere and attitudes of the characters. Whenever Baby and her Dad are fighting or one of them is upset it seems this cassette begins to play. I think it shows that even in times of despair they are persevering. It is playing quite a lot, which shows that the emotional setting is grim most of the time and the atmosphere and setting is sad and depressing throughout the book. 
 
1. What are Hugo's Motives ? Why does he manipulate the other characters?
Hugo's motives for his actions are partially to make his Dad value him more as a good basketball player. Throughout his entire plan to kill Mike and Desi he might have assumed the plan would end in Odin's self destruction. He wanted Odin to lose control by consuming his thoughts with Desi cheating on him so that he would have to step down from the team or not be played as much, therefore highlighting himself.  When he hears his Dad say that he only wants Odin to play one more game he whispers "Who's your favourite now?", showing how he is hoping he will now be the team and his Dad's favourite. He manipulates the other characters to get his way, rather than to actually help them and their situations. He is a selfish person, which is why he finds this to be an ok thing to do throughout the story.

2. Why is Odin vulnerable to Hugo's manipulations?
Odin loves Desi so much that when he hears she might be cheating on him, he is destroyed. He wants to learn more, so he listens to what Hugo tells his. Hugo is his only source of information, so he wants to stay close to him in order to gain more insight into Desi and Mike's "affair".  He genuinely thinks Hugo's actions are aimed to  help him and show the truth about Desi because he is close friends with Hugo. He trusts Hugo so he listens to his advice without second guessing it. Although Odin may interpret the presented "evidence" as Desi cheating on him, in reality it is a simple friendship that Hugo has shaped into looking like they are sleeping together.
 
1. What aspects or general themes from Hecatommithi would make an interesting adaptation into Othello on Stage?
If Iago loved Desdemona in Othello On Stage like he did in Hecatommithi the plot would be very different, but interesting at the same time.  Instead of counselling Othello to kill her and Cassio, he would potentially turn the plot and kill Othello so he himself could be with Desdemona.  Perhaps he wouldn't even be associating with Othello as he is in the on stage version because he is fuelled by jealousy for him. It would be a very different adaptation of the original story, but this one small change would make an interesting change.  
2. Predict what ending do you think Shakespeare chose - Othello kills himself or is killed by torture after banishment?
I think shakespeare would choose to make Othello kill himself because it is a more tragic and dramatic ending for the story. After all the trials and tribulations that go on in planning such a deliberate plan it would be a much more fitting ending for Shakespeare to choose. I think Othello would do this too because his one love and the most important thing in his life has been stolen from him by someone he thought he could trust and was "helping" him for the right reasons.