4A Independent Reading discussion

It takes a lot for a book to shock me into putting it down and walking away, but that's exactly what happened when I reached the half-way point due to a shocking death in the text. Summer of Night is about a group of friends in 1960 whose town is haunted by an entity that originates from a 150 year old elementary school they all attended. Behind this entity is a secret the town has kept for about as long involving the occult tied to a 500 year old bell the founders of the school placed in the belfry. Duane finds out this secret and is murdered for it in a threshing machine on his father's farm. "There was a great tearing at his legs [which]... pulled him into the vortex" (242). The horrific death of Duane is juxtaposed by his innocence and his tragic upbringing with a loving yet alcoholic father and mother who died when he was little (138). It made me sick to my stomach. I have a hard to reconciling the death of Duane adding to the stakes for the other characters, my sheer enjoyment when a book surprises me like this, and the disgust I felt with it happening in such a violent way to such a sympathetic character. Now that I'm reading again and finishing this book, I'm excited to see what is in store for my next favorite character, Mike and his cute little brother Lawrence. I swear, if Lawrence gets eaten by the thing under his bed, I'm going (to secretly love it) be so pissed!