Part I: Man on A Wire and Let The Great World Spin really are the antithesis of each other when it comes to the deliveries and atmospheres they create when trying to explain the exact same scenario. The book really is much more structured, asa book should be, but it also makes the situation seem a little more robotic when it comes to emotion. For example, if Petit was really a man trying to commit suicide and had done so in the first few pages, I doubt any of us would have cried (not to say we wouldn’t feel anything at all). However, even though they were interviewing Petit throughout the documentary, it gave you more of an emotional connection and “behind the scenes” view of what was going on rather than a much wider, yet vaguer perspective that the book gives you. This had me sweating when Petit was actually walking across the buildings, even though I obviously knew he would survive (they were interviewing him after the fact, after all). I was almost crying when he started to lay down! However, even a monologue by the judge at the end of the book seems to follow this standard of structured thinking (then again, he’s a judge, so that’s what he’s supposed to do). Nonetheless, you do see this structure to break at the edges a bit, as we see in Part II.
Part II: The fact that the judges get both Tillie and Jazzlyn and Petit on the same day is very symbolic on how easy it is to make a connection not only in this book, but in our lives as well. Characters that never seemed to ever have a connection between each other, or never seemed to have a purpose to meet, still found that connection between each other, even if it seems as insignificant as meeting in court on the same day. The point behind this is that even meetings by chance, which often seem insignificant (unless you’ve seen every romantic comedy movie ever), can hold greater significance to the world as a whole, even if it does only the simplest things for the actual characters involved. In other words, connections between characters may not do much for the actual characters themselves when it stands alone, but with all the connections combined (see Olivia’s chart), they add to the piece as a whole due to the fact that it exemplifies how absolutely anything can make a connection between two people, and that these connections sometimes may add to the emotional or physical strength of a character, but other times may provide a symbol for a cause greater than the characters themselves. In this case, it shows the corruption within the “interpretation of the law.” If Pettit and Tillie and Jazzlyn were on separate days, one can make the argument that the judge may have been having a bad day during one of the cases, or the judge had an epiphany. In this case, we can tell the judge does have some bias to him, and therefore we are led to feel more sympathy towards Jazzlyn and Tillie. Like G said, the judge makes a distinction between “good crimes” and “bad crimes.”
Part III: I believe the reason behind the placement of parts 1 and 2 before part 3 is because, simply enough, these two parts lead into and have a special connection to part 3 just s each of the characters seem to have a unique connection between each other. It is really left up to the reader’s interpretation of what it truly means that the world is spinning (which is why it was placed at the end). I believe that it is the connections that occur between the world, from the main ones such as Ciaran and Corrigan (a brotherly love) to symbolic ones (Petit and Tillie and Jazzlyn showing the corruption within law and distinguishing between “good” and “bad” crimes), that really makes the world spin. Think about it: Olivia spent all that time on that beautiful chart (she deserves extra credit for that), and the sad thing is she didn’t even get every connection. There are so many things that appear to simply be factors of the humdrum of everyday life that are actual connections between humans, humans and animals, or even humans and their environment. Therefore, I will make a bold statement in saying just as there probably was a new connection on every single page of this novel (if you look close enough), there is a new connection made every second for every day, and those connections are so powerful that they are just strong enough to give the world the slightest push when standing alone, but completely rotating it when coming together. Therefore, the bridge made between the prologue and the ending was the connections that brought them all together.
A bridge that unsettled me at first was the connection between Lara and Ciaran. At first, I am thinking to myself: why the hell is Ciaran going after the girl that led to his brother’s death? Are you crazy?! However, almost immediately after this thought, I decided to give them a chance because crazier things in life have led to love, so why not this? I started to convince myself that Lara didn’t cause Corrigan’s death, and how she really is perfect for Ciaran. It’s crazy how the perspective of a book can change when you are simply looking for things that would confirm your theory (see confirmation bias in your psychology notes, if you actually took any). Now, looking back on things (see hindsight bias in your notes, now that you have them open), I realize that Lara helped catapult Ciaran as a good guy that you should be rooting for (if you already weren’t doing so), because even after all that hell he went through, he is still ready to forgive almost anyone, something we can all learn from.
The connection that made my heart sing was Corrigan and the love he showed with the rest of his environment and the people that inhabited it. No matter what Corrigan went through, he was always a great man and showed great charity to others without ever endorsing a religion, showing that he truly did what he did because he genuinely wanted to help others. I’m not going to lie, I thought Corrigan was a little annoying and troublesome at first, but I soon saw the error of my ways as soon as he gave his own blanket away to a stranger. At that age, I still was hogging up the last cookie at Thanksgiving, so you can see Corrigan was at a much higher level than all of us (at least me) at such a young age.
