Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Why does Mr. Hoodhood recut the lawn?

At the beginning of the chapter titled "November," Holling describes cutting the lawn for the last time that year. But his father isn't happy with the job, apparently. As Holling says:


…then my father cut the lawn again to get it right, since it was going to look this way until spring, he said, and it had better look good.


Holling doesn't say much about how good a job he did cutting the lawn. Because...

At the beginning of the chapter titled "November," Holling describes cutting the lawn for the last time that year. But his father isn't happy with the job, apparently. As Holling says:



…then my father cut the lawn again to get it right, since it was going to look this way until spring, he said, and it had better look good.



Holling doesn't say much about how good a job he did cutting the lawn. Because of this, you could read Mr. Hoodhood's actions as reasonable. Maybe Holling did a poor job, and Mr. Hoodhood just wants it done right. But we know, based on Holling's descriptions of his father, that Mr. Hoodhood isn't the most reasonable man.


Over the next two pages, Holling lists more things about the house that make Mr. Hoodhood mad: dirty water from the gutters staining the house and a stain on the ceiling of the living room. All of these issues show how much Mr. Hoodhood despises anything that threatens to spoil the perfect image he wants to project to the community.


Because we know this about Mr. Hoodhood, it becomes clear that he didn't just recut the lawn because Holling did a poor job. He recut the lawn because Holling didn't do it absolutely, one hundred percent perfectly. He very unreasonably demands perfection, and he'll do anything within his power to try to meet that unreasonable standard.


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