Summer Blog Entry #1

The book I am reading for this summer is Ship Breaker by Poalo Bacigalupi. The main characters in the book so far are Nailer (who is also called Lucky Boy by many), and Pima, one of Nailer’s long-time best friends. Nailer and Pima are both light crew members who go through old air ducts to find copper wire. They are both very clever and know their place in society but they frequently dream about being rich and living luxoriously.

            The setting of the book is a dystopian society on of a storm-ravaged Gulf Coast. The people who live on the beach are all workers who collect the raw materials from old oil rigs that have washed up and been abandoned.  These workers sell the raw materials to big companies like Lawson and Carlson and General Electric that then pay them just barely enough to live off of.

            The conflict at this point of the book is that Nailer and Pima have stumbled upon a huge wreck of a very expensive, new, clipper ship. They think that their dreams of becoming rich have finally come true but they then find a young, rich girl, barely alive on the ship. They feel bad just leaving her for death so they rescue her and now have to decide whether or not they can trust her. The girl says they will be rewarded greatly when her people come to find her since they saved her life. Pima and Nailer aren’t sure whether or not to believe her because she is definitely very secretive and sly. For now, they decide to camp out by the wreck until the rich people come to find her. I predict that they will take Nailer and Pima with them but will end up treating them like a much lower class and Nailer will realize that he is right back where he started, no money and treated like dirt.

            You could relate this book to nearly any dystopian themed book. One good example is The Hunger Games .They are both books about a teenage character who has grown up in a very poor society who only works for the rich people who live elsewhere. They have dreams about being rich but with the social classes, there is nearly no way to get there.