The Book of Ruth

A detailed Summary of The Book of Ruth

Suffering is something that everyone has to deal with sometime in his or her life. You can either be positive while suffering and live through it or you can choose the other route, being miserable the rest of your life. Many parents who have lost their children in accidents or disease have suffered greatly. Half will try live through it with bumps and the other half will never succeed getting through it because they could never live on like it used to be. In Jane Hamiltons, The Book of Ruth, many characters suffer. Three of the four characters in this essay got the most out of their life or tried as hard as they could for the situation they were in. The fourth one lost it and ended up living his life in loneliness. This essay will explain how the attitude in the characters towards suffering depended on the outcome of their lives.

Ruth always tried to make the best of life. She suffered the thought that she was dumb, and through her mothers constant nagging remarks. However, when she found someone that made her feel special she hung on to them with all her life. Then she thought she was special. When she felt that she was special to someone she always tried to get the best out of life. As she was a little girl, she alw

"She is certainly beautiful, but she assumed she didn't have to do one thing; she would always look glamorous and everyone would automatically love her for her looks alone...She did hit and run accidents and thought nothing of it."(pg. 102) This quote is about a girl named Daisy. She accepted life as it was and lived it as she thought fit. Even though Daisy thought nothing of what she did, she still ended up well off. When she was younger, she would run if with random men. "Daisy wouldn't say much. She told Randall to lay off her. There was something she said about a trucker down at the truck stop near the highway, and how she went clear to Kentucky with him."(pg. 83) In other words, she was a prostitute. She did what made her happy, what's wrong with that? Daisy was very pretty and could get by with almost anything with it. "Daisy always described her favorite boyfriends and where they took her, before she was on probation. She always made them drive her to fancy clubs and restaurants, otherwise she wouldn't bother to date them." (pg. 101) She used men to be happy and at times, to feel wealthy. Daisy always thought the best of everything. If anything bad happened in her life she ignored it or just dealt with it. "She was supposed to behave, stick around, seriously look for employment, and quit drinking as part of her probation. The police had their eye on her every move because she stole and went driving around when she was smashed. She had hurt Mr. Kirk...so badly his arms and legs will never function."(pg. 100) Even though it was a horrible thing that she did, Daisy did the right thing by leaving it in the past and moving into the future. Daisy had a great attitude about what she wanted to do in the future. "She kept saying she was moving to Hollywood, California, one minute, and then New York City the next, to do makeup for famous people..."(pg. 102) She ended up getting out of Honey Creek like she wanted to by going to beauty school in Peoria. Daisy succeeded by getting her beautician license, and opened her own beauty shop. This is where she met her future husband. Daisy ended up well off even though she suffered through life in Honey Creek. I think Ruth sums her life perfectly in this quote, "I guessed Daisy wasn't planning on going to New York City or Los Angeles to work in the television industry after all. For a while her ambition was to stay at home and make casserole recipes. She didn't even want to go to Shear Magic. Bill owned a house outside of Stillwater and she couldn't wait to spend his money to fix it up. She was thinking of going to night classes in interior design. It's as if there's a virus that steals under a girl's skin sometimes, and makes her want to be a good wife, even when she wasn't planning on it."(pg. 243)

If everyone in the world goes around and feels sorry for themselves, then we would all wind up decaying in our own self pity. There would be chaos throughout the world, and no one could stop it. This is why we must have a positive outlook on life, or else we would end up lying around and eating a big bag of potato chips. In Jane Hamilton's, The Book of Ruth, many characters end up living either a terrible life or live the life they wanted to live. As you can see the attitude in the characters lives throughout the novel depended greatly on the outcome of their lives.

ays wanted to have a happy family and to have that family get along together. However, Ruth never had that. Her mother May was not the kind of mother that we all would think of as a typical mom. She was very rude and bitter. "I learned to stay quiet at meals because I usually said sentences of astounding dumbness. May looked at me like I was a stranger..."(pg. 17) With a mother like this to tell you that you are dumb constantly you would actually think you are. Ruth thought exactly that and most of her life she was affected by it. "I started out in the hole, i

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2651
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: People