Entry 2:

            What surprised me in the second half of the book was that Pickering did not pay much attention to Eliza and pretended like she wasn’t there after she had successfully been passed off as a lady at a party. This surprised me so much because I always thought of Pickering to be the nice one and Higgins to be the cruel, unthougtful one but in this scene both men were being cruel and unaware of Eliza’s feelings. I would have guessed after the huge success that they had with her that they would acknowledge her and congratulate her.

            Just as Higgins and Pickering acted badly that night so did Eliza. When she was being ignored she threw a big fit and was acting very ungrateful. She even went as far as throwing her shoes at Higgins. Even though Eliza was not being treated fairly she did not have any right to act that way after someone had taken her in for six months and taken care of her. I think the reason Eliza was so mad thought was because she had always gotten a reward for her work. This journey was like selling a flower to her. Once she sold the flower she would receive money, but now after she had done her work she was expecting her “money”, but it didn’t come.

            I went on a mission trip to Haiti this summer and I read the book before I left and when I was reading the part about how Mr. Doolittle lost his happiness when he became rich I didn’t understand how that can be true. I always assumed that the more money you received the happier you would be. But now that I am back from Haiti where the poverty was immense and the average person lives on less than one dollar a day I can understand that money does not make you happy. I learned this from when I was working with the children in Haiti, they were always to happy and positive, much happier than a majority of well-off American children, even though many of them did not know where there next meal would come from. This experience allowed me to understand the book and Mr. Doolittle’s situations and feelings more easily.