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Page 155: “Finally, turning toward home, I wave good-bye to Lincoln, whose bronze statue stands in the dead center of the square. Then I nod at Gandhi, whose bronze statue stands on the square’s western edge. They shot him too.”

Rant/Rave

The ending of the book perfectly represents Sarah Vowell. She could have had a tender ending and closed with her waving goodbye to Lincoln, but that would not fit her character and writing style. That would be too sincere, too pleasant, too average. Sarah Vowell must always do the unexpected. She felt the need to leave her audience with the head shake and grin that had become all too familiar at his point in the book. Some might think it was an insensitive ending, but that’s just who Sarah Vowell is.

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Page 251: “Here I’ve been under the impression that every time I come here to the Lincoln Memorial, I’m cheating death. Because the whole time I stand around reading his speeches, searching his eyes, I feel like I’m bringing Abraham Lincoln back to life.”

Interpretation

As I read this, I think back to Sarah Vowell’s page of quotes at the beginning of the book. One of them, by Carl Reiner, says, “That’s what writing is. You’re keeping people alive in your head.” I think this is what her purpose in writing the book was, to keep these assassinated presidents, and everyone else she writes about, alive in her head and to other people. She wrote these few sentences in the above quote four pages before the end of the book, and I don’t think this was a coincidence. She wanted to finally publicize what her purpose was. It stands out because it is one of the few times that she was serious in her writing, which I think was also intentional.

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Page 250: “For me, however, where gospel music is concerned, my taste is more conservative and narrow–minded then a Reverend Falwell commencement address at Oral Roberts U. Unless it’s an old holy–roller hymn Johnny Cash would have learned from his mama back in Arkansas, I’m not interested. So the only musical selection I sing along with is when the preacher, Amos Dodge, does a Martin Luther King and climbs halfway up the steps to lead us in an old Dash school, a cappella “How Great Thou Art.”

Evaluation

I thought this whole section was chock full of phenomenal writing. Whether or not the audience can relate to Sarah Vowell’s taste in music, they can appreciate her writing ability and the way she exemplified it here. With the simile and the humor, this section is an attention-grabber. I also love how she turned Martin Luther King into a verb, saying the preacher did “a Martin Luther King.”

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Page 250: “But as I suspected, at six-thirty sharp the choir does stand up to perform the first of their competent renditions of generic, mid-tempo pop ballads that sound like they were written by a computer database of Easter vocabulary.”

Rhetoric

Sarah Vowell utilizes an excellent use of diction to depict the choir. She describes the music as “generic, mid-tempo pop ballads” instead of stating that the songs were basic. She incorporates a simile by which the audience has an “ah ha” moment because the comparison is relatable and humorous.

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Page 215: “It was McKinley who actually saved his life. Looking up from his wound to see the assassin getting clobbered, the president commanded, “Go easy on him, boys.”

Reflection

I can’t relate to what President McKinley did. If I got shot, saving the life of the person who shot me would not be one of my main priorities. However, I think it was a very admirable thing to do. It reminds me of Jesus saying “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” after being crucified.

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Page 212: “People cried the light was so lovely. And all that beauty was made possible because George Westinghouse of Buffalo harnessed Niagara Falls into his alternating current, the same current that would soon be used to fry Leon Czolgosz in the electric chair.”

Basic

It amazes me how fast Sarah Vowell can jump from one thought to the next. This is a prime example of one of her ramblings where she ties it together at the end with something actually pertaining to the context of the story. At this point in the book, I come back to a question I’ve had throughout the whole thing. What is Sarah Vowell’s purpose? One can’t quite label this book with one genre. She incorporates history and entertainment mixed in with all of her tangents about who knows what. This makes it very difficult to pin point what her purpose in writing the novel is. I think maybe she wrote it more for herself than others, as a sort of journal to document her “morbid assassination death trip” (as she calls it on page 252).

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Page 208: “History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.”

Basic

This is a very odd thing for Sarah Vowell to say. If this is the way she sees history, why does she love it so much? She knows every detail about presidential assassinations and I’m sure her knowledge of historical people and events doesn’t end there. Maybe even though she thinks of history this way, she can’t help being fascinated by it.

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191: “So Amy had to hash it out with the woman in the back of a patrolman‘s squad car while Owen and I sat in the hundred-degree heat staring at ants frying on the asphalt, all because I wanted to see the tomb of her another assassinated Ohio president.”

Evaluation

Sarah Vowell did a great job of describing this scene. As I read it, I could clearly picture her sister Amy and a delusional woman bickering, and Sarah Vowell and her nephew Owen bored as could be sitting on a curb twiddling their thumbs. I’m always impressed when an author shows his or her audience something instead of telling it. She ties the sentence together with her usual sarcasm which has grown on me. She makes a jab at herself and her obsession with assassinated presidents, which reiterates who she is and everything that she embodies.

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Page 190: “I have not been particularly shocked by how much I love Owen, but I am continually pleasantly surprised by how much I like him. He’s truly morbid.”

Rant/Rave

When one first sees that Sarah Vowell says that she is continually pleasantly surprised by how much she likes her nephew, then follows it by “he’s truly morbid”, they might be shocked. Maybe even mortified. To most, having a nephew that can be described as “morbid” would not be a positive thing. But after reading the whole book up to this point, one isn’t surprised by her antics. They actually become welcomed. Things that once would have been taken offensively or seen as controversial are now accepted.

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Page 189: “Owen climbed on top of [John Hay’s grave] and hollered, “This is a nice Halloween park!”

Reflection

I can’t relate to the enjoyment that Sarah Vowell and her nephew Owen get from a stroll through a cemetery. I don’t like cemeteries. Not only are they creepy; they’re also depressing. I also will be a very different aunt than Sarah Vowell. I’ll take my nephews and nieces to the zoo or to Chuck E. Cheese’s, not on historical adventures centered around death.

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Page 180: “...today the wind is so truly windy the frozen sea spray slaps us cold.”

Evaluation

This is an example of exceptional writing. Sarah Vowell uses descriptive words that let the reader visualize what she is writing about. She also incorporates alliteration with “sea spray slaps” which adds quality to the line.

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Page 171: “But sitting where Guiteau stalked Garfield, staring at the White House gives me the creeps. So I take off.”

Basic

Here Sarah Vowell describes how she was sitting in the same spot that Guiteau watched Garfield the night before the assassination. This, she says, creeps her out. This makes me thing back to the very beginning of the book when she went to Ford’s Theatre where Lincoln was shot. Why was she okay with that, but not this? Maybe it was because she only looked at the spot where John Wilkes Booth was, but she was actually sitting where Guiteau sat. Or maybe it was because Ford’s Theatre had been redone, so it didn’t feel as real to her.

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Page 170: “After God commanded Guiteau to kill Garfield, it actually took the assassin a couple weeks to summon the nerve to pull the trigger...”

Rhetoric

In this section Sarah Vowell uses sarcasm. It is obvious that she is not actually agreeing with Guiteau’s idea that God told him to kill Garfield, but she doesn’t just come out and say that. She finds a way to make it more interesting and add new information at the same time. Her writing style and personality keeps the audience’s attention.

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Pages 163 and 164

Rant

Sarah Vowell tends to ramble on and on seemingly without purpose. She usually does come to a point near the end of her tangents, but I still don’t think they’re necessary. In these pages she thoroughly explains the details of a little boy thinking a statue was Paul Revere when it was really General Sherman. Although this was interesting and enjoyable to read, I didn’t see the real need for it.

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Page 159: “I am pro-plaque.” and “The gum cost a dollar, but the story was free.”

Interpretation

Sarah Vowell says that she is “pro plaque”. She explains that she came upon the plaque after buying gum. Through the plaque, she learned a story. She points out how the story was free, but the gum costed a dollar. To her, stories are worth way more than material things. She wanted to show how much history means to her.

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Page 135: “Before, I didn’t mind him, and of course I sympathized with his bum luck of a death.”

Basic

At this point I’m wondering why someone killed Garfield. What was his motivation? How did he do it? How many people were involved? I could try to ponder all the possible answers for these questions but I have a feeling Sarah Vowell will soon let me in on all the details of the deadly affair.

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Page 135: “As Garfield left the podium, every scared kid in the room could probably hear the sound of the stock market crashing him back to his old room at his parents’ house where he’d have plenty of free time to contemplate hanging himself with his boyhood bedsheets.”

Evaluation

Although this sentence could be taken offensively by some, I thought everything about it was well done. She uses personification when she says “the sound of the stock market crashing”. She then ends the sentence with alliteration, saying “boyhood bedsheets” which adds a nice flow to it. She could have simply said that the audience was scared, but she found a much more interesting way to put it.

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Page 133: “But I would imagine he would also have mourned all the books he never got to read.”

Reflection

I can’t relate. If I died no one would ever say this about me, because those who know me well know that I don’t like to read. If I died I would definitely not be sad that I didn’t read Huckleberry Finn. If anything I’d be happy about never being assigned to read another book ever again.

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Page 101: “...the next morning Edwin informed John at breakfast that he had voted for Lincoln’s reelection and they got into one of the arguments they were always having about North versus South...”

Basic

I wonder how two brothers had such different views. If they grew up in the same household, what made them end up thinking totally opposite? Maybe their parents had split views too and they each sided with one parent. Or maybe one of them strayed from the rest of the family’s beliefs. In any case, I think it’s very strange that while one brother voted for Lincoln’s reelection, the other other killed him because he hated him so much.

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Page 100: “...parks, by the way, with no fences around them, parks a citizen can walk in and out of any damn time she wants.”

Interpretation

Sarah Vowell says this the way she does to make her frustration with the fact that only some people can enjoy parks due to fences and gates keeping others out clear. She uses an aggravated tone so that the reader doesn’t miss her point.

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Page 96: “After reading his account of being hunted by dogs, of being so surprised by the reaction by the reaction to what he had done. Plus, he’s so cute.”

Rant

Gretchen Worden states this about John Wilkes Booth right after saying she feels sorry for him. Is she insane? She’s coming to the defense of a presidential assassin because she thinks he’s cute? There’s no explanation needed for why that’s totally whack, but also, just because someone thinks what they’re doing is right doesn’t mean you should feel sorry for them when they receive consequences for their actions.

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Page 96: “She sighs, murmuring, “I really feel sorry for John Wilkes.”

Reflection

This is a quote from the Mütter Museum’s director, Gretchen Worden. I can’t relate to this statement at all. I don’t feel sorry for the man who killed Abraham Lincoln. I wouldn’t feel sorry for any murderer really, but especially not one who assassinated one of the best presidents in history.

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Page 96: “John Wilkes Booth... mortified that the papers are calling him an evil lunatic, when he thought he was going to be praised and worshiped like the abolitionists’ favorite murderer, John Brown.”

Basic

Did he really think he was going to be praised for killing the president of the United States? If so, I think he must have had something seriously wrong with him in the head. Then again, I guess one would have to be pretty messed up in the head to kill the president whether they think it’s right or not.

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Page 89: “Brent, slowly navigating the car around the graveyard’s narrow curves, calls the layout “a Candy Land of death.”

Evaluation

I think this is excellent writing because she takes something well known and compares it to something totally opposite. We look upon “Candy Land” fondly. It brings us back to the simpler days of our childhood and we get an image of candy canes and gum drops, but it is compared to death. This gives us the same image, but totally warped. It is humorous and brilliant.

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Page 79: “As we ascend the stairs Mike says, “You can hear the wind blowing.” Yes, I can. It is the sound of fear.

Rhetoric

Here Sarah Vowell uses humor to draw the reader in. This makes the audience more inclined to enjoy the book and keep reading. At the same time she also uses a metaphor, saying the wind is the sound of fear. This keeps her writing interesting and helps the flow of the novel.

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Page 81: “I haven’t decided if he deserved to eat bread made out of sticks or live in a rancid puddle, probably because I haven’t made up my mind whether anyone deserves such treatment...”

Evaluation

This is a fine piece of writing not only because it is humorous, but because it makes the reader think. What kind of treatment do bad people deserve, and where does the line need to be drawn? I think any writing that causes the reader to start their own thought process and come up with their own questions is good writing.

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Page 78: “I sigh, telling him that yes of course I’m afraid of heights, not mentioning that of all my phobia... I’m almost proud of my fear of heights because it seems comparatively ho-hum, sane.”

Reflection

I can relate to this because everyone has irrational fears. She’s saying that her fear of heights is actually rational, unlike many of her others. While I have rational fears, like a fear of burning myself whilst curling my hair (I’ve learned from experience that this is a healthy fear), I also have irrational fears. Like my fear of hair dryers. I hate turning on my hair dryer because it is horribly loud right next to my ears and I’m afraid that someone will sneak up behind me and murder me.

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Page 51: “Listen. That room was so quiet. Of course it was. When the bullet dropped in such a quiet room, it must have been almost as jarring as the original gunshot.”

Rhetoric

Sarah Vowell takes the reader right into that room with the descriptive diction she uses. This is so much more effective than simply explaining what happened. She causes the audience to actually see and feel what is going on.

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Page 29: “There is a lesson here for the terrorists of the world: if they really want to get ahead, they should put less energy into training illiterate ten-year-olds how to fire Kalashnikovs and start recruiting celebrities like George Clooney.”

Interpretation

When I first read this it kinda shocked me. I thought, “Is she really giving advice to terrorists on how to do their job better?” As I thought about it, I think she’s actually using reverse psychology. She could be trying to spread awareness about the issue of celebrities being able to bypass security.

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Page 28: “So tonight, I leave the memorial knowing that the fact that Lincoln got to serve his whole first term is kind of a miracle.”

Basic

This leads me to wonder just how many times someone made an attempt to assassinate Lincoln. How did they do it? What was their reasoning behind it? I would guess that their methods and motives were similar to those of John Wilkes Booth. Still it would be interesting to look further into the facts.

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Pages 31 and 32

Rave

I think this sequence of writing was very well done. She explains the attempted murder of Secretary of State Seward. It was oddly interesting and very easy to read due to how well it all flowed together. I actually enjoyed reading it.

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Page 31: “Bennett looks at the plaque, then back at me, wondering, “This is my surprise? A plaque about Seward?”

Reflection

I can relate, for once, to Sarah Vowell here. I don’t necessarily relate with getting excited about a Seward Plaque and being disappointed when my friend doesn’t share in that same excitement, but it has happened in other areas. Like if I absolutely love a movie or a song and can’t wait to show it to my friends, but they don’t see the same majesticness that I do.

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Page 21: “Going to Ford’s Theatre to watch the play is like going to Hooters for the food.”

Evaluation

This is great writing. Sarah Vowell opens her first chapter by giving her audience a laugh. Even if someone has never been to Hooters, they can still understand and appreciate the humor in this line.

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Page 8: “Still, I dread bodily harm coming to the current president because of my aforementioned aversion to murder, but also because I don’t think I can stomach watching that man get turned into a martyr if he were killed.”

Rant

First of all, she totally contradicts herself here. She might have “aforementioned” that she was against death, but she also stated that she was obsessed with it. This means that she, in fact, does not have an aversion to murder. She dedicates her life to it. Someone that knows every detail about presidential assassinations does not have an aversion to murder. Quite the contrary, really. Second of all, saying that she couldn’t stomach seeing the president be turned into a martyr and giving that as a reason that he shouldn’t get killed is very insensitive.

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Page 1: “One night last summer, all the killers in my head assembled on a stage in Massachusetts to sing show tunes.”

Rhetoric

Sarah Vowell uses imagery to begin her book. This is a great hook. It grabs the reader’s attention and automatically paints a picture in his or her head. This was her exact purpose in using imagery to open the novel. It sparks the audience’s interest and urges them to keep reading.

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Page 6: “...while I am obsessed with death, I am against it.”

Basic

The fact that Sarah Vowell openly admits to being obsessed with death leads me to question her sanity. How can someone who writes and publishes a book for the world to see and only talks about death and her obsession with it be right in the head? In the quote she quickly explains that she is against death, as if that makes it normal and acceptable that she is obsessed with it. Maybe she started delving into the presidential assassinations and became too fascinated with them, causing her to spiral into an unhealthy obsession. Nonetheless I think she needs to see a therapist.

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Page 2: “I am the black hole of breakfast, a silent void of gloom sucking the sunshine out of their neighborly New England day.”

Interpretation

In this quote Sarah Vowell gives us a clear description of herself. She wants readers to know right off the bat what kind of person she is. This prepares the audience for what they are about to read. It lets us know that this book is not going to be sunshine and rainbows. On the contrary, from the preface alone we can see that the book will be dark and unpleasant.