The emotion Conor is experiencing here is a stark contrast compared to how he felt about his whole trip to Nepal in the beginning of the book. At first he only went to the orphanage so he could use the fact to impress women at bars, and to justify his whole trip around the world, but now he actually cares about the orphanage and the children there. The part “I hadn’t cried in years, and I was really sobbing” is extremely important to his development and the arc he experiences throughout the book. The fact that he rarely cries, and yet he is crying in this situation really shows how important the orphanage and children have become to his life. The emotion that he felt in this situation made it unquestionable to him that he would return to Nepal again someday.

This passage really shows how far parents will go just to keep their children safe. They don’t care that for the fact they’ll be in debt for the rest of their lives, they just want their kid to survive the upcoming civil war. The irony of this situation though is that handing Nuraj over to Golkka is probably as dangerous as keeping him with them during the war.  I feel like this story about the lengths parents will go to protect their children probably shocked Conor, as at the time he didn’t really fancy the idea of having children or a family. Maybe hearing this story and many others like this one made him more open to that idea.

This passage is also an extremely important passage to the growth and development of Conor. At this point he cares for the kids so much that he’ll go to a country in the middle of a civil just to meet them again and to save even more children. It is a really brave act of him to do that, and it’s amazing how he does it even though it isn’t even necessary of him to do so. I don’t think I could ever do anything like that, and to do it on impulse like Conor is doing is even riskier. For someone who started off the book not liking children, it is very astonishing how in just a few short years he’ll travel to a country in the middle of a war just to help some out.

I find this passage extremely relatable to the relationship I have with my parents. I coincidently ended up liking all the same music and movies that they like too. We also have the same, extremely offensive sense of humor that either makes people love us or hate us. I like talking about my common tastes in music and movies with my parents because it makes them feel more like friends to me than evil monsters who try make my life miserable at every possible second, which is what most people my age view their parents as. I feel like if kids my age spent more time talking to their parents about stuff like that, they wouldn’t fall into that common trap that most of them do.  

Conor said, “I bought zero apples, Jagrit. I was going to bring you one, but I ate it myself.” (page 230, part 5)

The reason why Conor said this is to Jagrit is to cover up for the actual reason why he didn’t bring him an apple. The only thing Jagrit remembers from Humla are its amazing apples, so if Conor bought home an apple from there, and it tasted bad, it could have lessened Jagrit’s morale about going back to Humla. I’ve had a similar situation to this from when I went to Little Tokyo in Los Angeles and got a banana flavored ice cream popsicle from one of the Japanese supermarkets there. It was the best ice cream I’ve ever had, so I based my whole entire trip going back there just to get more of them, but when I went to the supermarket there and they didn’t have any, it bummed me out and ruined my whole entire trip back Little Tokyo. Just how that has put a negative stain on my memories from Little Tokyo, that could have put a negative stain on Jagrit’s only memory from Humla.