Entry 2: Passage Analysis

            One quote that impacted me the most in the beginning of my reading of The Winter of our Disconnect was: “That night, I went to say goodnight and found the boys sitting up on Bill’s bed, side by side with their Coleman lanterns and their books: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and—get this—The God Delusion. So Dawkins was wrong after all, I reflected as I tiptoed down the hall. There really is a god” (54).

            This quote, written in a section of Maushart’s memoir that takes place after the disconnect has begun, shows how the children were adapting to the situation at hand so quickly which shocked me the most. In this case, it was Maushart’s son Bill and his friend Pat, who were both major gamers on their PCs. However, after the disconnect occurred and Bill was left powerless, literally, it seems that they adapted to the situation and ended up productively reading instead of playing video games or watching television on the internet. In this case, the productiveness and time of the two children that would normally be spent on technology, is now being put to use making light of a situation they were disgruntled about, and therefore for the better.

            Maushart even incorporates irony in this quote, stating that there really was a god after viewing what was going on in Bill’s room. To her, it must have seemed like a miracle that she had gotten two teenage boys, previously almost addicted to internet and video games, to read a book on their own and with no complaints. This ties in to how this quote is significant to the book as a whole because now, at a rate where the book is only 1/4^th the way through and the children are already adapting and enjoying themselves to a technology free life, a thought arises about how things, from here on in, can get even better for the Maushart family.