BANK HEIST FRIDAY AFTER CLASS HMU FOR DEETS (for legal reasons this is a joke @ my fbi angent ;))

Hey hey hey!!!

I hope everyone had a great weekend 🙂 And if you celebrated Saint Patrick’s Day, I hope you survived! HAHA. I LOVE it when we have required readings because I get to read everyone’s unique and different perspectives on the same book. It’s really interesting to see how everyone processes something in such different ways; it’s really cool.

So this week we read “Money to Burn” by Ricardo Piglia, and I really liked it. I found it to be the most similar book to what I normally read in my daily life. As someone with ADHD, I usually find it hard to read most books; they are too slow for my brain, and I don’t always love reading from a single character’s point of view. I enjoyed the author’s writing style in the sense that he focuses on multiple views and storylines; we were able to read through the minds of various gang members as well as through the lens of police officers, journalists, etc. It was a very thrilling and captivating book, and I think it is one that I will definitely be recommending to my friends outside of this class. Something else I enjoyed about this book was the author’s ability to make me feel on edge and anxious while reading. I was able to truly be transported into the book and have an immersive experience.

Something I’ve been able to connect with is this pursuit or desire to achieve the perfect crime—DON’T WORRY, I’M NOT PLANNING A ROBBERY OR ANYTHING HAHAH. But I mean it in the sense that we, as humans, tend to constantly strive for this unattainable perfection, and nothing we do ever seems to be enough, or we’re always left wanting to go further. As a society we have built this pressure which often pushes individuals to chase after material possessions, sometimes at the expense of their morals and values. Drawing parallels between Maggi’s desire for the perfect crime and real-life instances where people may resort to unethical means to maintain a certain lifestyle. So in a sense I can relate, I understand why someone may commit a crime or do something unethical, however, I am not saying I condone this behavior. I guess what I am trying to get at is that committing a crime or doing something morally wrong is not always a black and white scenario, or easy to put blame on someone and say they’re a bad/evil person. HAHA writing this I guess this touches on our class discussion about us justifying bad behaviors in characters, LOL so yeah anyways it’s a difficult situation.

discussion question: How does Ricardo Piglia’s portrayal of the pursuit of the perfect crime in ‘Money to Burn’ reflect broader societal pressures and individual desires for success and fulfillment? Can you draw parallels between the characters’ motivations and real-world instances where people may feel compelled to resort to unethical means to achieve their goals?