Reading Hornby’s “A long way down”

First assignment of a characterization of Maureen February 25, 2007

She is probably the most different character in comparison to the other three characters of Nick Hornby’s novel “A long way down”. Maureen is a middle-aged and very quiet woman who has to bear a heavy burden. Actually she hadn’t live for almost twenty years now because she gave away her life. And the reason for that is her disabled son who can’t neither walk, talk nor recognize anything that is going on in the world around him. Maureen has to look after him night and day and you probably can imagine that she really is in pain (she even takes anti-depressants!).

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Maureen #1 February 25, 2007

Maureen is a mittle-aged single-mum. Her son Matty is profoundly retarted, he can’t speak and probably even not realize Maureen. She only had one time in her life intercoursed with a man – Frank, he is the father of Matty. Since Matty was born Maureen said her life has stopped and would never change. Because she has to pay Matty all of her attention and can’t do anything else in her life. She says that her biggest wish is that Matty is going to die. Maybe that sounds very hard, but also it shows her desperation. She thinks that her life is wasted and she wants to be like all the other happy people around her but she can’t because of Matty and that is the reason for her wanting to commit suicide. Maureen goes to church every sunday, but only because she is afraid of what other people would say if she doesn’t. That shows that Maureen worries about what people could think about her. Maureen seems to be a very shy and reserved woman and also not very selfconfident, because she doesn’t talk that much and if she says anything she seems to be very doubtful. She wishes that she could explain herself better and be able to show more emotions. She also doesn’t tell anything from herself and has to be asked by the others for her reasons of wanting to commit suicide. Maureen makes herself a picture of the other 3 characters, but does not speak out loudly what she is thinking about them. But her point of view shows that she is a bit old-fashioned, for example she hates slang and she does not know Martin Sharp, a famous tv presenter. All in all I think Maureen is a very friendly person and liked by all the others.

Maureen (V.1) by Vladimir February 25, 2007

Mauree seems to be the only person who has REAL problems in her very difficult life. She is not like the other characters, because she wanted to die not because she made a mistake in this life, not because she missed something or somebody, but because of her son, Matty, who is disabled to do anything in this life, because he has a very seriose disease and exists only like a vegetable… He cannot say thanks to his mother, for all what she did for him, he cannot say anything at all. It is not his fault and it is not Maureen’s fault… It is fault of the nature if we can say so and nobody can cure the boy.  And this is a great disaster. Her own son, who must be the greatest award for every single woman , is for Maureen the biggest punishment. Sometimes she thinks that it will be the best thing for Matty to die, but these thoughts only break off her heart. In addition to it, her little world is limited by her own house and by a local church. Maureen lives like a prisoner and Matty is her “supervisor”.  It does not seem that she has a lot of friends, maybe only a few in the church.  And day to day her situation becomes more and more difficult… Nobody in this world can understand her or better to say that nobody want to understand her. All have their own problems and Maureen does not want to impose her problems to other people. Even when she tried to kill herself, she wanted to do it “in the silence” making no anxiety to other people. One more interesting thing in the Maureen that she is a dutiful Catholic, and in the Catholic religion like in other religions suicide is a biggest sin, but how we can see, wish to die is more powerfull than all her belief. So we can understand that the religion was the only thing, which gave her a hope, but when she totaly lost her hope, she does not care a lot about her next life.  But suddenly she met these three strange people and she decided to be together with them. Although she sometimes cannot understand the modern behavior of JJ(She also thinks that JJ is a gay because he has long hairs and he is American and it sounds very strange but if we remembered that she was almost 20 years isolated from this world it seems to be quite normal ), dirty slang of Jess and  strange Martin’s life, she feels that there is something that connect them, that they are one team, one band and they can help each other. Maybe she does not know how to do it, but maybe these guys are her last chance.