Reflection on "Communion" by Uwem Akpan

I thought this story a confusing but good one because of how the boys acted in the different situations and the different environments. When the boys were in the street, witch was there “home”, they were disrespectful and they were trying to steal money from the main character. Later when they were in the church, they were still disrespectful but they tried to copy what the other people did. Once they got into the line to have there communion, they were respectful to the other people and they did the right thing. In each of the environments that they were in, they acted how they thought it was appropriate. Even though they didn’t have any manors, they tried to act right. They were raised to get money to live from people from the street and that is what they did to the main character. They did not know that what they were doing was wrong. What I think was very good of them to do, however, was that when they realized that they did something wrong when they took the umbrella, they gave it back to the owner at the end.

Many people act differently in the different environments. They act differently when they are in the park and in a stranger’s house without even realizing it. When someone is in there house, they act how they were raised. Then when someone is in the park, they have fun and they can run around everywhere. Sometimes, however, someone can mistake these two places and act as if they were in the park, in there house. I think that this is what happened too the children once they entered the church. As people grow, they start to mistake these two things a lot less. When someone is young, they start to learn how they should act in each place and they start to experiment the places. Once they learn about every place, they know how to act in the places.

Since the boys in the story got confused about how to act in the places, I got confused if they had good or bad intentions. When the boys gave back the umbrella to the character, I noticed that this was a good intention. But, in the beginning of the story, the character explained how they kids picked pockets and stole. This showed me that when they stole there were just trying to be able to live. When they steal I did not notice if they were doing it because they were raised that way or it was because they had to do it to live. Because of these two parts, I did not know of the boys on the street were doing things with good or bad intentions. I liked this story because to fully understand it, you had to think about it.