Answer:
A lot
Explanation:
Elwood Curtis is a teenage black boy living in Florida in the early 1960s, and the protagonist of The Nickel Boys. A determined young man, Elwood lives with his grandmother, who takes him with her to the hotel where she works. While she’s cleaning the rooms, Elwood spends his time in the kitchen, peering out at the hotel’s dining room and imagining what it would be like to see a black person sitting at one of the tables. Elwood is particularly interested in the Civil Rights Movement because the only record he owns is a recording of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at the Zion Hill Baptist Church in Los Angeles. During high school, Elwood works at Mr. Macroni’s cigar shop and reads magazines about the Civil Rights Movement, which is why he ends up admiring his new history teacher, Mr. Hill, who is an activist. Recognizing Elwood’s impressive determination, Mr. Hill helps him enroll in college classes, which he plans to take while finishing high school. On his way to his first class, though, he hitchhikes with a man who—unbeknownst to him—stole a car. Consequently, Elwood is arrested and sent to Nickel Academy, a reform school. At Nickel, it doesn’t take long before Elwood experiences the wrath of Spencer, the school’s superintendent, who brutally whips him for trying to break up a fight. This experience sends him to the infirmary, where his new friend, Turner, tells him that the safest way to get through Nickel is to simply keep to oneself, focusing only on earning enough merit points to “graduate.” Elwood initially decides to follow this advice, but when he hears that government inspectors will be visiting the school, he writes a letter to them outlining the institution’s egregious practices. Turner is against this idea but ultimately helps Elwood carry it out. That night, Spencer takes Elwood from his bed and beats him before putting him in solitary confinement. Several days later, Turner hears that Spencer is going to kill Elwood, so he helps him escape, but Elwood is shot and killed in the process.
Answer:
Throughout the passage, the shift in the physical description of the landlady does impact the story's meaning. At first, when you hear what the landlady looks like, you'll think that she's not at all "wrong in the head", but as you progress through the story, the landlady morphs into a detrimental woman. When Billy sees the landlady at the start, he thinks that she " looked exactly like the mother of one’s best school-friend welcoming one into the house to stay for the Christmas holidays (29)". He basically thinks that she's just a kind woman who won't do him any harm. Later, "he caught a whiff of a peculiar smell that seemed to emanate26 directly from her person. It was not in the least unpleasant, and it reminded him — well, he wasn’t quite sure what it reminded him of. Pickled walnuts? New leather? Or was it the corridors of a hospital? (78)". He thought that she was "dotty", but he didn't care, nor does he really pay any close attention to how she acted or looked. All he thought was since she invited him to a place to stay for a good amount of money, she was welcoming and inviting, therefore, he assumed that she was innocent and not at all "wrong in the head". In the beginning, we all thought that this was going to be an innocent story where Billy enters a house and a landlady allows him to stay there. The landlady would mind her own business and be polite and Billy would be safe and just be there for a tiny bit, all happy and everything would be just fine. But no. As the story reveals more, it gets more twisted and dark. The landlady turns out to be purposefully poisoning Billy with tea and probably stuffing him later. All things will turn for a deadly end
Explanation:
