Shin 1

Heesu Shin
College 1
October 23, 2014
The Madonnas of Echo Park Chapter 6 RRJ
Summery
The main character of this chapter is Freddy Blas, a forty-two years old man, born in Mexico, but
calls himself a 100 percent American, grew up in Boyle Heights, and spent nineteen of his forty-two
years in youth camp. Some main sub characters mentioned in this chapter are Cristina (one that Hector
cheated on Felicia for), who gets in relationship with Freddy, Angie, Cristina's daughter, Javier, who
worked together with Freddy, Julianne, who lived across from Freddy and Cristina, and also had fun
with Freddy when their spouses were not home, and lastly the bus driver (Efren). The main events that
happens in this chapter are Freddy going in and out of jail cells for robbery, Freddy meeting Cristina at
Pilgrim's Supermarket, where Cristina was the cashier and Freddy was trying to steal some food, they
gets married, and live together with Angie. Works with Javier on a new club in West Hollywood called
Reflection, get's paid a lot, gets home late and gets drunk so much that eventually Cristina kicks Freddy
out from her house. Few years later, Freddy goes to find Cristina and meets Julianne, Freddy hears that
Cristina gained a lot of weight and always stayed in her house, and discovered that she is dead. After
that, Freddy and Julianne have their fun time and Freddy leaves. Freddy goes to a bar, gets into a
game with a man, wins all the games, but the man decides to beat Freddy and leaves. After Freddy gets
beaten up, he finds a bus that was parked in the Sunset Boulevard near the gas station, and gets a rid to
the nearest shelter in Downtown.
Your Response
My first response to this chapter was discouragement about the length of this chapter. Also I
didn't really like the contents in this chapter for mostly it was about Freddy doing his robbery and

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Freddy getting into a relationship and having fun with women. But there were some familiar names
mentioned in this chapter such as Freddy, Cristina, Hector, and the bus driver Efren. I was able to make
connections with these names for they were all once mentioned in previous chapters. Hector and Cristina
was mentioned in chapter one where Hector would cheat on Felicia by meeting with Cristina. Also Efren
and Freddy in the out of service bus after Efren runs away from the crime scene in chapter four. I looked
back into chapter four and noticed that the conversations that Freddy and Efren had are exactly
mentioned again in this chapter, therefore I was amazed at how much every characters are related to
each other.
Discussion Questions
1.Why did the author of this novel decided to kill at least one person in every chapter?
2.I thought this novel is to fill in the gaps of Aurora's life by other's perspective. But this chapter never
mentions either Aurora, or any event that Aurora was involved in. So why is this chapter so important in
this novel?
Reading Process
My reading process for this chapter was horrible. I had too much homework this week that I
barely had time to read. Normally what I do is read the half of the chapter in one day and the other in the
next day, but that was totally out of my plan this week due to the amount of work I had. Therefore I had
to read and do this RRJ all on Wednesday which was what I tried not to do. Anyways, aside from that, I
was confused with why this chapter is mentioned in this novel for it never mentions anything about
Aurora nor any events that Aurora was involved in. Also the contents of this chapter were mainly Freddy
doing this robbery and him having fun with women, which I felt quite awkward and wanted to get
over with this chapter quickly.
Good Words
1.Juvie- a youth, especially one involved in disorder or criminal offenses. I chose this word because I've

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never heard of word before.
2.Euphoric- characterized by or feeling intense excitement and happiness. I chose this word because I've
never heard this word before.
3.Semiflaccid- not firm: not hard or solid: lacking strength or force. I chose this word because I've never
heard this word before.