Seeing from all sides

When you're reading a book as intense as "Ana's Story" it's hard to come up with physical ideas/thinking from the text. On the other hand, it's such a mind-blowing, idea generating story that it's hard not to have a strong reaction- even if it's an unaware reaction.

"Ana's Story" is the touching, true tale of young Ana, an HIV/AIDS patient. I'm a little more than halfway through the book, and so far Ana has gone from a young girl to a fifteen year old whose life has changed faster than the mind can process. The change is continuous, and she moves from place to place.

There are so many interesting apects of Ana's life in just the first half, but a certain part that really struck me as big was Ernesto. At some point, Ana and her sister Isabel move in with their Abeula(grandmother), who is angry and somewhat violent. But her husband is even worse.

Ernesto (Abuela's husband) is a horror. Though the girls are only about twelve years old, Ernesto abuses them and touches them in innapropriate ways. Of course, I won't go into extreme detail about how he goes aboout this or how increasingly bad it becomes. But while the main thought that he was a horrible person sat on the top of my mind, a few other thoughts struck me.

I always try to see not necessarily the good in everyone, but everyone's reasoning. Nobody just does something- especially something as extreme as what Ernesto does- for the heck of hit. I din't exactly come up with a reason for why he would do such a disgusting thing to the girls. But I did wonder what was provoking or causing him to behave like that, and I decided to question his past, figuring that something done to him could have started up his hideous actions.

And I pity him in many ways...pity him for having to eperience something so horrible that it generates these actions, and pity his having to opt to this.