Beautiful Losers, the End.

Beautiful Losers (p. 198 to p.257)

Main Events That Happened

Here are some of the big events that happened from 197 to 257:

 

• Catherine became extremely religious in this part of the book. She started doing holy rituals, she started not eating for extended periods of time, and she had sewn thousands of thorns into her blanket and mattress. After enduring so much pain during those rituals, she eventually died.
• F. and Mary (Mary is F.'s nurse) had a complicated end to their story, they fought a little about Mary’s weird transformations then they were good and in love. But after that the cops came, Mary told F.  to run away. He got away, but the police dogs got Mary and wounded her.
• A weird thing happened after those events. We learn by multiple examples that the mud from where Catherine was buried became magical because of her. They gave multiple examples where the mud was applied, and miracles occurred. They applied the mud on a cow that was swollen, and she instantly came back to her regular size.

The story ends with two people in the city talking about things like hot dogs, a terrorist in a bar, and then they went to the movies but the guy couldn’t see the film.   

What We Thought Was Going to Happen

As we said in the last post, we were pretty sure that the end of Beautiful Losers would be remarkable. However, after finishing the book, we realized that once again, we were wrong. This novel is very hard to predict and even if all along we tried to imagine what was going to happen, we were never completely sure. The end of the book was a story in the 3rd person that did not really converge with the stories from the two other parts of the book. It did not link all the other parts together either. To resume, the book did not end with a big event that would make everything make sense as we predicted, but we think it is because Beautiful Losers is not a continued story, so it is harder for us to guess what is going to happen next. 

Mood

While reading the ending of Beautiful Losers, we felt a little bit confused. In fact, we were all waiting for the big event or the event that would make us understand the whole story, but it did not happen. We had to try to put the pieces of the many small stories together to understand the whole book, which was a little bit hard at times, but we also thought that the book was interesting, since it really made us think a lot to comprehend the whole book. 

Quotes

"The war between the French and Iroquois continued. The Indians asked some of their converted brethren at Sault to join them, promising them absolute freedom to practice their religion. When the converted refused, the Iroquois kidnapped them and killed burnt them at the stake." Beautiful Losers, p. 209 lines 1 to 5. 

In this passage, we can understand that the relationship between the French and the Iroquois was not always good, they had a lot of disagreements, some because of religion, some because of the commercial activities, etc. We can also understand that at that time, religion took a lot of space in people's lives. 

" We are at the heart of the winter of 1680. Catherine Tekakwitha is cold and dying. This is the year she died. " Beautiful Losers, p. 217 lines 5-6.

Catherine Tekakwitha

At this point in the story, we learn that Catherine Tekakwitha died. In the novel, people want to plan a funeral for Catherine Tekakwitha's death. In the book, it seems like during the 17th century, only important people had funerals so that everyone who wanted to could go say their last goodbyes. Because of that, we understand that Catherine Tekakwitha was important and known. We also learn that Catherine died at 24 years old. 

Other information

Towards the end of the book, after Catherine Tekakwitha's death, we learn that some people came together and formed a group of supporters of the Mohawk Saint in memory of her. P. Bruyas, who was a Superior at Sault, came to see the group because his arms were paralyzed and wanted them to do a novena for him so that he would recover. Then, he refused all the treatment that the doctors wanted to give him. After a couple of days, magically, his arms could move. The novena had worked. That shows that Catherine Tekakwitha really had something special and that the novena that the devotees had performed could, in fact, cure illnesses because of Catherine's power. 

Final Thoughts on Beautiful Losers 

To begin, one of the most important lessons that we learned while reading was that unexpected things can happen when we least expect it. For example, F. lives in a mental asylum at the end of his life. We did not think that would happen because F. seems like he is very intelligent, and he shares his thoughts a lot during the stories. Also, we learned that there are some things that we can’t control. An example of that would be that in the book, I. could not control F. and Edith’s relationship, so he had to live with it and accept that his wife had also a relationship with his best friend.

The element that was the most significant for us was the relationship part of the story. In fact, the whole story is based on I.’s relationships and the events that happen around those relationships. As we read, we learn a lot about who was the most important to I. and who was good for him as well. Lastly, we learned that F. was toxic for I. since he made I. question himself all the time.

To continue, we think that the main message is that we need to pay attention to who our friends are, because the main character always gets put down by F. so we think that it is important to choose our friends carefully. 

To conclude, we think that one of the things that happen in the book and that is still happening right now is Quebec separatism because it is still a relevant topic. Some people still want Quebec to become a country on its own, so that topic is still relevant in 2020. 

However, a difference between the book and now is the place religion takes in our lives. In the book, we can see that people care a lot about religion, in fact, there are many chapters that talk about God. Nowadays, we don’t go to church as much as they did before and that is something that changed from the time period of the book and the time period in which we are now. 

References (for the pictures):

1. French and Iroquois Wars (1642-1698), (site consulted on 28/10/2020), [online], https://www.uswars.net/french-iroquois-wars/. 
2. CBC books. Beautiful Losers, (site consulted on 28/10/2020), [online],https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/beautiful-losers-1.3992107. 
3. Kateri Tekakwitha, (site consulted on 28/10/2020), [online],https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kateri_Tekakwitha.