It’s a Small World

Summary

On their way to Teaneck, Prenna and Ethan stop at a school near Prenna’s home back in her real life and stay there for the day. She answers many of Ethan’s questions there and tells her the story of Traveler One, the first time-traveler who everyone in the future considered as a myth because he was never seen again. The next and highly anticipated day, May 17, 2014, around 7:10 pm, Prenna enters Mona Ghali’s office pretending to be one of her little sister’s friend who comes with a birthday gift from her. She stays with Mona until Andrew Baltos arrives; Prenna finds him very familiar and realizes that he was the one who killed the old man. Suddenly, Andrew takes out a gun and tells Mona and Prenna to sit near a wall while he searches through Mona’s computer and file cabinets. Mid through Andrew’s frustration, Ethan appears and takes the gun from his hands discovering that Andrew is a time-traveler, Traveler One. During a moment of confusion, Andrew Baltos manages to recover his gun, shoot and kill Mona Ghali, and escape to the parking lot when later Ethan shoots him in the leg so he can explain why he killed Mona Ghali. 

 

 

Quote 1

“And they missed a very big thing, which was freedom. We had secrets to keep and scripts to follow, but no freedom at all. I don’t think Benjamin Franklin would have approved of that.” (p. 167)

I wanted to share this quote because I think it’s very funny and a big coincidence that I talked about the lack of freedom Prenna and her community has in my previous blog and the author also mentioned it in the story. It was very hard for Prenna to stay quiet for so long, that’s why now she asking and responding to all the unmade questions with great joy.

Quote 2

“I am racked with sympathy for people like my mother who don’t want to take any risks or fix the future, bust just want to live another day. Maybe it isn’t corruption or greed that makes you cowardly. Maybe it’s not weakness, suffering, or even fear. Maybe it is love.” (p. 181)

I think that what Prenna is saying here is very true. Sometimes we don’t say or do something because of weakness or fear, we don’t do it because we know that hurting someone we love is worse than any other thing we can do. We do the things we know are right even though it’s hard. That takes a lot of courage.

Conclusion

I’m reaching the end of the book and I wanted to say that I have really enjoyed it and it’s very interesting. It connects to modern day reality in many different ways and talks about problems such as global warming, plagues, and the unreachable utopian society. I believe that in the last couple of chapters, the community counselors will find Ethan and Prenna and they are going to have a fight. It’s possible that Prenna and Ethan will have to continue Mona Ghali’s work or at least find someone who can in order to save the world. Finally, I think that Prenna will have to let go of Ethan to prevent the future of ending in chaos. Don’t miss my next blog to discover the grand finale!