A Visit from the Goon Squad

...

there was a kindly heart in his body. Rob was a good guy. He even tried to love the person Sasha loved, so he helped Drew to register students to vote after Drew and Sasha were together (187). He hoped Sasha get well. Rob loved Sasha, sincerely, so when he was dying, he hoped that he could always be near her, protect her (207).

Rob had a good soul, but he did not have a strong soul. Rob was poor-spirited even he had football muscles. He was good at football but did not want to play it anymore because he was scared to fight with opponents; he grew up next to a lake but never liked water because he was scared to fight with water; He was Sasha’s best friend willingly because he was scared to fight for love; He hoped that he could live in a cabin built by his brother, where is an isolated escape for him. He seldom actively made some positive change. He always passively accepted the current situation until he cannot do it anymore, and then he would escape from reality: his spirit would be out of body. He even indulged himself in "E" pills and lost the control of his body to get a monster high (198) even he knew that Sasha chose him as her fake boyfriend because he did not look druggy (193). Because of his poor-spirited, he lost the chance to be Sasha’s lover and his fate was arranged by Jennifer Eagan to be swept by the “current”. So when he was passing away, he heard Sasha screaming for him to fight since he really need fight for himself.

It is no doubt that Rob loved Sasha, but his sexual orientation was vague. He had a homosexual sex with James. Even he told Sasha that he was not a fog, the following narrative- “it wasn’t you in the car with James. You were somewhere else, looking down, thinking, that fag is fooling around with another guy.”- showed he was uncertain about his sexual preference (195). He denied the facts that had happened, which exposed his guilty. Actually, Rob did not understand himself very well, maybe he was a bisexual, because in many time, he was split into two disconnected parts. Rob’s story could be narrated as an internal monologue in the second person, one part of Rob related the story to another separate part, because he was split into two disconnected parts. So the narrator knew what happened around Rob clearly and what he was think about explicitly. His emotion was expressed thoroughly and conveyed to the readers through Rob’s perspective.

Rob believed what Bix said people would meet again in spirit form after death (203). If it is true, how to cope with the unrequited love he will when he meets Sasha again? Will he fight for love at that time? No matter whether Rob could realize the significance of “fight” for his life, we, who read his story, would know that we should make positive change constantly as long as we are alive.