High Fidelity, book

Essay# 4
Michael A.

Nick Hornby High Fidelity, book
Nick Hornby, the author of the book, High Fidelity taught us important concepts and experiences which might based on his own life. So in the book he related a story about a “rocker” called Rob, “the most deceitful man in the book.” He loves music and his crazy about his records. Actually the book is about music and how Rob compares most everything in a “top 5 list.” He started to be selfish by his relationships with Alison, Penny, and Jackie.
Alison Ashworth was Rob’s first break up in his life. She cheated on him when he was fifteen years old because he saw her kissing another guy. When Rob and Alison broke up they wanted to try new experiences like the first French kiss and touching each others. He wanted to have the experiences the other kids with the same age already. So, on the page 7 Rob said “at the fourth night of their relationship I turned up in the park and Alison was sitting on the bench with her arm around Kevin Banister.” Obviously, they were kissing each other, cheating on Rob. He felt so sad and disappointed. When he saw that he was vexed and his face became red. Surprisingly he forgot how to walk “without being aware in every single part of his body.” What to do and where to go, Rob said. Then on page 7 he said, “I didn’t want to fight; I didn’t want to sit there with the two of them and I didn’t want to go home either.” I think that is not what I would have done if I were him; I might would have left the scene to go to my house to listen music and maybe made a mosh-pit by myself. This experience left a mark on him. On page 9 Hornby writes, “But there still seems to be an element of that evening in everything that has happened to me since; all my other romantic stories seem to be a scrambled version of that first one. Of course, I have never had to take that long walk again, and my ears have not burned with quite the same fury.” This tells us an important event that left a mark in Rob’s life. It was his first experience in love hurts his heart making a little black mark in it.
Penny Hardwick was a "nice girl" and Rob’s second split up. She didn't let him touch and try anything risgue with her, so he decided to split her. By the time he had been growing up, his thoughts change to something little bit more mature; he was looking for something other than hands contact. He wanted "sex". As Nick Hornby tell us in the book, High Fidelity, that Rob was carried away by some of those ideas from the guys in his school, they said “Are you getting any?; Does she let you have any?; How much she let you have?; and so on.” This tells us that Rob was just trying to get everything he could and showing to his friends that he could, but when he realized he wouldn't “get any,” he gave up and finished with her. Days after, Rob learned that Penny went out with other guy called Chris Thompson. As on page 14 Rob said, “One day maybe three weeks after his last grapple with Penny, Thompson came roaring into our form room,” saying, “Oi, Fleming, you spastic. Guess who I knobbed last night?,” Rob knew that it wasn't nothing to feel proud of because he knew that was, “bad news.” He said. He felt like a mule, small, and very much younger than this “unpleasant, oversized, big mouthed moron.” Everyone knew that Thompson got whatever he wanted from whomever he saw, and this time it was Penny. Rob had been humiliated, assaulted, and surpassed. I think that he didn’t fell in that way because he knew it that was happen; he cares a lot about that the guys in his school say about it. Right after Penny left him, Rob try to take revenge, on page 13 he said, “I went out with a girl called Kim, who I knew for a fact had already been invaded, and who (I was correct in assuming) wouldn’t object to being invaded against him.” Rob’s mind was a little bit confused. As on page 14 Rob explain to us how he thought, he said, “I still couldn’t understand what had happened. How had this transformation in Penny been effected?; How had Penny gone from being a girl who wouldn’t do anything to a girl who would do everything there was to do?; Maybe it was best not to think about it too hard; I didn’t want to feel sorry for anybody else except me.” He didn’t understand how she changes a lot in a small time. He taught that she is a “pig,” so he decided left her, but he was remorseful to did it that.
Jackie Allen was Rob’s third experience of break up also a secret relationship. She was his friend Phil’s girlfriend. That’s why they keep their relationship in secret, they cheated on Phil. On page 16 Rob tells us a bit about Jackie’s relationship. He said, “We met in secret and phoned each other in secret and had sex in secret and said thinks like, ‘What are we going to do?’ in secret and talked about how nice it would be when we didn’t have to do things in secret anymore. I never really thought about whether that was true or not.” So one night Rob saw Phil very close to Jackie in a corner. Phil was visibly upset. Furthermore, the next day Jackie runs to Rob’s house to tell the good news. She said, “Rob, we don’t have to do things in secret anymore, I broke up with Phil.” But Rob didn’t like that, so after that they spend three weeks more, but he didn’t feel the same. He went through the third split up in his life. He felt free, but also uncomfortable at the same time. After Jackie broke up with Phil, to be free with Rob, He started thinking about how to get out of the relationship because he didn’t like her or feel anything for her anymore. Then when nobody likes each other anymore, Jackie went back to Phil; however, the relationship didn’t go back to the way they had been. Then on page 19 and 20 he finished the experience down saying, “In a few shorts weeks, mock-marital status had ceased to be something to aspire to, and had become a cause for scorn. At seventeen, we were becoming as angry and as unromantic as our parents.” Rob wants to keep the relationship in secret because he felt masculine or that was taboo and exciting.
In conclusion, Nick Hornby shows us how Rob learned to be selfish. Alison was selfish with him because she didn’t care about Rob’s feelings and she cheated on him. Then Rob didn’t care about the girl feelings, so he just wanted to obtain “sex.” He started to thinking about sex, but I think that sex in not the only good thing in a relation or in life. I believe in the love, feel security by the person who loved you, it is the only think that is important for me; not sex. So, Nick Hornby tells us that Rob learned valuables and important believes to be successful. He gained skills in each relationship and he was success in his last relation with a girl called Laura. I really wish that you could read the book because is so interesting and enjoyable, might you would feel identified with the actor, Rob. Might like him, you have been passing for the same situations. The book will help you, and you would learn from the different relations that Rob cruised in his life.