Last Days of Summer Blog

In the Last days of summer the author does a superb job of writing minor details that hint towards a character's physical description, personality and feelings. The flow of the story is smooth considering this style of writing. Personally I think that the story flows like it does because of the details and letters going back and forth between characters in the book. For instance, you can tell that Charlie is not book smart because of the few remarks he makes towards his self and also his spelling mistakes made in the book. One example is on page 213 when he mentions in a letter to Aunt Carrie and Joey's mother that he can't dial numbers on the telephone sometimes. Secondly, you also can tell that Charlie is a tough guy. This is because of the newspapers that give a description of what happened in the baseballs games. It was always Charlie punching another guy or getting into a fight with them. Also when writing to Joey he always made remarks about how he was going to rough up another person or Joey. Another thing Steve Kluger does is show Joey's report cards which shows what type of personality Joey has.
You can tell because on his report cards he gets all As in every class except obedience. This showed that he was not only bright but he was mischievous. Another way the epistolary style illustrates the story is threw different characters perspectives. The two main people that this happens between is Charlie and Joey. For example when Joey was one of the top 10 students in the nation to meet Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife in the white house. Joey writes to Hazel "don't believe anything Joey tells you". Then he goes on to tell her all the things that happened such as how Charlie kicked Joey extremely hard and how he reacted to the president. Exactly after that you see the letter that Joey writes to Hazel(which is more descriptive). When he explains the events that went on he writes about things Joey did not mention such as winking at Eleanor Roosevelt and calling her toots. Now once you have read both you can start to piece them together and fill in the empty spots. Which in turn gives you a whole outlook on how that event took place in the book.
In conclusion, the epistolary style was used in various ways by the author. I choose two of the ways he uses the epistolary style to illustrate the story. First, he used minor details in the letters to hint towards a character's physical description personality and feelings. One of the examples I used was the remarks Charlie makes against himself indicating he is not book smart. My last point was that he illustrated the story through different character's perspectives. The example I used here was the letters Charlie and Joey sent letters to Hazel on their trip to visit the President Franklin D. Roosevelt.