Entry One:

The major characters are Nailer, a young, skinny scrap-worker in the ship breaking yards.  His father, Richard Lopez is the drug addicted, child-beating father of Nailer.  Pima is a strong, black woman who is striving to get on the heavy crew, but has doubts she will be strong enough to make it to the heavy crew.  Her mother, Sadna, is a strong black woman with strong morals and a strong work ethic.  The last major character is Nita, a wealthy young girl who finds herself shipwrecked near the ship breaking yards.  Most of the other characters are minor characters called "half-men".

The setting is a ship breaking yard near what used to be New Orleans.  New Orleans, however, is now called Orleans and is filed with shanties and shacks, poverty, death, and a near-slavery society.

The conflict is the struggle between the classes.  There are the hard working, almost slaves and then the "lucky" ones who are able to eek out an existance and then there are the well-to-do people, called the swanks, who take advantage of the poor and have no feelings toward the suffering of the poor.

I predict that if the United States continues on its present path that the scenario presented in this book could ultimately become fact.  The same thing happened in Planet of the Apes, where space travelers returned to earth hundreds of years later to find the world was a hostile environment with one of America's greatest achievements, the Statue of Liberty,  buried in the sand.

Could this possibly happen to the United States?  What religious, political, or social events happened to turn the United States presented in the book, to this kind of society?  Why is there an absence of organized religion?  Everyone counts on luck or makes sacrifices to the Fates.  Is that the reason for the downfall of America?


Entry Two:

Nailer is an obedient, hard working skinny kid, even though his father, Richard Lopez beats the living daylights out of him.  He is loyal to his work crew and is very dependent on Pima and Sadna to help feed and protect him from his father.  He battles between daydreaming of escaping but yet worries about the people he would leave behind.

Richard is not very complex.  He lives to get high on red rippers and crystal slide and becomes very very mean.  All he wants is enough "red chinese" currency to escape his situation.  Perhaps it was the death of Nailer's mom that changed him from a nice guy to the evil guy he is now.

Sadna and Pima are very loyal and they struggle to keep their head up and help others in this degrading society.

Nita is a spoiled rich kid, a swank.  She ends up having so much courage and strength inside that helps save her life.

The half-men are genetically engineered combinations of man, tiger, and dog.  They are the bodyguards that are assigned to patron men and cannot leave their patron or they die.

A theme that emerges early on is class struggle and how the poor cannot become rich unless they get lucky.

Entry Three:

Selection from the book:

"Nailer slid slowly along the wall, questing down into the murk with his toes, feeling for some bump or ledge that would tell him a door laid below.  The first time, he found nothing, but the second he let himself sink lower, oil lapping around his jaw.  His toes brushed something.  He tilted his nose to the sky, letting the oil lap higher, up around his cheeks, closing his mouth and nose.  A ledge.  A rim of metal.

Nailer ran his toe along its width.  It could be the top of a doorway, he guessed.  It wasn't much more than three feet wide.  The ledge itself was a boon.  He could almost rest letting his toes cling to it, taking some pressure off his trembling fingers.  The ledge felt like a palace.

You can rest now, he thought.  You can wait for Pima.   Sloth will tell her you are down here.  You can wait it out.

He killed the hope.  Maybe Pima would come save him.  Probably, though, Sloth wouldn't say anything about him at all.  He was on his own.  Nailer balanced on the ledge on the edge of decision. Live or die, he thought.  Live or die.  He dove."



The entire book was filled with exciting life-or-death situations and decisions.  It was fast-paced, exciting and had many twists and turns.

At this point in the book, Nailer, in order to follow the mean head boss's orders, had gone far into the ductwork of the ship to retrieve more wire.  Although he had already made quota, he had offended the boss, who made him go back into the ship and retrieve more.  When the ductwork deep into the ship fell, it dumped him into a midden vat of oil.  Since you can't swim in oil, he was stuck there, clinging to a pipe that ran into the vat.  His only hope was if another crew member, Sloth, would tell Pima he was in trouble.  He would die if no one came and helped him.  Sloth, however, wanted Nailer's job and was going to let him die by not letting Pima know he was in trouble.  At this point, Nailer had no other choice than to try to find his own way out.

When he dove into the oil, he found a wheel to open the door, but had trouble getting the wheel to move.  After several tries, he was able to open the door and was spilled out into the beach, bloody and battered but alive.  This is where he gets the nickname "Lucky Boy" and Sloth was banished from the crew.

Entry Four

I  chose this book because  one of my friends said it was really good and he was right. I also liked the name ship breaker it made the book seem like it was either futuristic or in the past but not present day. Also the name implied it might be about a fearsome pirate who broke ships in half.

I would say that I am like Nailer because I am loyal and would to anything for my family or "crew". We both wear our convictions well. And work when you need to. Me and Nailer are both missing a family member. I would like to think that if I was in Nailers situation that I would be as smart and as cunning as he is in this book.

I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone. This book is one of the best that I have ever read. It was even as good as The Outsiders and Hatchet, one of the best books ever. Whoever doesn't like this book needs to get their head checked because EVERYONE should love this book. there were no bad parts at all it had you in the action from page 1 to page 324.