Reflection of "The Bridge of San Luis Rey"

          When I first read the book, "The Bridge Over San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder, to be completely honest, I did not like it. I could not imagine the characters in real life situations, and I had found the plot of the book to be quite flat and a bit cheesy. To me, "The Bridge Over San Luis Rey" was just another book that I had to read for school, that is, until we did our oral presentation.

         The characters to me did not feel very genuine, a priest in search of god's will, a crazy old lady, her faithful servant who can do no harm, a deep and mysterious twin, an old womanizer and a silent little boy. They all felt like characters I had read about in other books. The only character who I had found interesting was Esteban, and even he seemed a bit redundant to me, the classic twin who looses his other twin and can not get over the loss.
           The book is a story of a priest who tries to see if there is a thing called an Act of God by looking into the lives of those who died in the collapse of the Bridge of San Luis Rey. He learns that they all died after they had made a big change in their lives, the Marquesa had just decided to be kind to Pepita, Esteban to start a new life, Uncle Pio gave up on Camila, Don Jaime left home for the first time, but they all died before they could put the change into motion. People dying before they can do good, a man searching for answers about their death years later through those that knew them. It just felt a so cheesy.
         Researching acts of god, writting about each character and writting about piety did not change my opinion on the book. These only made me feel like I was working on a school book even more. Only when we did the oral presentation a few days ago did my opinion on the book change.  When everyone was playing a character from the book, it was as though they became alive. I could see the sadness in Estebans eyes, I would feel the regret in the Marquesa's voice and the kindness in Pepita's. It was a strange experience, one that changed, "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" from a school book, into a normal book in my mind. Now if anyone asks me what I think about the book, I believe I would say that it really was not half that bad.