Meeting Pancho Sanches And His Past

Pancho Sanchez is a 17-year-old adolescent who has lost his mother and father, and very recently his sister. After his sister's death he was sent off to a foster home and then got himself kicked out of that foster home and into the St. Anthony's Orphanatory. Pancho is kid, who’s mind is clouded by vengeance and hatred, he wants to kill the man that murdered his sister. IN the foster home he meets a boy with brain cancer called Daniel Quentin or just D.Q. Pancho is assigned to take care of D.Q. because, although D.Q. can walk he doesn't have enough strength due to the radiation of his treatments. As Pancho's eagerness to find Rosa's (his sister) killer grows, D.Q. notices that he has to tell Pancho what his plans are. D.Q reveals that he is dying and that before his death he wants to write a book with the help of Pancho, called " The Death Warrior Manifesto" in which there are rules/instructions on how to live life. Pancho says that that's never going to happen and he leaves the room kind of mad/bad, leaving D.Q. alone. A few hours gone past, Pancho decides that he is going to build a punching bag and he gets the help of a boy who everybody calls Memo. After they're done building it Memo calls two other kids to help them get the punching bag up in the tree, one of the boys was called Coop, he was very strong and a little taller than Pancho, so Pancho asked him if he wanted to fight Pancho for 20 bucks. Pancho won the fight but he felt something in the actions that he did was not right, so the next morning he called his guardian, Mrs. Olivares, and asked if he could go and get some stuff from his trailer, she said yes. D.Q. came along with, although Pancho didn't want it he came. at his trailer he got Rosa's diary and his father’s revolver for when he finds Rosa's killer.

“Rule number one: A Death Warrior does not whine aloud or in silence under any circumstance.” (Stork, 38) I think that what this quote means is that the Death Warriors should never complain about anything aloud or complain about things but not saying them but thinking them. I believe that D.Q. said this to Pancho because Pancho is always complaining about something, if it’s not liking it ant St. Tony’s then it’s about how the cops refused to look further in in the death of his sister. I also think that he says this because maybe D.Q. used to complain about how unfair life is for giving him brain cancer or maybe for his parents abandoning him when he was just a youngling. Any ways, I chose this quote because it made me think deeply about how both D.Q. and Pancho may be feeling, and about how we complain about everything and not be thankful about what we have at the moment.

So far this book has proven to me to be very interesting and a little bit sad. Sad because I can’t even begin to imagine what Pancho must be going throw, first losing his mother, then his father, and now his sister. Then there’s D.Q., honestly I have to say that I admire him for his peacefulness knowing that his time on this Earth is about to run out but I admire him the most for what he intends to live behind when he parts. I think that the Death Warrior Manifesto will help Pancho in his life, that is if he follows it.