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What is a character trait of Mr. Hoodhood in The Wednesday Wars, with an example?
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Mr. Hoodhood is characterized as ambitious and self-interested, prioritizing his architectural business over family. For example, he is more concerned with winning a contract from Mrs. Baker's family than his son Holling's school life, pushing Holling to please his teacher for business benefits. He also neglects parental support, as seen when he prioritizes a TV special over attending Holling's performance. His actions consistently reflect his focus on business over family.
Mr. Hoodhood, Holling's father, is ambitious and self-interested. For example, he is an architect who wants to win a bid from Baker's Sporting Emporium, a store belonging to the family of Mrs. Baker, Holling's English teacher. Each night before Walter Cronkite broadcasts the news on TV, Mr. Hoodhood asks Holling how things are going with Mrs. Baker. Mr. Hoodhood's intent is not to inquire how Holling is doing in school; he doesn't really care. Instead, he only wants his son to please his teacher so he, Mr. Hoodhood, can win an architect's contract with Mrs. Baker's family's store.
Mr. Hoodhood is also a perfectionist. For example, he becomes upset when the gutters overflow and stain the corners of their house, which Holling refers to as the "Perfect House" because his father is so obsessive about keeping it perfectly maintained. The stain on the roof of the ceiling of the Perfect Living Room also makes him ballistic. Mr. Hoodhood is the type of cold person who cares more about his belongings than about his family and their wellbeing.
Mr. Hoodhood in The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt, is not a very appealing or sympathetic character. He is Holling's father and is not a very supportive man—much more interested in his own life and concerns than those of his son, he isn't much of a father to Holling, especially while Holling is in junior high which is a tough time for any kid.
There are several examples that support this assessment of Mr. Hoodhood. First, Holling's dad says he will take his son to an autograph signing by Mickey Mantle at the Baker Sporting Emporium; this happens to be the same night that Holling plays Ariel in local Shakespeare Company Holiday Extravaganza's presentation of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
While preparing for the performance, instead of encouraging his son...
...his father tells him to wear [the embarrassing costume] to please Mr. Goldman, who might one day need an architect...
In addition, Holling's dad (and mother) does not attend the performance in support of his son. Instead, he stay home to watch the Bing Crosby Christmas special on the television—but at least Holling's friends come to watch. When the play is over, his father is not there to take him to meet Mickey Mantle as promised. Holling runs to the emporium, only to have Mantle tell him to get lost because he is wearing tights, and Mantle won't sign anything for a boy in tights. Had Holling's father been there, the experience would have been decidedly different.
When Holling and Meryl Lee plan a date, and Holling doesn't have the money to take Meryl Lee out for "dinner and a show," instead of contributing, Mr. Hoodhood laughs, saying that if he gets the contract for building the new junior high (instead of Meryl Lee's dad), Meryl Lee's father's business may well go under (or be destroyed).
Although being a good father should be his most important concern, Mr. Hoodhood is more interested in his business and himself than his son.
What is a key personality trait of Mr. Hoodhood in The Wednesday Wars?
In Gary D. Schmidt’s novel The Wednesday Wars, Holling Hoodhood is a junior high school student whose father, Mr. Hoodhood, is an architect who is proud of his professional skills, highly concerned about the survival and success of his architectural business, and interested in making sure that the business still exists when Holling himself is old enough to inherit it.
All these characteristics of Mr. Hoodhood are illustrated during the first discussion between him and Holling depicted in the book. Holling is convinced that one of his teachers, Mrs. Baker, hates him. He tries to explain this perception to his father, but Mr. Hoodhood seems far more interested in the fate of his business than in his son’s worries about life at school. Mr. Hoodhood immediately assumes that if any teacher is hostile toward his son, his son must have done something to provoke the hostility. Mr. Hoodhood cannot imagine that a teacher would “hate” Holling without reason.
When Mr. Hoodhood discovers that the teacher in question is Mrs. Baker, he immediately reports that the broader Baker family is about to select an architect for a new building it is planning for its own business. Mr. Hoodhood’s own firm is one of the leading contenders for the contract. Mr. Hoodhood therefore asks,
“So, Holling, what did you do that might make Mrs. Baker hate your guts, which will make other Baker family members hate the name of Hoodhood, which will lead the Baker Sporting Emporium to choose another architect, which will kill the deal for Hoodhood and Associates, which will drive us into bankruptcy, which will encourage several lending institutions around the state to send representatives to our front stoop holding papers that have lots of legal words on them – none of them good – and which will mean that there will be no Hoodhood and Associates for you to take over when I’m ready to retire?”
In one long series of questions, then, Mr. Hoodhood is effectively characterized. His first instinct is to suspect his son of misbehavior. His second instinct is to assume that whatever infraction his son has committed may damage his business. His third instinct is to assume (perhaps with self-conscious exaggeration) that the damage may be catastrophic and will hurt not only him but his son as well.
Obviously the quoted paragraph is meant by the narrator to be funny, and perhaps even Mr. Hoodhood himself intends it to be funny and is merely teasing his son. However, it is significant that when Holling next goes to his sister to explain his situation, she immediately intuits the kind of response Holling has already received from their father:
“It might hurt a business deal, right? So he won’t help the Son Who Is Going to Inherit Hoodhood and Associates.”
Apparently their father has used before (apparently often before) the kind of logic he has just used in his discussion with Holling. The sister is so familiar with this kind of logic that she treats it as if it is a predictable cliché. Both this comment by the sister and also the discussion recounted above suggest that there is good reason, at this point in the book, to assume that Mr. Hoodhood is not merely having fun with Holling but that he is indeed typically and vocally concerned with the welfare of his architectural business.
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