Doug Swieteck's Relationship Quotes

Doug Swieteck’s Journey

“Blood means you’re related. It doesn’t mean you’re family”. Doug Swieteck in Gary D. Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars learns throughout the book that he doesn’t have to be like his brother and that he can be who he wants to be. He starts out as a bad guy, makes friends in the middle of the book, but by the end of the book, he has quit the bad guy act. You don’t have to be like your family, you can be who you want to be. Starting out, Doug is like his brother and likes to be the bad guy. Doug really focused on being bad seeing as he constructed this, “Doug Swieteck once made up a list of 410 ways to get a teacher to hate you,”(1). “I think that things became illegal around number 167,” (1). Doug is known throughout the

Doug doesn’t have any friends so he pranks people for enjoyment and keeps to himself. Doug most likely gets this attitude from his family, especially his brother, “There was Doug Swieteck’s brother, for one, who was already shaving and had been to three police stations in two states and who once spent a night in jail.”(11). His family has a bad reputation and he is probably just rolling along because a lot of people most likely expect him to be like his family. The middle of the story is when Doug starts to make friends and to not be the bad guy as much. He really starts his friendship with Holling and Danny off, by showing his personality when he is talking about Mickey Mantle (pro baseball player) and he tells them, “He had a batting average of 245 this year,”(79). “Down from 288 last year,”(79). These quotes are the first time he shows his personality and Holling and Danny are

It was opening day at Yankee stadium and Doug, Danny, and Holling went to the game together. After the game Joe and Horace saw them and yelled, “Hey Danny, Holling, Doug,”(195). “You want to come down on the field?” (195). Then Holling, Danny, and Doug ran around the bases. This is another example of them becoming stronger friends and sharing their love of baseball together. They were on the bus to go camping and “Doug Swieteck started One Thousand Bottles of Beer on the Wall, until Mrs. Baker came down the bus aisle and didn’t need to say anything. She had her arms crossed,”(242). That shows that he still is a little inappropriate, but not like he was before. Then at Danny’s bar Mitzvah, the music started and “Mrs. Sidman had stepped into the ring beside Doug Swieteck-who didn’t look all that happy,”(263). That shows that he has changed because if that happened in the beginning of the story more than likely he would’ve acted