The Life We Bury By Carl Iverson Summary

Have you ever heard the saying don’t judge a book by the cover? This is extremely predominant in the “The Life We Bury”. Not so much as the book itself but in the character Carl Iverson. Carl Iverson seems to be a rapist and murderer at the beginning based on his conviction but after hearing his story and the truth coming out it is shown that you can not judge anyone until you hear all sides of the story. While some people are just bad people and you know that right away, people should not judge other people until they know who they are and hear their story because, it spreads rumors based on what you say about them, it doesn’t give them a fair chance to explain themselves, and people could be judged wrongly and seen as completely different people than who they actually are and their

Even after Carl is out of prison and in the nursing home his reputation is still there. Mrs. Lorngren and Janet think he is a rapist and killer and therefore they do not like him and don’t even talk to him. Mrs. Lorgren tells Joe that he shouldn’t interview him because he is dangerous and she thinks it would be better if everyone left him alone and he died from his cancer. Another person who instantly hates Carl is Lila. Once she hears that Joe is interviewing him she gets mad at Joe. She says that Joe is just giving him attention by interviewing him and that Carl is going to lie to him to get him to tell people that he is innocent. Lila tells Joe, “You should do a story on the girl he killed, or the girls he would have killed if he hadn’t gone to prison. They deserve the attention, not him. He should be disposed of quietly, no grave markers, no eulogy, no memory of the man” (Eskens 53). This shows how Lila felt about Carl all because of a lie. With all of these people prejudging Carl there is a very important lesson to learn. In life always give someone a chance to explain themselves before you jump to conclusions about