Chapters 16-17: In Which Grandpa Talks to Will About Life, Death and God's Will, and Will Explains His Hatred for Aunt Loma

Chapters 16-17:

Will's conversation over pie gives Grandpa Blakeslee the chance to talk about his ides on religion.  Most of the Baptists, the Methodists, and the Presbyterians all thought Will had been saved by God or "God's Will." Grandpa has a much more practical view. Even though Grandpa believes in God, he thinks most religious people are a bunch of hypocrites and that the idea that people don't have free will is pretty silly. He thinks Will lived because he thought to flatten himself out under the train.  He asks Will if Will thinks God wanted him to be up on the trestle in the first place or if God favors a dog who catches a rabbit, or if the dog is just faster. He also disagrees with people saying that it was God's will for Will's best friend, Bluford Jackson, to get lockjaw from a firecracker burn and die. Grandpa says, "The Lord doesn't make firecrackers." Grandpa says God's not a bully, and mostly wants people to get well if they can, but people have to die sometime.

Also, Will asks Grandpa a question that becomes very important later. He asks what Jesus meant when He says in the Bible, "Ask and it shall be given," because Will has tried it, and it doesn't work. Grandpa promises Will that he will think about that and get back to him.

Grandpa then says a prayer in front of everyone thanking God and Miss Mattie Lou and the town, and everyone congratulates him and Miss Love.

Will then dreams about how Loma broke all his lead soldiers, lied about about it, and how he got punished for it, and how he had to start calling her "Ain't Loma" though she was only six years older than him. Will has three other people he hates:
1) Mr. Tuttle - He is a stingy tattletale and paints his tools no one can steal them. Will and his friends love to prank him.
2) Hosie Roach - He is a mill boy with "cooties" who is older than Will and always fights with him at school. Will says he's smart and wants to graduate, but always wants to fight and is never clean.
3) Grandpa Tweedy - Who always makes Will study for church but who put gunpowder in his firewood so that a little sharecropper boy's hand was almost blown off. Grandpa Tweedy felt he was right. He is all Old Testament religion - no forgiveness or generosity.

But Will says all his hate for them is nothing compared to his hate for Loma.