Masters Reading Response to The Italian

This piece was very interesting to me. Maybe it is because it started out with an assassin in a church and secretly I've been obsessed with assassins. They just fascinate me. But that's beside the point. Italy in this piece was represented to me, as a place where rules are their own. For example: the Englishman was extremely surprised when the assassin was able to walk around the church freely. The friar explained that was because he sought sanctuary there and his justification was that this assassin would starve without the sanctuary. Italy seems to be a place where a lot more is legally acceptable. Our group recently discovered that Italians, especially the ones throughout history, have been oppressed by whatever empire had taken them over at that time. So, breaking rules was their way of getting back. The other day, we ran into a couple who rode the bus without a bus ticket and their justification was the fact that it was late and no one really cares. The other thing that I've noticed about Romans and rules, especially regarding crossing busy streets, was that there are no rules. They just walk across whenever they feel like it. You may or may not get honked at, but every driver will stop. This is relevant to The Italian because that's the way it seems to be within the churches in Italy: there is a different set of rules. I think this could be the same in America, but you don't here about it, and you definitely don't see it with assassins. Italy is represented as a place with it's own code of conduct, that can still be seen today.