How Working Hard Can Produce Good Results as Highlighted in Walter Dean Myers' Book The Treasure of Lemon Brown

People work hard and gain positive things all the time. People who don't work don't gain positive things. This is what happens in the book The Treasure of Lemon Brown by Walter Dean Myers. In this story a boy named Greg leaves his house and goes into an abandoned tenement after his dad tells him he can't play for the basketball team because of his grades. In there he meets a man named Lemon Brown who tells him about his treasure. They defend the house from evil people who want his treasure and Lemon Brown then shows Greg his treasure, a harmonica. The theme in The Treasure of Lemon Brown is work hard for positive outcomes.

If Greg worked hard he would have been able to play for the basketball team he wanted to play with, the Scorpions. Greg and his dad were having a argument about basketball. Greg had failed math because he wasn't studying hard enough and his dad wasn't letting him join because of that. “But the principal ended the suspense early when she sent the letter saying Greg would probably fail math if he didn't spend more time studying.” This shows that Greg was going to fail math which means he wasn't working hard enough. It also shows that Greg needed to study hard to get his dad to let him on the basketball team and since he didn't he could not get in the team. That proves the theme because if he worked hard he would have gained the favorable conclusion of being on the basketball team, thus showing that you gain positive outcomes from working hard.

Greg's dad worked hard to become a postal worker. Greg thought about his dad while he was sitting on a couch in the abandoned building and how his dad was extremely proud of being a postal worker. ¨His father had been a postal worker for all Greg's life, and was proud of it, often telling Greg how hard he worked to pass the test.¨ The important part of this quote is the part where he said how hard he worked to pass the test. This shows that he had to work hard to pass the test to become a postal worker. Because having a job is favorable to not having a job and he had to work hard to get a job this quote confirms the theme, work hard to get a positive benefits.

These two examples show that you should work hard if you want favorable things to happen to you. This happens a lot in real life, people who work hard have better lives than people who don't work hard.