As you are reading your circle/group novels, I will be looking for what YOU UNDERSTAND or FIND in the novel (not something you have gathered from others in your group, internet sources, or other teachers). Share with me something YOU have found/learned/seen in the book that you want to talk about. Make sure you identify which novel you are reading.(The deadline to post to this blog is midnight Monday, September 12, 2011.)
Saturday, September 10, 2011
I Understand
As you are reading your circle/group novels, I will be looking for what YOU UNDERSTAND or FIND in the novel (not something you have gathered from others in your group, internet sources, or other teachers). Share with me something YOU have found/learned/seen in the book that you want to talk about. Make sure you identify which novel you are reading.(The deadline to post to this blog is midnight Monday, September 12, 2011.)
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I am reading 'As I Lay Dying', and there is a passage about things made tall or long. Long things, like horses, or carriages, or roads, are meant to go somewhere. However, tall things, like trees or people, are supposed to stay where they are. I think that this does have some truth to it. If people were meant to leave, would they get homesick? Most of what everyone wants, after escape from whatever their problems are, is for tommorrow to be a lot like today which was preferably a lot like yesterday. What we crave is stability, because we are not meant for going places.
As I am reading "Their Eyes Were Watching God", I am constantly finding myself questioning why Janie puts up with these men. Her two previous husbands treat her terribly and she left Logan for Jodie, hoping he would be different. She didn't find the courage to leave Jodie; she finally found freedom from him when he passed away. I hope Tea Cake will be a pleasant surprise for Jodie and treat her right.
In "We Were the Mulvaneys" I am noticing how one thing can ruin an entire family. After Marianne was raped, her family fell to pieces. The community looked at the family different, and her family neve saw her the same. How others see us is very important, and, as humans, we try our best to live up to society's expectations. This is not a good thing to do because in the process we lose ourselves and the ones we love most.
After having read "As I lay Dying", I was left with the question is Darl really insane? Does he have a mental disability? Also, I find it interesting how each member of the family has a "gift". It is obvious that Darl has a "seeing" ability. After closely reading, the author leaves hints that Anse and Dewey Dell also have the ability to "see". The gift that each member of the Bundren family has can represent the uniquness and special qualities of each person in society.
I am reading "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and I have learned a lot about freedom from the novel. In the novel Janie struggles with the men she is with, and while the men allow Janie to be physically free, they dont allow her to be mentally free. Janie feels that she has to live like these men want her to. Therefore I have learned that freedom is not only being able to live freely but also think independently.
I am reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Throughout the novel are many letters addressed to "my unborn son" and in one of these letters the author describes the bombing his home town Dresden. In this description, the author describes everything so vividly. It left me with a feeling of despair and sickness due to the graphic description. However, the description showed the truth to what an attack is like.
I am reading "Looking for Alaska" and in it a group of close friends must learn how to mature and deal with life's problems as adults. In one point of the book Pudge (Miles) Makes a comment on how there will be a time in all children's lives that they realize that their parents can't help them or themselves and that is the time in which they come to the fork in the road. In one path they could take the high road and learn to mature and be and adult. The other path they could chose to not deal with the situation and use outside influences to forget their problems.
I am reading "We Were the Mulvaneys". In this book I have noticed how much a family's name can mean to them. At the beginning of the novel the Mulvaneys were the idealistic family of the town. Every citizen looked up to them. However, when the daughter Marianne was raped, her dad sent her away just to try and save the family name. Even though they sent her away, their family still struggled with different situations, which tore them apart and destroyed their family name even further. This also shows how people in society are becoming corupt because they believe the most important thing in their life is their reputation.
I am reading "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close". In the novel, Oskar is a kid who is always busy "inventing" things. Most of his inventions are of ways that a skyscraper could survive if a plane hits it. For example, one of his inventions would be for a skyscraper's elevator to stay put while the building would move up and down. He says this would be useful if a plane hit the building and people would want to get to the ground quickly and safely. Oskar's inventions show how he wishes he could've invented something to save his dad, who died in the 9/11 attacks.
Melinda did not log out, the comment for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is from Mallory
While reading, "Catcher in the Rye," I have noticed that Holden is extremely hypocritical. Throughout the novel, he complains about things people do, yet he himself participates in or exemplifies some of these things. For example, he claims to be a pacifist at one point in the story, but he later fantasizes about defending his honor by shooting a man in an elevator. This hypocrisy seems to play an important part in the theme and adds a touch of irony to the novel.
In my novel "Looking for Alaska, the protagonist, Miles (Pudge) Halter, there is a scene when Miles is preparing to take a shower, and as he is looking in the mirror he seems self conscious about his own body. Along the progression of the novel, Miles seems to be crawling out of the shell he cocooned himself in during high school. The first instance of change is when Miles actually makes friends because he had no friends in high school, and the next instance is when he notices the "curves" of Alaska's body.
In "Things Fall Apart" the very beginning of the book talks about how much Okonkwo hates his father. Growing up he vowed to never be like his father and has not broken this vow. Everything that his father did or was for Okonkwo is against. Sometimes he pushes the people around him more than he should but it is only because he is trying to be a man, unlike his father.
My assigned novel is "Things Fall Apart", and while reading this, I came to the stunning revelation that religion is often very forceful and rips families apart. Within the novel, white missionaries come to the village Okonkwo, the protagonist, is currently residing in, and they steal the heart of his son with their far fetched tales of glory and runs away. I found this to show that religion often seems as though it is the only key, and families are all to often torn apart by a disagreement with it.
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