Of Mice and Men

From his first paragraph, John Steinbeck sets the scene in Of Mice and Men through his use of imagery as he describes the natural world as a parallel to later events in the novel. From the sentence describing "the Salinas River" dropping "in close to the hillside bank and" running "deep and green", a few words stick out to me. "close" reminds me of being close to someone (as in a relationship). "River" sounds similar to a nourisher or life giver. Parallels to the story from this sentence would be that Lennie (hillside bank) and George (the River) are close and George provides for Lennie (ex. food). The "slopes" that "curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan mountains" partly describes George and Lennie's relationship to one another. "curve up" sounds as though the mountains and the river are related to or close to one another (relationship). The mountains being described as strong and rocky are similar to something coarse and mighty. The parallel to the story could be that Lennie (mountains) and George (the slopes of the river) are close to one another and Lennie is very strong. One of the more interesting descriptive sentences about leaves "under the trees" lying "deep and so crisp" describes how protective each is to the other. The word under may refer to protecting or covering. The crisp leaves may be something unhurt and unmolested by trampling feet. To the story, Lennie (tree) and George (the leaves) or vice versa each protect each other and watch out for one another so no harm will come to the other. Even though there may not seem to be parallels to the story in the first paragraph, upon reading the book many parallels can be seen throughout the story.

The second part of this analysis involves quotes from the story and interpretations of the tone. The first tone word I came up with was unfortunate. George still stared morosely at the fire. "When I think of the swell time I could have without you, I go nuts. I never get no peace." "Well, we ain't got any," George exploded. "Whatever we ain't got, that's what you want. God a'mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an' work, an' no trouble. No mess at all, and when the end of the month come I could take my fifty bucks and go into town and get whatever I want... These quotes show how unfortunate George may be because he has to look after Lennie. George expresses how much more fortunate he would be if he didn't have to look after Lennie all the time. The second tone word I came up with was the word dire. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and rolled down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering. "Well, that girl rabbits in an' tells the law she been raped. The guys in Weed start a party out to lynch Lennie. So we sit in a irrigation ditch under water all the rest of that day. Got on'y our head sticking out from the side of the ditch. An' that night we scrammed outta there." These quotes show how dire George and Lennie's situation was at times, mainly caused by Lennie's mistakes. The drastic measures George and Lennie took to avoid these consequences and what reactions these situations called for show how dire their situation was.

Although being your brother's keeper is not always easy, one must remember that your brother will keep whomever keeps him as well. "So we sit in a irrigation ditch under water all the rest of that day. Got on'y our head sticking out from the side of the ditch. An' that night we scrammed outta there." This quote shows how dire George and Lennie's situation was and what measures they took by sitting "in a irrigation ditch under water all the rest of that day." Carlson was not to be put off. "Look, Candy. This ol' dog jus' suffers hisself all the time. If you was to take him out and shoot him right in the back of the head-" he leaned over and pointed, "-right there, why he'd never know what hit him." This quote, while foreshadowing, illustrates that the people during this time would do what had to be done by shooting "him right in the back of the head". A show of mercy is also realized in this quote when Carlson says, "why he'd never know what hit him." Recently, I have had an instance of watching out for someone, and then having the favor returned. A couple weeks ago, I found a class ring that belonged to someone I knew from the band. I returned his ring and he replied by saying that he "owed me one". While taking a quiz in Chemistry class later that week, I came upon a question that I just couldn't remember. Part of the question had to do with "the partial pressure of a gas on the surface of a liquid". I wracked my brain to remember what the answer was, but I just could not remember. Mr. Russell, our Chemistry teacher, gave my class a hint by saying that "there's an eleventh grader with this same exact last name". After he had said that, I remembered who I had given the class ring back to and wrote his name down. Because of this exchange of favors and indirect favors, I made a one hundred percent on the quiz and raised my class grade to an eighty-eight percent.

(Direct book quotes are in blue.)

Book Review: The Bar Code Tattoo

      Suzanne Weyn's The Bar Code Tattoo astonished me in how I could see our world in a similar situation.

    A major idea of the The Bar Code Tattoo is that all people would (will?) be identified with bar codes.  These bar codes would identify the person's blood type and other medical specifics.  What if the codes told more than just these medical specifications?  What if we were tracked through these codes?  What if our lives were controlled by a few simple black bars?  That's a tough set of questions.  In the story of The Bar Code Tattoo bar codes are beginning to be used for everything from buying items to getting a job.  In the story, a character compares the degree of government tracking individuals by saying that "they first started out using Driver's Licenses as IDs, then credit cards were tracked" and so on.

     Kayla, the main character, resists the bar code and joins a group against the bar called KnotU2.  This group is centered around working against Global-1.  Global-1 is a large organization that owns all farm production and many other vital businesses.  This reminds me a little bit of our (somewhat) monopolies in our society.  Though not on the same level, what if these large corporations turned into an all-controlling monopoly like in the story?

    Our world may be moving in this direction if we are not careful of our government and business corporations.  I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes semi-futuristic or action themes.

The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage amazed me with the main character's tale of bravery in the face of death.

In The Red Badge of Courage the youth (as he's called throughout the story) leaves home to fight in the army during the American Civil War. This in itself is the youth taking a stand against his mother, who wanted nothing to do with the War. I believe that the youth might have felt a little bit obligated to serve. However, this idea is mostly thrown off when the youth confesses to himself that he joined for the wrong reasons. Those reasons being that he wanted more so to defy his mother. The youth also joined because he saw, or rather imagined, himself as being a hero among the soldiers by using courageous speeches and battlefield survival. Another stand is taken by the youth when he and one of his friends overhear an officer saying to a general that he (the officer) can spare their (the youth and friend's) own regiment the best of all to lead a suicide charge into the enemy on a different front. The officer even goes as far to say that the regiment "fight like a lot 'a mule drivers". During this charge, the youth is reminded of the officers words and grows agitated. Later during another charge, the youth had made a resolution in his mind of retaliation against the officer. "It was clear to him that his final and absolute revenge was to be achieved by his dead body lying torn and glittering, upon the field. This was to be a poignant retaliation upon the officer who had said 'mule drivers,' and later 'mud diggers,' for in all the wild graspings of his mind for a unit responsible for his sufferings and commotions he always seized upon the man who had dubbed him wrongly."

I enjoyed reading The Red Badge of Courage and would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Civil War stories or tales of bravery and courage.

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Book Review: 1984

George Orwell's 1984 amazed me with the style of writing and Orwell's concept of a future dystopia.

1984 is told through a third person point of view, with a little twist. Most of the actions throughout the story are told in the normal third person view, or the one most people are used to. The twist comes when the reader sees and hears into the mind of the main character, Winston. In the world of 1984, fear is the main way that the government controls its members. This is known better when you see into Winston's mind and can feel his fear. Winston's fear cuts deeper when he is faced with death and his most feared figure in his life.

Even though the year 1984 has passed, George Orwell's concept of a future dystopia seems to grow ever more possible in our world. Orwell's dystopian government is ruled by fear, torture, false accusations, self-destruction, lies, oppression, poverty, deception, and a form of mass hypnosis. If someone were to compare what seems to be our government's direction that we're beginning to take, they could begin to pick out some similarities. The government of 1984 is one of blind devotion and the consequence for being too smart or mutinous is simply death.

I would recommend 1984 to anyone who like an "Alternate Future" kind of book. The story does get more and more depressing the more one thinks about the subject though. The government of 1984 may seem closer than someone may think.

Book Review: Julius Caesar

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar challenged me with its moderately complex text and kept my thoughts of irrational behavior in check with the results of the actions taken.

Julius Caesar was written in the year 1599 by William Shakespeare. Since this novel was written a little over 400 years ago, finding the text complex in our time is easily understood. However, attempting to just read through the novel without looking at the side notes can make someone misunderstand the plot or get lost in translation. The side notes (or foot notes, I'm not really sure which one is the correct term because the notes are on the page next to the play's text but that's just me rambling) help immensely in understanding what is happening in the play and give a little insight as to what people of the time referred to. Reading the side notes is a trade off between understanding the story and the time needed to read the novel though I prefer to understand what I'm reading.

The decision to kill Caesar is justified by Brutus to be for the good of the people and is made in haste. This irrational decision has both its short and long term results on the conspirators and all the people of Rome. At first, the conspirators celebrated the assassination of Caesar in seeing that his death was the end of the beginning of an empire. In the long run, the conspirators must face the consequences for their irrational behavior. These actions and consequences in the novel make me question my own thoughts when I think irrationally and help me to think more clearly. Even though the gravity of the situation in the novel and in my own mind are quite different, I still find the story to teach me of my own behavior and its consequences.

Julius Caesar is a very good novel, despite its age and somewhat alien references. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the times of Julius Caesar or his assassination. I would recommend this book only if one is willing to read the side notes though, because the dialogue makes much more sense with them.

Shared Book Review: The Lovely Bones

(This is a very rough draft, so there is much editing to be done)

(Also, there is mention of violence, murder, rape, and spoilers in this review, so you are forewarned)

(This book also contains adult situations, language, and other situations everyone might not enjoy reading about)

The book is called The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. The main character in this book is Susie Salmon who was murdered on December 6, 1973. She was 14 years old. She was coming home from school when a neighbor asked her if she wanted to see what he built in his cornfield. She thought it would be ok because she had seen her Dad talking to him before. He had built an underground bunker of sorts. When she goes down there, she doesn't feel easy but he was showing her. He rapes her and cuts her in pieces. He puts her in a cloth bag and takes her mutilated body back to his house. When she dies she feels her spirit rising up to Heaven, but on her way, she accidentally touched a girl that was near the school, who's name is Routh. She realizes that she is in Heaven, but then realizes that's the in-between. She meets people there that she doesn't actually know and remembers a gazebo a neighbor had built and wishes for a gazebo in her world. Everyday, she looks over the edge of the gazebo and watches her family below and tries to contact them. The family soon realizes that the girl is missing and another neighbor's dog finds her elbow which leads to finding very much blood in the corn field where she was murdered. Since there is no solid evidence, the police cannot do anything to help. Each member of the family takes the murder differently. The father tries to find the murderer and such... Susie watches over her family from her Heaven and also keeps an eye on her murderer and learns that she is not the only one that he's murdered. Susie's sister, Lindsey, talks about going into the suspected murderer's house and tries to find anything that will help with the murder of her sister. She kicks out the basement window and sees a sketch book of houses and beams and such. She sees the picture of the underground hideout in the cornstalk field. She doesn't hear him coming home, she tears out the piece of paper and manages to get out through the window. The neighbor remembers Lindsie's jacket number and calls the cops on her, but acts calm. Later, he packs up and leaves without a trace. About ten years later, her sister Lindsie comes home when her father has a stroke. Routh, an unpopular artist, touched Susie's spirit as she went to heaven and finds that she can see dead people and understand their death. She kept books of Susie's death. One day Routh gets a letter from her Dad that there is a sinkhole and they decide to check it out. Mr. Harvey, Susie's murderer, travels around undercover to stay under the radar. He gained a lust for killing from a young age and tries to curb his appetite but he soon gets too hungry to bear. As he follows a young girl, he is impaled by an icicle and dies. Susie is trying to cope with being in her heaven because she is stuck in the in-between due to her want for worldly things. Routh goes to the sinkhole and spots a beat up vehicle and recognizes that it's Mr. Harvey's. She faints immediately and when she wakes up, she is Susie (Routh is a kind of an in-between for Susie and the real world). She disliked the book because there was no closure for the book and many more questions were left unanswered than were answers. You would think that Susie was going to get some kind of closure by having her body discovered by her parents or such. All that happened was that Susie got to go back and spend time with Ray (the person who had a crush on her). The story ends as Lindsie gets married and the family working out their differences. All of Susie's simple desires were granted to her in her in-between Heaven. The story is basically about a family moving on after the death of a child or sister and that it is difficult in the way that each family member copes with the loss. Also, she doesn't care if it was on the number one national best seller and hopes that the movie is different from the book (basically she said the book ending sucked and it kinda ruined the other parts of the book).

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens

      Sean Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens truly enlightened me with it's numerous anecdotes and the habit that changed the way I look at solving problems, Habit 4 - Think Win-Win.

      Hearing other's stories, or anecdotes, helped me to better understand some of the situations I was facing.  Handling a new situation on your own can be very difficult, but learning from others or telling others about the problem can be the best to learn to handle the situation.  I probably felt better reading the anecdotes because I'm not much of a people person (well... most of the time anyway) and I feel that I wouldn't have to expose myself (which is really something I should work toward being able to do... maybe).  While reading some of the anecdotes, I felt as though I could really connect to a few of them.

       After reading Habit 4, I gained a little more insight into the other side of deal-making.  Before reading Habit 4, I truthfully looked more toward my benefit when making deals.  In retrospect, if I were the person on the receiving end of a bad deal I probably wouldn't feel too good about the situation.  The next time I make a deal with a person I will most certainly put myself into the other persons shoes to see how I would feel about the deal.

       Perhaps just from the examples told in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens I could say that the book is extraordinary.  However, I would not give justice to the book if I did not say that the seven habits make the book more than simply extraordinary.  I would definitely recommend this book to any and maybe all teens (even if you think you don't have any problems or actually don't).

Book Review: The War of the Worlds

H.G. Well's The War of the Worlds slowed my down with it's slow pace, but amazed me with its unique and original idea.

Even though H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds was published in 1898 the speed of the story telling can become slow and encumbered. These times of slow progression could be blamed on the now unfamiliar language used and slang of the time. The unfamiliar language is not helped with a lack of footnotes, which helped me immensely when reading The Time Machine. However, there were times when the story progressed in great pace to what I am typically used to reading. Thinking of locations in relation to others and general directions can be very difficult if the reader does not live in the general area of London or does not know the towns and cities nearby. Luckily, most of the locations do not have a great impact when following the main ideas of the story. Towards the end of the book, H.G. Wells conveys the narrators feelings in an incredible and easy way. My chest swelled with the very same feelings of the narrator when his words were used and I had a very real feeling of recognition for all the small things of our world.

The most unique characteristic of The War of the Worlds is the plot behind the whole book. Very similar to The Time Machine, the ideas in The War of the Worlds are very unique in just the thought of how H.G. Wells could have imagined this up, especially during his time. Just the concept of how the martians looked and how they were described blew me away. Also, I can scarcely imagine how H.G. Wells could have thought up the process in which the martian war machines were built as the narrator of the story watches from a nearly destroyed building.

H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is probably one of the best sci-fi books I've read thus far in my life, even with the sometimes crawling pace of the story. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about unique alien technology, martians, or sci-fi in general.

Book Review: The Time Machine

      Try to think far into the future, as far as you can. H.G. Wells' The Time Machine teleports you straight into the future thousands of years from now, or according to the book it does. 

     I remember that I was once told that ,”The past is a strange, distant land.”  That might not be exactly what was said, but the general affect is still given.  H.G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1895, which can easily be picked out by the writing style that H.G. Wells uses.  I feel a slight air of dislike for the writing style that H.G. Wells writes in, but I remember that his style was the normal in his time.  Some of the vocabulary can become confusing because many are no longer used in the same way.  Even though the vocabulary may be strange, the words used seem to better get a point across about the mood than I think normal writing would.  An exert from The Time Machine reads, “The Eloi, like the Carlovingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility.  They still possessed the earth of sufferance...”  If it were not for the footnotes on each page to help me to translate and understand some of the words, there is no doubt that I would have read this passage differently than was intended.

       It must have taken a vast amount of imagination to think up the environments of The Time Machine.  The present day surroundings would not seem that odd to us even in this time.  When the Time Traveler moves through time though, the area opens wide to vibrant and sometimes scary future.  As the Time Traveler traveled, he thought to have seen many amazing advancements, “I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist.”  We are left to our own imagination to think of the advanced buildings.  As the Time Traveler stops moving through time, he finds himself first in a dim world occupied by a single sphinx statue.  This world opens to be what could almost be described as a strange paradise.  However, beneath this paradise is later recognized as a grim situation between fellow man.  The final known setting of The Time Machine is simply barren land.  The description given by H.G. Wells gives the feeling of depression or giving up and letting what will happen happen.

     The Time Machine, I believe, could easily be the definition of Science-Fiction because of its ability to draw imaginatively on scientific knowledge and speculation.  I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Sci-Fi or who delights in looking deep into a story to pull out different meanings.

Book Review: Uglies

      Imagine a world of flying cars, hoverboards, and incredible beauty.  Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies barreted me with the emotions and moral choices contained within its folds.

     A story can only be as unique as its environment.  If this is true, then  Uglies would most definitely be one of the most unique stories I have ever read.  The setting ranges from a super high-tech town, to valleys of orchids, to a camp in a valley.  The setting of Uglies stars in the high-tech town of New Pretty Town, or rather, the outskirts, in a place called Uglyville.  Tally Youngblood, the main protagonist in the story, constantly dreams of when she will become a pretty and move to New Pretty Town.  New Pretty Town is where all of the new pretties live after they have had the operation.  The town is always crawling with activity ranging from parties to parades.  The town is also brimming over with extraordinary technological advances.  Unused items can recycle themselves and everything is automated.  During a point in the story, Tally drops a plastic mask after finding what she was looking for, but before she can pick up the mask and put the disguise back on, the cover had already recycled itself and absorbed into the carpet.  Later on, the setting changes to a camp ground in a valley.  Not much can be said of the camp ground, because too much information on the story may be told.  However, the valley is described as being extremely beautiful.  The area is also described as if a feeling of true freedom were felt when seen from high in the mountains.

     Uglies is packed with morals and moral choices throughout the book.  Simply put, any choice, large or small, can have a much greater impact than one might have initially thought.  Through much of the story, Tally conflicts with herself on whether or not she truly wants to become pretty and what she’s willing to sacrifice to get what she wants.  Tally also gradually realizes how many other people she will effect with her moral choice.

     Uglies is a very unique story in that this adventure can easily pull the reader in and hold them there.  I would definitely recommend Uglies to anyone who likes Sci-fi technology and an engaging read. (425 pages)