Author: Bradley Ducote

The Great Gatsby is one of those incredible books that you read and you begin to question really what the rich life is like. The book is about a cool dude named Nick who lives in kind of a crappy apartment next to Gatsby who is a very rich man. Gatsby is very popular and has a lot of parties in his own house and is really loud. One day Nick gets an invitation to one of Gatsby’s parties, which is kind of rare, and goes to it, meeting Gatsby, which is also kind of rare. They become really close and have a really good time with each other.

This story is kind of like a really good book about economy and how even though you are rich, you can still feel empty inside. I really love the metaphor to the human condition that is in the story and I love how Nick doesn’t start out rich and inside of the rich life, but when he gets into the rich life, he begins to notice how different it is and doesn’t enjoy it.

Even though there aren’t many characters in this story, the main characters have a lot of development and aspects to them. The reader always manages to take away a new trait of each character each chapter. I really love in this book the chemistry that Nick and Gatsby has and just the incredible relationship that they develop just because of the invite to a party. I also enjoy that even though Gatsby is rich we see more to him than just an older rich person that has worked hard for his earnings.

This story is very good at bringing up questions of morals to the readers. There’s morals that comes into play with each character that can impact the reader. From the actual intentions of Daisy to the real feelings of Tom to the deep truth of who Gatsby is, F. Scott Fitzgerald never fails at growing these characters in a positive or negative way. I think the character arcs and development of each character is executed extremely well and that his storytelling ability and sensory details were very defined and pinpoint in this story. Faulkner manages to show a lot of his talent through this wonderful story and it definitely shines throughout.

I do enjoy his way of tackling topics in the real world in this story. Cheating, being rich, and maybe even exploration of yourself when you are older instead of a coming of age from a teenager. I believe that he did a great job at doing a coming of age portion of the story while avoiding the cliche of it being about a teenager and a group of kids who are experimental, emo, and trying to understand who they are. Faulkner dodged a lot of cliches in this story, and maybe even invented some from this story. He added his own flare and originality to affairs and the rich life and it definitely shines through.

I highly recommend reading this book. It’s great.

The book The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, is a wonderful story about greasers. I think that this book might be one of the best books I have ever read. It’s a great book that has described greasers perfectly as characters. The way that this book is written is wonderful. It manages to constantly pull you back in every single sentence. The story gives you these incredible characters that you become easily attached to. It manages to give out the background story of many important characters so well without interrupting the flow.

There are so many great characters in this story. There are basically two groups that don’t necessarily get along. There are the Greasers and the Socs. You automatically get sucked into the world of the Greasers as a group and so you start to not really like the Socs. I think the Socs might be one of the greatest antagonists I have ever read in a book. They genuinely strike you as people that you want to get away from the main characters.

In the story, we follow Ponyboy, a 14 year old boy who runs track. As soon as you understand that these people are all about 14-20 you begin to get sucked into this world that has horrible kind of situations. It manages to pull us in because it doesn’t spare us the straightforward areas in this story.  Sodapop Curtis is 16 and Ponyboy’s brother. he dropped out of school and works at a gas station. again, just small aspects of a character brings the reader right into where they are and what is happening. The author writes these characters so well and it manages to keep our attention. Johnny Cade is Ponyboy’s best friend who is 16 and lives with his abusive parents. I think that even though abuse is considered very cliche now in writing, I believe that this book writes about how abuse can cause kids to act certain ways because of what happened to them and how they were raised. Johnny is a great character and he is written very well, he just came from a bad area in his life. Darrel, known as “Darry” is the oldest brother in the Curtis family. He is 20 and basically leads the gang. Darry is one of those characters that are tough but is a very loving character. He cared for his two younger brothers when their parents died from a car crash.

There are so many great characters in this story. I appreciate how well written every single character is and how the author doesn’t seem to care about what people think because he does not shy away from serious issues. The writer understands what makes a great character and he does. I think that there is just a perfect balance of protagonist and antagonist in this story. Enemies are very well written here and the plot of the story is so well thought out and well executed. I think that many people should read The Outsiders. I highly recommend it.

A Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a play by Eugene O’Neill. The play is about Mary, Tyrone, Jamie, and Edmund. These four characters are very smart and seem very wealthy. The father, Tyrone, is extremely cheap and stingy, he is a businessman that buys land and rents it out, but he gets scammed a lot by in his mind, a friend, and he is into the theater and Shakespeare. The mother, Mary, has a bunch of things that happen to her. She is very caring, but she has a troubling past of mental and drug problems. She starts showing signs again in the play of mental illness and the characters become worried for her. The older brother, Jamie, is a very interesting character. He is kind of like the mentor to Edmund and he sleeps with prostitutes and drinks a lot of alcohol. He shows a lot of signs of jealousy at Edmund, he also seems very angry. The younger brother, Edmund, is kind of like the baby in the story. He talks a lot about philosophy, writers of philosophy, poetry, poets, and he also drinks a long with Jamie. He is sick in the play and the mother worries about him, but he seems content with his sickness. Edmund has signs of being very pretentious and stuck up.

I think that the idea in this play is very good and unique. I think that the stage directions in this play is extremely well thought out and great. The stage directions throughout the play definitely add a very strong feel to the play and gives a good punch to the story. They are very detailed.

I like the idea of the story and the play is very well thought out and put together well, but I did have some problems with the story. I think that the author had so many ideas for each character that he felt he should put in, that it seems more of a grocery list of problems and characteristics. It all kind of jumbles together and dos not necessarily work with the effect that the play has ultimately. The plot is very slow and it does not seem to build up for me. It was lacking action or even intense moments in the play. When a character revealed a big thing that happened, it’s more glossed over and there seems to be no reaction or turmoil from what they revealed. The big reveals of the mom, Edmund, and Jamie did not have a big effect of a big reveal of what was happening because too many hints and reveals was scattered throughout the play. The reveal didn’t have an effect that it should have had because all of the reveal was scattered throughout. I understand that the mom is very crazy and many of the characters seem crazy, but in this play, so many things were repeated more than once. At times a character would say something to another character that they already told another character, but it was done multiple times and that specific strategy even got repetitive.

The play has a great story and it is well put together, I just feel that it lacks excitement.

Looking for Alaska is a wonderful book by John Green. In this book, the characters are in a prestigious boarding school. The main characters are Miles “Pudge” Halter, Chip “The Colonel” Martin, Takumi Hikohito, Alaska Young, and Lara Buterskaya. The book is about these teenagers trying to understand life. The main character, Miles, tries to find out who he is and tries to experience new things in his life. When Alaska goes missing, he begins to try to understand what happened to her and misses her. When she goes missing, he thinks back to the fond memories that he has of her.

The story is told in a brilliant way. It manages to pull the reader along to whatever is going on in the story.  John Green does a good job at making ever character very relatable in some way, he wants to constantly make us emotionally invested with every character in the story. Even though the story is about the protagonist trying to get over his feelings for Alaska and us experiencing his incredible bond with her, it’s also a wonderful story about people learning new things constantly in their teenage years. Miles is an inexperienced nerdy kind of guy, and he is introduced to Chip who is a really cool person, almost the exactly the opposite of Miles. Miles goes through a journey of exploration of smoking, drinking, and other things with Chip who is also, in a way, trying to find out who he really is as well.

I believe that this book is very symbolic. Cigarettes are used as a symbol in this story. It is used as a sign of rebellion, but also it symbolizes time running out. One very popular quote from Alaska is, “Y’all smoke to enjoy it, I smoke to die.” I believe that cigarettes are used as a way to symbolize death and time running out. Alaska goes missing and it ultimately shows other people that time is very scarce. I think the book is a good way to show people that time matters in our life and we shouldn’t throw it away.  Instead of spending all of our time trying to understand life, it symbolizes that we should spend our life trying new things and not being scared. That we should always jump into everything head first because life is too short and valuable. The book represents a giant  example that we can literally die at any time.

Life is too short to dwell on mistakes we made in the past and worry about everything that will happen in the future. The book shows that we should not worry about the future, especially since we are young, because we could also die at any time. Time is valuable, but also the time for us to die does not have any limits to how old we are. I think that John Green made this book to get people out of their comfort zones and to just dive in all the way into life and not regret things that we do.

The book Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is one of those books that most likely read in eighth grade or freshman year. I think one of the reasons it became so popular in schools is because it’s relatively new and it’s a very refreshing book. I have read this book around four or five times and every time I read it, I get another perspective on it, learn something new, or just have a good experience of a fresh breather. This book is such a good example of being a great book fro pretty much all ages. I enjoyed reading at a younger age, and I still enjoy reading it now.

The book is about a kid named Percy Jackson who is kind of like an outsider. He is a half-blood, a half mortal, half god. He gets chased down by monsters that kind of don’t like him and it kinda turns out to be inconvenient most of the time, like it would any time you’re on a school field trip and some teacher actually turns out to have bat wings and is trying to kill you. In literally the first chapter, we manage to get so much information, like his crippled teacher has a powerful sword inside of a fountain pen, Percy kind of has powers related to water, Percy is a half-blood. This book just jumps into this awesome world and manages to scoop up the reader and bring the reader on a crazy ride. I find myself being severely emotionally attached to many of the characters and I also managed to be at the edge of my seat several times during the book.

After the kid defeats a monster in a museum, he is then taken to a special camp for kids who are half-bloods. The camp is known as Camp Half-Blood. This camp allows Percy to learn who his dad is, since his mom is Sally Jackson. The camp also allows him to train in combat and enhance his skills. He then goes on to do a quest and that is basically where the book’s main plot kicks off.

I think this is an awesome book for young kids. I learned a lot about mythology because of this book, and I think that it can be beneficial for children to read it, and if anyone else knows nothing about mythology, they should read the book as well. The book is a well-written book that brings you on one adventure, but has so much put into it. You can always expect an encounter with a crazy monster attacking the kids, or some very interesting dialogue. The author does a really good job at introducing new characters and aspects of them at the perfect time. It brings up background details at the correct timing and it brings in so many different aspects of the same characters.

Some of the main characters include Grover Underwood, Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, Clarissa La Rue, Luke Castellan, Sally Jackson, Chiron, and Silena Beauregard. Every character has a very clever background and interesting plot.

The first book branched into a larger series, which is extremely understandable. Mythology is a very large concept and there was so much that wasn’t explained in the first book. The first book got many people into the characters that they just constantly wanted to learn more about the characters and the story in general.

Lord of the Flies is a book that is a perfect example of pure taboo. No parent wants to have the thought that their kids are dead or stranded on an island with no supervision of a guardian or adult. In the book about twenty-five twelve year old boys from Britain ended up on an island because of a plane crash. The book features main characters such as: Jack, Ralph, Simon, Piggy, Roger, Sam, Eric, etc.

The book is a perfect example of society. Ralph is the character that shows respect to people and respects order. He represents the government of society, could be looked at as a controlling person. He made sure that all of the little ones in the tribe who were six and up would get food. He was respected by most in the tribe. Piggy could represent a secretary. He was the brains of the tribe and the right hand man of Ralph. He was bullied by others because he was different and because of his weight, asthma, and inability to do physical activity. I personally look at Simon as someone who is just a citizen. He’s the guy who stays back and is affected by everything that happens. Simon is quiet and observes. He values his time alone and doesn’t try to bother anybody. Sam and Eric can represent businesses that are controlled by the government. Sam and Eric are twin brothers that always finish each other’s sentences or speak at the same time who is in charge of keeping the fire ablaze. They do what they are told by Ralph.

Jack could represent an anarchist. He does not respect what Ralph is doing on the island and he wants to be free, hunt, and take power over the island. Jack is an alpha and a leader. Roger represents the court. In society, many people dread court, even hate court. Court can be completely unfair and gives out punishments. In the book, Roger is a bully that likes to give unfair punishments to other people.

I love this book because it has so many different ways that it could represent. It has some aspects of religion in it, it represents society, it is all a book that can relate to taboo. It can also be looked at as a dog eat dog world kind of thing. In the book, it’s Jack versus Ralph. The government versus the anarchist. Jack does not stop causing trouble. Jack wants to be in control. This book could represent something like a social experiment. If you put a group of kids on an island who have to fend for them self and have absolutely no parental supervision.

I highly recommend this book. It can give the reader a whole different look on society or maybe a whole different perspective from me. It can give the reader a roller coaster of emotions. Lord of the Flies may be one of the best books I have ever read and I highly recommend people to read it.