Category: Senior Literary

This book was based on a young girl who had moved to a school district and came to regular school after being home schooled her whole life. She didn’t know how to fit in with the other kids and did things completely out of wack. She didn’t really pay much attention to the fact that people were judging her and instead stayed the way that she had always been. She also named herself according to what sounded good to her. She didn’t stick to one name, she didn’t care that it wasn’t normal.

We see a romance develop between star girl and the main character. This is quite interesting because the main character has opposition to her in the beginning of the story just like everyone else did and then somehow down the road was drawn to that difference. I love the idea of this romance, it was so different than most romance is conveyed in books. This honestly added in so much of a plot and individuality to the work. I also like the idea of him wanting her to change, and not liking the way that she is simply because she didn’t fit in with everyone else. He was helpless to the idea that she wouldn’t change who she was just for him.

The stargirl was selfless throughout the book. She didn’t care what people thought of her, and she almost seemed to not have an ego at all. She only wanted to make other people happen, not herself. If anything, helping other people made her happy. I enjoyed this aspect of this character because it’s something you don’t really see much in other books. You almost have to root for this character, and I always got lost in thought thinking about how it must have felt to be helpless if only for just a moment.

I really like the fact that throughout this entire book there was always some kind of surprise that I would never expect. I didn’t lose interest in the book because every time I turned the page there would be some image sticking in my mind that I couldn’t get out of my head. At some point the idea of a wagon that she kept rocks in was brought up. She placed rocks in the wagon for each time that something made her happy and took it out each time it made her sad. This was a really good example of the surprise that came in this book.

This book still resonates in my mind. The end of this book tied the whole thing together and gets the reader thinking about literately everything that happened in the book all on one page. We think about the fact that this young girl who was so weird had so much of an impact on a school that she was only in for one year. Her leaving almost makes us want to understand why she left in the first place. I wanted to see more of her, to understand what made her act so weird. Most of all I wanted to know what she would do next.

The Overview:

Macbeth is a tragic play written by the infamous William Shakespeare and allegedly first performed in 1606. It describes the dramatic fall of the titular Macbeth from revered war veteran to psychotic king. After years of war, Macbeth is declared a war hero. Then he comes across three witches who make for him a startling prophesy: Macbeth will become first, Thane of Calder, then king. He dismisses the witches, until immediately after,  he is named Thane of Calder. This starts a Domino Effect, until Macbeth becomes mad with power and plagued by guilt over the terrible things he has done to achieve it.

The Diction:

As one would expect of anything of Shakespeare’s, the diction is very, for lack of a better term, Shakespearean. It was, for me at least, next to impossible to read and understand simultaneously without prior exposure to Elizabethan language. I would most definitely advise reading aloud, as that is how it is intended to be heard, and is far easier, though still tough, to comprehend.

Potential Turn-offs:

For me, there were many turn-offs. For one, it seems like even the great Shakespeare isn’t perfect. There are subjects that are brought up and dropped later in the story as if they never existed. The problem is, besides the obvious creation of a major plot-hole, is that when you include prophetic elements in a story, you had better fulfill it. Obviously, there are going to be loopholes in it, which makes the wording of the prophesy crucial. There are also abrupt changes in character that bothered me greatly. The story is also far too political for my taste.

An Appealing Factor: 

I’m thinking really hard to come up with even the smallest thing that I enjoyed in Macbeth. The best I can come up with is the smart mouth of Macduff’s son, Macduff’s loyalty, and savagery of Lady Macbeth’s reasoning. I won’t give any spoilers, but not all of the aforementioned  traits survive to the end.

(BONUS) The Hype:

Supposedly, Macbeth is Shakespeare’s second most popular play, right after Hamlet.  I haven’t read Hamlet, but I’ve seen loose adaptions of it. I’ve also read and seen Romeo and Juliet, another famous play of his. So, I went into Macbeth completely ignorant of the plot and hoping to enjoy it as much as I did Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. The only thing I knew about Macbeth was just the bare bones of Lady Macbeth’s characters, and I was looking forward to it. And I must say, I came out of it more disappointed than ever. There is discontinued plot elements, a terrible character’s de-evolution, and if I hadn’t been had an audio-book to listen to, I wouldn’t have understood a word. I wouldn’t have even kept reading.

My Rating:

I don’t think I’ve ever been so let down by such a hyped up piece of literature. Without a doubt, I am never going to read Macbeth again. I’ll give it 3 stars out of 10, and I’m being generous.

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.

This is a story about a young boy who started off quite normal. He lived a normal life, his parents were still together, his sister was a smart girl, and he didn’t have any home troubles. He wasn’t bullied in school, and he had friends that he enjoyed spending time with. His best friend’s name is Aaron and he spent most of his time at Aaron’s house watching TV and smoking.

We later see his character start to transform into a boy who is struggling with depression over something that he did not understand. From what we know about him there was no real reason for him to become depressed.  Something in his mind just clicked at a party when his friend starts to date the one girl that he was attracted to. We find out later on that his problem really was a chemical unbalanced problem instead of having some traumatic story to his problem.

This story was structured and written very well. I was drawn to the story from the very first page when it starts out with “Its hard to talk when you want to kill yourself.” This really brought me in to wanting to read this story because the subject is touchy and many people especially in this day and time can relate to that in some way. I loved the idea of it being a chemical imbalance because usually people think that there has to be a reason behind being depressed, and they mark off people who have problems with depression as just wanting attention. The story also has a way of showing the characters thoughts very well. The way he talks to himself shows us the destruction of his mind slowly and we can clearly see his age throughout the dialogue he has with himself and the “army guy” that is in his head. He refers to himself as soldier and the man that is in his head seems to always push him forward into doing certain things that need to be done. The use of this gives us so much about this character and really moves the story along.

The place he is placed into when he tries to kill himself really brings more into the story. He makes new friends, and he surrounds himself with people that are like him. I think that the idea of him being where he is with the people that are like him opens him up to the idea that he isn’t as crazy as he thinks he is and shows him that he isn’t alone with his feelings.

There are so many real characters in this story. We see development of all the characters in the ward that he is in. Ranging from a character who is a sex addict to some that are really mentally insane. We also see a character who just wants to get back on his own feet, and have his own home. This was all real to me, and this book really cleared some things up to me about what depression really is.

Animal Farm, written by George Orwell in 1945, recounts the dangerous life of farm animals on their farm. The main characters are depicted in a simple format and writing style , but the entire plot of the story alludes to the communist party/ the Soviet related events that were unfolding in Orwell’s life as he aged. (Orwell is known for being against totalitarianism).The novel’s main characters are Napoleon and Snowball (pigs), the two leaders of the animal’s revolution in the story. They first overthrow their human owner with the help of the animal’s original leader, a pig named Squealer. They overthrow  Mr.. Jones, then move to the rules of Animalism, making sure the the main rule is “Four legs, good, two legs , bad.” Everything is fine at first, but when Squealer dies and Napoleon/ Snowball come into power, the rules become unclear. All the other animals still follow, although uneasily, and they build windmills, start trading with other farms(though at first the rule stated not to); they even set up battalions to defend the farm when need be.

The pigs begin to take more power then the other animals, despite the rules telling every animal that all animals are equal. The pigs are vicious, they relentlessly work the animals until each is gaunt and sickly. One valiant horse, Boxer, nearly works himself to death. He is not rewarded, but later in the story is shipped off to be processed into glue. All the animals start to question the rules when this happens, but none fight against it. The pigs being walking upright. They are fed more food than the other animals who work more. They even sleep in beds and carry walking sticks. All of these things are prohibited; somehow, the pigs still manage to twist the rules, all because they are in power. At the end of they story, the pigs are seen trading with humans, and the other animals cannot tell the difference between the pigs and the men.

This idea Orwell was trying to create was about how twisted the socialist rulew become once put into law. He was against both capitalism and totalitarianism in any form, but he blatanly bashed the communist system in this story without actually stating it. Napolean and Snowball are allusions to the men in power during communist times while he was alive. The entire story is an allegory to the problems in the Soviet system.

I enjoyed this book thouroughly; it provided me with insight into Orwell’s mindset on communism and explained using examples the way the socialist party fell apart under aggressive powers trying to take advantage of hard- working men and woman beneath them. In communism, the people in power have an easy life and the men and women breath do not. They struggle, they survive with the bare minimum. This book, although fictional, proves the communist system to not work.

I love George Orwell and his works. He has an amazing mindset on certain things and tends to be brutally honest in his work. My next book review might even be on his story, ” 1984.”

“The summer of ‘86, DeVante got jumped by two old sixteen-year-old Vice Lords from West Jackson.”(Laymon)

This short story by Kiese Laymon, had to be one of my good reads for the month. The story “I Mean Y’all” was one I came across on his website. Also included in the tile was the description, a “short short short story,” and the purpose of me reading it was definitely not from the detail added to the title. The thing that caught my attention was the title itself, “I Mean Y’all”. The title brings so many nostalgic moments for me being a girl who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. To many people, it may seem as just a southern slang, but to me, it reminded me of the people I’ve been around for so long. The way they talk, and the familiarity of the slang that I have grown so accustomed to.

Mr. Kiese Laymon does a great job of going straight into the story with detailing of the characters. Details that I can only imagine people growing up in the urban schools of Jackson, Mississippi will understand. His diction is very relaxed, and after a while of reading it, you can almost hear his voice telling you the story himself. For some, that may seem uninteresting, but I can most definitely say that if you have taken the time to speak with Mr. Laymon, you will soon see he is quite the character, and his work reflects his characteristics greatly.

Mr. Laymon has a way of writing works that take you along for a ride, and before you know it, you are being slammed into by a truck on a busy highway. His messages within his work are powerful, and they ease up on the reader in the swiftest way.

A disclaimer, however, that I must give is that this work, as well as many of his other works, are not and I do repeat not for the faint-hearted. It is a short story that is vulgar, honest, and very uncensored; however, I do believe that if the work were not written as it is, then it would miss the rawness of the content. Being a young adult such as myself, who has grown in the community of many other Jackson residents, South and West particularly, I am familiar with the language. The story felt like one I have heard of or even seen before. The people within the story feel like people that I know too well, and that is what I admire most about the piece. I enjoy the way it feels as though Mr. Laymon had the ability to capture the culture and characteristics of the people I have grown to know.

The story, although again its content is very explicit, is a read that I do not regret finding. The work inspires me to embrace my surroundings, and to keep my memories and experiences as close to the surface of my mind as possible. Because even years later, they may be as vital to me then as they were before.

Do All Cultures Have an Extrovert Ideal?

Soft Power

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

This section of Quiet by Susan Cain explores the different cultural outlook of the “perfect” or “ideal” boss.  Mainly looking into Asian countries ideals.

It seems that the extrovert ideal is not important at all to Asian countries.  Indulgence of sound is important to them, but it is opposite from Americans where the sound they should indulge in comes from.  Asian families would much rather instill a “listen before speaking” basis in their children.   Listening is much more important for finding information and making well rounded, well thought out decisions.

Personally, I think this is very important in the case of understanding Asian culture and people.  In fact, I think this rule is brilliant.  I do not find having grades for how much you speak in class, just to get a grade for being loud without understanding anything, is a good thing.  I think it is lazy teaching and shows that culture in America prizes loud and noisy people over well thought out and well aimed articulate people.  China and Japan prizes the quiet and well spoken people.  They are number one in industry for a reason, and I think this is a beautiful way of thinking because it prizes respect and thought over being spoken over and not thinking about things.  Obviously America prizes loud noisy people, our cabinet is full of them.  Our president is a perfect way to show this.  He is loud and intimidating, but as shown what has he to show he thinks?  Not much but his words.  His tweets sure don’t.

Back to the subject, the book gives examples of how surprised immigrants from Asian countries were to sit in an American classroom for the first time.  Susan Cain met and interviewed Hung Wei Chien, a mother in Cupertino, California who moved from Taiwan to the U.S. in 1979.

“I remember bring amazed.  It was linguistics class, and that’s not even linguistics the students are talking about!  I thought, ‘oh, in the U.S., as soon as you start talking, you’re fine.”   while as she reminisced about her time as a child growing up and attending school back in Taiwan, she commented “The teaching back home is very different from here.  There, you learn the subject, and they test you.  At least when I grew up, they don’t go off subject a lot, and they don’t allow the students to ramble.  If you stand up and talk nonsense, you’ll be reprimanded.”

This section of Quiet followed the differences in what the U.S. prided its students off of verses what Asian countries prided themselves off of.  It explains the importances they set on the basis of their counties and contributes to societal affairs and the economy of the country as a whole.

My take on this section of the book is that the United States puts too much importance on just talking instead of also talking to listen as well.  I believe there needs to be a balance between the two.  These are both incredible aspects to pride off of, but if there is not one to listen what is the point of talking and if there is no one to talk what is the point of listening?

“Is human nature such that, under certain conditions, stupidity can come to dominate, infecting the brighter quadrants, dragging everybody down with it?”(Saunders 7)

If you are interested in reading a good collection of essays, I have just the selection for you.

For my blog this week, I decided to do somewhat of an excerpt from a larger work. I’ve selected to review the first “chapter” of essays within the book written by George Saunders, which is a collection of essays. The book is entitled, The Braindead Megaphone and the layout of it itself is quite interesting. The essay themselves are separated as somewhat chapters; however, some of the essays have subtopics. The chapter my blog focuses mainly on is the first one, “The Braindead Megaphone”. The chapter is broken into individual subtext that are divided in numeric order from one to nine. The subtext itself is somewhat confusing when you first begin because at first glance, it doesn’t seem as though they correlate to each other than the fact that they are works based on hypotheticals and internal thoughts.

My two favorites would have to be number two and number six. They both link to each other, and the philosophy of the “Megaphone Man” is truly something brilliant. It is very difficult to explain the clever analysis of the situation within the writing without going in-depth and explaining the entire essay.

This first collection, in particular, does not necessarily lay out a full start to finish storyline; however, each does deliver a message that may or may not tie into another subtext within the essays. The works are written in what I can only explain as a thought process form. To elaborate on that, a few of them drift between thoughts, some follow a distinct line of ideas that drive the work to a specific conclusion, and in others, Saunders lays out information and plainly talks to the readers about a topic that interests him.

The positives I received reading these works are that the works each have some very interesting logic to them. After each of them, they left me with something to think about as I went into the next piece, and a thought-provoking essay is always a good thing. The only negatives I can give are that this book judging from the first chapter that it is not a collection of essays for the feeble-minded and that the layout of the book, taking the numbering and divided sections into consideration, can be somewhat confusing for the reader. However, I do not believe that a book being for an intellectual audience is negative. I am simply stating that the book follows a very complex and creative mind that dissects the boundaries of social living and an individuals purpose in life.

Although this review is only for the first “chapter” of essays, I do not doubt that the writing will be phenomenal. George Saunders has a very distinct voice within his writing that pulls you into a view of the world from an overview. In conclusion, the writing is most definitely worth a read.