TONE- After Baseball Bologna

The game had just finished, we won by a lot! Absolutely killed them! The nest games were for the state play offs. As the team walked over to the Left Field Lounge, a common hang out spot for the students, we all started clapping for the MV baseball players. My friends and I ate our grilled hot dogs and waited to congratulate our classmates, friends, and all stars. I was talking to the catcher, telling him what a great game he had. joking around with him about his plans after the game. It was a big win, we couldn't stop smiling. "Hey Erin!" I heard the pitcher call,"Why don't you take your friends and get the hell out of here. No one wants you here!"
He was panting with unnecessary rage. His bulldog face was red with uncalled for meanness. It was dead silent. He turned to his teammates. They liked us. We were all friends. The pitcher was on his own island of hate. "Chill man," the left fieldman said. the pitcher's face went from furry to embarrassment. everyone knew why he was upset. My best friend didn't want to date him. Plain and simple. I did not deserve that. The pitcher left, and my friends and I sat there with jaws wide oopen as his teammates laughed at him.

Curiosity- Poetry Response 14

Alastair Reid is known for constantly comparing and contrasting 2 groups of people, ideas, or things. In his poem, Curiosity, the theme he captures is exploited quite obviously. The poem is not very "deep" so to speak, but it is very interesting. It leaves the reader with something to debate. In summary, the poem talks about how curiosity supposedly killed the cat. Then Reid goes on to explain that the only way for the cat to truly live is for him to be curious and take risks. "Nevertheless, to be curious is dangerous enough." If the opening line of the second stanza. If kind of opens the whole poem up. Then concludes with "... dying is what, to live, each has to do."

This whole idea captured me. I loved it. I have 2 cats, so I suppose there are 18 lives that Boone and Merlin can churn through. Like the time Boone climbed the Christmas tree, but fell out from the top, because she is a little on the overweight side. That's one life gone. I guess it is comparable to, I don't know, the time when I didn't make my free throws in overtime and we lost to a team that was ranked 4th. (I think it's pretty awesome that the only time I "died" that I can think of is taking a loss. I have a good life!) Once I get older, I think this poem will become even more meaningful. Just to be able to have the attitude that even if something really terrible happens, I have lives to give, because I was curious. Then I'll know if I'm really living. I'm curious to know what school will be like in Washington, which is why I am going there!!! Curiosity allows us to live. Man... cats really have this living thing figured out!

THANKSGIVING

Halloween is over, all the kids had their fun.
Hunting season is here, turkeys better run.
Friends and family join in thanks
with one roll left, there is tension among the ranks.
The leaves are falling all the time,
NOT watching NFL on this day, is a crime!
Turkey, potatoes, stuffing then dessert,
if you eat too much, your stomach will start to hurt.
This time of year where family is prize
Hopefully all the food won't go to your thighs.
November is almost over, the end is drawing near,
Lift your glasses for thanks and cheer!!!

The Secret- Poem Response 13

A common theme with poetry is talking about youth, childhood, life lessons, and "coming of age." This poem falls into the childhood/ lesson category. I am going to try something new:

"Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of poetry."- Pretty straight forward, the girls are reading a poem and find something out that they didn't know before.

"I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me" - The author, wrote the line, yet she doesn't even know what the secret is. I guess the meaning of poetry changes for each person.

"(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was,
not even"- the girls found a secret of life, not in a specific line of words, but more in the poem's meaning as a whole.

"what it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,"- the girls are impacted by the poem for a split moment, and then they forget the lesson.

"the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,"- they forget where they learned this from, but the author is happy, because the girls found meaning where the author did not intend.

"and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that"- She loves the girls because they love her. The author gave them a lesson. Then the girls forget it, leaving them unmarked again.

"a thousand times, till death
finds the, they may
discover it again, in other
lines,"- This part of the poem is vital, because it explains how necessary it is that the girls become a blank slate, so that other poems can have the same impact, and learn new things.

"in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for" - the girls must be curious to get meaning out of poetry

"assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all."- There is always a secret to be learned, just as long as we search for it!

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Vergissmeinnight- Poem Response 12

Vergissmeinnight: a German word meaning "forget me not."

This poem is about WWII. It is also about love (DUSTY!). The author, Keith Douglas, tells the story of a soldier returning to a battle ground. The battle he fought in is over, yet the body of an enemy soldier remains. He walks over to the body, and in the first 2 stanzas, the tone is very cold. He shows no sympathy for the killed man- why should he?

He picks up a picture of a girl laying next to the fallen soldier.In German on the back of the picture, "Steffi. Vergissmeinnight", is written. I believe Steffi is the name of the girl. The photo has been dishonored because the soldier was killed. The next stanza goes onto talk about how all his guns, and equipment are not physically damaged. They will not decay, yet he will. I think that is a very interesting part of the poem. When I read this part I thought of the bigger picture. The equipment was war, war will never decay. War will always be there, yet the people that use war, that give it so much value, THEY will decay. They will die. I think this notion is backwards. The picture, the soldier and the equipment show three different things. The lover, or love, as shown by the picture is effected even greater after the soldier is killed, because her love lives on. She still feels the hurt that the guns inflicted.

I don't know how to conclude this... but man, this poem was cool.

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The Coming of Wisdom with Time- Poem Response 11

The poem is simple. Very short. I love it! Rossco and Chris taught this poem a couple weeks ago, and I think they did a very good job in finding the meaning behind it. I think the poem is basically an analogy, using a tree, to the cycle of life. "Through all the lying days of my youth... I may wither into the truth." This is the cycle of how people live. I thought of the "root" in the first line to kind of be the life its self; it is the actual existence, the tangible body. The leaves he talks about are the experiences Yeats has gone through. Each experience and part of him buds to form the adornment to who he is, but overtime it withers away and he is again "naked" (ok not literally, that'd be gross, but figuratively naked.)He talks about how he has to wither into truth, maybe the leaves and flowers that covered him up must fall, leaving him exposed to the entire world. I like the line about a lying youth. I feel like youth in general is a lie to the world, but it is necessary! Parents cannot expose their children to the horrors and stresses of the world, so they let them sway in the gentle breeze. It could just be a lie?

This is my take on this poem :)

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Dissillusionment at Ten O'Clock- Poetry Response 10

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

In continuing reading poems that fit my mood, I picked one where the first line said the word "haunted," for the sole reason that it is Halloween. The poem, however, is not about Halloween, or ghost haunting. This poem is about dreams. The way I interpreted it was that it was from a drunk sailor's view point. Tangent: Why in the world do sailors always have to be either crazy or drunk in all these readings?! Ok, sorry. Anyway... The poem is about dreams. It is about imagination. Dreams are the essence of imagination in the sense that only in dreams can people actually live what they could only imagine. Like catching tigers in red weather. WHAT??!!

I found it really interesting that Stevens said that people are not going to dream if baboons and periwinkles. Maybe because these things are to simple. Stevens also toys with the idea of color. How any color you can imagine will be alive in a dream. This poem is really really ghoul! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

The Snow Man- Poetry Responce 9

First off, I picked this poem because I am freezing, and I judged it by its title, to be fitting of my mood. Then I read it, and realized that the poem was about winter. It was about how the snow man needs to think very highly of winter to view all the wonderful things that happen during it. This is poem explains how fully immersed in the scene the Snow Man is, that he gets to observe the nothingness of the environment, with out himself bringing anything to it. The later is the difficult part for me.

I followed Stevens very well while his figurative language described the scene vividly, but once the last stanza rolled around, I go lost.This stanza required the reader to read it several times! I interpreted it to mean this: in order to fully appreciate the winter scene and environment, we must bring nothing to the scene. Just like in the case of the snowman. He has no previous judgment, he is nothing. WE must be nothing to see the full nothing of the winter. Does that make sense? This poem reminds me of this time when I was skiing with my family. I was about 8 years old and I got lost-ish off the side of the run and my ski's popped out into the deep snow. I was frustrated and cold so I just sat in the deep snow in all my ski gear and took off my mittens and just looked around and ate snow. The image was almost exactly how Wallace Stevens describes winter, and the picture of "Winter" in my head, is the one I have from when I was young, not thinking, and just sitting in it.

This is a good winter poem to read while your cold :)

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A Gray Haze Over The Rice Feilds- Poem Response 8

For the record... I was absent when the new packet got handed out, so I just picked a poem that no one had done yet for my response, from the old packet! Ok. That was the disclaimer, here's my response:

Looking at the title, I had to read the poem to know the meaning behind the "gray haze." I originally thought it was a literal foggy day, but it most definitely is a shadow, or hazy memory of the authors childhood. The author is searching for a memory to clarify her childhood, yet she stumbles upon these things that she is trying to forget. The author says, "I am looking out in search of memory, not death." The author obviously dealt with death and hurt in her childhood, or the haze would not be there. I really liked the style of compare and contrast Jayanta Mahapatra(author) uses when she talks about the relationship with her grandmother compared to her mother. I interpreted the meaning, that the grandmother showed so much love, and gave so much attention that the author was incredibly sad when she died. This contrasts to the mother, who was absent in the child's like, because of the mother's own youth. "Behind the closed door of her youth," was the exact line referring to the mother. I automatically thought of a teenage girl getting pregnant and ignoring, not intentionally, her child because she was not ready to have one.

In the second stanza, the line about the dangling thread was the most important. I assumed this meant that there is something missing from this person's life. That the author, or whoever she was writing about, always feels like her thread is not complete- that she missed out on something, or is searching for something that is constantly out of reach .

This poem was really good :) so far I haven't hated any of the poems!!!

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A Chinese Bowl - Poem Resonse 7

Wowzers. I read this poem... easily 10 times. Still, the intense metaphors, sad lines, and reflective thought made my mood kind of gloomy. I really really liked how the author incorporated lines in the poem that clearly reflect specific childhood memories. For example, she talks about how the bowl from a thrift store was old, chipped, and had some faded painting, yet it was the symbol of childhood. Also, the scene where her dad is writing some document on the desk, while she is writing some story, thinking she should be happy. Yet, for me, the general outlook on those lines was kind of nostalgic and sad because it talks about a lock box type of thing that holds all these terrible memories. "Black list," "Party Business," "Drink," "Mother's Death" all connect negative things. This made me reflect and kind of literally think about what has been locked away that no longer allows me to be happy. I feel fortunate in the fact that I am a genuinely happy person. I feel like my lock box fills up with events, but those events slowly crumble away with the slightest erosion of happy memories. I might be too young to have dramatic events that hinder my absolute happiness, like others might, but I also feel that people must find a way to- not necessarily go to a shrink and drastically change his or her life- move past limiting factors. Everyone should be given the opportunity to be happy. Great poem! :)
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Evening Concert, Sainte-Chapelle- poem response 6

This poem was one of my least favorite ones. The thing that stood out to me was that the author was really trying to portray a certain feel, describe a certain thing, which led to be being very overwhelmed with following the scene or trying to visualize what was happening. One of the on going strategies the author used was tying to use certain words to incorporate all different senses in order to have the effect of the violins and the church. In the line that illistrates how the violins produced red an blue, I thought of Disney's fantasia. The movie uses color, and motion to describe a musical piece. The next thing the stands out in my mine was the reference to the composers Vavaldi as well as Brahms. These composers have different style as Elise demonstrated. Brahms is more relaxed and tranquil where Vivaldi is more intense. It is more powerful. This interpretation of the music also works well with how the author describes the light that is coming into the church. He makes a reference to milky light. Although we have said that a reference to milk can sometimes refer to a child, or youth, but in this case I think he literally means the light gets kind if cloudy. It isn't crisp light, instead, it is softened to a more milky light. To wrap up this poem, I struggle with the line about lead. "our violins were trapped in thin but solid sheets of lead." I remember talking about this line, and how it has meaning with how a violin is constructed? I will look at other people's responses and see how they interpreted it!!

Getting into the SWING of High School

Yes, you are now in high school. Big, bad high school, but your not too cool to get on the old park swing. In fact, high school is extremely similar to taking a ride on the swing.

You get on the swings. A row of 6 swings open waiting for you and your friends. Start slowly, easy going, barely any problems. Your friends are right next to you. Stay close to the ground, your just happy to be on for the ride. You have seen the swing forever, you have waited, and now it's your turn. You are excited for the ride! You are Fresh.

You and your friends get comfortable. You climb slightly higher, getting into the constant rhythm of the swing. Your friends are right there next to you, laughing and giggling. Thinking you've got it all down. You can't imagine the obstacles that lie ahead. The people who climb higher at your pace are the ones you are always around. This is when you decide to take an easy ride, or strive for the highest level. You are sophomore.

This is the tough part. You have been on the swing for awhile now, yet you still aren't high enough. Your legs are still strong, not tired yet. You make the choice to climb high, to push yourself because you know that will get you to the top. Your "friends" who cannot keep up, slow down. They waver at the bottom, closer to the ground. They are moving slowly, so slowly that it barely shakes the whiskey in their hands. These people won't get to their max, it makes you sad, but you learn from them. An older boy steals your heart and adds more stress to your already hectic ride. Your close friends climb with you. Their cheers and encouragement get you through this tough stage. The rhythm has so many distractions now. You may want to slow down, to go with the less focused people. You may want to take a break but that will diminish all the previous work and vigor you went through. The people at the park see your success and are proud. They know the work you did now will pay off in the end. You and a junior.

The swing has made you tired. You are at the top. You're so used to pumping your legs hard, that it's no longer a burden to keep up the work. You are ready to be done. You're glad you're so high up, because you have every intention to jump. The people who are with you now are the ones you love, the ones who love you back, and the ones that want you to jump far and land beautifully. You are scared. You're so high up, the jump, you know, will be fun. Yet, the anticipation is so stressful you have to cry. You find ways to deal, no matter what. Your friends stay by your side. you have made it this far, there is nothing that could tear you apart now. The kids who swing close to the ground have no room to jump. They can step off the swing, but they won't get as far as you. You make all the preparations for your ejection. You are so nervous, but you have watched countless generations do the same thing. You jump! Your done. It's bitter sweet. Your friends go to the tire swing, to the spider net, to the tube slide. You go to the marry go round. Yet, it is still all the same park.

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The Halo That Would Not Light- poem response 5

A very sad, dark subject is childhood death; which is why writing a poem about it makes said poem so powerful. In class we talked about effect of this poem, and how it made us feel. The detail and description said in so little words is extremely effective in creating a vivid picture in my head. The overwhelming theme of descriptive words were ones that portrayed dark images. The first line has the darkest, yet most descriptive word as "Raptor." A raptor as a way to describe a bird is so dark and gloomy that it immediately starts the poem off on a sad note. The next line had the words "scarab- colored hollow." This creates the image of a dark hole in the ground, AKA a grave. Saying that the raptor put the tiny baby into a grave is horrid. My favorite lines of the poem are, "Hunting as the leather seats of swings go back and forth with no one in them." The wind, or the raptor (I'm not quite sure which one) are hunting these abandon, old, parks. I just imagine this dark, foggy, cold, breezy, play ground. It has squeeky, creepy swings that children once played on, yet now, those children are dead. I am amazed that only a couple of lines could produce such a vivid picture in my mind.

I really liked what someone said in class while discussing the line, "Of your endless childhood." I was very confused when the poem said this, because I feel like the child didn't really have a childhood. Someone suggested that maybe the endless childhood, is how people will remember that child. No one will ever know anything about the child, because they had died so young, with so much of his or her life undetermined. Therefor, in everyone's memory, the child who passed, will always be stuck in childhood. Such a sad concept, but very profound. I was again amazed how the author was able to say and portray so much in so little words.

Poem Response 4- To Myself

W.S. Merwin's poem "To Myself" is very reflective of how a person views him or herself. Merwin has a background in Buddhist philosophy, and I feel this poem is very deep and from a philosophical point of view; although, many people can relate to it. To me this poem very much told what I feel about myself. I thought it could be referring to another person. Kind of like the author writing a poem to himself, about a desired person. The poem is more meaningful if it is talking about himself, or in the case of the reader, talking about the reader. The strategy I used was to take it line by line. The first line says, "Even when I forget you... I go on looking for you." I thought about how many times I have lost myself, or lost what I once was and have become something different. Yet, I still look for what I once was, and try to remember. A couple lines later the poem talks about remembering the subject from a long time ago, or just a second ago. I interpreted this to mean that I am always changing. Who I was years ago is completely different than who I am now, which is completely different from who I was even a week ago.

"... and the air is still alive around where you were," is one of my favorite lines of this poem. My family goes to the exact same place for summer vacation every year, and every year I am a different person. The place remains the same, and when I arrive at the condo's, the air around the place is alive from who I was last year. The poem shifts view point a little when it says that the subject "pretend to be, but who are not." A very impacting thought. What I am is not what I pretend to be, or not what I pretended to be. The awkward meanie stage I went through in middle school was not who I was, it was what I thought I had to be. This leads me to ask how do I know when I am not pretending? This poem is a great poem to just make the reader sit and reflect on their life. At least I did!

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Blackberries for Amelia - Poem response 3

Blackberries for Amelia is a time line of a blackberry bush. The bush intertwined in the thick, dense, bushes of a forested area. The blackberry bush starts out with "new leaves" then sprout the flowers. Then the author talks about the leaves and the flowers disappearing until only blackness remains. This blackness reveals itself to be blackberries. The berries that were worth the wait. The tone in the last stanza changes and becomes more playful. This is where the author incorporates the title and talks about Amelia. The very last line, which is the emphasis or the climax of the poem reads, "And a grandchild to to talk with while we pick."

The structure of the poem is 5 stanzas of four lines in each. Lines 1 and 4 rhyme, and lines 2 and 3 rhyme. This combination produced a poem that flows very well, and is easy to read. The poem is mostly straight forward, talking about a moment the author really cherishes. The third stanza was the most confusing to me. It was talking about stars in the night sky, and how the stars are burning out until only blackness remains. I was confused, but then i visualized what the poem was saying. I envisioned the white flowers on the bush so delicate and pretty, yet they will leave as the season changes. Then what is left is the blackness, or blackberries. That's a pretty big metaphor,and it is very visually appealing.

I enjoyed blackberries for Amelia because it was a simple thing in the author's life, that had a great impact on his life.

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Mr. Fear- Poem Reponse 2

Stephanie and I taught this poem to the class, so I figure it's be a great one to evaluate on my Epistle.... "Can I please have someone read the poem?"... "Ok, now can I have someone read it again?" The first thing that sticks out for me is the line "Mr. Fear, we say in our dreams, what do you have for me tonight?" This is very straight forward, what fearful thing, or scare must we overcome in our dreams? The author might be suggesting that people are nervous or antsy to go to bed because they are afraid of what Mr. Fear will make us deal with while we sleep.

I remember Jordyn R. suggested that possibly the title having the Mr. in front of it suggested the authoritative figure that fear has over us. We respect it, yet it always will have some amount of control over us; hence, MR. Fear. I agree with her interpretation... Although I would like to include that possibly, the author feels formality must be used when talking to the "fear" because it controls us in our dreams.

After reading The Heart of Darkness, I noticed the obvious symbolism with black and white. There is a line in the poem that reads, "And he looks through his sack, his black sack of troubles." The reference to black in that line is clearly a negative symbol of fear. Fear is the unknown, intimidating, scary, therefor it must be represented with black.


The last thing I would like to comment on, is the last stanza which talks about what the author heard, or experienced right before they fell asleep. I think it is pretty well known, that what a person experiences right before he or she falls asleep influences the dream more then anything else. So what if right before you fall asleep, while your laying in your bed trying to sleep, you think about something happy. Something that you could never be scared of... Maybe that will overcome Mr. Fear.

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1943... Poem Response 1

Why is the title of this poem a year? Of course when I think is the year 1943, I don;t automatically think, "Wow wasn't that the year the Golder Globes started?" No... What the majority of people relate 1943 to, is US involvement in World War II. Summing the whole poem up to one year, took me directly to that time in history and gave me an idea of what to expect. After reading the poem once, I did not fully understand it. The time went from a high school auditorium, with a fun event to a dull, painful, war. let me break this down. Line one read "They toughened us for war. In the high school auditorium Ed Monahan knocked out Dominick Esposito in the first round..." This line, as an opening to the poem, led me to confusion. Was this before the guys knew there was going to be a war? Before war had even started? Who was "they" and how were they "toughened?" These questions I feel are not as important as the rest of the poem. I decided that the reference to the fighting might partly be to say that later, one of the men who was in the boxing fight at the high school dies in war in Europe.
The second time I read the poem, I really got into the meaning. The relationship between the lifestyle at in the US and the war in Europe. The author used milk to tie both the soldiers in the war, and Americans together. The way I interpreted the references to milk when talking about Americans was in a negative way. Almost as if the author is saying how the Americans in Southern Connecticut were blind to the war. They were unaffected by it. The line "...frozen cream lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles Grade A or Grade B, while marines bled to death in the surf." The paradise like life of people here because of the death there. The choices we have at home, because the boys are dying there. The climax of the poem was the line, "or troops marched-what could we do?- with frostbitten feet as white as milk." Who is "we" in this line? It has to be Americans here at home, because when I remove the clause, it reads, "troops marched with frost bitten feet as white as snow." What could we do? We couldn't, can't do anything. That is the mind set, we are helpless?

The Heart of Darkness

Let me just start out saying, that I usually don't finish a book and think, "Wow, I really didn't enjoy that!" After reading this book, that was, unfortunately my exact thought. I enjoyed the story part of the book, but I did not understand Marlow's tangents from the main story. It was almost as if the reader was just taken inside of Marlow's mind where all those "tangents" were Marlow thinking to himself. He was working questions out, not necessarily for others to hear, but mostly for himself. That element of the book threw me off. Also, I sometimes did not understand all Marlow's description. Many times I was reading and he stated one thing, but elaborated on it so much, that I got confused if he was still talking about the same thing. My annotations did help some, because I would write what the topic was each time he started talking about it, and then if there was a topic change I tried to mark that so it was more visible for me to see.

The most shocking thing in this story was just how brutal the people were treated. The native Africans working on the Steamship were given close to no food, they were ordered around, and they were worked to the bone. The white men, or the 'pilgrims' as he referred to them treated the natives horribly, while they sat around and collected ivory.

Kurtz was an interesting character, but a confusing character. Up until the last section, I did not fully understand why he was so important, or why everyone looked up to him. he understood the natives, yet, he would do anything to get his hands on their ivory. He had piles of ivory, but he did not even want to sell it or leave the jungle. Maybe he had gone crazy, as the doctor who examined Marlow warned. Kurtz' death bed quote to me was profound. He saw everything that had gone on, he saw "the entire universe" and realized the horror that had taken place... What if people now took in everything happening over the world, and realized before they were dead, the horrible things taking place?

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The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a perfect example of layers of symbolism. The big symbol that i noticed was the "green light" across the bay. The symbol was, through Gatsby's eyes, a lost hope, so to speak. He bought the house with this covered love, where he could view the light, or feel the light, cough cough love cough cough. He lives his life and carries on with big parties and such, mean while his unconscious mind is thinking of that visible "light' the distance is so small that he can see it, and give himself hope, yet it is so great that two separate lives can carry on with. So in a sense,the green light represents the love with Daisy.

When I finished reading the book, I noticed that the main character was not Nick. Obviously it was Jay Gatsby. Then why, did the author write from the perspective of a neighbor. I have come to the unfinished conclusion that the only way for the story to be bias in a way the reader could understand, was to have the story be from Nick's perspective.Daisy, in Nick's eyes was beautiful, delicate, graceful, and much more deserving then her husband Tom, whom the reader was let to dislike. The only thing that made sense was to have the perspective not from the main character.

The final thing that I noticed after reading The Great Gatsby, was how powerful money was, yet how little it actually brings. This is an obvious lesson the book teaches, yet it still had great impact. Jay hosted many people, where ladies pretended to love and adore him. Men pretended to look up to him. Yet, on his death bed, his true friends were absent. Actually, i don't believe he had true friends. As a rule, money does not buy friendship. Friendship makes life worth living, and so money does not effect the worth of life.

The Kite Runner

When I first looked at the book, the title confused me. Why would a book about Afghanistan be called The Kite Runner. That seems like an upbeat, fun thing i do with my dad on the beach, not exactly what I think of when I think about the middle east. That was the irony of the title. The book was so sad and depressing, yet in each dark moment, the author seemed to incorporate some sort of foreshadow that led the reader to think, "better times will come." The book was a captivating read, and I was never bored with it, except for the ending, which I thought did no justice to end the rest of the phenomenal book. Those were just my initial reactions.

I chose to do the "interact with the book" style of annotation. I thought this was fitting for the book so that I was free to react to the choices Amir made, the connections I made to the book with the world now, ask questions, etc. The whole time, however, I found myself writing the same thing in the margins of my book (much to the dislike of my pre- AP lit self), and that was "Amir! you have to tell somebody!" Amir, throughout the entire book dealth with self conflict. The author's style did a fantastic job to make the reader feel what Amir felt, yet the reader always knew the correct choices Amir should have, or could have made. This style made me feel sorry for Amir only about the things he could not control. For example, I felt sorry for him that his father didn't give him the love he needed, however, I didn't feel sorry for him about the guilt he felt because he didn't stop the rape.

the ending, like I said before, did not do it for me. I was expecting something more. A smile is not a large enough ending I thought, mostly because the kid hadn't spoke, showed emotion, or anything for a year and a simple smile probably wouldn't change much. I am probably just being cynical :)

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was sad, yes, but it was a great story and had happy moments.

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