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?

<3

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.

<3>