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[notericclapton-blog]

“The Road”, a tale of gray ash.

I really enjoyed this book. Now, it may be because I watched the movie a few years back and always wondered what the movie left out. I have to admit, the book was anticlimactic in the traditional sense, but I think it was intentional. The way I like to look at the book is the climax happened before the book starts. So, whatever cataclysm that brought on the ash and set the world in peril and destruction was the climax of the book. The rest of the book is falling action and the resolution. Like Professor Clark stated in class, the apocalypse or whatever you would call it, was left out so that way it would not be the main focus of the book. The story was written so the questions of humanity would be the main focus and not the environmental factors. I believe McCarthy wanted us to ponder things like how there could still be “good guys”, the lengths at which someone would go to protect someone they love, or even how someone being raised in a world where compassion and empathy will almost certainly get you killed and yet compassion is the only thing they know. It doesn’t matter whether it was nuclear fallout, volcanic eruptions, or a comet striking the Earth, McCarthy wanted the reader to focus on humans and their interactions with one another after such an event. 

[bradybe11-blog]

I also agree that McCarthy didn't want us to focus and or even think about the actual event that caused this post apocalyptic society but instead she wanted us to focus on what the people in the book would do about it. Whether they would abandon all morals and resort to cannibalism or would there be people in the world that stuck to there morals and just unwritten code of being human and "carry the fire" as the son and the man always talked about and she makes you question that the entire novel until you get to the end.

[jeffery-williams]

The Road

The Road is a very interesting book to me and is a nice change of pace from our other books.  The book does in some ways remind me of The Walking Dead in the way of a father trying to protect his sons innocence and also Mad Max before everything was just desert.  My favorite thing about this book is the basis of the story, just a father and son against the world.  This is something that I can relate to as my father was the one that raised me and also felt like it was us two against the world.  

[notericclapton-blog]

I enjoyed the book for a few similar reasons. I couldn’t help thinking about “The Walking Dead” every 10 pages or so, but the story itself is really similar to a series of books I read by Stephen King called “Dark Tower”. It’s about a band of a few people travelling through the world after it has suffered some crazy event too. The themes differ between these stories, but the overall setting is very similar. I think “The Road” has been my favorite book that we have read in class so far, just because it’s a totally different change of pace from the other stories we have read. 

[bradybe11-blog]

I also couldn't help but to think about the walking dead and almost how identical it was to the fact that it was a father and a son and the main/only goal of the father is to protect his son at any cost. Except in this post apocalyptic world instead of being chased around by people and zombies the living conditions in this book are a lot harsher and they have in many cases resorted to cannibalism and the only immediate dangers they have to themselves is other people and the elements.

[bradybe11-blog]

Such irony!

Gilead has transformed Harvard’s buildings into a detention center run by the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police. Bodies of executed dissidents hang from the Wall that runs around the college, and Salvagings (mass executions) take place in Harvard Yard, on the steps of the library. Harvard becomes a symbol of the inverted world that Gilead has created: a place that was founded to pursue knowledge and truth becomes a seat of oppression, torture, and the denial of every principle for which a university is supposed to stand.

[bradybe11-blog]

Time to catch up- Handmaids tale women as political instruments

Despite all of Gilead’s pro-women rhetoric, such subjugation creates a society in which women are treated as subhuman. They are reduced to their fertility, treated as nothing more than a set of ovaries and a womb. In one of the novel’s key scenes, Offred lies in the bath and reflects that, before Gilead, she considered her body an instrument of her desires; now, she is just a mound of flesh surrounding a womb that must be filled in order to make her useful. Gilead seeks to deprive women of their individuality in order to make them docile carriers of the next generation.

[bradybe11-blog]

The danger of total equality

In "Harrison Bergeron,” Vonnegut suggests that total equality is not an ideal worth striving for, as many people believe, but a mistaken goal that is dangerous in both execution and outcome. To achieve physical and mental equality among all Americans, the government in Vonnegut’s story tortures its citizens. The beautiful must wear hideous masks or disfigure themselves, the intelligent must listen to earsplitting noises that impede their ability to think, and the graceful and strong must wear weights around their necks at all hours of the day. The insistence on total equality seeps into the citizens, who begin to dumb themselves down or hide their special attributes. Some behave this way because they have internalized the government’s goals, and others because they fear that the government will punish them severely if they display any remarkable abilities. Although equality is "ultimately" achieve in Vonnegut story it is at the cost of freedom and allowing people to be who that want to.

[bradybe11-blog]

He's my intro what do y'all think?

​Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury follows the postmodernism template with the introduction of a man named Guy Montag who lives in a world where society is ruthlessly censored. This society is centered on the meaningless and distracting technological lifestyle where there are more televisions than people within a home. Though, to completely erase any form of higher thought and maintain control, books in their entirety are banned and are burned by firemen; Guy Montag’s profession. Bradbury’s thematic message of ignorance through censorship can be recognized in his use of elements of fiction such as: setting and characters, in this postmodern novel of an oppressed society.

[bradybe11-blog]

I am not done fully reading the book but I have just passed the part where Winston hears the women singing out the window. I think the red-armed prole woman whom Winston hears singing through the window represents Winston’s one legitimate hope for the long-term future: the possibility that the proles will eventually come to recognize their plight and rebel against the Party. Winston sees the prole woman as a prime example of reproductive virility; he often imagines her giving birth to the future generations that will finally challenge the Party’s authority.

[bradybe11-blog]

Everybody gets a 🏆

In Harrison Bergerons short story of Vonnegut he tells us about a society that has become completely equal in every aspect that they could possibly control. The strong are hindered with lots of weights, the smart are given and almost headphone like device so they aren’t aloud to think, the beautiful people are masked and the prettiest have the ugliest mask. Which when reading this story it sort of reminded me of our society today and how in the past 20 or so some odd years it has become a more and more common idea of everyone gets a trophy. No longer rewarding excellence in most things making in a sense everyone equal. So what's the point to strive for excellence or to be the best if everyone is going to get rewarded for it?

[bradybe11-blog]

Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth?” Faber pg 83. Faber refers to the Greek Myth of how Antaeus was defeated by being held away from the ground, and represents how the people are held away from the ground of reason and quality of information rich like the soil. That the people cannot grow off of the lies they are told, but only from the truth. I really like this analogy that Faber refers to because although Montag has no idea of what Greek mythology is he can relate and put sense to what Faber is trying to say to him.

[bradybe11-blog]

Short story "Maus"

Reading the story Maus with all of the illustration reminded me of the story animal farm. Which at the time was a very radical idea for the author George Orwell. The universal message of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is that all violent revolutions which aim to and initially succeed in overthrowing repressive totalitarian regimes, after a brief idealistic period rapidly deteriorate into totalitarian and repressive regimes themselves. Orwell illustrates and clarifies this profound universal truth by his allegorical novel “Animal Farm” in which the animals and the incidents represent the characters and incidents of the Russian Revolution. Which was also a dark time likewise to what the story the Maus was portraying, which was the Holocaust.

[bradybe11-blog]

With reading the story the lottery in class, I thought it was only fitting to talk about the actual lottery that was just hit record highs of around 1.6 billion dollars. The Powerball jackpot is almost a fever that everyone catches when the jackpot reaches usually over 5 to 6 hundred million dollars and people can't help themselves but to go buy tickets driving the jackpot sky high. I am even guilty of catching the lottery fever. It's almost like you can't not buy a few tickets because if you don't play then you can't win, and there's always that what if.....what if I played could I have won? Although your odds of winning are extremely slim (1 out of 292,000,000) people still go nuts playing even creating giant pools of people ranging from the work place, home, and even neighbors. Now that the jackpot has been won paying out about a billion dollars to split between a few of the winners, the media is publicizing people that didn't win and they are calling it lottery hangover. As long as people still believe that they have a chance of winning the lotto then people will continue to play and for the most part wasting there money because of the almost insurmountable odds against them.