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“Betrayal. It’s one of the worst feelings”

Title: 13 Reasons Why

Author: Jay Asher

Text Type: Novel

This novel is one of the few novels that i was able to really relate to and be inspired by. Usually, young-adult novels are about vampire hunger and love games, however, this novel challenges that custom and talks about Grief, guilt, regret, shame, malice, detachment, and denial; Which shows that the feelings swarming through the kids in “13 Reasons Why” are deep and complicated.

I really enjoyed this novel as it had many events in it that i either have experienced or have been around someone who was experiencing it at the time. Clay Jensen come home from school one day to find a strange package with his name written on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by his class mate and crush, Hannah Baker, who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah's voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out why. Clay spends the night cruising his town with Hannah as his guide. He becomes a firsthand witness to the pain Hannah was faced with, and as he follows Hannah's recorded words throughout his town, what he discovers changes his life forever.

Although i really loved this book and related to it, i think it could of easily dug deeper into more seious issues. The character Clay Jensen says “The way we treat each other and look out for each other… It has to get better somehow.”, although this is true and very relevant to the generation i live in, this statement, i think, is a bit vague for a moral of a novel about a teenage girl’s experience with things like bullying, sexual assault, and suicide. Yes, i think if Jay Asher was too specific with his resolution it could’ve risked him coming across as dismissive or condescending to the complex topics in this novel. But while it is true that there isn’t any easy answers, the questions being asked are harder than the novel dares to explore, despite its good intentions.

Although i think this, the overall story of this novel was still very impacting and inspirational to me, and it should be to my generation too as it takes on suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for teens in the 15 to 19 age group; peer pressure, adolescence dramas, drugs and many other factors can make growing up unbearable for many of the young people in our generation. Thirteen Reasons Why tackles the issue head on, and doesn't offer any easy answers, which again, can be seen as a good or bad thing, but it does offer hope. I believe It's a serious read, for serious readers, that delivers a powerful look at a teen in torment. Which is what i believe is what our generation needs. Our generation only pays attention to things that challenges us, things like meetings and assembly talks don’t impact us like books or movies could do.

I would recommend this to my year 12 classmates and a year 12 bookclub as it is a challenging read and needs a lot of thinking to understand it. It tackles big topics in society today that are usually avoided in young-adult novels. I think this book is a text that so many of the teenagers in the society today could relate to and be immensely inspired by.

"You hate me? You don't even know me.”

Tittle: Freedom Writers

Director: Richard LaGravenese

Text Type: Film

This film is one of my all time favorite films mainly because i love how it is so straight up. This film doesn’t sugar coat anything its straight forward and shows what is going on in the lives of a group of teenagers that face tough obstacles on a daily bases in a interesting and in depth manner. This film is a big statement to the old saying “not all heroes wear capes.”

You’d think that the first encounter between students and their new teachers would always be exciting. Miss Gruwell, the new teacher at Wilson High, is greeted with hostility from her Hispanic, Asian and African American students. One of the students even states that she hates her because she is white. In this scene Miss.G: You hate me? You don't even know me.Student: I know what you can do. I saw white cops shoot my friend in the back for reaching into his pocket, his pocket! I saw white cops come into my house and take my father away for no REASON except because they feel like it! Except because they can! And they can, because they're white. So I HATE white people on sight!” I think this scene is very important and relevant to our society today as a lot of us judge people based on what people from the same culture as them have done. An example of this would be Muslims. Many hate crimes have been done towards innocent Muslims based only off of the actions of other Muslims that have no connection to the innocent Muslim besides religion

I think that the reason for why in the beginning the students didn’t necessarily like Miss G was because they were oppressed and because they were looked at differently because of their race and culture which was something that Miss G did no struggle with. This is was something that i think Miss G did not recognize when she started teaching her classes, it just wasn't something that made sense to her, she didn't fully grasp what it meant to be in the situation they were in, this was something that she lacked. But throughout the movie she took these differences for good and used them to teach. She not only taught to the students but the students taught her, she gained knowledge about things she wouldn’t of necessarily learn’t if it wasn’t for her students. I very much agreed with this idea in the movie that differences aren’t always a bad thing and that they shouldn’t separate us from each other but bring us together. This movie really made me think about how much we can learn from people who are different from us and how if we all took the time to understand people who much greater our societies would be right now.

There is a particular part in the movie that i found very touching and inspirational,That is the part where Miss Gruwell gave notebooks to her students and told them to write whatever they wanted to write, (whether it was a story, poem or song) about their lives, and she told them that if they wanted to share their pieces, they can put it in a drawer reserved for their work. And to her surprise, she saw the drawer full of her student’s notebooks. And she read all their works and got to know each student for who they really were. In that part I saw that even the toughest students need concern and care that comes from a genuine person who will love them as they are. And they found this love in their English teacher. They needed and wanted to feel important and Miss G knew exactly how to do that. Miss G made them realize that just because you come from these bad backgrounds and are seen as people who cant get an education, you can use your life experiences that no one else has ever experienced and put it into brilliant writings and expresses your feelings. Those writings i think would of given insight into the students life which could’ve in the long run eliminate racism and intolerance for people with these kinds of situation.

I would 100% recommend this movie to my year 12 classmates as it is a movie which we could all learn many things from. It is based on high school students which makes it that much more relatable and interesting to our year. This would be a great text to be studied at a year 12 book club as it has many complex ideas and challenging scenes that makes the audience learn and understand more about others.

“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”

Title: All the light we cannot see

Author: Anthony Doerr

Text Type: Novel

‘All the light we cannot see’ is one of the few books that really touched me and inspired me. This book by Anthony Doerr, is a historical fiction based book with the main theme of the tragedy of war. The author portrays this theme by creating characters that are full of promise that are suddenly transformed in heart wrenching ways by the violence around them. One of these characters is Werner. Werner is a bright and curious boy with dreams of becoming a scientist; instead, he is given a tough choice between dedicating his life to the Nazi cause or working in a coal mine. Another is Frederick, whose sense of duty takes him to the Nazi school. Despite his compassionate ways, he refuses to kill a helpless man and is later singled out for punishment and is beaten so severely that his mind is permanently damaged. And finally Marie-Laure, Etienne, and Jutta all lose someone that is close to them due to the war and are forever scarred as a result.

In Addition to reflecting on the war’s horrors through individual stories, the novel also offers glimpses into the larger scale horrors that occur in WWII, which i think was a very significant and valuable thing to do, it showed how innocent Civilians are killed mistakenly, women are raped, and prisoners of the war a heavily mistreated and murdered. Although the Holocaust is never mentioned directly in the novel, it is occasionally suggested which creates an inescapable backdrop to the story.

The novel questions how much power we as humans actually have when it comes to choosing our own destinies, and to what degree our lives are predetermined by the world around us. On one hand, war makes certain personal choices impossible. As Frederick tells Werner, “Your problem is that you still believe you own your life.” On the other hand, the novel emphasizes the power that individuals have to choose their own path in life, despite the world around them. In one of the book’s most important scenes, Werner tells Marie-Laure that she has been very brave. She replies, “I wake up and live my life. Don’t you do the same?” Werner answers, “Not in years. But today. Today maybe I did.” Although Marie-Laure denies her own free will, Werner’s response suggests that she has been fighting for the resistance, ultimately refusing the easy path Werner has been taking up until this point.

I believe Marie-Laure’s character is a representation of what true courage is. She portrays the idea that courage isn’t always about obtaining the quality of being brave. She shows that courage is about not giving into what life has temporarily thrown at you. Though it may seem very saddening and depressing at the time, having a fighting spirit that will help you make it through till the end is what is important. Marie-Laure’s journey in life being blind, raped, and losing her father was in no way easy. Marie-Laure’s character was very inspirational to me because even though she had to go through all those struggles and heartaches she remained optimistic, she remained hopeful, she remained kind which is something we need to think about. I really liked Marie-Laure’s character as it made me think about how to be strong like her. Obviously it’s hard to remain positive and kind when we are dealing with hard obstacles, but we need to try our best to remain positive and be loving people no matter what we are going through. Like Marie-Laure, we should never loose the qualities that make us who we are due to our current circumstances.

Personally i think, as Werner’s conversation with Marie-Laure shows, This novel calls attention to the shared humanity that bridges our differences and the deception of the dividing lines between “good guys” and “bad guys”. One of Werner’s fellow soldiers raises attention to the deception of ethnic division when he jokes, “The true Aryan is as blond as Hitler, as slim as Göring, and as tall as Goebbels,” citing examples of leading Nazi figures who did not fit the Aryan stereotype. Marie-Laure and Werner’s bond is one the best examples of common humanity. Even though they are complete strangers on opposite sides of the war effort, they are similar spirits nonetheless.

Although this novel was published in 2014, it was based in 1934 all the way through to 2014. This novel talks about many important events that shaped our society today and the message it raises is still relevant today. I think Anthony Doerr was very clever to pick the theme of the tragedy of war is it will always be an important topic. Also because he does an amazing job at showing the reader how we should go through life, showing the characteristics we should uphold to how to be able to look at life in a way that you can always stay hopeful; which i think is a very significant message to me and my generation today as many young people take their own lives because they think there is no hope left. This novel shows that it always gets better, and that there is so much light we cannot see and that we really have to look hard for it. But we must remember that just because we can’t initially see the light , doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

I would highly recommend this novel to Year 12 students and to a Year 12 book club as it teaches us that our situation in life does not have to define who we are as a person. What will define us is how we fight against it and what path we choose to take in life. It shows that regardless of how many times life tries to bring us down, we should always remember that we are bigger than our problems and hope for miracles and know they are not impossible.

“We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

Title: Human Family

Author: Maya Angelou

Text Type: Poem

“human family” is a poem written by Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou was a highly influential poet that had many experiences in her life that made her poems extremely informative and powerful. Although Maya Angelou struggled in her early life, getting molested at the age of 7, she used her stories and life experiences to be able to gain a voice in society which she used to highlight issues found in our society, issues such as racial discrimination and social injustice. Maya Angelou left this world a very powerful legacy of love, hope, and truth.

I believe this poem is a very relevant testimony to the society we live in today as it highlights how ‘we are more alike,... than we are unalike’. I found the title of this poem especially clever, as typical title’s would read “’American family”, or something between those margins. I only realised why Maya Angelou titled her poem “Human Family” after i finished the poem. She states that we are all human. That we are all alike. It’s like family, some family members are similar in the way they act, some family members have that same smile or same gesture. And since we, the humans, are all alike, the author hints that we are also all family. After i made this conclusion the title of this poem made perfect sense and fit the poem perfectly, and i noticed that really, there isn’t anything confusing about it.

“Human Family” is one of those poems that will forever be important and relevant. Although it was written in regards to racial equality and civil right issues of the 1990′s, which was arguably, the most deafening, controversial, and racially involved decade since the 1960s. Any nation or person that is facing inequality, racism and bullying will easily find this poem relatable to their lives as it depicts the importance of understanding that our differences shouldn’t matter as much as it does, and doesn’t have to break us apart, but enable our likeness to bring us together. As a teenager in today’s society, this poem helped me to see that our differences shouldn’t separate us but bring us together. It inspired me to see that there are so many people in this world and none of them are the same, and yes in minor ways we are different from one another, but in major ways we are the same.

I found it very clever that Maya Angelou used figurative language to express to her audience what she believes are the differences between humans and how similar we really are. Maya Angelou used repetition in her poem to express her point that all humans are alike. In the poem, She says, "We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike," in the last few stanzas. In total, she repeats it three times. I loved the fact that Maya Angelou added this type of figurative language to her poem. First of all, she put this phrase at the end of the poem. Next, she repeated it three times. With this type of combination i was persuaded to keep this phrase in my mind long after i finish reading the poem. This made Maya Angelou get her point across successfully, which is what most poets and writers want to achieve through their writing.

The phrase “ We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike,” in the poem is the thing that stuck with me the most, mainly because of the fact that it was repeated throughout the poem, which shows that it is important and is meant to be noticed. By the means of this, I personally think that Maya Angelou has successfully delivered what she wanted for people to understand. That in a society where differences, whether its racial, religious or class prevails, we should not focus on them and rather, focus on our similarities and allow them to bring us together as one equal ‘Human Family.

I would highly recommend this poem to my Year 12 classmates and to a Year 12 book club, for it teaches us the importance of treating everyone equally and accepting people for who they are as a whole. It teaches us That even though we have so many differences it doesn’t really matter because what is important is that we are able to allow ourselves to focus on our similarities and allow ourselves to hope for a brighter and equal future.

“The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.”

Title: Because I could not stop for death

Author: Emily Dickinson

Text Type: Poem

This poem by Emily Dickinson is a very interesting and clever text. Death is not a new concept as it has been written about in many poems, however, Emily Dickinson does a great job of challenging the usual conception of death by having death take the form of a man. And no this is no grim reaper type man, dangerous looking and all, Dickinson’s death is the kind of guy that would hold the door open for someone. A real gentleman. Emily Dickinson uses the death concept as an extended metaphor to explore what real death might be like which i think, is why this poem is so interesting. This poem focuses on the communication the speaker is making from beyond the grave, walking the audience through her journey with death.

I think the speaker shows no fear when Death picks her up in his carriage, she just sees it as an act of kindness, because she was too busy to find time for him. This is the kindness and attention that death shows her which can be seen in the first stanza. It is emphasized that the carriage holds just the two of them, because of the internal rhyme in “held” and “ourselves" that lead me to see how the speaker will so easily give up on her life and what it contained. This is stated, as it is “For His Civility” that she puts away her “labor” and her “leisure,” which I think is Emily’s wordplay technique to represent her life. The next stanza shows the life is not great, as this slow carriage ride is contrasted with what she sees as they drive along. A scene of school children playing is an example of the difficulty of life. Although the children are playing “At Recess,” the verb Dickinson uses is “strove,” emphasizing the hard work of existence. Dickinson writing “We passed” also emphasizes the tiring repetitiveness of mundane routine.

The next stanza changes to a more standard vision of death. The speaker experiences things becoming cold and more sinister. Although it becomes clear that though this part of death, the coldness, and the next stanza’s image of the grave as home, may not be ideal. I think it is worth it to have this part in the poem as it leads to the final stanza, which ends with immortality. Immorality being the goal is hinted in the first stanza, where “Immortality” is the only other passenger of the carriage, although it is only in the final stanza that we see that the speaker has finally gained it. Dickinson shows that time suddenly loses its meaning. She implements that hundreds of years feel no different than a day. Because time is gone, i especially like how the speaker is still filled with enjoyment in that moment of realization, she feels that death was not just death, but immortality. I think it was very clever of Emily Dickinson to end the poem with “Eternity –,” as it makes the poem itself approve this eternity, and moving out into the infinite.

In the final stanza, we find out the speaker's ride with Death actually happened centuries ago But she makes it seem as though it happened just yesterday, when she first got the feeling that horse heads (meaning those of the horses that drew the "death carriage") pointed toward "Eternity"; or in other words, showed the passage from life to death to an afterlife.

This poem has many life lessons, the main one that spoke out to me was time. Time goes by so quickly now days that our lives feel like they are flashing by in a blink of an eye. Emily Dickinson hints that we should live our lives to the fullest and to not fear death but to accept it, i think this is one of the reasons to why she paints death as such a gentle being. Dickinson shows us that sometimes just embracing death and realizing that it is inevitable isn’t such a bad idea. The poem highlights how we should live the best life we can so when it comes to the day death knocks on our door, we are happy and proud of all our achievements and deeds.

I would recommend this poem to my year 12 classmates because it is a very clever and interesting poem. "Because i could not stop for death” would be a valuable choice for a year 12 book club because It teaches us to live a good and fun life and to not be so fearful at the thought of death but to embrace it instead. So that when the time comes, it is easy to let go and die a happy death because we are happy with the life we have had.

“Can we all just Get Along?”

Title: Get Along

Author: Guy Sebastian

Text Type: Song

We live in a day and time where it is very common for people to be quick to hate and put down people’s beliefs and practices. This song speaks against prejudices and religious intolerance. The chorus sings: “Dear God, dear soul, dear Mary, Mohammed. Can we all just get along?’, through this chorus Guy is trying to make a point that it doesn’t matter who we serve, we should be respectful of each others religions. ‘Get Along’ by Guy Sebastian raises a simple yet challenging question, why can’t we all just get along?. I strongly disagree with Guy Sebastian suggesting that we could possibly all agree and be at peace because it’s the same things we are striving and believing for. The metaphor “Different paths up the same mountain” could be used to illustrate this. I believe this is illogical because Atheists believe in no gods, Christians believe in one true God, and Hindu’s believe there are many Gods. It is very much possible that none of these beliefs are true, but they certainly can’t all be true.

Although I think this, I still like the overall message this song has, and how it is very relevant to the generation i am in right now, it is even more so relevant as i am a teenager. This song is a reminder to me to be a kind, loving and and to be respectful to other people's culture and religion and i think it should be something everyone excercises on a daily basis. The idea of everyone getting along is very desirable to all of us, however as Guy implements when he sings “Maybe if we’d work together, we’d already have a heaven here on earth.”, It would be very hard for everyone to get along as it is our very nature to act selfishly and to make decisions that are only good for ourselves and that only benefit ourselves. This stops us from being open minded to the idea of working with people different to us. This song made me wonder, besides from religion and personal beliefs, why is it that we all as a people are not able to come together as one?. There isn’t that many obstacles stopping us from becoming one massive unstoppable team.

The time this song was released, in November of 2012, there was a lot of violent and horrific events happening. The period in which this song was released there had been many suicide bombings and religious attacks happening, which links back to the meaning of this song which is religious intolerance; which also made this song a lot more significant and important in that time. This song was relevant in 2012 and is still relevant today. Our world is still having to deal with conflicts caused by religion. In this song Guy Sebastian uses imagery as a technique to make us long for what it is he is singing about, which is worldwide peace.

I would recommend this to year 12 students because i think they would find this song very interesting and meaningful as it isn’t a generic type song, it is complex and has depth. This text would be a valuable choice for a year 12 book club because it challenges readers to think about what goes on in the world. It shows the reader how strong our communities could be if we let go of our pride and differences, and come together as one. It is a very deep song with many inspirational and relevant messages that can be found if this text is properly studied and analysed.

#songreview #reading assessment

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