The Miracle of Literature

Love Jesus, Love People,Love Music, Love Spider-Man, Love Life!...hate seagulls...

[nichole-haire]

Not sure what to write about seeming as we’ve finished the last of the books to read and last class we were focused on the final. So, I think this post will just reflect on the class as a whole.

I should really thank my friend who suggested this course to me. It was everything that she said it...

[kkesther]

I agree! It was a really fun class and Professor Clark is great! :) I love that I was able to make some new friends and read (or half-read) some great books. My favorite thing about this class has to be that In my whole life of school, this is the only class where I have been apart of such a great group. In our group of You, Risdon, Emily, myself, and sometimes Christian we really got along well and we all worked together and off of each other really nicely! I will definitely miss that about this class! God Bless!

[kkesther]

The Road

As I finished The Road I surprisingly did not cry. Granted, it was a sad ending and did stir up the ability to cry...I just held it back very well. To me, it was given from the beginning that one or both of them would die at some point in the story, so I had prepared myself for it. It does not bother me at all that we are not given their names. It is a deep symbolic meaning to me about how inhumane and animalistic humans had become. To the point where they did not even deserve a name. It also does not bother me that we have no idea how the world ended up the way it did. I find the meaning irrelevant to the story. It symbolically brings up his constant point about moving forward and not looking back or giving up. We do not know what happened to the world, because at this point in the story, that is in the past. and the dad's ultimate goal is to keep moving forward and not look behind him. All in all, as bleak and dark as it is, I liked this book a lot.

[kkesther]

UGH! I wish I had time to read!!

Unfortunately, I am one of the people that is way behind in the book right now. :( However, What I have read so far, I am enjoying. As others on here have said already, it is kind of annoying how it skips around but I kind of find it intriguing as well. It is like a short story for each character and each short story is connected to the last in some way. It is kind of cool because it is also a postmodern writing style. You don't normally find novels written in this fashion. The one thing I absolutely do not like about the book so far, is the cursing. I believe that the same story could be gotten across just as well, if not better, without the curse words. I do however, understand that it is written from the perspective of the music world, and I am sure cursing is way worse there than it is in the book. I am hoping to finish it up this weekend God willing, so we will see how that goes. haha

[sarahreno]

The first few chapters of this book were great. I had a good definition of all characters and then BAM, put in the following chapters and now there is a ton. I like Sasha’s character but find myself feeling really bad for her. She clearly has some unresolved emotional issues that surely are the...

[kkesther]

I agree, the very first thing I noticed with Sasha stealing other peoples sentimental things, is that she must be missing something extremely close to her. I think there also is a lot of symbolism with the first chapter being about her stealing something while she is on a date. That could be digging into the personal thing she is missing as being someone to really love her. She may be missing the one thing everyone misses in some way, Love. And the only way for her to feel love is to steal a small part of someone else's. 

[kkesther]

SPRING BREEEAAAKK!!!

It is finally here! I find it funny how I am soooo excited for something I don't have special plans for...haha. This spring break I am working and doing a paper for another class...but I don't have to worry about extra school work for a whole week! I get to catch up! :) The midterm in this class wasn't too bad at all in my opinion. There was a lot of stuff that I meditated on for it that weren't even on the test though. lol. Anywho, I hope everyone has a great and safe spring break! Please think of your safety first though, don't do anything stupid, Your life isn't worth it. :) Have fun and God bless!!

[kkesther]

Critical Thinking #1

I am going to do my critical thinking essay on The Things They Carried and I’m focusing on the theme of love for it. I really enjoyed the concept of finding love in that novel that is focused on so much on hurt and pain. It has been interesting thus far digging into the story and finding love in the oddest places and also figuring out a whole different definition of the word love. The normal person thinks of love as a sappy feeling we people get when in a romantic relationship or the feeling we have towards family members. But we fail to acknowledge that it also can be seen in times of turmoil. Protestant Christians understand the brutal death of Jesus Christ as the ultimate show of love. And oddly enough, this book portrays that very concept in the fact that they are laying down their lives for others that may never know or even care about what they did (very much like what Jesus did). I'm excited to finish the assignment.

[samablam-deactivated20160223]

I enjoyed class today. I don’t recall ever having a professor that let us make up our own questions for the midterm. Not a big chunk of the midterm I should say. I was actually just about to start my essay for this class. I am thinking about writing mine on the book “Extremely Loud and Incredibly...

[kkesther]

I agree, It is really neat that she lets us make up our own questions for the midterm! As far as the essay goes, I am going to do mine on The Things They Carried and I'm focusing on the theme of Love for it. I'm excited to tear this apart and dig into that theme! :) 

[kkesther]

My Truth about Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Okay, I have to come clean, I am one of the people in the class who is not caught up with where we are supposed to be in the novel. :/ Between working full time and school part time I have not had all of the time that I would like to have had to read. That goes for any book, not just this one. I was in the middle of three different books when s know. Sad Stuff.

However, when I have found times to read this novel in particular, I have loved it! I am getting closer to being done and I'm starting to slowly see things come together in the story. Although it is ridiculously confusing at times because the whole story has key points spread throughout it. Its hard to stay on track with what point ties to where. But I'm sure that Foer intended it to be this way seeing as that is the way he wrote it.

I am hoping and praying I can get the rest of it read this weekend, but I am chaperoning for a youth trip at my church. You may know the feeling of trying to read with a room/bus load of kids with you, so we will see how that goes. 

[kristenhmckay]

I have almost finished reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and I am so glad that everything is finally making sense to me. At first the chapters Why I’m Not Where You Are confused me because I wasn’t sure who was writing the letters and the pages with just one word or one sentence...

[kkesther]

I agree, this book likes to jump around plot wise and that makes it extremely frustrating and incredibly confusing (see what I did there? haha) But i too, am glad everything is starting to come together and reveal itself in a a way that is mesmerizing. I'm loving the book so far though.

[darthrisdon]

Something that caught my attention while reading Shiloh is that Norma Jean has grown accustomed to Leroy’s absences to the point she has taken on a more forthright and masculine persona, so when Leroy is injured there is no room for his masculinity because there can only be one alpha male, which...

[kkesther]

I definitely agree with this. Leroy seemed to use his focus around the rebuilding of the house to prove his masculinity. But what he didn't realize was that talking about it repetitively and not doing anything about it was really almost proving how unmasculine he was. The fact that the gender roles are switched here is great because it shows how truly gender bias we are and how much we don't realize it. In class we spoke about how if it was the woman staying at home we wouldn't say anything. But to my understanding it seemed that Leroy was home on the couch smoking pot all day and not really doing much at all. That is where the word "lazy" comes in. If his wife was on the couch all day doing nothing but smoke pot while he was at work, we would call her lazy. So i say, Put the shoe where it fits.

[kkesther]

In this past week I have begun to read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and to tell the truth, I am thoroughly enjoying it so far. I definitely understand how one would find this boring or untasteful due to the character of Oskar, but I for one find him fascinating.

As I said in class, I have a developmentally delayed brother, and I have found one of the most intriguing things about him, is learning how he thinks. Getting inside that brain of his and figuring out how it functions the way it does. How socially awkward he is while yearning for human contact at the same time. Why he gets attached to certain (what we would think of as irrelevant) subjects and learns all he can about them, but yet he cannot tie his shoe or ride a bike. How he has the mind of a 7 year old (or less depending on the day), and yet his vocabulary exceeds mine at times. (and he understand what the word means!). How little things in his routine, like getting the Sunday Paper every week just for the comics, become the most important thing to him. When you live with an Autistic child you really understand how fascinating it is.

A lot of what I have read of Oskar thus far shows signs of him being developmentally delayed in some fashion. He is socially awkward in the limo but yearns for the drivers attention all at the same time. His logic is intriguing on jewelry and inventing, but giving a stranger the key to his house makes perfect sense to him. His actions at times shows his age and at other times exceeds or diminishes his true age through simple things like crude jokes or advanced vocabulary. He refuses to wear any color except for white, and that is extremely important to him. 

All that being said, this book has already hit home with me and I'm only a few chapters in. I cannot wait to figure out the whole story line behind his family, and Oskar himself. :) 

[kkesther]

In class yesterday while discussing "The things They Carried", we briefly brought up that this story,as gruesome and odd as it is, is a love story. I began to really think on it. I mean come on! How on earth can this book about death, and horror, and losing yourself, and war and human tongue necklaces be a love story?! It made no sense...at first. I then began to think deeper, and this Bible verse came to mind. "No greater love has no one than this,that he lay down his life for his friends" John 15:13. I mean wow! This verse states that the greatest love there is, is sacrifice to save another human soul! And that is what these soldiers in Vietnam were doing. As hard as it was and even as much as they didn't want to, they still did it, Because it proved to be the greatest love possible. To sacrifice yourself, so that others may live....Deep stuff huh? 

[kkesther]

My Interprtation of "The Things They Carried"

I have not read to page 81 yet. I am about halfway through to that point. But what I have read so far has been quite good and fairly easy to understand. (a lot easier than those first few readings at least haha) In this book, the perspective seems to jump a lot. One minute it is referring as "I" and the next it is saying "You" or "he" The perspective seems to jump between characters as well. That part confuses me. However, I love the description used and the depth of each character. Some characters you don't need to know a lot about them to know exactly who they are. The form of writing is intriguing!

[kkesther]

I think I am losing it...

My topic today is all about how lost I am! These last four short stories have been killing me and confusing me! If I think I may understand one, I for sure do not understand the second story. I can not say how grateful I am that we talked about them in class! A lot of it came together in the group discussions.

I must say though, knowing that "In Cold Blood" was based off of a true story and then watching the small clip, I really want to watch that film now! It looked so suspenseful!!

I definitely agree wholeheartedly with this! I have been very lost when reading and then coming into class and hearing discussion about it helps a LOT. I also am intrigued to watch the movie based off of In Cold Blood. It looks very interesting.

[doylecasey]

First, I have to say that I am actually excited to read “The Road” and the other novel “Extremely loud & Incredibly Close”! I have yet to read either one of these pieces and I have only heard great things about them! I also believe it will be interesting to hear the class thoughts and...

[kkesther]

Like you, I am also very excited to read "The Road" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." I have heard such good things about them and I love that this class is giving me the chance to do that. Taking this class is giving me the excuse to read which is something i LOVE to do but rarely have time to do unfortunately. And this concept of Postmodernism is so confusing that it is intriguing at the same time. I cannot wait to dig deeper into what this class has to offer. Yay Literature!! haha

[kkesther]

For my first Literature post, I chose to share a video. You may have heard of it, seeing as a few years ago it went viral. This is a spoken word entitled "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus" This poem takes two seemingly similar subjects and brings out the truth about how radically different they are. Aside from being spiritual, this poem is Powerful and it is Relateable. It is not only well said and well written, but the video quality,the scenery, and the tone is amazing. Since making this video the speaker, Jefferson Bethke, has written a book called Jesus>Religion which happens to be one of the 3 books I am reading right now. If you enjoy this Spoken Word video (which you will) I truly believe you will enjoy his book. Enjoy!