Contemporary Literature @nitsirkeellehcim - Tumblr Blog

Alright! The Road definitely has the best ending of the books. The Things They Carried only left me wanting more and a little confused on certain topics. It seemed to talk to theoretically for me especially that crappy chapter Notes from the Author. As for ELIC, that left me unsatisfied in that we...

nitsirkeellehcim

I never really thought about all of the different endings until now. I think The Road has the most definitive, it is the closest we have come to a neat clean black and white ending out of everything we're read but I still did not feel satisfied. I think it might be because in the end I felt like their journey was for no reason because the beach turned out to just be a beach not the solution to all their problems. For some reason I thought the beach was going to be much more important than it actually was.

Final Post

I have not been the best student this semester. I would say that 95% of the class I was behind in the reading. I have half the Tumblr posts that I need, and I confess to only getting to chapter three of A Visit from the Goon Squad when we were talking about it in class. Despite all of that I really enjoyed this class, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and all. While none of the novels made it into my top favorites I appreciated each book for one reason or another, the jury is still out on the Goon Squad though because I am only on page 70.

jhonatanu

The two main characters in the book are the father and the son. Throughout this whole book the they are just trying to survive. The father symbolizes protection. He loves his son and is willing to do anything for him. He cares about him and to me, the son is the main reason why the father is...

nitsirkeellehcim

The father son relationship is my favorite part of the story. I really like that the mom walked out and the dad stayed with the child, the stereotypical assumption would be that the mother stays behind because she is the caretaker. I enjoyed how The Road shows that even in a post-apocalyptic setting the relationship between family and son is that same. I agree that the father and son rely and feed off of each other; they could not survive without the other. The son provides motivation for the father as well as keeping him sane. The father protects the son and gives him the guidance and support he needs, they are close to a perfect pair.

Cannibalism

Thanksgiving happened last Thursday, mine went really well. There was turkey, ham, and lots of other sides. I ate a lot, and it made me think of how glad I am that I am not starving and don't have to eat other human beings in order to survive. I have always been really disturbed by cannibalism. The Criminal Minds episodes with cannibals are always the scariest to me. If I were alive in an environment like The Road's setting I am almost positive that I would never eat anyone. I completely sure that I would kill myself before I was captured and slowly eaten. The creepiness of the cannibals almost trumps the crushing feeling of loneliness and hopelessness in the story.

jeff-madison-blog

At first I didn’t think that I would like “The Road” because it seemed to be moving pretty slow with not much happening in the story. It seemed like I was reading the same thing over and over and the story just kept repeating itself. Now that I have read more of the story I can say that I am...

nitsirkeellehcim

I agree, the pacing of the book felt pretty slow, but for me that feeling never really left. I felt like I was reading the same things over and over again with the only small differences happening with how and where they found food. I think that the lack of chapters illustrates the life of the father and son really well. Without chapters the book has a somewhat endless feel to it which mirrors the journey of the father and son. The beach was their destination but when that did not pan out they just headed somewhere else because in reality there is no end for them, except death.

Isolation

The Road starts out slow, and has a lot of description but not a lot of action. Throughout the story I was constantly waiting for something to happen. The events in the story never fully lived up to my expectations. To me the book seemed boring, but at the same time it made me think about the life of the boy and his father.

The entire idea is interesting to think about but what struck me the most was how isolated their life is. Human beings are social creatures but in this book their first instinct is to get away from other people. We all experience loneliness in life at some point, but for it to last a lifetime is unimaginable.

the general feeling of hopelessness in the book also stuck with me after I finished the book. In the beginning we find out that they are heading to the coast, and even though it is never explicitly stated I imagined that the beach was going to cure their problems somehow. So, the time leading up to their arrival at the beach I had something to hope for, but when it became clear that the beach was just a beach I was a little upset. At that moment it finally sunk in that there is nothing to work toward. I was thankful for the small silver trout lining though.

Serena Wakes Up

I wake up and the last thing I remember is the transformation of my love. All I can think about is being with him, but he is gone. I search the entire ship but I cannot find him. As I try to make my way outside the ship doors open and he walks in. I greet him but my voice is different, I sound digital and automated. Buzz replies with hesitation and I can tell that he is hiding something. I ask him what is wrong, I try to move toward him but realize that I do not have a body. I cannot feel anything. Finally he tells me that he never had the ability to bring me back to life, but he could not stand to let me die and now I was a part of the ship. I am hardwired into the ship’s programming, a talking computer program forever.

gramsey0507

I did not like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Let me start by saying that I love the way it was written and I loved the alternating points of views. The way the several stories intermingled was good. I also applaud the author for the subject matter and how he explored it. Using an unordinary...

nitsirkeellehcim

. I agree with almost everything you wrote. For me the characters were fine and I was able to connect with them fairly easily. I can relate to dragging something out, like Oskar did going through the names alphabetically instead of geographically, just so that it does not have to end as fast. Also all of the problems with communication, or lack of communication, and loneliness are easy to relate to. The book makes a clear case for the importance of saying what you mean. I particularly liked what the grandmother said at the end of her last letter to Oskar.

"Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar.

It's always necessary. "

Finally Finished

I just finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and I actually enjoyed it for the most part. It is probably not the first book I would recommend to someone, maybe the tenth. I had low expectations because of the film, but I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed the book over the movie probably because the grandparents and their story is my favorite part of the book. By the end of the book I also had a better opinion of Oskar. I like him the most when he is crying, which sounds weird, because it is such a normal response to his situation.

hellostephanymaurer

I feel so bad for how everyone feels about Oskar! That poor child has gone through so much, losing his best friend at such a young age, dealing with his mother’s calm response to the whole thing, reading a letter- that might be disturbing for a young boy to read-from his grandmother, feeling like...

nitsirkeellehcim

I do feel bad for Oskar because he has a lot of things working against him, like the death of his father and and being bullied at school. He also feels alienated from his mother because she does not grieve in front of him and laughs with Ron, and probably also from his peers because he is smarter than them. At the same time he is mean. He hid from his grandma just to see what she would do, and told his mom that he wished she had died instead of his dad. It is hard to dislike him because of his circumstances but it is also hard to like him because he is manipulative and mean.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Feelings up to pg. 192

I watched the film adaptation of this book a few years ago and did not enjoy the movie much, so when I saw the book on the syllabus I was not very excited. However, I have been pleasantly surprised. The movie leaves out the grandmother and grandfather's part in the book, which I actually find more interesting than Oskar's story. I would be okay with leaving Oskar out entirely and reading a book about just the grandma and grandpa. Oskar is a difficult character to like becuase he gets pretty annoying. As soon as I start to feel sorry for him or maybe even like him a little because he does have funny moments, he does, says or thinks something that brings me back to being annoyed again. Then I feel a little guilty for being irritated by a little kid who has lost his father in such a tramatic way. The three different points of view makes the reading go by faster and it breaks it up nicely. I do not know if I could read a book that was 100% Oskar. I am curious to find out where all of three points of view meet.

There is a conversation in See the Moon? with Cardinal Y where he says that the world rests upon an elephant that rests upon a tortoise that sits upon a red lawnmower. Which made me think of a book series by the British fantasy author Terry Pratchett called the Discworld series. I’ve never actually read any of the books but I remembered looking it up once. In the series the disc world is rests on the back of four elephants standing on a giant turtle. The world carrying turtle was mentioned again in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close so I looked it up to figure out if there was any history behind the turtle and the World Turtle, or Cosmic Turtle, Divine Turtle, World-bearing Turtle, is referenced in Cosmological myths in North America by the Iroquois, in China and in India. In India the turtle’s body represents the earth, atmosphere, and heaven.

nitsirkeellehcim

There is a conversation in See the Moon? with Cardinal Y where he says that the world rests upon an elephant that rests upon a tortoise that sits upon a red lawnmower. Which made me think of a book series by the British fantasy author Terry Pratchett called the Discworld series. I’ve never actually read any of the books but I remembered looking it up once. In the series the disc world is rests on the back of four elephants standing on a giant turtle. Because of the differences in the number of elephants I did not think too much about it, but when the world carrying turtle was mentioned again in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close I figured that it was not just chance. So I looked it up and the World Turtle, or Cosmic Turtle, Divine Turtle, World-bearing Turtle, is referenced in Cosmological myths in North America by the Iroquois, in China and in India. In India the turtle’s body represents the earth, atmosphere, and heaven. I’m sure that there is a lot more to it than that but those are my quick googled findings until I research it further, I just thought it was interesting and wanted to share. Did anyone else notice the world carrying turtle’s two appearances?

brobooks-blog

The turtle with the world on its back is actually a myth started in Iroquois tribes. They just thought that the world was on a turtles back, like how some people thought the world was flat. It has no real significance other than it being a phrase commonly used in everyday things. Have you never heard of that before?

nitsirkeellehcim

I have never heard it used in everyday conversation, now I kind of feel like I've been oblivious my entire life. I guess you learn something new everyday, sometimes lots of days after everyone else.

The word comic does not hold much weight for me. Usually titles like Batman and Spiderman come to mind, but not because I read either of them only because of how popular they are and the movies they have spawned. Newspaper comics are the second thing that I think of, and those are generally cute and funny, but Lynda Barry’s comics much different than the comics I usually think of. She grapples with deeper ideas. I really enjoy her unique style e and her text to illustration ratio. I really enjoyed both of the comics we read for class. Their themes were things we all can relate to, or most anyway.

The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried and I got off to a bit of a rough start. I read the beginning of the first chapter in between my classes and was not a very big fan of the lists of things they carried. All I kept thinking was I hope this entire book is not just a list of things each person carried, and for that reason I put off reading the book for as long as I could. Until finally I sat down and read until page 85, and I am really happy that the rest of the book is stories about the war and not just a bunch of lists because for me its hard to visualize the physical things they carried, like the different guns and supplies all I keep thinking is, wow that sounds really heavy. I did enjoy the personal things carried like the letters and panty hose. I also liked the mention of the emotional and mental things they carried like guilt, sadness and fear. I am still a little behind and have not finished the book yet but my favorite short quote from the book so far is "They all carried ghosts" on page nine. I like it because for them it is especially true but it is also true for everyone.

See The Moon?

Even though this story was difficult to follow I really enjoyed it. Immediately after I finished reading it I was sort of dazed and had no idea what I just read, or if I even absorbed anything from the story; but the more I thought about it the more connections I made. I like the challenge of trying to figure out what is going on and what was the point of the entire story. My favorite stories are the ones that leave me thinking about them even after I have finished reading them. I especially like the part about Cardinal Y because for a second I was wondering if it was a bird or person.

I think that the other reason I like the story is that I can in a very small way relate to the letter. I like to send handwritten letter to my friends in New York and my sister away at college. The letters I write can be pretty random and aimless at times. However, I think that mine are probably a little more cohesive than See The Moon?

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