Exercise 3

Try Not to Breathe by Jennifer R. Hubbard
Black Boy White School by Brian F. Walker
Dead to You by Lisa McMann

The intro provides a short background needed to understand the rest of the novel, which commonly includes a quick overview of the main point leading to the climax. From there it digresses to focus on a major plot point that occurs. The conclusion analyzes the overall book, including the characters, plot, and how the story can be connected to real-life.  The conclusion also gives insight to how well the author did at portraying the topic and ideas.

Note 1

"Anyway, Patrick started driving really fast, and just before we got into the tunnel, Sam stood up, and the wind turned her dress into ocean waves. When we hit the tunnel, all the sound got scooped up into a vacuum, and it was replaced by a song on the tape player. A beautiful song called "Landslide." When we got out of the tunnel, Sam screamed this really fun scream, and there it was. Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. Sam sat down and started laughing. Patrick started laughing. I started laughing. And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."

The events of the passage from Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower are intriguingly and astonishingly blissful which creates a larger than life atmosphere. When the mind is extinguished from all thought, extraordinary sensations of infinity triumph over what is real. The elements of nature that transform a dress into "ocean waves" balance flawless creation with mediocre reality. The beatific harmony of "Landslide" overpowers the echos of cars and rushes of air flooding through the tunnel. When even the simplicity of "lights on buildings" can capture a person in a state of wonder and awe, it is clear the infinite feelings leave an everlasting impact. The repetition of laughing among all three characters involved intensifies the overall euphoric tone of the piece. As portrayed in the novel, infinite is the perfect concept to express such feelings of power and ecstasy.

Exercise 2

Weaknesses-
"Inside a metal chute" gives a chaotic touch to the style while evoking a sense of innocence by naming the bull "Little Kisses." This is quickly shunned away by the foreshadowing of the danger soon to come as he "slapps his face forcefully, bringing adreneline roses to his cheeks."

The author enhances the stress by throwing the reader straight into the action.

She gets so unfocused writing her book that she "is about to BASH her little sister's HEAD IN." This infers that Roberta is easily distracted and can be gruesome. 


Strong Exercise-
let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters

Exercise 1

Lynda Barry's "Cruddy" portrays a harsh and immature tone which evokes a sense of rage and rebellion. Taking place on a "cruddy street on the side of a cruddy hill in the cruddiest part of a crudded-out town," the repetition of the the word "cruddy" stresses the narrator's bitterness towards the current situation she is placed into. The excessive capitalization within the passage emphasizes the childish diction and fosters the thought that the author is perhaps an adolescent. The bold tone of this passage screams with emotion to enhance the author's overall distress and alludes to an omen of future vengeance.

Reading Log: Go Ask Alice

Go Ask Alice is in the format of diary entries from a fifteen-year-old drug user which takes place over a one year time span. Within this year, the narrator goes through an emotional roller coaster beginning with the night her soda was laced with acid. Unsure at first what had happened to her, she is intrigued by the feeling and soon takes on the challenge of experimenting with any drug she can get her hands on. The diction is somewhat immature as are her decisions which becomes redundant and a little annoying. After a tough incident relating to her drug usage, she runs away. Upon returning she vows to never fall victim to drug's evil grip, but unfortunately lets it happen, and runs away once again. This time, returning is different, she vows once again not to get caught up in drugs and uses all of her strength not to. 

Just as she is starting to improve her life, her beloved grandfather died and soon after her grandmother died as well. Raging with emotions she confides in her family and new friend, Joel. Her good intentions and maturity become stronger. Although she is improving, her old "friends" (the drug users) pin her and bully her for becoming "pure polly." She then realizes that while she was a user and a pusher, the people she hung around who were doing the same thing, were never really her friends.They bully her and eventually give her chocolate covered peanuts coated with LSD. She unknowingly eats them and has a mental breakdown while on the trip. After her morbid wounds slightly heal, doctors send her to an insane asylum. She spends a short amount of time there before she proves she is fine. When she is released, her character expresses full maturity and life seems to be going really well. She is really happy with how her life is and is disgusted at the thought of any type of drug. The narrator says that her diary is the only thing that kept her sane and even alive during the rough times in her life, but decides to no longer keep one. The epilogue states that only three-weeks after her decision to not keep another diary, she was found dead at home by her parents. It is uncertain how, but it is certain that it was due to drugs.

Going on the journey through the life a drug user was hard to take at times. If she could only realize the near perfect life and loving family she was destroying with her decisions, would it have made her stop sooner than later? She became an entirely different person while on drugs. They took her to some scary places, nearly on the verge of death at several different times. If this doesn't make the reader want to never get involved in drugs, I don't know what will.

Pages read this week: 159       Pages read this semester: 1624

Anthology: Theme Statement

For my anthology theme, I am choosing to do "Infinity." It is something that is really difficult to comprehend, yet something that most can relate to. It is also a topic that can be interpreted in a plethora of ways, making it a precise art to be able to narrow down the best artifacts that will complement each other. 

I got this idea from a novel I read earlier in the year, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. My first artifact is a quote from this book, "And in that moment I swear we were infinite." The feeling of infinity is ineffable, but in the context of this sentence, it becomes crystal clear. As a second artifact, I would love to use the infinity symbol. Sure, it's predictable, but it has great meaning behind it and it represents the definition of the word to its entirety.

Q4 Reading Goals

1. Read a total of 1400 pages this quarter
2. Read in unique places each week (i.e in a tree, on the roof), not just in my room or at school
3. Read at least one Classic Literature novel
4. Read at least 30 minutes each day

Catching Fire

As I came to the conclusion of Catching Fire, I realize that I have dragged out this book and posts as long as possible. Books like The Hunger Games and Catching Fire are ones that you hope will never end. Ever flip of the page is a sweat-breaking thrill to find out what is going to happen next, but also is a pain-inducing agony at the thought of coming closer to the end. Now I have one more book, Mockingjay, until my true expedition through the adventurous life of Katniss will finally come to an end. Like before, I'll try not to bore you with my familiar summaries, but instead focus in on one of my favorite parts.
After President Snow announces that the Quarter Quell (75th anniversary of The Games) will contain the surviving victors from previous years, Katniss immediately knows she's headed back into the arena. Haymitch, her mentor, is chosen as the male tribute, but instead Peeta takes his place. Things start to heat up even more as Katniss secretly decides to sacrifice herself to save Peeta.

For the interview, Katniss wears one of the gowns that was chosen for her for the wedding between her and Peeta. But this time, she feels that something is different; it is heavier. Cinna, her stylist, instructs her to turn around and lift her hands up at the right time during the interview. When the time comes, she obeys and the dress catches fire (it's always a thrilling moment when you figure out the title of the book) and burns off of her body, making her appear as a mockingjay. The mockingjay is the object upon Katniss' pin that she wore as a token from her hometown. It was given to her by her friend, Madge, and it is later discovered that it belonged to Madge's aunt, Maysilee, who died in the second Quarter Quell games. The mockingjay acts as a symbol of Katniss' rebellion and is also a slap in the face to the Capitol as the mockingay was created as the Capitol's disastrous attempt of using jabberjays to spy and obtain crucial information from the districts. By once again bringing the prominence of the mockingjay forward for all of the Panem, including the Capitol, to see, Katniss not only stands out among the other tributes, but proves her bravery and strength going into the next Games. She is there to fight and she is not going to  fall under cruel, unjust influence of the Captiol.