Blog #6

We are currently watching O Brother, where art thou? in English, and I love it! It is such an interesting movie. I remember watching like 10 minutes of it like 5 years ago and being extremely bored but now its super enjoyable. There are many connections that I have seen between the movie and the Odyssey, which it is based on. The church congregation and women who enchant the 'brothers' are analogous to the Lotus-Eaters in the Odyssey. George Nelson is similar to Odysseus, who both after great feats, robbing a bank and blinding the Cyclops respectively, vy for attention and call out there names in a vain attempt to gain recognition among the people. Also, the blind african-american man in the beginning of the movie is like Athena giving Odysseus advice on their journey and what they will encounter. I also thought that the cars were like the ships in the Odyssey that take the brothers from one place to another.

Blog #5

Great book so far...It is the most interesting book about the Holocaust that I have read. It is narrarated by death ( i found out) and so there is way too much foreshadowing that I would rather not know. Here is a good quote I found that gives away a later part in the book.
"The Hubermanns had two of their own, but they were older and had moved out. Hans Junior worked in the center of Munich, and Trudy held a job as a housemaid and child minder. Soon, they would both be in the war. One would be making bullets. The other would be shooting them," (Zusak 39).
From this, I can tell that one of the Hubermanns will join the Nazi's and fight for Germany in the frontlines of World War II while another one will be behind the scenes, not participating directly. I thought it was a really unique way of describing the turn of events.

Blog Post #4.

Im not even one eighth of the way into the Book Thief and its so utterly confusing. All I understand is that there is the narrator-a male who is following a little girl (wow, sounds creepy) and I don't know if he is a dead spirit or a real person because nobody sees him (at least not so far). And this guy takes dead people's souls and warms them up or something. Right now the mom is taking the little girl and the dead boy to the orphanage. Apparntly, the mom is carrying the dead body of the boy, but I thought it just said that they buried him. Maybe that was the plan crash. AHHH! I better keep reading. But one quote i really liked is: " A Translation: Himmel=Heaven. Whoever named Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that it was a living hell. It wasn't. But it sure as hell wasn't heaven, either," (Zusak 26).

Blog Post #3.

We finished the Odyssey in class this week! I was very excited...until we were assigned a paper- not that I hadn't known about it of course. But I was writing my essay today thinking I was going to write about one theme, and then I experienced a revelation and am very proud of myself for coming up with a contradictory thesis that was exactly the opposite of what I originally intended. I'm writing about the roles of women in the story. At first, looking at the book comprehensively, I had thought that women played a big part and displayed power, independance and other charateristics commonly associated with men. However, as I looked closer, these supposed actions were within themselves contradictory. For example, we see Athena's power to transform herself into Mentor, a man who guides Odysseus and Telemachus, appearing before kings of other lands and many other people. But the fact that Athena has to turn herself into a man in the first place is disparaging. It illustrates that a woman showing herself in public to be bold, talking to mean as equals and taking leadership would not have a very a good reception. She needed to be a man so that people would listen to her.

Blog Post #2

I just finished reading a book called MAD DOGS by Robert Muchamore. It is the 8th book in an AMAZING SERIES! It is about kid spies (except they are wayyyy advanced) who infiltrate some gangs and try to learn enough inside information to break them up and arrest the leaders. The main characters are: James, Micheal, Gabrielle, Bruce, Kerry, Major Dee, Sasha Thompson. The 3 gangs' names are: The slasher boys who use machetes and knives as choice of weapons. The Runts who are a neighborhood boy gang. And a newly created MAd Dog gang. They are all very immersed in illegal drug trade, robberies, thefts, everything you can think of. James and Bruce are trained in a group called CHERUB. They go in undercover and make friends with gang members and have to provve their alliance, loyalty and skill. There is also very comedic romance in the book!

Outside Reading #1

I just started the Book Thief by Markus Zusak and it is very confusing. What I understand so far is that the narraration is divided into different parts. One part is a poetic paragraph, which I think is given so that people can understand what the narrarator is thinking and explaining at different moments. The main story is about a girl who apprantly steals books. I can already tell that the author incorporated colors and inevitability of death as an ongoing theme.
The book kind of reminds me of ELIC by John Foer because it has that same childish tone to it and the broken narrrarations.