Really? Yes Really.

Finally. Yes, we have finally finished those confounded in class discussions. As you probably guessed, I’m not a huge fan of the small group discussions. Anyways, I actually found this one a bit more productive than usual, most of us did our share of talking and we actually touched on some fairly out-of-the-box connections to the overall story. We discussed a case similar to Melinda’s, the main difference being that this poor girl didn’t have such a happy ending. Not to say Melinda’s had a happy ending, but it was much better than this girl’s. In short, the case similar to Melinda’s was the one of a girl in Texas, raped by an upperclassman like Melinda, but, unlike Melinda, she told the police what happened and was ridiculed, humiliated, and hurt because the police didn’t believe her (and the football guys ran away shooting and/or throwing stuff at the cops). It took this girl nearly commiting suicide for the police to notice and take a closer look.

Ouch. This made me cringe, and it made my classmates pretty up-in-arms about the whole deal. Even more so than usual up-in-arms-ness most people at ASTI seem to have. First I explained the whole deal with the Texas cheerleader and we linked it in various ways to Melinda’s story. It was a pretty productive compare-and-contrast, what Melinda did that the other girl didn’t and vice versa, etc. etc. etc. But, unfortunately the conversation turned to the same old “why didn’t she talk?!?!” thing again.

And in the spirit of finally being done with the book, I’ll add some of my own thoughts and reflections in the few words I have left to get my point across. I honestly had a hard time reading this book for a second time, though I’m not completely sure why. It might have something to do with how such a little book (less than 200 pages) can convey so much pain and loss and sorrow. It really isn’t a book I’d suggest to people any younger than high-school age... it’s pretty dark. The back of the book actually says something about it being “darkly funny”. I find nothing funny in this book, just the suffering of a girl that really doesn’t need to suffer.

Not So Sure...

In our literature circle discussion on Friday, it was pretty much more of the same. In all honesty, I find the lit circle discussions irritating because we haven’t really worked out a system to actually discuss the topic. It’s really more of a Lit Circle Argument than anything else. More often than not, your opinion on the matter at hand is brutally rebutted and you are told point-blank that you are wrong. No matter how logical what you said was. On that note, I’ll head into the topic of the discussion itself. This week, we were asked to focus more on level three questions, or, in layman’s terms, questions that apply in everyday life. As I noted earlier, we discussed many of the things this week that we did last week, however, we attempted to apply our earlier musings to something closer to reality. Questions like “Why don’t some parents (who no longer actually love each other) get divorced even if staying married has a more negative effect on them and their children?”, “Why do so many schools have to cut their budgets?”, and “Why isn’t art really appreciated in schools anymore?”. These are some pretty interesting questions, but I’m not sure that they are the right kind of questions for Literature circle discussions seeing as there are a whole host of answers for each, so we can’t ever really discover the solutions, which is what we’re aiming for, right? Ask a question that relates to your book and reality, then find a way to answer your question, thus solving one more of the great mysteries of the world. Something I’ve always wanted to learn is how we think. Not what we think or why do we think, but how. How do we understand words in our head? How do we build images of things that are there? How the hell do our minds work? What overly complex math equation holds the answer? See there is a question that we would all love to have answered, one of the biggest mysteries of the world. If we can’t even answer our small lit circle discussion questions, how are we ever to answer bigger ones like that? Yeah, I understand that this post is about a million years late posting-wise, but I suppose it’s a good thing I still got it done.

Oh Look, The Bird's Eating Again

In the interest of being honest, I found our lit circle discussion this week fairly unproductive. We seemed to go in circles for the full twenty minutes we had to talk. We at first discussed the girl herself, and one of my classmates quite loudly wondered why she didn’t just stand up for herself or tell anyone, and my response to said classmate was: “She wants to forget. Her life is falling apart at the seams and she has no clue what to do about it”. The girl in our book, Speak, is named Melinda. The summer before she started high school, she crashed a party, not telling anyone why. After that, she lost all of her friends and became a social outcast from day one of high school. Why though, doesn’t she just tell someone why? Why doesn’t she just patch things up with her friends? She just wants to escape her waking nightmare of a life, though her methods only seem to make it worse. Her parents never spend any time with each other, and slowly, Melinda realizes that her parents would have broken up a long time ago if it hadn’t been for her. This hits her hard, making her feel unwanted and a burden to her family. There’s reason one. Two, the incident over the summer has made many of her classmates feel angry, mainly because she won’t tell anyone why she called the cops. Three, she wants to forget reasons one and two. And because of these things, she slips deeper and deeper into depression and desperation until she thinks she’s going insane. She’s unsure of who she is, sometimes, she wonders if it’s not her going insane, but the rest of the world. And everything else, actually, all aspects of her life seem so surreal to her. Have you ever been the one who was shunned by everyone else? It doesn’t even have to be for the same reasons she being shunned. If you have ever been bullied like she is, you’ll understand why everything seems so unreal to her. One of my groupmates mentioned something about the book itself being badly written... when I asked why they said this, they told me that the characters were too perfect, they were too stereotypical teenager. And I asked them in turn, “have you ever been to a real high school? In a normal high school, we’d be, you’d be, the stereotypical geek. You’d meet people that these stereotypes fit like a glove.” The book isn’t the problem, what’s going on here is the simple fact that you’ve never been to a normal high school, and for your mental well-being, I hope you never do get stuck in your stereotypical high school. ASTI is definitely much better.

Sift and Search for That we Cannot Understand

 (Kite Runner Review)
Prompts:
2. For what audience(s) is this book intended, and how can you tell? (in other words, for whom would you recommend this book?)
3. What are the weaknesses of this book, in your opinion?

You’d be amazed at the controversy this book brings to literature circle discussions. The book in question is a novel called The Kite Runner,written by a man named Khaled Hosseini. This book is all about betrayal, redemption, and a twisted war. The main characters are two boys named Hassan and Amir, whom are the best of friends. Because of his roots, Hassan is hurt and humiliated, and Amir doesn’t do anything to stop it. Overcome with guilt for not helping, Amir pushes Hassan away, not realizing that this wasn’t the right course of action. A while after Hassan is hurt, the Russians invade Kabul, their hometown. Hassan having been gone a good amount of time, only Amir and his father are left to flee to Pakistan and eventually America. Amir spends the rest of his life in America, marrying a beautiful woman while living there. After living many years in America, Amir gets called back to his hometown to salvage what he could of his past...

This book is intended for the teenage/young adult audience. This is clearly shown by the content, language used, and length. The content of this book revolves around some very messed up incidents in two children’s lives, things that, if someone younger than (about) highschool age would be horrible traumatized to read. The language is clear and well put together, and lacks (thankfully) redundancy. For example:

“A look of disgust swept across his rain-soaked face. It was the same look he’d given me when, as a kid, I’d fall, scrape my knees, and cry. It was the crying that brought it on then, the crying that brought it on now.” (157)

I particularly liked this scene because of the vivid detail that doesn’t use too many words to convey. It shows pain, a bleary depressing background, and a relationship, all in just two sentences. It amazes me how well authors are able to put their thoughts together like this. I must say I’m jealous. There are other, probably better examples of Hosseini’s interesting writing style. For one thing, the book is in first person, a risky way to write because you can’t have a character know too much before things happen, also because of his mixed use of Afghani and English in the dialogue. The use of mixed languages provides an intimacy to the book, I suppose it makes it seems more like you are in the book when reading it.The length of this book is also an indicator. It is not often that I see children younger than at least middle school age reading books this long. It’s a sorry truth that our younger generations don’t read books much longer than about 300 pages because they simply don’t want to focus on it that long. Because of this fact, something as simple as the length of this book indicates that it’s intended audience is teenagers and young adults.

Though I greatly enjoyed this book, I felt it had just a couple weaknesses. In all honesty, I felt that the conflict with Assef is left unresolved. Sure, Sohrab and Amir triumph in one battle, but the war was not yet won.

“The whole world rocking up and down, swooping side to side, I hobbled down the steps leaning on Sohrab. From above Assef’s screams went on and on, the cries of a wounded animal” (291)

“The screams went on and on, the cries of a wounded animal” This is a perfect example of how they did not conquer the problem of Assef. They wounded him badly and escaped his wrath, but they didn’t find a way of removing him from the back of their minds for a good long time. I’m not saying they should kill him (though after what he’s done...) but the author should have at least found a way of getting rid of him forever. With this things he’s done, Assef would be given twenty life sentences and the death penalty. Am I the only one with the feeling that there’s something missing at this point in the plot? Sure, Amir reaches his goal. Sure, Sohrab escapes. But we never deal with Assef, who brought the original issue from the beginning. From the point where conflict began in this book, the story branches, intertwining with other segments from time to time, but still branching enough for there to be clear subplots and subtext. The Assef subplot (from now on referred to as “Subplot A”) has a beginning, a middle, and no end. Where there should have been an end to Subplot A, there was an intersection between the main plot and the subplot, perfectly reasonable, if the subplot had been resolved there, instead of standing still for the rest of the book, making us wonder if Assef would show up again, patched up and thirsty for blood at any moment. So overall, the subplot needs a bit of work, and this is my main issue with this book, my only complaint.

In conclusion, though I loved this book, I also had issues with it (love-hate relationship, no?). But many pros and cons of this book that were unmentioned were born of the literature group discussions held during class time and I feel that I should have branched out my own writing more into those subjects. Controversy was a popular part of any discussion, as it is in general life. Whether this is a good guy or a bad guy, if he’ll help or hinder, whose fault it was that something-or-other happened, etc. These were just a few subjects in need of recognition that not touched upon in this piece. I fear I’m rambling, repeating myself time-and-time again as I try desperately to convey how important it is to realize it’s not just my opinion that matters, nor even yours. It is the opinion of the masses that will win this battle of controversy in the end.

Mixed Review

So, in section two of The Kite Runner (p.125-242) Amir heads back to Kabul at Rahim’s request. He is told that Hassan needs his help. After much debate with himself, he buckles and flies to meet his old friend Rahim. And our section ends with Amir leaving a home that had offered him shelter for a night on his way to Kabul.

So there’s your basic summary of what’s happened so far, but what do I want to say?

In many of my classmate’s logic (as I believe I mentioned in my last post) their views are clouded by a misguided belief that they’re supposed to dislike Amir because he dislikes himself so much. I find this frustrating, because many logical arguments are shot down, not through more logic, but by sheer stubbornness and will. But for now, that’s beside the point. I found this section very telling, not only because of Amir’s reactions to learning that Hassan was his brother, but also because of Amir’s driver’s reactions to Amir growing up in a wealthier section of Kabul. The driver rants at him continually, calling him a “tourist in his own country”, claiming that he had never actually seen the real Kabul. However, after hearing the real reason that Amir was returning, the driver relents and apologizes, ultimately helping him towards his goal. This shows how the horrors of the wars in Afghanistan has changed the world he knew, and how it changed the people within it, causing them to be less trusting and more judgmental.

The wars in Afghanistan changed the country in interesting ways, they describe a time before the wars when the place was peaceful, trusting, when a credit card was a stick they cut notches in. It is something that my generation probably cannot imagine, because as long as I can remember, Afghanistan is seen as a battlefield and ultimately unsafe in everyway. It is portrayed as such on TV, in the papers... pretty much in all modern media. Hosseini paints an excellent picture of what the country was like before all this happened, though Amir’s story creates a sad contrast to the world he portrays.

Kites and Needles

In this first section of the book (pg. 1-124) we are introduced to the main characters, Amir and Hassan. Amir is a troubled young boy, struggling to find his place in a man’s world, one which his father has pushed him into against his will. Amir’s father, Baba, views his son as something of a challenge, something that needs to be molded, to fit his idea of a man, perhaps because of some atrocity that appeared in his own childhood, one he is trying to save his son from. And lucky young Master Amir’s best friend, Hassan, is spared from a similar fate. Hassan is a Hazara, a race viewed simply as unclean, inferior, compared to the Afghani. So, while Amir suffers from a oppressing culture, Hassan is in some ways freer than his friend. Though he does not attend school, he has a quick mind, and is indeed capable of many things the rest of their world say are impossible for a Hazara. So here, pretty basically, are your main characters for the time being.

Delving into the underlying meanings in the language, or put simply, reading between the lines, you see a more complex weave of connections, more ways in which you might finally understand a character’s mind. You start to notice the subtleties in mannerisms each character uses towards other characters. And if this makes no sense, try placing yourself in the book, a silent,invisible, witness to every scene described, and watch. Simple watch the small changes in grammar, the way they move their hands, everything. And eventually you’ll see a pattern in the chaos, a pattern, that when interpreted correctly can tell you a characters exact feelings towards another character, and hints towards what they may be hiding. The language in this book is fascinating, in some areas, foreign words are explained, and in others, they leave you to use context and wits to figure it out for yourselves. It’s somewhat like a foreign friend saying an unfamiliar phrase, and rather forgetting to explain what it means. The incorrect grammar is also interesting, when used in dialogue indicates translation to English from another language, as if someone were remembering the tale and retelling it in another tongue.