Week 5 Post B

I believe that the strongest and most important part of a story is the main conflict. In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the main conflict is that of a father and son struggling to survive in a barren land which takes a tole on their relationship and love. This main conflict always kept me wanting to read more of the book and find out what will happen next. At one point in the story however, the father and son find a secret emergency bunker filled with food, clothing and everything that they would need to survive. I was let down at this turn of events because the main conflict had temporarily been resolved. For this section of 30 or so pages, it was very painful to read and it seemed slow and boring. For me, there was no main conflict, no suspense, no hunger and no struggle to survive. Eventually, the father and son are forced to move on and face the elements again but I was confused why McCarthy put that part in the story. I do not feel that it was a good use of writing because all it did was temporarily suspend the main conflict and all the action that made the story interesting and suspenseful. I am not however, criticizing the setting or most of the plot. I enjoy reading about the father and the son but I feel that this particular portion of the story could have been left out.

Week 5 Post A

Definitions

Tableau (77)-a picturesque grouping of persons or objects; a striking scene.
Bedlam (82)-a scene or state of wild uproar and confusion.

Figurative Language

"He looked at the house an he looked out over the dripping countryside an then let the door back down and descended the steps and set about making breakfast"(130) This is a little like personification but humans can't exactly "drip" so I would call this more of a metaphor. Even though McCarthy doesn't spend a lot of time describing the father's viewpoint, this sentence brings memories of camping and all of the times I have been wet and miserable. I can relate to the feelings that the father and son are going through.

"The faintly lit hatchway lay in the dark of the yard like a grave yawning at judgment day in some old apocalyptic painting"(131)

"The boy going ahead with a broom and clearing the way of sticks and branches and the man bent over the handle of the cart watching the road fall away before them"(131) McCarthy uses clever personification to describe the monotonous journey to the ocean from the father's point of view. It is almost like the races I compete in and how I pick a spot in the road as a short term goal and use that to reference my long term progress. This is how I imagined what the father and son must have been doing.

Quote

I know you thought we were going to die.
Yeah.
But we didn't.
No.
Okay.

Here is another example of McCarthy's dialogue. It is hard for a majority of writers to write about death and being close to death because it is often times hard for the reader to relate. In this case, McCarthy keeps the discussion of death simple and straight forward.

Theme

Throughout the novel, the son always asks his father about good and bad. One theme that reoccurs in the story is that of good, and the temptations of evil. The father and son's journey is a test to see if they can remain "the good guys" and not give in to the bad. These tests include ravaging hunger, opportunities to take advantage of people and mental hardships that test their will.

Week 4 Post B

Dear Cormac McCarthy,

I know for watching your interviews with Opera in L.A. class that you do no google yourself so you will probably never see this. I wanted to start off by analyzing the two books of yours that I have read. All the Pretty Horses and The Road have both won many awards but I feel that they have two different writing styles. Yes, both books use the same method of dialogue but The Road uses shorter sentences and simple metaphors to convey the feelings of the two main characters whereas All the Pretty Horses uses many long and sometimes paragraph-like sentences to describe feelings and setting. Both styles do an excellent job of providing the reader enough information and make the book interesting to read. I was also shocked to see the contrast in settings between the two books. Most writers have a certain era that they prefer to write in and you seem to break the status quo with your books ATPH and The Road. ATPH takes place in the 1900's which is more than one hundred years apart from the setting of The Road and its post-apocalyptic setting. I enjoyed both books, the differences between them and I look forward to reading more of you books in the future.

Week 4 Post A

Definitions

trellis (75)-a framework of this kind used as a support for growing vines or plants.
parsible (76)- I wasn't able to find a definition for this word. Oddly enough, dictionary.com didn't recognize the word.
idiom (75) -A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements

Figurative language

"Stood looking where the last of that ragged horde seemed to hang like an afterimage in the disturbed air" (78). The slaves that McCarthy describes have a large effect on the father and son. To the father, the horde symbolizes what will happen to himself if he should stop fighting against the harsh elements.

"The boy's candle colored skin was all but translucent. With his great staring eyes he'd the look of an alien" (109). McCarthy uses a metephor here to emphasize the desperate situation that the father and son are in. Any modern day person looking at these two main characters must feel that they do look like aliens because of their lack of hygiene and food.

"Steam was coming off of him like smoke" (124). This is another simple simile that reminded me of elementary school in Michigan. The first thing that every kid does when it is cold outside is huff at the air and watch the steam rise from their mouth pretending to smoke a cigarette.

Quote

"The world shrinking down about a raw core of parisble entities... More fragile than he hould have thought. How much was gone already? In time to wink out forever" (75).

Theme

The two main characters haven't had anything to eat in a couple weeks. The underlying themes of family and friendship still endure however, now both the father and the son seem to be counting down the days until they die. Their progress and will haven't faltered but they carry on knowing that they are walking themselves to their death.

Week 3 Post B

Cormac McCarthy is such a stud. Not only could he possibly be related to me, but his writing style is truly unique. McCarthy uses an abstract writing style that keeps the details down to a minimum but still manages to get themes of love and survival across, all in small paragraphs. He also rarely uses quotation marks, which takes some getting used to, however i feel that it is a clever stylistic choice that makes the dialogue between the father and the son significant even though they are the only two characters in the whole book. Here is an example.

Did you have any friends?
Yes. I did.
Lots of them?
Yes.
Do you remember them?
Yes. I remember them.
What happened to them?
They died.
All of them?
Yes. All of them.
Do you miss them?
Yes. I do.

McCarthy doesn't follow the conventional quoting rules but it is still clear to the reader who is speaking. McCarthy is able to to this because there are only two characters in the book at this point; the father and son. Through this technique, McCarthy is able to give each character a unique voice while keeping the actual words spoken down to a minimum.

Week 3 Post A

Definitions

Cormac McCarthy's writing style uses many unconventional words that I seldom encounter. As a result, I may have more definitions than just two.

Basalt (30)-he dark, dense igneous rock of a lava flow or minor intrusion, composed essentially of labradorite and pyroxene and often displaying a columnar structure.

Piedmont (40)-a plateau between the coastal plain and the Appalachian Mountains, including parts of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.

Penitent (46)-Roman Catholic Church. a person who confesses sin and submits to a penance.

Figurative language

Following a stone wall in the dark, wrapped in his blanket, kneeling in the ashes like a penitent."(46). I didn't know what a penitent was, however using the context I was able to guess that it was some sort of religious person. The word "like" made it a simile which was an easy target for my figurative language section of my blog. Describing the father as a penitent shows the weakness and the vulnerability that he is going through. McCarthy uses small scenes like these to characterize the father and son in unique and interesting ways.

Reflecting back the sun deep in the darkness like a flash of knives in a cave"(35). This quote sounds like a nice and thoughtful simile however, McCarthy is actually describing dead bodies in the bottom of a semi truck and comparing them to knives in a cave. Pretty delicious ehh?

"He shoved the pistol in his belt and slung the knapsack over his shoulder and picked up the boy and turned him around and lifted him over his head and set him on his shoulders and set off up the old roadway at a dead run, holding the boy's knees, the boy clutching his forehead, coved with gore and mute as stone"(56). Contrary to popular belief, I didn't use this quote solely because it is a very long quote. The figurative language at the end of the quote is more significant to the reader if it is given in context. McCarthy describes the boy as "mute as stone" to show the state of shock that he is in. His father has just murdered a random traveler and now the two are running for their lives.

Quote

"He wiped the blood from his face and held him. It's okay, he said. It's okay"(57). OMG! The father has just killed his first victim. He is clearly turning into a psychopathic killer who will stop at nothing to drink the blood of others.

Theme

The main theme at this point in the book is simple, run for your freekin lives. Or if you want a more English oriented equivalent of that last sentence, every man for himself.

Week 2 Post B

Often times, we like to think that women are exactly the same as men when it comes to roles in society. But even when women have the same constitutional rights as men, our society still sets out different standards for men and women. For example, we generally think it is ok for a women to stay at home and take care of the house. In fact, it is considered a sign of wealth if a wife can stay home. However, if a husband stays home while the mother works, people would think it's creepy and that the husband is down right lazy. From the knowledge I have gained from my AP World class, this has been happening since the very beginning of time in Mesopotamia (Not that the AP Euro students would know this TOM AND AMY!) The two genders have always played unique roles in the development of society but the males in each culture seem to dominate. I am not saying that males are better, I'm simply saying that women and men aren't as equal as we would like them to be.

Week 2 Post A

Definitions

Primrose(26)- any plant of the genus
Sectarian(28)- narrowly confined or limited in interest, purpose, scope, etc.

Figurative language

"Everything was alight. As if the lost sun were returning at last. The snow orange and guivering. A forest fire was making its way along the tinderbox ridges above them, flaring and shimmering against the overcast like the northern lights"(27). Cormac McCarthy isn't afraid to expres his thoughts and feelings in short and disconnected sentences. In this quote, McCarthy strings together three or four similes that describe the terraine around him. The land he describes is actually very bleak and grey but by using the similies, he is able to draw the reader's attension to the little details that give the father hope.


Quote

"Slogging to the edge of the road with hhis back to the child where he stood bent with his hands on his knees, coughing. He raised up and stood with weeping eyes. On the gray snow a fine mist of blood"(26). Yeah Son! My hat is off to the father for sucking it up and dealing with the pain he is going through. I don't have a clue what is wrong with the father, but he can't show his son that he is sick otherwise both of them will lose moral. Pain=good and Tom=Noob.

Theme

Not much has changed in the last 10 pages that I read. The bond between the father and son seems to be crucial to their survival. The father continues to push on through the baren and snowy land in hopes of finding a better life, and keeping his son alive. His son counts on his dad to get him through the difficult challenges that they face. Together, both of them count on eachother and depend on eachother to survive.

Odyssey Vocab 1

Here's the link to the vocab that I made on quizlet: http://quizlet.com/set/184423/

Week 1 Post B

"Can I ask you something? he said.
Yes. Of course.
Are we going to die?
Sometime. Not now."

This quote happens just before the father and son go to bed in the middle of a barren field that is covered in ash. Although the reader doesn't know how old the son is, we are able to see that he is very scared and anxious about what is going to happen to them. The father, in this case, is asked an extremely difficult question but answers honestly, calmly and lovingly. I believe that most parents, when put in the same situation, would reassure their children that they will never die but the father from McCarthy's novel comes up with a clever way of giving the truth, without letting his son panic. McCarthy describes very little physical characteristics of the father and son but from quotes like these, we can see that the father has a very strong bond with his son to the point where he would sacrifice anything for him. I look forward to reading this book to find more about the nuclear devastation and how it effects the relationship between the father and son.

Week 1 Post A

Definitions

glaucoma(3)-bnormally high fluid pressure in the eye, most commonly caused either by blockage of the channel through which aqueous humor drains
flowstone(3)-a layered deposit of calcium carbonate, CaCO₃, left by thin sheets of flowing water, as in a cave.
granitic(3)-a coarse-grained igneous rock composed chiefly of orthoclase and albite feldspars and of quartz, usually with lesser amounts of one or more other minerals, as mica, hornblende, or augite.
congeal(4)-to change from a soft or fluid state to a rigid or solid state, as by cooling or freezing.

Figurative language

"The lamp in the rocks on the side of the hill was little more than a mote of light"(8). This is a metaphor because Cormac McCarthy describes it as a "mote" although it is clearly not. This is an excellent comparison because of all the smoke and ash caused by the nuclear fallout in suffocating the lamp's light to a point where it is just a dull glow in the night.

"He caught [the snowflake] in his hand an watched it expire there like the last host of Christendom(13). I don't know the exact word for this type of figurative language but McCarthy references Christendom in his book to give the reader a connection to the characters in the book. The reference helps the reader see the father and son more as normal people rather than characters in a fictional nuclear war.

Quote

"You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget(10). This just stuck me as an interesting quote that I thought was ironically true. In the father's case, he has already suffered terrible losses and the quote signifies an emotional reality. However, I enjoyed this quote because it seems that on tests at school I always seem to remember the stuff that isn't on the test and forget the stuff that is.

Theme- So far, we know very little about the father and his son but we do know that they are the last two people alive in their area. One theme seems to be that love can carry a person through anything. At one point in the novel, the father goes to the extreme when he answers a question from his son saying, "If you died I would want to die too"(9).

Remember The Name Son!

Soundtrack to The Odyssey

Song name: Remember The Name
Artist: Fort Minor
Album: The Rising Tied

The one word that relates Telemachus to Remember the name is: underdog. We see in the novel that the suiters criticize Telemachus and his effort to find his father. The early transformation of Telemachus shows his effort to try to become more confident as a man and more comfortable with who he is. He often appears to be alone socially and in his beliefs which is demonstrated by the suiters when the refuse to leave Telemachus' house. His underdog status encourages the reader to root for him and keep reading to see what happens.

Similarly, the song Remember The Name, describes a young rapper who is trying to make it in the music business, but no one will even bother to give him a chance.
Mike! - He doesn't need his name up in lights
He just wants to be heard whether it's the beat or the mic
He feels so unlike everybody else, alone
In spite of the fact that some people still think that they know him
But no, he knows the code
It's not about the salary
It's all about reality and making some noise
Making the story - making sure his clique stays up
That means when he puts it down Tak's picking it up! Let's go!
Like Telemachus, the person Fort Minor is describing doesn't want fame or fortune but rather wants people to hear what he has to say and to take him seriously. Both "characters" have amazing tallent at what they do but are frequently underestimated in their abilities. Telemachus gets put down by the suiters while the character in Remember the Name has a hard time getting respect from his family and others because he raps.

Week 7 Post B

"Mariam heard of women who were killing themselves out of fear of bing raped, and of men who, in the name of honor, would kill their wives or daughters if they'd been raped by the militia."

I believe that fear is detrimental to any society whether that society and can cause unpredictability, hardships and even war. In fact, I believe that all wars in man's history were caused by fear. The British were afraid they would lose their colonies in America curring the Revolutionary war. Lincoln feared that the United States would lose their unity and fought to preserve it during the Civil War. Most recently, the United States feared terrorism and weapons of mass destruction and invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Fear drove Mariam and Liala to kill their husband and fear changed the city that they lived in. In Mariam and Liala's case, the Taliban, who were once praised, staged public massacres which kept people off the streets and their whole economy suffered as a result.

Week 7 Post A

Definitions

Mewling(226)- To cry weakly; whimper.

Blithely(218)- Joyous, merry, or gay in disposition; glad; cheerful:

Figurative Language

"And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hop, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold"(229). This quote uses the flowers to symbolize Mariam's hopes and dreams. Because she doesn't want to be let down, she doesn't hope for any love or anything special in her life.

"Mariam could see their wings catching the phosphorescent blue of moonlight beaming through the clouds"(218). I felt that this was good description on Khaled Hosseini's part. It almost seems like poetry when reading this book. It adds and element that provides the reader something extra to think about.

"The baby's hand balled into a fist. It rose, fell, found a spastic path to her mouth. Around a mouthful of her own hand, the baby gave Mariam a grin, little bubbles of spittle shining on her lips"(217). I liked how Khaled Hosseini used appealing words to describe an unappealing, sloppy baby. It shows his creative side and shows that he put some effort into what he tries to convey to his reader.

Quote

"The streets became littered with bodies, glass, and crumpled chunks of metal. There was looting, murder, and, increasingly, rape, which was used to intimidate civilians and reward militiamen"(227).

Students at EHS have heard and dealt with tragic events such as shootings and suicides and constantly tell themselves, "I'm lucky it wasn't me." It's hard to see just how fortunate we are and Khaled Hosseini's knowledge of Kabul and the hardships that people experience there on an everyday basis provides a better prospective on our lives. Making the comparison from my life to the book gets me thinking about the whole world rather than complaining about the homework that is due the next day at school.

Theme

For the first time, the two seemingly separate plots come together and create an unusual tension and hatred between the two main characters. As they grow together, the reader learns that feelings of anxiety and disgust can quickly turn into hope and happiness.

Week 6 Post B

For this week I decided to write about an event that has always happened to me but was never brought to my at attention until I read A Thousand Splendid Suns. The two main characters, who are in love, are watching a romantic movie together.

"On the screen, Alyona and her new husband locked lips. Watching the kiss, Laila felt strangely conspicuous all at once. She became intensely aware of her heart thumping, of the blood thudding in her ears, of the shape of Tariq beside her, tightening up, becoming still."(141)

I think that this has happened to almost everybody at one point in their life or another. Personally, this has happened to me when watching movies with my friends. Everybody knows that there has to be at least one romantic scene in a movie and when it finally comes, everybody is too afraid to make even the slightest movements. Even being the person that I am, jokes never seem appropriate during a make out scene in a movie.