"Power" in Specials

In the book I’m reading, Specials, by Scott Westerfield, the clear person who has power in the text is Shay. The most interesting thing is that Shay was completely powerless in the last book, Pretties, and now she is clearly the alpha dog. The other people in her group, notice her group, call her Boss and always wait for her signal and do what she tells them to do. The surprising thing is she seems to know what she is doing as well. I think she has changed her ways because she was being casted out in Pretties and she became smarter and more intelligent on her own, and she created a new group that everyone wants to be a part of.

     Shay also seems to have taken the power spot from Zane, who had a ton of power over the main character, Tally, in the last book, and now that power has been handed over to Shay. I think part of the reasoning for that is that Shay is the leader of a huge Special group, while Zane is still an average pretty. Tally needs the powerful person in her life to be of the same species as her, not below her. 

Pretties

I am currently reading the book Pretties by Scott Westerfield. In this book Tally has been transformed from a repulsive ugly to a stunning pretty. She has the world at her fingertips, until she discovers that the pretty operation makes you forget things in your past. She then decides she is going back into the wild to find the New Smoke. This book contains a lot of questions about society and how I view justice and society in the world.

     I find that in Pretties, there is a lot of attacking the society’s views. Constantly people are disobeying the society because the society’s views are very extreme. The brain lesions create this state of being called “pretty minded”, which basically means you act and talk really stupidly and your vision is always a little fuzzy. It is not until you experience something incredibly exciting and your adrenaline starts pumping that you become bubbly, normal, for only a minute. The society’s workers, Specials, say they cannot make everyone bubbly all the time because people would fight and have angry emotions and wars would break out and many people would die.

     To me, I think this reasoning on the Special’s side is unintelligent. Our society functions in a state where everyone has emotions and fights sometimes, but that not only makes life interesting, it also lets people figure out who they are. Are they calm, gentle people like the pretties? Or are the opposite: mean minded and cruel. Maybe they’re like most regular human beings: kind but they have an angry side that will come out when the time is right.

     This book makes me think about society’s laws and rights. It is kind of confusing when you think about society. There are so many parts to it. Some parts that are wrong, and others that our right. Some wrong parts many people wish to right, but it never seems to happen. I wonder if it ever will. 

The Kill Order

I recently finished the book The Kill Order by James Dashner. While it was still a good read, it was not as fantastic as I expected. I had read the three books in The Maze Runner trilogy, enjoyed them very much, and this was the prequel. I had thought it would be as amazing as the trilogy was. But it was not. Well…not until the ending.

            To me, The Kill Order was an uninteresting book. It would be on my list of uninteresting books now if not for an ending that wrapped the entire prequel in context with the trilogy. Understand this: the reason it was so uninteresting was that you had been entirely enfolded with the characters in the Maze Runner series, Thomas and Teresa. To make a prequel to a popular series after the series is finished is what a lot of authors do to make the story continue. The Maze Runner series even sets you up for a prequel, since the characters lose their memory in the beginning and you want to know what their life was like before the Trials. So when readers see a prequel has been made, they want to continue Thomas and Teresa’s story since their story in the Maze Runner series is so popular you don’t want it to end. To instead open the book and be greeted with brand new characters like Mark and Trina is confusing and annoying because you don’t want to hear their story, you want to hear the story of the Gladers and how they continue to survive.

            Yes, it is interesting to learn the story of how the Flare came to be and see the struggle it took to make it to a safe land in the time of the first sun flares. And, don’t get me wrong, the author makes it very clear and precise the amount of strength and courage it took to brave the sun flare days. He also does a brilliant job of illustrating how mentally insane the Cranks are, which, in the Maze Runner series, he does a poor job of it, considering they meet a lot of nice Cranks in the series. In the Kill Order, the author’s writing is a lot worse than I remembered it was in the series.

            But, at the end, it changes everything. It is very dramatic. The young girl they found in the middle of the book who they picked up and traveled with, Deedee, Mark finds is immune to the Flare. Then Mark, Alec, and Trina all start to feel signs of the Flare, which makes their traveling to the only place that can save Deedee all the more difficult. They go to the Flat Trans, push Deedee through, and the building collapses and everyone dies except Deedee. It was very, very sad and dramatic. But that’s not the best part. In the epilogue, there is a mother and a young boy. These men in masks walk in and take the boy away from his mother. Then the men say: lets name him Thomas. This is the Thomas from the series, only many years younger. So we assume Deedee becomes Teresa. This connecty last bit made the book eons better.

            

SANDY!

There have been warnings. There have been the alarm bells going off in everyone’s head. They continued to grow louder when Irene hit last year, closing down subway stations while water rushed into Lower Manhatten. But this Monday, when New Yorkers awoke to submerged neighborhoods and drowned electrical lines, officials took their first tentative steps. They took their first tentative steps to considering major infrastructure changes that could protect the fragile shores from disastrous damage.

         The biggest fear these officials have is that now that the storm is over, people will simply move on. The storm is over, electrical lines have been repaired, power is restored, damage fixed and New Yorkers have gone back to their daily routine, storm mostly forgotten, ready to get on with their lives. It is a fear to any environmentalist that the public will forget this storm. It definitely has to do with people polluting, and for people to move on and not consider this catastrophe as possibly their fault is devastating.

         Another problem is with all the cleaning up to do, people think about that first before any environmental thing. Mayor Bloomberg said he was “too busy getting the city running to think about what’s next”. People are too busy with community service or making sure loved ones are okay to even consider what happens next. This is a major issue.

         We need to get our act together and figure this out. We can no longer blame others for this. Everyone is to blame. And we need to recognize that.

The Drummer Boy of Shiloh #2

Have you ever felt too young for something? As if the world expects you to act older than you are? I have always felt this way. I am one of the youngest people in the 8^th grade. I’m only twelve, and I turn thirteen at the end of November. When I was four, I was in my third year of preschool, and my parents felt like I didn’t need a fourth year because my teachers had said I was highly intelligent. So I went into kindergarten as a four-year old. Ever since then, I have always felt a tiny bit out of it. As if all the other kids were smarter than me just because of the one-year age difference. That they knew more things then I did. In “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh” by Ray Bradbury, I feel like Joby is experiencing this as well.

            Joby is younger than all the other soldiers. The youngest of the troop is eighteen, while Joby is only fourteen. Joby feels isolated from the other boys, the deserted island in the middle of the vast sea, the lake in the desert, the drummer boy in an army. The night before his first battle, Joby has no one to talk to, no one to calm his fears. He feels scared and doesn’t think he’ll live through the battle. He thinks the other soldiers are better prepared than he is. “Me. I only got a drum, two sticks to beat it, and no shield.” I think Joby is jealous of the soldiers’ shields. In the literal term, they do have real, metal shields, but also figuratively they have the shield of immortality. A soldier thinks he will live through the battle, he wishes and hopes with all his heart, because no one can imagine that they will ever die, then he feels like he is immortal, which is the only reason he marches into battle. Joby is not feeling immortal. He knows he will be at the front of the army with only his drum. He knows he will take the heat of the gunfire. He knows he will die, he doesn’t romantically fantasize that he won’t, he accepts it. And that’s why he cries.

            When the general comes to visit Joby, Joby describes the general’s scent as “fatherly”. Joby needs someone to look up to, and the general is the perfect person, better than any soldier in the army. He needs a fatherly figure to look up to, and the general is the father of the army. The general tells Joby it’s okay to cry, that Joby is the heart of the army, that it’s Joby’s job to keep the mens’ spirits going with a solid fast beat on the drum, and that the men and Joby are all equal. “There’s your cheek, fell right off the tree overhead. Raw, raw the lot of you.” This makes Joby feel equal to the men, not a sad, young drummer boy who no one cares about. The general then mentions that he cried last night as well. I don’t think the general actually cried last night. I think he said that to show Joby that it’s all right to be scared, to give Joby the feeling that if the general is scared, that the father of the army is scared, then it’s okay for Joby to be scared too. The general also gives Joby a purpose in battle, making Joby feel more included and important. The general changes the way Joby thinks about the battle and the army as well.

            Joby felt as if he had no purpose in the army. I felt as if the other kids were smarter than me. He felt as if he was too young, too small to be in a big army. That the only thing for him to do was to bang his drum and take the heat of the gunfire. After he talked with the general, Joby now has a purpose. He is the heart of the army: the sound beneath the footsteps of the marching men. He decides if they walk fast or slow. He decides if they are strong or weak. He is no longer a fourteen-year-old banging on a drum in front of a whole army with no shield to protect him from enemy fire. No, he is the drummer boy at Shiloh.