Tris is Important

Have you ever felt torn or confused? A lot of people have; it’s a common feeling to have. Personally, this is one of the feelings I experience quite often. A lot of things happen where I have to choose between doing what I want to do and doing what my loved ones are doing. Yes, usually my loved ones do what is right, but sometimes they don’t, and that’s when I feel very torn. But I always do what my loved ones do because I feel safe when I know I’m choosing something other people I love are choosing too. This is where Tris, the main character of Veronica Roth’s Insurgent, and me disagree completely.

         Tris almost always does what she wants to do, no matter the cost. She throws herself in situations where she most certainly will die. She thinks she can discover secrets by thrusting herself in the enemy’s way. In one part, she races after Jeanine, the bad guy, and almost gets herself shot in the head by friend-turned-traitor Peter, if Tobias, her boyfriend, hadn’t been there to drag her away. This is not the first time something like this has happened. Tris attacks Peter in the Amity compound for stealing her hard drive, getting herself drugged with powerful laughing gas as a result. She turns herself in to the Erudite, the bad guys, and the result is her immediate execution, in which she lives with a very impressive turn of events as Peter is found out to be the one who saved her. Who knew he was not completely bad!

         After all these near-death experiences, she risks losing the most important person to her out of everyone: Tobias. He tells her “if you throw yourself into one more dangerous situation, without thinking, you and I are through.” This hits home with Tris because he is the one person she always thought would be there by her side. I think Tris needs to think before she acts and realize that these situations end in certain death. And not just for her: if she dies, Tobias’s heart is crushed, and so is the Dauntless faction because she is like a leader to them. She is the bravest out of Dauntless, and that makes her a really important person. She doesn’t know how many lives she will destroy if she dies. She doesn’t know how many people will be heartbroken if she dies. I think she doesn’t know how important she really is. That’s why she throws herself into these situations, and is shocked when things like her almost brake up with Tobias happen. She doesn’t think she means anything. I think she needs to realize that she does.

         Tris needs to realize how important she is. If she doesn’t realize this now, she is eventually going to die and that will throw the world into chaos. Tris needs to think, and think hard, about what she could lose and what she will lose if she dies, because she will lose both. I think this is Tris’s greatest weakness. Not knowing the power she holds over people. I think eventually it will bring her down. 

The Drummer Boy of Shiloh

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 probably the youngest person 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. That I could go into kindergarten as a four-year old. My teachers thought this as well, and so I went to kindergarten. Ever since then, I have always felt a tiny bit out of it. As if all the other kids were a lot 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 by a lot. 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 tree 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. “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 knows 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 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 to take the heat of the gunfire. He knows he will die, he doesn’t romantically think 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. 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 men’s’ spirits going with a solid fast beat on the drum, and that the men and Joby are all young. “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 also 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, then it’s okay for him to be scared too. The general also gives Joby a purpose for the 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. 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 try not to get shot. 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.

Themes in The Monstrumologist

I am currently reading The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancy. I am enjoying this book quite a lot. It is very interesting. I have noticed one particular theme coming up throughout the entire book, resulting in page-long monologues from the person writing the diary. His name is Will Henry and he is the monstrumologist's assistant. This particular theme is the strange and unrecognizable relationship the monstrumologist and his assistant have. The tension and feelings drawn between them change, almost as if the two do not understand each other. 

At some points, I, the reader, think Will Henry thinks of the doctor as a father, for Will Henry doesn't have one. Will Henry will dutifully do what the doctor tells him to, no matter how tired he is from days of sleep deprivation. The next page the doctor will ask him to do another errand and Will Henry will get defensive in his mind and say things like 'this is the big moment, where I show him I don't belong to him' and ' what is he doing, thinking he can act like my father.' At times, it seems as if Will Henry is blaming the doctor for the death of his father, a tragic death in a fire. It feels almost as if Will Henry doesn't trust the doctor. When the doctor sends him out to the market, Will Henry thinks of escape. He says in his head 'it wasn't the first time this thought had come to mind.' The tendency to escape has overcome him multiple times. He would rather be somewhere else. But he has no other family. Where would he go?

Yet, at the same time, the doctor seems to need Will Henry a lot. Not just for his services, which, as the doctor puts it, are 'indispensable', but for company as well. I almost think the indispensable quality is not the work Will Henry does for the doctor, but actually the company he brings. Late at night, the doctor will call Will Henry to his side just so Will Henry is there, sitting beside him. It's almost like the doctor fears about the monsters he faces, and nighttime is the only time he can let it out, in his nightmares. I think to the doctor, the fact that Will Henry will get up in the middle of the night without question, and just sit with him when the doctor is scared; I think the doctor thinks that quality is indispensable. 

The doctor and Will Henry have very confusing feelings towards each other. The doctor thinks Will Henry's quality of being there whenever he needs him is indispensable and Will Henry thinks of running away sometimes, or challenging the doctor's ideas, but other times he seems to think of him as a father. Their relationship is very confusing, at this point, and I hope I get a better grip on it when I'm farther through the book. 

Exceptional Reading Responses

Today I read Zozi's blog post about the book he read called "In The Times of Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez. His response first struck me when he wrote of the part in which the dictator, Trujillo, tries to ruin the family's lives. He kills off most of her family, then forces her sister to work for him, and then Dede's, the main character, best friend tries to assassinate him. This part was what really drew me in. The truth that loyalty, even in a time like this, can overcome most everything. Even when things are looking so down, so deserted, so alone, Dede finds hope can help her through. The one things you never think is possible can happen. Her best friend tries to save them. It's so shocking to me because Trujillo is a murderer, who would gladly murder Dede's whole family and then sabotage them yet again, and I would be terrified of him. But Dede's friend tries to assassinate him, and that is friendship. It's almost like a movie, it's so unrealistic. In a movie, a person always saves someone in the end, and I never believed that could happen in real life. But it did. And now I will always have hope.

Next, I read Naomi B.'s response to "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" by Mark Haddon. It was interesting to read this response, because I've read this book before and loved it. However, Naomi pointed out some things I didn't notice when I read the book. Like how the prime numbers and graphs are not just something he likes to do for fun, but they show a way of mapping out his own life when his dad can't listen. I also agree with the dad having a lot to deal with, having an autistic son and all, as well as being a single parent. It must cause a lot of stress.

Long Lankin

This summer I read the book Long Lankin by Lindsey Barraclough. This book is really frightening. It is about how Cora and her little sister Mimi are sent to live with their Auntie Ida after their mother runs away and their dad has too much on his hands. Auntie Ida lives in the village of Bryers Guerdon, in Guerdon Hall. Everything is going well, until Cora realizes that the villagers go silent every time Auntie Ida walks into a room. Then they whisper about how she ‘should not be allowed to have kids stay with her.’ Then Cora and her friends Roger and Pete discover mysterious words written inside an abandoned old church, a man in the church graveyard with a scarred face, and a strange awful creature crawling through the darkness towards their bedroom. This story, while it is still very scary, is based off the most realistic fears possible.

           

Long Lankin was originally a folk song about murder, witchcraft, and revenge. The author incorporates every aspect of the folk song into her novel, down to the baby being a boy and the witch being the boy’s wet nurse. Long Lankin, however, appears in the folksong to be a man wrought with revenge over a love stolen, and this is why he kills her. In the book, however, Long Lankin is a gruesome thing not even human that crawls through the grass, preying on innocent children who live at Guerdon Hall. The author clearly changed the person of Long Lankin to be more alarming, while, in my opinion, a man himself, without the gruesomeness of the skull and bony fingers, would have scared me more. It is more frightening to have the murderer look like someone we could all have seen walking on the street any day then a gruesome monster. That would’ve been scarier three years ago.

Another source of fear is generated from that monster-in-your-house type feeling. When we were younger, we used to think that monsters where in our house, and used to sprint, heart pounding, to the bathroom in the dead of night. This book uses a lot of moments of Cora laying in bed and hearing noises of scratching and little whispers in the dark. That has all happened to us. After a nightmare, the tiniest sounds are magnified to the point of thinking that the branch scraping against a window is a monster coming up the stairs. Even though it is scary, it’s scarier for younger children.

The book Long Lankin, while still being scary, is based off the most realistic fears that have been copied and copied in many, many novels. It is using basic fears and normal feelings that you get at night in the dark or when you’re scared.