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.

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.