Huge messages in A Long Way Gone

I've been reading A Long Way Gone, which is about child soldiers during the civil war in Sierra Leone. The main character, who is the narrator, is telling the story from his memory, it is all completely true. It's a really disturbing and depressing but it's also a strong and necessary wake up call to what we don't see of the world through watching TV and the rest of the media.

There are a lot of strong messages that I've noticed throughout the book. One of them is that war can change a person. The child soldiers become desensitized to the fighting and become unthinking killing machines. They lose everything human about them because of the horrible situations that they are put into. Another message is that family is important. Throughout the entire book, Ishmael is always searching for family. His real family, his friends that he meets along his travels, and even his squad in the army. It's a really powerful book and I think the messages in it should be heard by the entire world so that we can try and make a difference.

Review of themes in East is East

I recently finished reading the book East is East, and I noticed that there are a lot of themes that stay constant throughout the book. One of these themes is trust and betrayal. There are a lot of different trust interactions throughout the book. Another theme is ignorance and racism. The Americans know nothing about Hiro, so they resort to calling him racist names, and visa verse.

The theme of trust and betrayal is strongest in the book between Saxby, Ruth, and Hiro. Ruth hides Hiro and protects him without telling anyone, even her boyfriend Saxby. She ends up hooking up with Hiro because it's just something she wanted to do. Saxby eventually finds out about both of these things, and feels really betrayed. He has to decide between betraying them and telling the police, which he does because he didn't know Hiro was a good person, but he still had the police keep Ruth out of it.

Another big theme in East is East is ignorance and Racism. I did my last post about this and I'm writing more about it now because it is such a huge theme. The Americans are horribly racist towards Hiro, but they have absolutely no way of judging him outside of stereotypes that all come out of other people's ignorance. Hiro has stereotypes about Americans that aren't true of everybody, but his experiences prove them true. I think the author did that to make a point. He is saying that we have horrible and untrue views of other societies, but we live up to the stereotypes about ourselves.

East is East: Stereotypes and Ignorance

In East is East, Hiro, a Japenese man, has jumped ship and swam to a remote town in georgia in the mid 1900's (I think). This post is about how his interactions with people show how little each culture knew about the other. The southerners of small town Georgia had no idea what life was like in Japan, or even how to distinguish Japanese from Chinese, while Hiro had not-so-untrue stereotypes of Americans being fat and lazy.

When Hiro first encounters the Americans, he thinks they are all trying to kill him when really they are just wondering what he's doing, and the Americans end up thinking he's up to no good and decide to search for him just because he can't communicate well and doesn't look like them. I think that this is a really good depiction of how ignorant we can be sometimes, we just as humans in general. Our different cultures can develop on such different paths that when they intersect just by chance, they don't mix very well. However, tourism is in a completely category than this because when people visit new places, they are expected and expecting to be confused, and there are plenty of accommodations. This is different because the natives aren't used to people who don't fit in and because the one who's out of place has no idea what he's doing.

Self forgiveness in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

In Extremely loud and incredibly close, which I just finished reading this week, Oskar has brought his quest to some sort of a resolution. He found the owner of the key, and was able to forgive himself for not picking up the phone the last time his dad called. He realized that there was nothing wrong with being scared. Mr. Black forgave him in the place of his father and they had a really strong connection even though they were complete strangers. I think that it took a lot of courage for Oskar to forgive himself. Oskar was very courageous in forgiving himself because in order to do it he had to face what he feared most, which was that he had let his father down.

Ever since his dad died, Oskar has been conflicted because he felt like he should have picked up the phone, and that he was letting his dad down by not doing so. I think that he was so scared that he was in denial of the danger his dad was in, he just couldn't face it. It took Mr. Black forgiving him to get him to realize that it was ok that he was afraid.

Social commenting in Be More Chill

Be More Chill is a book about a kid who is extremely unpopular. He is frustrated and wishes that he was "In". He learns of a secret new pill called the "Squip". The squip enters your brain and tells everything to do to be cool. I think that the author wrote this book as a social comment to show that this isn't possible.

There are several things in the book that led me to believe that this was the theme. One of them is the fact that the layout of being an unpopular kid in high school is very cliche and if they didn't make a new twist on it instead of having a really cheesy theme like everyone is cool... bla bla bla..., it would have been a pretty bad book. But the way the author writes it is taking this cliche format and writing something meaningful about it.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Oskar idolizes his father

In the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the main character, Oskar's dad died in the 9/11 attacks. Oskar was so traumatized by his fathers death because he loved and looked up to him so much. His dad recognized exactly how Oskar's mind worked and was just a great friend and mentor to him, like how he knows that Oskar is a lot smarter than someone who's 9 years old and treats him almost like a peer. They had a conversation about why people exist, and it was really in depth and philosophical.

I think that Oskar has a sort of subconscious goal that he has to: 1; Finish the last puzzle that his dad gave him, which was just a map of central park, and 2; Find the lock that fits the key that he got from his dad's things after he was dead. (I'm guessing that those two will tie together.)

I'm just starting this book, but I can already infer a lot about it, which I think is a sign of good writing craft.

Small as an Elephant - Jack and his Mom

I just finished reading the book Small as an Elephant. It's a really good book about a boy who's mom is mentally ill and sometimes leaves him alone wherever they happen to be, often for days on end. The particular time that leads to the rest of the book is when the two of them are camping in Maine and his mom just leaves in the middle of the night.

Throughout the book Jack thinks about whether or not he wants to forgive his mother for what she did to him. At first he has no doubts about it and is completely sure he wants to go back to her. I think that he has grown up thinking that whatever his mom says is right because he loves her so much, but he has no judgement of when to say that she needs to get some help and he needs to be able to stay with someone else.

Later into the book, as he has been having to live on his own and survive with what he can find, Jack starts to realize that he should let himself be angry at his mom, or at least want to turn himself in and get her some help. Just like I predicted when I started reading, he never really gave in and felt any resentment or loss of trust in his mom, but he ended up realizing that she couldn't take care of him. I think that when he realized that his grandmother wasn't trying to take him away from his mother, but that she was just there to care for him and love him, he was also able to realize that there were so many people in the world who cared about him and that it wasn't him and his mom against everyone.