She's Come Undone

Wally Lamb

 

My self seeeeeeeeeeeeeeelect is She's Come Undone! It was prettttty lame at first. Once i got into it, it caught my attention. The emotions that Dolores expresses. She's in her own world, trying to escape. She struggles with her weight, the judgements of those around her, and trying to cope woth the death's that come her way. She feels as if she may have caused them herself. Everyone watching her, Dolores feels as if she has to lie to make other's happy. She believes nobody will accept her for the wrong she has done.

 

 

Dolores: Before and After.

 

 

 

 

 The Road

Cormac Mccarthy

 

Summary    

     Walking through the ash covered land, they struggle to survive. The road seems to be abandoned, no life is seen. The sky darkened all through the day and night, and the coldness is almost too much to take. A pistol, limited amount of food, and each other carry them by each day. Surviving would be a miracle. The Road tells the story of a disaster that struck the world, a man and son's journey.

 

 

 Quotes

 "There is no later. This is later."

- Imagine being lost in a world you knew nothing about, where there was no way out. And your only hope was for the person standing beside you. The odds of surviving are not high. This quote says that they have no time to waste. Wasted time could only bring them to step backwards and not forward.

 

" Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt. The smell was hideous." 

-This was disgusting to read, just the image that comes to mind. Are these the extremes we would go through if faced with abandonment and desolation of the world?

 

" The boy sat staring at his plate. He seemed lost. The man was about to speak whe he said: Dear people, thank you for all this food and stuff. We know that you saved it for yourself and if you were here we wouldnt eat it no matter how hungry we were and we're sorry that you didnt get to eat it and we hope that you're safe in heaven with God."

- The boy still prays, still has hope, and still asks for forgiveness for the wrong he thinks he has done. He feels guilty for taking food that was not his, he wishes he could share with all the others out there. I seem selfish after this. If I were to hit rock bottom, would i be doing the same as this boy? 

 

 

 

I would be scared for life and always in fear to live if these were the consequences. Only having a shopping cart full of items you need to survive, and nothing else. And living in constant fear of running into others along the way.

 

 

 

 

  Speak

Laurie Halse Anderson

 

Quotes

 

"It is easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say." 

-She's kind of blaming herself in a way... She thinks that if she keeps to herself and doesn't say a word, it will all go away somehow. But if she would have realized earlier that actually telling someone about it will make it better, than she wouldn't be feeling that way for so long. Even though we may be stubborn at times, it really is better to express yourself, it just takes a while to finally realize it.

 

"The tears dissolve the last block of ice in my throat. I feel the frozen stillness melt down through the inside of me, dripping shards of ice that vanish in a puddle of sunlight on the stained floor. Words float up."

-Woah woah woah! Woo woo woooooooo! There's not much to say about it, it says it all.

 

"When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time."

-Not expressing yourself about what your opinion is or how you feel, makes things worse. Even though you may not think so at the time. In the end, it's best to put yourself out there. It's better to say something than to say nothing at all. People won't understand you until you explain yourself.

 

"You have to know what you stand for, not just what you stand against. "

-Instead of just saying something because you think it's wrong, try thinking about the opposite. Think about what you believe in, whether it's good or bad. There's an explanation for why you think they way you think, you just have to find it.

 

"It's all about SYMBOLISM, says Hairwoman. Every word chosen by Nathaniel, every comma, every paragraph break -- these were all done on purpose. To get a decent grade in her class, we have to figure out what he was really trying to say. Why couldn't he just say what he meant? Would they pin scarlet letters on his chest? B for blunt, S for straightforward?"

-Haha... I did this one for you Bonn! 

 

Vocabulary

*Inconspicuous- not readily noticeable (7)

*Pseudo-  being apparently rather than actually as stated (22)

*Vermilion- a bright red pigment (78)

*Conundrum- an intricate problem (98)

*Indoctrination- to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments (172)

*Blathers- to talk foolishly at length (33)

*Interim- an intervening time (35)

*Vespiary- a nest of social wasps (104)   

                                                                                                                              

~Hear no! See no! Speak no! This reminds me of Melinda. She tries to ignore the outside world by not saying anything to anyone. She had a lot to say she just didn't know how to say it or who to say it to. There was nobody she could confide in. Imagine being in that situation. Walking through the halls and having to face the person who did something like that to you every single day. It was a really good book. I just got frustrated cause they draggggged on forever and ever why she wasn't talking and why nobody liked her. I just felt sorry for the girl.

 

Reflection

~I tried not talking for one whoooooooole day! What the hull... I'm not sure how someone could do that. I guess If I was in the same situation at Melinda, I'd be doing the same thing. It's harder than it seems. Cause I have a lot to say, trust me! All the time. I talked a couple of times cause I had forgotten I wasn't allowed to talk. I think I'm just gonna stick with the talkative me. Well... now I know I'm not gonna be a mime when I get older. Woooooohoooooo!

  

 

 

 

The Power of One

Bryce Courtenay

 

Quotes

"The beginning of the power of one--how I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed." Page 20.

 

"Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it." Page 115.

 

 

Black Boy 

Richard Wright

Quotes

"I used to mull over the strange absense of real kindness in Negroes, how unstable was our tenderness, how lacking in genuine passion we were, how void of great hope, how timid our joy, how bare our traditions, how hollow or memories, how lacking we were in those intangible sentiments that bind man to man, and how shallow was even our despair."

 

"Anything seemed possible, likely, feasible, because I wanted everything to be possible... Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning."

"Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly."

 

"At the age of twelve, before I had had one full year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering."

 

"This was the culture from which i sprang. This was the terror from which I fled."

 

"I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger of life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human."

 

Vocabulary

feign- to pretend or fake

morose- sad or depressed

squalor- a filthy and miserable condition or quality

peril- danger

transcend- to rise above or go beyond; to exceed

inadvertent- unintentional, careless

placate- to bring peace, soothe, calm

castigate- to punish or criticize severely

repugnant- distasteful, obnoxious, or revolting

 

Pictures 

His struggles first started when playing with a simple match when he was 4. It brought him to burn his house down, and instead of confronting what he had done, he ran away from it.

 

Reflection

Reading the book makes you really think about life and appreciate what you do get to have. Sometimes we ignore what's there and we tend to concentrate on what we don't have and the things we want or "need" Black Boy is an autobiography of Richard Wright and the incredible story of his life. He was never just handed anything, he struggled to succeed and bring forth himself and his family.