Pudge and The Great Perhaps

The main character in Looking for Alaska by John Green is Miles "Pudge" Halter and from the very beginning he mentions The Great Perhaps.Francios Rabelais was a poet and his last words before he dies were 'Igo to seek a Great Perhaps.'. And Pudge really wants to find his Great Perhaps before he dies. And he continues to say "I thought of the Great Perhaps and the things that might happen and the people I might meet and who my roomate might be..." (Green. 8) and  "...I wondered whether I could find a Great Perhaps here at all or whether I had made a grand miscalculation." (Green. 9) Personally, I think that what Miles is searching for is not something you can search for but something that finds you. And, that he may have found it in Alaska. And finally he realizes it, "...For she had embodied the Great Perhaps-- she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps... You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth." Also I think this sentence implies that somehow The Great Perhaps and The labyrinth were related in a way. Miles found his Great Perhaps in Alaska and Alaska found her way out of the labyrinth maybe because of Miles.

Background Information on Francois Rabelais

Catching Fire Movie

I love The Hunger Games series so much. And on November 22, Catching Fire comes out. The book is all about the 75th hunger games, also known as The Quarter Quell. Every 25 years the Capitol holds an unique hunger games and the third is as unique as it has gotten. The Capitol chooses one boy and one girl victor from past hunger games from each district. In district 12, they only have 3 victors.Haymitch, Peeta, and Katniss. Originally Katniss and Haymitch get chosen but Peeta volunteers for Haymitch. But Katniss realizes she can't let the hunger games go on any longer. People from other districts are starting to rebel. I'm skipping a lot of parts in the book (basically the whole middle) and going to the end. *SPOILER* Katniss has gone through manny struggles and is on the brink of dying. She only has a few minutes of life left and she has to think of a way to break the force field. She uses her bow and arrow and shoots at the force field and the whole thing shatters upon her. Later we find out that there were two air crafts one belonging to "the good guys" and the other belongs to the Capitol. The Capitol gets Peeta and the other has Katniss and Finnick and the other still living tributes along with gale. And some of the last words of the book were spoken by gale "Katniss, there is no District 12."

I'm just really hoping the book and the movie match up well. I know the first movie was as spot on possible. Here's the final official trailer for The Hunger Games 2: Catching Fire.

 

Romeo and Juliet: Comedy or Tragedy?

In class, we have been reading Romeo and Juliet and debating whether it was a comedy or tragedy. Before reading this I would have said it was definitely a tragedy. All I knew was that they fall in love but it was forbidden so they killed themselves. Tragedy, right? Well we looked into it farther...

Yes, whenever a character dies it is most likely a tragedy. But the parts leading up to it is what we're looking at. First of all, just the fact that they have known each other for a matter of a few hours is reason enough. They cannot be truly in love. Which leads us to think it is more lust than love. Instantly, when Romeo lays eyes on Juliet he completely forgets about Rosalin and switches love interests. I think that is when Romeo feels he is in love. He has not said a word to Juliet, yet he knows that is what love is. The same with Juliet during the balcony scene, act 2 scene 2. When he breaks into the Capulet's garden to see Juliet, instead of being a little creeped out like most would be, she is delighted! She declares her love for him even though she has said practically nothing to him and she wants to get married tomorrow. I think this may be a wanting to disobey her parents in a way as well as lust. Either way, I think this part is mostly comedy because in a way I think the play may be mocking teenage love and there is no way someone can fall in love that quickly. 

How do I get out of this labyrinth? (Spoilers)

In the book Looking for Alaska, you notice patterns and one of them is Alaska Young constantly asking 'How do I get out of this labyrinth?'. Well, we find ourselves asking what this means. The chapters are labeled 'eighty four days before' and up to 'the day before'. The whole time you are left guessing what is it counting down to? That's one of the ways the book pulls you in. *SPOILER ALERT* But we find out that this actually leads to Alaska getting into a car accident and dying. Back to the big question though. How do you get out of the labyrinth? Well one theory Miles (Pudge) and Chip (the Colonel) have is suicide. They seem to think that Alaska, although highly intoxicated, drove off campus and purposefully killed herself, although they say it was unintentional. They also think that killing herself was the way out. The way out of all her troubles and worries, and furthermore the labyrinth. They try to figure out if this was her way out by asking the officer that saw the crash, "'I's still in mah cruiser and I seen out the corner a' my eye the headlights, and my lights was on and I turned the siren on, but the lights just kept comin' straight at me, son, and I got out quick and run off and she just barreled inta me. I seen plenty, but I ain't never seen that. She didn't tarn. SHe didn't brake, She jest hit it. I wa'n't more then ten feet from the cruiser when she hit it...'" (Green. 162) We have evidence from the police officer that she didn't hesitate or give it a second thought which lead them to think it was suicide but then there was evidence of it not being suicide, "Warning signs of suicide the COlonel and I found on the Web: Previous suicide attempts, Verbally threatening suicide, Giving away prized posseisions,...Writing, talking, reading, and drawing about death and or depression,...Rcent loss of a friend or family member through death or suicide..." and only two came up as postive out of the many, many signs. So there are mixed to reasoning as to if she did or did not commit suicide. But either way they were still devistated about their friend. Also still questioning whether this was her way of getting out of her labyrinth. 

Go to this website for more information on Simón Bolivar: http://www.biography.com/people/simon-bolivar-241196

Go to this website to get more information on what this symbolized and others' perspective on what it means: http://www.theliteraryanalyst.com/code%20/looking-for-alaska-character-analysis-and-the-labyrinth/

Dialect in Looking for Alaska

In my book that I am currently reading, Looking for Alaska, by John Green, I have noticed a lot of dialect from a couple characters. Dialect is when a character has an accent or a way of talking, it shows up in their dialogue. The first character is Lara. Lara is from Romania and moved to America when she was 12 years old. There is even a part in the book where it explains her accent and what she can and cannot say, "'You don't sound like you have an accent sometimes,' I said, which was pretty stupid, but darn sight better than throwing up on her. 'Eet's only soft i's.' 'No soft i's in Russian?' I asked 'Romania,' she corrected." (Green. 102) This is one example of dialect in John Green's writing. We see more of it as we go on, the Colonel's mom is from the more southern part of Alabama and she says, "'I believe,' Dolores said, 'that yer s'posed to drink white with turkey, but-- now I don't know 'bout y'all-- but I don't s'pose I [care].'" (Green. 93)

I really do like how he adds personal touches to the characters. It adds diversity and gives more information about the characters. Like where they came from or how they might have been raised. Opposed to most authors that don't, we get these characters expeiriences and might even be able to relate to them in a personal way. For example in a part of the story Lara tells us that when she immigrated from Romania, she had to speak for her parents because they didn't knwo any English, and it was a good and bad experience. The good story was, "'Eet's easy. The day I came here. I knew Engleesh and my parents deedn't, and we came off the air plane and my relatives were here, aunts and uncles I had not ever seen, in the airport and my parents were so happy. I was twelve, and I had always been a leetle baby, but that was the first day that my parents needed me and treated me like a grown-up. Because they did not know the language, right? They needed me to order food and to translate tax and immigration forms and everytheeng else, and that was the day they stopped treating me like a keed...'" (Green. 116) But there was a bad side, "'My worst day was prbably the same day as my best. Because I left everytheeng. I mean eet sounds dumb, but my childhood, too, because most twelve-year-olds do not, you know, have to feegure out W-2 forms.'" So from her dialect, we get to knwo her background and her struggles she has had. Her dialect is a key part of her story if she didn't have an accent then we wouldn't have known that she has struggled so much back then.

Back to The Infernal Devices series

I never posted a final blog about the last book The Clockwork Princess. *SPOILERS* The last part in the book was about how it was modern times just a few years back from now. Tessa was waiting for Brother Zachariah (Jem) at a bridge in London as they have almost every year since Jem has joined the Brotherhood. But this year was different. When Tessa was waiting, she found herself reminiscing on all the years that have gone by and she was remembering all the amazing years she had with Will. And when he finally retired from being a Shadowhunter. And when he died. Ever since then she has been alone with the occasional comfort from Magnus Bane. She was snapped out of her reverie when she saw Jem walk next to her. It was Jem, not Brother Zachariah and his hair and eyes were darker than she has ever seen. They had finally found a cure for his illness. They got to talking and then Jem brought up how he was still in love with her but then he thought it was stupid of him to say so be ran off and Tessa ran after him. In the end we are left  to assume that Tessa and Jem get back together.

Overall I thought that this was a very well written ending to the series and I really enjoyed that she wrote how they eventually got back together again at the end. It was very creative and this is the first time I've seen this type of writing. Through and through this book was fantastic and by far the best book out of the three in the series. 

Looking for Alaska by John Green

I finally finished The Clockwork Princess and thought it was AWESOME! I have started a new book though, Looking for Alaska by John Green.

My initial impression of John Green from this one and only book I have read of his is he has a really unique style of writing. He uses a lot of figurative language such as "...so I grabbed one of the desk chairs and sat down outside my door in the shade overhanging eaves, waiting for a breeze that never arrived." (pg. 7) This is an example of personification because the breeze doesn't really arrive, but it is given a human action that is not generally given to an inanimate object. Also, I assume he is an amazing writer because a very famous quote by him from The Fault in Our Stars, which I haven't even read but have heard many times is, "That's the thing about pain, it demands to be felt." quoted from Augustus Waters. The fact that I haven't even read this book, but I have heard this part so many times must mean something about his writing. He hasn't given much description about the characters looks but he has told us a lot about their personality traits and how they act. The most common way he tells us about their personality is through others words or actions. For example we learn a lot about Alaska by the way The Colonel talks about her here, "So she really likes him? 'I guess. She hasn't cheated on him, which is a first.'" In this passage Miles is asking The Colonel about Alaska and her current boyfriend. You are able to tell his sarcastic tone when he says "...,which is a first." This implies that she has before and is a common thing for her. You learn a lot about The colonel and Alaska in this one sentence. Another unique style of writing in this novel is I noticed he numbers off reasons a lot. I think that is just the character, Miles talking not Green's actual writing style in everybook though. On pages 23, 18, 14 and maybe more pages has numberings on it.

Allegiant Book Predictions

Only a few more weeks until the third book of the Divergent trilogy comes out, Allegiant! Ever since I have read the first pages of Divergent I have been obsessed with this book. There is so much action starting from the very beginning and only ends with even more. This series goes on to become the second book, Insurgent. Also a REALLY good book but I think I like the first book better. We see the book ending with a couple cliff hangers that leave the reader questioning and wanting to read the next book.

First of all in the end of Insurgent, some of the last words are 'Edith Prior'. As you may know Tris' last name is also Prior and we want to know "Who is this women?!" I have a feeling that in the third book Tris will really be questioning who she is and who her family really is as well.

Another big question in Insurgent is 'What is outside of the fence?'. We know that the 5 factions are all contained inside a fence that is set in futuristic Chicago. I don't think anyone has an idea what could be outside the fence. Is it more people? Or is it nothing? Is it just a lot of land that has nothing filling it?

You will have to find all of these questions out when you read Allegiant by Veronica Roth. It comes out October 22, 2013.

This is the official Teaser Trailer for Divergent movie coming out in 2014. I think the director did an AMAZING job from what I've seen so far. And I think they did an awesome job on casting everyone. I definitely expect a lot from this movie.

Almost Finished! Clockwork Princess Update (SPOILERS!)

I am almost finished with the third, and final book of The Infernal Devices series, The Clockwork Princess. If you are planning on maybe reading this book I suggest you stop here because there will be many spoilers in the next paragraph...

As I have said in previous posts, we know that Jem has asked the members of the London Institute, who are also like family to him, to stop searching for a cure for his illness. Jem's condition has worsened and has minimal yin fen (the drug he has to take to stay alive) left because Mortmain has bought all of it and prevented all new shipments to come in with anymore. Once everybody stops searching, Jem dies and the Silent Brothers come in to take him away. While this is all happening, Tessa was captured by Mortmain and no one knows where she has been taken. But Will might have a clue. There has been multiple times when a hint of Mortmain's where-abouts are. Cadair Idris. In Wales. Will is confronted with the problem of not leaving Jem's side or finding Tessa. Jem eventually tells Will to go and find her and so when Jem dies, Will is out on a long journey to Cadair Idris. One morning while Will was having breakfast at an inn, Will has this agonzing pain above his heart. Where his parabatai rune is inscribed. Jem has died. Will goes through so many different emotions while on his way to find Tessa. Eventually Will finds where Mortmain has Tessa hidden away and goes into the building. He searches the place and sees Tessa and runs toward her. They embrace but then Tessa says to Will that they are both now stuck in an invisble wall all around them and cannot get out. They speak about Jem and what had happened and both of their terrbile journey here. They both find themselves just waiting for Mortmain to see them both here and probably kill Will. Until the members at the Institute find a way to travel instantly to Cadair Idris to aid Will. These people include Henry and Charotte Branwell, the heads of the Institute, Cecily Herondale, Will's younger sister, The Lightwood Brothers, three Silent Brothers, Magnus, a warlock and some Mundanes that are of help to the Institute. Once they reach Cadair they split up to find Will and Tessa. Magnus is the one to find them and since he is a warlock, he is able to break the barrier that holds them there. They get dressed in their Shadowhunter gear and set off to find the others. Suddenly, Will here's a scream of horror. Cecily. The three of them burst into a battle between the Shadowhunters and the automatons. Immediatley Will throws himself into the mess and tells Magnus to watch Tessa, to make sure she doesn't fight. Tessa glances around and sees Henry crumpled on the floor, motionless. And Charlotte trying to comfort her, possibly, dead husband. She takes another look and sees one Silent borther lying dead on the ground. She quickly turns around to watch what is happening and she sees another automaton cease one of the three Silent Brothers by the neck and lift him up, only to see silvery hair and a pale face. Jem.

I've had so many questions along the way through out this book, but my biggest one yet is, How is Jem still alive?! I haven't been able to put this book down yet and hopefully I will finish soon.

Jem Carstairs, AKA Brother Zachariah