Where's the miracle?

While reading "What is the What", I realized how unreal this story seems to me, that this kind of suffering actually happened. This is because I was reading while the TV was on and left the room for a couple minutes. I came back, anxious to resume Valentino's story, but for some reason, I thought that this story was coming from the TV! It's like I thought this kind of suffering was only possible in fictional stories and every time Valentino and the other Sudanese are forced to suffer through in their refugee camps and forced to walk to some other deserted location, I admit I am amazed. It's just like Valentino said, that people expect refugees to remain in refugee camps for only a year or so. I guess I really did think so or, if not for about a year, that their time in the refugee camps would be far shorter than it actually was. It really makes me wonder how and when Valentino will actually go to America.

Communist hunt in what is the what?

On page 79 of "What is the What", Achak describes how people were forced to declare hatred of the SPLA, name others who sympathized with the SPLA, and how those who were named would also be interrogated. This sounds, to me, a lot like the Communist "witch" hunts that we learned about in US history and in the movie "Guilty by Suspicion". After reading that short passage, I predicted that at least one person's life would be ruined by this aaand I was right. Achak's father was then interrogated about his friend by the soldiers and they were forced to move away from Aweil and leave the store behind.

TV Boy as Us?

Whenever Achak/Valentino talks about TV Boy, it always sounds as if he's not really talking to TV boy but is talking to us. TV Boy seems to represent how people like us only know what we learn from the TV and that's why we look down on people like Valentino (by dropping phone books on his head and kicking the tape back on to his mouth). I really enjoy how he seems to be talking to us, the readers yet, at the same time, not. It makes me wonder. Did this TV Boy really exist or was it just made up for the story? I find it difficult that this book is part biography and part fiction because it's hard to distinguish which parts actually happened and which did not =/. Other times, the things that Valentino says to TV Boy (in his head).... seem a bit extreme and don't always seem to flow correctly. It seems like Valentino is only saying these things in his head in the story in order to continue the story of what happened back in Marial Bai. I wish I knew which parts were fact and fiction, and I hope that the parts of the story back in Marial Bai are true because I'm taking everything he says about his life back then as what really happened.

1 AM Blogging

I was thinking about this just a few minutes ago and figured I might as well write about it while I still remember...

Why is it that in "Heart of Darkness" Marlow thinks that the man who died on pg. 55 had just fallen over because he had just wrestled a cane from the attackers and not that he had been stabbed with a spear?

When Marlow first started giving the description of this man falling over on the deck and hitting his head on the steering wheel, the first thing I thought was 'oo, he's dead', but I was really confused that Marlow wasn't more surprised by this ..... Until I realized he didn't realize that the man was dead. And this seems strange to me, because he was standing so close to where it happened that the man's blood was able to flow and fill his shoes. Maybe it's strange because it symbolizes something?


So far, I have three guesses... It either symbolizes
1. how Marlow is unable to see danger ahead (such as how he chose the wrong path that led them to danger and how he may be unable to see how dangerous going to meet Kurts is)
2. that Marlow is destined to walk a path of blood and violence, even though he tries to avoid it by throwing his new shoes overboard.
3. or the suddenness of death

I guess I'll see if I'm right x.x?

Beginning Heart of Darkness

Yay! I finally got to start reading my other summer reading books! The first book I've chosen is Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I actually chose it because I thought it would be the easiest to analyze (since it's only 96 pages long so I'd have less to remember). However, two things surprised me. It's actually really difficult because I keep wondering if something is a symbol (like how the old man likes pigeons and how Marlow keeps on wanting rivets). The second is that the book is more interesting than I thought it would be (I thought it was just going to be about the sea after reading the first couple pages). It's actually really interesting how Conrad describes everyone. He makes it seem at first that the whites are the only people who do wrong but later shows how all people are capable of wrongdoing when he describes the men of the Eldorado Expedition which included both blacks and white men. I'm still not sure what the title "Heart of Darkness" refers to, but I'm going to guess right now that he's talking about the dark hearts of all men.

Because really, everyone Marlow describes in his story seems like an awful person. These people fire at each other and fight each other for no reason other than their god, which is actually not even god. What these people worship is the ivory within the trading business. Comparing ivory, which has already come up so many times in the book, to a god that they whisper and pray to really helps to make these men look like power-hungry fools. I'm interested in seeing if Kurtz, the man who Marlow is looking for will be the same as everyone else Marlow has met so far.

A bit insulting, don't you think?

I have no idea how to begin this, so I'll just start by saying how insulting it was how he compared (in the chapter "It's All About Sex...") the chalice to female sexuality as "an empty vessel, waiting to be filled". MAYBE those "Grail legends" are about sexuality with the chalice representing female sexuality, but describing it, and therefore women, as an empty vessel waiting to be filled is sexist and saying that the only thing women are good for is waiting for a man to "fill" them, literally or not.

Other than that, I'm finding that this book is waaay too long and boring. These examples he gives take way too long to explain and a lot of the time, I feel like he's rambling on and on forever, which REALLY makes me wonder how old he is. I'm finding that a lot of the time, I feel like I'm reading and see a phrase that's sort of interesting, but by the time I've gotten there, I have no idea what he's talking about because the rest of what he's saying is too dull, in my opinion, for me to be able to pay attention.

I remember how, earlier in the book, Foster said that the reason authors using ideas from other books is so effective is because of that "Aha!" that we get when we realize something's the same and it helps us to understand the work better or w/e. I think it's just because we like to feel smart. And when authors put in things that are like things in other books, we can say "Oh, this sounds like this" and then go tell other people how much that thing sounds like some other thing. Or we could use it to BS some essay by saying how much it sounds like some other book. I really don't feel like all these things that he's saying are necessarily true.

Honestly, reading this book irritates me because I feel like I'm going to make him correct by reading it. Like if I were to write a story after reading this, I could think of a whole bunch of extra, clever, things to put in, but would people really, really, think to put these things inside books if no one put that idea in their heads in the first place? I tried making a manga before but found that it took too much time. But in the first page, I drew a man with his arms stretched out in the position of a cross. In no way was that man supposed to be Jesus-like. It's really just an arm position. It seems to me like Foster may be promoting overanalyzation, by which I mean giving meaning to things that have no meaning.