Still Memory by Mary Karr

What I first noticed about this poem are that the pictures that Karr create are very vivid. I can see the bed flying down a river towards an old house. I can hear a father banging into a busy kitchen, smell the coffee "smoky odor," and feel the cold bathroom tiles on my feet. I can also feel the pain that Karr is trying to portray. She does this easily by the use of foreshadowing, saying things like "my father in the doorway, not dead" at the beginning, then continuing her story until she brings it up again at the end. This makes me feel that nostalgia and that ache for the way life used to be. It's as though she is looking back at the good memories which are now overshadowed by the bad. The nostalgia also comes in the way she makes those pictures, remembering every little detail about that life. She acknowledges the simplicity of the life by describing the town around her and the everyday life. Karr's poem also gives a nostalgic, trying hard to remember the past, in the way that there are times when a line/ thought is finished in the next stanza as though she is trying hard to remember that time.

But Karr's main point in the poem is that when tragedy happens ( like parents dying), a person has to find a way to preserve the happy memories from before instead of being crushed by the present. This is shown in her line about how her sister is jumping across the bathroom tiles because they "are cold and we have no heat other than what our bodies can carry." The heat is happiness and the present is cold so we have to carry from the past our happiness. That is probably reading WAY too much into it, but that just jumped out at me.

Anyway, the way Karr seems to say to preserve those memories is to write them down, and that deep, realistic dreams are a way to enact that happiness.

On a beautiful cloudy Sunday, I was absolutely thrilled to feel such heartaches, and then discover a hopeful way to relive the happy memories.

Heart of Darkness: Text to World

As nerdy as this may make me sound, I was excited when I started reading Heart of Darkness. After many summer weeks of reading frilly young adult books, it was a relief to actually read something where I couldn't predict the next sentence. ( I know it really is my own fault for liking them so much.) The excess of description and story-telling point of view had me right from the start. However, that didn't last for very long.

At the beginning, I got Marlow's fascination with Mr. Kurtz. Essentially, the man was there, being what Marlow wanted to become. However, the story leading up to the actual meeting of the two did nothing for me. It was simply a story where I could see no connections as to what it would mean in the future. For the most part I could follow what he was saying, but was bored and frustrated by it.

Mr. Kurtz himself was very interesting. Here was a man who worked in a world that was all about glory and wealth, and all he wanted to do was what he loved. Granted, his line of work wasn't exactly an admirable cause, but it is still interesting to see that he did it because he loved it, not because of popularity. Also, it was unexpected to see that Kurtz turned out to be very much like what he was described as. It often seems that people of great respect can be over-hyped until Marlow has such great expectations that nothing can ever be met. However, that didn't seem to happen, even though Marlow did start to hate Mr. Kurtz seemingly because of his own hallucinations.

As for the title, I'm still not completely set on what the actual idea was. There were many times that Conrad mentioned it in the book. Most of them seemed to talk about inner demons, but, to me, there just seemed to be more to it than that. Although that inner demon thing seems to go along well with many of the characters in the book: Mr. Kurtz, his assistant, some of the black helpers on the ship, the manager, Mr. Kurtz wife, and even Marlow himself. They all had time when they were fighting something in the outside world that conflicted with what they wanted or were used to in their hearts.

Since I read this book first, the marking in it is the best. I summarized a lot of paragraphs but this text was also very convnient to apply to the world. Mainly, I was able to make a lot of connections to how the world has changed in viewing people of a different race.

I probably never would have read this book on my own. But, now that I've gotten the chance to, I might just read it again.... in a long, long, long time. (Are you sensing a theme here?)

The Great Gatsby

Let me start by saying that The Great Gatsby was another example, for me, of a book that takes on a whole new meaning the second time it is read. When I read GG the first time, I followed blindly through the pages catching bits and pieces here and there about Fitzgerald was trying to tell me. Granted, I was a freshman: not yet had I gone through the life changing circumstances that led me to better understand the book. (In other words, APUSH and a class with Mr. Moore.) Thus, the second go around was much more satisfying.

In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I absolutely loved Nick's sarcastic sense of humor throughout the book. I found myself laughing out loud through almost every chapter. It was almost made better by the fact that he seemed so serious! I loved that I could imagine his tone of voice for myself instead of through an actor's perception. Another part of the book that was funny were the parties that he attended. I felt like I was watching reality tv. The people were ridiculous! Those were mostly where having background on the 1920's was useful. I knew that this type of thing was completely new to people, so they didn't really have set rules on anything; they just did what they wanted. 

As for the main man, I couldn't help but feel bad for him. He had no real friends, no family nearby, and the girl he lived his life for didn't actually love him all that much. It's almost like the story was saying that money and popularity doesn't give you everything. Crazy!! and a little cliched, but there could definitely be warnings in there. His relationship with Nick was something I could never really quite comprehend. It definitely can't be described in a single word.

By the time I got to this book, marking the text was becoming non-existent. It was becoming more and more that I just wanted to keep reading to find out what would happen next. But, I did notice that Fitzgerald used a multitude of sentence styles.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book and will definitely do it again in the future!

Kite Runner

I had read the Kite Runner before this assignment, and for me it was the poster child for 'why never to judge a book by a first-time read.' I had completely forgotten most of what actually happens in the book and I was not excited to read it again.

Fortunately, once I started it, I became intrigued.

I began to notice many similarities between and American kid's childhood and Amir's. The way he described winter break could easily be paralleled to my summer vacations--lots of freedom and the excitement of being away from school. I could also relate to his enjoyment of the first snowfall of the season..."the soft pattering of snowfall against my window at night." I could relate to the dynamics of the family gathering in Jalalabad. And even the sad truth of a father being much more excited for soccer (or football or basketball or baseball) season than his son is. Really, these things show that what Farid explained when Amir re-entered Afghanistan was true: Amir had never really known the real Afghanistan. I don't really know what that does to the story for me. I suppose part of me is comforted by the cliched fact that kids all over the world feel the way that I do. But it also kind of makes me spiteful towards Hosseini for giving me a false sense of what Afghanistan was really like.

However, the connection that I felt continued to grow. Although Amir was clearly a person that I was supposed to hate, I found myself identifying with some of the general feelings that he was dealing with. Such as the jealousy he felt, the guilt he held for decades, and the lack of courage that he had in handling a situation. As Amir grew, I found myself wanting to defend and comfort him--those are normal things to feel Amir!

Yet, there was still that hate.

It was something Hosseini would never let you forget. The minute a passive attitude pops into the mind...BAM! Something terrible happens in Amir's life that makes it seem like he is getting what he deserves. I kind of hate Hosseini for that.

As for marking in my book, I would say that this was the best of the three. I was doing text to self and obviously found some connections, and was writing things down pretty regularly, but the last half just seemed to not give me a lot to say.

Overall, I was glad to read the book again. It was entertaining and little bit self-reflective.