Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beloved 

by Toni Morrison

Read as Apart of Crash Course Literature 

10 Words: Dark actions stemming from dark actions, consequences will always haunt.

     Beloved is the story of an African American Lady named Sethe who escaped slavery. Adventualy though  her masters found her and her children, in an attempt to protect them from being returned to life as a slave - which she felt was no life at all -  Sethe attempted to kill her children, and actually managed to killed her 2-year old daughter. 

     This act meant that there was always a missing place felt in the home. Her sons never forgot the fear she felt of the slavers and the fear they felt of her and so as soon as they were able they left the home. They all feel that a ghost of that child lives with them in their home. 

     This story goes on to express the way those surviving this event, and there past as a slave do the best they can do to honor the past but to continue onto a new life as time moves on. 

   This book shows the pain and mental trouble someone who is treated as the slaves were treated goes through. It shows the love that a mother can have, and the pain she went through to keep her children safe from the worst possible life she can imagine. The book  is doing its best to show us how the unstable lives slave had took a toll on the people that lived them. 

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart

by Chinua Achebe

10 Words: Traditional Man, cannot accept change, longs for good old days.

     This story follows through the life of a man who works hard for himself, his family and his people. Then one day an accident happens and everything he has worked for gets turned upside down. He is forced to spend seven years in Exile (his wife and children along with him). The year ends with Missionaries starting to gain a foothold in both his tribe and the one his mother came from. 

    The way it is written to me is apart of the simplified way that the people live in this world. They value the basic parts of life; having enough food to feed one's family, having a safe place for your family to live. The story is told with these simple facts in mind and it makes those simple parts of life feel like the greatest ideals one could live up to. 

     When things are changing he reacts against them. He believes in the traditions and the ways that have always been what he has lived for and seen as the strength of the tribe and his people. He does not understand the white people, their ways, nor does he feel that there is anything to gain by learning these things. As such when his son joins them he feels greatly betrayed by that action. 

     Its his strict belief in the old ways of doing things that leads him to attack the members of the church. When none of the tribe follow his lead though he is forced to accept that the tribe has changed even though he hasn't. He continues along the path that he sees as the strong, correct force for a man of the tribe to act when faced by an invader, though in the end he is forced to face the change and changes himself by committing suicide instead of facing the law - and pour treatment - of the white men.  

(Read as apart of Crash Course Literature, part 2 )

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonngut

Slaughterhouse Five

by Kurt Vonnegut

10 words: Sideways exploration during, before, and after the firebombing of Dresden.

     Slaughterhouse Five is the story of a Billy Pilgrim, a man who was an american soldier in WWII, though he wasn't a very good one at that. He claims that he was abducted  by aliens and that they taught him about the way that Time can work in the nonlinear fasshon. This has caused him to be unstuck in time and as such the story follows him through different points in his life jumping between moments in a nonlinear way. 

     This story is neet. Billy is a very simple person, with a very good live but not very interesting. To his children he has completely lost his mind when he starts telling the world about Time and the Aliens. Yet to him he is telling them the complete truth. You can't really tell if he is just a crazy old man. Or if what happened to him Actually happened. All you know is that HE believes it, and his Daughter doesn't.

     I also liked the way that Billy's wife is displayed. It is never actually stated that she is large and overweight. But whenever she is mentioned what is described is the food she is eating. The candy bars in her hands, or the wrappers. This gives me the feeling that Billy doesn't see her weight as a problem, its just a normal fact about the way she acts. 

     The way the story is told, through the different jumps through time leads to my uncertainty of weather or not billy was truly abducted by aliens or not. The way we as a reader is unstuck in time throughout reading about his life makes you wonder if Billy is actually living his life that way, and not just us. It also makes me wonder what that would be like. I kinda don't think Billy is crazy enough for it to really be happening to him. You would never know any context about what happened "yesterday" to the moment you are in. I would be forever writing things in my schedule and continually looking at the calendar because i wouldn't know what I needed to do when... ever! 

(This was read as apart of following along with Crashcourse Literature... I am just not reading them in the same order it seems... and I am skipping a few because I can't follow the Odyssey very well and I am over Hamlet... )