Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
One of the things I continually picked up on as I was reading this book was the idea of hope. Each character seemed to have their own symbol of hope. For Ma it was the apples. She nurtures her true apple trees, urging them to grow even in the dust and lack of water (43). They also connect her to Billie Jo. The entry on page 43 talks about when Ma planted the apple trees before Billie Jo was born "that she and they might bring forth fruit/into our home,/together." (43). Billie Jo looks forward to the apples and we find out that she also loves apples. Two entries later we see her again connect Ma and the trees to one another when she says that the apples will be ready to eat around the time when the baby is born (45).
Bayard's symbol of hope is the rain as well as water in general. His connection is to the land. He is a farmer, and in Billie Jo's eyes he is even a part of the land. She says, "I tell him he is like the sod,/ and I am like the wheat" (205). Pa keeps waiting for rain, and when it comes he tries again to plant his wheat, but the dust keeps coming back, taking away his hope. He finally decides to dig his pond. This, again, is him finding hope in water. If the pond fills then the drought will be done which will mean things will grow again and he can go back to farming. If the pond doesn't fill then it will be just like Billie Jo says, he will have dug his own grave. In the end he must compromise with the earth. The rain comes and it will grow things for him, but he must learn to care for it better.
Billie Jo's symbol of hope is the piano. When she can play the piano she is hopeful. She finds hope through playing the piano in the beginning because she sees it as a way of getting out of Oklahoma. It's her big break! She can go play on the radio or play concerts. She plays local concerts to help better herself and make the path that she hopes will lead her out. When her hands no longer play and when her Ma and the baby have died we see that she has lost hope. Not only does she not have much hope of her and her father being able to carry on without her Ma, but she no longer has the hope of her music to carry her away because her hands won't play anymore. Her hands become a symbol along with the piano. They "scream with pain", fighting against her hope, but she tries anyway for a while (135). She veers away from the piano at times, letting the state of her hands and the tragedy of what has happened take away her hope. The images of her hands kept coming to my mind as I was reading this. They were always really vivid in her entries, "The doctor cut away the skin on my hands, it hung in/crested strips./ He cut my skin away with scissors,/then poked my hands with pins to see what I could/feel" (62). This image made my stomach turn. Again and again she describes the "lumps of flesh" that once were her hands (73). She becomes really worried not only about how she uses her hands and what she can and can't do now, but about what other people think and say about them. The hands that once provided her hope and happiness are now a source of pain and remembrance of the blame that she puts on herself and her father.
I read this book for the first time when I was in third grade, and I read it at least three or four times after that throughout my elementary, junior high, and high school years. Reading it again now that I'm through college, I found that I read it through a different lens. I still picked up on some of the same elements, but I feel like the images were stronger, and I feel like I picked up on the themes a lot better. As a child I read the book wanting the enjoyment and entertainment out of it. I was interested in the time period and I loved talking to my grandparents and finding out what they had to say about the time period and what happened during the dust bowl for what they remember. This time when I read it, I found that I read it as a teacher, looking for the connections I could help my students make if they were to read it in class. I think that this is definitely a good book to use when making connections between the literature and history. It would work with many different age groups, because the level of the text makes it very accessible, but a teacher could very easily up the level of the reading through the questions they posed to the students and the discussions they led in connection with the book.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
The Giver
The Giver by Louis Lowery
This book had been talked up to me by many, many people, and while I loved the lessons it taught, I wasn't as impressed with the book as I thought I would be.
Set in a utopian society, the people are kept from having any painful memories or knowing anything of the past. They don't know war, they don't know murder and death. In fact, you find out through the training of our main character that the other members of the utopia don't even know what colors are, they see in blacks and whites and tones of gray, but the idea of color is foreign to them.
The idea is that people must know about these past events in order to learn from them. And while the Receiver of Memory in the book is meant to hold all of these memories in order to keep the rest of the community from knowing pain and in order to keep peace, it tears this poor man apart to have all of these painful memories to bear as his own burden.
Overall a good read, and certainly some lessons to be learned. While I didn't find it as good as I expected it to be, I would still recommend it. It's a short book and a quick read and memorable. There are two sequels, and I have been told that the pieces I felt were missing from this book are incorporated in the the other two books of the trilogy.
This book had been talked up to me by many, many people, and while I loved the lessons it taught, I wasn't as impressed with the book as I thought I would be.
Set in a utopian society, the people are kept from having any painful memories or knowing anything of the past. They don't know war, they don't know murder and death. In fact, you find out through the training of our main character that the other members of the utopia don't even know what colors are, they see in blacks and whites and tones of gray, but the idea of color is foreign to them.
The idea is that people must know about these past events in order to learn from them. And while the Receiver of Memory in the book is meant to hold all of these memories in order to keep the rest of the community from knowing pain and in order to keep peace, it tears this poor man apart to have all of these painful memories to bear as his own burden.
Overall a good read, and certainly some lessons to be learned. While I didn't find it as good as I expected it to be, I would still recommend it. It's a short book and a quick read and memorable. There are two sequels, and I have been told that the pieces I felt were missing from this book are incorporated in the the other two books of the trilogy.
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Oh! Wow!
Definitely a must read book!
Set in futuristic America, it portrays the lives of the people who have rebelled against the government and now must pay the price by sacrificing their children once a year in the ultimate game of life-and-death.
This book is one of the new big trends in high school English classrooms. With so many aspects that can be focused on and so many big questions that can be used as themes it lends itself to a universal classroom available to many different grade levels and units.
I really enjoyed this book, and since it's been a little while since I read it (I've read three other books since then), I'd like to share with you my journal entry from when I read it for class:
Warning: Contains Spoilers
I connected to this book in a lot of ways. In particular I found myself connecting it back to other texts that I had read. The two texts I kept coming back to were Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and "The Most Dangerous Game." Particularly, I kept thinking about this idea of killing and how it was portrayed in each of the three stories. In The Hunger Games it was very brutal, usually involving a lot of blood and some sort of savage act. Some competitors seemed to have no problem will killing one another. They had been raised and trained to do just that so that if the time came they could bring back a victory for their district. It wasn't about morals or allies for these kids, it was about the way their district would treat them when they returned and the honor that their district would receive. For others, killing came less naturally, but as we saw with Katniss when Rue was killed, there became a time when the killing was justifiable and it didn't matter that it was murder because it was in revenge of something or someone that really mattered.
In The Goblet of Fire the winners aren't supposed to actually die, but it happens regardless. This causes controversy and people begin pointing fingers. Because no one sees what happens Harry becomes the target. Winning is not seen in that case as being held above life, but then, it also isn't a life-or-death game. For Voldemort, however, he is like the tribute that doesn't care who he kills. He kills mercilessly simply for the sake of killing.
"The Most Dangerous Game" seems to tie these two ideas together. First there is the idea of it being a sport. Certainly in The Hunger Games the killing itself becomes a sport as they must hunt each other not only in order to survive against one another, but to survive against the Gamemakers by being the sole survivor. Both of these stories present the idea of what it means to hunt and how hunting humans is similar and different from hunting animals. Not only that, but they both create a situation in which killing becomes the only option for survival. While they post a situation in which killing is the ultimate outcome, do they not also lend themselves for other ways to try and outsmart they're opponent. Katniss doesn't jump right into the idea of killing the other tributes, but she does use her wit and skills to try to outsmart them as a way of wearing them into defeat. In the case of the food pyramid, for instance, she destroys it, not only hoping that it will lead them to the conclusion that another tribute did it, but also diminishing their food supply to take away the ease that they have created for themselves. In "The Most Dangerous Games" this also happens. Traps are set as a way of slowing down his enemy as he attempts to keep himself alive. These are meant to outsmart but not to necessarily kill (in most of the instances).
The two big questions related to killing that I was left with after this book were "how far can you/should you go to prove a point" and "are we more likely to follow society or our own morals?" These questions can both relate not only to killing, but to life in general. In the book the Capitol believes they have a point to prove to the districts. There as been an uprising before and while the destroyed District 13 as a way of stopping them from uprising, they are convinced that in order to keep control they must continue to hold the Hunger Games every year. Does it make sense to punish these people though? Yes, it was their ancestors that created the uprising, but how many of them were alive or even remember knowing those ancestors who were? This is the 74th Hunger Games, creating a large time gap. Do they still believe that the districts will rise against them? If they continue to hold the strict rules they have created and the crappy conditions which they force upon the districts is there even any way they could create an uprising? (Probably. I'm hoping they could and eventually would, actually, but really, is it even a possibility?) I think that by keeping the laws and conditions they have proven their point, and not only have they taken it too far by holding the Hunger Games, but they've crossed an entirely new boundary line by forcing everyone to watch the Games as they are played out.
The second question, that of society and our own morals, seems to be one that the tributes aren't given much of an option about. The choice is to fight or die. But there are certainly moments of defiance toward the Capitol (which could be the society in this instance) where the characters morals show through. Alliances are created and upheld, like that of Rue and Katniss. Thresh letting Katniss go in exchange for her kindness and alliance with Rue. Peeta protecting Katniss from the pack of Careers at the risk of his own life. In all of these instances the players morals showed through above what society would have told them today. The Capitol told them what they must do, and they showed their defiance through the kindness towards one another. The final defiance and showing of upholding their morals comes from Katniss and Peeta at the end of the Games. At first Katniss jumps to the ready with her bow, believe she will have to fight Peeta to the death after all, but when Peeta gives in, throwing away his knife and begging her to take the victory, she realizes that she can't do that. Her morals and her love for him (whether she is willing to admit it or not) will not let her. Their defiance in choosing to die together and leave no victor leads the Gamemakers to retract their previous statement and change the rules yet again. Their defiance leads to a change in the rules of the society. Can't we do the same thing? Maybe it's not always in a life-or-death situation, but can the defiance and refusal of a few, or even one, cause people to notice and society to somehow change?
Oh! Wow!
Definitely a must read book!
Set in futuristic America, it portrays the lives of the people who have rebelled against the government and now must pay the price by sacrificing their children once a year in the ultimate game of life-and-death.
This book is one of the new big trends in high school English classrooms. With so many aspects that can be focused on and so many big questions that can be used as themes it lends itself to a universal classroom available to many different grade levels and units.
I really enjoyed this book, and since it's been a little while since I read it (I've read three other books since then), I'd like to share with you my journal entry from when I read it for class:
Warning: Contains Spoilers
I connected to this book in a lot of ways. In particular I found myself connecting it back to other texts that I had read. The two texts I kept coming back to were Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and "The Most Dangerous Game." Particularly, I kept thinking about this idea of killing and how it was portrayed in each of the three stories. In The Hunger Games it was very brutal, usually involving a lot of blood and some sort of savage act. Some competitors seemed to have no problem will killing one another. They had been raised and trained to do just that so that if the time came they could bring back a victory for their district. It wasn't about morals or allies for these kids, it was about the way their district would treat them when they returned and the honor that their district would receive. For others, killing came less naturally, but as we saw with Katniss when Rue was killed, there became a time when the killing was justifiable and it didn't matter that it was murder because it was in revenge of something or someone that really mattered.
In The Goblet of Fire the winners aren't supposed to actually die, but it happens regardless. This causes controversy and people begin pointing fingers. Because no one sees what happens Harry becomes the target. Winning is not seen in that case as being held above life, but then, it also isn't a life-or-death game. For Voldemort, however, he is like the tribute that doesn't care who he kills. He kills mercilessly simply for the sake of killing.
"The Most Dangerous Game" seems to tie these two ideas together. First there is the idea of it being a sport. Certainly in The Hunger Games the killing itself becomes a sport as they must hunt each other not only in order to survive against one another, but to survive against the Gamemakers by being the sole survivor. Both of these stories present the idea of what it means to hunt and how hunting humans is similar and different from hunting animals. Not only that, but they both create a situation in which killing becomes the only option for survival. While they post a situation in which killing is the ultimate outcome, do they not also lend themselves for other ways to try and outsmart they're opponent. Katniss doesn't jump right into the idea of killing the other tributes, but she does use her wit and skills to try to outsmart them as a way of wearing them into defeat. In the case of the food pyramid, for instance, she destroys it, not only hoping that it will lead them to the conclusion that another tribute did it, but also diminishing their food supply to take away the ease that they have created for themselves. In "The Most Dangerous Games" this also happens. Traps are set as a way of slowing down his enemy as he attempts to keep himself alive. These are meant to outsmart but not to necessarily kill (in most of the instances).
The two big questions related to killing that I was left with after this book were "how far can you/should you go to prove a point" and "are we more likely to follow society or our own morals?" These questions can both relate not only to killing, but to life in general. In the book the Capitol believes they have a point to prove to the districts. There as been an uprising before and while the destroyed District 13 as a way of stopping them from uprising, they are convinced that in order to keep control they must continue to hold the Hunger Games every year. Does it make sense to punish these people though? Yes, it was their ancestors that created the uprising, but how many of them were alive or even remember knowing those ancestors who were? This is the 74th Hunger Games, creating a large time gap. Do they still believe that the districts will rise against them? If they continue to hold the strict rules they have created and the crappy conditions which they force upon the districts is there even any way they could create an uprising? (Probably. I'm hoping they could and eventually would, actually, but really, is it even a possibility?) I think that by keeping the laws and conditions they have proven their point, and not only have they taken it too far by holding the Hunger Games, but they've crossed an entirely new boundary line by forcing everyone to watch the Games as they are played out.
The second question, that of society and our own morals, seems to be one that the tributes aren't given much of an option about. The choice is to fight or die. But there are certainly moments of defiance toward the Capitol (which could be the society in this instance) where the characters morals show through. Alliances are created and upheld, like that of Rue and Katniss. Thresh letting Katniss go in exchange for her kindness and alliance with Rue. Peeta protecting Katniss from the pack of Careers at the risk of his own life. In all of these instances the players morals showed through above what society would have told them today. The Capitol told them what they must do, and they showed their defiance through the kindness towards one another. The final defiance and showing of upholding their morals comes from Katniss and Peeta at the end of the Games. At first Katniss jumps to the ready with her bow, believe she will have to fight Peeta to the death after all, but when Peeta gives in, throwing away his knife and begging her to take the victory, she realizes that she can't do that. Her morals and her love for him (whether she is willing to admit it or not) will not let her. Their defiance in choosing to die together and leave no victor leads the Gamemakers to retract their previous statement and change the rules yet again. Their defiance leads to a change in the rules of the society. Can't we do the same thing? Maybe it's not always in a life-or-death situation, but can the defiance and refusal of a few, or even one, cause people to notice and society to somehow change?
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