Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore Synthesis Page

"V for Vendetta" Reading Response

                V for Vendetta,  written by Alan Moore and drawn by David Lloyd, is a graphic novel which takes place in England about a dystopian future in which people are watched constantly and everything is filtered.  One person wants to change this totalitarian government.  His name is V and the government calls him a terrorist.  The book centers on V and Evey Hammond, a would-be prostitute whom V rescues.  In V for Vendetta, the book revolves around two main concepts, justice and anarchy, both of which are very instrumental in shaping the plot. 

            In V for Vendetta, justice is a major theme.  The book debates on what justice means and what its limits are.  For example, in the beginning of the book, the police, or Fingermen as they are called, have found out that Evey is trying to prostitute herself.  One of the Fingermen says, “You know the laws on prostitution, that’s a class-H offence.  That means we get to decide what happens to you…. You’ll do anything we want and then we’ll kill you.”  The bringers of justice in this society get to decide your fate.  In this case, they want to rape and kill her.  That would be allowed in that society because that’s their justice.  The price of prostituting yourself should not be getting killed, but it is.  Is this justice?  Does prostitution equal rape and death in the eyes of the law, and moreover, in the eyes of justice?  It shouldn't, but it does here.  This shows how justice can be taken to the extreme and can be mistaken for allowing law keepers to do whatever they want.  At another point in the book, V talks about how the justice of this world has been transformed.  V says, “The justice that I loved was gone; who had such kindly eyes; who took such small and careful steps…Transformed, she glared through narrow slits and ground good men beneath her vicious heel.”  This shows readers how, in this society, justice has morphed into something that is more like injustice in disguise.  Justice in our world is supposed to help find the truth and give people the treatment that they deserve.  Justice in this world however, oppresses citizens and rises up those who shouldn't be put upon a pedestal.  Is it justice to rape and kill someone who’s only guilty of prostitution?  Is it justice to oppress innocent and good people? No!  It’s not!  This book tells us how justice is easily abused and misused.

            In V for Vendetta another major theme that the book revolves around is anarchy.  The book focuses on what anarchy really is and how it connects to the other theme of justice.  Most people think of anarchy as something with no laws or order to keep people in check.  But, as V says, “Anarchy means ‘without leaders’; not ‘without order.’ With anarchy comes an age of… true order, which is to say voluntary order.  This age…will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle… has run its course.”  This anarchy that V wants is not chaos, but uncontrolled order.  This type of anarchy is meant to balance out the chaos that the government’s justice has brought about, and to bring about a true kind of justice.  This justice from anarchy would be the people’s self-appointed justice, not their totalitarian government’s justice.  V also talks about the different versions of anarchy: chaos and order.  As V describes anarchy he explains, “Anarchy wears two faces: both creator and destroyer.  Thus, destroyers topple empires; made a canvas of clean rubble where creators can then build a better world.”  In this way, this shows how V believes that in order to make this society better, he must first destroy it.  This is also V’s way of saying that in order to get justice, there must be anarchy.  All of this shows that the book is trying to say that anarchy is not always a bad thing.

            As you can see, the two major themes of this book are justice and anarchy.  The book’s focus is on how these two themes interact, and subliminally, how we can incorporate them into our lives.  Anarchy isn't chaos, but un-ruled order, and justice should be finding the truth dealing out punishments fairly.  As V says, “justice is meaningless without freedom.”  This freedom can be our own type of anarchy, our own liberating order.  What this book is really trying to teach us is that justice and anarchy can coexist.

V For Vendetta Synthesis Page

Blog Review: Living in the Glass Castle

Link to Sara's Blog Post: http://sarafellman.blogspot.com/2014/11/blig-post-121-thirteen-reasons-why.html

            For my blog review, I read Sara’s 1st blog post on “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher.  The book is about a girl named Hannah, who killed herself, and left behind thirteen tapes giving thirteen reasons why she killed herself.  Behind each reason is a person that has done something horrible to her.  There are several things that make this blog post amazing.  One thing that makes this blog post great is the inferences based off of the text.  Another thing that makes this blog post so good is that Sara also makes many connections to the real world from the text.  This is why Sara’s blog post is so amazing.

            In Sara’s blog post, she makes inferences from the book and its characters.  One thing that really stuck out to me that she wrote was when she wrote that the author’s purpose was “having us readers, read Hannah’s voice as our own.”  This really stuck out to me because as she says earlier in the blog post, the book is told from the perspective of a character named Clay.  Hannah is just a narrator.  I have read this book before, and this inference made me look back at the book in a new light.  It made me realize that in fact, what Sara says here is true.  When you read this book, you do take on Hannah’s view of things.  Even though the book is told from Clay’s perspective, you see it through Hannah’s eyes.  Sara’s inferences about the book were profound and eye-opening.  They make you look at the book differently than how you would have, had you not read this blog post.  This, for a reader, is a very good thing because it opens you up to new perspectives.

            Another thing that Sara does in her blog post is to make connections to the real world based off of the text of the book.  One connection that she made was between Hannah’s deluded view of the world and how this relates to herself and everyone as a whole.   She talks about Hannah’s need for perfectionism and how everyone has this want for everything to be perfect.  In Sara’s words, “I can relate to Hannah; I want a perfect life, and if one thing is ruined, it upsets me, most people can say the same.”  This too, made me look back at this book which I had read, in a new light.  I had never considered Hannah to be a perfectionist, but this blog post made me realize that she was a perfectionist.  It also made me realize that everyone is a little bit of a perfectionist.  A blog post that makes you look at things differently and make realizations is a good blog post.

            All in all, Sara’s blog post about “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher was awesome!  She made you realize new thing and look at things differently.  She did this through inferences and connections.  In her first blog post about this book, she said that she could relate to the character of Hannah, yet in the second blog post about the book, she talked about how she was disgusted by Hannah.  It’s very rare when you find a character that you can be both disgusted by, and yet can relate to it.  It’s even rarer to find someone who will admit this.  Reading Sara’s other blog post about “Thirteen Reasons Why” made this one stand out even more because it was so interesting to see her change of opinions.  All of these factors made this an amazing blog post.

            

Non-Fiction Critical Analysis 2: Hechinger's Field Guide to Ethnic Stereotypes

            In “Hechinger’s Field guide to Ethnic Stereotypes” by Kevin and Curtis Hechinger, the Hechinger brothers want readers to know that stereotypes are nonsense because we are all different, and therefore, should be ignored.  One way that the Hechinger’s show readers this is by listing out all of the different stereotypes of different ethnicities.  The Hechinger’s also use ridiculous “facts” to make stereotypes seem even more crazy and unsupported.  For example, according to the book, “Many Scandi-Americans… have spent so much time consuming dairy products, eating baked goods, and sitting out the snows on their living room sofas, they have fundamentally altered their genetic code.”  This quote is just one example of a crazy “fact” that is obviously untrue and supports a ridiculous stereotype.  Finally, the Hechinger’s use humor to make fun of stereotypes and show that they are nonsense.  All of these examples show and support how people should not be confined to stereotypes or to listen to stereotypes.

            The Hechinger’s want readers to laugh at the hilarity of stereotypes, and feel surprised at the assumptions of some stereotypes.  One way that the Hechinger’s do this is by using humor to make fun of and show the ridiculousness of stereotypes.  For example, in the book, the author’s say, “But recent improvements in down-coat technology have led to the dispersal of Latinos across the country.”  This is one of the many ways that the book uses humor to disperse myths about ethnic groups that stereotypes and generalizations bring and support.  The Hechinger’s also simplify the topic by using casual language.  This use of language familiarizes and connects the narrator and the reader, causing the reader to feel comfortable while reading the book, and allows them to feel surprised at certain revelations and facts that contradict stereotypes. 

            After reading “Hechinger’s Field Guide to Ethnic Stereotypes,” I agree with the Hechinger’s that stereotypes should be ignored, but I think that the way they supported and built up their ideas with humor was confusing and unnecessary.  Their humor was too forced and to me it ended up just being confusing and seemed at least a little racist.  I agree with their message, but I thing that they went about saying it the wrong way.

Hechinger's Field Guide to Ethic Stereotypes Non Fiction Synthesis Page

"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" Reading Response

            The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams is a book about the adventures of a group of friends as they travel throughout the universe.  Arthur Dent is a man from Earth, which has recently been destroyed to make way for an inter-galactic highway.  Zaphod Beeblebrox is the ex-president of the universe, who cut himself off from parts of his brain, which now controls his destiny, unbeknownst to himself and others.  Trillian, or Tricia McMillan as she was formally known as, is also from Earth.  Ford Prefect is a writer for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a book which informs people about the innumerable parts of the universe, even though it is not always correct.  The last member of their group is Marvin, a very depressed android.  Through the adventures of the group, Adams teaches the readers about how justice is served in our world.

            Justice, according to Adams, isn't always served.  One example of this is how, in the book, Zaphod Beeblebrox locked off part of his brain, but that part of his brain made plans, and now he has to follow these plans, even though he doesn't want to, and doesn't even know what these plans are and doesn't want to know.  According to the book, Zaphod says, “‘I don’t know what this great thing I’m meant to be doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed to not know.  And I resent that, right?  The old me knew.  The old me cared.  Fine, so far so good.  Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain-my own brain- and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it…. But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't he, by changing my brain.’” The injustice here is that Zaphod has no idea what he must do next, and doesn't know what these “plans” that his brain made are.  You’d think that this injustice would somehow be served with some sort of justice, but, in the book, there is no justice served.  Zaphod is at the whim and mercy of his brain; even though he doesn't know what his brain wants him to do.  Even though his brain brings this injustice, Zaphod himself blocks justice, and is the only one who can bring is.  Justice could be served if Zapod could just unlock the parts of his brain that are locked to him, and discover what he’d been planning.  This injustice pulls the story line along and makes you wonder: what was Zaphod like before he locked his brain off?  Another example of how Adams shows this is through the dying-out of the original Earth species.  According to the book, when Earth was first created, it was inhabited by life-forms that head naturally developed on Earth.  Then, a spaceship full of a different race of fully-developed aliens crash-landed on Earth, which caused Earth’s original inhabitants to start dying out.  You’d think that justice could be served by something terrible happening to the alien race, but no such justice is served.  Instead, no justice is served at all, and the original Earth species continues to die out while the alien one thrives.  This shows that Adams believes that justice is not always served.

            Justice is not always served, if ever, in the way that you expect it to be.  An injustice that shows this is revealed to the reader during a conversation between a man named Roosta, a colleague of the former self of Zaphod Beeblebrox, and Zaphod himself.  According to the book, “‘Beeblebrox,’ he said, sticking his hands behind his head, ‘have you any idea what’s going to happen to you on the Frogstar? … They’re going to feed you’ said Roosta, into the Total Perspective Vortex….You can kill a man, destroy his body, break his spirit, but only the Total Perspective Vortex can annihilate a man’s soul.  The treatment lasts seconds, but the effects last the rest of your life!’… ‘Any idea why these guys want to do this to me?’… ‘They believe that it will be the best way of destroying you for ever.  They know what you’re after… You want to meet the man who rules the Universe.’” The injustice shown in this quote is the fact that “these guys”, whose identity is unknown, want to destroy Zaphod Beeblebrox’s soul just because his former self made plans to find the real person who controls the universe, and now his current self has to follow through with those plans, regardless of whether or not he wants to.  You’d expect that in order for justice to be served here, something bad would have to happen to the people who want Zaphod’s soul destroyed, but this is not how justice is served here.  Instead, justice is served because Zaphod escapes and is taken to see the man who controls the universe.  The people who block justice here are the people who want Zaphod’s soul destroyed, and, surprisingly, it is Zaphod’s former self who brings justice by making the plans for Zaphod to escape and see the man who controls the universe.  Yet, Zaphod’s former self not only brings justice, but blocks it in a way because the current Zaphod had no idea of the plans he’d made and only got into this mess in the first place because of those plans.  Another example of how justice isn't always served in the way that you expect it to be is when Zaphod and the others leave a restaurant without paying by writing someone else’s name on their bill, therefore making someone else pay for their food, and then stealing a spacecraft.  You’d think that the justice served for this wouldn't be very severe.  You’d be wrong.  In an unexpected turn of events, that spacecraft turns out to belong to the same person who had to pay their bill, and is scheduled to crash into a sun.  Even though they will die, the owners of the spacecraft won’t rescue them, forcing them to stay in the spacecraft and die.  This seems very extreme, but it is the justice that gets served to them.  This shows how Adams believes that justice isn't always served in the way that you expect is to be.

            As you can see, Douglas Adams had several views on justice.  He believed that justice is not always served, and when it is, it’s not always served in the way that you expected it to be.  We can apply these views to our own lives.  They help us realize that life isn't always fair, and they teach us that life is unpredictable.  This can go a long way in helping people, especially kids, prepare for the world outside.