Imagine a society full of greed and envy, with little love and comfort. This is the ideal reality in “Gathering Blue” by Lois Lowry. I relish the book due to the main character’s physical and emotional strength. The main character, Kira, was always identified as being an insignificant burden due to her deformed leg, but she was tenacious, because her mother always told her that her strong hands and wise head make up for it. This book left me at gusto. If you are looking for a complex story with amazing twist and turns then this book is in your favor.
The book starts off in Kira’s perspective. Kira, a fifteen year old girl, with exceptional threading skills sits next to her mother’s spiritless body. Kira felt the remaining warmth and comfort from her mother slip through her fingers as it flew into the wind with its spirit\. In the society Kira lives in, it is normal to sit next to the deceased for four days in the Field until the body’s “spirit” is completely gone. The Field has a similar concept to a cemetery. It is where the deceased and flawed are taken to, but the villagers believe that at night “beasts” will come towards those in the Field to attack and devour them unless they have some source of light. After her mother’s spirit leaves. Her father,
…show more content…
Christopher was said to be taken by the beasts before she was born, so she is alone. As Kira goes back to the village, she finds her cot burned to ashes. In the society she lives in, it is normal to burn down the cot the ill were living in, so their sickness would not spread from cot to cot. Kira immediately thinks to try to rebuild her cot, but is stopped when she was about to pick up a pile of saplings that were on top of her space of land . A woman named Vandara stopped and told her that the space was hers now since Kira’s mother could not protect her no longer. Women soon came out of the cots surrounded the space of land that had once been a cot and surrounded the two. The women argued that they needed the space to build a pen on for the tykes and fowls. Most villagers in the village had distaste in her, because they believed she was a complete burden who has a deformed leg. Kira was born with a bended leg that had disabled her from doing the work girls her age in the village would do. The leader of the group of of women, Vandara, had taken Kira to the Council of Guardians at the Council Edifice, confident that the council will kill her. Vandara had said “ we have tolerated her presence for these years” (Lowry 26) and “But she has not contributed. She cannot dig or plant or weed, or even tend the domestic beasts...she drags that dead leg around like a useless burden” (Lowry 27) The Council decided that Kira would stay at the Council while Vandara and the others would take her space to build a pen for the tykes. Kira would have to repair a special robe everyone in the village knew about. Kira had started learning to create dyes from an elder who taught her mother. Out of nowhere, the elder who was teaching her dies. Kira was sad about the death and how she didn’t learn how to make the dye blue.The robe would be worn at The Gathering told the story of the past ancestors and would be worn by the singer. She later encounters other gifted orphans who were taken in by the council. She meets Thomas, a gifted woodcrafter and Jo, a young tyke with an exceptional voice. Thomas was in charge of the staff the singer that had the story carved on it. She also has a friend that is a young tyke named Matt. Kira believes that her gifted friends and herself have some connection to their gift or talent. For example, when she holds a piece of cloth she had threaded as a young tyke, she feels that it sends her messages through feel. Kira’s friend Matt goes missing at the end. He later comes back with blue dye and a blind man in a blue shirt. The man was Kira’s father, Christopher. Kira is very overwhelmed.. Her father tells her that those who are left in the Field to die are taken to the village he had came from. The village is caring and full of love amongst each other. She learns that there is no such beasts. Kira and her father both believe that the two villages will know each other. Her father gives her a bundle of blue thread which she feels life in. “Gathering Blue” by Lois Lowry tells the tale of a girl named Kira living in a society full of greed and envy, with little comfort.
Kira faces many obstacles. She is so tenacious physically and emotionally. I personally enjoyed this story, because it was so vibrant to me. My favorite part would be when Kira slowly remembers a past memory with her mother telling her that she was not a burden, because her mother just boosted her self esteem. “Your strong hands and wise head make up for the crippled leg” (Lowry 6) My not so favorite part would be when Thomas and Kira had found Jo singing unhappily, because Jo is a young tyke who does not have much freedom. “Gathering Blue” is a fresh breath of air to
read.
Isobelle Carmody does make use of some traditional fantasy elements in The Gathering but the departure from rigid archetypes is what enables her to achieve a sophisticated exploration of the oft-stereotyped concept of evil. She is able to effectively do this not just by the traditional good vs evil but by the dark side of human nature and mankind. To achieve this she uses Mr Karl the deputy principle at Three North in Cheshunt where this novel is based. However she hasn’t just gone and changed how traditional fantasy operate. She has used a good balance of both traditional and modern ways of getting messages out to the readers.
The novel, The Color of Water follows the author and narrator James McBride, and his mother Ruth’s life. It explores their childhood—when they were both embarrassed by their mothers—through the part of their lives where they began to accept themselves for who they are. Moreover, this memoir is quite distinctive as McBride cleverly parallels his story to his mother, Ruth’s story using dual narration. This technique further helps contribute to the theme of self-identity. Throughout the novel, McBride searches for identity and a sense of belonging that derives from his multiracial family. By using two different narrations, McBride gradually establishes his identity and by integrating both narratives at the end, McBride also shows that although both narrators at the beginning had different upbringings, in the end they came together, and understood each other’s perspective.
Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate is the story of an African boy, Kek, who loses his father and a brother and flees, leaving his mother to secure his safety. Kek, now in Minnesota, is faced with difficulties of adapting to a new life and of finding his lost mother. He believes that his mother still lives and would soon join him in the new found family. Kek is taken from the airport by a caregiver who takes him to live with his aunt. It is here that Kek meets all that amazed him compared to his home in Sudan, Africa. Home of the brave shows conflicts that Kek faces. He is caught between two worlds, Africa and America. He feels guilty leaving behind his people to live in a distant land especially his mother, who he left in the midst of an attack.
“Black Power”, the word alone raises an abundance of controversial issues. Black power was a civil rights movement led by the black panthers which addressed several issues including segregation and racism. Black power had a different meaning to every member of the Mc Bride family, Ruth and James both looked at black power from a different angle. In “The Color of Water”, The author James Mc Bride admired the black panthers at first, but slowly he grew afraid of them after fearing the consequences his mother might face for being a white woman in a black community influenced by black power. James’ worries were baseless, black power’s motive was to educate and improve African American communities not to create havoc or to harm members of the white community.
film as well as similar to 'Stand By Me' We simply used our own ideas
Perhaps no other event in modern history has left us so perplexed and dumbfounded than the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, an entire population was simply robbed of their existence. In “Our Secret,” Susan Griffin tries to explain what could possibly lead an individual to execute such inhumane acts to a large group of people. She delves into Heinrich Himmler’s life and investigates all the events leading up to him joining the Nazi party. In“Panopticism,” Michel Foucault argues that modern society has been shaped by disciplinary mechanisms deriving from the plague as well as Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a structure with a tower in the middle meant for surveillance. Susan Griffin tries to explain what happened in Germany through Himmler’s childhood while Foucault better explains these events by describing how society as a whole operates.
In The Color of Water, author James McBride writes both his autobiography and a tribute to the life of his mother, Ruth McBride. In the memoirs of the author’s mother and of himself, they constantly face discrimination from their race in certain neighborhoods and of their religious beliefs. The trials and tribulations faced by these two characters have taught readers universally that everyone faces difficulties in life, but they can all be surmounted.
Silver Linings Playbooks tells the story of Pat Solitano Jr. (played by Bradley Cooper), a high school teacher diagnosed with bipolar disorder who is trying to get his life back together. The movie opens as Pat is released from a psychiatric hospital after eight months of treatment and moves back in with his parents. He is determined to get back together with his wife, Nikki, despite all the signs that say she does not want to be with him - such as the restraining order she filed against him. Pat meets recently widowed Tiffany Maxwell (played by Jennifer Lawrence), who is suffering from depression and overcoming a sex addiction that ensued from the death of her husband. Tiffany offers to help deliver Pat’s letters to Nikki if he enters a dance competition with her. As the movie goes on, Pat and Tiffany’s relationship progresses and they learn to cope with their issues.
Is society too egotistical? In Hunters in the Snow, Tobias Wolfe gives an illustration of the selfishness and self-centeredness of humankind through the actions of his characters. The story opens up with three friends going on their habitual hunting routine; their names are Frank, Kenny, and Tub. In the course of the story, there are several moments of tension and arguments that, in essence, exposes the faults of each man: they are all narcissistic. Through his writing in Hunters in the Snow, Wolfe is conveying that the ultimate fault of mankind is egotism and the lack of consideration given to others.
"My Children are black. They don't look like your children. They know that they are black, and we want it recognized. It's a positive difference, an interesting difference, and a comfortable natural difference. At least it could be so, if you teachers learned to value difference more. What you value, you talk about.'" p.12
Character list Annemarie is one of the main characters in this book. She is a 10 year old German girl who lives in Copenhagen, Denmark with her mom, dad, and young sister Kirsti. Annemarie tells the story from her point of view. “It was only in the fairy tales that people were called upon to be so brave, to die for one another. Not in real-life Denmark” Annemarie struggles to find the definition of courage, but with the big journey that awaits uphead she soon finds out.
I chose to do my paper on the movie, For Colored Girls, by Ntozake Shane (2010). In the movie For Colored Girls, I thought about all the Tangies who have not been professionally treated for their childhood rape. It is not an easy subject to talk about. The victims sometimes hide their emotions for years. Sexual abuse on a child is vulgar and according to Martin (2010), it is considered maltreatment and should be reported to authorities. Tangie knew her attacker, in fact he lived with them. He was a caregiver who was supposed to protect her. She held a lot of anger towards her mother because she felt that at least her mom should have protected her.
Diamant has Dinah effectively tell her story from three different narrative perspectives. The bulk of the novel is related by Dinah in first person, providing a private look at growing up and personal tragedy: "It seemed that I was the last person alive in the world" (Diamant 203). Dinah tells the story that she says was mangled in the bible.
In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
The four pillars of life include staying connected, motion, nutrition and reduction of stress. In the novel, Beka Lamb, by Zee Edgell, these pillars are examined. A novel about the upbringing and changes a young girl goes through. She makes some mistakes throughout her life but she soon realizes that she needs to alter her ways. With the help of a close friend, considered to be like a sister, she is able to look at life differently. Their friendship helps them to transform.