the sun also rises by Ernest Hemingway

                Right now I am reading The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I just started reading this book. This is the second book that I have read by Hemingway, before it I read the old man and the sea. As I was reading "the sun also rises" I did a little bit of research. It says that this book was his first novel and that it was based off of Hemingway’s own experience in Spain.
     this book takes place in Paris, the main character is an american journalist named Jacob Barnes, who is in love with an English woman named Brett.  Brett has had numerous love affairs, she has married and been divorced and is engaged to a man named Michael Campbell. however she is in love with Jacob.
     Brett and Jacob realize that there is no way that they can have a relationship, because their lives are so different. i would say that so far this the major theme. in my research i found that Brett is supposed to represent the "new sexual freedom of the 1920s" which is why she has married, divorced and had several love affairs. during the book several men fall in love with Brett, which builds tension.
      the book consists of three parts (books). and i have just finished book 1. overall i find it a bit sad that Brett may be in love with Jacob but she is engaged and they can never really be together.

witch child entry 3 salem witch trials

  i have now finished the book, the witch child  by Celia Rees. and as i predicted, this novel eventually led to the salem witch trials. i wasnt expecting the book to end the way that it did. i expected a more happy ending. but i really liked how it ended in a suspenseful way that left u wondering what actually happened. overall this book was alright, nothing particularly special about it. the salem witch trials were a tragedy. a lot of people were brutally murdered for something that obviously does not exist (witchcraft). i think that that is why i resisted this book in some ways. but i think it could have been more suspenseful or just more interesting. I do however find it scary to think that this could have been a real incident. It could have been a real person's story of their life in eary America. i dont remember wheather i chose tragedy or triumph for a social studies essay last year on the puritain society. but i wish that i had read this book at the time because it really gives a good perspective of the way puriatins ran their society.

the witch child. entry 2

I am a little more than half way through the book. There are a lot of difficult things going on in the text. I mentioned the main conflict in my last blog post. Mary thought that in America she would be safe from the witch hunters and she could begin a new life, different than her old one. But even as people travel overseas and oceans, no matter where they go, they carry their superstitions and beliefs with them. Really, if anything, it might become worse in America. Several people are beginning to suspect that Mary is different. And several people have been informed about her past.

To get away from this, Mary spends a lot of her time in the woods. She has befriended some Native Americans and she enjoys being in the woods. But she cannot be seen with the Native Americans because the settlers fear them and hate them. I think that this is another conflict in the novel. Nearly none of the settlers know anything about the Native American people. Mary’s Native American friend, Jaybird, helped cure one of the settlers from a disease. The Native Americans know a lot about the land and the plants, including which ones heal and which ones are poisonous. This knowledge could help the settlers, especially since they only have one doctor. But they do not trust this; they believe that use of herbs is associated with witchcraft. Which leads back to the main conflict of this story.

The conflict with the Native Americans in this book reminds me of a movie that I watched in social studies this year. It was called Bury my heart at wounded knee. Although the two stories take place in different time periods they both have parts about the oppression of Native Americans. the movie, Bury my heart at wounded knee, is about the assimilation of Native Americans. The witch child takes place far before the battle at wounded knee and the assimilation of native Americans. i really felt strongly about what we saw in the movie. i thought that forcing people to change their ways of  living and their culture is a very cruel thing to do. america was originally the land of opportunity and religious tolerance, but it did not start out that way. It took hundreds of years for it to become that. and even to this day, many social issues involving rights still exist.

The Witch Child

 

                The Witch Child begins with a young girl in England in the year 1659. This girl, Mary Newbury, never knew her mother or father. She lived in England with her grandmother, who was taken away and accused of witchcraft. Mary flees English witch hunters to settle in an American Colony. She hopes to leave her past behind and keep it secret from the puritans.

I am not very far into the book but I’m finding the prospective very interesting. I found myself resisting the text sometimes because the character is around my age and she is experiencing some very harsh things. Mary watched her grandmother’s trial and she was threatened with death because everyone believed that she was a witch.

Mary is very cautious about what she tells people and how she expresses herself. She makes sure that there are no hints that will lead anyone to believe that she is a witch. On her voyage to America, Mary saves a newborn child from death. People began to say that she “breathed life into the newborn”. But Mary explains that all she did was clear the baby’s mouth and nose so that it could breathe, denying any hint of magic.

I noticed that in the beginning of the book, Mary was not sure if she was really a witch or not. But later on she realized that everything that she and her grandmother were accused of was all lies.

                I remember learning about the Salem witch trials in social studies last year. But I realized that Salem is in America, but in this novel the Witch trials are in England. I’m wondering if later on in the book some people will accuse Mary of being a witch in America.

les miserables (spoiler alert)

    I finished reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo a while ago. It is a great book. The book is focused on several characters. The main character is Jean Valjean, who starts off as a peasant in Paris,  France. Jean Valjean commits a crime and is sent to jail. The book is about his life, the way he is treated and the way that he hides and begins a new life to escape his past.
   There are several interesting themes in this book. It starts off as crime and punishment, and as i progressed through the book i noticed it becomes more of a good and evil theme. What i think is so beautiful about this book is the main character is a good person who did something wrong, yet he gets a second chance. He hides from his past and begins a new life. Its difficult, but he finds what he always wanted, love. Jean Valjean is blessed with a daughter whom he adopts and saves from a life of abuse. these two individuals, Jean Valjean and Cosette, find eachother. Both of them struggle and go through terrible things, but when they find eachother, they find what they were missing.
    Jean Valjean was good person who did something wrong. Inspector Javert, who relentlessly persecutes Jean Valjean, belives that he is fighting for justice. Javert is a very interesting character because of this. He thinks it will be just to capture Jean Valjean, but what he is doing is wrong.
   At first the book is very depressing, I found myself frequently resisting the text. but later on, justice is served. Although Cosette is abused and not loved at the begining, she is adopted by a man who will love her as he would his own daughter. Together Cosette and Jean Valjean heal eachothers wounds. Cosette grows and becomes a beautiful woman.  She has everything that she deserves. And although her life and Jean Valjeans life have flaws, its a beautiful story.
 

resisting les miserables

Throughout the book so far, i have found myself resisting the text several times. this book is very emotional and very difficult to read sometimes. because this book takes place in the 1800s in France, this plot is very foreign to me. but the main reason i resist this book is because of the injustice. in the book there is a young working woman named Fantine who was in love with a man named Felix Tholomyes. Fantines friends were paired with Felix's friends and Fantine was pregnant with Felix's child. later all of them left Fantine, they left her to take care of the child alone. Fantine leaves her daughter with a family, the Thenardiers, and pays them to take care of her daughter, Cosette. the Thenardiers abuse Cosette and use her as a servant of the house. this is really where i began to resist the text. madame thernadier loved her own two daughters, she spent time with them and cared for them. As for Cosette, she was hated, beaten and forced to work. Cosette was given a tiny place to sleep in while the two daughters of the thernadiers were given much more luxury. the Thernadier daughters, Azelma and Eponine, were just like their mother, cruel and unkind to Cosette. and M. Thernadier demands more money from Fantine to "take care" of Cosette. by the time Cosette is five years old she had to sweep every room, the street, wash the dishes and carry heavy loads. all this work had made her thin and pale. "injustice made her sullen, misery made her ugly, only her eyes were beautiful, but they were painful to look at. large as they were they seemed to increase with sadness." and in the winter this poor child, shivering in her thin dress, not yet six years old, sweeping with a large broom, her hands red and her eyes filled with tears. this was Cosette. she was called the lark. "no larger than a bird, trembling, frightened, shivering, first to wake every morning in the house and the village, always in the street or fields before dawn. except that poor lark never sang." this particular quote makes the book difficult to read. Cosette is so innocent, shes still practically a baby. A young child being abused by a family that is not her own, she probably doesnt remember her mother. and her mother doesnt even know that this is how her daughter is being treated. this sense of not knowing is also a difficult part of the book. if only Fantine knew what was happening. Fantine is struggling to make money for her daughter, because the man she loved left her. she was fired from her job and forced into prostitution, just so that her daughter could be cared for, but even that is not happening.  I cant even begin to imagine what it must be like. the way that victor hugo describes the situation with Cosette and Fantine makes me resist this book. its heart-breaking to read about the misery of these characters. but there are people out there in our world who are much less fortunate than us. unfortunately life is not just.

Justice. Les miserables

i am currently reading les miserables. the main character, Jean Valjean, has been a convict for 19 years. 5 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread, and 14 years for 4 attempted escapes. The main social issue in this book is punishment. It is quite clear that 19 years is too much for stealing some bread.  What really bothers me is the fact that according to his record he is a very dangerous person. What makes it so unjust is that no one knows the true reason why he was imprisoned. the report from his case says that he was sentanced for burglary and attempted escape. although this is true, it lacks detail and i would say that it exaggerates the real situation. and due to this Jean Valjean has now been stripped of his rights as a person. No one wants to help him because they are afraid of him.   this leads me to my point;  how do we know if the punishment fits the crime? and how do we decide on an appropriate punishment for a crime?  different people have different opinions on how to punish a crime. so how can everyone come to an agreement?  i believe that this is one of the biggest social issues of the world. its everyday that you hear stories on the news about some kind of crime and you always wonder whats going to happen to the person responsible for the crime. and sometimes you may think that the punishment is too harsh or sometimes its too mild. but how can we develop a system for punishing crime the right way so that everyone can be in agreement, and is it even possible to do so? les miserables takes place during the early 1800s, so right away you can see how far we've come to punish crime in a more fair way. but there are still places in our world where punishment for crime is not fair, and even in places where it is, there are exceptions. our world is far from perfect, but if everyone realizes the mistakes we may be able to create justice.