Dead Zone

Author’s Note: I wrote about the book Magisterium by Jeff Hirsch to meet two goals, text analysis and the three categories of organization.

Imagine, your mother had left you ten years ago, and all you have left is your father, who went mad after she left and locked himself in his workshop, so concentrated that he would forget to eat if you didn’t remind him and the only joy you have is your goal to go to another planet, trying your hardest in school so you can skip grades. Then when you think that you might finally get your chance to get into the school you needed to go into space your father claims to have made it work. After he tells you, you try and schedule him an appointment with the psychiatrist so you don’t miss your one chance, but then the government shows up, takes your father, blows his lab sky high, and made you run into a place that was said to make you go insane. The book that I am reading is called Magisterium by Jeff Hirsch. Magisterium had a lot of important events, but the most important was when Glen (you) told her psychiatrist that her father needed help.

One thing that happened was that after Glen had told her psychiatrist what her dad had said she acted as is Glen were right, but really knew that her father had a potential weapon of war. After their chat, she had told the head of the government what Glen had said, and they went to go retrieve it from Glen’s father, and that caused Glen to have to run into Magisterium.

Another thing was that the place that her father spoke of, the Magisterium, was going into a downward spiral, because their leader was becoming more and more evil, something that the Magisterium would do to anyone in the royal line, and Glen’s father was trying to get her out. Everyone who wasn’t in the Magisterium, believed that the Magisterium was a dead zone, which is why Glen thought that her father was crazy. In addition, if it weren't for Glen telling the psychiatrist she may have never went into the Magisterium and saved their world.

The final thing that happened was that the government actually began a war between the two places, and would’ve been the biggest war that had existed in the book, even before the government created the Magisterium. They would’ve also gained so much power from the Magisterium that they would’ve been able to take over the entire world.  

As you can see, all of these things were caused by one little event— her trying to save her father. And if it weren’t for that, the government may not have found out and destroyed most of her father’s work, forced her to go into a mysterious place, and had her save the world.

Retained

Author’s Note: I wrote about the photograph “Unspoken” by Sandra Raynor because we always write essays about text and based off my goal of text analysis and scoring tens in introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion, I thought it didn’t necessarily need to be about text, so I wrote about a photograph (Plus I thought writing about an image would be easier and better quality than writing about text).

The black and white photograph “Unspoken” by Sandra Raynor tells the story of a young woman in isolation from the world around her. But the artist leaves it up to the viewer to decide the nature of her internment, and makes us wonder if her imprisonment is literal or emotional. Is it self-imposed, a result of withdrawal into grief or has she been rejected, placed there due to the actions of others? The artist gives us many cues throughout the work, such as the body language and posture of the young woman, the figure in the background or the iron bars in the middle ground, or even just the title itself. All these elements combine to create a powerful image of emotional withdrawal that is immediately familiar to anyone who has suffered the pain of separation.

The mood of distress is mainly communicated through the young woman’s facial expression and her body language, like how the main character fills the majority of the photograph. Also, you notice how her body position creates a fortress that separates her from her surroundings, with her knees are pulled tight against her chest and her elbows are drawn inward. She also huddles in a corner with her face turn downward almost hidden by her thick cascading hair. Her eyes appear closed as if focusing on something deep inside rather than on what’s going on around her. She grasps her head with her hands in a way that suggests her pain is almost physical.

This feeling of emotional withdrawal is enhanced by the passive, non-interactive relationship between the various parts of the scene. The young woman doesn’t acknowledge the photographer or viewer’s presence in any way even though we are seeing her from close range. It is as if we are observing her with a binoculars from a far off place, invading a private moment both uninvited and unacknowledged. The only other character in the photograph, a blurred male figure in the background, also fails to connect with the young woman or with us.

This impenetrable divide between people is maximized by the separation of the picture into two spaces, a foreground and a background. The bars function as a divider between these two distinct and distant spaces, and beyond the bars the background is blurred creating the idea of the distance between the girl and her surrounding world. The ghostly background figure haunts her but fails to materialize and end her isolation. Both division and obscurity suggest that these two characters might have once shared some sort of a relationship (if not a space), but now, something tragically keeps them apart, unable to breach the emotional or physical distance separating them.

The implications of the iron bars that divide the image are unmistakable. They clearly reference imprisonment and isolation but is unclear as to whether the containment is self-imposed as a way of keeping others out, or externally imposed as a form of captivity. On one hand the conditions of her captivity do not read as forced; her expression is one of internal turmoil not directed outwardly to an external threat. And because there is nothing in the photograph that refers to actual prison conditions one tends to interpret the bars as a metaphor for some sort of internal emotion state of thralldom rather than a literal condition. But what she is captive to is unclear. She might be a prisoner of her own alienation and pain or possibly a prisoner to her need and desire for the other that is beyond her reach.

The title Unspoken also affects the way we interpret this story. If we assume that the young woman’s anguish is somehow related to the ghostly male figure in the background then the narrative is about a dissolved relationship. After all, with minimal elements in the photograph to begin with, the male figure with his back turned to the scene and walking away from the young woman, no matter how ghostly, holds our attention. Might Unspoken indicate a failure to communicate, an absence of emotional exchange and connection? Sandra Raynor does not give us concrete answers to these questions but instead keeps active all these possible interpretations allowing the viewer to find their own empathetic response her visual story.

The Gatekeepers

Authors Note: I wrote my text analysis essay on how Anthony Horowitz changes the point of view in-between characters, because I think that more books should be like this. There are many books that can be improved and extended by just doing this. 

Confusion happens all the time in a book. You don't know what to think about a character because someone doesn't always have the right thought about someone. Like saying they're stuck up but really just shy. In most books it's just one person's like, one person thoughts and ideas. However, in the series The Gatekeepers, by Anthony Horowitz, every couple chapters or so the point of view changes. In this book there are five main characters that all share the same importance. It helps showing the thoughts of different characters, but also what they think about each other. The story can now be viewed by many different views. It improves the quality of the literature. 

Anthony Horowitz writes great books; they really show the personality of a character. She also shows how overtime in the book they change. But not just in the eyes of the character, in the eyes of others too. This helps show what the main characters are thinking about each other. Without the changing of the point of view readers, would think that maybe a character playing the bad guys or he really has changed. In the book when Scott is with the Old Ones, it goes to his point of view and it shows he’s teaming with the winning team. This helps the ready really find out how the character is really thinking about a situation

While that is happening it switches point of views a lot and shows how every character see’s what’s going on. Some hope he’ll choose them over the old ones; some think he’s waiting for the right chance to attack. This really helps the book progress along because instead of having one person’s thoughts and one person’s actions being told. Reading books like this really keeps the reader interested in the book. Sometimes you may pick a favorite character and anxiously read hoping next they will stumble into the chapter that shows his or her point of view. Horowitz has written many books with this un-unique quality. Each book better in many ways by this one thing, the changing in point of view.

When everybody, Matt, Pedro, Scar, Scott, and Jamie, get separated. It shows the point of view of all five of them. Telling the reader where they are and how they are getting along. By doing this it really shows the instinct and the personality of the character, showing how they react when pressed with an urgent situation. Some acted with braveness and others acted like a coward. This also shows how they act.

There was a scene in the book where somebody was going to betray them and everybody thought it was a different person. It went through every character's mind and showed how they investigated. It really showed how other people thought and what they thought about each other. In a book it’s really interesting to see who characters trust and who they don’t.

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There aren’t many books like that, but the ones that are keep the reader intrigued and more interested. Anthony Horowitz is a great book writer. He perfectly describes and shows a character's attitude toward things. Anthony also gets the reader to realize and understand the motives of the characters very well. This really puts the book together not only does it help the reader realize what other characters think but it really pieces together a book. Everybody’s thoughts is way better than just one, everything comes together and in the end just makes more sense. Having the point of view change throughout a book drastically increases its literature and meaning of the story.

The Good, The Bad, And The Secrets

Author's Note: I decided to write a point of view peice to meet three goals for the reading rubric and have an essay for the writing rubric. I wrote a point of view peice on the book A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket in the view of Mr. Poe.

Many people know of the book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is written by many authors (under the cover name Lemony Snicket). Very many people also know that in the series Mr. Poe takes care of the Baudelaire orphans and manages the gigantic fortune that Violet inherits when she becomes of age. Though all of this is true, Mr. Poe can seem like a bit of a bad person at points in the story. People may think this, but they haven't thought about what’s happening with Mr. Poe and what he needs to worry about.

The childrens’ new guardian, Count Olaf, basically abuses the children, so the children bring this to Mr. Poe and offer all of this about Count Olaf: “Count Olaf is a madman!”, “He makes us do a great deal of difficult chores.”, “He struck Klaus across the face.”, “He calls us orphans... ...He has terrible friends... ...He is always asking about our money.”, and the children are 14, 9, and 3 years old. Seemingly inconsiderate Mr. Poe replies with: “Children you must give yourselves time to adjust to your new home.” 

From the view of any normal person Mr. Poe seems like a monster letting children that young live in conditions like that. The children expected Mr. Poe to instantly have them extracted from the Count’s custody within seconds, in fact, you were probably think that too. At this point Mr. Poe seems like a completely disrespectful towards the children, only caring about his issues, and not giving a rat’s hat about the children’s. 

“Yes, yes, no, yes, I'll pay the taxes tomorrow don’t worry about it. Oh, hello children!” As Mr. Poe seems joyful to see the children he’s really thinking something else. ‘Ooooohhhh great, more whining from these children is the LAST thing that I need in my day.’ As the children continue to talk, Mr. Poe is thinking of what’s going on in his life. ‘Oh my goodness how am I going to pull this off?! I can’t believe I've forgotten my wedding anniversary again! This isn't going to go down well.' 

Now that you see this perspective, Mr. Poe is as innocent as the grass is green. Yet, he was an unmindful child, who had other things on his mind. So, now that you've seen the other side of the story, Mr. Poe doesn't seem too bad. Now, he's just another person who has real world problems that he needs to worry about, and is unable to juggle the hundreds of problems that the Baudelaire have. So next time you have a problem, that you need to run and show to someone else for help, take a reality check, and realize that they have problems just like you, and that a perspective swap, can change your whole point of reference.

Figurative Language

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1amU5kCDVzJJH5c-EPnj6orduJkUu_GANiN4yzKWhXPs/edit

Draw The Dark

Picture yourself living in a small town in Wisconsin, not much different from Pewaukee, small enough where you know everyone in town. There is nothing really exciting that happens, until you hear about a murder that happened during WWII, when all the Jews left, because the mayor were using German PW’s for work. You have to a history report about something local, so you decide the murder. Draw the Dark, by Ilsa J. Bick, is a great mix of a supernatural and mystery book.

You might be wondering how supernatural fits into this book. The main character, Christian, has an amazing drawing talent. He can draw anything! By anything I mean, he can draw a nightmare for example. When he draws something, he can make someone visualize it. He can even draw death, making the victim see how they will die. Christian also has a special bond with a guy named David Witek. Christian has dreams of Davids past, and uses them to find out what happened at the barn.

The mystery in this book, as you might of figured out, is about the murder at the barn. Christian decides to look at newspaper articles from then, but when he finally sees the scene, he finds out that the murder isn’t close to what the article said. The article said that Mordecai Witek, David Witeks father, injured the man he intended to kill, Charles Eisenmann, and killed someone else instead. But what happened was Mordecai got mad and punched Charles, and almost killed him, but the man he supposedly killed, a German PW, killed Mordecai. They didn’t help Charles so he died. They replaced Charles with another man and buried both Mordecai and Charles under the barn.

Even though this book isn’t a series, overall Draw the Dark is both a great mystery and supernatural book. I liked this book because it seems realistic, even though it isn’t possible. Not to mention, this book demonstrates that if you try hard enough, you can get what you need.

Backwards In Time

Author's Note: I wrote a cause and effect piece on The Infinity Ring: A Mutiny In Time by James Dashner because I thought it would be a great example to demonstrate cause and effect.

Imagine you’re a kid genius, knowing everything there is to know about history, but you have only one friend, a science whiz. Your parents are even smarter than you, and they have their own lab in the basement, where you’re not allowed. Your parents aren't home for a couple weeks and they let you stay home alone for the duration. Your science friend insists they you and her should go in the lab while they aren't home. She convinces you and you let her in with the keys you found in their room. when you go in you see an almost finished time machine (The Infinity Ring). a week later, your friend actually manages to finish it. You are right about to test it, when your parents walk in the door.

The main cause, messing with their parent’s stuff and getting caught. I don’t think that the book would be anything like what it is now, because if they hadn't messed with the stuff, there parents would’ve never gone missing in the first place. The machine may not have even been completed without the science friend’s help. Or if they did, but they were never caught, they wouldn’t have made their parents go missing, or they could've been killed.

The result of this caused a large train of events, them to all go back in time at once, getting caught by the British in the Revolutionary War, trying to get away but instead went over the mass capacity of the time machine, and having to be separated from their parents in the time stream. They were soon after captured by a strange group of people (in their own time) and forced to fix all of the things that weren't supposed to happen in the past. Unfortunately in the end of the book (the climax), they didn't find the protagonist's parents their parents, but they figured out how to find them, but that would include fixing all the bad things that happened in the past, because their parents would be attracted to them, like magnets, in the time stream.