The Book Thief (Continued)

I am currently about halfway through The Book Thief and a lot of new characters have been introduced. For example this character is known as “the new Arthur Berg” because he replaced the former leader of Liesel and Rudy’s stealing clan. His name is Viktor Chemmel, a ruthless, snotty and greedy rich boy is named the new leader of the fruit stealing boys; plus Liesel of course. Viktor refers to Liesel as “whore”, for example he says things like; “He then turned his casual focus on the girl. ‘Who’s the little whore?’” (Zusak 273). Just from that simple phrase I completely dislike this character. The author then goes on to describe him more in comparison to the old leader, Arthur Berg. “Last year, she knew that is she was stuck in a tree, Arthur would come back for her, despite claiming otherwise, This year, by comparison, she was instantly aware that Viktor Chemmel wouldn’t even bother to look back,” (Zusak 274). So Viktor is nothing but a selfish little devil, in my opinion at least. Stealing has become a fundamental part of survival for Rudy and Liesel; times were rough and they both are starving. So it’s important that they get enough to eat. However, they only get one apple to share between the both of them, and Rudy argues with Viktor so he kicks them both out of the little stealing group.

As Rudy’s death is still foreshadowed I am waiting achingly for the moment to come. Will he starve? Will he get beaten to death? Those are just some of the questions I’m asking myself as I go on to read about this marvelous character Rudy Steiner. He goes to a place called Hitler Youth and always gets in trouble so his teacher makes him do extra work. Hitler Youth is kind of like a military school so basically like a gym class. He comes back with cow poo on him and that’s the last straw for Rudy Steiner. He claims that he needs “a win” which means he needs to steal something. Liesel decides that they can steal from the mayor’s house. The mayor’s wife did fire her mama and Liesel was so furious about this that she yelled at the poor mayor’s wife. This was a huge turning point in the book and for Liesel’s character. It shows the round character she was become. She says, “’You think you can buy me off with this book?” then later she goes on and says, “its about time that you do your own stinking washing anyway. It’s about time you faced the fact that your son is dead. He got killed! He got strangled and cut up more than twenty years ago! Or did he freeze to death? Either way, he’s dead! And its pathetic that you sit here shivering in your own house to suffer for it. You think you’re the only one?’”  (Zusak 262). The mentality and brutal words that spread out of Liesel’s mouth is unlike anything I’ve ever heard her say before and it really shows how she has changed and developed emotionally as a character. She used to be such a sweet, quiet, innocent girl and now she is yelling at an adult who let her read and kept her secret of stealing books. What is to come of her next? What will happen if someone finds out she has been hiding a Jew?

The Book Thief Predictions

        So far the book has been through some quite twisted tales, an unexpected stranger is let into the Hubermanns house and hidden within the walls of the basement. He and Liesel connect with their love for words and atrocious nightmares. Rudy's fate is revealed and Liesel is open to a world of books in the Mayors house. What I find most interesting about this book is that it is narrated by death itself. It’s the first book I’ve read that wasn’t narrated by a person but a thing. For example it says things like, “It was exactly when I knelt down and extracted his soul, holding it in my swollen arms. He warmed soon after, but when I picked him up the boy’s spirit was soft and cold, like ice cream,” (Zusak 21). As you can see there is a great use of figurative language such as similes and personification. Death doesn’t have arms! Death might not even be described as a thing; it is more like a fate. However all through the book this ‘Death’ tells The Book Thief’s story. In such a creative way and interesting way, I predict that something tragic will happen at the end. Like maybe they will get caught hiding the Jew or he will die. What I would like to happen is for the war to end and for Jews to be saved to live their life again! But death isn’t so kind, I don’t think it would waste it’s time telling a happy ending story.

The Book Thief

I have currently started reading this fantastic novel about a young German girl named Liesel Meminger is ripped away from everything she knows of a family. Her brother dies and her mother can no longer take care of her. She is sent to a foster home with this two strangers names Hans and Rosa Hubermann, its 1939, and World War II is on the rise. Hilter has gained full power over the German people. You wont go a day in Germany with out hearing the words "heil Hitler" from all the Nazi citizens. Liesel finds her first book in the snow soon after she finds out her brother is dead. I am at the part in the book where she steals a book left over from the fire. All Nazi's burned every Jewish thing in this fire."They began to leave the scene of the crime and the book was well and turly burning her now. The Shoulder Shrug had applied itself to her rib cage," (Zusak 122). Liesal has just stole the book from the fire and it was still extremely hot. It shows the risks she is willing to take to steal books and how she feeds off of this knowlege.

Hans and Liesel have a special kind of relationship, Hans finds out that Liesel stole the book from the fire. "Listen Liesel.'. Papa placed his arm around her and walked her on. This is our secret, this book. We'll read it at night or in the basement, just like the others-but you have to promise me something.' 'Anything, Papa.' The night was smooth and still. Everything listened. 'If I ever ask you to keep a secret for me, you will do it.' 'I promise.'" (Zusak 127). The trust and comfort in their relationship is far more dynamic than any other characters relationships in the book. Hans trusts Liesel to keep a secret if he asks her to and he promises to keep hers. He has been taching Liesel how to read and they read in the basement every night and she learns new words to catch up withthe rest of the people in her class. She has less of an education than the rest of the kids because she never went to school before she came to her foster family. Hans helped her to catch up and be in the correct grade level.

I am very excited to be reading this book and I look forward to seeing the movie. I predict that the secret her papa (Hans) will ask her to keep is the Jewish man they decide to hide in their basement. The family is not part of the Nazi party and Hans dislikes Hitler. I predict that they will keep the Jewish man safe but will go through a lot of stuggles and Liesel will find comfort in books and her learnings. I know that times are rough since this is during the war and Hilter is killing Jews and other types of opposing people to build a "Pure Germamn Society". I love to see Liesels family defy the rules of the society and keep the man safe. This book reminds me of the Anne Frank Diary i read a while back. They are both set at the same time fram and include Hitlers mass genocide of Jews.
                

The Fault in Our Stars

This is the movie trailer of the book I am currently
reading.  So far the book has been great and there are many dynamic plot twists and meaningful lines throughout the text. Hazel Grace and Augustus travel to Amsterdam to meet up with Hazel’s favorite author Peter Van Houtan to find out what happens to the characters of his famous unfinished book An Imperial Affliction.  While on the plane; Augustus says something absolutely wonderful, he is talking to Hazel on the plane. ‘I’m in love with you,’ he said quietly. ‘Augustus,” I said. ‘I am’ hesaid. He was staring at me and I could see the corner of his eyes crinkling. ‘I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all
doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to
dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have. And I am
in love with you.’ (Green 153).  Gus tells Hazel the story of his old
girlfriend Caroline who died of a brain tumor. She was mean to him but the
doctors said that the cancer “poisoned” her brain. She joked around saying
crude things like, ‘Gus has great legs. I mean leg,’ (Green 176). She would laugh
about it over and over again. Hazel tells Gus that she never wants to do that
to him and he responds with the famous quote; ‘Oh, I wouldn’t mind, Hazel Grace.
It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you,” (Green 176). I think
this line is so important because it shows how much he loves Hazel. He is
willing to go through heartbreak just to enjoy the happiness of being with her.
Augustus is one interesting dynamic character; I look forward to see him
develop even more. So far I love this book and I want to read more books by
John Green.

Blog Reflections

Looking through my past blog posts I have noticed that they have become more detailed and in depth. I have read a total of four books this trimester. I used Good reads and found out about the Divergent series which 3/4 of my blog posts were about. I chose to read Divergent because it had good ratings and a lot of my friends were reading it. I noticed in my past blog posts I didn’t explain very well and I wasn’t as interested in the book I was reading so I read less often. The quality of my writing has improved immensely over the course of the trimester, my first blog post compared to my last are very different. You can tell by my use of vocabulary and detail in my last post compared to my first post that I have improved a lot. An example of my first blog post is; “The theme of my book is that with every good thing that happens a bad thing follows shortly afterwards. For example my main character Ren, gets adopted when his chances were very slim which was fantastic but; he doesn't get the "perfect" family that he has always dreamed of. A quote that supports this from my book is "We all need prayers," Said Brother Joseph. "Especially when something good happens to us" He sighed. "Bad luck follows anything that’s good" (Tinti 12).” What I said in my first blog post wasn’t bad, I like how I included a quote from the book and stated the theme. Now here is an example of my most recent blog posts; The new discovery is that the Bureau gave Jeanine Matthews the serums! So they helped her kill the Abnegation. Why? I don't know, I suppose they do whatever is best to heal the genetically damaged people. They will stop at nothing to do so, and kill as many people as they want. Tobias recently discovers that he is a GD and this informer Nita who works at the Bureau explains how the government has treated GD's so badly and that we have had wars before people were GD. So the question to ask is, why waste time fixing the GD? The tragic event that occurred was a plan to steal death serums in order to get revenge on the Bureau. Nita however told Tobias that they were going to steal the memory serum. A series of explosions occur and Uriah gets hurt. He still remains unconscious. Later on Tris and everyone teams up with some Nita and her inside people in the Bureau as well as some people from this place called the fringe.” I paraphrased on my most recent blog post and really summarized what happened in the book and included a lot more detail. I also can tell just from comparing the two blog posts that I was more passionate about the book and enjoyed reading it more than reading my summer reading book. I think this was because I didn’t really have a wide range of options to choose from. One strength I had while blogging was summarizing and including a vast amount of detail. Also my use of vocabulary was good. I struggled with coming up with a topic to blog about, I didn’t really like going off the writing prompts because I felt restricted into only writing about one certain topic. I overcame this by explaining what was going on in my book. In other words I included a brief summary of what I read. Then I made predictions and included my opinion and thoughts on the book. Although I did not meet my goal I am still proud of what I have learned and read this trimester. I gained a lot of knowledge and learned a lot of lessons just about life in general from reading these books. I also have expanded my vocabulary and common sense. I now understand what is it like to have no one you can trust; like the character Tobias from the Divergent series. I also made some strong connections with the character Tris from Divergent. So a vast majority of my learning has come from the Divergent series. I highly recommend reading this series if you haven’t already. My experiences while reading these books have taken me on an emotional roller-coaster. The books are very action packed and unexpected. There are many cliff hangers and a lot of imagery and diction; as well as figurative language. So overall, I think I have improved a lot in my reading skills and writing skills.

Unwrapping Allegiant

 

As a follow up on last week’s predictions for this book I have recently "unwrapped" new secrets and some tragic event does occur so my prediction was correct. Although I do think that something even bigger will occur. The new discovery is that the Bureau gave Jeanine Matthews the serums! So they helped her kill the Abnegation. Why? I don't know, I suppose they do whatever is best to heal the genetically damaged people. They will stop at nothing to do so, and kill as many people as they want. Tobias recently discovers that he is a GD and this informer Nita who works at the Bureau explains how the government has treated GD's so badly and that we have had wars before people were GD. So the question to ask is, why waste time fixing the GD? The tragic event that occurred was a plan to steal death serums in order to get revenge on the Bureau. Nita however told Tobias that they were going to steal the memory serum. A series of explosions occur and Uriah gets hurt. He still remains unconscious. Later on Tris and everyone teams up with some Nita and her inside people in the Bureau as well as some people from this place called the fringe. The fringe is a poverty blown place outside the city. What I question is why the government doesn’t just help the people and give them food and shelter instead of trying to fix their stupid genes. Also, why are they hiding the history of our world from everyone? There are so many secrets to unravel still and I ponder on what is going to come next. I like the use of the author’s words that get to you emotionally. She uses great diction and figurative language and has a mass amount of imagery. I admire her writing greatly and enjoy her books.

Predictions for Allegiant

So far in my book the Allegiant group has escaped the city and ventured beyond the city walls to come to find some very interesting information. People from a place called the Bureau of Genetic Welfare. It was established because scientist tried to alter people’s genes to make the "bad genes" go away; this only caused more problems and created genetically damaged people. To create pure people they set up the faction system in Chicago as well as in many other cities. The Divergent are actually the pure genetic people. So Tris and Tobias are pure! Caleb and Tris find out that they're mother was an outsider who was put into the factions to solve the problem of people killing the Divergent. When the group of people that left the city find all this out they are astonished on how little they know. They don’t know what America is or what airplanes even are!! All of this fascinated me and made me excited to read on.

I predict that Tris and the others will live outside the fence and try to come up with a plan to fix the now disorientated city of Chicago. I also sense that more problems will also occur. From listening to my peers it seems as the book has an unexpected tragic ending so I’m fearful to find that out. I love these series and I really hope I’m satisfied with the ending! For now I will continue to read on and discover new things about Tris and her family. This book reminds me of the book “The Maze Runner” By James Dashner. People have their memories erased and live in an enclosed place like the factions; people have certain jobs and are separated. Scientist study and observe them to shape society in order to prevent war so both of the books have the same type of theme.