Jeremy Ross

Beloved is an interesting book, similar to Handmaid's tale, I find it to be quite a hard read as I always find myself to be unable to concentrate on the story as my mind starts to drift. In fact, it's devoid of any visual descriptions. Hence I don't know what to imagine, and my mind gets lost in the words as I simply don't find it stimulating.  Nonetheless, a lot of things about it is quite good. Obviously, the book discusses the effects of slavery both, during and after the enslavement in some detail. However, what I find interesting within this story is the sense of community and its consequences or benefits. As a matter of fact, a good example of that is Paul D. The reason he managed to escape with the rest of the men is because they worked together. In contrast, at the end of the spectrum is when you have no community support. We see this through Sethe's infanticide. As a matter of fact, the community has failed to informed her of schoolteacher's visit, who

    Handmaid's tale is a classic dystopian novel. Unlike other novels of this genre, this one is always a hard read for me as it relies so much on metaphorical imagery. However, what always comes back to me about this novel is the symbolism used for the colors of their clothing, which, without knowing anything about the characters, allow you to already understand the purpose or nature of each person within the society of Gilead.     As a matter of fact, if we start with the handmaid's themselves, they are portrayed in red, which is often a symbol of passion, love, or even blood, which can be associated to motherhood. They are objects of desire in society as fertility is rare, they are required for the survival of our species. In contrast, the wives of the commanders are in blue, which show quite the opposite. Serena Joy is always portrayed as being a sad being, with no real purpose in life. Wives are not fertile, which renders them useless in that societal structure.     Then w

  1. What is your reaction to the text you just read?: Well that's a very good question indeed. I guess I'm partly confused, partly curious. The thing with short stories are that they need to build the world in the shortest amount of time possible. You are thrown into the world and expected to understand it right away. In that sense, you concentrate on every chosen word and try to create an image in your mind of what the character is seeing and feeling. Since the story was so short, I'm not entirely sure I understood everything about the world, and I'm not entirely sure what it's trying to say. A lot of it seemed to discuss the effect of upbringing and how it affects one's view of the world, as the main character struggles with two perspectives concerning her world. Should she resent those egg creatures due to the cruel reproduction cycle they put Terrans through, or be thankful for their magical eggs, calming venom and mother-like nature?  2. What connections d

     My experience with his book was pretty strange. Similar to last week, I found this book to be more interesting in its world building than its actual plot. In fact, I found the ending to be a little underwhelming, as it pretty much ended with their problem being solved, thus saving anyone, and the character being left, well happy, without that much development. On the other hand, what I did find interesting about the nature of the conflict is the notion that you aren’t safe anywhere. In fact, nowadays, when we play video games or enter new worlds through entertainment, we just try to escape our world and have that notion that we’re safe. In this world however, you can be hurt wherever you go, even in the metaverse, which actually reminds me of Sword Art Online .  What’s more, I liked that the worldbuilding illustrated current world issues, such as wealth disparity, showing that, even in this futuristic world, not everyone would have access to technology and thus not everyone would

     Babel 17’s premise is actually extremely interesting to me, as two years ago, I was actually listening to a Philosophize This podcast which was actually talking about the philosophy branch which discusses linguistics and the bias of languages and expression. My memory is a bit fuzzy on the subject, however what stuck with me is the fact that the limitations of vocabulary influences the extent to which you can communicate ideas or feelings. You are simplifying human emotion and thoughts and trying to put them into words. Or put differently, you are altering definitions in order to fit them within the vocabulary of your given language. If you speak multiple languages, you can actually encounter this phenomenon quite often when you try to explain something to someone and realize the perfect word you would prefer using does not exist in this given language. Another concept this raises is human experience. We often “box-in” or categorize through words, different aspects of the world.

       This book is definitely another example of a classic as its depth to which it shows human character is incredible. Not only is it a survival story for Watney, he also has to deal with the depths of loneliness and the restrictions of bureaucracy. Similarly, the other members of the crew learning that he has survived need to to be able to deal with the guilt and also fight over the moral decision to follow NASA’s orders or risk their own lives trying to rescue Watney.  With this short blog entry however, I’d prefer to mainly focus on Watney’s side of the story. What should be made clear is that his knowledge of science was not enough to get him through the mission. In fact, he had to utilize ingenuity, determination and needed to be ready to take risks. Loneliness is another hard factor to battle, as being put in his shoes, you don’t necessarily expect people to know you’re alive. You expect any day to be your last and try to fight the solitude creeping it, however, you see that