Beasts of No Nation; pp. 1-73

When I started reading Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala, I was a little surprised that the book is written the way it is. At first I was really annoyed by the improper grammar of the young narrator Agu, but then I realized why Iweala is writing like that. By writing the book in broken English, Iweala is trying to portray the child’s accurate point of view during this war.

In one word I would describe this book as horrifying. And I think that it is especially horrible that the language is that of a very young child, maybe 5 or 6 years old. Although I really don’t think that Agu he could be THAT young, and it is possible that he just has broken English because he is from a small African village.

I think it is interesting how Iweala shows how these particular young, African soldiers evolve. Agu repeatedly says that he is not a bad boy because he is doing what a soldier is supposed to do. Agu’s mental state has been altered and because he is so young, he never really had a chance to understand what was happening.

The Complete Persepolis: pp.3-298

Although a graphic novel may have a bad reputation among literary snobs, I find that this particular form of telling a story only makes it easier to understand and absorb information. To be completely honest, I really don’t think that I would be too interested in all of the historical references about Iran if The Complete Persepolis was not a graphic novel. Also, the reading goes so much faster, and I think that I actually retain more because things become more simplified. Also, providing a visual image along with text helps the reader keep track of characters and situations.

I think that the most interesting issue to consider when reading this graphic novel, or any biographical form of writing, is accuracy. I don’t think that I ever really considered the fact that a biography, especially an auto-biography, is relative to the author’s perspective and opinion about situations and issues discussed within the text. However, I think that Marjane confronts this issue by clearly writing with the perspective that she held at any particular age. For example, in the beginning, it is obvious that her memories may be over exaggerated or even imagined by her young self through her sometimes silly images, like when she is describing her growth spurt on page 189.

One Hundred Years of Solitude: end

Today’s class discussion really made me think more deeply about One Hundred Years of Solitude, and in fact, as I was leaving class, I couldn’t help but thinking that there is still so much more to discuss regarding this book.
The ending of this book is profound and groundbreaking. The fact that the Buendia family comes full-circle at the end of the book is something that I was not expecting. I still believe that this story is suppose to mirror the fact that the characters within the story exist only if the author, Garcia Marques, exists. In a way, these characters are all trapped in his mind and in his ideas, and therefore, he has complete control over them.
This book can easily parallel the Bible with the epic story lines, and the idea that human beings are all pre-destined to follow the path that God has chosen for them. And in this way, Garcia Marquez might be mocking religion and even the very existence of God.
During class today, it was my belief that Garcia Marquez’s point was that people need to look back into their history in order to improve the future. However, after thinking about it a little bit more, I now think that his main point was to show that an author is the God of a story and its characters in the same way that humans are “the creation” of God; whether that means that he is mocking the idea of a God, or just making a comparison.