I chose to read the novel “Snow” by Orhan Pamuk for my book report. The novel “Snow” is about a poet named Ka who is a political exile living in Germany. Ka travels to Istanbul to attend his mother’s funeral and is asked by a friend at a local newspaper to travel to the town of Kars to write about the municipal elections and a string of suicides being committed by Islamist women who are being forced to take off their headscarves at school. Ka has been experiencing writers block while living in Germany. Upon his return to Kars, poems begin to start coming to him. Throughout the novel, Ka has poems come to him after a significant event occurs or when something inspires him. Ka ends up writing 19 poems during his stay in Kars. When the citizens of Kars find out that an esteemed poet is returning to Kars, they insist that he read one of his poems in front of the town at the National Theater. Ka arrives at the town of Kars during a severe winter storm and is barely able to make it to the town. Upon arriving at the town, Ka reconnects with a woman that he had feelings for when he was younger. Her name is Ipek and she is recently divorced from her husband Muhtar. While Ka is meeting with Ipek at a local café, a Muslim extremist who blames the director for the suicide of a woman named Teslime kills the local director of the Institute of Education in the café. Ka and Ipek leave the café after the local director of the Institute of Education is shot. Ka goes to tell Ipek’s ex-husband, Muhtar, who is currently running to become the mayor of Kars. The two talk about Ipek and how Muhtar feels bad about the way he treated her while they were married. He confesses that he would like to repair his relationship with her. Muhtar insists that Ka ca... ... middle of paper ... ...order to the town of Kars. Ka ended up being killed about 4 years after he left the town of Kars. No one ever found his killer, but it was believed to be a follower of Blue who had vowed revenge for his death. The narrator of the story returned to Kars to retrace the steps of his friend Ka, in an attempt to find his book of poetry that he wrote while in Kars. He finds out that Ka never attempted to return to Kars or that he never attempted to contact Ipek ever again. Ipek assumed that Ka had told the authorities about Blue’s whereabouts, but we never actually learn whether this is true or not. The narrator is only able to find the poem The Place Where God Does Not Exist after transcribing it from the recording of the filming of him reading it at the National Theater. The rest of the poems are never found, and it is assumed by the author that Ka’s killer took them.
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, is one of the most famous historical fiction books ever written. This 352 paged book has inspired many teens to acknowledge the Genocide of Baltic people. Ruta Sepetys was inspired to write a fiction book instead of a non-fiction book based on the stories she heard from survivors of the genocide during a visit to her relatives in Lithuania. She interviewed dozens of people during her stay. Between Shades of Gray was her first novel that she had written. This book was interpreted well enough by the readers to become a New York Times Bestseller.
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson The novel Snow Falling on Cedars, written by David Guterson, revolves around the.. around a racially charged court case involving an innocent Japanese man accused of the murder of a German fisherman. The author explores the human traditions of war and social division and the inevitability of decay, suffering and death, using the murder trial of Kabuo. Miyamoto as a focal point. Guterson investigates the way in which personal ethics can transcend the conspiring effects of ‘fate’.
Typical stories of civil rights demonstrations by African Americans and civil rights workers in the south tell accounts of passive resistance and nonviolent protest. They tell accounts of African Americans being neglected and ignored in restaurants, verbally abused for being out of “their neighborhoods”, and beaten and arrested for speaking up or acting out against such grave injustices. They were further repressed by the fact that the police, prosecutors, judges, mayors, and even governors of southern areas not only turned a blind eye to newly enacted civil rights legislation but also actively participated in ensuring the continued suppression of African American acceptance. This complete segregation from society and lack of protection under the law naturally spawned groups of African Americans who decided that the only protection they were going to get was the protection they provided for themselves. They began to arm themselves, forming small bands that set out to protect civil rights demonstrators and retaliate against racist acts. One such group was the Deacons for Defense and Justice in Louisiana. In his book Crossing Border Street Peter Jan Honigsberg tells of his experiences with the Deacons while working as a civil rights worker in Louisiana. Becoming deeply immersed into African American culture Honigsberg learns what it means to be black and living in the south during the civil rights movement. Furthermore he reveals some of the motivations of white individuals who participated in the movement.
though he is moving away but at the same time he claims that he feels
The first encounter with Helga Crane, Nella Larsen’s protagonist in the novel Quicksand, introduces the heroine unwinding after a day of work in a dimly lit room. She is alone. And while no one else is present in the room, Helga is accompanied by her own thoughts, feelings, and her worrisome perceptions of the world around her. Throughout the novel, it becomes clear that most of Helga’s concerns revolve around two issues- race and sex. Even though there are many human character antagonists that play a significant role in the novel and in the story of Helga Crane, such as her friends, coworkers, relatives, and ultimately even her own children, her race and her sexuality become Helga’s biggest challenges. These two taxing antagonists appear throughout the novel in many subtle forms. It becomes obvious that racial confusion and sexual repression are a substantial source of Helga’s apprehensions and eventually lead to her tragic demise.
Naeem Murr's novel, The Boy, is a story about a boy that is put into foster homes all of his life. This boy is exposed to all different kinds of influences that affects his life in a negative way. These are the things that cause the argument in the story; is the boy evil or not?
World War I and II brought the worst of times for some people; loved ones were lost, families were separated, homes were destroyed, and innocent lives were taken during this time. There are many ways to deal with these hardships; Jewish poet, Avrom Sutzkever, used his hard times as inspiration for his writing and as a way to deal with the war and survive it (INSERT CITATION). This part of history also resulted in other great works of art as a way to deal with what the war brought, during and after the war was over. Avrom Sutzkever wrote his poem “Frozen Jews,” using such dark and depressing imagery, connotation, and diction because of his historical and biographical background.
“Wild Geese” is very different from many poems written. Oliver’s personal life, the free form of the poem along with the first line, “You do not have to be good,” and the imagery of nature contributes to Oliver’s intent to convince the audience that to be part of the world, a person does not need to aspire to civilization’s standards.
The first thing I noticed about Kate Chopin’s “The Storm,” is that it is utterly dripping with sexual imagery and symbolism. Our heroine, if you will, seems to be a woman with normally restrained passions and a well-defined sense of propriety, who finds herself in a situation that tears down her restraint and reveals the vixen within. I wonder if it was intentional that the name Calixta makes me think of Calypso – the nymph from Greek mythology. If half of the sexual symbolism I found in this story was intentional, Chopin was a genius. I was quite taken with the sexual imagery of the colors mentioned: white, and red. There is also mention a place called Assumption, while there’s nothing written on it in the bible, I believe it’s the popular opinion of those of Christian faiths, that Mary (Jesus’ mother) going to heaven was called “The Assumption.” Again, I cannot accept that as merely a happy coincidence, I believe its mention in the story was intentional. Finally, we have the storm, so central to the theme of the story that it was named for it. In this work, as well as others by Chopin, there is a recurring theme of infidelity, or women behaving in ways that society generally doesn’t accept, women behaving badly, if you will, I cannot help but wonder if Kate Chopin used her writing to express desires that she would not otherwise have expressed.
Frost is far more than the simple agrarian writer some claim him to be. He is deceptively simple at first glance, writing poetry that is easy to understand on an immediate, superficial level. Closer examination of his texts, however, reveal his thoughts on deeply troubling psychological states of living in a modern world. As bombs exploded and bodies piled up in the World Wars, people were forced to consider not only death, but the aspects of human nature that could allow such atrocities to occur. By using natural themes and images to present modernist concerns, Frost creates poetry that both soothes his readers and asks them to consider the true nature of the world and themselves.
A Cold Day in Paradise is a book that was written by Steve Hamilton and takes place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The name of the book is very significant to the meaning of the book. The cold day represents the metal bullet that is in Alex McKnight’s chest and on cold nights, it is a reminder of a traumatic event that took place. While Paradise is the place that he lives and where the last death took place and it was also on a cold windy night.
In the poem pride, Dahlia Ravikovitch uses many poetic devices. She uses an analogy for the poem as a whole, and a few metaphors inside it, such as, “the rock has an open wound.” Ravikovitch also uses personification multiple times, for example: “Years pass over them as they wait.” and, “the seaweed whips around, the sea bursts forth and rolls back--” Ravikovitch also uses inclusive language such as when she says: “I’m telling you,” and “I told you.” She uses these phrases to make the reader feel apart of the poem, and to draw the reader in. She also uses repetition, for example, repetition of the word years.
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
In this text Mohanty argues that contemporary western feminist writing on Third World women contributes to the reproduction of colonial discourses where women in the South are represented as an undifferentiated “other”. Mohanty examines how liberal and socialist feminist scholarship use analytics strategies that creates an essentialist construction of the category woman, universalist assumptions of sexist oppression and how this contributes to the perpetuation of colonialist relations between the north and south(Mohanty 1991:55). She criticises Western feminist discourse for constructing “the third world woman” as a homogeneous “powerless” and vulnerable group, while women in the North still represent the modern and liberated woman (Mohanty 1991:56).
This story is focused on one family in the town of Kafr El Teen, especially on the woman of the family. Zakeya and Kafrawi are Brother and sister and the oldest of the house. Karfrawi's daughters also live with them, Zeinab, and Nefissa's. Also at one point Galal, Zakeys son lived with them ( also Zeinabs husband ). This family is put through many struggles mostly placed upon them by the Mayor of the town, who has an obsession with the daughters of Karfawi.