Ishmael

I really enjoyed reading Ishmael, but didnt necessarily agree with the ideas the book was trying to portray, or at least not all of it. The theme I got was how bad humans are and how we are destroying the planet and this gorilla is telling the narrator how bad people can be. I do agree with this, as a society we do use more than we should and we will leave this earth worse than when we got here, but the types of solutions that were talked about in class were pretty shocking. At one point one of the students said we need to reduce the population. That is just a nice way of saying murder or intentional starvation. I learned about a guy that did that in another LBST class, his name was Joseph Stalin. I was surprised when that was brought up considering as Americans we use up way more than any other country. I agree that the world needs to change, but if it causes the deaths of human life then I dont even want to hear it. Another point that I thought was almost funny was when someone said animals like the gorlia in the book are just as important as human life. Im not saying I hate other animals but if I have a choice of a young boy and a chimpanzee to save from a building my first instinct is to save the boy. Then animals like cows and pigs that we eat were brought up. That was laughable to me, as humans we are at the top of the food chain and since we are there I think we have the right to eat what we please. When I say that I do not mean to sound arrogant, just realistic. It was almost like some of the people talking werent in favor of human survival. Needless to say I did not agree with the ideas or the comments said.

Sunset Limited I enjoyed the ideas of the movie, but I did not enjoy watching the movie. The two points of view are very interesting, but an entire movie of just arguing in the same room can get very dull very fast. In class we watched different clips on the power that the music has and the different camera angles send different messages which is something that I would not have noticed by myself. When Mr. Black is talking he is being motivational and his ideas and beliefs that God has a purpose for them meeting and while he is talking it made me feel good about what he was saying. As a Christian I believed in what he was saying and it gave me that good feeling in my stomach. And then Mr. White has his rebuttal and it destroys every feeling I got. As he talks the music gets dark and creepy and in a way that only Tommy Lee Jones could make you also feel like death. It is one of those scenes that you start with a smile and then it slowly turns to a frown and makes you doubt everything you thought before. Mr. White believes everything ends in death, which is just depressing. Something that wasnt said that I was surprised it wasnt was the speech that we listened to in the beginning of the year, about choosing not to be in that default setting. You can see that Mr. White is in that default setting and he sees the world as death, while Mr. Black does not stay in that state of mind and sees them meeting as an act of

God, then the ending that leaves you asking what the hell? at the end. You would think that good will prevail and Mr. White wont kill himself, but he cant be convinced and walks out of the apartment and Samuel Jacksons character is left dumbfounded as to why God would have him put in a situation where no matter what he does he cannot win. An ending like that makes you believe that Mr. Black could have a change of heart; before he was a criminal who killed and was away from God, but then found salvation. Now that he failed to save a life he could wander from Gods path and fall into the same state that Mr. white was in and only see death in life.

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes This was the hardest book for me to read so far, because of the way it is written and the plot isnt very interesting to me. Nothing to terribly exciting happens and it gets very dry at some parts. I do like and respect the ideas of the characters though, of course. It is a good story about fighting for equality and rights. I have no experience in dealing with situations like that other than learning about the civil rights movement. Having Malcolm X was cool because it is someone I had known about before reading this novel. I thought it was hard that Angelou had to let her son go and not worry about him anymore. That stuck me harder than I thought. I think parents and children kind of go through that when they leave for college. I remember move in day freshman year and my parents helped me move in and my dad shook my hand as if saying you are on your own and you are your own man. Having a conversation like that brought tears to my eyes and having Angelou have to move on from her son gave me those feelings, obviously her situation is harder but still relatable. The in class assignment we had on the book was when Malcolm rips into Angelou for criticizing Du Bois wife for not supporting the civil rights movement. In reality she does a lot for the cause but is not on the front lines like Angelou is, but she is still just as important. Again I bring it back to the speech we listened to when David talks about the SUV intensive traffic we can either see everyone in our way or stop to think we could actually be in someone elses way, what if a sick child is in a car and they are in more of a hurry than me. Angelou sees this woman and assumes that she isnt supporting the cause and she isnt a good person. This impression of her sets Malcolm off and he takes everything he has on her. At first Angelou is very emotional and feels angry (I think I would to, my first instinct when being yelled at like that would be to yell back) but after a deep breath she understands. A big vocal point by the class was how she was being immature and judgmental about the woman. I agree that she jumped the gun and judges someone a little bit too quick. On second thought I do agree with her first instinct to criticize. With something as big as civil rights it is the most important thing to them they are putting their hearts and souls into this and to look over and see someone who you think could do more its easy to get angry at them. She was uneducated in her assumptions, but I like to see the fire in someone that wants something so bad.

Education of little tree-book This novel I dont even know where to begin. I didnt really like it at first, it was slow and so detailed, but towards the end it speeds up really quickly and the detail reduces. As for the plot itself it was one of the saddest stories I have ever read. It was filled with horrible events that all happen to a little kid in a short amount of time. First his parents die and he has to go live with his grandparents and they teach him the way and he is emotionally growing up faster than any person I have ever heard of. After living with them for a while and going through the struggles of racism in his school, which is something nobody should have to deal with, especially a child, one of their family friends Willow John gets sick ad dies. Then his grandpa fall and dies shortly after that. Now it is just him and his grandma, who soon after passes away in her chair and writes a note to Little Tree to feel for them when he is listening. So his parents die, his friend dies, then both his grandparents die, now it is him and his two best dogs. At this point I thought he was going to move on and walk off into the sunset with the dogs and the end, right? No. both dogs also die! The emotional damage this would do to any normal person would destroy them, and this is a child. The biggest point that was brought up was that there was no way a child would have the emotional growth that Little Tree has in the book. When I was his age I was playing with Legos and G.I. Joe. This kid is making life connections that most full grown adults cant even make. When I say it was brought up by the class that is an understatement, I think every single person that spoke brought up how remarkable and impossible it was for a child to grow up like this. It would make more sense if it was an 18 or 19 year old adult that is fully grown and know who they are as a person. As I would read it I would have to keep telling myself this was a second or third grader dealing with all of these problems and is learning to live his life as a man when he is still 10 years from being in adulthood. It was a terribly sad story and I just wish Little tree was older so it was easier to connect to the character.

Education of Little Tree-Film I enjoyed watching the film much more than the book; of course that is how most movies are for me since I more of a visual person. The movie was much less depressing and not filled with loss and death. And being able to see the conflicts that little tree has more of an effect on me. In the book everybody that little tree is close to dies and in the movie it isnt filled with death. The main conflict is the racism and prejudice against the Indian people. Little tree seems a bit older in the movie than I was imagining when I was reading and I thought the actor did a really good job in the movie considering child actors often ruin movies because they arent good at acting yet. The biggest problem the class had with the book was the huge and unbelievable leaps emotionally that little tree made as a little kid. He would lose everyone close to him and

learn that life is hard and he has to keep moving on, when in reality if a child lost his parents his whole world would come crashing down. The only problem that was discussed a lot during class discussion was how the audience loses a lot of the growth of the character since you dont get that insight into the Little Trees mind. In the book you got to see how Little Tree was thinking and I thought that was the problem because he had a thought process that no child should ever have. In the movie you dont have that so it has more of a realistic reactions to loss and the class didnt like it as much. I agree with that, I did enjoy the movie more and it would be hard to find the perfect balance between unrealistic growth like in the book and a lack of character insight in the movie. I would recommend the movie to others to watch, its not really my kind of genre, but it was still a good watch and I enjoyed watching the movie more than I read the book. If the book wasnt so dry to start off with all the in-depth details and not much plot then it would have been an easier read and more enjoyable. With the movie you dont really have to deal with that and it makes it easier to handle.

Slaughter House Five-Book This is my favorite book so far, I read Slaughter House Five in high school and it was one of the only books I liked in high school and it was really interesting seeing the different ideas from high school and now a college course. I thought that the plot was really interesting and really fast paced. It is really hard to follow since it jumps around so much so I found myself having to reread the same pages over to figure out what was going on. When I read it in high school I didnt even realize that there was two narrators in the beginning, my teacher didnt even point it out which is surprising rereading it now. When I read after I reflected on it I thought he was dead. They talk about how when you die you relive moments in your life and that is exactly what Billy is doing the entire book. Nobody else thought that, but I convinced my teacher in high school that it could be a possibility. Reading it a second time I wasnt as sure. Part of me thinks he is dead and is just retelling his story as he goes through his life again. At the same time I think he might just be crazy and is just living a fantasy from the book he read. Most of the class was betting on him just being crazy. One of the interesting things that was brought up was how unfaithful Billy was even though he doesnt recognize it as cheating. He says he cheated once at a Christmas party, but when he is taken by the aliens and has sex with Montana Wildhack multiple times and even has a child with her. The narrator says this happens, but doesnt recognize this as being unfaithful. One of the main reasons I like this book was how it puts a negative image of war for the reader to see. This came out when the country was divided on the Vietnam War and the details he has of the bombing of Dresden and even makes the United States look like the bad guy when they go out of their way to prove a point to flex their muscles to destroy a town. It put a bad taste in my mouth about war and the first thing that came to my mind was the scene in terminator 2 when Sarah Connor has the dream of the end of the world and everything explodes. Very scary stuff.

Slaughter House Five- movie I really enjoyed Slaughter House Five, I think I liked it more because I really liked the book and it would have taken a lot for me to dislike the movie. It was an older movie so it had its flaws and you could clearly tell it was an older movie. I think the movie can show the jumping around in Billys life without losing the audience. I really like how they show two scenes at the same time. In one scene it shows Billy get up and is acknowledged when he is younger in the military and while he is older in the corporate world he is jumping back and forth from memory to memory and it looks really good in the movie, but in a book it cant be done successfully. I heard they are making a new version of the movie which I think could be a great movie. In the movie they only do the voices of the aliens, which is a good thing because in the book it says they look like plungers which would look laughable in the movie. I didnt really like how the Tralfamadore zoo looked. It has a lot to do with when it came out and the budget and stuff, but I thought it looked silly. The scene when he first comes out of the bomb shelter is really powerful. We watched it in class a few times. The way the Germans react gives the audience a view of the destruction of war. The young soldier runs all the way home to find his family buried underneath what used to be his house. A scene that if in the book would surely be followed by so it goes. Both the book and the movie show all the horrible things that happen in war and how normal it is for them to happen. In the book after describing something horrible it would follow it with the line so it goes. In the movie it doesnt really have that message but you still see it. at th end of the movie it is at the scene where Billy gets sniped and killed while giving a speech and as he is killed it then cuts to the Russians saving him from Dresden, and then to one of the happiest moments of his life where he is with Montana and they have had a child and they are celebrating on Tralfamadore. Its another great scene done in the movie that cant be done as well in the book. I think I like the book more than most of the class, even after watching the movie I still think that Billy Pilgrim is dead and the Narrator is reliving and retelling the story.

Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness, true to its name, tries to reveal the side of man as it relates to evil. For me, this book was difficult to complete. It tries to reveal the truths about mankind and the darkness in nature, but in order to get there you have to follow a very dry storyline. It is slow in the way it progresses through the story but tells the very unique story of an Ivory dealer traveling through Africa. Violence and the disregard for compassion throughout this book is upsetting. There is a lot of murder in this book. There was a very strong relationship between the main character, Charles Marlow, and another prominent character named Mr. Kurtz. Towards the end of the book Mr. Kurtz dies and the sadness consumes Mr. Marlow. Their friendship was a very powerful piece to the book and consumed a lot of my attention in proceeding through the story.

The death of Mr. Kurtz kind of wraps a bow of sadness around the entire book. The violence and death in the book kind of makes you lose faith in humanity. A word that comes to mind when I read this book is virtue. In my fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon, we believe deeply in virtue. Behaving virtuously with morality and compassion is an important part of life and giving the world a better essence. But in this book there seems to be no virtue. There are small doses of compassion that you see in friendships but there is no honor and virtue in this book. But I feel like the author was looking to exploit that side of the world we live in. In heart of darkness there is not a measure of criminality, killing is just too normal. The main character is thrust in to a violent set of circumstances and would rather take someone elses life to prove a point. In class we discussed the deterioration of human values and in a sense the virtue you do not see in this book. I really felt like this book was tough to embrace, but had a very deep and clear lesson that it could teach. No person could want to live in a world like the one in Heart of Darkness. I think that the fear it puts in to you and hopelessness it gives you makes you want to be an opposition for that way of life. Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now is basically an adapted version of Heart of Darkness in the Vietnam War. The movie revolves around the U.S. Army Captain Benjamin Willard and his destructive lifestyle. At first you see how the effects of war take a toll on his mental health. And then later on the movie Willard is assigned to kill an enemy while following a river in Vietnam. You can see the effects of PTSD on him as he prepares to kill his target. Willard starts to practice unorthodox and torturous methods of killing to use on his target, and eventually shows the deterioration of his mental health in killing many, many, people. I actually prefer these types of movies and I find this genre very interesting. I would have to say that I found this movie very good as well. I would have to put this up with my favorite movies, Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon. It is very interesting to see the effects that war has on people and upsetting to see the way they become ruthless and violent. The theme that I noticed in this movie and in the class discussion was the way that war kills you mentally. People evaporate in the real world after coming back from war and you can see in this movie what it looks like when they go back to war. Much like Heart of Darkness this movie makes you lose faith in humanity and most importantly the product of war. The characters that make you lose faith in this movie are psychotic but are the product of nonstop violence and the education it takes to wage a war. Games and the mentality that we have adopted over the years make war, and violence very frightening. Games like Call of Duty have now desensitized us from the weight of actual violence and war. Apocalypse Now tried to shed light on the real damage that war does to people whether it kills them or not. The only difference between this movie and Heart of Darkness is that it is visually captivating and allows you to follow the story better. I liked this much more than Heart of Darkness it put a good message in to a form you could easily receive

it. I would recommend this movie despite its age to anyone that has an interest in violence and war in order to show them what the effects might be like.

The Story of B

Following the theme of religion in this class I found the book The Story of B very interesting. The book follows the life of one incredibly interesting character. A Roman-catholic preacher who eventually loses his life because of his mission to change the perception of the world and recognize the anti-Christ is the main character that this book revolves around. He travels through Germany to give public teachings at theatres to people who want to hear his interesting beliefs. Bs job is to try to recognize where society is going and point out what is wrong with it. If there were a scale he would be all the way on the radical side. The philosophy that he believes in though is very, very, deep. I really liked how different that this book was and exactly how radical it was. It wasnt too much to bear and was actually somewhat relatable and made sense. The plot and storyline of the book were very interesting too and it had enough going on and you wanted to read more. Unlike the Left Behind movie. The coolest thing about this book is that there are people out there that fit this profile and they have the philosophy that B had. It was kind of like getting a peek in to a world that exists but we dont often see. The book and mission of B seem to want to create a culture shift and an awakening about some of the things that society does wrong. It seemed to meet that it was the mission of the writer to try to implant these ideas in to peoples heads and he did it with this book. I think that telling it the way he did with a diary feel to it really helped especially that the had the ideas and full ideas and speeches included in the book for the reader to see too. This was probably my favorite movie/book that we got to read in this class. I probably wont even sell this book back either because it really has some great content in it. It is interesting to see how morals play in to the book as well with the motive to assassinate B and continue to spread his story to shake the customs of society. There are a lot of reasons to disbelieve in humanity from what you read in this book but it asks so many important questions that you cant ignore it.

Left Behind Left Behind is an interesting novel that revolves around the rapture and those that are not included in the journey to heaven. Those who are left behind slowly begin to realize that they were excluded and question their faith. The people left behind always believed that they were

worthy to be admitted to heaven but find out over time that they werent as worth y as they may have believed. I found this book to be very interesting and it begs the question are the good things you do enough? It follows the theme that Apocalypse Now has nicely. It shows what happens when the human community has to answer the question about their morality. To, me this was a very good book and a very cool concept. It has a way of righting the path that people are on if they are on a bad path. Over time you would eventually realize that people had vanished but in terms of the total population that is more than 560 million people. A small group of characters throughout the interesting story try to recover those that they lost and submerse themselves in a newfound Christianity. The class discussion was very interesting to hear whether or not people felt certain characters in the book deserved to be excluded. There were a lot of opinions about what is right and what is wrong and eventually what is righteous. It makes you questions your ideas about religion and the ideas about what is morally right. This book is very controversial and I could tell as we had the in-class discussion. I would have preferred if we didnt read a book that was this laden with religion. It is a very controversial topic especially as it relates to morality and virtuous behavior. Religion itself can be sticky in terms of what you believe but when we have a discussion about how you should act and what you believe is the truth it can be a very difficult conversation to have especially with a diverse group like the one we have in the class. I understand the purpose and I like the concept of the book but you could see the division and feel the tension in the discussion when we started to dissect what was right and what was wrong. Overall, I thought the book had a great lesson and enjoyed what it had to teach.

Left Behind Movie

The movie and the book obviously follow the same plot but the movie was not very well done. As much potential as the movie had to be great there was just a lot of difficulty in accepting it for how it was. There is nothing that changes after the people are admitted to heaven. There is really not much of a problem for people the entire movie until the end when they realize that everyone was gone. It seems like there was really not much of a point to even having the movie it was just like there was not even a point to the story. I was very bland and it didnt do the book justice. I know it our class discussion it seemed like the rest of the class, myself included, couldnt get past how bad the movie was. Not exactly the biblical content but the actual cinematography of the film was terrible. I just cant necessarily appreciate the content for what its worth because of the way it was given to me. I believe that there was a very good opportunity to portray the idea of the rapture and its effects but this did not capitalize on that opportunity. The way that the characters dont even really face much of a problem throughout the entire film and that is not what moviegoers enjoy in a film. I also read a review when I was researching more about the

film when we were in class and someone actually wrote that it was a waste of time and money. While that is very harsh I would definitely agree. Like I said I actually believe that the book was better than the movie and it was a better platform for a really good story. The author of the book sued the movie for how the writing of the story affected the overall perception of the film and the book series. That should just go to show how poor the relationship between the two really is. I think that the author was in the right to do so also. I hope that they try to remake the movie again with some more success because I would like to see what potential this movie has to be acclaimed by audiences and fans of the book series. The actors and the directors of the film have some serious material to work with.

2BRO2B

This is a very interesting science fiction story about a futuristic United States where agelessness exists. The society will not allow people to be born unless someone volunteers to die or dies in general. That is how they exercise controlling the population. I really liked this book and a lot like The Story of B it was unique philosophically and had some interesting ideas. Now because so many people die in the story and it seems a bit depressing Im not entirely sure that they are good ideas but they are ideas nonetheless. There is a lot of sadness and death in this book and the fact that the government intervenes with suicides is not something that I agree with but it is an interesting stance on population control. Compared to the Story of B I liked this book but I didnt think that it was as good. The fact that The Story of B is incredibly realistic is what drew me in and allowed me to learn from it and enjoy it. But this book is far out there. I thought it had some interesting things to share and some ideas and a philosophy that was unique but I would dread living in a world that was like that because I just dont think perfection is work that price. It had an incredibly unique approach to solving some issues that we are facing right now in the world. I dont think this philosophy is the solution and I think that when the window cleaner took his own life (or decided to have an assisted suicide) that it was pretty clear that he did not want to live in a world like that either. The book ends when the window cleaner decides to take his own life and he does that after taking a lot of time to consider the world that he is living and the things that society asks of him. In order to give a life you have to take a life and the depression and sadness that this book gives you from that idea is overwhelming. It makes you thankful for the world that you live in and the ideas that we have in place right now and hopeful that the future will not bring ideas and philosophies that are like the ones that are expressed in this book.