Blogging Around

First i decided to take a look at Jenkins' blog about the connection between Kite Runner and Hot Rod.

Dear Jenks,

I thought your analysis of father-son relationships was very insightful and it made me think about other father-son relationships i have seen in literature, entertainment, or real life. They all seem to have one thing in common, the father and the son each have a similar trait that they share, whether they want to admit it or not, and the son is trying to do anything he can to gain his father's approval.

Another thing i noticed was that all three of your examples used the winning of some kind of competition to prove that the son was "good" enough or "manly" enough in the eyes of his father. I found this to be very interesting and it made me wonder if maybe the relationship between a father and a son becomes oversimplified in fictional stories to be only about how talented the son is. After all, there has to be a deeper relationship lying beneath the superficial acceptance of the son due to his ability to throw a ball or fly a kite.

Then I read Jordan's post about Post-modernism and Stephen Colbert

Dear JoJo,

After reading your blog and watching the video attached to it, I must say that I agree with you in this case. Combining the many different tasks that Colbert was performing seemed to have worked in his favor this time. His speech was informative, yet easy to watch and understand, which let's face it is a pretty necessary thing when dealing with Americans.

I think that this just goes to show that there are many ways post-modernism can be viewed and there is so much more of that philosophy that we have yet to discover. The fact that it is a philosophy means that it can be interpreted in different ways, and even denied in some ways as well, and after watching this video i believe that i have a much more clear knowledge of some examples of post-modernism. As always though, there is more to learn.

It Matters: Closure to Cold Cases

If we lived in a perfect world, there would always be happy endings where the main character finds exactly what they are looking for and discovered a way to solve all of their problems. In a perfect world, there would always be full closure. Sadly this is not the case for many people, and that is why one element that separates nonfiction stories from fairy-tales is having the character find only partial closure.

In Kite Runner Amir searches his whole life to find closure for an incident that happened when he was merely twelve years old. So, he goes back to his homeland and tries to find a way to somehow right all of his past wrongs. Then, he writes a whole memoir about his life in four days, reliving some of his most painful experiences, and still after all of that, Amir does not even seem to obtain the full closure that he was looking for.

Similarly, there was a recent article published about a girl named Kimberly Norwood from Texas who had disappeared over twenty years ago without a trace. Her family is still holding out hope that she will turn up even though there have been no legitimate suspects charged. The mother even says that Kimberly "will be" 34, and not "would be" because she refuses to believe that her daughter is dead.

This case of the missing girl says a lot about closure in real life. This is an instance where it is very likely that the mother will never have closure for her missing daughter, in any form. In fact, the mother believing that her daughter is still alive after over twenty years of being missing would be seen as downright wishful thinking. Why then, in stories is it so disappointing when the characters are left without closure? After all, in life there are many times where closure will never be found, shouldn't stories reflect that?

I believe that why people so often look for closure in their literature is because they want to find hope. People want to know that if they make a mistake or something terrible happens in their life, they will find some way to deal with it and move on. And sometimes this does occur, but many times either no closure or partial closure is the only option. In Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini may not have left the reader with the satisfying ending they were looking for, but if he had then the story would have been much less believable, because as we see in the story of Kimberly Norwood, we do not live in a perfect world.

Best of Week: Emotion trumps Grammar

I can remember it clearly, sitting in my fifth grade classroom, learning where to put commas and end marks, "And remember children, every sentence needs a subject and a verb, and no run-ons!" These simple rules were the basis of what I was taught and re-taught throughout middle school. Without basic grammar, I was told, my writing would be sloppy and give away my age. However, I believe the most important thing I learned this week is that in certain cases, it is okay to break these sacred rules in order to convey emotions to readers.

I had always wondered why fragments and technically "misplaced" commas were not accepted by my English teachers when clearly I had put them there for a purpose. I had always believed that if my writing sounded good when i read it aloud that that was enough, but my teachers never seemed to agree.

I felt like Beat by Beat was referring directly to me when it said that a mixture of long and short sentences, maybe even a few fragments, all contributed to the rhythm of writing. This rhythm is what gives writing voice and personality. And yes, while it is important to know the rules of grammar, if the author knows the rules, but consciously chooses to break them in order to convey a certain emotion, then they can be used to his or her advantage.

I will keep this idea of rhythm in my mind now when I am writing stories, and try to be aware of what the length of my sentences are saying to the reader. The biggest lesson i learned was that basic grammar can create a story, but rhythm is what gives it life.

Change of Mind: Healing of America

Prior to reading the book The Healing of America by T.R. Reid, I thought that I was somewhat educated about our nations healthcare situation, at least educated enough to form an opinion. My opinion about our healthcare was the one of a typical uneducated conservative, I believed that there was no way to change our healthcare system without turning to "socialized" medicine, which, of course, would be the worst thing in the world because "socialism is bad." However, after reading Reid's book, I realized how dense I was being in my thinking, and that there are many different types of governmental healthcare that exist. I now see that there is a way to provide healthcare to all Americans without compromising quality. Now I believe that there does need to be a change in the way our healthcare system is set up, and change is not as difficult implement as we have been led to believe. This book educated me about how the rest of the world handles their systems and what the benefits and drawbacks are of each one. I think this is the first step in helping Americans see what different choices we have and that our current system has much room for improvement.