A Thousand Splendid Suns………The Beginning!

The book A Thousand Splendid Suns hurried to capture me as a reader. I am immediately immersed into a culture and its customs through the  main character Merriam. Merriam is the daughter of Nana who was disowned and shunned by her father and wives of the man she laid with. Nana was thrown out of the house she was a servant in for sleeping with Merriam’s father and placed in a home built by Merriam’s father.

The house being closer to a shack in appearance house Nana and Merriam while being supported by the family of Merriam dad. Merriam refuses to get caught up in the hate her mother has for her father and welcomes him every time he comes to visit her each Thursday.  Nana fills Merriam’s head with discouraging ideas of who her father is and how much he doesn’t love them. The book begins with the explanation and narrative of Merriam situation and predicament. The challenge she has of being just and hopeful with her father despite her loyalty to her Mother.

 

The themes that begin to present themselves are those of regret and content, revenge and forgiveness, compassion and hate, trust and  distrust.  Many other themes exist and begin showing up from the beginning Merriam is stuck between rock and a wall suffocated by her desires and her loyalty to both her mother and father. A genre also begins to emerge withing the setting and themes of the story which I believe is a story of a young girl breaking away from ignorance and discontent. I see the story becoming one of  a journey where Merriam is catapulted by her desire to know the truth and become educated. In my next blog  I will begin acknowledge the moments I this story that set genre up and present complex ideas to the reader.

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Blog 1

Since Mariam was a little girl growing up in the kolba, she needed the love and approval of a man. She goes to her father’s house hoping to live with him, his three wives and all of their children. Being the illegitimate child that she is, she is not wanted there so they marry her off to Rasheed after her mother kills herself. She begs her father to let her stay with them – begs for his love and acceptance – but her request falls on deaf ears and she is married off the next day. She tells her father that she never wants to speak to him again and when he tries to contact her almost ten years later, she refuses to speak to him. She stares out of the window at him, waiting and hoping for her to speak to him (just like he did to her the first night she came to ask to live there) and closes the curtain. He leaves a letter which she tears up without reading. The act of pride comes back to hurt her later when she gains hope in thinking she can get money from her father to help her family’s dire situation. Her hopes are crushed when she finds out that her father passed away many years ago. Had she read the letter he left her then she would have known that an inheritance awaited her.

After her initial apprehension to her marriage with Rasheed, she comes to seek his approval just as she did from her father. She goes from being disgusted by him to looking forward to making his meals. She accepts and even shows gratitude for her new life in this arranged marriage but it quickly goes sour after they both realize she is unable to have children. Mariam still seeks the approval she lost even after the physical and mental abuse from Rasheed. Then Laila shows up and Rasheed realizes that she can be the chance for having another son and they quickly marry to Mariam’s dismay. Laila ends up having a girl and Rasheed loses his admiration for her and she starts to get the same mistreatment as Mariam. The two women’s dislike toward each other turns to a close bond from this common unfortunate situation of abuse and unhappiness that they share. The other thing they have in common is their love for Laila’s little girl, Aziza. Laila does and up having a son who is doted upon by Rasheed unlike Aziza who he knew by the looks of her that she wasn’t his daughter. Aziza is the daughter of Tariq who was thought to be dead until he showed up at the door. The son tells Rasheed that he was there and Rasheed almost kills Laila by strangling her. Mariam grabs a shovel and kills him. She tells Laila to run away with the children and Tariq. She takes the blame and is sentenced to murder.

 

Discworld Blog 3 (and blog two-ish)

In Discworld: The Colour of Magic, the first installment in a comic fantasy novel series, author Terry Pratchett uses myriad intertextual and cultural codes, drawing on nearly everything from ancient mythology to contemporary theoretical physics, to build his characters’ semic codes and set up the proairetics of his parody of the hero’s journey conventional form. The arch of Rincewind, Discworld’s unassuming protagonist, follows mythologist Joseph Campbell’s outline of the heroic story in The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

The premise of Discworld, that the world is a disc balanced on the back of a cosmic turtle (Pratchett, 1), Pratchett borrows straight from an ancient Chinese myth. However, Pratchett writes that Discworld is, “a world that only exists because every improbability curve must have its far end,” and also a quantum shift into a parallel universe fits into the boon of Rincewind’s arch (Pratchett, 46 108). Together, these intertextual codes from Chinese Mythology and theoretical physics put Discworld in the science fiction/fantasy genre by posing the question: What if there is a parallel universe full cosmic turtles with oceans and continents on their backs?

Pratchett implicitly declares that Discworld is a parody of the hero convention when he introduces a literal “hero” in Hrun the Barbarian, “who was practically an academic by Hub standards in that he could think without moving his lips (Pratchett, 20).” Hrun, is a reference to the Old English epic Beowulf, about a Christian hero who kills the monster Grendel and his mother, but then is killed by a dragon. Pratchett links Hrun to Beowulf by starting his name with “hr.” In Beowulf, the “hr” sound starts many names such as Hrothgar the King and Hrunting the sword. This intertextual reference to Beowulf builds Hrun’s semic code by calling up the images of the barbarian heroes of Old English and Germanic Lore: brave but arrogant. The connection to Beowulf contributes to Discworld’s proairetics as well because it is known that Beowulf  died of wounds acquired while slaying a dragon. Therefore, when Hrun the Barbarian battles dragons in Discworld, one expects him to die, increasing the dramatic effect when Pratchett writes that Hrun is saved at the very last moment (Pratchett, 106).

Hrun’s talking magic sword Kring is also a vehicle for intertextual codes. Pratchett writes that Kring says to Rincewind, “I spent a couple of hundred years on the bottom of a lake once (Pratchett, 71),” which is an intertextual reference to King Arthur’s sword Excalibur which in every version of the legend is at least thrown into a lake when Arthur dies. This furthers Pratchett’s parody of the heroic journey, because Hrun is portrayed as a selfish warrior contrasting with his sword’s previous owner, a beloved ruler. Kring also says, “What I’d really like is to be a ploughshare. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like an existence with some point to it,” which is a paraphrase of the Old Testament, Isaiah 2:4:

“And He will judge between the nations, And will render decisions for many peoples; And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they learn war.”

The Color of Magic – Blog 2

The genre of this book is fantasy with some aspects of sci-fi. There are some logical and scientific explanations to the “magical” components of the text, but I don’t think there are enough to consider it sci-fi. There is no way you could scientifically explain Earth being balanced on the back of a turtle. This book was created because readers want an outlet for escapism into a fantastical world. Fantasy breaks free from mundaneness and takes the reader on an imaginative adventure.

I have an idea of where this text is going. I believe some of the organizing principles are concerning the importance of money and how it can destroy the good in human nature. This world balanced on a disc is counter balanced by a world comprised almost entirely of gold. This is indicative of the value we place on money. The visitor from the Counterweight Continent, Twoflower, is an insurance underwriter. The author alludes to the true nature of the business when the innkeeper says, “[Insurance], it’s called. It’s like a bet that the Broken Drum won’t get burned down” (62). He’s shows us using humor that the whole business is just a gamble that the insurance company usually wins. It’s ironic that the inn does end up burning down and it’s because of Twoflower.

“Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them.  Instead of a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it.” – Chuck Palahniuk (www.litreactor.com)

The author does this well throughout the book. After having a conversation that didn’t go in his favor, this is said of the lieutenant, “The lieutenant snorted in disgust, and strode off around the room to bully his men” (61). The author showed the lieutenants’ personality through his actions rather than telling us. You can see that this is a man who doesn’t take well to not getting his way. He reacts badly and takes out his frustration on his men. The author didn’t tell us what to think, he allowed us to figure that out on our own by observing this man’s actions. Another example of this is when he gave us an insight into Zlorf’s personality. “People who said this in earshot of Zlorf tended to carry their ears home in their hats” (63). Duly noted; don’t mess with Zlorf. This is a very strong aspect of the author’s style.

Color Of Magic #4

If only I knew what the author was thinking, it would make this blog post much easier! But I don’t so I can only assume and I do believe the author is believable. In order for this text to work the author has to believable. Why do I say that you ask? Well the text invites the reader to imagine and enter a world that has to become reality. It was difficult for me to begin reading this book if I had not given all of my trust to the author.  As the addressee I am confident that the narrator is giving information that I am certain about. Rincewind in one instance where he brings the reader to trust him and that is when he chooses to not steal the gold that Twoflower has in his suitcase. Although Rincewind does this because he feels it would be of no use to him I still believe Rincewind still is reliable.

The narrator in The color of Magic is transparent in his intent and inner thoughts. I am constantly aware of what Rincewind is informing me of. When I don’t have any idea what Disk world is like I almost feel like I’m forced to trust Rincewind with no hesitation.

The relationship between the narrator and the addressee is almost manipulative to me. The non familiarity with disk world causes the addressee to need to trust anyone in the text. The text creates an environment that is constantly unstable and pulls in the addressee to hold on to the Narrator. This is where I look at the text and think “wait a minute” because this is where I hesitate to continue reading and not have control as an authorial reader. I don’t know how this book will end but I know one thing, I won’t be an authorial reader.

Color of Magic – Blog 1

What I’m reading for in The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett is to get lost in the story. I enjoy fantasy novels that take me away from reality and I’ve already found myself doing that. What I’m finding strange is that now, as I get lost in the story, I am simultaneously aware of codes and the meaning behind the words. I don’t want to read like I normally would – which is to get completely lost in the text and become the ideal narrative audience. I don’t want to believe everything the narrator says without question. A lot of meaning to the story is lost this way.

The story is a based the strange concept that the world is a flat disc that is swum around the universe on the back of a giant turtle. There is a visitor, Twoflower, who is from the rumored Counterweight Continent which is very abundant in gold. The traveler has a magical trunk with legs that follows him wherever he goes; it carries the largest gold coins made from the purest gold. He cannot speak the language so he carries with him a black book that tells him what to say. He meets up with Rincewind, who isn’t very highly respected as a wizard. The wizard agrees to be Twoflower’s guide after a very generous gold offering. Twoflower wants to see all of the excitement that this land has to offer. He wants to meet renowned heroes and be in the middle of a bar fight. He left his meaningless job as a clerk, although his wages would make most in this land envious. He wants to live, not just make money.

Rincewind takes the four days advance pay that Twoflower gave him and ran off to start his own practice with the fortune he acquired for four days work as a guide; but instead he is brought in by guards to the Patrician. The Patrician orders Rincewind to be the best guide and make sure that Twoflower goes back to the Counterweight Continent with a good report of this land. If Rincewind is successful then his offenses will be pardoned.

Value Graph Color of Magic

Fight Club Blog 4 – Christina Ellis

The narrator wants the reader to become the type of person who is cynical and a bit of a loner but he knows that most people aren’t like that so he has to be cunning. In chapter 7, Joe talks about his obsession with Tyler. He says, “How could I compete for Tyler’s attention?” So now he’s mad at Marla for ruining his meditative times during the group meetings and stealing Tyler’s attention from him. The author knows they have to portray the image of absolute craziness but still make it accessible and relatable to the reader. It’s not very common to become obsessed with a friend and having all of their attention – Joe is on the broad end of the spectrum in that respect; however, it is common to feel upset when a very close friend is making a lot of time for someone else when you want to spend time with them. The latter is something everyone can relate to, especially during the teenage years and early twenties. The narrator causes skepticism with the craziness that comes from Joe’s obsession but then reels the reader back in with more normal thoughts such as when Joe says, “I make friends. They get married. I lose friends.” The author uses this tactic throughout the book. One second you think the narrator is crazy as hell and the next you can relate to what they feel. There are more than two personalities in this book. Being a lonely person is just one of the many types of readers that the author speaks to.

This tactic of going back and forth from crazy to relatable is what makes it so easy for the reader to become a “space monkey” and go through the motions of the text. The narrator wants to keep control of you as much as he wants control of Tyler, and even Marla. He doesn’t want to lose you by causing you to think this is too far-fetched and crazy. The actions of these characters are lunacy, however the feelings such as loneliness and skepticism are common. The author wants you to feel both to the extreme that you can almost understand this man. His extreme actions are justified by his satirical ideas which the author slyly puts in a less crazy way so the submissive reader doesn’t become highly resistant.

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The Color Of Magic Pt.3

Over the course of the beginning of the text the main character, Rincewind, is caught up in a fight with his own self. The character who he is a guide to, Twoflower, carries around rhinus which are gold coins. The temptation of various character in the story to take these coin is constantly revealed. One of these characters is Rincewind who does not simply because he see no use for them at the moment. He battle against his will to take care of Twoflower and keep him from being taken advantage of.

This continuous repetition of gold and greed is obvious. it hints at the Idea that this is a symbols for what this story is about. a moment in the story that reveals this is when Rincewind enters the room where Two flower is staying while Twoflower is still asleep. He has the opportunity to take the gold coin but does not because he find a greater value in keeping to his responsibility.

Rincewind  begins to value the life of Twoflower and hold his responsibility above the material at this point. The story is present the symbolic code as the structure reveals itself. The story of a failure the start on the road to becoming a hero is defined by his first battle won against himself.

The Color Of magic pt. 2

The book begins with the text describing the origins of disc world and how it looks. I was immensely confused when i first began reading. I had no idea what the text was saying as it began describing a peculiar sight that i could not fathom. The shape and function of this world could not be thought up in my head. I pushed hard through the first pages because I was so confused. I eventually learned what disc world was and became familiar with its structure as a place where life existed.

I steadied my focus on what i began to see was a repeating theme in the story. Rincewind constantly fought with others and bargained with those he encountered in Ankh-Morpork. Over and over again Rincewind is confronted with one situation after the other where he needs to negotiate his decisions and actions. He has no anchor, no purpose to live for yet he is in a constant heap of trouble.

The text becomes a story of a person who has failed at being successful. A person who is without a story to tell or an adventure to follow. Rincewind is this person and adventure discovers him giving him a purpose and no option but to go. Rincewind has to become a hero himself in this adventure and start on a journey of finding himself. a genre and form develop in the mist of the general path of the text.

The conventional form develops when the structure of story is revealed where a failure becomes a hero. The hero is forced to find in himself something he never knew he possessed. In The Color of Magic, Rincewind discovers his courage and wit as he maneuvers through the dangers that present themselves when the story begins to unfold. The genre of science fiction does present itself where style is present also. The book start out by explaining what Discworld is and then gives the reader a future scene of the story right at the beginning. while reading the beginning am taken back to the past to be shown i arrived at that future moment.

It is a style that is conventional and offers structure to the beginning of the book. The text was difficult to comprehend but I understood where in the story we were because of this structure.

The Color of Magic Pt.1

I AM NOT A BOOk Reader, I Am Not A Writer. Right now that’s what I tell myself because honestly I’m not any of those. I have never read a book like The Color of Magic and never planned on it. I have never written anything similar to any part of this book and I never planned on it. I’m confused at the beginning of this book and I’m push through all of my personal resistance to continue reading. While reading I find myself reading for something that I could compare the story with.

I’m trying to make the book my own before even entering into the text. I want to know the book before it know me. If that sounded confusing ill explain, as a reader of this book I want to be the lord of this book before its lord over me. I’m not allowing the text to bring me into disk world, the world that the story takes place in. I’m trying to understand the terms and characters before i even know what the story is about. Yet when I attempt to do so I cant, and begin to push back on the text because I haven’t grasped the characters.

The color of magic is a story about a wizard called Rincewind that becomes responsible for the safety of his home. Twoflower, who Rincewind is a guide to, comes to explore the land and becomes and becomes a real threat to himself. Two flower has also come to see the heroes he has heard for so long about. He desires to meet the heroes and see all of the tales he has heard come to life. As the story goes on Rincewind slowly learns about the magic called Reflected-sound-of underground-spirits which leads the story heavily later in the book.