The Hunger Games: Free: E.C.

While reading The Hunger Games I felt many different emotions. I felt excitement, fear, and joy, just to name a few. The book itself was very exciting, obviously, because it is about children between the ages of twelve and eighteen killing each other for food. During the reading process, though, it did not seem like that sort of book. It was as if I was just reading another action/adventure/romance type book. The excitement was not dulled down by this quality though. In a few parts of the book I felt fear. Fear that Katniss would get caught and that Peeta would not make it. I felt fearful for Gale when he had to watch Katniss battle and when he had to watch her pretend to love someone else. Katniss was good, yes, but that does not mean that she was the best in the Games. She did end up winning, but most of the time she spent during the Games she was hiding. When she found Peeta and his leg was so infected, I thought for sure he was dead. I remember thinking, “I was just starting to like him and now he’s going to die???” I was scared that he would die and the plot would not go the way I expected it to. I also put myself in Gale’s shoes. To like a girl and to have to watch her love someone else must have been an ordeal. I was fearful that he would hate her and then Katniss would be all alone when the Capitol came after her. I was joyful when both Peeta and Katniss made it out of the Games. I thought for sure the book was over when they were both going to swallow the berries and that the second book would be about different people, but they made it through. I would encourage everyone to read The Hunger Games and see which emotions the text stirs up within them.

Suicide Free Write

In Thirteen Reasons Why, Hannah Baker killed herself. I have never known anyone who has killed themselves, but reading this novel makes me feel like I do. It also makes me think of myself and how others see me. She looks ok on the outside, but on the inside she is torn up. She goes through drastic changes emotionally and physically, but no one can see that she is going to kill herself until after she does it. I have never thought of suicide before, but I have gone though moments like this. Like now, for example. I look fine on the outside and I seem happy and composed, but during the last few weeks of every semester I start to freak out inside my head. I change myself physically, a sign of suicide according to 13 Reasons Why, but that’s not why I do it. I need a change every once in a while, so I show it on the outside. It is easier to change one’s physical appearance than one’s mental functions. During the last few weeks I also change socially. I will start getting edgy with people and start showing signs of withdrawal, another sign of suicidal thoughts. I could never be suicidal though. I know I would hurt too many people is the thing. If a person were to kill themselves, they would usually be afraid of how much pain they would go through. For me, I would be afraid of the people I had left behind and how bad they were hurting.

The Lovely Bones: Free Response: E.C.

In The Lovely Bones, there were so many emotions going on inside me that it was hard to decipher what I felt about the book. When Susie was in the hole with Mr. Harvey and her parents were looking for her, I felt panicked that they would not find her, even though I already knew she was going to die. I wanted her parents to find out who killed her or find her body or something. Yes, they found her books and her bracelet, but that is not evidence enough to say that the neighbor murdered her.

Another scene that really hit home was when her mom started acting different and then just left. Psychologically, that was a punch in the face. To “watch” her mother leave her family when they needed her most, and that she did not even seem to care that her daughter was dead, was heartbreaking. I actually got teary-eyed when this happened and she started sleeping with Len. When she came back from California, though, to see her husband in the hospital was heartwarming. It showed that she never really forgot about Susie and that she always loved her family.

The text stirred up many emotions in me because from one chapter to the next, no, one page to the next, there was a different emotion going on. So many people were feeling such different things that it was hard to know when to feel happy or sad. I got teary-eyed through happy parts and laughed off the tears through sad sections. In the end, it was happy though and I was very satisfied with this book.

The Lovely Bones: Guided: E.C.

Many changes went on in The Lovely Bones. Susie Salmon, dies, and quite gruesomely if I do say so myself. She is dead by page ten and we already know who has done the deed by page five. Now, to go from living to dead may sound like a huge, major, gargantuan change. It really was not for Susie. When Susie died, she “ghosted” away, just like a kite. As she was leaving our world and moving on to the other side, she touched someone. She touched Ruth Connors. Ruth had always been different, but now she was seeing Susie in her dreams and thinking about her constantly. Susie can see Ruth and watches her write poems about her and draw her. This is not all Susie can see. She watches her crush, Ray Singh, as he grieves her and goes through the process of answering the police. Susie watches all of this, like a movie, from her place among the dead. She meets a girl named Holly. They have similar Heavens because they both wanted to make it to High School, so that’s what their Heaven is. During the entire book, Susie watches her family change and move through life. No one ever forgets her or lets her go. For several years they do not touch her room or celebrate her. Her mom leaves and her dad has a heart attack. She watches all these things change right before her eyes, but can do nothing. Until one day when Ruth and Ray are at an old shack and Ruth has an experience. Ruth changes internally. She becomes Susie and Susie and Ray get to spend one last day together. This entire book was one character changing after another, so there was no specific change to share.

The Hunger Games: Guided Response: E.C.

Katniss is the main character of the Hunger Games. She is strong in many ways including, but not limited to; her mind, her body, and her will. She was not the one chosen to participate in the Hunger Games. Her little sister, Prim was the one who was chosen to be slaughtered on the battle field. Prim and Katniss are very close and Katniss would do anything to protect her. As the story goes on, we see more of Katniss’s protectiveness over others. She is worthy of praise because of this attribute.

During the Hunger Games, Katniss meets Rue, a young girl from District 4. Rue reminds Katniss of her little sister, Prim, so Katniss helps Rue. When Rue dies, Katniss decorates her body with flowers to show that she is not “another piece in [the Capitol’s] games”. Katniss decorating Rue showed courage. It showed that she is not afraid of the Capitol and she surviving the Games shows that she is very strong and worthy of praise.

Katniss also has a “lover” in the Hunger Games. Peeta, the baker’s son, professes his love for her at the opening ceremonies during an interview. Katniss does not know how Peeta really feels. She thinks it is all a game, but goes along with it. The more they are together, the more gifts they had gotten from Haymitch, their mentor. As the Games end, Katniss saves Peeta’s life by killing the last player before Peeta could bleed to death. This was a very heroic move on her part.

week 12, After

Amy Efaw, the author of After, chose the title for After for many reasons. One is because the book is set after Devon Davenport’s pregnancy. After her pregnancy, she has thrown a baby in a dumpster and realizes the effects of her actions. Her actions have led her to jail and a court date. During her time in jail, which takes place after the police find the baby in the dumpster but before the court date, Devon thinks of everything she has done and how her life could have been different if she had not met Connor, the baby’s father.

This book is also called after because of the way Devon thinks. She is thinking of her consequences after the baby was born. What would things have been like if she had known about her pregnancy? Would she have kept the baby still? She has all these thoughts going through her head that it is hard to think straight. As she sits in jail and thinks about That Night, things start to connect. She sees that she could have known that she was pregnant, but she may not have wanted to see it. She does realize that something was wrong with her, but she did not know until That Night. These consequences are one of the reasons the novel is called After, too.

I have chosen to read “After” for my second half of this semester. It was very hard for me to get into reading this novel. I went from reading “The Hunger Games” (great book by the way) to reading this. They are two totally different novels. “The Hunger Games” is written in first person and you know what the main character is thinking all the time. In “After”, we, as readers, do not know what Devon, the main character, is thinking until she says it. We do know her actions, though, and sometimes those give things away.

This book has affected me in ways that I would expect. I tend to “leech” to characters in the books I am reading. In this book, Devon is going through a mental struggle dealing with what she has done in the past and I feel like her pain is real, in a way. When I read I usually am about to go to sleep and that usually does not affect my sleeping patterns, but with this book I wake up more when I’m reading it. I think my mind starts working more and it makes me restless.

Why this book affects me like it does, I have no idea. All I can guess is that I have a very large imagination and I can pull characters out of books to make them real. Within this parameter, I can also conjure up any image the book gives.

I’ll have to close saying that I hope this book gets a little more interesting. My mind is usually used to jumping around from one thing to another and this book does do that, but in the most annoying way.