The Glass Castle

This week I chose a book to read for my book report.  There were a couple books that I considered reading for this, but I ended up reading The Glass Castle.  This book is a memoir written by Jeanette Walls.  It is about growing up in her crazy, dysfunctional family.  The reason I chose it was really just because both of my sisters and my mom have read it, and they all really liked it.  I didn't know much about it when I chose it.  So far, the book is interesting, but not great.  My sister said that is has a slow start, so it will hopefully get better soon.  The characters are starting to be developed, and I have started to get a feeling of what this family is like.  For instance, their dad is super smart and ambitious, yet has drinking problems and is probably too ambitious when he says they are going to find gold one day.  The main character's mother is a free spirit and is not a typical mother--she seems to have less rules and a very different parenting style than usual.  As for the main character, she seems curious and smart so far.  This family obviously loves each other, but they aren't a regular family.  They are constantly "skedaddling" from where they live to escape from people (I'm not exactly sure who because I think the dad makes stuff up when he tells the kids why they are leaving) and then finding a new small town to live in for a while.  I'm definitely not used to reading about a family like this, so I'm very interested in reading on.

Tillie's Family and the Capulet Family

A couple of days ago I finished reading The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, which was pretty good.  Just a little while ago, I read Romeo and Juliet.  When comparing the two families, Tillie's family can relate to the Capulet family from Romeo and Juliet in a lot of ways, although they definitely aren't exactly alike.

For one, both Juliet's parents and Beatrice, the only parent to Tillie and her sister Ruth, and very protective of their kids.  The Capulet family, for example, never really lets Juliet into the world.  She is never able to walk around in the streets of Verona or anything.  Instead, Juliet mostly stays up in her room or at least in the Capulet home.  This, however, wasn't uncommon in that time period.  Beatrice is also very protective.  She doesn't want Tillie to get made fun of at school, so she tries to keep her home and is always telling her not to wear the ugly clothes she wears so that she won't get laughed at.  This is a very mean way of trying to protect Tillie from being laughed at, because it probably really hurts Tillie's feelings and also makes it so she can't go to school.  However, it is Beatrice's way of "protecting" her.

Also, both families have controlling parents.  This is has a lot to do with them being protective, because to protect Juliet from the world, the Capulets have to control where she goes and what she does, and to protect Tillie from being made fun of, Beatrice is controlling her and making her stay home.  Another thing that the Capulets do to control Juliet is deciding who she marries.  They want her to marry Paris, which is not what Juliet wants.  Beatrice wants to control Tillie by forcing her to wear fancy-ish clothing for the science fair.  As for Ruth, Beatrice wants to get her to think that no boy or man can be trusted.  She's trying to control Ruth so that she doesn't end up like she did--marrying a horrible man that she always fought with and ended up divorcing.  This is also a good example of her being protective.

Another similarity between the two families is how, even though they care about each other, both Juliet's parents and Tillie's and Ruth's mom can get very angry at them easily.  Beatrice, for example, is always threatening to kill their rabbit(and actually ends up doing it) if the girls don't clean up the rabbit droppings around the house.  Also, when Ruth wants to come to the science fair with Tillie and Beatrice, Beatrice gets very angry when Ruth says she's coming even though Beatrice won't let her, so she shoves her.  As for the Capulets, when Juliet says she doesn't wish to marry Paris, Capulet(her father) gets extremely mad.  He calls her a worthless piece of trash and says that if she doesn't marry Paris, then she may as well live on the streets and never come back to their home again.  He obviously got a little too angry too easily.

These two families definitely have their differences as well.  First, in the Capulet family Juliet is an only child with a mother and a father.  Tillie, however, has a sister and a mother, but no father.  Also, the Capulets live in Italy in somewhere between the 1300s and the late 1500s.  Tillies family lives somewhere in America in around the 1960s.  Another difference is that it seems like Beatrice actually knows and loves her daughters a lot more than Lord Capulet and Lady Capulet know and love Juliet.

So, these families do have some things in common, even if they are very different.  If I had to choose to live in either of the families it might be hard to choose at first.  Both of them do not seem like the best families, but I would probably go with Tillie's family.  Beatrice seems to actually love her daughters and care about them, even if it doesn't seem like it all the time.

Act One in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

This week I read the first act in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, by Paul Zindel.  It was a very strange book, but it definitely kept me reading and was really interesting.

While reading this play, I tried to find a way to relate to it, which was actually pretty hard.  Tillie is a girl with a troubled childhood that probably feels very alone. She has a horrible, uncaring mother, and a sister who doesn't care about her much either.  I definitely can't relate to that.  There were a couple things that I could relate to, though.  One thing is how Tillie is different from her mom and sister--she is her own person.  She doesn't try to fit in with them, but instead she stays herself--someone who loves science and is particularly amazed with atoms.  I am not much like the people in my family either.  For example, I play an instrument, unlike everyone in my family except for one of my sisters.  She, however, plays guitar, and I play viola.  Another part of this play that I can relate to is how much Tillie seems to love her pet bunny.  You can tell that she loves it because throughout Act I, whenever Tillie is talking to her mother, she comes across as very obedient and calm(except for when Ruth is screaming and going crazy), as if she's trying not to get her mother angry.  However, when Beatrice asks Tillie if she wants her to use chloroform on her rabbit, Tillie shouts, "No!"  That shows just how much she cares about her pet.  I love my pets too, except they are dogs, not bunnies.  As you can tell, Tillie is definitely the person I can relate to the most in this play.

I really can't wait to keep reading this book and learn more about Tillie and her messed up family.  It's actually really interesting to read the "Marigolds...Revisited" part in the beginning of this copy of the book and the "Paul Zindel Bio" document Mrs. Marietta sent us because they show just how much of this book relates to Paul Zindel's life.  This was interesting to me.  To end, I feel like the radioactive marigolds represent Tillie, specifically in her family situation, and I definitely want to find out more about this.

The Nurse in Romeo and Juliet

The Nurse acts as both a mother and a friend to Juliet in the tragic play Romeo and Juliet.  She is the one that Juliet trusts, and she is always trying to please Juliet.  Juliet comes from a wealthy family, and in those days(hundreds of years ago), it was usual for wealthy families to have a nurse who looked after the children instead of the mother doing it.  This was the case for Juliet, so her relationship with the Nurse was similar to a mother-daughter one.  The Nurse is also a friend to Juliet, and jokes around with her and listens to her.  The main character traits I see in the Nurse are motherly, loyal, and talkative.  Shakespeare conveys these characteristics through monologues the Nurse says, the conversations she has with Juliet, and the actions she takes to please Juliet.

To start, the Nurse is very motherly to Juliet.  In Act I, Scene III, Shakespeare has the Nurse say a monologue to quickly get across the fact that in this play, the Nurse is the one that probably knows Juliet the best.  In this scene, Lady Capulet is talking to Juliet about her marrying Paris.  Before she does this, she tells the Nurse to leave.  She then remembers that the Nurse knows Juliet well, and allows her to stay in the room.  The Nurse tells Lady Capulet that she does know Juliet well, and then goes into this story about Juliet as a little girl.  She explains how she used to have a daughter named Susan, but after Susan died she started taking care of Juliet.  She says that she breast-fed Juliet, which shows how she’s been acting like a mother to her since Juliet was a baby.  The Nurse then tells a funny story about Juliet.  It makes her sound like a loving mother recalling back to when her child was young.  Next, when she meets Romeo in the street to ask him about the wedding plans between Romeo and Juliet, she says, “if ye should lead her into a fool’s paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behavior, as they say: for the gentlewoman is young; and, therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.”  Here we can tell that the nurse is very protective of Juliet, and wants to make sure that Romeo is going to treat her right.  Finally, the way the Nurse continues to repeat that it is a “lamentable day” when she thinks Juliet is dead shows just how much she cares for her.

Another way to describe the Nurse in this story is loyal.  She is always doing things for Juliet and keeping secrets.  In fact, she is one of the two people besides Romeo and Juliet themselves who know about their doomed love.  One thing she did for Juliet was go to Romeo to get details about the wedding of the two lovers.  Also, the Nurse tells Juliet as soon as she can about Romeo’s banishment for killing Tybalt.  She then says, "I'll find Romeo To comfort you,” showing just how much she wants to please Juliet and make her happy.  One other way that the Nurse seems loyal to Juliet is how even though she doesn’t exactly think that Romeo is the best man for Juliet to marry, and doesn’t quite seem to understand their love for one another, she still stands by Juliet’s side and helps her and Romeo marry.

Also, the Nurse is a very talkative person.  She loves to chat and joke with Juliet, which makes them seem also like friends of one another.  When the Nurse comes back from getting news of the wedding from Romeo, she teases Juliet, and complains about her aching back rather than telling Juliet the news she wants to hear.  Next, when the Nurse is talking with Lady Capulet and Juliet about when Juliet was a little girl, she rambles on and on and even when Lady Capulet begs her to be quiet so she can talk to Juliet, the Nurse won’t stop talking.  Finally, when Capulet is yelling angrily at Juliet when she says she won’t marry Paris, the Nurse defends her.  At this, Capulet says, “Utter your gravity o’er a gossip’s bowl.”  This is implying that the Nurse likes to gossip with others, which makes her seem like a chatty person.

Throughout the story, the Nurse is a character who acts as a mother to Juliet, who is loyal to her, and who loves to talk.  She obviously cares deeply about Juliet, and even though she doesn’t fully understand her, she is the one that knows her the best.  The Nurse may have different ideas about who Juliet should marry, but she still supports Juliet’s decisions, and when Juliet appears dead, the Nurse is very sad.  She also enjoys talking to Juliet and almost anyone else she meets.  The Nurse is a static character who doesn’t change too much throughout the play, but is also a very important one.

The First Act of Romeo and Juliet

This week we started reading the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.  It was at times very hard to understand, but I'm beginning to get more used to it.  Reading through the first act of the play made me begin to get a feel for this play's style, plot, and characters.

Reading Act 1 of this play took quite a while, but annotating the pages and taking my time definitely helped me understand the story better, and after annotating the play for a while, you become more familiar with the style of writing and reading the play is easier.  It was nothing like anything I've really read before, not because of the format and the fact that it was a play, but because it was written in a very early form of modern English.  The use of words and words themselves were sometimes very hard to understand.  As I read Romeo and Juliet, I had to look up many words, such as "rapier," which is a type of sword.  Some words were spelled differently than I'm used to too, such as "o'er" instead of "over."  This took me a little while to get used to.  I also noticed rhyming(ex. prove/remove, daylight/night, etc.) throughout the act.

Act 1 seemed to start off the story by introducing the major characters and their personalities.  As for the plot, Act 1 nicely started the plot off by introducing the Capulets and Montagues--two feuding families--and also having Romeo and Juliet meet.  It showed how quickly both Romeo and Juliet changed their minds and emotions about certain things when meeting each other, which was very interesting.  Romeo at first seemed devastated that Rosaline didn't love him, and Juliet said marriage was not for her because she did not wish to marry Paris, but the moment they met they both seemed to fall in love with each other.  I thought this was especially interesting because of Romeo's immense sadness beforehand.

When examining the characters in this play, I've noticed that both Romeo and Juliet seem hasty, and Juliet seems somewhat lonely.  So far, I've noticed that Juliet's parents are pretty strict.  Also, Tybalt was a character that stood out to me because of his bad temper.

Overall this act definitely wasn't that exciting, but I think that it did a good job of setting the story up.  I'm not sure if I will really enjoy this play, mostly because of the way it was written.

The Characters in The Catcher in the Rye and "A Perfect Day for a Bananafish"

The Catcher in the Rye and "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" are both stories written by J. D. Salinger.  The first one is a novel and the other is a short story.  There are many comparisons that can be made between the characters in these stories.

First, as you read these stories, the main characters both seem to really relate to each other. One way that Holden from The Catcher in the Rye and Seymour from "A Perfect Day for a Bananafish" relate to each other is that they both seem to enjoy being around children more than others.  Holden himself always seemed to feel better when he was around children like his sister, Phoebe, and the kids he met by the museum.  Seymour seemed to be happy when around Sybil, who was a little kid.  Also, all throughout the story Seymour is trying to get away from adults.  For instance, during Bingo he went off alone into another room and played the piano.  Salinger actually relates to this too, because he has said that some of his best friends are children.  They all would rather be with children, who are more real than most adults.  Another thing that Holden and Seymour have in common is that they both felt alienated and alone.  Seymour felt this way because after he was let out of the hospital after a war, he probably wasn't the most stable, but his wife didn't seem at all concerned about him.  As for Holden, he felt like he never really fit in, and was having trouble finding his identity, especially since he had just gotten kicked out of school.  Both characters were also depressed at times.  There were many times throughout the book that Holden said he felt depressed, but he ended up getting through it.  On the other hand, Seymour can be seen as probably very messed up and depressed, because at the end of the story he ended up killing himself.  

Other characters that relate in these stories would be the hot-shots and phonies that Holden talks about, such as Stradlater, and Seymour's wife Muriel.  Muriel seems to be somewhat of a phony, and she doesn't seem to care that much about Seymour.  She is a materialistic woman who is surrounded by luxuries and riches.  In the story she is wearing a silk gown and is said to have fancy leather luggage.  She can't really relate to Seymour, just like the hot-shots can't relate much to Holden.

It is pretty easy to notice how similar these characters really are.  Both of these stories were very interesting.

The Catcher in the Rye--Where Would I go if I were Holden?

The main character in The Catcher in the Rye is Holden Caulfield, a boy who gets kicked out of a prep school and leaves it to wander around alone in New York for a few days.  If I were him, I probably wouldn't have gone to New York.  I know that he's pretty familiar with the area, but I would not feel at all confident enough to stay alone in New York City.  I wouldn't want to wander the streets alone or be by myself in an apartment room.  It would probably make me feel really sad and lonely, which is another reason that I would decide to go somewhere else(besides being not confident about staying alone).  I'm not sure where else I would really go if I were in Holden's place besides my house, even if it meant having to face my parents before they knew I was kicked out of school.  Because of my parents probably getting very angry at me when I got home, it might take me sort of long to get home, but I still definitely wouldn't stay in New York.  In my house at least I could be safe and with my family.