Week of September 22-28 Entry #3

Chapter 10 and 11 talks about farmers getting prepared to move and after they move out. In Chapter 10, Tom and Casy join the farmer group and help the group prepare to leave. The farmers do work such as salting meat. At the end of the chapter, the farmers finally leave. A grampa suddenly change his mind and decides to stay and the rest of the group leave the land and head towards California.
Chapter 11 is about the land that was left after the farmers left to California. The author describes the land as barren because some people are left there and they cultivate the land, but they are not so enthusiastic enough to actually grow crops there. The author says that these workers just drive a tractor over the land everyday. The men left in this land seem to have little skill in cultivation.

Week of September 21-28Entry #2

This week, the independent reading was done in class because we had to do the oral presentations on our Things Fall Apart scrapbooks. Since the class wasn't so silent due to other kids being nervous, I couldn't read a lot. Yet, I read about 30 pages despite the bad conditions.
From this part of the book, the story starts to flow. Chapter 7 is somewhat different from the precedent part of the story. This talks about how a salesmen could cheat tenant farmers. If a car seller changes the car's important parts into older and cheaper components, the salesmen could make more profit because the farmers don't know well about cars.
Chapter 8 starts to talk about Tom and Casy going to uncle John's house. Tom talks about Unlce John to Casy. Later, they arrive to the farm of Uncle John, but they found out that the place has been abandoned.
Chapter 9, the next chapter relates to chapter 6 again. It talks about the tenant farmers preparing to move to California. The interesting part of this chapter is the people who help the farmers move are ripping them off and the author is taking the perspective of a typical tenant farmer who is disappointed about moving to California.

Week of September 17-20 Entry #1

Book Read: The Grapes of Wrath
Author: John Steinbeck
Entry 1

The Grapes of Wrath. Some students might recognize the title of this book if he or she has an elder sibling. Some may know this book even though they don't have an older sibling because of its notoriety. The information of this book indicate that this is a classic book written in the 1930s by John Steinbeck, whom we know as the author of The Pearl, and is one of the hardest, enduring, and painstaking book to read. However, this is an inevitable book that we have to encounter in our high school year. I wanted to have some experience with the book, so I checked this book out of the library.
As I was reading this book, I noticed that what I heard was true. The first day I got this book, I read two pages and I was already half-sleeping. The first few pages describe one scene of a village in detail. For students who haven't been reading a lot, this book is rigorous. Yet, I endured the hardships and proceeded on. The basic plot is that a group of farmers are pushed out of their land in America during the early times of the United States, and are forced to move to California, and this book portrays the hopeless and hard conditions of the migration. The main character is Tom, a man who stayed in prison for 4 years for killing a man in a fight when drunk. I have read up to chapter 6, but not much has happened except for the fact that a group of farmers are forced to move, and Tom is with Jim Casy, a former preacher who quit preaching because of bad sexual relations. Anyways, this book seems to be an interesting, but hard book. I am looking for to check out whether the things I have heard about this notorious book is really true or not.

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Book 2 Entry #6

Q. Are there any current situations in the world that relate to the novel? what are they, and how do they relate? does the novel shed any light on how current situations could be resolved or "fixed"?

As I was reading this novel, I was easily, obviously relate this situation to a real world situation. It was Korea. Although some minor factors are different, there are many similarities with Korean education and the Battle School in Ender's game. Both gives hard time to students and soldiers.

As many students in TCIS know, Korean schools literally “impose” a lot of work on students and basically inundate the students with knowledge. The similar thing is done in the Battle School. They take the children when they are young, treat them like soldiers in armies, and make them do tough training. Moreover, the Battle School and Korean schools both show ranks of soldiers/students about how well they perform. As the students and soldiers grow older, their lives become more harder. They have to think more and work more. Therefore, students who perform well tend to live an easier life in both places.

Still, there are some differences. One is that the Battle School doesn’t force students to enter it, and it only has geniuses in the school. However, after the boys enter the school, more things are similar. They are swamped with hard work by harsh, given from not so magnanimous teachers.

Because the novel isn’t focused on criticizing Korea’s education system, it doesn’t talk a lot about how the battle school could be resolved or “fixed.” As a matter of fact, in the novel, the Battle School seems to be an efficient system, which can train soldiers and commanders at the best conditions. Yet, it doesn’t mean that Korean education system is always efficient. There are always problems in education systems. If we are to find solutions for such problems, it would be better to look at other non-fictions are other genres of fiction, because Science Fiction has a distance from real life. Personally, I think this book relates a lot with the 21st century Korea’s education system, though it isn’t intended by the author.

Book 2 Entry #5

Q. What is the mood of this novel? Do you find this novel saddens you in any way? why?

The whole novel’s mood, as a matter of fact, is quite depressing. We all have these scenes and numerous pages where Ender goes under suffering from his launchmates, fellow soldiers, upper commanders, and even his brother, Peter. Then, in the last climax, Ender gains victory. However, this part is too short to change the mood of this story. Though it has a strong emotion, ten pages can’t beat the rest of the book. Moreover, I think this book is more depressing because there is no nature in the book. Throughout the whole novel, Ender stays in the Battle School, and because it is located in space, no sense of nature comes out. The author almost never seems to mention about nature such as sunlight, forests, flowers, fresh air, rain, or snow. It is just life in the cubed rooms, full with tension.

Frankly, this novel saddens me because of how other characters treat Ender. This is similar to real life in Korea. I think the people in this novel treat geniuses in a wrong way. At least, I can’t blame Graff for giving Ender such a hard time because he actually became the war hero, but I think Graff’s method was wrong. I think a real way to grow geniuses is using the carrot-and-whip method. The people who train the genius shouldn’t just give loads of work and hardships, but also fruits and show accomplishments of the genius so that they can understand that they are developing. This worked because this was fiction. I am quite sure that if this was real life, Ender would have had a very, very high chance of giving up in the middle of the Battle School. Furthermore, geniuses are also people and they need rest. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, no nature comes out in this novel. I think we could change the mood of this novel by portraying the scene where Ender comes back to Earth, feels the warm sunshine and enjoys the scent of flowers.

Book 2 Entry #4

Q. Who are the main characters in the novel? Do you like them? Why or why not? What is special about them? What do they reveal about the universal human experience?

Peter: Being the oldest of the Wiggins, Peter comes out as the villain of this novel. Though the Wiggins in this story are all portrayed as geniuses, their characteristics are all different. Peter represents the evil side of the Wiggins. Throughout this novel, Peter threats Ender a lot of times, and later, he becomes the greedy man who just peruses power. It is not precisely known why Peter didn’t enter the Battle School, but the two biggest reasons seem to be not being genius enough and his malevolent character.

Valentine: Valentine is Peter’s younger sister and Ender’s older brother. Valentine is basically the opposite of Peter. Unlike Peter, Valentine really cares about Ender, encourages him, and supports him mentally. If we see Valentine, we can see unconditional love like one a parent should give. Later, Valentine becomes an anonymous author with Peter, writes articles, and tries to change the government.

Ender: Ender, the youngest of the Wiggins appear to be the most intelligent boy in his family. He also has the character right between Peter and Valentine. He loves his family and friends, but he often hurts them, for example during the launch, he breaks Bernard’s arm. As we could see in the title, Ender is the protagonist of this story, and the whole plot is focused on Ender. Starting as a genius in a normal home, Ender enters a Battle School, becomes the youngest soldier, shows superior qualities of a commander, gets promoted to command at the Third Bugger war, and finally becomes the war hero.

Like most people would, my favorite character from this book is Ender. However, I also Valentine too. I think these three characters are significant about human truth because they each represent types of people. There are many types of people in this world, and I think this author described it well with this three characters. I think this book also has a focus on relationship between people. This shows how people react to others and kind of shows how we should act to others by showing the good aspects of Valentine.