Lara's English Class Blog

 Although I enjoyed many of the characters in Ragtime, Mother stood out to me as an exceptionally written character. Ragtime takes place at the turn of the 20th century and a big theme of the time -- and, of course, the book -- is the idea of change. Doctorow hits on various key societal changes through many characters: we see Emma Goldman publicly trying to fight for a better society, Younger Brother joins Coalhouse and later goes to Mexico to continue his fight for justice, and Coalhouse himself is a good example of a fight for racial changes. The list goes on, but the character who I'd most like to focus on is Mother. Throughout the book, Mother's personality goes through major changes and, by the end, she discovers an entirely new existence for herself. Unlike Father, who is unable to keep up with the changes around him and eventually becomes depressed, Mother thrives in her new environment. During Father's excursion to the North Pole, Mother becomes self-reliant. She ...

 Up until this point in the book, Doctorow has hit on a lot of themes that have interwoven through multiple characters, but I think the most striking to me is each characters' quest for meaning. With each person, we've seen an internal struggle, whether explicit or implicit, to discover themselves. The first clear example to me is Evelyn. Doctorow spends much of the first part of the book focusing on her character -- especially in relation to Tateh and The Little Girl. In class, we discussed whether we thought that Evelyn had good intentions during her interactions with Tateh or if she was being selfish. In my opinion, Evelyn's acts, though debately in poor taste, were good intentioned. Throughout her life, Evelyn was viewed as a sexual object rather than a person. She was manipulated by Thaw and White from an early age and forced to make a name for herself using her sexual appeal. Her entire life resides under the public eye and she is constantly being scrutinized, but whe...

     My favorite moment of Sag Harbor is without a doubt when Benji describes being at the U.T.F.O concert when the bass is about to drop. I felt it was perfect scene because, even if it was just for a night, Benji could finally stop thinking about his father's abuse, his struggles fitting in, and the challenge of discovering himself. He could relax and enjoy.     At home, Benji clearly has a difficult time relaxing because of his father. In fact, he would rather take extra shifts at the ice cream shop to avoid seeing his dad on the weekends. In Manhattan, both Benji and Reggie struggle making friends at school. Benji is painfully aware that they don't fit in with their white classmates and even the surrounding community makes it clear to them. The lack of friends at school made Benji and Reggie dependent on each other for company which gave Benji a lot of anxiety surrounding discovering his true self.     Benji's struggles all culminate to the mo...

As we see throughout the book, Jason goes through the full spectrum of popularity.  In the beginning, he's not quite an outsider, but he's certainly not the most popular either. When we see him get tested by the Spooks, he finally gets the chance to join the elite group of popular boys which we know he has wanted for some time. Of course, as we see, Jason doesn't become a Spook and he instead falls even lower on the popularity spectrum when the boys find out about his stammer.  When I was reading this book, I found Jason's wide range of popularity to be quite interesting. We could easily see that Jason was very aware of where he stood in the popularity rankings at the beginning of the book. I think that a lot of people his age can relate to his descriptions and his wishes to be popular. Many teens change their personalities to try and fit in with the 'popular crowd', but Jason doesn't. Throughout the book, although he almost wavers sometimes, he stays true t...

One of the very first things I noticed when I started reading Fun Home was Bechdel's grey and blue tone color palette. I was quite curious why she made the choice to draw her book in such a limited color scheme. Especially when she was describing her childhood home that her father decorated, she depicted all the rich colors he chose, but never showed us. It seemed to me that using color would have been the perfect way to "show not tell" what her home and childhood looked like.  When I reached chapter 5 and read through the scene where Bechdel's dad colors her coloring book because he thinks she is coloring it wrong (pages 130 and 131), it became much clearer as to why she doesn't use color. All through the book we saw the clear contrasting dynamic between Alison and her father. Alison is the hero; her father is the anti-hero. As Alison herself puts it, she's the butch to his nelly, utilitarian to his aesthete. They've always clashed with each other and now...

 Throughout The Bell Jar , I noticed that Esther always thought she knew what to expect in the real world based on how society dictates she should experience it, yet Esther always ended up experiencing it very differently. At the time this book was written, women were expected to be quiet, cheerful, and put together constantly which is a sharp contrast from the detachment, dreariness, and over-all misery Esther feels on a daily basis. Her nonchalant accounts of multiple suicide attempts is not a topic we, as readers, expect to read about in such an informal tone. It sounds like she's simply telling us what she was thinking about eating for lunch when, in reality, the topic is dark and a typically taboo topic.  More examples come from her time in New York where Esther feels like she should be happy in such a vibrant environment, yet she once again feels out of place and finds it depressing. In addition, her struggle between trying to choose whether to pursue writing (as her hea...

 Throughout The Catcher in the Rye,  Holden constantly says that people who do certain things, say certain phrases, or act in certain ways are "phony". Honestly, I think it's definitely favorite word. However, I've noticed that a lot of the time, the things he says are phony, are characteristics which apply to him. The example that brought my attention to this hypocrisy is when he is in the restaurant with the nuns. He goes on a monologue about how people who dress up fancily and go eat lunch at fancy restaurants are phony and he doesn't like them. Yet, Holden and his family are quite well off and Holden isn't reserved at all when it comes to spending his money. He'll pay for cabs when he could easily walk, he buys countless drinks, and he gave the nuns 10 dollars completely unprompted and even tried to pay for their order on top of that donation. It's quite hypocritical that the very class of wealth Holden is from is the one he finds most phony. Anoth...