The Ordinary World

In The Jungle Book by Richard Kupling, Mowgli's ordinary world is deep into the Indian jungles living amongst his family-the wolfpack. The wolfpack is huge and each month they all attend a meeting of the wolves. Mowgli lives with a smaller clan of wolves; mother and father wolves and all of his brothers and sisters. From birth Mowgli was separated from his parents and he grew up with the wolves, so this is where he finds himself most at home. When he is forced to leave this world, he faces challenges like speaking human language and doing human things like farming and cooking.

The Ordeal

In the novel Change Of Heart by Jodi Picoult, Shay Bourne is a 30 something year old man convicted of first degree murder of a police officer and child and molestation, and he is sentenced to a death penalty. Before he dies he wishes to donate his heart to the child of the woman who was a mother and wife to his crimes. The little girl who is the daughter of the woman needs a heart soon or she will die. The Ordeal of the story is after Shay's wish is granted by the supreme court and he is allowed to complete his death sentence by hanging instead of lethal injection so that the organs can be harvested. It is when he gets hanged that is the ordeal or the heart of the journey.

Ask Again Later

I just finished Ask Again Later by Jill A. Davis. It was about a girl named Emily Rhode, who's father left when she was five. She is 38 when her mother developes cancer, and when she does Emily quits her job and breaks up with her boyfriend-using the cancer as an excuse to get out of everything she has going on in her life. She moves in with her mother until the cancer is removed and when her mother doesn't need her anymore she doesn't know what to do with herself. In the end she gets counselling and gets married and has a baby girl. I didn't really like the book because it was pretty boring to me and had a really slow story line.

The Hero

I'm currently reading Ask Again Later by Jill A. Davis. It isn't clear who the hero is yet but I think the emerging hero might be the main character, Emily. I think this because so far the book is in her point of view and it is talking about her life so it is obviously a path from the ego. Another hint is that in the story Emily's mother developes breast cancer and Emily immediately quits her job and breaks up with her boyfriend to be at her mother's side. It is also hinted that her mother will probably die so I definitely think that there is a lot of self sacrifice in Emily's life. The author also makes it obvious that she is an antagonist, which is also a hero character trait. I think something will happen in Emily's life soon that will somehow define her as a hero even more but I haven't come to that point yet.

In this quote you can kind of see how Emily is dealing with her mother's cancer and how it makes her a bit of a hero.

""I quit my job, walked out on Sam, and slept at my mom's house last night," I say.

Long pause. I'm actually waiting for him to shake his head in disgust, or laugh hysterically. He does neither. "All or nothing," Paul says. "All or nothing. Finding a middle ground would..."

"Be impossible, but feel like a vacation?""

-Jill A. Davis, Ask Again Later, Page 59.

The Lovely Bones

I just finished reading The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. The book was about a fourteen year old girl named Susie who is lured into a trap by her neighbour and is violently murdered. From there she watches her family go on through life without her from heaven. I really liked the book because things like that happen everyday and sometimes we don't realize it. The one thing I was confused about was the point of view because at first when Susie is still alive it is in first person, but when she dies and goes to heaven she is still in first person but can see inside people's heads at the same time. In my opinion it was really well thought out and really compelling.

Character Archetypes

Right now, I'm in the middle of the novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I found that there were many different archetypes in the book since there are so many characters. I would classify Susie Salmon as a hero archetype because she is self sacrificed in the book. Susie is fourteen when she is raped and murdered, and the rest of the story is told by her watching from heaven. She is a reluctant hero because she has to sacrifice her life but is obviously not willing. The shadow in the book would be George Harvey, who rapes and murders Susie along with a bunch of other women. George is a shadow because he is the villian in the story- the one who killed the Salmon's daughter in the first place and he is a negative figure that we would like to eliminate. Here's a quote from the book that would classify Mr.Harvey as a shadow. "He felt a calm flood him. He kept the lights out in the bathroom and felt the warm water wash me away and he felt thoughts of me then. My muffled scream in his ear. My delicious death moan. The glorious white flesh that had never seen sun, like an infant's, and the split, so perfectly, with the blade of his knife."- Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones Page 16.  Obviously he is the villian/shadow.  If you want to learn more about the book here's a link of the trailer.

Who Is Telling The Story? What Do You Know About The Main Character?

'Mom, please talk to me. -Claire.'
'I just can't Claire. I'm sorry but I just cant. Be paitent. -Mom.' 
This quote was taken from my book, Life On The Refridgerator Door by Alice Kuipers, Page 118 and 119. Within this quote, you learn that the narrator is both the Mom and Claire, since the whole book is just notes between just them. You can also see that there is some sort of conflict between Claire and her mom, though it doesn't say in this specific quotation what it is. It is also obvious that the conflict is a big deal, since they are not talking at all about it. I've just finished the book, so I can't really make a prediction oh what happens, though it is pretty obvious when reading it since her mother has a serious form of breast cancer. For the video I picked a song that reminded me of the book.

Life On The Refrigerator Door

I read Life On The Refrigerator Door, by Alice Kuipers. In the novel, Claire is a fifteen year old girl who only lives with her mother. Both mother and daughter lead extremely busy lives and it leaves them to communicating by constantly writeing notes to eachother on the refridgerator door. So the story is ocmpletely notes from them. Throught these notes, a story developes on how Claire's mother developes breat cancer and how they carried on through the whole problem. I really liked the book because it was short and easy to read but it also had a meaning behind it. It turned out to be a really sad story, even though it was only through short notes. I really liked the way the author used the note strategy, because it made the story a lot more interesting.