Figurative Language

I remember that day like it was yesterday. That day wasn’t even that long ago. Everything about that morning was so strange. It was December 13, 2008. I was going home that next day for Christmas break. I remember lying in bed; I hadn’t slept at all that morning, which for me is very strange. It was a Saturday morning; I sleep until about two o’clock on the weekends. I remember laying there thinking why aren’t I sleeping? I checked my phone, it was six o’clock in the morning, I hadn’t been asleep for long. I noticed I had 15 missed calls. I also noticed my phone was on silent, my phone is never on silent. All of the calls were from my Dad’s cell phone, which usually means he got my credit card bill or I’m in trouble. So I didn’t call back. I turned my phone on loud, and rolled back over to fall asleep. It was not only a minute later the phone rang again. This time I said to myself, “this is really weird, I need to answer the phone, something is going on.”  So I answered. It was my Mom, even stranger. I remember her asking where I was. At that moment, I knew something was wrong. She attempted to talk, but there was something in her voice that made me instantly start crying. She told me, “Andrew was killed in a car accident an hour ago.” I immediately started uncontrollably crying. It was like a waterfall. I remember asking absurd questions, where, who was he with, why. I couldn’t understand why he was home that night, I was supposed to be driving him home from Miami later that day. And then I remember running down the hall to the bathroom. I don’t know why. And then my Dad got on the phone and said to get home. I remember grabbing my keys that very moment, and he said no, that I needed to wait an hour so I would calm down before I got in the car. So I sat there, and waited. And packed my clothes. Packing my suitcase, full of dreary colors, and wondering what do I wear to my best friends funeral? I had never had to even begin to think about that.

So that hour passed, and I jumped in my car. It took me 30 minutes to get home, It should take about 50. I remember pulling into Andrew’s house, and noticing all the cars in the driveway. My dad’s car, my mom’s car, my sister’s car, his cousin’s cars, the Rich’s car’s, and the Grote’s cars.  I got out of the car and walked into his house, like I always do. Andrew has two brothers, so there were always loud noises going on, but today was different. It was silent. I could smell coffee. His puppy lay in the kitchen, where he had gotten sick. Weirdly enough the dog knew something had happened to his beloved owner. I remember going into the living room, where Diane, Andy’s mom was. I remember not even noticing her. She was curled up in a ball, covered in quilts, crying on her oldest son, Barrett’s lap. I remember sitting there and thinking that this is not supposed to happen to someone. But it did. I remember three days later, at his funeral, his parents wanted me to speak. Public speaking is not my forte, especially at a funeral. I remember my brother and Andy’s brothers carrying his casket down the aisle. And the song, “Forever Young” by Rod Stewart, his mother’s favorite song, being played as he was carried down. I remember walking up to the podium with my cousin, knowing we were about to talk about our long lost friend. I barely made it through what I had to say. But I know that it made him proud.

At his burial, which was the hardest part about the whole thing, was what really made me realize, Andrew is gone. The bagpipes, the cold, the ice on the ground. He had gone to a very close-knit high school, St. Xavier. The people standing around his casket, were everyone we had gone to school with, our entire lives. I had grown up with these boys. I was one of the boys. My dad and Andrew’s dad went to high school and college together. We were supposed to grow old together, with all of these boys standing around him. The boys of St. X put their arms around each other and starting singing their alma mater. It was one of those moments you know you will never forget, just like Andrew.

It has been four months now and I still think about him everyday. He should be turning 19 this next month. Although I miss him everyday, we laugh because he and I no longer get into trouble. But now when I fall on my face, or lose something, I know it’s Andrew giving me a hard time. I wear an angel wing necklace his mother gave me every single day. He was the greatest person I have ever known in my entire life. It is he who is in my blogger profile picture with.  

Intertextuality

My example of intertextuality comes from my favorite TV show, Family Guy. In this certain episode, the show opens with the theme music from Jackass, which is the first clue of intertextuality. The men are watching an episode of Jackass and are laughing hysterically at the stupidity of the guys on the show and decide to try it themselves. The next scene are the men doing ridiculously stupid stunts and filming them, finding themselves terribly hurt, but of course it’s funny. The whole episode they do stupid things, just like the guys on Jackass.

            Opening the show with the Jackass music creates an immediate allusion to the show. The interaction between these two shows because apparent almost immediately. The opening music almost sets the scene for what this certain episode is going to offer. But overall, it interacts two hysterical shows into one, which makes that certain Family Guy episode even funnier.

 Here is the link to a clip of the episode: 

http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=family%20guy%2Bintertextuality&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv#

Blue Highways

like the book so far. I have a feeling it is going to be hard to get into, but it will be done. I absolutely loved the last book, and I hope I can enjoy this one just as much. It is definitely different than the first book so far, that I can tell. Over break I did think about the last book. I think I thought about it because I was traveling and obsessing over the book and telling my friends to read it. My travel experience over break was good, I suppose. I absolutely hate flying, I am the worst flyer in the whole world, so traveling for me is a bit stressful. I am a big wimp when it comes to flying. But we got to Florida; things were great until an hour after we got there, by friend broke her nose in the pool. She thought it would be a great idea to swim from one end of the pool to another without coming up for air, and her eyes were closed. Genious. So we had to travel 45 minutes to the hospital at 2 in the morning. So my first day of break was just FULL of travel. After that, everything was great until we had to travel back to good old Oxford, Ohio..

Narrative Sequence

Narrative Sequence: Option 1

 

 

     

            The novel, Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name, pays close attention to a woman, Clarissa, and the life she leads, the life she finds out she knows very little about. The life she has been living, one she thought she knew so well, comes to halt when her fiancé tells her that it is not what it seems. Her mother abandoning her fourteen years ago, and who she thinks is her real father’s recent passing, has changed this woman, but maybe not for the better. Engaged, and later we find out, pregnant; she goes to search for her mother. While on this search, across the world, changes Clarissa even more. From the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to Clarissa’s mindset. She acts upon impulse, and very quickly, and usually not good decisions as well. In this paper, I will be analyzing frame of mind.

            Clarissa has grown up, a girl to a woman, without a mother for many of those years. Her mother disappeared, and abandoned their family about fourteen years earlier (Vida, 41). We learn that she left with nothing, no clothes were taken, nothing. This shows that Clarissa’s mother, who we later learn names is Olivia, left upon impulse. When Clarissa’s father dies, she leaves her fiancé, Pankaj, unexpectedly to go to Lapland, to find her mother (Vida, 1). Clarissa’s mindset echoes that of her mothers, and just leaves on her journey to learn about her life, “At seven, I opened the door to my room and stared at Pankaj. I would leave him, I decided” (Vida, 16). This shows Clarissa’s impulsive personality, there is not a reason for her to have decided to leave him. At that moment, she felt like she wanted to leave him, and that is what she is going to do.

            Leaving Pankaj was the first sign of Clarissa’s personality; it is really only just the beginning of her decisions. While on her journey, she meets a man named Kari. Kari is a much younger boy, but she still decides to have drinks with him (Vida, 34). As one thing led to another, Clarissa, and engaged woman, finds herself with Kari, doing something she shouldn’t be. But in her luck, Kari cant handle his alcohol and finds himself face down on the floor of the bathroom (67). The fact that Clarissa engages herself in these situations shows her personality is unstable. She is an engaged woman, who isn’t holding true to her commitment to her fiancé. “A part of me was relieved that what had started had ended” (36). This quote shows that Clarissa does things without thinking. She gets herself into situations, luckily enough she got out of it before it was taken too far, but by the way she says it, it almost seems as if she would have regretted it. She leads a life of uncertainty and confusion, but is that a real excuse for her decisions?

            Clarissa and a young man, Henrik, whom she meets while traveling, create a close relationship. They travel to the ice hotel together, in search of her mother (Vida, 176). Their relationship is something that could very well be something that she did not think through. At first Clarissa did not like Henrik, but the way she talks about him, and his blonde hair, makes it seem as if there is something there between them, something Clarissa has not completely thought through. This is the second time she has become close to a man that of which is not her future husband. She has trouble making responsible, adult decisions. The difference between Henrik and Kari, is that Henrik actually helps her in the long run, he leads her to her long lost mother.

            As the novel goes on, her decisions become more unthoughtful. After her long journey, Clarissa finally meets her mother. While you would think a fourteen-year separation would allow a warm meeting, but it is not even that. It is awkward and tense and very uncomfortable. Although the way her mother acts, almost is the same as Clarissa’s short answers and attitude with Pankaj, her fiancé, that of which she still does not know if she is going to return to him.

            “If I returned to Pankaj now, I would be the daughter of a madman. I would be the child of rape, motherless, raised by a quiet man…I could not live with this kind of condescension” (Vida, 223-224). Clarissa’s thoughts are absolutely absurd. She is taking things, and blowing them out of proportion. It is strange she is even thinking about not returning to her fiancé. She pities her life, much like mother, “ you have no idea what I’ve been through” (Vida, 211). Clarissa and her mother alike are both sorry people, they are very pitiful.  They want everyone around them to feel bad for them, as if no one knows what the other has been through. But with this knowledge, or lack there of what each has been through, you would think Clarissa would have learned her lesson.

            Clarissa finds herself making a very mindless decision at the end of the novel, but she says so herself. “I didn’t know that during the fourth month of my pregnancy I would take a tram up to the top of the Victoria Peak…” (Vida, 225). She leaves her fiancé. Without telling him, without notice. She just never returns. This action echoes her mothers almost exactly. Here Clarissa finds an Australian man, a man who she will marry, “He would know nothing about my past—only that my father was named Richard and that my mother had died when I was fourteen” (225). This is such an important quote to the book. It is so important because everything that Clarissa has gone through, everything she has been searching for and the things she lost in the search, is exactly what she is doing to her own daughter. She is creating a vicious cycle of confusion. After growing up, thinking she knew everything about her life, and one day having everything come crashing down, and then in the following weeks only learn more and more of your mothers darkest secrets and your own, one would think she wouldn’t want her own daughter to go through that. She has lived a life, exactly like her mothers.

Clarissa has not learned her lesson through her own life, her life where all she wanted to know was her past, a past that was a mystery to her. “And when I would hear people say that you cant start over, that you cannot escape the past, I would think you can. You must.” (Vida, 225).

 

February 15, 2009

I finished the book a few classes ago, but kept my mouth shut in class so I wouldn’t ruin it for everyone else. The end of the book was very surprising to me, but I was also really frustrated with everything that was happening. It is great that Clarissa finally found her mother, but I was expecting a happy meeting, not a tense and awkward one. I wondered if my reaction to them meeting was like Clarissa’s own reaction. If I had not seen my mother, who left me, for years and years, I would expect it to be a little tense, but you would think its your own daughter, it would be exciting. Her mother seems like such a nasty woman, she jus has nothing nice to say at all, it was really frustrating to read it. It had to have been for her as well. I did like Anna Kristine though. She seems more like a mother to Clarissa than her own. She cares for her, nurtures her, and lets her into her home and allows her to stay there. Anna Kristine’s family almost becomes her own family.

At the end of the novel, when Clarissa tells her mother that Richard, one of her husbands died a few weeks ago, her immediate response was shocking. She acted like she didn’t even care, let alone know him. Later in that chapter, I was very very shocked when Clarissa found her mother crying. I believe it was over Richard, but it doesn’t say. When she tells Clarissa, “you don’t know what I have been through”, I was really mad because its like she doesn’t know what you have been through because you abandoned her, how is she supposed to know? Olivia seems like a woman that wants everyone to pity her, and to sink into her sappy life. But this pitiful life she leads, is what she has created for herself. She chose to leave, and to never return, to contact her family. She almost deserves it all.

The end of the novel, when Clarissa is talking about writing Pankaj, and not returning to him in New York, was not really a shock to me. I knew she was not going to go back to him. But what is shocking is how she finds an Australian man, raises their child, what we learn to know is a daughter, and they would live in an apartment overlooking a bay. And that they would tell her of her real father, who they would visit in New York City. It is amazing that Clarissa is doing what happened to herself, to her own daughter. It is a vicious cycle. Her daughter is going to go through EXACTLY what she went through, knowing nothing about her life, her real father, her real family. It is almost a let down to know that she is allowing this happen after everything she has been through. Clearly Clarissa has learned nothing from life. She is once again, echoing her mothers footsteps.

Overall, this is my favorite book I have ever read. I cant wait to give it to my mom to read. I feel as if this paper will be easy for me to write because I loved the book so much. As of right now, my narrative sequence paper is going to focus on Clarissa and her mindset. I would like to analyze her mind, and research how she acts so suddenly and on impulse, just like her mother. I know that I can get a lot of quotes and examples, so hopefully it will work out and be a good paper! 

1/27/09

So far, I still cannot put the book down. This past section of reading was awesome and I loved it. I really enjoy how I haven’t been told us too much yet and are keeping me guessing still. There is still so much going on in Clarissa’s life and her whole adventure is just beginning.

            This section really surprised me and made me believe that maybe Clarissa’s mother, is crazy. The whole talking to Taft the cat, is really strange to me. It is strange how she constantly would talk to the cat, no matter what the weather. It is very strange. And the writing BUY MILK in the grains of salt and pepper, that’s kind of weird. But as of now we don’t know much still about her mother, but I feel like those weird aspects of her are going to help reveal a bigger characteristic.

            I gasped out loud when her “father” reveals that her mother had been married before and just randomly disappeared from him as well. Just when I thought this book was good, it gets even better. I know this part is going to go for a huge 180. The mysterious box of Texas stuff, and Texas statue in the garden is also very strange and I feel as if that’s going to be revealed as something else later in the text.

            At the end of the section, it was amazing she found her father. And it surprised me a bit when the first thing he asks is, if her mother is dead. I feel as if no one would say that unless it was a probable thing to happen. I feel like this statement shows a lot about her mother, her character and what type of women she is. She is known for running away randomly, and doing crazy things, maybe his response to Clarissa’s arrival will only strengthen that idea. 

Reader Inventory 1/26/09

To begin, I honestly have not found a passion for reading. The types of books that I have enjoyed are all different types. I haven’t found a certain type of book that I enjoy reading, and this could be part of the reason why I don’t have such a passion for reading! Most of the books I have read in the past were school related books, and I have only read a few outside of this. The school related books; I obviously gain different types of things that are related to the class or lesson. The books that I read outside of the classroom have more of a personal message, or finding out something about myself. That is one thing that I noticed through reading, is I find something or someone I can relate to in the text, and while the characters discover themselves, I am discovering something about myself as well.

When I read, I don’t have any certain rituals. Where ever I am reading, there needs to be some type of noise, whether that be the TV on low in the background, low volume music or people talking. I quickly started to notice that when I read in quiet rooms, my mind started to wander, and I wasn’t getting anything accomplished. I have a really hard time staying focused when I read, even in perfect “reading conditions.” It usually takes me a really long time to read.

            Through high school, my approach to reading really didn’t change. I knew I didn’t like reading, and that I didn’t want to do it, so that was my biggest problem. It was always a hassle for me to have to sit down and read, and actually comprehend what I’m reading. My English classes in high school were extremely hard and challenging, and the older kids always came back and told us to keep our papers because they are the exact same in college. But while in these classes, the reading assignments were difficult and I felt as if this is why I hate reading. Although through all of this hard work, I found my two of my favorite books, The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby. I absolutely love Gatsby, and have re-read it many times.

Outside of school, I have a few favorite books as well. I always find myself reading the first few chapters, then putting it down and never reading it again. The books I have definitely found myself reading all hours of the night have been The Secret Life of Bees and my ultimate favorite, The Kitchen Boy. I think I enjoyed The Kitchen Boy the most because it has to do with family friends of ours, and so I had something to relate to and learn about them.  The hardest part about reading outside of school is finding the time, I usually find great books over the summer when I have time to sit down and actually read the book. I hope to find some other great books outside of school.

Since high school, reading in college has been much different. I don’t know if it’s the type of reading or if its just I realize I need to do it, and do it well to pass the class. The only books in college that I have read this far are those in anthropology. My English class last semester, I didn’t even open a book.  The books were extremely extremely interesting and I loved them. So far, my attitude towards books in college is good, and I hope it stays that way so I am able to enjoy reading.