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Gotta love AP lit.

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One Flew Over the Handmaid's Tale (Control)

Going in about 40 pages into my book, I noticed a connection to Handmaid’s Tale.

In the book the Narrator, Chief Bromden, introduces the Patients at the Hospital and talks about how everyone is kind of in their own class. There’s the Acutes and the Chronics. The Acutes are known as the curable people, while the Chronics as described in the book are “Machines with flaws that can’t be repaired”. Chronics can come to the hospital as Acutes, but eventually become mentally crippled.

The connection I got to this was with the class system in Handmaid’s tale and how in that book women are divided based on something they can’t control: their gender. While in this book the patients at the hospital don’t control if their mentally handicapped state that they could be in. This could be evidence for a then of “Control” within the book and how Nurse Ratched is the big Boss of the hospital.

There’s also a lot of references to machines in the book, and a lot of passages where Nurse Ratched is being compared to a machine. This could also represent control and how a well working machine is in control. Nurse Ratched is that “well working machine” trying to use the class system of Acutes and Chronics to make the Hospital run well.

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Finding the book (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

When trying to find a book to read for the assignment, I decided to search the internet for recommended books. One book on my list I had in mind before I even searched the internet was “Death of a Salesmen”, which is actually a play. Then when I started researching I found “Our Town”, which was also a play I was very interested in but never thought about reading. These were the only two that really stood out to me, until I looked online and found “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” which I knew of, but didn’t really know what it was. So my list of are my top three books that intrigue me. I will decide soon!!!! Update: I figured it out in reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest yay.

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Reading The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore is definitely an experience to say the least and isn’t a typical book you would read in a school curriculum. It’s basically a satirical look on Shakespeare as he mixes two of Shakespeare’s plays, The Merchant of Venice and Othello, and an Edgar Allen Poe short story The Cask of Amontillado. What I was unaware of before starting the book was that it’s a sequel to another book called Fool. Fool follows the same style as Venice did as it was a parody of a Shakespeare play King Lear. This was very co fusing when I started reading the book as they did not take the time to really explain what was happening, they just start in with the characters you should already know. However, by Chapter 3 or 4 the plot starts to become it’s own and you can understand and enjoy it more.

The book itself also has a confusing structure. In the beginning of the book and sometimes throughout the ready of the book the author likes to change from 3rd to 1st person a lot. The book is prominently in 1st person so whenever it changed to 3rd person it kind of annoyed me. The first chapter doesn’t have the narrator introduces yet so it’s a 3rd person view of the other three main characters. 2 chapters later the narrator speaks. To me this makes the 3rd person chapters seem irrelevant.

The book is also very vulgar. It uses a lot of curse words and a lot of sexual references as jokes. The jokes of the book and the satire the Moore writes are actually a great part of the book, but is outweighed by its vulgarity. Here’s a quote I like to use for this situation on page 63 where the main character gets “rescued” by this girl who also wants to keep him as a slave to do his chores so she can have fun. The problem is their family is Jewish and the main character is not, so she knows her father would never let him do that. “And so, while the fool slept the sleep of the deaf, the beautiful Jewess snipped off the tip of his Willy. ‘What… unhand my Willy, young woman!” So, you can also see the childish kind of writing that Moore uses for the chorus and the character of the Fool

You can just overall tell the book is either a hit or miss. If you love satire, childish humor, vulgarity and sexual jokes, and Shakespeare, you’re going to love this book. But if you’re looking for a book that’s supposed to teach you something then you aren’t really looking at the right book as it’s meant to be a parody.

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Tracy K. Smith

One poet I was considering was Tracy K. Smith. I read a brief description of what her poems are all about and I was intrigued. She mixes science fiction and reality and the universe into her poems and things like that in her third book “Life on Mars”. I wasn’t able to find the book online sadly but I did find another poem of hers about music which really intrigued me. If I find her book I would definitely pick her. 

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Self Permission Slips

I actually had made two personal permission slips. One of them is a goal for the present, and one is a future goal. "I want to give myself the permission to excel further in my leadership positions and learn new ways of leading a group." To some people this may seem weird or unimportant. For me, this is a huge part of my school life. With going to school I lead major groups in multiple extra-curricular activities, and a lot of people in a way have to rely on me to do a good job in order to succeed. Doing this is a good practice for real life when I might have a job when I have to lead something or talk to someone about a certain task they have to do. This then ties into my goal about the future. "I want to give myself the permission to research more about my planned career path." Right now, my plans are to be a teacher, and to do that in the future the important thing is to learn now how to control groups, which is something I do on a daily. But I also want to start to look into on how to actually become a teacher and different colleges I could attend and what I need to do to prep myself for the future.

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Fortunato (Fool)

Fool is the main character of the book. He is very witty and clever but extremely “loud” in a way. To me it seems like he is the contemporary character of the book. Everyone else is the steady Shakespearean standard that we’re all used to while Fool is what makes the satire of the book poking fun at the text.

Ways he does this is he uses a lot of vulgar language and makes a lot of sex references. This may not seem to far off from some Shakespeare plays but he plays more into a modern day character.

He also disagrees with the Shakespeare style narrating. Often through the book the “Chorus” narrates some transitional stuff. Fool will sometimes interrupt the chorus and he absolutely hates them. He’s threatened them which makes it pretty clever and funny.

Overall his character is what we as a reader are probably thinking when we read Shakespearean text ourselves which makes the book much more respectful.

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Literary Devices

So, as I was reading I was confused on a specific thing in the book that probably isn't ugh but it just bugged me. So, in the opening they introduce the characters and say things like "Antonio - A Merchant". And when the story actually starts, they only introduce the characters by their titles. So they say "the merchant was waiting" whatever. Then eventually in the book they start using their names like Antonio or Othello. But then, they switch on and off between using their names and their titles. And so far I only noticed this in Act 1 (the first 6 chapters of the book). I'm going to look more into it later but it just intrigues me...

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Serpent of Venice

So, starting the book off was extremely difficult. It took me about 3 tries with audio book to actually get the story going. I later had found out that this was technically a sequel to a similar style book called “Fool” which would’ve been nice to know. Around chapter 3 or 4 the backstory is retold and the plot is its own thing so it became much easier to comprehend. Also didn’t start off as funny as it was claimed to be.

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Journeys

A theme that stood out for me was “Journeys”. All 3 narrators had to go through a Journey in their life that was exemplified in the book.

Oskar’s was obvious, it was his Journey to get closer to his father and quickly find what the key from the vase went to before he lost his father forever. And emotionally his Journey was to accept his fathers death. 

Oskar’s grandmother’s Journey was more of an emotional Journey. She heads to New York and has to adapt to America. She has to go through her sister’s death and her emotional Journey with Thomas and her focus on her child. 

Oskar’s grandfather’s Journey was to deal with his pain of his past. His gradual loss of words and what he went through with the bombings. Then his journey with Oskar and his care for him to try and finish his Journey for his father.

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Oskar’s Inventions

I love reading about Oskar, he’s such a unique character. Something I thought was pretty cool was his inventions. He talks about inventing things a lot, especially near the beginning of the book. His inventions can be seen as a method for him grieving. Some of his inventions allude to his dad’s death and his coping of that. One example was on page 38 when he talks about the special drain he would make for everyone in New York and when people would cry themselves to sleep the tears would go to the same place. He then talks about New York being in “Heavy Boots” which we can tell is Oskar’s way of saying that New York will be depressed. 

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First Impressions...

Going a few chapters into the book I’m noticing a few things I like in particular about it and the writing style.

I find it interesting the author goes through the different narrations of the family members. Talking about Oskar’s narration, first thing I notice is obviously the use of using Extremely and Incredibly all the time. I’ve only really noticed it with Oskar, and I think it heightens his sense of “wonder” in a way. In “What the?” He’s always asking questions or starting conversations and he just seems more “imaginative” than say his mom or the limo driver. His use of those words kind of makes everything more exaggerated in a way, and that makes sense for Oskar because he is a kid who has a very big personality with wonder. 

The book in a whole is just intriguing and I can’t wait to continue on to find more.