The Secret Life of Bees- Sue Monk Kidd *COA*

         Lily Owens is a fourteen-year-old white girl from Sylvan, South Carolina. She lives with her abusive father T- Ray a local peach farmer. Lily’s mother- Deborah Fontanel- was killed when she was four-years-old she was shot with a pistol on accident. Lily picked it up to give it to her when it went off unexpectedly. She still blames herself about Deborah's death.

         The setting of this story is Sylvan, South Carolina and Tiburon, South Carolina in the summer of 1964. In Tiburon Lily is in August Boatwright's house and T-Ray Owens' house. This is an important in the story because it is the typical place where there are stereotypically a lot of black people and it's usually hot. The white people in Tiburon are meaner to black people because they know that South Carolina is typically a predominantly black state.

         Lily Owens is a frail and thin girl. She was put in a bad situation when she was born because she was surrounded by domestic violence due to her father T- Ray. Lily's living circumstances only got worse after December 3 1954 when she accidentally shot her mother Deborah Fontanel when she was four-years-old. Her best friend is her housekeeper/ nanny Rosaleen is her motherly figure and helps keep her out of trouble, to protect her from her father's wrath. Lily I feel is a character that shows determination and a longing for motherly love. Lily finds a lot of confidence in her self after she sees Rosaleen's confrontation with a group of white racist men in Sylvan. This confidence was so strong that it allowed her to run away from home, risk her life by breaking Rosaleen out of jail and to go searching for her mother's past. This is how the setting switches to Tiburon, South Carolina from Sylvan, South Carolina. Lily goes out to Tiburon because she hopes that there is a chance she will find a link to her late mother's past. She got this idea because she found an old picture with her mother and on the bottom the caption said "Tiburon, South Carolina". Lily has a lot of internal conflicts throughout the story like she wants to feel loved but feels like an outcast everywhere she goes because she does not have mother like all of the other children. She has also fallen in love for a black boy named Zachary Taylor who she cannot go out with because of the prejudice and segregated society that she lives in. Though Lily does not have a physical mother in her life she does have a lot of female protagonists that altogether equal her motherly figure. The two main protagonists are August and Rosaleen. August is a unique, unmarried, black beekeeper that owns a lot of property and is educated. She did not turn up her nose at the idea of taking in a white runaway girl with her housekeeper. Throughout the story August takes Lily away from her low self-esteem state and put her in a confident world that Rosaleen refers to as her "dream world". Without August, Lily would not have matured into a young lady and would still be the frail and shy child she has always been. 

         I find that there are a lot of themes and symbols in this book. Like the bees, the bees in this story are Lily's unspoken guides throughout the books. In the beginning of book, she speaks about the bees flying around her room in T- Ray's house. The bees are also the ones that gave her final decision on leaving T-Ray's house when she finally decided to run away. Beehives are also a theme in this book. In the story beehives serve as a parallel community that August has created in her house. The bees live, work and produce honey in the beehives and in Augusts’ beehives the females dominate. The queen bee stands as the mother of all bees like in Augusts’ mind that the Virgin Mary stands as the mother of all women that she is close to. These women August calls the Daughters of Mary. As the story goes on Lily learns about the ways of a beekeeper and the bees and becomes a successful beekeeper by the end of the story. I also think that irrational racism is a theme in the story. During the story Lily struggles with her own racism, she is not a racist but throughout the story she finds that a lot of her stereotype thought were abolished because she realized that they were not true. Lily assumes that all black people are the same, coarse and uneducated. These specific thoughts stop when she meets August Boatwright. This shows that these are the type of African Americans that Lily was exposed to, making this her thoughts on all of them. Lily also thought that black people could not be extremely handsome like young Zachary Taylor her crush, who is a black resident of Tiburon. 

         In the Secret Life of Bees there are many different aspects to the main plot of the story. There are many different protagonists that are direct people and ways of life (i.e. Racism would be an indirect Antagonist) and vice versa. Lily matures a lot throughout the book with the help of other people and b herself and her own actions and by the end you feel almost as if you knew her from when she was a child and you have watched her grow into a beautiful, radiant, and confident young lady. 

Maus I: My Father Bleeds History

In Maus I: My Father Bleeds History Art Spielgman is retelling the story of holocaust survivor Vladek Spielgman who was also his father. Art shows up at his father's house ready to record one of his father’s Holocaust memories so he can use it in a book he plans on writing about his father's life. His father begins by describing being a young man in Sosnowiec, Poland, during the years that led up to WWII. Then Vladek tells where he met Art’s mother Anja Zylberberg. She was a young, smart woman from a wealthy family who later helped Vladek open up a textile factory. 

         The internal and external conflicts Vladek face pertain to the Holocaust and his deceased wife Anja. Anja committed suicide after she and Vladek had their second son Art. Her first son Richieu was poisoned when he was four years old with his cousins and aunt in an attempt to escape the concentration camps and gas chambers. Anja suffered many losses during the war and she finally couldn't take the depression and killed herself. This loss took a toll on Vladek and he has been very bitter ever since. Vladek also has a lot of medical problems for example, he has cataracts in one eye and the other eye is glass. Art seems to have difficulty getting the story out of his father who sometimes has emotional out bursts, and was a very difficult person to deal with.

         Vladek remarried another Holocaust survivor named Mala but they did not get along at all, they both constantly argued about money. Vladek suffered two heart attacks and has to pedal on a bike so that his heart keeps healthy. He also takes more than forty vitamins and pills for many other medical problems that he has. Whenever the resurfacing nightmare of Vladek’s life becomes too much for him he would cut the recording session early and have Art come back later. Whenever Vladek gets upset about something he can become very hard to deal with, and Art tries to remain patient and ask simple questions.

         Vladek married Mala because she resembled Anja, and he only stayed with her because she looks like Anja. Mala and Vladek clearly couldn't stand each other's company, but Mala wants to inherit Vladek's money when he dies and Vladek just wants to have her because she looks like his only love in the world Anja Zylberberg. Vladek has to take a myriad of medications because of the exposure to certain elements that occurred during the Holocaust, and old age.

         Retelling certain things like your Holocaust story can be extremely painful especially if you have an extraordinarily sad story, so I can understand when Vladek can't talk about it anymore. Retelling his stories also reminds him of the good times that he had before the Holocaust, with his family and marrying Anja, and how it all spiraled toward the end of his marriage with her. Vladek is very stingy and saves a lot of "worthless crap" as Art describes it. Vladek will go to a fast food restaurant and keep the napkins that they give you so that he does not have to bother buying paper towel for the house. When Mala and Vladek got married she asked him if she could borrow some money to buy new clothes and instead of giving it to her he went upstairs to the closet and pointed at all of Anja's clothes and said: "these are all for you," and walked away without another word. Art has had to deal with Vladek's stinginess for his whole life and does not have the strength to fight his father about it anymore. He has thrown in the towel and will remain calm so that he does not aggravate his father any farther. Art will also be very careful about the topics that he brings up. For example, Art won't bring up Mala to his father at all because it will just send his father on a rant about how she spends too much money, and how she only married him to get his money after he dies.  Vladek’s out bursts can get so bad that Art will have to simply sit there until it stops.

         I cannot relate to Vladek because I was not in the Holocaust.  I can on the other hand relate to Art. I have been in situations with people where I try to refrain from certain topics that will set them off easily. Art does the same thing for his father and will try to stay on safe topics so that his father does not explode with anger. 

A Raisin' In The Sun- Lorraine Hansberry

         In A Raisin' In The Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, she shows her readers what a few weeks is like in the lives of the Youngers family in South side Chicago in the 1950s.  When the play starts Mrs. Youngers is about to receive a $10,000  insurance check from her recently deceased husband Mr. Youngers. Everybody in the house has a different idea of what Mrs. Youngers should do with that money. Her son Walter Lee thinks that she should give it to him so that he can invest in opening a liquor store, and her daughter Beneatha thinks that she should keep it to herself or spend it on her going to medical school. Mrs. Youngers wants to spend it on her grandson Travis, because his family is going through a financial crisis and he has been wearing the same shoes since last semester.
         I think that some of the themes in this book so far are; The importance of family, and The value and purpose of dreams. I say the importance of family because they are all working together to help each other in some way but then there is always one person working against them. Walter Lee is working against Beneatha, Ruth is working against Mrs. Youngers etc. The value of purpose and dreams because Walter Lee and Beneatha both have dreams tat they value and want to accomplish and are willing to take their father's insurance policy money to get it but they know it's wrong and want to either keep it for Mama or the other, and that's where it goes back to the importance of family.
         I think that the protagonist- Walter Lee is going to do something reckless like try to steal Mama's money and end up getting caught.
       

Romeo and Juliet

         My class recently watched the well known Shakespeare classic "Romeo and Juliet", but this was the modernized version with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. This was a very interesting movie, they kept the characters very well. They still spoke in verse like the original Shakespeare production but they were in a more modern time period where there were cellphones and gas stations.
         Juliet's cousin Tybalt did not want Juliet to be with Romeo, but that did not stop the "Star cross'd lovers" from staying away from each other. They had a secret marriage that only Friar Lawrence, Romeo and Juliet knew about. Tybalt had always been on the sidelines causing problems with Romeo and when he finally confronted him he ended up killing one of Romeo's best friends Mercutio. When this happened Romeo went after Tybalt and shot him to death. Romeo's cousin Benvolio told on Romeo and Romeo was banished from Verona.
      One of the major problems with Romeo's being banished- other than the obvious he won't be with Juliet- was that Juliet was definitely going to have to marry the man that her parents want her to marry- Paris. To keep this from happening the day before the wedding Juliet drank a potion that Friar Lawrence gave her that would make her pulse go down and would make her sleep for twenty hours. When this happened the Friar would tell everybody that she had died, thusly escaping the dreaded marriage. Twenty hours later she would awaken and go to Romeo. The fatal flaw in this plan was that Romeo was no told about this, and when she was found dead Paris went to Romeo and informed him of the news. Romeo lost it and went back to Verona and bought a poison so that he could lay dead next to his love and they could be together.
         There is an ongoing war going on with the Montagues and the Capulets, so you can imagine the damage of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet getting married was going to be considered absurd and they would not be able to have a normal open relationship together.
         Mercutio even in death contributed to Romeo and Juliet's deaths. When he saw that Tybalt was beating Romeo, he went after him and got himself stabbed in the stomach. Romeo had no other chance then to avenge his friends death by killing Tybalt in return, and the price he had to pay was on unfaithful cousin and one banishment from Verona.
         The last people to contribute to Romeo and Juliet's death was... Romeo and Juliet themselves. Their passionate love for each other was so intense that it clouded their thoughts and common sense. When Romeo heard of Juliet's "death" instead of thinking maybe she's not dead, or responding in any other way. All he wanted to do was lay with his wife once again even in death and go "up above" and rest with her there in peace. So he returns straight back to Verona which causes a wild goose chase and goes straight to the Apothecary and buys his most fatal poison. He goes to the church where Juliet "rests" and talks to her corpse stroking her hair. Then he drinks the poison and dies. Juliet's contribution was when she did not tell Romeo her plan and then when she woke up when Romeo was at her death bed and stared at him for too long when she realized that he was drinking poison it was too late. She kissed his lips hoping that there would be some drops of poison left, but there was not. So she took the gun that Romeo had with him and shot herself in the head.
         In conclusion just about all of the characters in this movie all did something openly or subliminally that all lead up to Romeo and Juliet dying (for real) in each other's hands.

Antagonist/ Author Patterns

         In Vampire Diaries: The Return Series #2 Shadow Souls by L.J Smith, Elena Gilbert's boyfriends Stefan Salvatore was captured by the Kitsune Twins, Shinichi and Misao. The map to wear Stefan is located is in Damon -Stefan's evil younger brother- in the "Darkest Dimension" and she has to travel there with him. Damon wants Elena, and he hates Stefan. The only reason that he is helping because in one of Elena's other lives she made them swear to protect each other and her, she said this when she was dying on the floor. Damon is a man of his word and protects his brother and does not Influence Elena into "being with him".
         I find that the Antagonist in the story is Damon, he is technically against Elena and Stefan though he is helping them out tremendously. He is extremely annoyed with the fact that he knows that he cannot have Elena, and it belongs to his "stupid younger brother". In one chapter he was being very mean to Elena, he was giving her the longest silent treatment, and making snide comments. Whenever she tried to touch him he would jerk away from her. He finally had a moment where he practically lost it, he grabbed her and kissed her, he smashed a window, he screamed at her to "leave him alone", and then he told her to run away. I was personally worried for Elena's sanity and health, you're in the room with an out of control vampire that's telling you to run away from him before he ends up hurting you and you're just yelling back claiming that you're not phased by his temper? I don't think that makes much sense if you ask me.

      I find that there are a lot of Setting and Author Patterns. Usually what L.J Smith does is after every chapter ends she will switch to another scene with the other main characters so: Matt, Bonnie, Meredith etc. I have noticed that she is:

1. Staying in Damon's perspective.
2. Staying in Elena and Damon's scene.

When I noticed this I realized that something big was going to happen between them and that it was going to be explosive. Damon and Elena were always in a situation where they were in close proximity to each other and the tension and awkwardness level kept on rising. It felt as if you could just reach out and touch it. This is also when I noticed these things. I am reading this book from my Nook Tablet ® and I am making copious notes of everything, patterns I'm noticing, funny phrases and lines, and metaphors that I find interesting. It's all leading up to one big event that I can feel coming and it's going to be big; they always are. What will happen next?

Visual Art: The Teenage Mind

         This picture shows, a joke on what goes on inside the teenage mind. If you look closely some of things say, "Rebellion Center" and "Slang Decoder". These are based off of the way adolescents act these days. They use slang that most adults don't understand, and they have a definite rebellion stage. If you look closely there is also a yin- yang section of the brain that says "Love for Parents" and "Disdain for Parents", this is most likely wired to the "Rebellion," and "SuperTurbo Rebellion Centers".  I am quite the rebellious teen myself and I found it interesting that the artist of this picture put a "SuperTurbo Rebellion Center" in stead of keeping the "Rebellion Center".

         Stuart Goldman MD says that teenagers are "hard- wired to butt heads with their parents" and that "It's the task of the teenager to fire their parents and then re-hire them years later, but as consultants rather than managers." Experts say that one of the five main teen behavioral problems is that the "Your teen seems to hate you". This would clearly go in the "Rebellion Centers" and the "Disdain for Parents" section as well. The Five Main Teen Behavior Problems are: 

• Teen Rebellion
• Staying Out Late (Testing Limits)
• Communication Device Addictions (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, BlackBerry Messenger)
• Drama, Drama, DRAMA
• Hanging Out with Bad Influences

Coming from a teen I can say that most of these are actually true. I love communicating with my friends (texting) there's always drama and occasionally I do get home late, but Doctors say to all of these that there is a logical reason for why teens do this. For example: When you're a teenager you feel emotions intensely which is why everything is usually over- dramatized in your Mom's perspective.

           I think that this connects to real teenagers everywhere. Whenever you see some comic in the news papers about teens you find that the teenager is usually saying something stupid or unethical, or they're not following rules- especially when it's a girl- but why? I never understood why teenagers had to be considered stupid. I always see different photos of thoughts on what the teenage mind looks like and it's all the same. For boys it's usually "Cars, Girls, loud offensive hip- hop music, girl, song lyrics" and for girls it's usually "Boys, make- up, prom , Facebook status, hair and cosmetics, etc" Some parents become worried about their children and try to "Decode" there text messages.  A text message conversation could be: 

• Hey, are you coming to the party later on tonight? 
• No I don't think I can my Mom grounded me (winks). 
• Oh ok talk to you later! 
• Bye!

And easily be written like this:

• Heyyy r u cominn' 2 dha partiii3 l8rr on 2nit33 lmlmlml ??
• N2 i dnt thnk so dha momz qot meh on LOCKDOWN %)
• oh aiiiiqhtt ttyl!
• bii33

That was a complete change in words and symbols! For teens the last letter you have to type the better. The mind of a teenager is very intriguing it's an intricate field of hormonal inbalance and random thoughts. This is why I thought that this picture was very interesting. 

  

Nominated Mentor!!

         My Blog Mentor nominee is Gabi!! I chose Gabi because she is very passionate with her writing. She shows  that she has put work and thought into it. She always has something new to say about her current Independent Reading book! The way she formats everything her reader will really understand, she will give a brief retell of where she is in the story, pick and idea, and then elaborate and explain the idea. She will stretch it out and make some type of logical reasoning out of it. She is a great example of good blog posts that I know I can go to as a good recourse.
         Gabi also is very good at making her book sound great, meaning that other people will want to read it. For her post for the Hunger Games the way Gabi explained the story made me really want to read it. I was never really a fan of the Hunger Games and after I read her post I started thinking Hmm... maybe this isn't such a bad book after all? I thought that was pretty amazing because I'm very stubborn especially when it comes to my likes and dislikes and the fact that Gabi could make me even reconsider my thoughts on the Hunger Games says a lot about her as a writer, and a lot about her as a person. All in all her posts are really great and I hope she keeps writing them!

Link: http://www.myclubhouseforbooks.blogspot.com