Post #1

1) The book that I enjoyed reading the most was 1984. The book had so much detail in it but it also had a lot of description of what the main character's thoughts were throughout the book. It had a lot of suspense in it and it just made me want to continue reading without stopping to see what would happen next. It is very interesting because it shows how much power a government can have on a person and change a person's mind through torture, spies, and constant watching to make them believe what the government wants them to believe. Even children are taught to be spies for the government and help imprison their own parents if they thought they were a threat to the government. The idea behind the book of a totalitarian society is something that I enjoyed reading, because its different than what I always read, but would never want to be part of that society. It also shows us what some countries have been through in the past and makes me thankful about the way we live today.
2) The book that I enjoyed the least would be The Stranger. I enjoyed it the least because the book didn't really have something behind it that excited me or made me want to continue reading it. The main character was only affected by the environment surrounding him, especially the sun, which caused him to do a lot of things that someone who is in his normal thoughts would not do. He was amoral and came to the conclusion that everyone will end up in death so there is no reason to fight for your life whether you die naturally or you are executed, which made me understand what he thinks but didn't make the book that much interesting to me at all and I just did not agree with what the author tried to say. Also, the main character only wanted to please himself from time to time with Marie and he didn't even care if he married her or not, as long as she is pleasing him in what he wants, he feels like everything is complete. Even another job opportunity in France and his mother's death made no difference to him. Although the author wanted to show the irrationality of the world, his book wasn't something that I liked very much.
3) If I were to write an essay on Their Eyes Were Watching Gods, I would focus on a couple elements. One of the main one would be the author's use of the language. Reading this book took me sometime because of the the way it was written, but the author wrote it this way to make us imagine and see the story in our minds as we read it. She wanted to portray an African American story and through the language, she was able to make it possible. Another element I would focus on would be the dreams of people like Janie's grandmother who was in slavery, compared to Janie who had a better life than her grandmother. This is an important point because someone like her grandmother, would only dream of a better life which includes leisure and wealth, whereas Janie doesn't think about those. Instead, she thinks of a life where she would fall in love and want to be married to that person because of her feelings about them, not marry them because of their assets.