Week Ten: The Fiction of Ideas

Week ten, I read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. It is one interesting book! It’s about Genly Ai, the main character, who has a mission on the planet of Gethen. He has to convince the Gethenians to join the Ekumen. The strange thing is that the Gethenians do not have obvious gender. They are both male and female. Once a month they can become either male or female depending on their partners.

Nowadays, the world has changed and many things happened. I think there is no barrier between genders like the Gethenians in the story and everyone should be Genly Ai. We all should find the ways to gather everyone, every gender all together. In our world, there are many issues such as culture conflicts, religious conflicts, political problems, gender issues, and every other unnecessary thing that should not be the topics for people to argue about. So gender issues are not the only problem we have and all the same issues are happening in every places and everywhere in the world. This means all of these issues include many people; a lot of people, even a small family will have all kind of issues. The world is like a big family and we have many big problems to solve. To live peacefully together, everyone in the world is all involved to solve the problems.

We cannot tell or control anyone to be what we want, especially, their gender. We have to think and try to understand them not try to change them to make the world a better place. It is about humanity and what we human being can do to another human being.

The Left Hand of Darkness kind of led me to the new world, the world without barrier of gender and it makes me think of many things about the present world. In my opinion, this book is a really good book for everyone to read and start thinking about the new world which is the better world for the future.

Week Nine: Space Opera and the New Frontier

For this week, space opera, I read The Martian by Andy Weir. I never watched the movie and the only thing I know is that it is about a guy who is stuck in space. I read it and I found it interesting how the mood of the novel is kind of relaxing even though he should be panicking and everything because he is stuck in space alone and he will die soon if he has no food or water. Mark Watney is really funny, I feel like he doesn’t scared of anything, except dying of course. He is a chill dude and very positive. In my opinion, the novel is kind of heavy with scientific stuff, plus math. Some parts are hard to understand because of the science and math stuff.

The Martian has many different feels from many genres. There are many elements in the story that it takes from other genres. The first element that I found is that Mark Watney has to find his way back to earth, so I guess this can be includes in adventure genre because he is on a journey, a terrible journey to find his way home. Also, with Mark’s personalities and how he thinks and talks to other people in the novel, I think this will fall in comedy genre, it is entertaining and makes the story even more fun and relaxing. Space environment and science stuff make it into the sci-fi and science fantasy genre and it is drama because he has to deal with trying and struggling to survive.

The Martain is really entertaining, exciting, and fun to read in my opinion. I don’t know how the author created the story but it feels real to me and I like Mark, how he thinks and how he talks. His conversation with the people in NASA is really amusing. At first, I expected the Martian to be very serious and boring but it turned out that it is fun to read after all.

Week Eight: Contemporary Urban Fantasy

A myth is a traditional story that has been told from generations to generations.

It’s been so long that some stories, no one no longer knows of it is true or not. Myths are what you normally heard from older people when you are young and we children tend to believe that they are true. As we grow up, we are most likely to tell the stories that we heard from when we are young to our children too. In my country, most of the myths are kind of scary and adults use the myths to teach and trick the kids to do good thing or listen to them. It makes me feel dumb sometimes when I think about how I believe about it back then when I was younger than this. Like, asking yourself, how can I believe in that or how is the story even make sense.

But in the other hand, no matter how far the world has moved on, myths are still, always in use.

            For this week, I read Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. It told to be fantasy novel. The story is about two brothers, son of Anansi, the spider god. They had never met each other before until their dad died and this is the beginning of the story. When Charlie met Spider, a lot of things happened to his life it is not a good thing either. Spider seems to steal everything from Charlie and the thing which I think is the worst is that he stole Charlie’s fiancée, Rosie.

At first Neil Gaiman leads us to the real place on earth and then he brings us to the world of myth. That makes the reader slowly forgets about the real world when reading the story. I think the important thing I learn from this story is you have to think carefully before you make a wish or want something because you will never know if the thing you wish for is going to come true or not and it might also possible that it may cause your life to be good or bad. 

Week Seven: The Tale of Spiritual Education

The black and white stripe tents suddenly appeared in town waiting for the night to come and when the time has come, then it’s Le Cirque des Rêves or the Circus of Dreams time. That’s the beginning of the story Erin Morgenstern had created. I think the way she described the scenes and everything in Night Circus are amazing. It makes me feel like I am a person who is standing in the crowd, waiting to see what kind of circus opens only at night and closes at dawn. While standing there, the smell of caramel wafting through my nose. When the tents and lights are all sparkling against the night sky, it’s the time for the show to start and then, found out that this circus is neither a normal circus nor normal show.

            Celia and Marco are the main characters of the story. They are forced to play the cruel game by their respective master. The rule of the game is that the person who is able to survive is the winner. Celia and Marco have to compete each other with magic but neither of them knows or understands the rule. In my opinion, it’s very unfair for Celia and Marco and they can’t even refuse to play the game. When they found out that one of them have to die to end the game, neither of them wants to kill or see one of them getting hurts, they are in love with each other. So the solution is trying to find the way out of this game. This part of the story teaches the reader what is right and the characters know what the right thing to do is. They are also brave enough to do it. This is similar to Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, the main characters; Harry, Ron and Hermione. They know what is right and they fight for it, no matter how dangerous it is.

            Even though Celia and Marco are young, they choose to do the right thing without fear and if we look back at both Night Circus and Harry Potter, we will see how mature and brave the characters are, age doesn’t matter. Sometimes, adults are the one who use children as the tools to do what they want. Night Circus doesn’t teach this moral to only young adults but it is reflecting and teaching the adults themselves to rethink about what they are doing, whether it is right or wrong.

Week Six: Heroic Journey

            The definition of hero in my mind is the one who help other people and fight for the right thing but in this story, The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins just doesn’t want to lose his chance to go on an adventure, he does it for himself, so I don’t really think that he is a hero.

            I think this story is far from the classic journey of the hero because at first he doesn’t even want to go but suddenly he changes his mind. Then, he goes and catches up with the dwarves and Gandalf. In the story, the point of the adventure is to bring back the dwarves’ treasure from Smaug, the dragon. Bilbo is just someone who has been chosen for this adventure. He didn’t want to go to help the dwarves or anything. He just wants to explore the world outside of his comfortable hobbit hole. I don’t think that supposed to be the purpose of the hero’s journey. In the story sometimes, it shows that he is scared and wishing he was back at home, lived his comfortable life. Bilbo doesn’t have any power and he rather small compare to everyone else. He is nor brave or has goodwill as other heroes. On the way of the adventure, when he faces with Trolls or dragon or anything, he always has Gandalf or someone to help him. This means that he can’t even help himself so how can he survive without other people’s help?

            The Hobbit is the story of the great journey but is it the journey of the hero? Bilbo Baggins is just a hobbit. He is not a hero and without the hero how can this story be the journey of the hero?

Week Five: Witches and Women in Genre

            For the fifth week I read Aunt Maria (Black Mariah) by Diana Wynne Jones, a nightmare for Mic and Chris begin when their mom had agreed to visit and spend Easter holiday with Aunt Maria, an old lady who pretends to be good and kind but not at Cranbury-on-Sea. Aunt Maria uses magic power to control the town, only women can work and all of them work under Aunt Maria’s order.

            In the town, the men are all acted like zombie and have no role in town. Only Aunt Maria and a group of women who come to tea parties at Aunt Maria house take place in everything. This is the stereotype of the women who own all the power, Aunt Maria. The story shows the worst situation when women take all responsibility in everything because women use emotions and feelings more than reason but I think there is not much different. Whoever and whatever genders, men or women if they have too much power and can’t control themselves, it will be bad for people who are under their control.

            In the real world, many people still think that women cannot and should not lead or only men should be the leader. In my opinion, either men or women if they know how to use the power that they have in the right way, and be able to change or make the world a better place, that’s enough. There is no need to judge a person by their gender if they can prove themselves. I think equality of gender is important and everyone should not judge an individual by their gender, just like don’t judge a book by its cover because you will never know what really is inside. Women can do everything that men can so no one should look down on any gender.       

Week Four: The New Weird

           For the fourth week,I read Monster Island by David Wellington, the author from Pittsburgh. He wrote many online stories about zombie and they are popular. The Monster Island is a fun adventure story which made me feel excited and thrill with the characters the whole time I was reading. The adventure that involves zombie was incredible and fun for everyone; the author was being able to make me understand and imagine what was happening in the story and got my attention through the end of the book.

Monster Island starts with the apocalypse. There are two main characters which are Dekalb and Gary. Dekalb is a survivor from America who stuck in Africa with his daughter. Dekalb promises to find anti-HIV medicine for Mama Halima, who is a powerful warlord. Dekalb knows the place where to get the medicine. He travels from Somalia to New York and hopes he can get the medicine at UN building. At New York, Dekalb and his team meet Gary. Gary is a training doctor. Gary has found a way to retain his identity and preserve his mind after death.

The whole story can be described by the word ‘weird’ in many details. For example, first thing is that the story is about apocalypse which turned the whole city into hell and people who survived had to live secretly, away from the zombies. Second, the main characters have been in doctor and medicine fields. Last, Somalia child army and Mama Halima are the examples of woman and child abuse which reflect as one of the problems we have nowadays.

From the whole book, I found a part of the story compelling which is. "One of the girls opened up with her rifle, a controlled burst, three shots. Chut chut chut chopping up the grey water. Chut chut chut and the bullets tore through the red windbreaker, tore open the woman’s neck. Chut chut chut and her head popped open like an overripe melon and she sank, slipping beneath the water without a sound and still, pressed up against the railing on Liberty Island, a hundred more reached for us. Reached with pleading skeletal hands to clutch at us, to take what was theirs." The author described this part so well. He makes me feel i was there in that scene and witness everything that happened in the novel.