Poety blog 1: 1943

        At the beginning of this poem it sounded like it would be about boxing because it talks about a person knocking out someone in the first round and also mentioning heavyweight finals.  It then changes and talks about the war.  I knew this was World War Two because 1943 was when much of the fighting was taking place.  The fourth line of the poem says, "...Dom died in the third wave at Tarawa."  This leads me to believe Dom was an American soldier because Tarawa was an island in the Pacific, where the U.S. were fighting the Japanese.  The poet then goes on to talk about memories back in southern Connecticut.  After reading through a second time makes it sound as if this is a journal kept by a soldier who is overseas fighting a war.  He is thinking of home and  wishing to be back, but knows that he has to continue to suffer through the difficult times and conditions even if survival doesn't seem likely.   

Heart of Darkness

          After getting about ten pages into this story I was more confused than I had ever been.  Frequently I was having to re-read and slow down to try and figure out what was going on.  This surprised and disappointed me because after reading the back cover of the book made it sound as if this would be a very interesting story.  Even though this book had the fewest pages, it definitely took the longest to read just as Mrs. White's note said. 
          One of the most exciting parts of the book was when some indigenous people tried to attack the riverboat and the pilgrims returned fire.  This would have been scary knowing you can be surrounded on both sides of the river banks and there is not many ways to escape. Even scarier would be being on a ship with cannibals aboard.  To the crew's relief the loud fog horn scared the natives away since it was even louder than the gunfire and the natives were very primitive.  To me finding Kurtz did not seem like it was worth all of the danger, time and money spent just to get there. 
          Joseph Conrad has a writing style that was extremely difficult for me to keep track of.  Even with annotating his writing style was difficult to pick up on.  As I would be reading I would often find my mind wandering to something else which then caused me to take even longer on the book and read through the page or selection a second time.  By the time I was at the third section of the book I think I was starting to pick up on his writing because it was gradually making more sense.  This book has an interesting story, but it was very difficult for me to get used to the author's writing style.  

The Great Gatsby

         This book was a fairly quick read but at times had some slow and boring parts where not much seemed to add to the story. 
         What I had to do was make a list of all the characters just so I could continue to understand who is who and how they were related.  As mentioned in the title, Gatsby was a major character along with the narrator.  Making notes on each of the characters seemed to be helpful and allowed me to keep reading through the story while understanding it.  I found myself imagining all of the events in the story such as the parties at the mansion to help comprehend each event and what order they happened in. 
         Since this book was written quite a while ago, the authors style of writing somehow seems different than modern books and harder to understand.  While taking some time to annotate the book and making notes of key events helps to realize what is going on and makes it much easier to go back and see what happened in a certain part.  Some parts seemed sort of clustered such as when Wilson was hit by a car, seemed to have a lot of events happen quickly and all at once.  Upon the conclusion of the book after Gatsby had died and the narrator meets Gatsby's family seems to wrap up the book in an unusual way.  Overall the book wasn't one of my favorites because a lot of times being difficult to understand, but there was a story that for the most part I was able to follow.   

The Kite Runner

        When I first started reading The Kite Runner it started off slow and confusing but gradually began to pick up speed.  As I figured out what was going on and understood the story it became more interesting and easy to get through more pages at a time. 
        I didn't know that Afghanistan was actually a peaceful place before being ravaged by war and corrupt governments.  Knowing what Afghanistan is like now it was hard to imagine how it used to be.  It used to seem like nuking the whole country was a good idea because of all the terrorists being housed there had no benefit to the rest of the world but this book showed me that the whole country is not out to kill us.  Afghanistan actually has many good citizens just like in the United States.  They have their own traditions, families, friends, games, and ways of life.  It also makes it seem as if the war we are fighting in Afghanistan is not pointless, and it does serve a purpose. 
        Kite running is a sport I have never heard of and sounded very interesting which is what a lot of the book had to do with.  When Baba was trying to give the same compassion to Hassan as Amir received it did not make sense until towards the end when it was explained to why he did that.  Although I never understood why Amir avoided Hassan, when Hassan chose to forgive him after that winter morning in the alley when Amir did nothing to help Hassan.  That seems as if it would haunt him for life after making a bad decision and now that Hassan is no longer alive.  By adopting Sohrab is a way to make things right and I was glad that worked out in the end after some very close calls with death.
        After finishing this book it was actually a pretty good story and I learned much more than originally expected.