Day: 17 October 2017

Novel

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

“All the light we cannot see” is a beautiful novel about a French girl who suffered from being blind and a young talented German boy, whose paths collide in occupied France as they both try to survive the devastation of World War Two. Marie-Laure has been blind since she was six and she lived in Paris until the invasion when she moved to Saint Malo, a small coastal town in France where her great-uncle lives. Werner, the young German boy, is from a dead-end town and wouldn’t have made it past the mines but he was lucky. He was selected to join the brutal Hitlers Youth Academy for his knack in radios. He had been deconstructing and rebuilding radios since he was a young boy and learned the art of radio technology and electronics. The enchanting storyline brings you along in their journeys while also helps to embed the characters into your heart with Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle).

The story is based on acceptance and appreciation that disability can be an ability. The idea that you could be weakened by something like blindness or deafness but strengthened in other compensating ways, creating a new and different experience of life. Throughout the book, Marie-Laure never sees herself as anything less than any other person and believes that her disability can be used to her advantage. Marie-Laure’s father builds models of Paris and Saint-Malo to allow her to navigate throughout the city unaccompanied. Sight becomes no longer necessary as she uses her heightened senses of touch and hearing to her advantage and to escape when the Germans come looking for her. This opens the gate to an independent lifestyle without the constant need for a caregiver and the opportunity to navigate the world on her own. This independence only gradually develops as her doting father was always around so she relied heavily on him and it wasn’t until he was gone that she matured and developed her confidence. I have not had any personal experience with a blind person but my sister suffers dyslexia and struggles with reading and writing on a daily basis. What my family and I have come to discover is that she is very creative and has a conceptual mind which benefits her greatly in other areas.

I connected to the character of Marie-Laure and appreciated her struggles but was impressed by her strengths even more and the emotional connection I had to her character provided me an engaging and heartfelt experience from the book. 

Novel

Butter

Erin Lange

The novel ‘BUTTER’ by Erin Lange is a story of a lonely obese adolescent in the harsh society of today. This novel highlights the issues today’s youth faces when using the internet in the harmful ways. An unfortunate encounter with his childhood bully causes the main character to indulge in a whole pound of butter, therefore earning him the nickname “Butter”. Butter doesn’t have many friends and spends a lot of time alone but he plans to turn this around and make history. “Watch as I eat myself to death – live on the internet – tune in if you can stomach it”.

One of the many ideas portrayed in ‘BUTTER’ is the multitude of problems arising with the internet. The ability to communicate instantly and universally creates many different social issues including 24/7 bullying and peer pressure. In the novel, Butter sets up his website stating that others could join in, comment and interact while he prepares to eat himself to death and by doing so he opens the gate to further and around the clock bullying and pressure. He was relentlessly insulted and even encouraged by his peers to commit suicide. Butter is one of the millions around the world suffering from the internet’s harmful effects. The world is evolving so fast that there is no time to establish effective boundaries and rules. Kids have grown up with parents telling them it’s bad to talk while eating, never to swear, to eat with proper manners but the world has overlooked the internet, the one sole thing with the worst effects. I have had personal events where I have been affected by the internet and the absence of guidance has played a big part in my life. The lack of limitations and extremely magnified reality in social media is also seen to have caused serious effects in the controversial TV series ’13 Reasons Why’. The main character ends up killing herself as a result of multiple extreme sources of bullying mainly prominent on social media.

I feel that I have connected with the character Butter as I too have been bullied about my appearance. In previous years of my schooling people used to call me names and make fun of skinny body as a joke at my expense. This helped me to feel emotionally connected to the situation that Butter was experiencing and this, in turn, caused me to be more engaged in the novel.  Although I have only experienced bullying on a very minimal level the way the kids treated Butter and the way many other kids are treated across the world because of their genetic appearance or for any reason, changed my approach to how I interact online and with my peers.

The interpersonal connection I felt with Butter caused me to become more engaged and enhanced the experience. The relevant issues also are seen in the book began a changed lifelong approach to social media and how I interact with it.