Saturday, August 23, 2014

Question Commander (Week 1) - Marina Dissinger

Was it unclear or confusing to understand why the author chose to write only in 2nd person in the book?

     It was fairly confusing to understand why the author chose to write only in 2nd person, as it was not possible to differentiate when the main character was talking about himself or about his brothers. As a result, every time you read, thinking and replacing "we"s with ''I''s was necessary in order for the reading process to be easier. 


                                               Credit: https://vine.co/u/1002356080531410944


What themes have you gotten from the book so far?

     So far, I have noticed the theme of equalness because all of the people need to exactly equal in this called "community". To start off, each person has numbers instead of names as identifications, as cited on part one. So, everytime someone calls a brother, they have to say the numbers in order to communicate with him. Additionally, the brothers each have to say "we" instead of "I". I think this happens because people are not allowed to talk for themselves and need to equal and believe that the brothers are a part of them. Also, another theme I have noticed is organization because everything is so organized in the community. Firstly, all the children go to the children's home when the are exactly five. Then, when they are fifteen years old, they start working. After that, when the men are older than twenty and women older than eighteen, they are assigned to a partner from the opposite sex and are sent to the City Palace of Mating. So, everything is perfectly separated and assigned.


What are some of the author's writing style characteristics?

     The author's writing style has many characteristics. One of them is that she writes formally, as the words in the novel are very difficult and long, for example atone, toil and convulsions. Another prominent characteristic of her style is that she writes descriptively, so that the reader can imagine each scene that is described. Lastly, another characteristic that she shows is that she made the book seen like a journal belonging to the main character, where he tells the story. Because of that, the story is written in both 1st person and 2nd person. You can notice that comparing the first two pages to the others.



7 comments:

  1. Marina, I agree with your post. I also question why the Author chose to write the book in second person, because I could not imagine myself writing in 2nd person and it made it very confusing.I also agree that this book is about equality and I can conclude that this book is like the Giver.

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  2. Marina,
    Nice post and connections! I think that the theme of equalness comes from communism. I would like to know if you agree but first let's give some evidence. First, communism is a political style that makes everyone within the country to be exactly the same. Well maybe not exactly like we see in the book, people look different and think different. To me that seems like a flaw in the communist act within the community. The idea of communism seems great doesn't it? Everyone is equal,,, But don't be fooled! As we learned from books like the Giver and Uglies, things may seem nice but mysterious and evil secrets exist behind the promising act.
    Hope this comment help clear the thoughts of communism,
    Heitor

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  3. Marina,
    I totally agree with your answer to the first question. "Was it unclear or confusing to understand why the author chose to write only in 2nd person in the book?" I agree with we vs. I as it's one of things I wrote about in my post. Something that confused me as well was how all their names are now a little code number, but it is your post who put that in my mind so thank you and great post!
    -Julianna(Juli)

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  4. 1. To me the author chose to write "we" instead of "I" because in this community, there is an idea that everyone has to be equal, and the author thought that was a good way to represent it. Sometimes it is difficult to understand if Equality 7-2521 is talking about himself or a group of people when he says "we", but I tried to change the we's to I's in my head.

    2. The themes I have gotten so far are Utopia/Dystopia, equality, and communism.

    3. The only thing I noted from the authors writing style is that she uses "we" instead of "I" and that the sentences and vocabulary are complex. Overall I think you chose good questions and I like your answers, good job!

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  5. Marina,
    I agree with your post, and I think that when the protagonist says “we,” a youth named Equality 7-2521 he is Always referring to himself. However I don't get why Ayn Rand chose to write the book in second person because it is very confusing. Sincerely I would never chose to write a story in second person.

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  6. Hi Marina. I think that your three questions are relevant and will help me while continuing reading. I totally agree that the author used difficult words and I believe that everyone is having some confusion because the author chose to write in second person. Because it was confusing for me too, you gave me a very good advice which was to replace "We" as an "I." I also agree that the author describes every single scene very well so that we can imagine the scenes. I also noticed that the author's theme is equality and a utopian community. Eventually, I think that your answers for the questions were really good and also helped me.

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  7. Hi Marina, your post really helped me think more deeply about the parts we read so far. Honestly I only thought about my role after reading, but after reading your post I could get more ideas about the novel. I think your questions and the answers to them were thought very deeply. I agree with you that the author uses descriptive language, for example "...skin of our hand were thirsty and begging of the metal some secret fluid beating in its coldness", which I used for my blog post. Also your first question was a question we all had as a reader of this book, so thank you for answering our questions and good job on your post!

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