Ernwine,+Kaitlyn

~Fifth Entry~ 9-27-11 Final Blog James Thurber

~Characters~ This section is a bit difficult for a few different reasons. One, because I am reading short stories, and, two, because Thurber concentrates most on the concepts behind his story and much less ont he characters themselves. However, I'll give it my best shot! The three short stories that I read by Thurber are: ' The Peacelike Mongoose', 'The Night the Bed Fell', and 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'. In 'The Peacelike Mongoose', the characters are the peacelike mongoose, the other mongooses, and the cobras. As for protagonists and antagonists, there wern't any. Not really. Yes, one could argue that because the cobras were killing the mongooses they were the antagonists. Some could also argue that the other mongooses were the antagonists because they condemed the peacelike mongoose for being different. To this I aruge that, yes, while what they did can't be disputed, the peacelike mongoose was as much of an antagonist to them as they were to him. And as for the cobras, well, they were only mentioned in the story. In 'The Night the Bed Fell', The characters are; I, Mom, Dad, Grandpa, and Briggs Beall. In this story, 'I', the narrator, is a teenage boy who sleeps in an army-cot bed. His cousin, Briggs Beall, is a nervous, supersticious wreck. His grandfather isn't home at the time, and his mother and father are just that. There was no protagonist in this story, and the only antagonist that I could even consider would have to be the bed. In 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty', the two main characters are Walter Mitty and his wife. The minor characters include everyone else on that bombing plane, everyone else at that hospital, and everyone else in that court. Walter Mitty is a bit of an excentric man, suffering from the mundanity of life. His wife is a normal person. You honestly don't see much of her at all in the story. There were no protagonists or antagonists in this story either. It seems to be a trend of Thurber's.

~Summary~ 1. The Peacelike Mongoose : There is a mongoose that is born in cobra country that does not want to fight cobras. He is criticized and hated for this reason. 2. The Night the Bed Fell: The Narrator and his family experience a chaotic event when his mother thinks that the attic bed fell on his father. 3. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: Walter Mitty is an ordinary person. Or is he? In his mind, he escapes the mundane by making up adventures for himself, roughly based on his surroundings.

~Rating~ All of Thurber's stories were wonderful. But I did enjoy 'The Peacelike Mongoose' more than the rest of them. I give the 'The Night the Bed Fell', and 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' threes, and I give 'The Peacelike Mongoose' a five.

~Wiki Reflections~ I very much enjoy Wikispaces. It gives students a greater access to the thoughts of their peers on literature. It's also an easier way to communicate their thoughts for some people. However, some students are not using their recourses as they could be. Does this really surprise you? I personally think that students are much more willing to do this than have to carry around and write on a reading log. Kudos to you, Mrs. Olsen, for incorporating this into our learning experience.

~Fourth Entry~ 9-27-11 The Peacelike Mongoose James Thurber

"In cobra country a mongoose was born one day who didn't want to fight cobras or anything else." This is the first line of 'The Peacelike Mongoose', by James Thurber. It is a brave and sad line, and those who read it can almost guess what the ending of this very short story is. My guess was death. I was wrong. It was banishment. Regardless of the nitty-gritties, the concept is the same. The peacelike mongoose was banished by a jury of it's peers for not wanting to fight cobras, and then asking why it was so wrong. That is a very sad, and very brave concept. It was obvious while reading this that the 'mongooses' and the 'cobras' could easily be substatuted in for by two opposing groupes of people. I was curious, so I looked up what, or who, rather, Thurber was talking about.Unfortunately, I couldn't find any answers to that question, but I suppose that Thurber wouldn't have to have any spacific two people in mind. Because, in some ways, all of humanity can be like this. Judgemental, spiteful, and, mostly, afraid. Thurber didn't touch on the fear of the other mongooses, but it was implied in the actions and reactions that they had with this peacelike mongoose. Mongooses reacted out of fear. The fear of how different the peacelike mongoose was. Much in the same way that people react out of fear. Exactly the same way people react out of fear. In the end, the peacelike mongoose was gotten rid of, and, therefore, that 'threat' to the other mongooses was extinguished. Sad. Very sad, and very true. I loved this short story. It's the shortest story of his that I've read yet, but it's deffenately the best, in my opinion. I don't know how he managed to pack such emotion and such honest and horrable truth into the length of a paragraph! I'd recomend this story to, well, not very many people, actually. Not because it wasn't good, because it was amazing. And obviously not because it was too long, but because it takes a certin.... deeper understanding of the implacations of the work to truly appreciate it. I think that alot of people would be quick to pass it off as a stupid short story about mongooses and cobras, and the only reason that they would choose to read it would be because they had to for a school assignment. Either way, it was an exelent read, and, as with all of Thurber's work, I enjoyed it very much. Good reading and happy trails to all of you! ~Kaitlyn Ernwine~

~Third Entry~ 9-11-11 The Night the Bed Fell James Thurber

It is well understood, if not expected, that every family has that one family member that's a little bit... strange. It could be that one aunt who absolutely MUST have her hair done a certin way. Or perhaps it's that uncle who can't stand to be anywhere neer the family cat because he's convinced that it watches him while he sleeps. And, if you're really lucky, maybe it's one of your parents, or syblings who has the family oddity. Or, perhaps, it's you. In James Thurber's 'The Night the Bed Fell', the strangest family member is Briggs Beall, the narritor's cousin, who is staying with the narritor and his family while the narritor's grandfather, who usually stays with the family, is gone. The story takes place in a short amout of time ( 10,15 minutes, maybe ) in which the narritor's bed falls on him ( his bed, similar to a futon bed, fliped onto him because he rolled too close to the edge. ), and his mother thinks that the bed has fallen on his father, who is on the unstable bed up in the atic. The chaos that followed is both ironic and quite funny, as all family members are reacting to the different sounds and sensations of the house going into a momentary state of panic. Thurber did a good job with this story. It really was quite funny, and it was refreshingly chaotic as opposed to the novels that I've been reading as of late. I've noticed that, in Thurber's wrighting, there's alot of comas, which can make his wrighting a bit hard to decipher at times. However, it's worth the extra effort to read the story, as long as you don't get torn away from the story in trying to decipher his puncuation and sentance structure. All-in-all, a very, very good short story. I recomend 'The Night the Bed Fell', and any other short story by Thurber, to anyone of a highschool reading level that has a good, and almost flexable sense of humor (maybe a touch of morbid humor, also). Thurber's short stories are indeed delightful to read, but the delight comes from the humor and irony in the situations, so a good ironic sense would also be a good thing to have while reading his books. Well, either way, good reading and happy trails to all of you! ~Kaitlyn Ernwine~

~Second Entry~ 9-1-11 The Colour of Magic Terry Pratchette

Imagine with me, if you will, that the early astronomers, sailers, philosophers and geographers were right in their assumption that the earth was, indeed, as flat as a pancake. This would create some subtile, but important differences between our world ( being round ) and what our world would be if it were pancake shaped. One change, would be that there would be no real horizen. Watching the sun rise would be quite different, and, of course, there's the difference of the possability of falling over the edge being very, very real. Now, imagen further, and imagine that this flat, flat world, rested upon the back of four gigantic elephants, and those elephants rested uopn the shell of a galacticly huge turtle. ( By galactily huge, I mean with a head the size of contenents, and eyes the size of oceans sort of huge. ) This is the mannor of Terry Pratchett's Diskworld. Diskworld is home to a great many wonders. Gods of all shapes and sizes, magical creatures thought to only exist in the realm of childrens' story books and poorly made horror movies, and, of curse, dragons. ( the existance of which is a bit more of a contravercial issue on the disk. ) It is also the home of Rincewind, the Disk's most innept Wizard. As a matter-of-fact, Rincewind is such a bad Wizard, that he got kicked out of the Unseen University ( The Disk's greatist magic school ) at the age of 40 having only learned one spell. ( Mind you, this spell stole itself into his head, and scared all of the other spells out; but, regardless... ) Depressed and with nowhere to go, Rincewind wanders around Ankh-Morpork, ( The Circle Sea's capital twin cities. ) and, eventuially finds himself at the tavern called The Broken Drum. It is here that he meets Twoflower. Twoflower is the Disk's first tourist. He came from the Counterweight contenant to... well... see things. ( It is called the counterweight contenant because, although it is considerably smaller than the contenent in the Circle Sea, it weighs just as much. This is accounted for by the mass amounts of gold that can be found there. ) Twoflower and Rincewind are polar opposits. Where twoflower is nievely, and almost idiotically optamistic and trustworthy, Rincewind is rather... not. He is cowardly, terrified of most things, and pessamistic all around. It's easy to see how they might not get along at first. But, as the book continues, the two come to care very much about eachother. This book is my fave. book, no doubt. I do it no justice in this short little explanation. I recomend this book to anyone with a sense of humor and a love for a good book, though it's a better read if you understand a bit of psychology, history, science, and human nature. But, honestly, I think that everyone should read this book. Heck, I think that this book ought to be required by schools to be read! But that's just me. Anyhow, good reading and happy trails to all of you. I'll be back on track with Thurber next week~ ~Kaitlyn Ernwine~

~First Entry~ 8-26-11 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty James Thurber

The hydroplane buzzed onward through the storm towards its destination. It's crew, nervous, but ever-trusting of their captain; the cool, brilliant Walter Mitty. But wait! The doctors are at a loss, the patient is dying, the machines are failing, it seems all hope is lost... until the great Dr. Mitty appears, calm, collected, and always ready for any surgical mishap. And now! The court is in session. The accused has an always-cool attitude. He's ready for the prosecution, he's ready to be questioned, he's ready for anything that the court can throw at him. Because he's Walter Mitty, the great assassin. Confused yet? This is the REAL life of Walter Mitty: 1. Take his wife to the hairdressers 2. Get some overshues 3. Pick up his wife 4. Go home But in Walter's mind, this is not all that's happening. No, in his mind, he lives out all of his fantasies as the greatest, most celebrated, and, in some cases, most infamous men that he can dream up. This short story was exelent. I was a bit confused at first, thinking that maybe Mitty was a war veteran. . . and then a doctor? Right about the time when he was imagening himself as a convicted assassin I suddenly understood. Oh my gosh, he's crazy! However, as I read more, I realized that, no, he wasn't crazy, he just lived a very mundane life. All in all, it was an epic and wonderful story. I'm currently still looking for my next short of his to read, (actually, I'm looking for a book of his shorts, but I can't seem to find one) so my next blog will NOT be about Thurber. (DUN DUN DUUUUN!) Good reading and happy trails to all of you! ~Kaitlyn Ernwine~