journey through junior year

Throughout the beginning of the novel, Guitar is shown as a sort of role model for Milkman. However, after finishing the book, we learned that Guitar actually tries to kill Milkman. After this murder attempt, Milkman chooses to not bring it up to his friends and instead, says he accidentally shot with his own gun. Why did Milkman not tell his friends the truth? Was he just in shock of what had happened? Maybe he just couldn't believe that the person who he thought was his close friend just tried to end his life? While thinking about this, I made a connection with celebrities and their fanbases. Nowadays, many kids look up to and admire famous people (singers, actors, models, youtubers, etc.). However, often times, these celebrities start using drugs, becoming addicted, and therefore, not a very good role model. When this happens, there always seems to be a group of fans who become very defensive and start making up all kinds of excuses and cover-up stories. For instance, I used...

While discussing this passage in class, I learned that the male peacock is meant to represent Milkman because just like how the male peacock is unable to fly due to his large, extravagant feathers, Milkman is also weighed down by his wealth. On the other hand, peahens are symbolism for Pilate. Female peafowl can fly because their feathers aren't so big; Pilate "has wings" and is free because without a lot of money, she is forced to be independent. This made me think about the current lotteries that are going on- the Mega Million and Powerball. I often find myself just in awe and unable to grasp the concept of just how much money those lotteries are. Curious, I looked up some follow up stories to those who won the lottery. To my surprise, quite a few of these stories are actually super sad. For instance, one average individual named Evelyn Adams won $5.4 million dollars, spent it all on gambling and slot machines, and now is broke and living in a trailer park. How d...

    This week during class, we read a different type of literature- a folk tale. While Mrs. Valentino was reading the Gullah Folk Tale to the class, she quickly said, “I’m not good at reading picture books.” For some reason, this seemingly insignificant statement stuck with me. It reminded me that different people could all read the same story, but with different inflections and emphasises, it could have completely different meanings. Perhaps we are actually interpreting all the old folk tales wrong. Over the course of the days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia... AGES that folktales are told, the people telling them and the people hearing them are different. Depending on the teller and listener, a story could be a simple time passer, or a life changer.  Maybe something that used to serve as just a bedtime story is now interpreted as a huge life lesson. Honestly while reading Maus, I often found myself wondering if all the little symbolism we p...

While reading Maus, I discovered that every small detail had a purpose and contributed to the novel as a whole. If I were to have read it on my own, I honestly would've only gotten approximately 5% of the true meaning of the graphic novel. Every time we had a class discussion on a certain page it actually blew my mind how many hidden meanings and symbols could fit onto one page or even a single panel. Never in a million years would I be able to figure out on my own that a simple umbrella handle would represent the bars of a jail cell. This got me thinking, this one book has so much more to it than it appears to have on the surface. But what if people never took the time to analyze it deep enough to discover all this? Would Maus  just eventually die away as nothing more than a meaningless comic book? If so, then how many books are out there that actually have more to them than meets the eye? How many books are out there that we never spent time readi...