The Chosen

In “The Chosen”, a boy named Reuven plays a rough baseball game with a group of Hasidic Jews who are supposed to be “monsters”. Their best player, Danny Saunders, hits a ball directly into Reuven’s eye. His glasses beak and the glass wedges itself into his eye. His wrist is throbbing from another tough catch and his head hurts from the blow. While recovering at the hospital, Reuven makes some new friends. Some qualities about Reuven are unrealistic and make him seem like a perfect person.

One example of when Reuven is a little too nice takes place a few days after the accident. One of his visitors at the hospital is Danny Saunders. The first time he comes to the hospital, Reuven gets mad at him, which is understandable. But the next time he visits, they become friends. Reuven forgets about how angry he was and that his new friend could make him blind in one eye. How could he completely forgive Danny Saunders for what he has done after just one visit? Danny Saunders is known to hit the pitcher (as Reuven was) so it was not a complete accident. It seems almost as if he was never even mad because of how quickly he forgave Danny. This forgiveness trait is an unrealistic trait, because many people would hold a grudge for at least a week or so. I appreciate that he is being nice, but in my opinion, that is just not the way things are.

Another example was during the baseball game. Reuven is hurt first by a really high and fast ball which he was able to catch. Afterwards, his hand and wrist hurt a lot whenever he would catch a ball. His coach asked him if he wanted to stop playing but he declined the offer. First of all, because the book describes the throw as very hard and high, it is not completely realistic that he would catch it. Their team is a pretty good team and there is always a chance that someone would catch such a difficult ball. But I still think that it is not entirely realistic that he caught it. Second of all, how could Reuven keep playing if he was in as much pain as he says he was in? It is brave of him and showed good sportsmanship, but if it hurt so much that he was still complaining later in the hospital, than he should naturally take a little break. Even though some people would do what Reuven did, the majority probably would not.

If Reuven hadn’t become friends with Danny Saunders so quickly or caught the ball (and if he did, sit out for a little while), he would be a more realistic character. A lot of people do strange but perfect things, but the average person would probably not do these things. Maybe Reuven is not an average person. Even though his actions are unrealistic for an average person, they make him a better person. This may be the reason why Danny Saunders wanted to become friend with him as well.

To Kill a Mockingbird 3

In “To Kill a Mockingbird”, the plot continues to become thicker and thicker. At the beginning, Jem and Scout had fun with their friend Dill in the summer trying to coax Boo Radley from his house. But as the story progressed, more issues of racism came into play. The trial, as unfair as it seems, was a normal occurrence in the south. But Scout is a character that is against the racism, even just in her town and she knows what is unfair.

Scout’s Teacher, Miss Gates, teaches her class a lesson about Democracy and Dictatorship using World War 2 and Hitler as her example. But what made me physically angry at her was when she begins to talk about how because we are a democracy, we are fair to everyone. She says, “Over here we don’t believe in persecuting anybody.” Wait a minute there. She said that America does not believe in persecuting anybody while all of America and even herself are rude to African Americans all of the time. She lives during the civil rights movement! It is especially not right to say this after the trial that has just taken place. I do not think that it is right for her to be saying that then, but maybe she could get away with that now. But even saying this today would be risky because not everyone is treated fairly. This scene happens while the students are reading current events, but Miss Gates obviously doesn’t know about current events.

Because Miss Gates thought that it was right to say that America treated everyone fairly during the civil rights movement, it makes me think that she is not the only one. Maybe people didn’t include persecuting blacks as unfair treatment. The way I suppose the people think is “they deserve it so it doesn’t count.” But as we know, this is not only unfair, but also untrue. The fact that Scout catches this mistake and asks her father about it says that maybe Miss Gates is off her rocker, but at least some people have some sense.

Miss Gates is an angering character in “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Even before she said this, Scout never really liked her. Scout seems like she is opposite from the community in her beliefs and her style. She does not believe in persecution of blacks and she does not want to become what her society calls a “lady”. So in some ways, she is not a very realistic character, but I think she relates to girls in modern times.

The Two Towers

I am in the middle of reading The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien, the second book in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The book follows each little group of travelers through their journey after they split apart in the first book. One group is off to destroy the ring in Mordor, one group is chasing the orcs to find the last group, and the last group finds a way to break away from their capturers. I think that the most significant part of the book so far is when Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn find Gandalf after they perceived him dead and lost in the mines of Moria. I thought that this is an important part of the book because it takes a lot of the pressure off of the team. But I think that the story would have been more original if Gandalf was, in fact, gone forever.

The architecture of the story suggests that Gandalf will return again before he actually does. I could predict that he would reappear because of his name repeating many times in the beginning of the book and in the end of the last one. The groups always depended on him and he brought them to where they are now. He was bound to return and help them or they would never have found their way to wherever they are going (I am not quite sure where they are going specifically yet from the information given to me in the story). Gandalf is a major part of the story and it would be drastically different without him as a character. He is very important in the story but I think that it helped the story quite a bit to lose him for a while. Do you ever get sick of a character? I know that I do and I definitely was a little tired of Gandalf. When he fell, I knew that this would be hard for the characters, but I know that it will help the reader.

The return of Gandalf after he is presumed to be dead, in my opinion, worsened the story. This is because I thought that it was unoriginal. I have read countless stories where a character of force is gone and then returns. On example is The throne of Fire by Rick Riordan. The two main characters, Carter and Sadie must preclude the rising of Apophis which could result in destroying the world. In the story Apophis reverts from being dormant for many years. This is somewhat the same context as in The Two Towers, where Gandalf comes back from “the dead”. This sequence occurs in many other stories so in this book, I think it made the story less original by using this format.

I think that so far the book is really well written and the story line is incredible. I am excited to continue reading it. There are, like most other books, a few tweaks I might make to it to make the story more unique and interesting. In this case it is the return of Gandalf. I think that there are two ways Tolkien could have done this. The first way is to not make Gandalf fall in the first place. The second is to not make him come back. I am pretty sure that Gandalf will be helpful later in the story so my second idea would more than just tweak it. I do now think that the fall of Gandalf had much effect on the book so I suppose that Gandalf could never fall. Maybe instead, he could just get injured terribly and not function correctly for a while. I think that a man with as much imagination as J. R. R. Tolkien could come up with a more original way to bring Gandalf back to life.





*If this made it sound like I do not like The Two Towers, it is not true. It is just this one aspect of the story that I think could have been changed.