Paper Moon and Animal Farm

In “Paper Moon”, Long Boy and Addie go on the road and do business, which is cheating people for money. At one point, Long Boy makes a horrific mistake and the two must rapidly escape. “Animal Farm” is about a farm where the animals take over in a large and ever growing rebellion. In each book, the main characters cause the losses for other people for a cause they believe to be right.

Addie and Long Boy believe that they are doing what is right for them. They make a fortune using people to get money. They are not doing what is fair to most people, because they are not treating those people fairly. However, it is fair to them because they are the ones making the profit. The people that Long Boy and Addie cheat lose much money and/or goods such as cotton because of them. Sometimes they sell them faulty items or items that they have unknowingly already bought. Most people in the story, as well as those who read it, do not think that what they are doing is right, that they are stealing. However, they make a large profit out of this business, as it is their full-time job. They would surely have doubts about what they were doing if they believed it to be wrong.

Similarly, the animals in “Animal Farm” also hurt others for a cause they think is right. Most people believe and are taught that war is wrong. However, the animals believed it right enough to feel the need to fight in order to take over the farm. The humans obviously did not think that the rebellion was the correct thing to do, but those animals did. They caused the loss of land, and a job loss for many farm staff to help a rebellion that they thought would improve the world. In my opinion, I think they are correct. Those people who lost their farm may not see the long term consequences. With animals taking over, people would die out. In the story, the animals seem to know how to do everything that the humans did to take over the farm, but realistically, the humans would no longer create such an impact, and therefore the earth would be used less harshly. Would a tiger use fossil fuels? Would insects destroy entire forests within minutes? I thought not.

The main idea of “Paper Moon” and “Animal Farm” is that the main characters or group of characters use other people for a cause they think is right. But does this make it right? I think that this makes it right to those people. Right and wrong cannot be proven, so something can only be right or wrong when people (or animals) believe it is. These books use their plots to explain why a few criminals wreak havoc: to pursue what they think is right.

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.