Independent Reading Entry; Le Social Issue.

Well, I have choosen a book that is kind of THE book to read if you want to see some social justice. Persepolis is an entry writer's dream, and the authors nightmare. It tells the story of a young girl living in Iran throughout a tumultuous time period.  It goes from tyranny to revolution to tyrany.

I think one of the main problem is people misinterpreting justice. They have some twisted way of thinking, mainly because of religion. They beat women because they are not wearing a viel. They throw people in jail becauase the they oppose the tyrannical rule. Ans the worst part is they think they are right!

Religion has a history of hindering social justice. In the past (and present) they are everything but just. Centuries ago the church was the big boss in town. In spain, they tortured people because they were not christian. There were many crusades to get rid of other religions, mainly islam, which were costly and unfounded. The worst incident was a crusade in spain. The Catholics were besieging a city. When asked who to spare a preist responded "Kill them all. God will know his own." And in the modern day, extremists are using the Koran as an excuse to attack innocent people.

I don't know how social justice can survive with religions. Each religion has its own set of sick justices that are out dated. But how can we convince people that the bible is wrong? That if we were still fooloowing it word for word, society would be back in the dark ages!

We can't really. Preists molest children without retrubution. In islamic countries they still sonte people to death. All the advances in social justice that we've made (civil rights, voting rights, free speech) are being destroyed. Now I am jewish. I go to sinoguoge and what not. I don'tthink that religion is always a bad thing. Yet when people take it to extreme meausures, bad things happen. We have to teach people to believe in modern social justice, AND religion./ This will be a difficult task indeed.

Social Issue

Recently I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime  by Mark Haddon.  It was about a kid named Christopher who has autism. He struggles to understand things as life gets more complicated, starting with him being accused to killing a dog in the nighttime. What follows is a sometimes funny, sometimes, tragic book that is centered on a social issue.

Most of the main issues are because no one quite understands Christopher. His mother leaves the family after she realizes she just can’t deal with him. The father has a difficult time being a single parent of an autistic child. Christopher screams when he’s touched and often huddles in a ball. He can be violent at times too, and hurts people without realizing. The biggest problem is that he can’t understand human emotions.

This book raises questions on how to raise, or just understand autistic children. Autism was relatively unknown 70 years ago, and the amount of children diagnosed with it has skyrocketed. Why it happens is still a relative mystery.  In the The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime  the father and mother get very frustrated with Christopher. But it’s easy to see why.  So what should they do? What should society as whole do?

The truth is I don’t know.  The cold, logical person might say that we should put them away, that they are not functioning members of society. Indeed if we were a species of birds they would die off because of natural selection.  But we’re not a species of birds. We’re humans, and emotions like sympathy, kindness, and patience set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. They are one of us. But raising these children is just so taxing. And usually the child cannot return the love. It just seems so unfair.  And as the children with extreme conditions grow into adults, they need just as much help as when they were 4 or 5.  

It’s one of the most complicated social issues, because there’s not a definite answer. For racism it is easy to identify what is right. People who judge others by the color of their skin or where they come from are awful, stupid people (The problem is convincing them of that).  And autism is growing. There are no definitive numbers but many of them said about 5 out 10,000 children are diagnosed with autism. (1 out of 2000). The best thing I can offer is that we found out why it happens and how to prevent it.  But for now, I am conflicted on how to deal with the issue. 

ReReading

Rereading the Phantom Tollbooth has opened my eyes to many things. The subtleties, the humor and the general genius of the book were lost on me as a child. Norton Juster himself said he wrote things that an 8 or nine year old wouldn’t understand.   And the question of  how he interweave so many morals into the book yet still keep it light hearted and funny was answered in my rereading.  Indeed I think the phantom toll booth is one of the best books to reread.  My favorite line in the whole book was only discovered in the rereading, “How are you going to make it move? It doesn’t have a- “                                                                                                 “Be very quiet” advised the duke “For it goes without saying” (p79)   the humor in this sentence is lost upon younger audiences.              

However the most important discovery (as mentioned previously) was how Juster did it.   I noticed first when tock appeared and yelled at Milo for killing time. “KILLING TIME?! It’s bad enough wasting time, without killing it.”  I noticed that A. He made Tock a literal watchdog, and B. He made time seem like something killable. I started noticing this trend everywhere. What Juster was doing was making concepts and sayings tangible, therefore making all kinds of plays on words (such as my favorite line). He put a literal value on money and time. And importantly he made Human traits objects.  Things like malice and hate became monsters and vile creatures.

This absolutely proves Juter’s genius. For it is easy to teach a child not to make wild claims by making  it disgusting to eat your own words. (“I didn’t know I was going to have to eat my words!” …. “Then you should have made a tastier speech. “ p.88) In concepts such as Time and Words does Juster’s style work best. He makes time something real, something what is terrible to kill and squander. He makes doing something as “giving ones time” seem to be a sin. For words Juster created a “word market” where you have to buy words.  Words become of great value and therefore should not be wasted. (“I never knew words could be so confusing” Only if you use a lot to say a little p44)

Then there are things that are icing on the cake. Like how sound becomes tangible, or the “weather” man and the ‘Whether” man. All these play on words add to the books humor, but they also make conveying morals easy. That is why the writing style is so brilliant and Phantom Tollbooth is such a literary achievement.