Blog post on Jose Salvador Alvarenga

Have you ever felt lost?  Or have you been away from home by your self?  Imagine felling alone and being away from those you love for a whole year.  Eating uncooked food.  Drinking your own urine!  That would be disgusting and hard to live through, but that's what Jose Salvador Alvarenga went threw.   

     I read an article on a castaway that survived 13 months on sea with nothing but a friend and a fishing rod.  jose went from Mexico to the Marshall Islands (halfway between Hawaii and Australia).  He survived on raw fish and turtles.  Jose's friend refused to eat the fish and turtles so he threw himself out of the boat and drowned. Jose's friend's name was Ezequiel Cordova.  Jose just got out of the hospital yesterday and is planing to go to back to El Salvador.

     I really liked how Suzanne Chuarto, Jack Niedenthal and Jethro Mullen used sub-headings to categorize what the were saying.  The article had 5 sub headings telling about the families and stuff like that.  They also put in a lot of facts in the article.  The writers made sure that they put in meaningful quotes into the article.  The authors ended with a very meaningful quote that left you thinking.

     This article made me feel a little sad for the family who's son died.  But with Jose, I am impressed with.  He survived on his fishing skills and rain water.  For 13 months and 6,600 he survived.  I also feel bad for Jose .  He saw one of his friends go crazy and drown himself.  Also Jose has bad kidney pains and he may have health issues that may never go away.

Close reading on Graff

     I am writing my blog post to discuss Ender's game.  I am writing about one of the "unseen" characters in the book, Graff.  Many people see Graff as a person who takes tons of orders.  Some people don't even know who Graff is.  You learn a lot about Graff from the bold writing in the book at the beginning of each chapter.  You see inside his head and what he feels about Ender.  I understood him as a complex character and a multi sided character.  I know people that skipped the bold part and they really missed out.  Graff has one persona at the beginning of the book and a completely different persona at the end.

     At the beginning of the book Graff takes orders from his commanders and thinks nothing of them. Graff is doing what his commander thinks is best for the army.  It seems like he doesn't even have a mind of his own he just does what his master tells him, like a slave.  As we near the end of the book he  start to understand what is happening and how they are treating Ender unfairly.  He thinks on his own and doesn't take orders any more, sort of like a slave rebellion.  Graff has changed from a person that  commands to a man who decides stuff for himself.

     You learn about Graff in a side story, and it was pretty interesting, almost as interesting as the real story.  There is a tiny conflict that is not about ender at all.  you also see that Orson Scott Card put in a reference to slavery.  By studying characters you don't know much about you may learn some surprising things.  You may get obscure references that the author put in the book to reward people that closely read books.  The next time you read a book try to think about characters you wouldn't normally notice.

Fox

The book that I am doing my blog post on is "fox". It is a story about a bird and a dog that are friends. The bird says " I will be your missing eye, and you will be my burnt wing". They are perfect for each other.  Then one day a fox comes around and persuades the bird that the dog running is nothing like flying. The bird leaves the dog and goes with the fox because the fox says he is faster then dog.  But fox betrays the bird and leaves her in the forest.

This book was about greed. The bird is happy with dog until fox comes around and messes things up. The bird is perfectly happy with dog but when she hears someone is faster then dog she gives dog up. The bird wants to be with the fastest creature, not the one that is not a good friend. The bird is a very greedy character.

This book connects to the world in a lot of ways. A lot of people are greedy. One person that was greedy was Bernie Madoff.  He stole money from investors that believed in what he was doing. He was sort of like the bird. He didn't stop at good enough, he kept on going and going and going for a long time and that made him a greedy person. "Fox" was a book that was about greed. The book had a lot of connections to real life.