Helpful Connections!

I spent a lot of time reading through my peers blogs and trying to find three posts that best relate to my lit circle book “Little Brother”. While reading through all these blogs I found a lot of similarities and differences between my literature circle novel and other people’s literature circle novels, but it seemed that there was some kind of connection in each complete blog post that helped me understand my novel better in some way.

 The first blog post I commented on was a post by a student named Tarra. Immediately when Tara mentioned government corruption in her post, it reminded me of my lit circle novel "Little Brother". In her post she wrote about “The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas” and how the protagonist, Bruno, is unaware of what’s going on in his world around him during the holocaust. Bruno reminds me of most of the people living in San Francisco in the novel "Little brother". Both Bruno and the people of San Francisco are unaware of the horrible things going on around them. They were told they were being protected from terrorists, when their neighbors were being tortured by the DHS. Similar to how Tarra said Bruno was fed miss information to lead him to believe that all is well around him. Then I read Megan’s blog post on her book, “The Fault in Our Stars”. In her post she talked about the theme of her novel being, never give up. The theme of Little Brother is to never give up as well. The protagonist of Little Brother, Marcus, faces a lot of challenges in his attempt to take down the DHS, but he doesn't give up. Marcus finds a girl who wants the same things he wants and they work together to get what they want. Similar to how Hazel and Augustus meet over something they both want and work together to reach their goals. The last blog I commented on was a student from GCI’s. The novel they wrote about was “The Book Theif”. The connection I made was between the experiences of both protagonists. When the protagonist of "The Book Theif", Liesl, went through the loss of her little brother she must have felt like how Marcus felt after his best friend was stabbed then never released from the DHS custody. Until the end of Little Brother, Marcus was almost certain his best friend Darryl was dead, and he couldn’t help feeling slightly responsible for it. The student mentioned how Liesl felt like he failed to protect his brother; Marcus also felt like he didn't do a good enough job protecting his friend after he got stabbed. Now they both have to live with the loss of someone very close to them while feeling somewhat responsible for that person’s death.

The connections I made helped me to understand my novel better by putting the emotions characters felt in my novel into different situations. For example, I didn’t really realize how devastating it must have been for Marcus when he lost his best friend until I read the last blog I commented on, where it gave me a new perception on the feeling of losing a loved one. I can’t relate to now it feels to have a best friend die, but I can imagine what it would feel like to lose my brother since I’ve been close to losing him. It was a lot easier for me to be able to relate and understand how Marcus felt, and why it was so important to defend his friends honor, after reading that blog post and putting it into consideration. Also, it’s easier for me to understand my novel when I can connect it to things I already have knowledge about, so I can have a more thorough understanding on the topic. For example, I have a pretty good understanding on the holocaust, but my novel didn’t really explain how the people of San Francisco felt about the issue going on with the DHS, but then I read Tarra’s blog and was able to make a lot of connections between the people of San Francisco in “Little Brother” and people during the time of the holocaust. They both were very unaware of what was really going on in their world. The final way reading these blogs helped my understanding of my novel is by applying the theme of my novel too different stories and situations. By looking at different ways the theme was demonstrated it gave me a better understanding of the theme. For example, Megan’s blog post gave me the impression that they had the same theme of never giving up. But when further comparing the themes I realized in both stories the protagonist was able to make it through what they wanted by not giving up, and with the power of a special girl they met who had the same goal as them.

The 3 Blogs I commented on:

1: http://brennanbonesfan.blogspot.ca/2013/11/80-people-killed-while-people-     were.html

2: http://makpb.blogspot.ca/2013/11/the-fault-in-our-stars.html

3: http://kristydigitallearning.weebly.com/3/post/2013/11/november-27th-2013.html?

Image Citations

-http://sanmarcoshighschoollibrary.blogspot.ca/2010/05/review-boy-in-striped-pajamas-boyne.html

-http://www.patheos.com/blogs/happycatholicbookshelf/2013/03/recent-fiction-book-club-picks/

-http://booksellers.penguin.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780525478812,00.html