Comments to Peer's essays

Grizzell:
:D it was interesting to read your post. i think that the first paragraph/ introduction was an interesting summary of the book but it is somewhat a spoiler. i think you should do what sutherland recommended, which is to talk about the entire summary but without revealing any names. the rest of your essay was nice. i think that you should switch the second and third paragraph to make it more interesting. however, that is just a suggestion. you don't need to do it if you don't want to. it is OK the way it is already.


Crystal:
you write such perfect essays that there is no need to correct T_T. i think that you summarized a bit too much. too detailed from how i see it. its as if we know every single little thing that happened in the book. i like how you connect it to Macbeth. i suggest that you emphasize what you wrote near the end, about human nature and take away some of the summary.... kinda like finish your essay in a way that makes readers interested in actually reading the book even after the detailed summary


Amber:
Hi evil XD you introduction is good. i like how you gave the summary but not the characters name. it is good overall but i think you can say more about the weakness area and maybe cite something to show your point.

the coma book review rough draft

In this book, “the Coma” by Alex Garland, it talks about a coma patient exploring his dream in order to try to find a way to wake up. In his dream, he experienced confusion because things were different from how he remembered it and he seems to forget many stuff. He then realizes that he is in a coma and then tried to find ways to wake himself up. He constantly tried many ways in waking himself up but without the things he should have remembered but forgotten, he doesn’t really know his identity or occupation. The things he can remember are blurred so he knows part of the truth but not the whole truth.

Because the book is explaining the psychology of a patient in a coma, it gets confusing at times. The weakness of this book is the short chapters. The chapters are so short that it is sometimes a page or half a page long. Although this book is very interesting because it keeps the readers anxious to know what really happens when one is in a coma. One of the flaws of this book is the chapters. It is pointless to me to see that this book have so many chapters when each chapter is really the continuation of the last. Reading it, I felt as though the author just made one section into another chapter to expand the pages. This story do captivates its readers but these chapters really annoy me and make me lose focus every single time. It completely made me neglect the reading and focused on the length of the chapters and compared one chapter’s length with another.

            The other flaw of this story is switching the event and the scene. Although the content of the story is understandable, the way how the author writes makes it confusing because the reader would then have to remind themselves that the character is switching from being awake in the coma to being awake in real life but no actually awake at the same time. The author did try to italicized chapters where the main character, Carl, is awake but not awake at the same time. The italicized chapters did help with the transitioning but the narration switches. The way Carl explains the situation gets mixed up. For example, in chapter two of the second section, one paragraph states, “The next morning, I was lying on the bed. I was lying on the bed, and the nurse was walking across the room towards me,” (Garland 74). It was confusing the first time I read this line so I had to reread it again. In this book, there is one Carl, but there is also two of him: the coma version of him and the sleeping version of him. It transitions between both on

            Due to the complexity of careful syntax and dictions required to make this book less confusing, the author also divided this book into three sections. The first section talks about Carl in his coma sate where he continues his “daily” life. He thought that he was either paranoid or had a stroke which affected his brain. He was unaware that he was in a coma but he did notice a few strange things which he can’t explain so he thought that he was hallucinating. The second section reveals to the reader that Carl suspicion continues to grow until he realize that he is wake, but only in his dream. He realizes that he is never awake and that he is in the hospital, still in a coma. The third section reveals how Carl tried to wake himself up by trying to take a road down memory lane and remember something that might make him wake up. In the end, he saw himself in his dream the incident which led him to his coma state.

            Each section allows the book to be less confusing because the story continuously switched the scene where Carl is in his coma to where he is awake in real life but can not move. To have the whole plot revolve about Carl in his coma sate is confusing because if the diction is poorly worded, the story itself would be confusing. The author tried to divide this book into three sections to make this story less confusing.

            I think that his style of writing did make this less confusing to read. This book gets harder to read if the book wasn’t divided into this way and if the chapters were long. The author was careful in making the chapters really short to make sure that the readers can grasp what they read and the illustrations also helped.

            To conclude, this book’s weakness, which is the writing style, is also its strength. It does get annoying at times but it makes the book a whole lot easier to read. Because the book focus on something very complex such as talking about the things a coma patience experience, confusion is very common. 

book review 2

In “the Coma”, Alex Garland uses the main character, Carl, to explore a psychological event of what happens to a person after they fell to a coma. This book describes about one possibility to a coma patient and describes a way to perhaps wake up from the coma. In this book, Carl was beaten till he was unconscious. When he wakes up, he realizes that something was weird until he found out that he was in a coma.

            Due to the complexity of careful syntax and dictions required to make this book less confusing, the author also divided this book into three sections. The first section talks about Carl in his coma sate where he continues his “daily” life. He thought that he was either paranoid or had a stroke which affected his brain. He was unaware that he was in a coma but he did notice a few strange things which he can’t explain so he thought that he was hallucinating. The second section reveals to the reader that Carl suspicion continues to grow until he realize that he is wake, but only in his dream. He realizes that he is never awake and that he is in the hospital, still in a coma. The third section reveals how Carl tried to wake himself up by trying to take a road down memory lane and remember something that might make him wake up. In the end, he saw himself in his dream the incident which led him to his coma state.

            Each section allows the book to be less confusing because the story continuously switched the scene where Carl is in his coma to where he is awake in real life but can not move. To have the whole plot revolve about Carl in his coma sate is confusing because if the diction is poorly worded, the story itself would be confusing. The author tried to divide this book into three sections to make this story less confusing.

            I think that his style of writing did make this less confusing to read. This book gets harder to read if the book wasn’t divided into this way and if the chapters were long. The author was careful in making the chapters really short to make sure that the readers can grasp what they read and the illustrations also helped.

Book Review: the Coma

What are the weaknesses of this book, in your opinion?

        In my opinion, the weakness of the book, “the Coma”, by Alex Garland is the short chapters and the continuous switching between one situation with another. The chapters are as short as one page or even half of a page. Although this book is very interesting because it keeps the readers anxious to know what really happens when one is in a coma. One of the flaws of this book is the chapters. It is pointless to me to see that this book have so many chapters when each chapter is really the continuation of the last. Reading it, I felt as though the author just made one section into another chapter to expand the pages. This story do captivates its readers but these chapters really annoy me and make me lose focus every single time. It completely made me neglect the reading and focused on the length of the chapters and compared one chapter’s length with another.

            The other flaw of this story is switching the event and the scene. Although the content of the story is understandable, the way how the author writes makes it confusing because the reader would then have to remind themselves that the character is switching from being awake in the coma to being awake in real life but no actually awake at the same time. The author did try to italicized chapters where the main character, Carl, is awake but not awake at the same time. The italicized chapters did help with the transitioning but the narration switches. The way Carl explains the situation gets mixed up. For example, in chapter two of the second section, one paragraph states, “The next morning, I was lying on the bed. I was lying on the bed, and the nurse was walking across the room towards me,” (Garland 74). It was confusing the first time I read this line so I had to reread it again. In this book, there is one Carl, but there is also two of him: the coma version of him and the sleeping version of him. It transitions between both on some chapters and so it was confusing because of the need to reread it and to reread it slowly. 

Amy Tan Vs. Amy Chua

What similarities and differences do you notice between Amy Chua’s relationship with her kids and the mother-daughter relationships we see in “The Twenty-Six Malignant Gate”?

In the Twenty Six Malignant Gate, we see that each daughter in the four chapters were rebellious against their mother because they felt oppressed. It is similar to Amy Chua’s article, “tiger Mom’ because both of the stories explain about a mother who tells her daughter to do this and do that and that it will benefit them in the future. The daughter will end up rebelling and then a fight begins. In the fight, the daughter will be stubborn to see things from another view, and just view it one sided while the mother secretly knew everything. Then the daughter realizes something and made up with her mother.

In “Four Directions”, Waverly Jong talked about how when she was a ten year old prodigy, her mother would brag and tell Waverly what to do with chess although she didn’t really know the basics of it. Waverly got angry at her mother because she “hated the way she [mother] tried to take all the credit,” Tan 170). A fight started in the streets where Waverly told her mother that she did not know anything and then ran. When she went back home, her mother began to ignore her and then when they are back on normal terms, her mother did not stay by her side when she practiced and did not brag nor dust the trophies. With time, Waverly, “understand finally. Not what she had said. But what had been true all along,” (Tan 183). Their fight allowed Waverly to discover something about herself.

In “Tiger Mom” Amy Chua had a similar fight with her youngest daughter. Her daughter was not able to play this one piece in the piano because her two hands cannot play a different tempo at the same time. Amy Chua continued to force her daughter to practice hard until she gets it right:

“Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.
Get back to the piano now," I ordered“You can’t make me.”“Oh yes, I can.”Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds,” (Amy Chua).

The fight ended with Lulu discovering that she was able to play the piece and found out that she have the potential to play it, just that she needs to work a little harder.

Joy Luck Club: Introduction

Question: What is Amy Tan’s purpose behind the introduction to the second section? What thematic elements, characterization, or plot foreshadowing connect it to the stories that follow, particularly “Rules of the Game” and “Voice from the War”?

            In “The Joy Luck Club”, Amy Tan’s purpose behind the introduction to the second section foreshadows the bond between mothers and daughter. The introduction talks about a mother telling her daughter to listen to her and to stay near her. The mother feared for the daughter’s safety if she is out of her sight. The daughter didn’t listen because she wanted to ride her bike but the mother refused. Even after being told about the Twenty-six Malignant Gates, the daughter still refuses to listen. She rode her bike to the corner, but before even reaching the corner, the daughter is injured.

            This is the theme of the stories that are in the second section. In “Rules of the Game”, Waverly Jong was a chess prodigy who gained fame at a young age. Her mother stood by her side proudly however during their grocery shopping, Waverly told her mother that she is embarrassed. The argument went to the point where Waverly ran and ran:

“I ducked into another dark alley, down another street, up another alley. I ran until it hurt and I realized I had nowhere to go, that I was not running from anything. The alleys contained no escape routes,”(Tan 100).

This relates to the introduction at the beginning of the section because the daughter had an argument with her mother and in the end, the daughter ran. this story of Waverly Jong demonstrates how the mother gave an advice to her daughter, but the daughter, rebelliously disobeys and in the end, an argument erupt from the mother and daughter.

Moreover, “The Voice from the Wall”, also connects to the introduction at the second section. Lena St. Clair told the story and how she had this imagination of what happened to her neighbor next door. One day, however, the neighbor, Teresa, went to her house. She told Lena:

“We had this fight and she pushed me out the door and locked it. So now she thinks I’m going to wait outside the door until I’m sorry enough to apologize. But I’m not going to,”(Tan 114).

This story also ties in with the introduction because it is also about a mother and a daughter arguing with each other about something.

Joy Luck Club. Kweilin

           In “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan, Suyuan Woo tells Jing-Mei “June” Woo, her daughter, the Kweilin story. However, each time she retells her story, the ending seems to change. From a happy ending, it slowly changes into one full of mysteries and many unanswered questions. One version was about how the formed a club in Kweilin although many people were suffering. They would play and have “feasts” while laughing and enjoying the happiness trying to forget the painful time they are enduring at the moment. It then change into about how Suyuan used the money to buy one thing and exchanged it with others and so on. The third ending was the journey to another place in order to escape death because she knew her fate being an officer's wife. She journeyed to Chungking and during her trip, she slowly abandon her stuff which was too heavy for her to hold.

          She changes the story she tells her daughter due to two reasons: trust and a lesson. As a child, June Woo isn't capable of understanding such a complicated a dark story. Telling her would be meaningless so Suyuan made it a happy ending when June was still young. The older June gets, the more Suyuan can trust her daughter into understanding such deep stuff so the ending will change to match the level of June. The deep secrets will slowly be revealed each time she retells the same story. Moreover, she did it to teach June a lesson. When June tried to ask for something, Suyuan said, “Why do you think you are missing something you never had?”(Tan 25). Suyuan told the darker side of her story in order to teach her daughter that she should value stuff and to not be greedy for more stuff. When June sulked in silence when she couldn't get what she wanted, telling this story allows Suyuan to indirectly tell her message to June about possession and greed without directly saying it. Many stories do have morals even if it is very unrealistic. Suyuan was probably trying to teach her daughter things and trusts her daughter to understand them.