Mentor Text Work: The Giver

This book is very familiar to many people. The Giver was an incredibly good book that really helped me develop better answers for my big question: How does innocence and naivety color a person's personality and perceptions of life? While innocence and naivety was described and utilized differently than in the book Never Let Me Go, it was an interesting perspective of the two. It was definitely described in a negative light at times, but the book really had positive points too that helped develop my answer better and more thoroughly.
The main character, Jonas, was used to show life in a community with "utopian" ways. His naiveness of the outside world and past memories colored his view that his little world was perfect, however, when he comes to the knowledge of all that was and is not he became offended by his cheated life. It was a different way at looking how innocence and naivety can influence our lives--and perspectives.
I will always recommend this book. It was very interesting and allowed me as a reader to see a different light shed on a utopian world. I think this is a good book to read and look at.

Mentor Text Work: Never Let Me Go

My big question that I came up with for the remainder of this quarter is: How does innocence and naivety color a person's personality and perceptions of life? This book was written by an English author. It's about a school designed to raise kids from birth to puberty with the sole purpose of sending them off to one day donate all their vital organs. It brings up questions of whether or not this is moral or ethical. And then there's the major theme of whether or not these kids are really human--like we are human. These kids are completely oblivious to their destined paths and only learn bits and pieces as they grow older and move on further down their lives. But, while this seems like a sick and completely inhumane thing, you see that these kids are able to use their naivety to enrich their childhoods--by not knowing their fate, they can enjoy their unique childhoods. Its a incredibly interesting book.
By reading this specific book I came to a better understanding of the saying "ignorance is bliss." We can all relate to times when our worlds were small and focuses even smaller--a time when our parents gave us freedom to be kids before the enevitable world would turn its ugly face toward us. Being innocent, being niave, being ignorant, those aren't qualities that we should negatively neglect, no instead we should embrace them and realize that it is those times that we are the happiest and can always believe and see things better than what they are.
I would recommend this book over and over again. I think it is a very interesting and different kind of book, unlike others. Its not necessarily a hard read, but it definently allows you to think about a couple of things in a different light.

Metaphorical Interpretations

Keelia wrote on the controversial topic of stem cell research. An author could make a metaphor on this issue by comparing it to a colony of ants. The ant's would discover that by scrapping off the "sluff" on their antennae could then be used to make a serum that would prolong the life of their ant queen.

Hannah talked about America and the country as a whole being behind the rest of the world when it comes to bilingualism. When I think of a metaphor that could relate to this, I think of a bunch of kids a different colored toys. All the kids would have the same toy but in different colors and as they somehow learned new things with the toys or something then they would get another in a different color. Soon enough a majority would have two toys, at least one of them in blue (sort of a universal toy to relate to everyone).

Michael discusses a very controversial issue--religion. And not only religion but whether or not Jesus actually resurrected from the dead. Maybe you could translate this story to a simple one relating to magic. A magician one day tells all his friends that he has the best disappearing act of all time. When the day comes around for him to preform, he tells them that they have to wait in a separate room for some time while he actually does the trick. However, when his friends come back into the room where he was, its empty. Who's to know what happened?