English 485: Expedition Adolescence

While I think the Blood Red Road  tells a story of overcoming obstacles through trust, friendship and perseverance that rings true to how such trials and tribulations would be experienced by adolescents, Young's message to the reader can become muffled due to the stylistic choice of writing with no punctuation. Young commits to the choice of using dialect to narrate the book from start to finish which I think works towards the goal of the novel to displace the reader from the language of here and now to that of Saba and the other characters who live in a post apocalyptic world. An argument could be made for Young's decision to write without punctuation throughout the novel because in the world of that time, there seems to be no formal education or rules governing items such as language, but a focus on survival; a lack of punctuation mirrors the lack of prescriptive rules in the world of which the novel is set. While this mirror of text and reality in the novel speaks to the rea...

I think one of the most interesting elements of Crank  is the way Hopkins creates two alternate identities within the novel to explore the ways in which drugs can completely alter a person's life. Kristina, who we meet in the fist pages of the novel, is your typical high school girl who does well in school, has a bright future ahead of her, loves her friends and family, and seems to lack confidence in who she truly is. Bree, the alter ego we meet on her visit with her dad, exudes confidence, seeks adventure and excitement, and is filled with a drive for the high in crank and love. Throughout the novel we see in internal struggle within Kristina as she tries to control Bree and the external struggle of her life as she tries to maintain her relationships with her family and friends and her school work as she continues to spiral into drug addiction. It is through the interaction of these two identities, Kristina and Bree, that the reader is able to experience drug addiction. Bree is n...

Time is usually an important piece in a story. The author typically keeps the reader up to date on a particular timeline to keep the story running smoothly and to prevent confusion in the reader between the events of the plot. Time in Prisoner B-3087 , or a lack thereof, is an important element not included in the story to create a confusion of time for the reader that mirrors the confusion of time for prisoners of WWII living in Nazi concentration camps. Yanek, a young Jewish boy living in 1930 Nazi occupied Poland, is the protagonist of the story. Yanek is taken by Nazis and forced to live in work in Nazi concentration camps when he is 10 years old. He is stripped of everything he owns and knows, his family is killed with the exception of a couple of cousins, and he loses all conceptions of his own identity and how long his existence as a prisoner has and will last. Gratz tells the story of Yanek's fight for survival during his various stints in ten different Nazi concentration c...