Looking For Alaska

Another book I chose was Looking For Alaska, by John Green. Now... for my first two books, I followed the same pattern of posting. For this book, however, I am going to do something new. I really liked this book, and I think that if I did the whole summary, message, and meaning/connection thing, I very well could ruin the book for someone (and no I'm not just using that as an excuse, I read the book and liked it and think other people should read it). Anyways, I want to use a single quote that struck me as one of the coolest ideas I have heard in a long, long time...

"We need never be hopeless, because we can
never be irreparably broken. We think
we are invincible because we are."
(page 220)

I like this quote because it can mean a lot to anybody, and anybody could relate or apply it in some way to their lives. It not only brings hope and strength, but enlightens a new style of alternative thinking that even if not agreed with, it still causes open mindedness that is healthy and important for any mind. I mean, when I read that quote, I can relate to it in several ways and in all of them it gives hope and tells me that maybe not physically, but spiritually I am invincible; nothing can kill me. There will be things that make me feel like I'm close, but nothing that is irreparably broken. I am invincible. To me, that's just an awesome thought. Hopefully, after reading this quote and possibly thinking about it for yourself, it has sparked some interest. There is a book, it's really good, about a boy's journey to come to this conclusion. If you're interested in checking it out, it's called Looking For Alaska. Happy reading...

Vernon God Little Meaning/Connection

Although after reading Vernon God Little, and understanding DBC Pierre's intent of viewing America and the media with different points of view, I thought that it was even more interesting when it made me think about how humans naturally tend to want someone or something to blame for anything and everything that goes wrong. At first, it seems like an unimportant topic, but after I thought about it for a while, maybe that is because we are so used to it happening. I mean, when was the last time you can remember something bad happening, and you simply saying, "Shit happens," (pardon my french) instead of thinking and talking and thinking about who did what and what caused who to want to do what... you get the point. After that thought came to my mind, my first reaction was, well, don't you have to figure out what happened in order to insure justice and catch the person or thing that caused the wrongdoing? But after thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that humans simply like knowing that something or somebody is being punished and when they know that, they feel like the situation is being taken care of and justice is being served. In other words, if someone is being punished or something being blamed for something bad happening, most people will pay very little attention to whether or not the person or idea should be persecuted because they just want justice as quickly and conveniently as possible. Maybe, just maybe, sometimes we should just accept that things don't always go the way we want them to and thats just life, instead of finding something or someone to lay the blame on to make ourselves feel better.

Vernon God Little Message

After reading Vernon God Little, I came to think about how much the media can affect people's opinions and thoughts, and how whenever something goes wrong, we always want something or someone to blame, and often will go as far as it takes to find a scapegoat. I think that DBC Pierre wasn't necessarily trying to convey a single message, but he wanted to open minds to new perspectives on America as a society and the media and its powers. By providing a satirical, funny point of view on these issues, Pierre wanted reading this book makes you think about them in a new sense and become more aware of all sides of every story.

Vernon God Little Summary

For another book I read, I chose Vernon God Little, by DBC Pierre. Vernon Little is an average fifteen year old living in a small town in Texas with his mother. However, one fateful day at school, Vernon witnesses his best and only friend Jesus Navarro flip out and shoot sixteen kids before taking his own life. Vernon is immediately pinned as an accomplice by the townspeople, police, and media. After such a horrific tragedy, all of these people demanded someone to blame, or someone that was at least alive that had something to do with it. Unfortunately, they choose Vernon as their scapegoat, despite him being completely innocent. For a while, Vernon goes in and out of police custody for questioning, but even while at home he is never left alone. Vernon's mom is the kind of woman that either isn't too bright or simply chooses to ignore what is occurring and instead goes on living like nothing is happening. While at home, a reporter known as Lally tries to befriend Vernon and convince him to tell the story to the public through him. Lally says that he knows Vernon is innocent and he could help the situation by letting the public know what was going on. After a while without much happening, Lally moves in with Vernon's mom and him after making Vernon's mom think she was in love with him. As soon as he is in, he immediately starts being a complete jerk towards Vernon and starts plotting to use Vernon as a scapegoat and get a huge story out of it. After a period of time where this continues and Vernon keeps getting questioned by the police and judge, Vernon is made to see a psychiatrist to be evaluated. When he gets there, the doctor turns out to be some sort of molester, and before anything happens, Vernon leaves the office and refuses to go back. After that, Lally keeps making things worse for Vernon, and it becomes clear that nobody is believing him, so Vernon decides he needs to leave town. While he is going, Lally sees him and Vernon punches Lally in the face and leaves while he is down. After he is gone, Lally calls the sheriff and when he gets there Lally kills him and makes it look like Vernon did it. Vernon leaves town towards Houston to try and meet up with Taylor Furgeson, a girl he has had a crush on since he met her when she was a senior and he saw her at a party. As soon as Vernon meets up with her at a mall, they get to talking and it seems like Taylor kind of likes him. However, Taylor's aunt meets up with them, and Vernon recognizes her as one of his mom's best friends, so he runs off. A day or so later Vernon ends up in Mexico after crossing the border to try and escape. He starts hitchhiking, and gets picked up by a Mexican trucker who befriends him. The trip they go on leads to stopping at bars and getting drunk until they pass out, and eventually coming to the truckers home in a tourist city on the coast, where Vernon is welcomed to stay for a while. Vernon starts talking to Taylor on the phone, and she wants to send him money to help him out. While watching the news, Vernon's picture is always up and new news that he had apparently been witnessed in the past week or so committing around thirty murders all around the state of Texas, which obviously never happened. On the day he was expecting the money to come, instead Taylor showed up herself. They go to a hotel, and start doing stuff when Taylor keeps asking Vernon to tell her how he killed all those people as if she thought it was cool, and finally to get her to stop and just do stuff with him he says that he did it. Turns out that Taylor had a microphone and Lally had convinced her that she had a future in media and that if she did this for him he would help her. So then the police came and brought Vernon to jail back in Texas while Lally looked like a hero. After being in jail for a while, Vernon starts to mature and become more responsible. Then, after his trial, Vernon is tried innocent of all the random deaths across Texas, but guilty for the sixteen at his school, and he is given the death penalty. On death row, another convict who everybody in the jail, including the guards respect talks to Vernon about life and all sorts of things, and how if Vernon wanted to fix things, the way to get what you want in life is to give people what they want in order to get what you want. Meanwhile, Lally has come up with this crazy scheme to have internet showings of the prisoners and have the public vote on which one on death row will go first, and then show the death and all this random crazy stuff, which would all make lots of money because criminals and television make money, and the money would help pay for the government to keep the prisoners. Vernon is thinking about what he learned from LaSalle, the other convict, and starts thinking about everyone he knows and what they want the most. He comes up with everything, even for people he hates like Lally, and sends them all letters helping them out with what they want. After they all receive their letters, Vernon is chosen to go next to die. While he is being injected, Vernon has an out of body experience where he sees all of those people getting what they want, and then turning out in Vernon's favor. He told Lally where another weapon was, so Lally went to get it, and next to it was a bottle of ginseng extract that Vernon had taken from Lally to hide LSD in. Lally unsuspectingly drinks it and starts walking around the town all messed up going crazy on acid with a gun that now has his fingerprints all over it. The deputy sheriff knew from Vernon's letter that something was going to happen that would help her career and she went patrolling and saw all of this. Taylor knew that something was going to happen that would make her a huge reporter if she got the story, so when they all showed up, Lally freaked out and shot at Taylor and then the deputy shot him. Meanwhile, Vernon's lawyer got a letter saying where evidence that Vernon was gone at the time that Jesus was doing the shooting, and had called the people in charge of his execution. Then Vernon woke up in the hospital, alive, to find out his pardon had come through, and Vernon was free to go.

Godless Meaning/Connection

After reading this book and pondering the message it is sending, I began to think about how religion affects people's lives and how it can be argued that it is good and bad. As a sixteen year old high school male, I personally don't agree with how religion is portrayed and dealt with in modern times. I often question not only my own "faith" but others' as well and even established religion as a whole, so I think that if Pete Hautman could choose someone to read his book and understand the message, I think that I would be a pretty good candidate. For me, the point is not whether I believe in God and am devoutly religious or not, but instead how religion is viewed and treated in the world today. All around the world, but especially in a place like Edina, where the vast majority of people are Christians of some form, religion is something that if you don't have, you are in a way labeled as an outcast. To me it seems like anyone who believes in a religion thinks that their religion is the "right" one, and that others are flawed and insubstantial. I mean sure, obviously people will believe their own religion is correct, but at the same time all it really accomplishes is dividing people, groups, countries, and races. If you look at the basis of all the worlds' most practiced religions, it is easy to see that nearly all of them are basically about the same things. Sure, every one has its unique characteristics, but in the end they all convey the message of faith towards a god or higher power to achieve happiness and be saved in life and afterlife. What I am trying to get at is that though religion may be something nice to have in life, you shouldn't let it overwhelm and control your beliefs and thoughts; everyone should keep an open mind to all sorts of ideas and opinions, and even if you don't believe them yourself, at least accept them and understand that many people feel as strongly about those beliefs, or even lack of them, as you do about your own.




...post-script: I understand this post can be considered extremely controversial. In fact, after just reading this you may be a little upset and feel attacked in some way. If that is the case, good. I can handle having people mad at my thoughts, because I know that at least it got you thinking...

Godless Message

After reading Godless, numerous messages came to mind. I felt that the book was trying to talk to people who were questioning their faith, especially teenagers who didn't necessarily agree with the same religion as their parents, or any religion at all. What Pete Hautman was trying to convey was not that everyone should be Catholic, or even believe in Christianity, but that in order to have the most full, meaningful life, one should have pure faith in something. With this book, he is not celebrating or putting down established religion, but trying to provoke exploration of faith and unique ideas, and questioning both of those until you come to strengthening them.

Godless Summary

For one of my books, I chose Godless, by Pete Hautman. Jason Bock, a large but generally friendly teenager, is trying to figure out what to do with his summer. His parents, especially his dad, are very Catholic, but Jason himself thinks of the Catholic religion as a waste of time and doesn't believe in any of it at all. One day while he is walking around with his shy, strange but very smart friend Shin, they run into Henry Stagg. Henry is the kind of kid that you see as unpredictably crazy, and even though he isn't big or strong, you can easily be afraid of him. One thing leads to another and Jason finds himself on his back after being punched in the face, staring up at the town water tower. He has a mini epiphany, thinking about how without water, life does not continue, and how in a way water is god over humans. And what controls the water? Water towers. Jason and Shin decide to start their own religion worshiping water towers. As quickly as it started, the religion they called Chutengodianism began to grow with both members and importance to them. Dan, the preacher's son, joins, as well as Magda Price, a girl who Jason secretly has a crush on, and even Henry Stagg. They all appoint each other mock titles, such as "Chief Kahuna," and "High Priestess." Though they pretend to take it seriously, they all know that water towers are not gods and the whole thing is kind of a joke. Shin, however, starts getting creepily into the whole idea of the religion, writing pages and pages of their new bible, obsessing over how important it is, and even seriously claiming that when he talks about it and writes about it, the water tower is speaking through him. One night, all the members sneak out and meet up at the water tower to have a "midnight mass," by climbing the water tower and having the meeting on top of "the godhead." All of them make it up fine, except Shin, who was scared of heights. While they were already up waiting for Shin, he freaked out and went home instead. When they were on top of the tower, unpredictable Henry pulled out a hacksaw and broke off the lock to get inside of the water tower. All of them end up swimming inside of the water tower, but when they come back out, things start to go wrong. Because of the combination of the smooth metal of the the tank and his wet body, Henry slips and falls towards the edge of the tank. They try to pull him back up, but he falls. Luckily, instead of falling to his death, Henry lands on the catwalk around thirty feet below, but still breaks his leg severely. As they rush down to help him, the police show up and they all get taken away. After the incident, the members all seem to go their separate ways. While Magda and Henry seem to start having a thing, Jason sits at home, grounded and jealous, Shin is constantly working on the new bible and trying to figure out how he can get to the top of the godhead, and Tom is never even heard from. After a while of this, Jason is laying in bed one night looking at the water tower out his window when it a lightning storm brews up. With each flash of lightning, he can see the silhouette of a person on top of the tower. Realizing it had to be Shin, Jason sneaks out to try and save him. Once he gets up the tower, Jason can't convince Shin to come down, and instead, they go inside the tower once again because if they are in the water the lightning will not hit them, instead just running down the exterior metal. After around three hours of waiting for the storm to die, Shin still won't leave, so Jason has no choice but to leave and call the police and fire department to get Shin down. Eventually things calm down again and slowly get back to normal, but Jason learns a valuable lesson. While sitting in the hospital because Henry had hit him across the head with his crutch after Henry angrily provoked him, Jason realizes that whether it is Catholicism, Chutengodianism, or anything at all, faith is something that is valuable to have in life. In the end, he talks about how he envies those who truly believe in something, and how he wants to believe in something, anything as long as he truly believes it.