This Is How You Lose Her

Like most of the literature we've read for AP English this year, I probably missed a whole lot of English rhetoric, symbols, and other nonsense in my independent reading book. I seem to be really good at being completely wrong about whether or not something is significant. But regardless of all of that, I really enjoyed my first book on parental love.

My book, This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz, was about all kinds of love. Essentially it's a group of stories told by a young Dominican man named Yunior revolving around relationships, love, family, marriages, affairs, and babies. In two hundred short pages, he talks about his many broken relationships, his brother's struggle with cancer, and his endless battle to get over "the ex" who changed him.

A lot of it was very interesting, but what I was trying to focus on was the parent/child relationships. What the book mostly explored was the way parents felt about their children.
Yunior's best friend Elvis has a love child, a son, in the Dominican Republic and a little girl with his wife in America. Elvis is so excited that he has a son that he refuses to see that the child isn't his until Yunior realizes it. Elvis is heartbroken, because he says that while he was fighting in the war, all he wanted was the chance to live so he could have a son.
In another subplot, a law student at Harvard leaves her boyfriend and comes to live with Yunior, claiming that she's pregnant and it's his child. She lives with him throughout her pregnancy, then in the delivery room abruptly shouts that it isn't his baby and never speaks to him again.
Yunior's relationship with his parents is also extremely complex. He loves his mother and wants the best for her, but his brother Rafa treats her horribly, stealing from her and blatantly being rude and disrespectful to her. He doesn't understand why she lets Rafa do this, but I think it's just a way of showing the great love parents have for their children.
What I have concluded from this book is that a parent's love for their child goes beyond logical thought and causes irrational actions. All the parents in the book did things that make absolutely no sense, either in an attempt to protect their children or to give them a better life.

The Road final reflections

We covered a lot of this in today's discussion, but I wanted to reflect a little bit more on The Road.

Supposedly it's one of the greatest pieces of modern literature to come out in awhile, and I kept asking myself while reading it: Why? It's alright, pretty easy to read, there's a lot of rhetorical strategy, but what makes it great?

After reading the entire book, I think what makes The Road good literary fiction is the ambiguity of it. For example, we discussed for a short time how limited and abstract the discussion about religion was. Everything he said was under the surface and easy to look over. It's possible to read the book and not notice that there is a message about religion at all. At the same time, someone else reading the book could draw a lot of conclusions about the boy, Ely, and what the woman says at the end. It could really speak to someone, because it hints at religion but lets the reader draw their own conclusion.

Also, the ambiguity of the situation makes it seem even more real in a sense. McCarthy doesn't specify what happened to the world, anything specific about the setting, or even the names of the two main characters. The no-name strategy has been used a lot, usually to make the characters seem more accesible, like it could be anyone. However, McCarthy takes this to a whole new level by not really giving any information about them at all. To some readers, particularly the English majors and book critics that actually liked this book, this probably seems like great strategy and makes the book even better.

So, I can see where all the people who praise The Road are coming from. And I definitely see why it would be read in an English class. But even after reading the whole book, I wouldn't recommend it to my friends unless they really wanted to be depressed.

Why I love English, but hate poetry

So, between the AP practice tests and The Road poetry we did in class, I learned exactly one thing in English this week: I don't know anything about poetry.

I usually like English, and I love reading and grammar and books, so it's taken me a long time to figure out what my issue with poetry is. What I finally decided is that I'm too literal for it. I hate people who go in a super roundabout way of saying something.

Poets, especially the ones we read in English class, just use too much figurative language for me. Whenever I read it it just seems like they're vomiting up imagery and rhetorical strategies to try to come up with something deep. Like, sometimes it isn't even deep and they just sound like they're trying too hard.

I know this is just one person's opinion, and I'd just like to say that I really liked the poems we did in class! I know she'll never read this, but Alexis Hensley's was crazy awesome. They were definitely cool, but I know for sure that poetry will never be my thing. I'm happy to appreciate it and other people can read it all they want, but poetry and I will never end up friends.

The Road

So, for our in-class discussion about The Road we were supposed to talk about:
-a scene that stood out a lot to us
-an open-ended question about the book
-our impression of the book so far.

The scene that I chose was from a flashback, in a discussion the man has with his wife before she leaves.
"You say you would die for us but what good is that? I'd take him with me if it werent for you. You know I would. It's the right thing to do.
You're talking crazy.
No, I'm speaking the truth. Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They'll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you wont face it. You'd rather wait for it to happen. But I cant. I cant."

Their discussion goes on for a few pages, but basically the man believes that it is better for them to survive and live in these bad conditions for their son, while the woman believes they should just all give up. Eventually she leaves and kills herself, and years later the man and his son have survived.

Now, my open-ended question was: Who do you think is right?

It's not an easy decision. But in my opinion, when there is no chance of your life improving from the hell it is, it may be best to let it come to an end. If you can be happy or if the struggles you're going through are temporary, then you should definitely keep trying and fighting. But in this situation, I'm going to have to side with the woman. The world is ending, people are cannibals and the environment is shutting down. The man and his son are both starving and in constant danger. There is no happy ending in store for this book, unless something crazy drastic happens. But that's just my opinion.

What do you all think?