Oh yeah!! i just noticed today that everyone should be done with the book by now!! woot woot =] im happy mostly because i had finished the book during my spring break and it was hard to tell what i should and shouldn't say in my blogs or class discussions. now that everyone is done i don't think i remember half the things i wanted to discuss about. Which leads me to think that i shouldnt read a head anymore. one i thing i think i remember thinking was: Wow. yup that one word basically describes the whole book for me there. mostly because they leave us at a freakin cliff hanger! also we never get to meet this luke she was so tragically turn from or the fate of him. It also doesn't even tell us if she survived to live in Canada or etc. But i must say that im happy to hear that nick isnt a bad guy. It did take me a while to figure that out though... and i don't think i would have figured it out anyway because i was sooo close to not reading the historical notes because i thought they were just the thoughts of the author had on creating the book. glad i read it though.. it showed me at least one of the answers to my questions: that this crazy society didnt stay long and was eventually turned back to how i call it normal life for me. =]

i thought that it was very interesting to read about page 201. it was in chapter 31 and was describing to us about the emigration of Jewish people. I don't know about why now a days, i think about the Holocaust a lot but i do, and i thought it was very ironic that the author wrote that. Because during world war two they were also a special case for them because of their religion. Here we see that Jewish people are also given a special treatment. Good or bad i have not figured it out yet. Mainly i have a hard time going between the two because they are either asked to chose between switching their religion or emigrating to another country. It says that people are hanged on the wall not just because they are Jewish but because they hide it.. which implies that they have to hide that they are Jewish but then again it says that people try to pretend to be Jewish in order to get out of the utopia. (i use the word utopia very loosely.) So if u were a true believer or their culture then i would say that the Jewish religion was a bad thing but if you hated the culture you would rather be Jewish and be able to move away from all the craziness. so depending on the type of narrator in the person speaking they would decided if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

Or course after writing a long paragraph like that i just don't know why i wrote it all on that. i mean i think i like interpretation a sentence but to connect back into the story would be... like asking myself the question of: WHY DID SHE PUT THIS INFORMATION IN THIS CHAPTER.. ANY IDEAS?

now as we get closer to finding out the truth in her life before the present setting. it is very interesting to see that she really did come from a world that wasn't what she is living into. like she was born in a different century with different traditions and rules. I think that the way you grow up into a life is what sets your standards. It must be really hard for that generation. i mean they are in the middle of the transition from the old (bad) ways from the new ways. There are always going to be people that rebel against others when new ideas are spread. that's what makes humans to special and a variety. but then it could be a bad thing when coming to terms of like example who has the better religion. the older people would have always lived in a different type and its hard for them to just forget they ever lived a different way. and when times go on, of course there are gonna be more children being born. and when that happens they would have never had any other different way of living which makes it easier for them to just not rebel. so in reading a part of where she tried to escape and preserve her way of living was really heartbreaking for me. =T

i don't know if the author should trust nick. i mean he could be one of those spy people! She could die or disappear or end up as one of those people on the wall. I think that is a very cruel thing to do! to murder someone and then to put it on display like it was some sort of side show and then people passing by should think that it is a ordinary thing to see. that reminds me of Hitler! or well Mussolini. we were learning about him in US today. Today was about how Hitler died and he killed himself because he was scared of what would happen to him or his body anyway. Mussolini's body was shot, hung upside down in the downtown and then let people piss and spit on it.. and rot... which is what i was imagining when i was reading it tonight. And in the end i don't think she should trust nick like that no matter how much he might seem like a good guy. he could be someone under cover that is trying to expose her as doing something bad so that he can turn her in!

But on the other hand she sounds basically sex starved.. not that i myself would know anything about that but i have heard that it can be a very fierce desire.... and she makes him sound very hot =P

i think right now its pretty early in the morning, but i wanted to make sure i got all my thoughts down about "handmaid's tale" before i forgot everything. i finished reading the first 99 pages yesterday night, around 12, and i wanted to go to sleep -___-. So I'm writing it now, right after i wake up. =]

From the very beginning i thought that i would hate this book, mostly because it seemed like it was only going to talk about women losing their rights. I was right in a way but i think that the fact that i hated it made it so much more interesting. Like i couldn't put the book down until i knew what was going to happen. i thought the chapters ended in cliff hangers a lot so i didn't stop until i got to the end of chapter 17. Overall, it was so heartbreaking to read her story about trying to escape and then her constant feelings of missing Luke. i would hate to be a situation like that and when you read further and further into the book the laws become more real and more constricting. Also, the feelings of her being a person and having a mind to rebel becomes more visible. i mean its not a whole act of rebellion like trying to escape but more like the little things. Her doing those things made me feel like she was trying to keep her own sanity and believed that she was not going to die living like this, that there was a way out and she would do her own little things now and then to rebel. rebelling made it seem like it was also a way to remind her that her life was how SHE control it and not everything was planned out for her. and i think that those little rebellious acts made it more challenging not to read ahead.

When it changed

First off, i would like to say that (coming from a female point of side) why do men feel more superior to us? We are different in some aspects like emotions and physical body parts but we are still apart of the same species. The stories brings up the male characters as aliens and the cause to inferior emotions. like being away from the opposite gender for a long while, and still surviving, can make you feel inferior if some random aliens comes saying that they are here to save you from yourself basically. they looked like they were slowly beginning to forget about ever having another gender. Like the feelings that a myth told to you when you were a child all of a sudden came true and that your life was going to change forever. I thought that the author was trying to show a story about what would happen if all the male gender on earth died out in a plague which was a mildly interesting situation.

it got me thinking when i read the line saying "where i come from, the women don't dress so plainly.", it made me thinking about society as it is now. the reasons why women like to dress so "non-plain". Do we do it just because there are another gender living with us and we are trying to attract them. And we WANT to attract them because they are so foreign to us?

The end.

Wow we finished the book! and it didn't take that long too! well I'm really surprised i actually really did enjoy this book. I'm still a little confused about why Le Guin would chose a title for this story. i mean yes there is the and it gives you a idea of where it came from, but i mean why that line? why only left side and it having to be darkness? Is it portraying genry or estraven? is it talking about how that world is the yin to our yang? The possibilities are endless, and I'm not sure, in my group today, we ever came up with a solid answer.

I think the last chapter was a good ending. we got to finally see what our minds were always wondering about, or well what my mind was wondering about. i always wanted to know if estraven had a special relationship with his brother. And that was the reason why he had to be exiled from his homeland and his brother died. Its a good parallel to chapter 2. it talked about the two brothers and how they had incest and then a child. So i guess chapter two was a foreshadow or was there to tell us the truth. i really was happy though when i found out estraven had a son with his brother though. that is because there was like a little part left of him after he died. his son (not from Ashe) seemed mad at estraven for begin exiled from the land and was branded a trator. but i thought it was cute that he forgave estraven right after genry told him that argaven was going to take back the traitor title on estraven. Also right after he asked about the other worlds and estraven which means he must have been curious about his father and is like estraven in a way that he also found other worlds interesting.

all in all it is always sad to read to the end of a book but at least it didn't end in a cliffhanger cause that would be a bust. =]

one paragraph homework.

When Ms. Aaland told us to write a story in ten minuets i was more worried about finishing a interesting story then paying attention to pronoun use. But i think the short amount of time was to force us into using the first gender that pops in our head for our characters. I noticed that i was very stereotypical. i found that interesting because I'm always the one to point out sexism or stereotyping mainly because its just there. I believe that women and men should be equal because whatever academic achievement there is, a women can always match a mans. After writing my story though, i found myself giving the more challenging and higher paying jobs to a male roll. It was not intentional but was there either way. Even though our generation is more equal, the work world shows us more men having higher jobs, so that effected my mind set. The data we collected in class and the years before gave us a very clear picture of how men still dominated. Mainly, this activity made me more aware of my pronoun use.

The ever to none creative Chapter 16,17

Just like the title says. i found chapter 16 to be the most boring. Or well the most uneventful. Is it because it was from estravens point of view or there was just lots of walking to be done and nothing exciting to write in between?

Okay well i can't say that the whole chapter was boring because one paragraph did catch my attention. it was on page 234 and top of page 235. It was the part that genry was trying to explain to estraven what the definition of a women was. at first i was thinking that he would say physical body differences and then he started going on about jobs and emotions. i found myself rejecting every idea he gave out because it sounded to stereotypical and sexist. But then i started thinking to myself what the my real definition of a male or female was and found out that it was also hard for me to explain too. We were also talking about this question in class for a little while, and i think we also came to a agreement. It was decided that we can't put a general definition on the emotion or characteristics of genders. But we can put one on the physical body structure of a person to determine if they are female or male. okie that sounded weird coming from me... stream of consciousness. =]

i doubt there will ever be a formal definition for a gender any time soon.

Who knew he had it in him?

First off, i want to give estraven a big thumbs up! who knew that he cared enough to break into a prison, steal, lie, and fraud as several people just to save the envoy. Dame he is one smart guy. Or maybe those guards either didn't care or were really stupid.. Anyway after this chapter everything seems to fit more. And its easier to not suspect estraven of being up to no good. Today in class we were talking about chapter 13 and how genry got captured and drugged in the prison. While we were discussing it, some of the people in the group and either said they read the chapter 14 by mistake or read a head. i remember them telling us that tonight's chapter was going to be the climax of the story. After reading it, i agree with them.

One of the best parts in the story to me was on page 198-199 when estraven said: "yet you are. it is strange. i am the only man in all of gethen that has trusted you entirely, and i am the only man in gethen that you have refused to trust." It almost makes me think that estraven is hurt by the fact that when he can finally trust someone, he is not trusted back. It also seemed that estraven had always been interested in joining with the eukemen to the point that when he said nativism toward a country is hatred toward another country is a good point. you can't put a boundary on land and say that you hate it, cuz land really doesn't have a boundary. And in having Orgota establish a connection with the eukemen first then karhide would most likely follow. He seems to jsut want to advance the people that live on the world.

A man can do WHAT?! 0_o

second blog! well, tonight i read the chapters eight and nine. i liked both chapters, but i guess this first paragraph will go to chapter eight. first off i want to say that im still very confused whenever i hear the words "him". It is okie when the story is talking about common actions but when they put the word him in sentences with giving birth... its weird. i read the sentence during the beginning of the story when the villagers were talking about how the king was to old to be giving birth. But to me, i was like Genry, i was thinking that it is was more weird to be thinking that the king was giving birth. usually when i hear the word king i think male and on a place i like to call earth, males do not give birth. Other then that weird confusion in my head, i also like how genry describes Orgora. Its sound like a place i would more likely go to live. The way genry describes orgota makes Karhide sound more stuffy, less colorful and elegant. which sorta sounds boring to me.

Chapter nine was another short story back into the past of the history of the world. at first when i the name estraven i was thinking that it was going to be story about when he was younger and had kemmering with his brother. or i had guessed in another chapter that he had vowed his first and only true kemmering to his brother. But the story turned out to be how he and the whole city go that name which was itnreasting too.

Chapter 5

This weekend we read chapter five. As this is my first blog, i feel like talking about two parts of the story that really made me read, blink, reread and think over. The first was a little culture shock that he mentioned. like the fact that his landlady may not have given birth but has fathered four children makes me aware yet again that they are aliens to me. In my mind i sorta just have the mind set that they are just almost like humans,until they throw something like that at me again.

what i really like in the story was the last page. Faxe was talking about how "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. ignorance is the ground of thought. unproof is the ground of action." This really made me think about how our lives are really based on the unknown. Its what makes the world go around. If you think about it, if we knew everything that was to happen in our lives we wouldn't have a purpose. like for example, if we knew that we were gonna die in 5 days, we would only think of the remaining five days as one day closer to dying. where else if we didn't know, then we could live the rest of those days with less stress. If we knew everything then we wouldn't have to make new inventions or study or go to school. it makes me think life would be all together more boring if we knew everything. It also brings me back to the story of bead women. The two similar themes were: everyone wishes to know everything but what would happen if you knew everything?

Overall though, i like how the journey is described from a traveler's point of view. i like it because a traveler would be more aware of surroundings then compared to a person born in that country.