Journal Three- Tammy Guo

My active reading is going pretty good, I enjoy annotating while I read since it helps me remember what occurred in the chapters. I started annotating in high school and it was really useful. Highlighting favorite passages and important events makes it easier to look back when we are discussing in class. The margin notes let’s me remember what I was thinking when I read the passage and also a short summary of what occurred. Also boxing words I didn’t know in the book helps with expanding my vocabulary and I could use them in my future writing. The thing I might struggle with is finding all the figurative language in the book since I have forgotten most of the terms for them and the definition. I can find similes,  metaphors, repetition, sentence length, and personification just fine but others I have trouble with.

The strengths and weaknesses of each book so far in The House On Mango Street is that the strength all the similes, metaphors and other figurative languages she uses in the book. She does a really good job on explaining and presenting  characters in the book. Another strength is the word choices she uses enriches her thoughts and you can really see the vivid imagery. Her writing in each chapter has their on specific title and she focuses on it and explains and tells a story about it.  I didn’t see many weaknesses in this book, I am really enjoying it but a weakness in the book is that the chapters don’t follow along one after another. In the book a long way gone by Ishmael beach the strengths in the book is showing the real horrors of the war through word choice, imagery and other figurative languages. Everyone in the story goes through a lot of trauma and beah explains his emotions really well. There weren’t many weaknesses in this book but a weakness is that it might not be a book for everyone since of all the vivid imagery. The content might be a little mature for younger audiences since it talks about blood and dead bodies everywhere and how the rebels label people after their done torturing them. I personally prefer the book The House on Mango Street because I enjoy the different stories that in each chapter and to me it's a fun read. This book is not gruesome and has a lighter feel to it.

A theme I noticed in chapters four, five, six, and seven in a long way gone by beah is survival. It’s important because in war time people are separated from their family and are really far away from their home town. Their having trouble to find food and to survive and keep going to find a way to survive. They went against their morals and perform actions they never they thought they would like stealing food, “One evening we actually chased a little boy who was eating two boiled ears of corn by himself. He was about five years old... we rushed to the boy at the same time, and before he knew what was happening, we had taken the corn from him(beah 30).” They have gone so far that they went and stole food from a child. This is unspeakable, but their need for food was so bad that they had to take food from a child.  Also, in times of war adults and children are traumatized from all the gruesome sights and they can never unseen what they have seen. This is especially traumatizing for the children and hard for them to process everything that has occurred, they have lost their innocence. Survival for the kids is hard since they don’t have the capability to keep going like the adults and having to endure all of this is appalling.