Truth about Quotations (It’s Hard on Everyone)

Finally someone just came up and said it. In this case a German writer named Durs Gunbien uncovered the truth about quotations and their sneaky ways of tangling themselves into our words and slowly feasting on our credibility and potential.  Believe me as I confess that the easiest way for me to express my deepest most opinioned thoughts is by quoting Gunbein and his penetrating metaphors, but he couldn’t be more correct about the abusiveness of quotes in texts. Every time I’m writing a paper I can’t help but realize that there is no better way of proving my argument than by writing word by word what someone with a greater authority on the subject has to say. When I look back and read some of my analytical essays that are overflown with quotations, it makes me sound weak and intimidated. Yeah that might sound a little too much but isn’t that what quoting is? I mean if there’s this really important part in a speech well duh fire away and quote” like their aint no tomorrow,” but if you get to a point where you can’t say it better than he/she then change the subject. God I hope I’m quoting correctly it would be awkward if I wasn’t.

Unicorns and Butterflies

I did not know where it was either!

Yesterday we went to the EVL to check out memoirs of all different types of scenarios. I found one that immediately caught my eye called When a Crocodile Eats the Sun. I went on and did a little close reading on the title and figured well crocodiles= Africa and eating the sun probably means tragedy struck so that might be interesting. Ok well I didn’t really get the whole Africa thing until I read the subtitle that said Memoir on Africa, but still I managed to guess there was going to be a lot of blood. I came back home to download it from my iPad and found an even cooler memoir about Africa as well. It was called Rainbow’s End by Lauren St. John and the title is really similar if you analyze it correctly (finally learned how to spell analyze yey me). The way both Authors decided to use rainbows and crocodiles that can be seen as creations of the natural world, and suddenly turn them around drastically is pretty original. The crocodile representing Africa swallows hope and desire while the end of the rainbow where one might expect to find a pot of gold becomes a puddle of blood. The reason I chose this memoir wasn’t based 100% on its title, but rather the gruesome gory details of a country shredded to pieces by violence in the first three pages. It was exactly what I was looking for, something harsh on the readers heart not some boring self-centered autobiography. This book had spice right from the beginning and I was not disappointed.

The Rhodesian conflict between the Zimbabwean African National Liberation Army and the People’s Revolutionary Army came to a point where every night ambushes and land mines were to be expected. I can’t believe I enjoy reading such massacres while Camille and Lisa have to watch their family being shot one by one so close that their blood splattered on their faces. The narrator (which has not yet fully introduced herself and is beginning to get on my last nerve) doesn’t open up as much as Brent Runyon. I know the comparison is not the best I mean he went over the top and really let us in if you know what I mean. This narrator seems like she’s just too busy taking care of everyone else to let us in to her deepest thoughts. I hope she will eventually because this memoir is full of childhood memories meaning their will be plenty of flashbacks and scar wounds left untreated.

Beastly

“She says they want to cover my body with dead people skin and skin from pigs while I wait for the Boston skin. I don’t want dead people on me.” Would anyone? What this kid has had to go through is more than just traumatic; it will scar him for life, literally. It reminds me on the memoir we read form Walker about beauty, the way she had a hideous scar on her eye from an accident and felt ashamed and unwelcome. She worried about her image, she wasn’t what she would consider pretty, and finally she doubted anyone would ever have a reason to love her. Brent is going through the same process having to watch his skinny rotten body on a hospital bed every morning. We’ve always know his characteristic way of being erotic and well kind of inappropriate, so it’s no surprise when his friend Alida comes to visit and all he can think about is if he’s going to get laid, “Were going to have dinner and watch a movie, but I don’t think we’re going to have sex because I don’t think I’m up for it” (61). This is how it starts, just a lame excuse that he’s not up for it, but sadly that is not the reason. He feels so ugly and beastly that he has sort of already accepted the fact he will stay forever alone, yet he has this feeling that just wants him to be loved again “It’s too bad that no one will ever want to have sex with me, but I don’t really care. I hope Craig can love me again” (40). How can anybody love him after an accident like that? This is not my thought it’s probably what’s going through Runyon’s mind everyday he lays there,” Mom, no one’s ever going to love me, are they?”(70).

 I think one of the hardest parts Brent had to go through were the visits from his friends and family. As soon as they saw him they were in shock, and I won’t mark them as greedy ungrateful people. Their just scared and a little disturbed because let’s face it it’s not a pretty sight to walk in to. All Brent can focus on is on their judgmental faces, “ He’s looking at me , down at my skinny legs all wrapped in bandages and then up to my stomach and chest, but he doesn’t look at my face”(56). Also I can’t imagine the pain he was reliving when his little cousin Amara came to visit him. He tried so hard to please her by painting his bandages and being all sweet and caring, but she won’t even make eye contact with him. She four years old and nobody expects anything from her, so she doesn’t have to play the role of the concerned cousin. He is freaked out and not afraid to show it.

Fifty Shades of Brent

This memoir has been intense in every way possible; somehow the gore and Brent’s mixed feelings make it rather fascinating for me. Some parts are even uncomfortable and awkward! The way he talked about his sexual needs and pleasures was a whole new level of honesty that I wasn’t prepared for.  I mean just how far is he going to let the reader in? If it’s all a lie he’s not hiding much!

He did give us a heads up at the beginning of the book when the typical teenage boy comments on a girls junk and big boobs, “I swear man did you see Catherine’s tits in that sweater?” I can take that its normal I hear it every day at my school( a little too much sometimes), but then sh#$t gets real, “ And one time I noticed a hole in the crotch of her pants and tried to put my finger in it, but she said it tickled too much.” I’m pretty sure that takes everybody by surprise and it reveals Runyon’s liberal style in his writing. Some can argue what he is saying is pretty controversial, almost like he’s exposing too much, but isn’t that what a memoir is all about? Once again he is confessing just like in Half a Life and Salvation, still it makes you think: If the writers are aware of what they want to reveal and what they prefer to hold back, what in god’s name is Runyon holding back. “When she rubs the top of my thigh, her hand goes in between my kegs and rubs the inside of my leg. God that feels good. Jesus. God I’m getting a giant boner”. WOW. That is all I can say about this. It reminds me of the book Fifty Shades of Grey that is flying off the bookshelves. Women are going crazy over this erotic novel, and honestly I even gave it a try (before knowing what I was about to face). The first few pages seemed interesting, but then …..Oh my… that is weird….Jesus…what the fudge!!? It was a little too much for me but if it’s making people happy then I don’t see a problem with it.

My Mom's copy.....What do those bookmarks represent?

Medicinal Vocabulary

I was already getting on my last nerve while reading The Burn Journals. As I have previously stated in my blogs, it’s basically a 14 year old boy speaking meaning his level of vocabulary isn’t exactly college material. I’m sure Runyon knows fifty times more than I do in language, but not when he was in middle school. This is why most of the terms were really difficult to find and most of them were medications and weird hospital environment words.

 Obviously since the kid is in the hospital 24/7 most of them were really complicated medical terms. Still, Xeroform started appearing a little more than I expected and there was just a point where I needed to find out what it was and how it helped his burns.  In that whole sentence I understood two things; the medication is a type of powder used as an anti-inflammatory.

Xeroform: used externally in powders and salves for the treatment of intertrigoes and of ulcers and inflammations of the mucosa. It is a component of Vishnevskii’s ointment and the hemorrhoid suppositories Anuzol.

Stethoscope: instrument that enables the physician to hear the sounds made by the heart, the lungs, and various other organs.

 

Furnace: enclosed space for the burning of fuel. 

Corduroy:  a cut filling-pile fabric with lengthwise ridges, or wales, that may vary from fine (pinwale) to wide.

Hypertrophic: enlargement of a tissue or organ of the body resulting from an increase in the size of its cells.

Sharks and Fire

While reading the Burn Journals I couldn’t help but notice the author’s unique styling of writing in his memoir compared to other books I have read. The texts simplicity and unsophisticated style took me by surprise, so much that I realized if I didn’t know the author I could easily label it as a 5^th grade paper written out of mere imagination, yet I believe this is what makes it so special. The way Runyon is able to look back and remember every detail of the accident and still writes as if he were writing in that moment, being 14 and in middle school is quite impressive. It reminded me of Bethany Hamilton’s autobiography Soul Surfer, written after a shark bit off her arm while surfing in the beaches of Hawaii. Clearly the plot is similar; Brent’s memoir is mainly focused in the hospital as he relives his surgeries, his nurses, and his visitors. The same way Bethany recalls some of the same events while she was recovering both physically and emotionally from losing one of her limbs.

It’s pretty hard to explain in words what I mean so I will show you two paragraphs of each book while both Bethany and Brent are in the hospital in their own scenarios.

                        Soul Surfer

“So they hooked me up to lots of machines- I’m not sure what they were all for, but I know they were giving me fluids and taking lots of X-rays and blood levels. Later I would learn that I had lost nearly half of my blood volume.”

-Bethany Hamilton Pg. 96

                      The Burn Journals

“Everybody is worried because of my temperature is so high, but forty doesn’t seem very high to me, or maybe it is because it’s not in Celsius or it is Celsius, I’m not sure which.”

-Brent Runyon Pg.36

These two paragraphs are a perfect example of how the writing is expressed din both books. My point is that they were both 13, 14 years old when tragedy struck and even though they published the books years after the actual events they still sound like innocent kids living through a nightmare. They don’t understand very well what’s going on and they don’t have the right words to express the pain of being burned alive or the shock of having a Tiger Shark bite off your arm from the shoulder. They were very scared and confused, but the writing makes you believe you are in the present, so basically it becomes they are scared and confused. It’s what gives each text originality and essence in every word, it may seem simple but the importance of their descriptions is valuable for the reader to understand them.