Coming to an End...
I had high hopes for this book when I first started and tried to stay positive when I got the the middle of the book but after I finished, I still don't enjoy it. The book had a positive ending which bothered me in a way. Knowing that it's a children's book made the "happy ending" more predictable. A question came up in one of our small pinwheel discussions that I thought was worth mentioning. Should all children's stories have happy endings? I think they all shouldn't because kids need to face the fact that happy endings only exist in stories and they need to be introduced to disappointment at an earlier age. As blunt as it sounds, it would be easier for kids to face reality through the use of enjoyable stories rather than being blindsided by real life events.
An important passage I marked down for "Language as a tool" was when Blabbermouth snapped at Haroun and said, "You shouldn't judge a book by it's cover," (Rushdie 114). Rushdie wrote this in a literal sense because Haroun assumed that the Pages could get in order based on page number yet neglected to think about the different volumes and chapters. Including this typical theme in a children's story is significant because it's a valued lesson in our culture.
Some of you may know that our class has been revolving around the central idea of "fictional stories are morally good lies". Now the definition of a lie requires a person to make a statement and believe that statement to be false and their intention is to make another person believe that statement is true. The key word in that sentence is intention. It's up to the reader (in this instance) to believe in the lie, as long as the author is trying to make them believe in the first place.
Concluding the Allusion presentation last week, it tied together many loose ends and made connections to Alice in Wonderland in particular. The mention of Alice in Wonderland made the story somewhat easier to comprehend because of the similarities between the characters and the plot. I will definitely carry this skill with me to future readings, attempting to connect them to other stories I have read.
Our discussion this week seemed to be a bit slower than the previous ones. I don't know if I can speak for everyone but personally, I was just burnt out reading/discussing this book. The ending occurred so fast that there was not much detail to go off of and we were left with discussing the correlation between fictional stories and lies for the 3rd time. This isn't a bad topic to discuss because it opens up everyone's views towards that statement and everyone either agrees or disagrees and often changes sides.
This leaves me with a question for you. If nobody knows of something, does it not exist?
