Sunday, October 28, 2007

The Sea Inside: post #3

The scene that impacted me the most was the one where the man look out at the ocean, dove in, hit his head on the sea floor, and then almost drowned. In the beginning the camera shot was a medium, eye level shot showing the ocean that the man was looking across. Then the camera became a high, medium shot as the man started diving into the water. Next the camera became a medium, eye level shot showing the man hitting his head on the ocean floor. Right after the man had started flouting to the surface the camera shot became a low angle look straight up and the mans face and then the mans face was pulled out of the water by two hands grabbing his neck. This shot is significant because this is showing how the main character of the movie became a quadriplegic and it is very sad to see him almost drowned in the water not being able to move. This shot means(and the man says) that he wishes that he would have died in that accident because he doesn't want to live without being able to move the rest of his body.

The Sea Inside: post #3

The Sea Inside: post #2

The differences between The Sea Inside and The Diving Bell and The Butterfly are that in the movie the man can talk and move his head. The man in the book couldn't even talk. The man in the book suffered a stroke while the man in the movie was at a beach and he jumped into shallow water and broke his neck. The man in the movie killed himself with a drug and the other man died of his condition right before his book came out
The similarities between The Sea Inside and The Diving Bell and The Butterfly are that in the movie and the book the victim is a man and they both are quadriplegics. Both of the men wrote a book about their experiences of being trapped in their own body. Both of the men ended up dying in the end. Both of the men daydreamed all day because they had nowhere they could go.
In my opinion I think that the similarities are more powerful because when people talk about cases in which things like that happen they can prove things if there are more cases then just one better then if there was only one.

The Sea Inside: post #1

I think that the movie was good and it was kind of sad because of the older man wanting to die. I thought that it would be very sad to see a family member not wanting to live the way that they are living and want to die. I think that the family should of supported his decision even though it would be hard for them to deal with but if the person can't live the way he is then it might be for the best. I don't think that it was a good idea to have anyone help him die because if it was me i wouldn't want any part of helping someone kill themselves.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Final week: post #1

in the last part of the book Jeannette moves out of Welch and moves in with Lori. Right away she got a job at a hamburger joint. The two girls lived in an apartment in the south Bronx. Then Jeannette got a job at a newspaper called the Phoenix. The two girls wanted Brian to come and live with them in New York City, so they sent him letters convincing him to move there and he agreed. The owner of the Phoenix told Jeannette that she should really consider going to college. So when she agreed to go to college she was accepted at Barnard and she couldn't pay half the rent at Lori's so she moved and lived with a family and to pay the rent she babysat their two small children. Then they called Maureen and convinced her to move here to. Next her mom and dad moved to New York City. First her parents moved into a boarding house a few blocks from Lori. Then they started living with Lori and Lori couldn't take it so she kicked them out. They then lived in their van. Their van got towed and the two became homeless. The kids wanted the parents to move back to West Virginia or Phoenix because it was to cold in the city. Jeannette's dad soon got Tuberculosis and was put in the hospital and he promised Jeannette that he wouldn't leave the hospital till he was better and then he found a job as a maintenance man at an upstate resort with room and board. He was sober for more then six weeks. Then mom made him quite that job and he drank some more. For Christmas Jeannette got her dad warm clothes but he wouldn't take them. Jeannette wanted to quit college and help her parents but her dad wouldn't let her. She needed $2,000 to stay in college and her dad gave her $950 that he won off of playing poker and he told her to finish college. Her parents were now living in an abandoned building in the lower east side. It reminded Jeannette of the house in Welch. Jeannette got a job writing a column in a magazine and she jumped at it. At that point she was living with her new husband Eric in an apartment on Park Avenue. Mom's brother died and she wanted to buy the land that he owned in Texas and it ended up being worth a million dollars and Jeannette refused to buy it. Maureen graduated from high school she had alot of boyfriends and wore lots of makeup. Six months later Maureen stabbed momwhen she told her she had to move out. She went to court and when she was let go she moved to California. Her dad died of a heart attack. Jeanette left Eric a year after her dad died. She married a man named John and they lived out in the country, Brian was devorced and had an eight year old daughter. Maureen never came to visit till later in life.

Final week: post #1

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Week 5: Part 2, Post #2

I Think that this book is very good and very sad. I think that Jeannette is a very strong person because if the average person would have gone through it would severely have damaged their mental attitudes toward life. When the author tells her story about how she needed to take care of her siblings and deal with her dad who would be drunk. I wondered how that would feel to not have parents in the aspect of them taking care of their children. I would never be able to get through my childhood if I didn't have my parents to help me. I am also really happy that herself and her sister finally got away from the abuse of where she is growing up. I think it is very sad that her parents think that it is OK for them to tell there kids to look after themselves while they go to school and go drinking when their kids are 13 and younger.(165) At the end of this book I think it would be really nice to see her and the rest of her siblings living well away from their parents because in their past they have seen a lot of bad thing and I hope that they live a normal adult life.

Week 5: Part1, Post #2

Jeannette's mom got a job at a school because a well fare man came to their house threatening that the kids will get taken away because they don't have enough money to support them. She started seventh grade and her friend Dinita was having a hard time at home, first she thought that she was pregnant and then she stabbed her mom's boyfriend to death. Jeannette at school was very embarrassed about her buckteeth so she made a pair of braces for herself. Jeannette started working for the school newspaper. She was the editor and fixed all the errors the other writers made. When Maureen turned seven her and the other siblings bought her a toy set of kitchen appliances and all Maureen wanted to talk about was California where she was born. Their mom would have total meltdowns and cry all day and Jeannette didn't feel sorry for her at all. That summer Lori went to camp and her mom went to Charleston to renew her teachers certificate. Jeannette had $200 to buy groceries and pay the bills while the two were away. Her dad came up to her and asked her for money and she couldn't say no to him. First he asked for $5 then $20 and she felt used by her dad because he knew she couldn't say no. Then her dad took her to a bar and this man danced with Jeannette and got drunk and her dad won $80 off of him playing pool. Then the man took Jeannette up to his apartment and he started kissing her but she told him about the scar on her waste and she went home. Her dad stole the money her mom got every month for the land she owns in Texas. She got a job at a Jewelry store to make up the money her dad had taken. She stole one of the watches but she didn't want her family to know what she did so she returned it. When school started and her mom and sister were back, on the first day of school her mom had a tantrum and refused to go to work. Jeannette talked back to her mom and her dad whipped her and she was extremely mad that her dad would do that to her. Next two people from New York City and her and Lori wanted to live there at that moment. So the two girl did all they could and started saving to go to the big city. Their dad destroyed all the thing that Lori did to get a scholorship and then he stole all the money they had saved up and they were both furious. Then a lady said that if one of the girls went to Iowa and babysat their kids she would pay them $200 and a bus ticket to New York City and Lori was gone. Jeannette worked with the paper and she also interviewed her dad's hero Chuck Yeager. After she finished 11th grade she left for New York to live with Lori.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Week 4: post #2

It starts of with Erma, their grandmother harassing Brian and the girls jumping in to help him and Lori ends up slapping Erma. Erma throws the kids in the basement while their parents are away. When their parents come back from Pheonix they find out that everything in their old house was stolen and they came back with nothing. Next, Erma banished the family from the house, so they started to buy this old house, with no indoor plumbing, up on top of the mountain in Welch where all the poor people lived. The family also had a huge rat that lived in their house and one night their little sister Maureen couldn't sleep because she thought that the rat was going to get her so they turned on the light and the rat was on top of her. So Brian and one of their dogs that followed him home, and they killed the rat and hung on the tree outside. They went to school and the town was a big fighting school everyone got in fights. Brian and Jeannette got in a fight with a boy named Ernie Gould because the family couldn't pay the garbage bill so they put there garbage in a hole the kids dug on the side of their house. Next, the winter came and the family didn't have enough money to afford so they used wood but it didn't make alot of heat. Grandma Erma died in their second winter in Welch. After that they went to their grandpas apartment and would take baths but their uncle was being inapropriate to Jeannette so she would only take a bath in the kitchen of her own home. Then in the summer Jeannette became friends with a girl named Dinitia and they went to the pool in the morning with all the colored people because the white people didn't like Jeannete and her brother because Ernie Gould told everyone that they live in garbage.

Week 4: post #1

"'Are we ever going home?' I asked dad one day.
'home?'
'Pheonix.'
'This is home now.'"(Pg. 154)
This was the lowest/ worst place that the author was living in throughout the book so far. The author misses the place in Pheonix where she used to live. This quote is important to the book because this shows how the author is having a hard time moving to all the different places her parent are taking her to.

Monday, October 8, 2007

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly: reflection

So, in my opinion I would have to say that the book was really wierd and confusing. I know that it was really hard for the writter to write the book but he desribed in such a way that he made it confusing and hard to follow. The thing that I didn't like the most was when he started telling stories out of nowhere that had nothing to do with what was actual going on. He would all of the sudden start a chapter with something that happened along time ago or something that he is just randumly thinking of and didn't happen. That made it really confusing for me. I did like that he wrote the book under the conditions that he was in, and that was a good idea for him to show the world how it feels to be trapt in lock-in syndrome. I just wish that he would have wrote it a little differently because then it probably would have been better. In the book I think that it is kind of wierd that he is putting himself in all of these different sittuations, like dancing with the lady who founded the hospital that he is in because usually I would think that he would think about being with his girlfriend then some other lady he doesn't even know. I would be very awkward if I found out that my boyfriend kept thinking about dancing with some other girl, thats just weird. I think that when he wrote the book he should have included more of the feelings and less of what he is thinking throught the day. That would have been more interesting for me because i have never herd of locked-in syndrome. That is what I think of The Diving Bell and The Butterfly.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Week 3: post #2

So far in this book the kids have been put through so many hard times because their parents refuse to stay in one place and start a good life for their kids. The mom hes been heving the kids to fend for themselves sinces they were three, by making their own food and keeping themselves entertained. The dad teaches them to be strong and not to let anyone push you around but he is a alcoholic. The kids are forced to move from place to place because the parents won't get a steady job and pay the bills. If they end up not making enough money the kids have to find ways to get food other wise they will go hungry for a couple of days. The strengths in this book are that she writes exactly what went on very well and the whole book is very detailed. The weaknesses of this book are how sad and depressing it was to be moving around constantly and never living in the same place. I think this is a very sad book because the poor kids have an alcoholic dad and a mom that tells the kids to go do what ever they want but just let her work on her art. I think that once the kids get old enough they will move away and live in one place for a while to see what its like. This book doesn't relate to my life because i have never had to deal with moving around every month and having to go without food for a couple days.

Week 3: Post #1

First, Jeanette's moms mom died and they moved into their grandma's large house. The house was located on North Third Street in Pheonix, Arizona. Their grandma also left them money, so Jeanette's mom bought lots of art supplies and her dad bought the kids bikes and other little things. Alot of their neighbors were gypsies and they would take things off of their yard. Her mom and dad also left all of the doors and windows open and people would come in and once a man came in and was touching Jeanette. once her dad took her and the family to the zoo to show them how mean it is to lock up animals in a cage. they ended up petting a cheetah. Her dad lost his job and they wanted Maureen to look nice for school so they would shoplift dresses from stores. When christmas came around each kid had a dollar at a thrift store to buy presents for their siblings. Her mom also bought a tree for three dollars on christmas. But that night Jeanette's dad came home drunk and burned the trees and the presents. For her birthday Jeanette's dad told she could ask for whatever she wanted and she asked her dad to stop drinking. He spent a couple months lock in his room trying to stop his addiction. After a month or so of being sober her dad went out and got drunk and came home and yelled at her mom. The family ran out of money and moved to Welch, North virginia and met the dad's mom named Erma, dad's dad named ted, and their uncle named Stanley. They all slept in the basement and the kids started going to school. A girl and her friends kept beatting up Jeanette but one day the girl say Jeanette help her neighbor away from a dog and bring him home they became friends.





Jeannette Walls:





Today Jeannette Walls lives in Virginia and is married to writer, John Taylor.


She regularly contributes to MSNBC.


She's worked at several publication including the Esquire, USA Today, and New York Times.





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