Darkness falls.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Carried an apple home
From the recreation area
Jonas saw it turn to red,
As traffic lights here do.
Orange... Fiona's hair came and went
He saw fleeting flashes of it
But then she turned
No, he couldn't understand.
Later he met the Giver
Who worked behind closed doors
Jonas could 'see beyond'
He said, an aptitude hardly anyone had.
That was when his training began.
'Oh,' Jonas said,
He didn't want it any more
The honour, the pleasure,
he didn't think the injustice would've tore
Unforgivable as it was
Jonas also threw his pill away
Soon after he absolutely knew
it didn't matter, not any more.
Receiver...
He thought, with halting crescendo
A burst of emotion helped him make his decision:
Receiver...
I am no more.
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(if there are no steps down the poem, apologies but there must be an error.)
This poem depicts the feelings when he is growing up. This poem shows the anguish that he has when he is not understood when he has special sightings, as it was 'an aptitude hardly anyone had'. As he feels misunderstood, plus the fact that he is twelve and going through puberty, his stress amounts in a 'crescendo' which is 'halting' due to the fact that he meets several obstacles on the way, such as the pills which suppressed his feelings, which resulted in one less output for him to relieve his stress, as wrong as it might have seemed.
Also, the stress increases until Jonas reaches his breaking point, which is at the end of the last stanza, but the margin is back to normal, to signify that he had made his decision, which was to leave the community.
Also, there are disruptions in the poem, which is signified by when the margins go back to the end of the page. This is supposed to show that there were significant events in his life, such as when he began training as the Receiver-in-training. However, when he made up his mind to leave his community with Gabriel, who is not mentioned but can be found through contextual knowledge of the book.
Lastly, the poem is an acrostic one, which means that a word is used to form the backbone of the poem. In this poem, the title is 'colour', and I feel that this is relevant to the theme of colour in the Giver.
LISA
2 comments
Thursday, July 22, 2010
It was much the same, this memory, though the hill seemed to be a different one, steeper, and the snow was not falling as thickly as it was before. It was colder, also, Jonas perceived. He could see, as he sat waiting at the top of the hill, that the snow beneath the sled was not thick and soft as it had been before, but hard, and coated with bluish ice.
The sled moved forward, and Jonas grinned with delight, looking forward to the breathtaking slide down through the invigorating air.
But the runners, this time, couldn't slice through the frozen expanse as they had on the other, snow-cushioned hill. They skittered sideways and the sled gathered speed. Jonas pulled at the rope, trying to steer, but the steepness and speed took control from his hands and he was no longer enjoying the feeling of freedom but instead, terrified, was at the mercy of the wild acceleration over the ice.
Sideways, spinning, the sled hit a bump in the hill and Jonas was thrown violently into the air. He fell with his leg twisted under him, and could hear the crack of bone. His face scraped along jagged edges of ice and when he came, at last, to a stop, he lay shocked and still, feeling nothing at first but fear.
Then came the first wave of pain.
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In this excerpt, Jonas receives one of the first painful memories from the Giver. However, although he senses some similarities between the first pleasant memory of the sled such as the setting itself, he also realises that there are some different things about this memory. For instance, he can '[perceive]' that the hill was steeper and the snow had a different texture- that it was ice and that it was 'bluish'.
If we compare much of what Jonas sees and feels in this scene to our lives, we will be able to learn many things from it. For instance, take the fact that even when Jonas sees that the snow he sees is in fact ice, he does not feel any sense of warning. Of course, this may have been attributed to his (and the community's) rather underdeveloped sense of danger. However, in real life, we often want to continue with what we do, even when we know that it may have a bad effect on us or our lives.
Next, when Jonas began to go down the hill, he did not really know that there was anything wrong with his ride until he lost control of the sled and could only let a combination of inertia and gravity control his vehicle. Similarly, we often only sense the danger and want to stop when it is too late, and by the time we manage to stop, something, whether pleasant or not, would happen. This would cause us to feel physical pain like Jonas, or more often than not, emotional pain.\
Let me share an experience of mine which happened not too long ago and i feel relates to this excerpt.
It was another netball training, but this time, instead of the usual warm-ups around the track, our teacher instructed us to follow a track around school, which wound through the primary basketball court and the carpark.
On hearing this, I could not help but groan as the mentioned track would need us to go up several slopes, which would increase my tiredness. However, there was no room for complaints, and our group quickly made our way up the route.
All was going pretty well until we came to the carpark, where a security guard shouted after us, 'Girl, watch out for car ah!' But i was not aware that that was not the real peril. We made it safely across the first half of the carpark, and now we were near the canteen, running past the pick-up point behind it. Several squat barriers on the ground dimly alerted us of a division in the road. The people ahead of me seemed tireless, and were sprinting ahead effortlessly. In an effort to keep up with them, I gave a burst of speed.
At that moment, my heavy shoe caught on one of the black dividers on the road, tripping me over. In that split second, I found myself on the ground on my left side, and several people stopped to help me up, and they asked me if I was all right. In a haze, I got up and continued to run, feeling only a numb buzzing in my fingers, elbow and knee on the left side of my body.
Then came the first wave of pain.
Instinctively, I looked down at my fingers, which were numb with pain. Bright red blood about to flow out of the wound, which, by the amount of pain, I knew was quite deep. Looking at my elbow and knee, I also saw that same colour, fresh and wet, in patches on the wounds.
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Looking at these two stories, what are some of the similarities and differences you can find?
Labels: accident, blood, fall, pain, sled, snow
3 comments
i wrote this myself, i hope it's okay!
The Last Time I Saw Him
The Giver looked at me
I could see it in his eyes
He missed Rosemary dearly,
But at that time I didn't know she was his child.
But
He held it back
And gave me memories
Of music, of Christmas,
Of love and family.
Then there were the bad times
Of war and tragedy
I saw the red of fresh blood, fights,
Guns and life, melancholy
I broke my leg
The second time I rode a sled
The pain was dizzying.
At the end
He said Good Bye
And I took Gabriel too.
He couldn't stay
In this place of disarray
Where he didn't have a place
The Giver and I, we had a plan
To save Gabe,
And let me go to a foreign land.
I was nervous, but
I had to do this;
If I didn't,
This Newchild would suffer under the needle, and have Death's kiss.
I left with an ache
In my body,
in my heart.
I couldn't serve this lowly society
Where nearly everything had its part.
We slid down through the snow,
I was falling asleep, but
I heard music, and Gabriel stirred
We couldn't stop then,
We were nearly Elsewhere.
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This poem portrays several scenes where the Giver parts with his memories to Jonas, and when he leaves his community with Gabriel. In the first paragraph, Jonas does not quite understand why the Giver was so sad when he talked about Rosemary, until he found out that she was his child. This shows that many feelings and facts are hidden in Jonas' society, and it is only by chance or questioning that he finds out these facts.
The rhyme in the poem suggests that although Jonas does not want to leave the community, he feels a sense of responsibility for Gabriel's life, which helps him to make the decision to leave his utopian society. However, when the rhyme is disrupted in the last paragraph, it shows how he wavers, but yet he knows that they are near their destination.
Some sentences in the poem end haltingly with the use of the word 'but'. This shows Jonas' hesitation when he is trying to make the decision on whether to leave or not. However, the poem goes on, and finishes when he is reaching 'Elsewhere'. This shows the amount of determination that Jonas had and how seriously he treated the matter of his escape, and even included the Giver when they hatched the plan.
The poem also recounts the many times Jonas visited the Giver and where the transfer of memories took place. This stanza can be related to our own lives, when we have the good times and the bad, which could be compared to the 'life, melancholy' that Jonas experienced and the 'love and family' that he felt when he saw those memories. Therefore, as many of us experience many good things and less of those rather extreme bad conditions in life, what Jonas learnt through his sessions with the Giver is comparable to our everyday lives.
The last stanza ends abruptly, which is due to the fact that Jonas knew that he was fast approaching Elsewhere and felt a sense of relief and finality, which ends the poem on a mysterious note, leaving the reader to wonder if he gets there at all.
Labels: But., Christmas, Elsewhere, escape, family, Giver, love, poetry, snow
4 comments
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
|
Left alone in the past |
| by Brande |
Left alone in the past
Forgotten friendships buried, never meant to last
She walked away from me
Why couldn't I foresee?
Time standing still
Another way to deal, another pill
The sky is gray with hate
One thing tore us apart, your fate
Now what will you do?
Who will confide in you?
Remember the times we shared?
Remember how well we paired?
The consequences are tough
You only knew how to treat me rough
Who is next in line?
Will you, too, break their spine?
Look at what you've done
This time I will stand in front of you, I won't run
Don't bother me anymore
All you touch, you tore
What you wanted, you took
Now I glance back, I take one last look
You left me alone in your past
Forgotten friendships buried, never meant to last
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This poem is very relevant because similarly, Jonas' felt hurt when he realised that his father's job had a dark side to it, and that many things went on in the world that he and the rest of the people of his age were probably unaware of. The mood in this poem is sad and melancholic, which exactly reflects the way Jonas felt when he realised several ugly truths.
Also, Jonas was told by his mother that once he went into adulthood, he would not be as close to his childhood friends any more. Although Jonas denied this, he felt detached from Asher and Fiona when they were having a friendly game of war. Similarly, in this poem, the speaker experiences feelings of loss when 'She walked away from [the speaker]' and when their friendships felt strained and 'never meant to last'. These sentences show how alone Jonas feels when he gains more knowledge about his community.
In the poem, the speaker is not sure how to deal with his problems, and wonders if 'another pill' would help. As in The Giver, Jonas had to deal with much pain because he was not allowed to request for relief-of-pain medicine. This poem reflects much about how helpless he feels.
Lastly, the poem also talks about the pain of physical injury, and how people are roughly treated, where he lives. This is very reflective of Jonas' society, where people who are deemed unfit to live in that community are 'released'. These feelings are reflected angrily, as Jonas felt, in the second stanza, where the speaker feels agitated and says that 'Who is next in line?', which when put on context of The Giver, could be related to Gabriel and his imminent release; and when the speaker says 'will you too, break their spine?' it could be related to the concept of release in The Giver. Therefore, the speaker feels very angry at the way things are done, in the poem. Finally, I think that this poem is very appropriate also because Jonas wants to escape the community, and despite the difficulties, is determined, just like the speaker in the poem, who did not want anyone to ‘bother [him] anymore’. This shows that Jonas and the speaker are tired of the way the things are run wherever they are, and wish to face up to it, although Jonas does it differently from the speaker in the poem. |
Labels: anger, poetry, release
2 comments
thankyou.
