Reflection InLet It Snow, By David Sedaris

In Larry Lankton’s text, “Beyond the Boundaries” we gradually enter an unknown world that is frightening yet filled with immense beauty for miles. Due to the copper mining industry, a gradual increase of working class men and their families start to migrate to the unknown world with unsteady emotion, yet hope for a prosperous new life. In “Beyond the Boundaries”, Lankton takes us on a journey on how the “world below” transformed the upper peninsula into a functional and accepted new part of the world.

John Foulcher writes interesting poetry because he can make the reader see, feel, and think. Summer Rain , demonstrate to the reader that Foulcher’s poetry is not only thought provoking and realistic, but it is also able to capture aspects of society through his unique use of imagery.

There are many ways authors include literary devices to not only express their position on certain things, but also to evoke emotion and thought from readers for them to fully understand the reason for them being presented. The author may drop hints through tone, style, symbolism, and motifs. These four elements help lead the reader to infer reasoning, meaning, and significance behind aspects of every story.

A literary technique is a device employed in literature to add depth to a writer’s work. These techniques can be obvious, such as the technique of rhyme in a poem, or subtle, such as juxtaposition, which can go unnoticed by the reader. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses many such techniques to provide more depth to his book. Four literary techniques used by Tim O’Brien are symbolism, pathetic fallacy, irony, and juxtaposition.

David Sedaris’ essay, “Let It Snow” is a reflection of Sedaris’ past. A single day from his childhood in North Carolina where Sedaris and his siblings were home due to school being closed for few days because of bad weather. The story reflects solely on the relationship that Sedaris’ mother had with him and his sisters, and how it was affected by her drinking problem. Although the story revolved around the children the mother was the main character.

Many centuries after the first spaceship landed on the moon, a group of brave rocket men and women did the unbelievable. The short story “All summer is a day”, by Ray Bradbury, takes place in the underground city of the planet Venus where tunnels roamed instead of streets. The land above them was submerged with endless pouring rain and deadly jungles. The sight of the sun was a rare miracle that only happened once every seven years. The children spent all their life in the enclosed underground tunnels, well all except for one. Margot was the only child who came to Venus when she was four, and the biggest difference was that she still remembered the times when the glowing sun gave warmth and hope.

Darkness at Noon, written by British novelist Arthur Koestler in 1940, is a criticism of Stalinism and the methods used by the Communist Party in the USSR. The novel was set in 1938 during the Stalinist Great Purge and Moscow show trials. Even though the story depicts actual occurrences, it does not specifically name either Russia or the USSR, but the characters do have Russian names while other generic terms are used to depict individuals and associations. For instance, the Soviet government is alluded to as "the Party" and Nazi Germany is alluded to as "the Dictatorship." Joseph Stalin, a terrorizing dictator, is represented by "Number One." The novel is a strong and moving picture of a Communist revolutionary caught up in the terror

When people are treated unfairly or unjustly, how should they perceive it and how do they generally react to this? In The Color of Water by James McBride, prejudice shapes James and Ruth in many ways, James has different stories than Ruth, due to the fact that he lived in a different time period, which makes his scenario different from Ruth’s. Both faced adversity, and stood up for themselves and defended themselves in many different ways just to make sure that they could survive in society. Ruth had always taught her children to be independent. She comes from an interesting background, she was starving of love and affection as a child. Ruth has experienced a lot of grief in her life due to all of these bad events that occurred. Even growing up, her father had treated her unfairly by taking advantage of her sexually. This was definitely not a right thing to do, Ruth’s father was an abusive man who had a sex addiction. He was found to have an affair with another woman even though Mameh knew about it the entire time. Due to her rough past when practicing Judaism, she decided to practice Catholicism after marrying Andrew Dennis McBride. She felt as if she was a freer person, she gained a personal connection to the religion which was good because it helped for her to get her mind off of things. James is a very confused boy, being black and white. He’s unsure where he fits in when it comes to society. A personal connection that I have to

Literary devices are techniques often used by authors to portray in-depth analyses of major characters, storylines, and central themes, which take place in a story. These analyses help readers understand a message the author is trying to convey. In the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses different literary devices in order to demonstrate the boys’ struggle against the lack of society and law on the island, as well as the consequences that have transpired due to this loss. This conflict is evident through the different instances of irony, foreshadowing, and symbolism that occurs throughout the novel.

All the light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, chronicles the lives and relationship between Marie and Werner, two children who grew up in France and Germany. The society around them forces discriminatory ideals that cloud their perception of the world, but they find its meaning through their own self-definition. In this, they are both guided by a single radio and the message and legacy that it contains. Throughout the book, the author isolated the two characters, but also created subtle connections between the two. The most important of which would be the radio. It created a bond between the two where they learned from each other’s experiences and struggles. All the Light We Cannot See recreates a new picture of the world by contrasting the two separate journeys taken by Marie- Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig to gain that image, which is guided by the power of a radio and the message it contains, ultimately leading to the meeting of the two characters that officially forms an image of the world where one’s actions are valued more than one’s physical features.

Tobias Wolff is a writer known for his memoirs and realistic short stories. “Hunters in the Snow” is a story about three friends, Tub, Frank, and Kenny, who go hunting in the snow. Wolff writes about humanity through the friendship of the three friends and the events they go through.

Why do you read books? To each person the former question can be answered differently dependent on the phases of their lives. Currently, this book was introduced to me via a class curriculum. “Do Glacier’s Listen” by Julie Cruikshank is an anthropological based narrative provided to our First Nations Studies class for our semester book review. Regardless of how I procured this book, I found this book to be a decent read. Of course, I wouldn’t have chosen this book if it had not been willfully introduced in a class setting, however the link to our course content and other First Nations studies classes in undeniable. One of the reasons why I enjoyed the text was because it mirrored some of the concepts learned in class such as Traditional Knowledge

Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway gives different viewpoints about Hemingway’s life and marriage. Hemingway gives the character Harry, who gets an infection in his leg and is suffering from great pain, a different outlook on his life when death gets involved. When describing such themes as death, infection and the small and unimportant values of life, we see a different kind of Harry come out of the story. A bashful, unkind, and shameful Harry is brought into our imagination with such imagery, symbolism, flashbacks, and rude dialogues that Hemingway writes about in Snows of Kilimanjaro. These dialogues make the reader rethink how happy Harry really is with his marriage. Rude words being said to his wife Helen such as, “bloody fool”

The book that I chose for the Book Talk project is "Frozen Fire" by Tom Bowler.

In our 21st century reality, new media and technology has transformed, with little resistance, almost every aspect of daily life; redefining our reality. From plasma screens to monitors to smartphones, we are constantly face to face with the black screens of our devices, or ‘black mirrors’. Canadian professor, Marshall Mcluhan described media as “artificial extensions of sensory existence,”; meaning, each media technology functions as a prosthetic, working in conjunction with our minds and bodies, allowing us to perceive more and reshaping our perception of the world (1969). This approach emphasises the impossibility of fully understanding social and cultural changes in society without understanding how media works as environments (Griffin, 2011).