What Colour are You?

Quick test : 

Most people these days recognize that colours often symbolize a different idea or emotion. If we look at literature for example: the initial pink coloured conch in The Lord of the Flies could represent innocence, Lady Macbeth’s bloody red hands represents her guilt and the colour gold in The Great Gatsby represents both wealth and death. In the Book Thief, Markus Zusak description of characters and the surrounding’s atmosphere consistently consists of colours. Thanks to the BourneCreative site I was able to somewhat interpret the meaning of certain colours used while I was reading the book.

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Source: tealzeh.deviantart.com

After learning that Death is the narrator, we are also introduced to his favourite habit of looking up at the sky during his job of collecting souls. In Death’s eye however, the resulting colour of the sky is dependent on the person who is dying. One example is when Liesel’s brother dies on the train and Death describes the sky as a “blinding kind of white“. A possible reason for Death to see this is because white is commonly associated with pureness.  Liesel’s brother who died at a young age could be seen as an innocent child. Other colours our narrator uses to describe the sky he/she(I’m leaning towards the he) sees are black – possibly to representative evil over the holocaust period? , yellow – represnting the exhilerating feeling during bombings? , blotches of red – ruthlessness of WWII, and Jews- yes he/she described the sky as this colour possibly due to the great amount of Jewish people that died.

Rudy’s lemon hair (from pinterest)

Another place where colours are used is in the description of most characters. When Death describes most of the characters, he distinguishes them by a quality with a unique colour. For example, the first thing Death notices about Hans Hubermann is his silver eyes. While Death distinguishes Hans by this, he describes Hans’s wife Rosa as cardboard-like. Although Hans is described with silver eyes not because he is physically wealthy, but possibly because he is very precious to his adopted daughter Liesel. While Rosa’s grouchy attitude on the outside but good-intentional side on inside could explain why she is described as cardboard- the colour brown. Other examples of characters that are described with colours are Rudy with his lemon coloured hair and the Mayor’s wife with her chalky fingers.

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One of the things that I find most interesting is that using colours to describe things is just as effective as using words. Reading through the book, I found myself imagining the images these colours created. If bright colors were described I found there seemed to be a lighter mood and if dark colours were used there seemed to be a sad mood. Overall colours were not only symbols but also a great way to set imagery as well as the atmosphere.

Source: etsy

*** A BLOG POST ON THE BOOK THIEF ***

It’s that time of the semester again when summatives start, and it just so happens that for my English summative I’m reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. One of my favourite things about this book so far is it’s narrating and writing style. So i thought for my first blog post on the book I’d write about it.

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Source: thebooktrail.wordpress.com

So the very first thing you notice from the book’s prologue is it’s very unique narrator – Death (notice how it’s written in capitals). Going into a book written about the Holocaust, you would expect it to be excruciatingly sad. However, the experience so far isn’t as bad as expected because I found that Death is quite sarcastic for a narrator of this topic. In a middle of what could be seen as a dramatic moment Death lays down a sarcastic yet poetic remark that slightly lightens the mood. It feels as if Death is reading us a story but at the same time adding his own interesting comments and experiences.

 A halo surrounded the grim reaper nun, Sister Maria. (By the way – I like this human idea of the grimm reaper. I like the scythe. It  amuses me.)  – 75

Source: cdn.business2community.com

I also enjoyed how the author incorporated side notes about the protagonist’s life. Through these side notes I felt that the author was indirectly giving his own perception/bias in the story. By adding these side notes, I also felt a better connection to the characters in the book.

*** A SMALL QUESTION AND ITS ANSWER***

And who do you think was made to

clean the spit off the door each night?

Yes – you got it.   – 44

Even though Death isn’t actually present in the protagonist’s life, it still feels as though he is everywhere in the story; which makes him the perfect narrator. By choosing Death to be the narrator, we get to see not only Liesel’s story but also glimpses outside of her life on Himmel street. Death is a great choice for a narrator in a WWII setting involving a young protagonist. As a young character, Liesel was too innocent at first too completely understand the situation surrounding. Death on the other hand despairs and could see the bad toll WWII was creating.

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I don’t think the reading experience would be the same without Death narrating the story. A movie adaptation has been made of the book and I’m curious as I’m reading through the book as to how the movie experience will be without the beautiful narration of Death. Overall, as I’m reading through the book now, I’ve grown a great liking to Zusak’s unique style of writing.

Here’s the trailer for the movie adaptation 

Hamlet – You’re Driving Yourself Crazy, Man

Source: Pinterest-Pico737

For our English class this month we’re reading the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. I have to say though, however weird Hamlet can be, I really like the guy. So your dad’s ghost tells you that your uncle-who just married your mom-was the guy that killed your dad, what do you do? You act crazy in front of everyone to find out the truth and possibly seek revenge!

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We haven’t got as far as finishing the play yet, but a main observation made about Hamlet is that he thinks way too much about things instead of actually doing something. In Romeo and Juliet for example, everything’s so fast paced, one action is done after another. Then when compared to this play I feel that Hamlet is a man more crafty with words than action. Hamlet’s funny and intelligent remarks to others is one of the reasons I like him as a character, I just wish though that he would save some of his intelligence for devising a good plan instead of sitting around thinking too much and insulting others.

Source:tickld.com

Even Polonius does more scheming and planing compared to Hamlet who mostly spends his time attacking others with words. As we are now in Act III, the main “action ” Hamlet has done after all this time is only the “The Mousetrap“. It is a good thing be thinking about your actions beforehand, but I think Hamlet’s going a bit to far to the point where he’s driving himself nuts. It’s like thinking and planning the homework you have to do for too long until you get to the point where you don’t even want to do the homework anymore because you get too stressed out. I guess you can argue that it makes sense to take things slowly instead of barging into Claudius’s room and killing him right away. You can also argue that it’s completely normal for Hamlet to take a while to make up his mind and do something because the situation he’s in isn’t really that simple.

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Right now I only know that Hamlet dies at the end, and my class has also been warned that Hamlet’s tragic flaw is being a man of no action. It’s good to think through our actions before hand; but if we think to much and produce no action, results might not always be in our favour – or their might not even be any results at all!