Book 4 Reflection Listicle

5 Reasons Why Louie Zamperini is an Epic Hero in Unbroken

1. He goes on a journey: In Unbroken, Louie goes on several "journeys". His transformation from a total delinquent into an Olympic athlete could be considered one. His time in the Air Force definitely counts also. And the main part of Unbroken, his time in P.O.W. camps in Japan, is definitely a journey. But he also has other troubles, like his struggles with PTSD and alcoholism, that are journeys unto themselves. The book is full of Louie's  journeys throughout his life.

 2. He faces adversaries along the way: Throughout his journeys, from his childhood to post-war life in the late-40's and 50's, Louie faces adversaries. His worst is the Bird, a prison guard in the prison that Louie is interned at once he arrives in Japan. After Louie first encounters the Bird, he "met the man who would dedicate himself to shattering him" (Hillenbrand 232). This shows that Louie faces some very strong enemies. He is, however, able to overcome them, which leads me to my third point.

 3. He overcomes his adversaries: Even though the Bird will stop at nothing to break Louie and strip him of his dignity, Louie ultimately perseveres. H able to survive long enough in prison to see the end of the war, and the guards abandon the prison, fearing retribution from the prisoners and U.S. troops. Louie is now a free man, and he stays at the prison with his fellow prisoners until U.S. troops arrive. But even before then, he overcomes challenges. To make it to Olympic trials, Louie had to race Don Lash, "Indiana University's twenty-three year old record-smashing machine" (Hillenbrand 22). They tied and ended up going to the trials, and the Olympics, together.

 4. He comes home changed: The war might be over, but it still haunted Louie. After coming home, he still had to deal with PTSD and nightmares of being tortured by the Bird. He eventually resorted to drinking to deal with these, but also suffered the consequences. He tried taking up running again, but he re-opened a war injury and was unable to run for a while. He sank into a depression. But after hearing Billy Graham, an evangelical speaker, his life turned for the better and he became a motivational speaker and started therapy so he could run again.

 5. He exemplifies morals of America:  Any epic hero has to embody the culture and beliefs of his country, and Louie does this. His story is one of rising out of poverty in a shack with "no running water, an outhouse behind, and a roof that leaked so badly that they had to keep buckets on the beds" (Hillenbrand 5). Louie uses his natural gifts to get a track scholarship to USC and to go to the Olympics. His patriotism brings him to the Army Air Corps and he becomes a bombardier, but he goes down over the Pacific. After surviving almost 2 months at sea, he and his co-pilot are captured by the Japanese. He outlasts the war and comes home a changed man, but Louie is still able to remain the same, unbroken.

Book 2 Trailer

Post 8 Book Talk

Post 6 Book 3 Listicle

 For my Listicle I am going to talk about an observation I've made throughout the book Donnie Brasco. Throughout the book lots of things happen, but one reoccurrence that you see is that the main character, Joe Pistone (he is under cover in the Mafia, Donnie Brasco is a fake name), never gets too involved, meaning he never does drugs, kills anyone, or does anything illegal. He doesn't even lie about doing bad stuff. The question is why?

 1. The FBI won't let him. Joe Pistone is an undercover FBI agent, but he is kind of a guinea pig. He is the first FBI agent to get really deep into the Mafia, so there are no set rules for what he can and can't do. When the FBI realizes this, they put him on lockdown: no murders, drugs, anything illegal, otherwise they don't help him if he's caught. So "Donnie" has to watch what he's doing during his 6 years as a Mafia member.

 2. He won't. Throughout the book, you begin to see Pistone portrayed as the Mafia member with a set of morals, and those are pretty rare. When offered cocaine, he has to refuse, or the FBI would have to end his operation and question him. But also, he is very against drugs. The other Mafiosi offer to take him on "hits", or assassinations, but he would be tried for murder, or caught by them for trying to stop it. During the book he thinks to himself, "If a hit is going down and I'm on the scene, do I risk trying to stop it and maybe getting killed myself "(Woodley 139)?

 3. It snowballs. If Pistone does drugs or kills someone once, who's to say he won't do it again? Pistone thinks that if he even lies about having killed or done drugs this will make the Mafia think that he's game for more killing and drug-doing. Over time a simple lie could lead to Joe having to choose between killing an innocent civilian or blowing his cover.

 4. He has a family to think about. Having a wife and 3 daughters can really complicate being an FBI agent. Especially if you are spending next to no time with them because of being undercover. "Nobody wanted to stand in the way of the work I was doing, but neither did anybody really know what I was doing"(Woodley 147). This shows that his family doesn't want to distract Joe from what he is doing, but at the same time they want to know what he is getting into. By not staying on the really dark side of the Mafia Joe is helping his family cope by them knowing that he isn't is serious business.

 5. His status in court is at stake. The point of the operation is to get operation about Mafia activities and indict them to send the Mafia members to jail. it is Joe's job to testify against them after the operation. He won't be a very trust worthy witness if he was involved in the same illegal activities as the Mafia members he is trying to throw into jail.

 All in all, there are several reasons Pistone stays away from illegal activities in Donnie Brasco. There are probably way more than I gave, but the 5 I offered are the main 5 reasons I could find.

Post 5: My thoughts on Genres

When talking about books, we often think of one thing: genre. But sometimes the question arises; Do we really need genre. Are all the rules separating different themes and styles of writing really necessary? Or can we just let stories be stories with no bounds or limits?

 The author David Shields asks do we need lines between genres—do we need to label something fiction or non-fiction? I think he has an excellent point. When we talk about a book, we talk about it's content, as in the characters, the plot, the settings and descriptions. Often, the genre is not needed. But at the same time, we can't just lump together everything from an instruction manual to the Bible to Harry Potter into one category: books. We need some form of line drawn in to keep our books categorized and organized.

 To argue for genres, however, is history. Since humanity started keeping books, we've organized them. From giant libraries to small collections, stored books have been categorized by their length, plot, author, ect. But the important thing is keeping books separated. Without genre and other boundaries we would have a giant blob of anything written called literature. So in the end, we need genre. It helps to stabilize literature and knowledge, and therefore us.

 

Post 4 Movie Adaptations

 For my 4th post, I will talk about the movie adaptation of my book, The Wolf of Wallstreet. A movie adaptation already exists, so this post will be centered around that.

 The movie stays somewhat close to the book, hitting on most of the good parts. But it also edits or completely do's away with some of the inappropriate scenes. One scene that the movie kept (as it should've) was when Danny Porush, the junior partner at Stratton-Oakmont, eats the pet goldfish of an employee that isn't paying attention. Next, the movie keeps all of the business meetings and shady dealings from the book. These can sometimes be boring, but thy show that in all the craziness of the book there is still a key business element that causes all of the madness. And finally, the movie keeps the scene where Jordan, the main character and owner of Stratton, goes crazy while high on cocaine, gets arrested, and is sent to rehab. This scene is important because the writing for it makes the scene very exciting and sobering. It is also the turning point of the story because during an dafter rehab Jordan cuts his drug habit and changes for the better.      

 Also, the movie heavily edits or cuts some parts in the story. One of these is when Jordan is having an argument with his wife. It is very one-sided, but there is also a lot of inappropriate stuff that I (like the movie) will not hit on. Readers know this as the infamous Chapter 3.  Another way the book is edited for the movie is that much of the business dealings (except for a few interesting ones) are missing. This is because they are somewhat boring, but also because the majority of viewers either wouldn't know or care what was going on in these (actually very important) meetings.                    

Post 3: Book 1 Project

Book 1 Project
By Seth Gerus

 For this project, the goal was to extend a fan's ability to interact with the novel, which in my case is Inferno by Dan Brown. To extend the experience Inferno offers, I propose making a video game based off of it. With so many people now playing games on consoles or their phones, I think a well designed game or app based on a bestselling story would sell quickly and produce lots of profit for the producer. Also, the fans would love to be able to play out scenes from the book and explore the book's settings in Florence, Venice, and Istanbul.

 The idea for making a game comes from many different scenes in the book. First off, Inferno has many scenes with action . One such quote can be found in Inferno when the main character, "Langdon pictured the spike-haired woman coldly killing Dr. Marconi ... the soldiers firing on them ... the Italian military police gathering at Porta Romana ... and now a surveillance drone tracking them through the Boboli gardens. He fell silent, rubbing his tired eyes as he considered his options" (Brown 144). This quote shows the action that can be placed in numerous parts of the Inferno game. Second, Inferno has lots of suspense. It's about a symbologist named Robert Langdon, who has appeared in 3 other novels by Dan Brown, trying to stop a virus created by a scientist who thinks that human overpopulation will destroy humanity. The scientist thinks that by "thinning the heard" humanity will survive, even though this will kill billions of people. As you can see, this book is very suspenseful. In the book, his  doctor, Sienna, says "You only said it once, buy I'm positive I understood." 'What did I say?" Sienna glanced up toward the drone and then back at  Langdon. "You said 'I hold the key to finding it ... if I fail, then all is death.'" Langdon could only stare" (Brown 115). Finally, Inferno has many different plot twists. In a well-made video game, there is always a plot twist or a complication to throw the player off. An example of a plot twist can be found when Langdon, who was recently given amnesia when a bullet narrowly missed his skull, is watching a security film to see who stole the death mask of Italian poet Dante Alighieri. However, things change when Langdon "... watched himself on the video as his gloved hand reached out and found the edge of the cabinet door ... and then, ever so gently, pulled back until the antique hinge shifted and the door swung slowly open ... exposing the Dante death mask" (Brown 178). This shows that the book using suspense can enhance the game.


 Overall, I think that this idea will help the fans of Inferno have a longer experience with the book by letting them play through it's scenes. Also, the game will bring Inferno attention because people will want to read the book that the game is based off of. Also, the author may be able to add to the story through downloadable-content to keep the story going even longer. With all that Inferno offers as a book, I think it would make a great video game.