Monday Muses

 In class we looked at a poem called My Childhood by Matthew Zapruder. The poem made me think about all the things I have in my life now, it also made me think about what I need never to forget. The poem also made me think deeper into the authors words, and find my own meaning behind them. 

A line I really thought about and struck me deep in my heart was the 10th line of the poem. The line goes like this "one square of light on the wall waiting patiently". This line reminded me of when my parents would leave me with a babysitter while they went out, and I would never be able to fall asleep. But when they came home, they would always talk in the hall outside my bedroom door, and I would wait for them to come in and check on me. Before my parents came in, my door was ajar and I could see a small patch of light against my wall, but when my parents did come in, they would block the light, and to me, that always meant that they were really home. This line shows that I found my own meaning behind the poem because that light the author was talking about, brought me back to those nights, the nights when I was younger, and for me, that's what a good poem should do. 

"I will learn my multiplication tables." This is a line that every kid can relate to. The learning of multiplication tables is like an act of growing up. I had a very hard time learning my multiplication tables. In fourth grade, each week we would take a timed multiplication test to see how much and how fast we could do 100 multiplication problems. I would get 60's and 70's and then I would get so upset, I would take like ten practice tests each night and then take out all my anger after I got a question wrong, on my dad. Yep, that's right, I got really mad, like red face about to blow mad, whenever I would get a bad grade on my multiplication tables! To me this was the worst thing that could have happened, and that is the case for most any child. Now, even though I haven't gone through any serious trauma, I still know, that is not nearly the worst thing that will happen to you. The author used this line to show how things become more and less of a priority as you get older. 

This poem makes you think, it lets you relate. That's, in my opinion, what makes a great poem. A person who can write about his own life, but make it kind of vague so everyone can relate to it. People really only can understand something if they know what they think the poem is trying to say. For example, if the entire poem is about how the author got raped or something, through out the whole poem, you won't be feeling what the author is trying to get you tho feel, you'll be feeling bad for her. Poems are supposed to make you feel, make you think.

My Childhood

by Matthew Zapruder

the orange ball arcs perfectly into the orange hoop

making a sound like a drawer closing

you will never get to hold that

I am here and nothing terrible will ever happen

across the street the giant white house full of kids

turns the pages of an endless book

the mother comes home and finds the child animal sleeping

I left my notebook beside the bed

the father came home and sat and quietly talked

one square of light on the wall waiting patiently

I will learn my multiplication tables

while the woman in the old photograph looks in a different direction

            

Chains

            In the book Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson it talks about a girl named Isabel, who is a slave. She thought that after her owner died she and her sister would be free, but they weren't. They were tricked and sold to a very wealthy couple in New York. This book takes place in revolutionary times. The couple that Isabel and her sister are sold to are Loyalists and have documents in their possession that the patriot army wants. In the book, a fellow slave named Curzon asks Isabel to spy on her owners and tell all she knows to the general of the patriot army. Isabel learns many things but one thing she learns is how men treated women in this era.

            Women are treated very differently by men in this time period. One way that men treat women differently is by keeping them naive. When ever something would go wrong in the Lockton family, Isabel's owners, Mr. Lockton would always keep things from Mrs. Lockton because he didn't want her to know too much. For example in the book, Mr. Lockton is wanted by the police and he gets  arrested, but he wouldn't tell Mrs. Lockton why. She kept asking him and finally after an hour, and he still didn't tell her, he got annoyed and started hitting her telling her to mind her own business. Mrs. Lockton was just worried about Mr. Lockton but still he would tell her because he thought it was too much for a women to handle.
             Another way women are treated differently in the revolutionary era is the fact that women are not allowed to speak their own minds. For example, one night the Locktons were preparing to have a huge dinner and Mr. Locktons aunt was invited.  Lady Seymour, Mr. Locktons aunt, knows a lot about the world that she was living in, but she couldn't have an open opinion about it. For example at this dinner Lady Seymour said, "What if the rebels decide that the turnabout is fair play? We need to care for them so they don't harm their British captives." Lady Seymour was talking about her opinion on the prisoners of war and the men at the table totally shot down all of her ideas. They said she didn't know what she was talking about because she was a women.
             The world that Isabel lived in was completely different form the world that we live in today. Today women can get the same type of education as a man can get. Today women can get the same job as a man. But that's not the case everywhere. When in my class we watched the speech that Malala Yousafzai gave in front of the UN, it made me think about, how in a lot of ways the way men treat women are a lot like hoe they treated them 300 years ago. Our world has changed a lot, but we still have a lot more to accomplish and change.

  

Faithful Elephants by Yukio Tsuchyio

“Bombs were dropped on Tokyo every night and day like falling rain.” This line from the heartbreaking picture book “Faithful Elephants” by Yukio Tsuchiyo describes a horrible war that engulfed Japan. In the book the zoo keepers are worried about a bomb dropping on one of the cages at the zoo, and that the animals might run free through the streets. So the zoo keepers had to kill all the animals, and then starve the elephants to death. The zoo keepers wanted to do everything they could to keep their elephants alive. They hoped and prayed the elephants will live long enough and then the war will be over; the elephants symbolized their hope. In times of war people need to put their hope in something meaningful, and something they believe in, for the zoo keeper the elephants are their beacons of hope.

The Elephants symbolized the zoo keeper’s hope in many ways. One way is the fact that even though the country made the zoo keepers kill the elephants; they couldn’t because the elephants never gave up hope. For example in the picture book “Faithful Elephants” it says “Squeezing out what little strength they had left, Tonky and Wanly made their last appeal. They stood up on their hind legs and lifted their front legs up as high as they could. Then, raising their trunks high in the air, they did their banzai trick.” As you can see, the zoo keepers put their hope in the elephants because the elephants never gave up. They tried so hard to stay alive, and the zoo keepers saw that.

The zoo keepers saw how hard the elephants tried and decided that if everyone tried that hard, the world might have been better. They admired the elephants and hoped that they wouldn’t die. That’s why when the elephants showed their tricks, the zoo keeper couldn’t take it anymore. “’Oh Tonky! Oh Wanly!’  he wailed, and dashed to the food shed. He carried food and pails of water to them and threw it at their feet.” As you can see, the zoo keepers feel as if they couldn’t live without these elephants, and if they had to, they would never again feel that the war might be over.

Another way that the zoo keepers put their hope in the elephants is the fact that they thought that if the elephants lived for just one more day the war might be over. For example in the picture book “Faithful Elephants” it says “But everyone was hoping and praying that if the elephants could survive only one more day, the war might be over…” As you can see, the zoo keepers had to go through things that they never wanted to go through, and after the zoo keepers gave the elephant’s water and food, they hoped that the elephants wouldn’t die, and hoped that if they didn’t, the war would end.

Though a big thing the elephants represented in the book was a beacon of hope for the zoo keepers, they represented so much more. They represented the sacrifices people had to face in wars, because they had to be sacrificed in order to save millions of people in Japan. The elephants also symbolize the hardships of war and what kind of toll it can have on people.