Sunday, October 28, 2012

The Stranger

Based on the book The Stranger  written by Albert Camus.

My Commemoration of Meursault

Many people knew Meursault somewhat, but not quite fully. He was a quiet man who rarely showed his emotions. Very much less than what men his age would share with other people. When he cared about something, it was big, nothing little. He would say that you shouldn't waste your time caring about random things when you could enjoy what is really important around you. Now that I think about it, I think that this decision that he made to live this way may have helped him appreciate things better.

Meursault was one of the best men that I knew, I loved him so much!  We had a short relationship but we were planning on getting married when he was found guilty for killing someone. Personally, I don't think that he was guilty because the Arabs were there trying to attack and Meursault, after seeing the two men attack his friend, felt that it was only necessary for his safety to shoot the man.

When his mother had died, no one had known. He didn't know for himself until a day or two after she died becaue he decided that it was better for her to live with someone who could pour their hearts into her. He knew that she deserved better than what he had to offer. I applaud him for that. But this is just another example about how little he would share his emotions with other people. Maybe he just bottled them up, or maybe he did not think that they were important enough to share with people. I loved everything about him including this and I think that he loved me too.

I wish that he could still be on Earth where I could see him. He absolutely loved the nature of things and I'm sure that he misses that. Meursault could look at someone and know exactly what they were going to do and how they felt. He noticed all of the little things that no one else would. I loved that about him.

I fell in love with Meursault in the short time that I knew him. He was one of the most genuine and true people that I will ever meet. People would try to influence him into believing certain things and living certain ways but he would never listen to them. He knew what he wanted and would never let things get in his way. This is why I love Meursault.

 

Marie

 

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Autobiography of Myself as a Reader

Everyone has a past of themselves as a reader. Some people have never liked to read, where as other people have read just about every book that there is. Over the past few weeks, I've learned more about myself as a reader and what I liked and absolutely hated. I've talked to the people who know me best including my parents and have personally considered every book I've read that I remember ever being important for me to grow as a reader.

I think that because of the fact that I read so much as a child, I became more imaginative and thoughtful. I learned about other people and how they lived and how things impacted them. Not only did I learn about people and their lives, I learned empathy for other people. Because of this, I now know that everybody is different and that it's okay to be yourself. Personally, I believe that because I learned these things, I was taught to think outside of the box.

When you compare positive and negatives through many peoples reading experiences, you find that when you are forced to read something, you tend not to enjoy it quite as much. I make this assumption because when I was younger, I read almost everything. As I grew as a reader, throughout my upper levels in elementary, I tended not to like as much of what I was reading. Since I never could find books that I truly loved, I stopped reading and looking for books. Personally, I believe that people fall out of reading as they are forced to read more and more as they grow up.

I think that many peoples experiences of falling out of reading suggests that it may be impossible to create the "perfect" reading program. As a more advanced learner at my elementary school and middle school, I always hated a lot of the things that they made me read. They were never anything that I would choose for myself. This is another reason why you cannot make the "perfect" reading program. Everyone has different interests and tastes. No one is the same.

After doing this research about myself as a reader, I conclude that I loved reading as a young child but as I became older, I fell out of reading. I started disliking books and I had a very hard time finding books that I truly enjoyed. I realized that I need to start looking for books again and that I need to change my reading habits and look at reading from a different perspective. Overall, I think that learning about myself as a reader is going to benefit me in the future in finding books that I like and things that I should stay away from.