The Stranger

There were a lot of different passages from the book that I used in the creation of this piece of art, but these are the main ones I focused on:

Seeing the rows of cypress trees leading up to the hills next to the sky, and the houses standing out here and there against that red and green earth, I was able to understand Maman better...But today, with the sun bearing down, making the whole landscape shimmer with heat, it was inhuman and oppressive. pg 15

I felt a little lost between the blue and white of the sky and the monotony of the colors around me - the sticky black of the tar, the dull black of all the clothes, and the shiny black of the hearse.  pg 17

Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Perez fainting (he crumpled like a rag doll), the red earth spilling over Maman's casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it...  pg 18

But I took a step, one step, forward.  And this time, without getting up, the Arab drew his knife and held it up to me in the sun.  The light shot off the steel, and it was like a long flashing blade cutting at my forehead.  At the same instant the sweat in my eyebrows dripped down over my eyelids all at once and covered them with a warm, think film.  My eyes were blinded behind the curtain of tears and salt.  All I could feel were the cymbals of sunlight crashing on my forehead and, indistinctly, the dazzling spear flying up from the knife in front of me.  The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes.  That's when everything began to reel.  The sea carried up a thick, fiery breath.  It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire.  My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. pg 59

The trees standing there by the road at Maman's funeral seem to help Meursault understand his mom better, so that is why there is a tree, and it is holding him/his life up.  The tree is also partially his life as well.  I made sure that the sky is seen in the background, as well as the black of Meursault's suit and tie (yes, that's him in the tree).  I made that a contrast, as Meursault does in the book, being lost between the colors of the sky and the black of the things around him.  When they reach the church, he takes notice of everything, except Maman, so I made sure to add the part about the red geraniums on the graves.  I decided that if the other graves had geraniums on them, then someone probably put flowers on Maman's grave as well, and I added that to the picture.  I made it so that you can see the roots of the tree, representing the roots that he sees in the dirt of Maman's grave, even thought the roots are of a tree, and those in Maman's grave are grass or something.  I spent a bit more time thinking about the end of the book to add to my drawing.  The background is a beach, my idea of what the beach in the book may have looked like, and there are people there enjoying themselves.  I put the ocean in the background, too, because he mentions in the book that the "sea carried up a thick, fiery breath", so I wanted to make sure that a sea was included in the drawing.  The knife is in the sky, throwing off reflections of the sun (which is out of sight) onto the branch Meursault is sitting on.  It is shattering the branch, just as Meursault's life and happiness was shattered (were you listening before?  I told you what the tree represented!).  Meursault's foundations at the base of the tree are burning and being destroyed, because his "foundations" of doing things whatever way he wants are being broken down and destroyed by his decision, and the sky splitting to rain down fire on the tree.  To add to the last part of the previous sentence, the lightning bolt thing in the sky is the sky splitting open, tearing away another part of Meuarsault's life.  If you look closely, though, Meursault is highlighted in black, contrasting sharply with the natural layout.  He sits alone, away from everything, still holding on to the last part of his broken life: himself.  And if you look even closer, you'll see a heart, outlined in black, drawn on Meursault's chest.  
And half of that heart is dark.

Autobiography of Myself as a Reader

http://prezi.com/qos9zihui38v/living-an-imaginary-life/#

I have realized that I am very specific about the kinds of books that I do or don't like, and that I prefer to choose my own books rather than have someone choose for me.  My mom taught me to read before Kindergarten, which helped immensely towards getting me into Quest and into other advanced classes at my two elementary schools.  It also feels as if I have become a stronger reader, able to tell from the first few sentences or chapters if a book is right for me; sometimes I can tell just from the cover what books I would like (yes, I know.  "Don't judge a book by its cover" but sometimes you can judge a book by its cover, and that is why it is important that when you are publishing your book, if you want your audience to want to read it, get a good cover!).  I'm rambling on, so back to the topic at hand.  ANYWAY, I was saying that my love of reading has helped me to hold things in my head better and do better overall in school.
I also believe that people fall "out of love" with reading because they are always FORCED to read things, for projects, and that makes them hate books, because books are adding to the homework pileup every night, and why should they read a book they don't want to read?  That is not the case for me, but I am feeling the pull of not wanting to read, or boredom with books because I have nothing to read.  Now, what I'm feeling about books and my boredom with them is probably nothing like what other people are feeling when they start to lose interest in books, but I'm just saying.  So that's my story.  What's yours?

-bookhouse4

Truth

It is hard to explain truth completely, for it has many sides, and is not just "right" and "wrong."  How do you know that things really happened?  How do you know that what we are learning in school is true?  We will probably never know.

Truth, to me, is what is right or correct from a certain point of view.  It all depends on your perspective, and what your beliefs are.  You will never be able to tell the entire truth, because in order to do that, you would have to have everyone who was involved tell their story exactly how they saw it, and even then they could be lying.  

There are many parts to truth, and if you really dig down in it, it would seem that there is always a different view of truth and that in reality, truth doesn't exist.  Fiction and nonfiction are just names that we give to genres, but how do we know that nonfiction is real and fiction is not?  History is usually told from the winning side, and that is what is considered truth, but what about the losing side?  The "dark side" such as during the first World War, with the Germans?  They may have seen us as the evil ones, just as we thought that the Germans were evil.

If you are a writer or a reader, you must understand that the truth can be twisted, and that not everything can be trusted.  You could believe that a "fictional" story is true, when the author of the book does not.  It all depends on your point of view.  Take, for example, the writer Tim O'Brien.  He gave a great example of your point of view on a story and his point of view.  He says in his writing of How to Tell a true War Story that if the answer to your question of "is it true?" really matters to you, then it will be truth, and you will say that it is truth.

If you write or tell stories, you will, at some point, add or subtract something that will make it not entirely the truth, and it will never be the whole truth.

When you listen to a story or read a story, there is no real "truth", yet not all stories are lies.  There is but a small amount of truth, despite facts given, and you must always remember that there is always something more that can be added in the telling of the truth.

-bookhouse4