Perspective

 

Author's Note- This is my response to the following assignment for my group reading book, Life As We Knew It. 

Assignment #2: Point of View

Identify the point of view in LAWKI and discuss how that point of view affects the reader's interpretation of the novel's events. Use specific scenes and examples to support your ideas. For an advanced score, determine how the story would be different if told from another point of view. Due December 7.

I struggled a lot with this assignment...it doesn't feel quite right to me.  Any advice/pointers?

In the apocalyptic, engaging novel Life As We Knew It, the point of view is written through the diary entries of 15 year-old Miranda, a normal teen thrust into a world full of death, destruction, hunger, and isolation.  The fact that a fifteen year old is narrating the story can easily be an advantage or disadvantage to the reader.   When reading this story from a teen's perspective, you get almost the whole picture, but not quite.  She is under no circumstances ever allowed to go into the pantry for most of the middle of the book.  Their mother always gets the cans out from the pantry, and she won't allow anyone in.  Reading in Miranda's point of view obstructs your knowledge of the food situation, as well as the condition of the outside world, as she's not allowed to waste batteries by listening to the radio like her mother does.  

Yet, her perspective still gives us an advantage.  At least we're not reading from ten year-old Johnny's point of view, who believes this horrid nightmare is some sort of game that he's playing that will all end soon.  It takes him weeks to realize that Miranda and Matt had stopped eating breakfast and lunch every other day to conserve food, or the fact that his mother had stopped eating almost entirely.  His young, naïve mind has yet to grasp the magnitude of this catastrophic disaster.

If, perhaps, the mother narrated this story, I have a feeling it would be much, much darker, the reason being that she sees what's happening a lot more clearly than a teen would, and she can assess the situation better.  She's slowly starving herself to death to save her kids.  She knows how low the food supply is, and learns about new disasters happening around the world daily from the radio.  She and Matt, the college-age brother, would understand how much more serious the situation is than Miranda and John, who are still on the drawn-out trek through adolescence.

Megan's Choices

Author's Note:  This is my response to the following assignment for the book I am reading with my reading group, entitled Life As We Knew It:

  

Assignment #3: Character

Analyze the motives (why) and behavior of one character from your novel. Is this character dynamic or static, and why do you believe this? How do his/her actions affect the events of the story? Use text evidence to support your ideas. If possible, compare this character to a similar one from another novel.

I tried to experiment with vocabulary a bit, but I'm not entirely sure I like the whole analysis...the first paragraph was sort of a summary of this character's story (who is not the main character- Miranda is.) and the second paragraph was the analysis.  The reason I included the summary is that only five other people in the class have read this book, and I felt like some background information would be required for the people who haven't.  Comments will be greatly appreciated!

Megan is withering away to nothing, purposely starving herself to death.  She was Miranda's closest and most trusted friend…until the sharp claws of Reverend Marshall lured her into it's grasp and kept her there.   Megan's always been Catholic, and always devoted to God.  But once the moon crashes into the earth, causing hunger, famine, floods, and volcanoes among other devastating disasters, a greedy and gluttonous reverend crafts his convincing words and uses her false trust to change her beliefs, along with the entire congregation's, and makes them think that the right thing to do is give their food to him and his family, while they all slowly starve to death.  He tells them that he hears God speaking to him, telling him that this is their destiny, and that God is waiting for them.  Megan is convinced immediately, as she has been listening to him all her life and trusts him unwaveringly.  Miranda must watch as Megan becomes so weak from hunger that it takes all her strength to stand.

Megan is quite obviously a dynamic character, as Reverend Marshall takes a hand in changing her beliefs, values, and attitude.  In fact, her whole attitude toward life is changed.  Instead of wanting  to live her life to the fullest like the old Megan once did, she condemns herself to the confinement of her room for the rest of her life, eating little to none everyday, even though she has food and she lusts for it,  for life, for sunlight.  Reverend tells her that her lust for these things, along with everyone else's is the reason why God did this.  He's causing the world to end to punish them, apparently, and they have to prove their love for God by sacrificing everything they love.  Food, communication, family, friends...When Miranda tells Megan she'll be back next week to visit her again, she even says, "Don't come back.  I have to show God I'm truly repentent, and I can't do that if you make me think about food, and talking to my family, and how awful things are.  I don't want to be angry at God and seeing you makes me feel that way, just a little bit.  So I can't see you again. I have to sacrifice our friendship, because I don't know how much left I can sacrifice to prove to God how much I love Him."  

Her actions affect the events of the story because once she dies, it pushes Miranda on.  It makes her realize she does not want to die, especially not like Megan did, so at peace with everything, and okay with herself dying for no reason.  It caused Miranda's decision to die fighting, which ultimately saved the entire family in the end.

Guy Montag from the book Fahrenheit 451, as well as most of the characters from this novel, would be perfect examples of characters similar to Megan.  The reason I say this is that Guy, like Megan, is completely and utterly convinced that what he's doing is the one true and right thing, though in reality, he's participating in terrible and wrong things.  You see, Guy is a firefighter, yet unlike our modern day firefighters, he doesn't put fires out, he starts them.  His job is to burn books.  He lives in the future, where classes like Philosophy and Sculpting no longer exist, nor do any other classes that would allow you to think for yourself.  Math, science, and business-type classes are the only classes anyone could take, books are burned, and writing is banned.  A controlling government has filled the population's heads with nonsense.  They have the creativity slowly beaten out of them with a (figurative) stick from a young age and are told this is right.  Now tell me, does that sound right to you?