Welcome back readers,

This week in ASTU we discussed the Judith Buttler essay and initially I was dreading reading this piece because of the reputation of complexity it held. As I started flipping through it though, I became pleasantly surprised with my ability to decipher many of the more basic and even a couple of the sophisticated arguments Buttler was presenting. This caused me to reflect back to my first attempt reading Shahzad’s essay at the beginning of the year and the difficulty I had forming a strong understanding on it. Now finding myself grasping a seemingly much more sophisticated piece of writing gives me a gratifying feeling of progression.

I found the in-class discussions intriguing this week as we broke down many of the different ideas concerning the “us” vs. “them” debate, 9/11, trauma, media and Guantanamo Bay. Specifically in a group discussion today we were asked to speak on how hearing the poems from prisoners inside Guantanamo might alter our impression of the war on terror. Firstly we talked about the abnormality of the idea of Guantanamo prisoners producing so much poetry, and that was an interesting thought. This idea definitely made the prisoners appear much more human to me. But then we started to discuss how it’s odd that Guantanamo wouldn’t allow for most of the poetry to leave the prison. Then a string of questions began to form. How was the producer of “Poems from Guantanamo” able to compile enough poems for an entire book? And if they were holding or destroying the majority of it, what reasons do they have? And again if Guantanamo holds so much how can the end product of the poems released be trusted to be free of any censorship in the editing process? Then of course there’s the question of translation that was brought up in class discussion, how can the process of conversion from Arabic to English be trusted? I’ve always thought that being a J. Edgar Hoover type would be fascinating because you’d have the access to view all of the United States shady activities and be one of the privileged few.

If you read my blog than thanks!

A.J.

Welcome Readers!

I’m not going to lie, I have been struggling all day to start this blog post, it’s been so long I hardly remember how to do it! But I hope everyone had a nice Christmas break with enough time to relax and let their minds wander away from school. As everyone should hopefully know we are kicking off the new term by discussing the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Personally, I was unaware that this story was made into a novel. I had seen the movie as it was somewhat of a hit in theatres with roles from Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. This happens to me quite often actually, I tend to hop on books rather late, after already had seeing the movie. I almost prefer it that way, because then there’s less potential for disappointment and in the case of Foer’s novel it gave me a much rounder, more full interpretation of the collection of stories that the book uses.

I actually really enjoyed the film, it’s completely focused on Oscar and his struggle to find the connection to his father once more in order to eventually let his pent up frustrations go. With so much emphasis on Oscar’s story alone though, the movie doesn’t cover the stories of Oscar’s grandmother, grandfather, Anna or many of the interesting characters Oscar comes across throughout his search. The lack of substance that these characters held in the film made them that much more interesting throughout the book. I was actually more captivated by Thomas Sr. and Oscar’s grandmother’s stories then I was Oscar’s because I had already seen a large portion of Oscar’s journey in the movie, but then being introduced to the book it was as if I was getting a behind the scenes look at the lives of Thomas Sr. and Oscar’s grandmother. With the addition of Anna into both their stories makes for an even more obscure and exciting dynamic between Thomas Sr. and grandma, while bringing more knowledge to be interpreted by the reader.

It’s understandable that the film producers decided to keep the majority of the movies focus on Oscar’s story, because it would certainly be difficult to create a movie with so much substance that didn’t drag on too long. That being said I personally would’ve found a part two and three or a full sequel that goes back and tells the stories of Oscar’s grandparents to be a fascinating way to fully depict the story from each angle. That’s something that I couldn’t get off my mind when reading this novel.

Thats all for today, thanks,

A.J.