Hello fellow readers!

It’s a new year and it’s my turn again to be the class blogger, one of the first five for this new term! How exciting! Being class blogger is my favorite part of this assignment because I got to read people’s ideas and perspectives on what is happening in our class this week or what are we currently discussing!

This week we are discussing a novel by Foer titled Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and it’s no surprise for me that almost all of you wrote about this in your blog this week. As most of you have explained, this novel is about a boy named Oskar who lost his father in the 9/11 tragedy and his quest to reveal hidden messages behind his father’s death.

In Kate‘s blog she mentioned a major theme in the book that our class discussed this week which is absence. We discussed a few of examples of absence but the absence of Oskar’s Father’s body is what hit her most till she came up with a brilliant question that keeps me thinking, “With such a tragic event, would knowing where the body of your loved one is make the coping process easier or simply be unbearable?”. In Oskar’s case knowing that the body of his father is absent, it makes him harder to move on and is the reason behind his quest all along, so he could reconnect with his father like what Melissa mentioned.

Some of you (Elizabeth and Martin) also talked about how this novel has touched you or has affected you personally. As we can see from Elizabeth’s blog’s title, “It can happen to you”, she shares her experience of losing someone she cares about, just like how Oskar lost his father. She mentioned that it can happened anytime in a blink of an eye, very unexpected things might happen and when its unexpected its harder to cope with the pain. This book has affected Martin quite differently than how it has affected Elizabeth, instead of telling his own personal experience about lost, he put himself in Oskar’s shoes by listening to the audiobook version of the book so he could really experience the loss Oskar felt.

While most of you only talked about Extremely loud and incredibly close novel, Maria and Magda saw some connection between the past novels that we’ve read in class with Foer’s novel. Like how Obasan, Persepolis and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close novels are very straightforward and honest about what they actually feel since they were told from a child’s point of view. All of the three novels are also talking about a child who tried to cope with trauma and how trauma has a big impact to a child’s life.

I was amazed after reading all of the blog posts you guys posted and how each and every one of you has something different to say and has different perspectives about one exact same novel that we are currently reading. I’m gonna end this blog post here, and if you guys have any thoughts or questions, don’t hesitate to leave comments down below.

– Inneke Soeyanto

Hi readers!

This week I’m the class blogger and I just finished reading everyone’s blogs and they were all amazing! Good job you guys! haha!

So anyway, this week, almost everyone from my class posted about Persepolis and connects it to Hillary Chute’s article titled The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. I am not surprised because that is what our class has been discussing this whole week and it was a great discussion, I myself enjoyed it so much.

Like what Kennedy said in his blog, its amazing how Satrapi was able to manipulate her readers by using techniques to somehow send hidden messages to the readers and the more we read her book the more we know what message she is really trying to send us. I also agree that each pictures have somehow different meanings and emotions behind it.

A lot of people (Kennedy, Kate, Grace, Peter, and Magda) focused on a picture from page 52 where Satrapi drew a picture of a man being cut up to pieces. Like what Peter and Kate said, it is obvious that it is a picture or an imagination from a child’s point of view. A child would imagine something violent in an unrealistic way where the man’s body parts in the picture was chopped equally, tidily, no blood and there are hollows, just like in cartoons whereas in the real world, its far from what she has drawn. Magda also agrees that its is not what the real torture looks like, she added that the picture above are more accurate of what the torture was like.

Another thing people in my class (Martin, Sandra, and Joseph) are drawn to is the black and white technique Satrapi has used. Like what Sandra said, most of us probably think at first that Satrapi used only black and white for her book just to set the mood and have no important reasons behind it. After reading Chute’s article we all changed our mind. The reason why she used black and white backgrounds turned out to be very important. Like what Joseph and most of us agreed that the reason why she used black and white backgrounds is to depicts how violent it was in that era. Martin added that black and white is a lot more powerful to recall traumatic experience and for readers to understand trauma more than to use color backgrounds. Martin ends his argument by quoting from our fellow classmate, Isiah that black and white is more straight forward and honest.

Reading people’s ideas and perspectives of the book and the article is very interesting and I really enjoyed it, as much as I enjoyed writing this blog post this week! Before I’m out, I have a small question for you guys to discuss, If you were the author of your own story/memoir, what special techniques or style you guys would use so that people would be drawn deeper to your story/memoir?

-Inneke Soeyanto