An Ember in the Ashes -- Informational Texts

An Ember in the Ashes 

as Informational Text (compare/contrast style)

Similarities to Ancient Greek Culture
An Ember in the Ashes:	Ancient Greek Culture:
Martial Culture	Spartan Warrior Culture
Scholars: emphasis on learning, arts, books	Athenian culture emphases on the arts
Class system: slaves and freemen and women, soldier caste, spiritual augurs as ultimate authority	Class system: the rich, slaves vs. freemen, ruling class of nobles, spiritual class as ultimate authority
Children are selected to be Martials at a young age, and are honed though years of training and trials.	Children become Spartan warriors at a young age, through a series of trials and training.
Young Martials have to fend for themselves in the wild to prove themselves.	Young Spartans have to prove themselves by surviving the wild.
Low class women are subjugated by sexual and physical violence.	Low class women are subjugated by sexual and physical violence.
Leaders come from the Martial class.	Leaders come from the Warrior class.
Women can be strong leaders.	“only Spartan women can give birth to Spartan men”
Price for failure or disloyalty = death	“come back with your shield or on it”
Dissimilarities
Presence of a Resistance Movement	Separate City-States mean Athens and Sparta govern themselves separately, so no need for a resistance.
One class rules another with violence and oppression	Freedom from outside rule and oppression, or at least the ability to fight against would-be invaders (Persia)
Silver Masks as hallmark of Martial Class	Shields and armor as hallmark of warrior class.
Scholarship is stamped out, not valued.	Scholarship is not valued in Sparta, but Athens embraces it, so there is a safe haven for learning.

An Ember in the Ashes -- Sabaa Tahir

Argument from the first 40 pages:

Here's the thing: I love fantasy writing. I love Middle Earth and Hogwarts and Westeros -- I love losing myself in alternate, kind-of-similar-to-my-world-but-not-quite kinds of settings. I can get behind a fantasy-world-premise and follow it obligingly, but my argument at this point in Ember is that I am wandering around this novel. I'm stumbling through the first chapters, trying to suspend disbelief and go with the Scholar class, Marshalls law, etc, but I'm a bit lost and confused as to where I am and what's going on. Thus far, the world has not been explained (although the back cover tells me it is "Rome-esque"), and the narration is jumping back and forth between two very different voices in the midst of two very different stories. The narration hasn't given me a minute to look around and get my bearings; I haven't had a bird's eye view of this world or any information about what its basic premises are. It's a bit much to expect from the reader -- to wait 40 pages to get hooked. I prefer to tour Middle Earth for a minute before setting out on my quest...I like to know what Panem is before I begin to fight the Power...I just like to get a little acquainted with my fantasy world before trying to survive in it, you know?

* note: I am totally hooked on this novel, of course, and I'm sure the narrators will flesh out Ember's world as I read.  I just want to remember that this is probably not a good YA for young high school readers; I'd recommend it for 11th and 12th graders. It requires a great deal of patience and reading-while-confused to get hooked into the story.  

Final, Existential Thoughts: The Fault in Our Stars -- John Green

This:

It was unbearable. The whole thing. Every second worse than the last. I just kept thinking about calling him, wondering what would happen, if anyone would answer. In the last weeks, we'd been reduced to spending our time together in recollection, but that was not nothing: The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they'd been hours before. 
-- The Fault in Our Stars (Hazel's reflection after Augustus' death; italics mine)


This passage struck me as incredibly and devastatingly true. (Devastatingly? Possible-made-up word alert.) When we experience the loss of someone, whether to death or the end of a relationship, we lose the power of shared memory. And shared memory is, itself, a validation of individual life, because someone else is remembering us, too. We have a co-rememberer-- one who witnesses our life and reminds us of its significance.

The idea is so powerful. The symbolism of memory and immortality are so rich in this passage.

The Fault in Our Stars -- John Green

Overall, what kind of feeling did you have after reading a few paragraphs of this work? Midway?

I've resisted reading TFiOS because I have a tendency to flee from trendy, of-the-moment fiction. It took me years to read the Twilight series, and anything with Oprah's branding on it guarantees I won't be reading it for awhile. It's not that I won't get around to reading The Latest and Greatest, but I often let years go by so that the bandwagon can pass and I can read the novel in relative peace and obscurity. In this way, I didn't read The Fault in Our Stars when it was published in 2012, and if I'm being totally honest, the timing for reading anything romantic... Well, let's just say that my personal life has had a little rough sailing lately, and the Very Last Thing I want to be emotionally vulnerable to is a love story. 

I opened to the first page a bit reluctantly, but within a few paragraphs, I was hooked. I didn't stop reading until an hour later, when I came to the bookmark alerting me that I'd read the assigned chapters for this week--all seven of them. Here are some slightly emotionally-messy thoughts and feelings after reading:

1. I sort of hate that John Green writes a female, adolescent, wise narrator so well. Hazel Grace's voice is so authentic. I always wonder how a male writer can write a young female narrator so effectively. I'm jealously cynical of such creative genius.

2. For someone a bit uncomfortable reading a love story, I feel a little better that cancer is also included. How sick and demented is THAT feeling? Haha -- but really. All cynicism aside, I think Green has chosen an unusually beautiful way to address love (and the truth of falling in love), while also acknowledging the often brutal reality of life's unexpected disappointments. 

3. I love that Hazel's parents are decent, loving, supportive people. Hell yes to some positive parental representation in a YA novel. (if we're not allowed to curse on these blogs, Dr. Sty, please forgive me)

Happy reading, my friends!

Final Thoughts: Literary Associations and Huxley's Brave New World

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (through ch. 17)

What characters do you find yourself relating to the most? Why?

When I read Brave New World as an adolescent, I was most drawn to John the Savage. I remember thinking that Bernard was a decent guy, but the women were all unlikable. Rereading BNW now, almost twenty years later, I am surprised at how much I sympathize with characters I found abhorrent before... I think I want to be John the Savage, but I am afraid I am more like Bernard. I have just finished chapter 17, so I don't want to offer spoilers, but I relate more to the misery of disappointment in Linda and the ignorance of apathy of Lenina. I don't feel like I AM either woman, but I don't judge them as harshly as I did when I first read BNW. And I find myself wishing that there was at least one woman who resisted the machine of civilization, you know? Because in BNW, Bernard, Helmholtz, John and (to an extent) Mustapha can see outside the conditioning to the higher-level issues, but none of the women can. It's depressing to see the two extremes: Lenina, who is ignorant but beautiful, and Linda, who somehow maintains ignorance even when faced with the opportunity for personal growth. It is painful to read these women. I wish there was a female John or Bernard or Helmholtz.

Gone, by Michael Grant (cont)

Would you change the ending of the story in any way? Tell your ending. 

Why would you change it?

I enjoyed reading Gone and wondered about the ending I'd eventually encounter. While reading it, I was reminded of Golding's Lord of the Flies (as children move into good-vs-evil groupings) as well as the current tv dramas preoccupied with supernatural events and happenings. Ward leaves the reader with an obvious craving for a sequel (I understand there are at least three books in the series) and many unanswered questions and loose ends.

One issue I found with the end of the novel was that there is an almost-preachy avoidance of going "too violent" with the characters. The final "war" scene has the perpetration of violence being found principally outside the main characters. I find this interesting for several reasons.

One, one of the most powerful themes in Lord of the Flies is that evil is found within us, not outside of us. In Golding's novel (written for adults), children are evil and cruel; does Ward's reticence in this area shed light on YA literature as a whole, or just Ward's personal boundaries? YA is typically perceived as having no boundaries--incest, violence, murder, rape--all have been addressed in YA literature, and Ward creates some characters who seem to delight in cruelty and evil; yet he reigns these features in for the novel's climax. Why?

Two: Can a novel's characterization suffer from this kind of authorial choice? Should a novel have a different focus or redemptive purpose if it's written to be read by children? How much "real" is too real? I think this novel offers an interesting space for discussing the role, purpose, and use of violence in children's literature.