The Member of the Wedding

I am currently reading The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. It is a great classic book about a girl named Frankie. This book takes place in 1946, Frankie is a 12 year old girl who is very bored with life in general. It is the middle of the summer and she has nothing to do.                                                                                                                                   Frankie’s brother named Jarvis is getting married. Since Frankie is bored, she feels really excited for the wedding. She has a crush on it almost. Frankie’s family has a cook named Bernice. Bernice is Frankie’s best friend, because she doesn’t really have anyone else.  Bernice and Frankie were playing around one day and Frankie got really mad because Bernice was teasing her about the wedding.

The next thing you know, Frankie has thrown a knife across the room because she is so mad. I think Frankie just lost control, she must be going through a rough time in her life right now and she must have just lost it. I understand why she went too far, she needed some excitement in her life. She doesn’t feel like she is a part of anything and she is depressed and lonely. If I was her, I would tell someone about what she is feeling and why. It’s not good to hold in a grudge, it will just make you more mad and angry.

On one hand I think I can relate to Frankie and know and understand what she is going through. On the other hand, maybe she is over reacting just a little bit. I think I can relate to Frankie, well not completely but on some level. She is twelve years old, that is not a very fun age to be. Also, she Is really bored it’s the middle of summer and she has nothing to do. I know that I get very annoyed when its summer and I’m bored. She must be even more bored because there were no camps and her friends weren’t around or anything. I think in general Frankie is so bored that it causes her to do irrational things that she knows is wrong. Apparently she broke the law that summer but I don’t know what she did because I’m not that far into the book. I wonder what drives her to do all those crazy things. I mean it is just because she is bored or is it because something else?

I understand that Frankie is bored but I also think that she is overacting just a little bit. She is saying that after the wedding of her brother, she wants to run away from home and stay with them. Honestly, I think that’s a little bit extreme if you ask me. Once school starts again, she isn’t going to be as bored. Also she will be older and have more friends. I think that she could at least make an effort to find someone to play with. And if not, she had the cook who could do stuff with her. Even though I understand that she is only twelve, she could at least brainstorm ideas. She also lives near her first cousin John Henry, who she says she doesn’t like playing with but she should just make the best of it.

The member of the wedding is a really fantastic book that is nice and challenging. It has great language and I feel like I am right there next to Frankie. I like how you can follow her life while it is still in third person. I would definitely recommend it.

Ninteen Minutes Whose Perspective Is Missing

    This week I have chosen to write about which perspective and whose perspective is missing. I am currently reading a book called “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult. It is about a school shooting. It is told in many different perspectives and it goes back and forth from the past. In the story a young boy named peter goes into his school and starts shooting people. He kills ten people including one teacher. No one knows why he did it and no one knows how he got away with it.

     I think that injustice was served that day for all the families that lost a kid that day. There are about five main characters so far. Alex who is a middle aged women who is a judge and has a teenage daughter named Josie who got injured in the shooting. Josie is another perspective and so is Lacy who is Alex’s best friend and is a doctor. She has a son named Peter who is another perspective and he was the one who shot the kids. And a police officer named Patrick who investigates the scene of the crime.

     In “Nineteen Minutes” Josie has a boyfriend named Matt. He is a big part in her life and he isn’t one of the perspectives. In the school shooting he dies and it affects Josie’s life greatly. In the book it talks about how Josie feels like she isn’t important anymore. She is popular and pretty but she doesn’t feel real anymore. She feels like this fake person and the only person she can feel herself around is Matt. I think that is why it affects her more than anything else.  

     I think the author leaves Matt out of the picture because it wouldn’t have been as powerful when he died. We know it affects josie and that is really it. It would be interesting to see and hear Matt’s perspective but I feel like it’s more emotional and powerful to have just josie’s. It makes you feel really bad for Josie because connecting back to the beginning of the book, you realize he was the real person she was connecting to. In the book it says “either Josie was someone she wanted to be, or she was someone who nobody wanted” That is a really deep quote and it makes you realize that she feels really out of place even though she is really popular. Then later in that part, it talks about how Matt makes her feel better.  When she was hugging Matt she was thinking “I’m lucky, at that moment she could not remember anything but what it felt like to be adored” Being around Matt made her feel good and that is why I think the author left him out of the book, so when he was gone you could really feel how awful Josie felt and what she was going through.