Final Post!!

NOT SO SHORT SUMMARY-

Finallllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy we have come to the last Haroun blog post!! I feel like we've been reading this book forever ahaha. The end of this book was super weird though. Like it was really great and all when Haroun solved everyone's problems and saved the sea of stories, but then Rushdie just ended the rest of the story in a really boring way. I'm not sure if he was rushing to finish? Or if this was even intentional? But then end of the story is just summed up with "his mom came back and he got a bird and the city is all good!!". It was weird to me that after all that detail and hidden meaning in the book Rushdie ended it so suddenly. Someone from my group today said that it might be because it is a children's story, and that ending the book with tragedy or sadness would be wrong. Okay so that was more than a few sentences and now im like half way done with the 300 word requirement for this post whoops.

LENSES-

Reading the book with the four lenses actually was kinda cool because I saw like hidden meanings that I wouldn't normally notice if I just read it straight out. I see the story in different ways because no I actually know what Salman Rushdie was going through when he was writing it and you can see who he was talking about or like subtweeting in his book. Now when I read other books I can look at it this way and see all the little stuff the author put in that you weren't meant to catch. Here's the link to my project- https://www.instagram.com/?hl=en . It shows a lot of the hidden meanings behind the characters that I talked about here.

ANNOTATION-

My favorite quote from the end of the book is "More minutes passed: six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Eleven minutes passed. Haroun remained stretched out, with his eyes shut tight, concentrating." (page 171, I don't even know how I would do MLA format for just this one part???) It kind of like signified the end of the book because Haroun's issue was that he couldn't pay attention for more than eleven minutes because his mom left, so this was like the resolution for him kind of. And even though his mom came back I think he would've been okay if she didn't because of this.

TODAY'S DISCUSSION-

In today's discussion we really just talked about the ending. We talked a lot about how it was ended so quickly because Rushdie was trying to keep the children's story aspect to it. I learned more about allusions to other stories as well. There are a lot of Alice In Wonderland and Wizard of Oz references that I didn't even pick up on in this book. Also Haroun follows the Hero's Journey like perfectly. I thought it was really cool that Rushdie and other writers can put so many references in that you won't even see unless you're looking for it.

LITERARY ANALYSIS-

I think Rushdie was teaching us about the importance of imagination. His whole background was him being surpressed and threatened just for sharing an opinion. This is why he tries to teach the reader through stories that you need to believe in yourself like Haroun did when trying to regain his father story-telling abilities.

FICTIONAL STORIES ARE MORALLY GOOD LIES-

Now that I actually know what this means (took me about two months) I agree with it. Although I don't think that Rushdie's stories are lies, because he doesn't have the intent for us to believe him, some children's stories depend on the kids believing them. For example, if kids didn't believe in Santa, the most known story of children today wouldn't serve it's purpose of making kids happy anymore.

SUM IT UP-

In my first couple of blog posts, I said that I didn't really like the story because it was too boring and hard to follow. Now that I've had the chance to finish it. I kind of like it a little more. Once I got to understand Rushdie's past and see the hidden meaning and purpose of what he was writing, it wasn't that bad at all. The only thing im really hung up over is the ending, because I expected a way better ending to such an interesting book. That's all for Haroun!! Bye! -Chloe