Week Two Post B

Since I'm too lazy to look for a quote or write a letter to a character or the author, I'll just analyze the setting and the characters and stuff. A lot of the book is written from the perspective of two German prisoners of war who have escaped and are hiding out in America. Detroit, actually. They have a strange opinion of America. They don't really dislike it, as neither of them really accepted the Nazi political doctrine. They just think that it is a very strange place where you can walk down the street without being asked for your papers. They find some American to be lazy, but know that there are many equally lazy Germans. They only halfheartedly supported the war to begin with, and accept that the Germans no longer have the strength to win the war. In their mind, America is a land of opportunity, and if they must be somewhere other than Germany until the war ends, they may as well be in America.

Week Two Post A

Vocab 1: Pince-Nez: A type of glasses that work with no earpieces but by pinching the nose. Page 64.

Vocab 2: I've looked through the entire section and I can't find another one.

Figurative 1: "Bolted like a rabbit". It is a simile, it uses the word like.
Figurative 2: "He was a snake". This is a metaphor because it compares someone to something they are not without using the words like or as.
Figurative 3: "...as long as the fire of National Socialism burns within our breast..." This is an example of a metaphor, I think, because there is no actual fire burning and it doesn't compare anything with anything else.

Quote: Walter: "You could go to jail for that." Darcy: "I've already been." I picked this quote for two reasons. First, because it is very important to the establishment of Darcy as a hardcore bad-ass type character. Second, and most importantly, it was the first quote that I could find.

Week One Post A

My quote for this section is from Honey Deal, the main character. When asked is she has ever read Mein Kampf, Hitler's book, she replies "I didn't, and you know why? Because it's so fucking boring. I tried a few times and gave up." I like it because it establishes her as totally irreverent, especially since she is married to a German who prides himself on his loyalty to his leader.

This man writes with an 8th grade skill level, and so uses very little big words or figurative language.

Week One Post B

There isn't much to say about the book at this point. So far it has all been character introduction and that kind of stuff, no story yet. I don't know enough about the book to do any of the things on the list like write a letter or analyze a character yet, and there haven't been any good quotes yet. So I'm just gonna describe the book a little. Its set in the 1940s, during World War II, and focuses around Honey Deal, an American woman living in America who is married to a German spy who believes himself to be the twin brother of Heinrich Himmler, but she doesn't know he is a spy...I just realized that this would make a better sitcom than a book. The only reason that I picked this was that there is a woman with a gun on the cover. It seemed like a good reason at the time. Anyway, the government thinks that he is a spy, and that he is hiding to escaped prisoners of war, which he is. That's all the reader finds out at this point in the book.

Outside Reading Second Quarter Overview

I'm reading Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard, published in 2007. It is fiction, and is 292 pages long. I chose this book because there is a woman with a gun on the cover, which is a perfectly good reason. It is sufficiently challenging becuase I found it by searching for adult novels.

Week 4 Part 2

After the trial, Razor was placed in the B-Wing of Latchmere House, a juvenile holding prison The B-Wing of Latchmere House has two sections. He had heard that juvenile was easy, so he wasn't worried. B-One if for minor crimes and younger children, and prisoners were not allowed to smoke. B-Two was for more serious crimes. Razor was placed in B-One. He wanted to be moved to B-Two, so one day at roll call he didn't leave his room to be counted. He waited for a screw to notice he was gone, and then refused to come out for roll call unless he was moved to B-Two. The screw called a Senior Officer, who basically told Razor to do what he was told or get a beating. Razor told them to do their worst, backed up into the corner, and put his fists up. A few screws rushed him. He was quickly subdued and brought to the punishment block.

The screws beat him and bruised most of his body, leaving him in the block that night. But the next morning when they came in, he was doing push-ups. He couldn't let them see that they had hurt him. They brought him to trial, and he pled guilty. He was sentenced to a week of solitary. When the week was up, he was moved to B-Two. This taught him that he could use violence to get what he wanted.

In his cell in B-Two he met a kid named Jel. Jel was in for burglary, and hated the screws as much as Razor. They got along really well, and decided to et revenge on the screws for their treatment. One night, when a screw that the prisoners just called Hitler was passing by their cell, they threw a bag filled with human feces at his head. He was hit, but didn't know who had done it. The screws tried to find out who had done it, but nobody confessed. A few weeks later, after the commotion had died down, they did it again. This time, they were caught by the screws and sentenced to a week of solitary each.

A few weeks later, he attempted to escape Latchmere House. He failed, and was brought to trial on escape charges. He jokingly used the Geneva Convention do defend his actions, citing a number of newspaper articles about the "War on Crime". He stated that if there was a war on crime, he was clearly a soldier in the criminal army who had been imprisoned during said war. His defense failed due to the fact that the criminal under ground is, at best, a terrorist organization but definitely not an opposing state. Also, there was no declaration of war. While the judge thought that the defense had been very clever and amusing, he had to rule in favor of the prison. Razor stated: "That was it. I had won a battle but lost the war, a war that the prosecution could prove did not exist." Shortly after this, Razor was sent to the Old Bailey.

Razor was proud to have made it to the Old Bailey at such a young age. It was a legendary court, where all the high profile and hardened criminals get tried. He reached it at the age of 16. He was expecting a nine month sentence. He got three years. He served his sentence at Ashford, a large, rundown prison. On the first day, he was awakened at seven for breakfast. He was still tired, and gave the screw a volley of verbal abuse. The screw told him that he would get himself in trouble if he continued to act that way, to which Razor replied, "Yeah? What are you going to do, then? Put me in a fucking prison?"

Razor found out a week after his arrival that Jel had been sent to Ashford as well, with the same sentence of three years. They met up with another kid, Tony, in for theft and burglary, who had come from Latchmere, and together they earned the respect of the other prisoners.
Once, they demanded to be let into the exercise yard for a game of football. This was unheard of, but they threatened to go on a hunger strike if they were not allowed to. The screws had no choice but to let them play.

Later that month, Razor, Jel, and Tony heard that three boys were being sent to Ashford on rape charges. Rapists are not well accepted in prison. In fact, they are generally abused by the rest of the prison population, as they deserve. This was exactly what Razor and his friends were planning on doing. When the rapists arrived they were abused at every opportunity.

Week 4 Part 1

In the final paragraph on page 482 of A Few Kind Words And a Loaded Gun, after Razor has been sentenced to life in prison, he states, "I have spent my life carefully fashioning the chains that now bind me." This quote shows that the understands that he is responsible for what happened to him. He accepts that his sentence is his own fault.