Connecting: During and after reading a book, you can find yourself having a lot in common with the character(s). How do you relate to the character? Or even with multiple characters, what experiences do you share?
To be honest I really cannot think of anything too deep or insightful that relates me to Roger Rosenblatt’s “boy detective.” Most of his book was spent “walking” through New York, reliving the past and contemplating the present. I think I do relate to him in the way that I learn a lot about myself from other people. Any time he had a lesson to talk about it was because someone else in his life said something or inspired him. I’m much like him in that I take other people’s opinions or thoughts to heart. There are some people in this world who are very independent, they know exactly what they want, who they want to be and they will to whatever it takes to get there. Rosenblatt and I aren’t like that, there are a lot of other things we take into consideration and other people strongly influence the type of people we are. He enjoys observing what’s going on around him. When I go to the city or travel anywhere I like to embrace my environment, and try to experience what life is like there and absorb everything I possibly can. Rosenblatt did this through his travels, movies, books and history, whereas I like to do it by what’s there in the moment. As I said, there aren’t really any ways that Rosenblatt and I connect as characters. Maybe that will grow with age, he is a grown man looking back onto his life, and I haven’t really reached that same point in my life to see where he is coming from. Perhaps when I’m older and have seen more or done more I would be more apt to see his point of view or connect to his writing.
I have mixed feelings as to being connected to the “characters”. Like I said, I was only introduced to “characters” in little anecdotes or short narratives. However, I must say that I was very surprised to find that I could potentially be in poverty at some point in my life. That idea was very eye opening to me. I found it startling that no matter how well you are doing in life, there are things that can really shut you down. Another worry that I began to form throughout reading the book was the fact that our society is so focused on money. As I was writing this, I was literally thinking, “Well, I suppose sometimes having lots of money can get you out of certain situations.” And maybe that is the problem with our society... We focus so much on just paper money that our lives are either made or destroyed by it. We are so incredibly dependent on it. And the funny thing is, you want to immediately refute the point and say that you're not, but the truth is, you absolutely are. Even our most essential needs cost money. You want food? Go to the store. You want clothes? The store. Education? Taxes, if not tuition. The mere fact that that is the case is sad and scary. We are willing to let people suffer if they can't “pay up” in some sort of paper form. Maybe that says something about the society that we live in... Was money or bartering always such an important thing to people? When did we decide money was a good idea? Why have we chosen a purely numeric system of wealth instead of a holistic one? Now, with those questions out and about, I can say that recently, I have been feeling very connected with the author. One of the main reasons that I picked this book in the first place was because Ambramsky was so invested in this one topic. I loved that he felt so strongly about helping people, and I loved that he did so much hard work to get to where he is. Stories like this inspire me to help others, and having both the real stories of many and cold hard facts mixed in with possible policy strategies makes me feel like finding a solution to our problems is possible. Now that you guys have read your books, how do you feel about American Society as a whole? What can we do to change it and make it better? What are we doing well already?
I think one of our biggest setbacks as a society is our immense desire to be the best, richest and most beautiful, and I think a lot of the time we miss on the little things. One of the things Rosenblatt enforced in my book was "stopping to smell the roses" once in a while. As we are headed off to college we are asked up front to be anywhere from $20,000-$60,000 a year for a quality college education. We are forced to pay, when the chances of us getting a job straight out of our senior years are limited. People only hire employees with work experience, but then people don't get hired because they don't have work experience... it's a vicious circle. Sometimes I wish I could just forgot about the obligation to go to college in order to get a job when I'm older and just drop everything and travel the world, but I think the way society is created prevents the majority of people from doing the things they dream of doing. We should continue to strive to be better, or else we will only ever get worse, but I think we could all learn the benefits of relaxation and happiness. I don't know if that would be done with mandatory vacation time, or longer maternity/paternity leaves, in a similar way to European countries, seeing as that works for them. Do you feel like we are overworked? It's kinda starting to sound like Metamorphosis again...
We are very much a country of extremes. We are over worked, over payed or under payed, some of us have more money than we know what to do with, and some of us have no money at all. We over spend. Our government over spends. We don't rest enough.
I have a lot of goals and aspirations-- things that I am interested in doing in my life time. But If I were to actually do all of those things, I would probably be in school for another 30+ years. THIRTY PLUS YEARS.
I think that since the industrial revolution, we have become very accustomed to change and advancement. But at some point, we literaly aren't going to be able to keep up with the times.
Throughout the book and especially at the end, I realized how much I had in common with Julius. I’m mixed race, just as him and I get to experience both side’s cultures all the time. I appreciate it, but as with Julius, that sense of being alone is a reality. In a way, we truly aren’t alone as Julius has many colleagues in the medical field and is studying something he absolutely loves, medicine. But at times, at one’s weakest moments, doing what you love can leave you that feeling of being alone, racially. There are half Chinese, Japanese, French, Nigerian, and Germans out there. But especially being in America, it’s hard to identify with one another. In a conversation with Saito, Saito tells of being confused with the other children, they were all American and had always thought so, and not Japanese. I view myself as both but sometimes it’s the public who form this opinion about you that you do not deserve. It gets frustrating when people constantly say things and it does affect you, but the next step is to not put up with it any longer. Julius implies throughout his story he has experienced a lot and has learned a lot, often seen in not trusting others and relationships broken because of the bad treatment of the other. It gets to the point where he realizes, he needs to do what makes him happy. And I have realized, getting rid of those who don’t want to make you happy is the best step, because dwelling doesn’t do anything. Julius explores the whole book, seeing places he naturally wouldn’t. And I took away that the journey really did great thing for him. You could see that it was about the journey, and not the destination, because he never had one and therefore he was able to enjoy his surroundings better. Whenever I travel, I have realized that not being fixed on that one place you need to go, whether it’s a restaurant, a monument, or a museum, is so much better. When I just soak in my surroundings, I have often discovered much more and it turned into an adventure. Like Julius, I’m a thinker. Sometimes I feel as if my brain doesn’t turn off because there is so much interesting news out there. I absolutely love learning and I believe learning makes your world much more exciting. Julius surprised himself at how much he learned about a city he generally just used to get to and back from his residency. He really did appreciate and come to love New York the more time he spent exploring it. Every day I surprise myself at how much I enjoy what I’m doing, especially piano, and I learn more about it every time every time I sit down at the bench. Julius realized as I have also come to realize, once you slow down things in your life and come to appreciate what you have, then you’ll find the people and establish the relationships with those who love what they’re doing just as much as you are.
To be honest I really cannot think of anything too deep or insightful that relates me to Roger Rosenblatt’s “boy detective.”
ReplyDeleteMost of his book was spent “walking” through New York, reliving the past and contemplating the present. I think I do relate to him in the way that I learn a lot about myself from other people. Any time he had a lesson to talk about it was because someone else in his life said something or inspired him. I’m much like him in that I take other people’s opinions or thoughts to heart. There are some people in this world who are very independent, they know exactly what they want, who they want to be and they will to whatever it takes to get there. Rosenblatt and I aren’t like that, there are a lot of other things we take into consideration and other people strongly influence the type of people we are.
He enjoys observing what’s going on around him. When I go to the city or travel anywhere I like to embrace my environment, and try to experience what life is like there and absorb everything I possibly can. Rosenblatt did this through his travels, movies, books and history, whereas I like to do it by what’s there in the moment.
As I said, there aren’t really any ways that Rosenblatt and I connect as characters. Maybe that will grow with age, he is a grown man looking back onto his life, and I haven’t really reached that same point in my life to see where he is coming from. Perhaps when I’m older and have seen more or done more I would be more apt to see his point of view or connect to his writing.
I have mixed feelings as to being connected to the “characters”. Like I said, I was only introduced to “characters” in little anecdotes or short narratives. However, I must say that I was very surprised to find that I could potentially be in poverty at some point in my life. That idea was very eye opening to me. I found it startling that no matter how well you are doing in life, there are things that can really shut you down.
ReplyDeleteAnother worry that I began to form throughout reading the book was the fact that our society is so focused on money. As I was writing this, I was literally thinking, “Well, I suppose sometimes having lots of money can get you out of certain situations.” And maybe that is the problem with our society... We focus so much on just paper money that our lives are either made or destroyed by it. We are so incredibly dependent on it. And the funny thing is, you want to immediately refute the point and say that you're not, but the truth is, you absolutely are. Even our most essential needs cost money. You want food? Go to the store. You want clothes? The store. Education? Taxes, if not tuition. The mere fact that that is the case is sad and scary. We are willing to let people suffer if they can't “pay up” in some sort of paper form. Maybe that says something about the society that we live in... Was money or bartering always such an important thing to people? When did we decide money was a good idea? Why have we chosen a purely numeric system of wealth instead of a holistic one?
Now, with those questions out and about, I can say that recently, I have been feeling very connected with the author. One of the main reasons that I picked this book in the first place was because Ambramsky was so invested in this one topic. I loved that he felt so strongly about helping people, and I loved that he did so much hard work to get to where he is. Stories like this inspire me to help others, and having both the real stories of many and cold hard facts mixed in with possible policy strategies makes me feel like finding a solution to our problems is possible.
Now that you guys have read your books, how do you feel about American Society as a whole? What can we do to change it and make it better? What are we doing well already?
I think one of our biggest setbacks as a society is our immense desire to be the best, richest and most beautiful, and I think a lot of the time we miss on the little things. One of the things Rosenblatt enforced in my book was "stopping to smell the roses" once in a while. As we are headed off to college we are asked up front to be anywhere from $20,000-$60,000 a year for a quality college education. We are forced to pay, when the chances of us getting a job straight out of our senior years are limited. People only hire employees with work experience, but then people don't get hired because they don't have work experience... it's a vicious circle.
DeleteSometimes I wish I could just forgot about the obligation to go to college in order to get a job when I'm older and just drop everything and travel the world, but I think the way society is created prevents the majority of people from doing the things they dream of doing.
We should continue to strive to be better, or else we will only ever get worse, but I think we could all learn the benefits of relaxation and happiness. I don't know if that would be done with mandatory vacation time, or longer maternity/paternity leaves, in a similar way to European countries, seeing as that works for them.
Do you feel like we are overworked? It's kinda starting to sound like Metamorphosis again...
We are very much a country of extremes. We are over worked, over payed or under payed, some of us have more money than we know what to do with, and some of us have no money at all. We over spend. Our government over spends. We don't rest enough.
ReplyDeleteI have a lot of goals and aspirations-- things that I am interested in doing in my life time. But If I were to actually do all of those things, I would probably be in school for another 30+ years. THIRTY PLUS YEARS.
I think that since the industrial revolution, we have become very accustomed to change and advancement. But at some point, we literaly aren't going to be able to keep up with the times.
Throughout the book and especially at the end, I realized how much I had in common with Julius. I’m mixed race, just as him and I get to experience both side’s cultures all the time. I appreciate it, but as with Julius, that sense of being alone is a reality. In a way, we truly aren’t alone as Julius has many colleagues in the medical field and is studying something he absolutely loves, medicine. But at times, at one’s weakest moments, doing what you love can leave you that feeling of being alone, racially. There are half Chinese, Japanese, French, Nigerian, and Germans out there. But especially being in America, it’s hard to identify with one another. In a conversation with Saito, Saito tells of being confused with the other children, they were all American and had always thought so, and not Japanese. I view myself as both but sometimes it’s the public who form this opinion about you that you do not deserve. It gets frustrating when people constantly say things and it does affect you, but the next step is to not put up with it any longer. Julius implies throughout his story he has experienced a lot and has learned a lot, often seen in not trusting others and relationships broken because of the bad treatment of the other. It gets to the point where he realizes, he needs to do what makes him happy. And I have realized, getting rid of those who don’t want to make you happy is the best step, because dwelling doesn’t do anything.
ReplyDeleteJulius explores the whole book, seeing places he naturally wouldn’t. And I took away that the journey really did great thing for him. You could see that it was about the journey, and not the destination, because he never had one and therefore he was able to enjoy his surroundings better. Whenever I travel, I have realized that not being fixed on that one place you need to go, whether it’s a restaurant, a monument, or a museum, is so much better. When I just soak in my surroundings, I have often discovered much more and it turned into an adventure. Like Julius, I’m a thinker. Sometimes I feel as if my brain doesn’t turn off because there is so much interesting news out there. I absolutely love learning and I believe learning makes your world much more exciting. Julius surprised himself at how much he learned about a city he generally just used to get to and back from his residency. He really did appreciate and come to love New York the more time he spent exploring it. Every day I surprise myself at how much I enjoy what I’m doing, especially piano, and I learn more about it every time every time I sit down at the bench. Julius realized as I have also come to realize, once you slow down things in your life and come to appreciate what you have, then you’ll find the people and establish the relationships with those who love what they’re doing just as much as you are.