OTHER SOURCES:

Political Philosophies

WHY I PICKED IT:

I received an introduction to political philosophies when I read The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. The Prince sparked an interest in seeing how philosophies control politics. I am interested in learning what philosophies successful empires employed and what philosophies caused their downfall. I want to dive into the origin of all politics and see what drives the political world today. 

TEXTS:

Review:
In complete honesty, I did not entirely enjoy reading this book. While the ideas in Anarchy, State, and Utopia are not complicated, Nozick describes them in difficult ways, often relying on previous knowledge of various texts. For example, nearly every chapter refers to A Theory of Justice by John Rawls or John Locke and his beliefs on state of nature theory. Unlike other philosophical works, he explains his philosophies after discussing examples and the products of his idea. Although his ideas, in many respects, illustrate utter brilliance, his writing style distracts from appreciation of those ideas. However, the way he uses logic to bolster his opinions completely captivates the reader into some degree of comprehension. His philosophies provoke deep thought into the boundaries of state influence in personal matters and the effects morals have on human existence and relations. Nozick’s ability to use complex logic to connect simple ideas and prove worldviews is the highlight of his work. Some may find his writing confusing, but it requires time and thought to grasp the enormity of his political philosophies. Once readers look past the rough exterior of his words, Nozick provides brilliant insight into the world of politics that deepens readers’ understanding of governments today. Anyone who enjoys complex logic, philosophy, and thought-provoking arguments would love Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick. 

Graphic Novels

WHY I PICKED IT: 

After we read American Born Chinese last year, I was fascinated by it and wished the rest of the year we were reading graphic novels. I love the style of how graphic novels are written. I’m curious about how the graphic novel writers and their style compare and contrast with each other.

TEXTS:

• Maus by Art Spiegelman
• Watchmen by Alan Moore
• They Called Us Enemy by George Takei
• This One Summer by Mariel Tamaki

TEXTS: 

SUMMARY:

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle is about a teenager, Meg and her little brother, Charles who go on an adventure in search of their dad who has gone missing. They realize they can not complete this journey alone, so they turn to Calvin, a friend, and three celestial beings who will help lead them in the correct direction as they travel through many different dimensions. The antagonist in this novel who they call “it” constantly tries to mess with the characters minds by altering the way they view reality making their journey much more difficult.

REVIEW:

I definitely enjoyed reading A Wrinkle in Time, and it was very interesting to see the characters develop over the span of the novel. I loved the way the author portrayed the different characters to make their mindsets similar yet still different in many ways. This novel is definitely suitable for most audiences, although, it’s especially good for people who don’t like knowing exactly what will come next when reading a novel. Although it was a great book, I felt that the author could work on explaining settings more frequently, because the characters are moving around different dimensions for the span of the novel, sometimes it was hard to keep up. 

*Recs from Nicole Laeno

TOPIC: 

Dystopian novels

TEXTS: 

SUMMARY:

The Giver by Lois Lowry is about a dystopian society, unbeknownst to the townsfolk. The weird thing about this town is that the elders' main goal is to make sure no differences are allowed, in order to make sure there is no division in the society. When the children of the town reach year 12, after the previous years of training, they get their permanent job assignments for the rest of their lives, until their release. Jonas, the main character is appointed to be the receiver of memory when the day comes. As he takes up this incredibly important position, he quickly realizes that his society is not as it seems. He learns many dark secrets about his town that changes his perspective forever.

REVIEW:

I definitely enjoyed reading this novel. Watching the characters slowly figure out the secrets of their society is very interesting because most times the reader can use context clues to learn the truth before the characters can. This novel was actually very similar to A Wrinkle in Time by Madelaine L'Engle, as both books have ideas of tightly controlled environments to minimize uniqueness. Many different audiences are suitable for this book, however after further research I learned that this book had been banned from many places, for a slightly graphic scene. My one main critique of this book is that I think it should be a bit longer, just to answer some of the questions that are left out there at the end. The author additionally wrote three other books using characters from this novel, but each book ends on a cliffhanger, causing Lowry to have to write a book to answer all of the unanswered questions from the novels.

The Republic by Plato strives to define justice, explore human nature, and construct the ideal state through a dialogue between Socrates, a famous philosopher, and his students. Plato splits his work into ten separate books, grouped into sections concerning different topics like justice, government, and communal ownership. Book one depicts a conversation between Socrates and his students as they try to define justice. They discuss that it could be helping one’s friends, personal advantage, or paying debts. Socrates uses this discussion to refute the proposed definitions, leading into books two through four which pursue a collective definition concerning the ideal state. Eventually, the group decides justice includes balance and harmony in individuals and the collective state. With this definition in mind, the group moves to the details of the ideal state. Socrates promotes the idea of “Guardians” which guide the population and protect the interests of the people in the ideal state. Book five includes a discussion in which Socrates supports the idea of women in government and promotes them as “Guardians of the state,” a rare opinion in his time. Books six and seven depict Socrates proving, through many analogies, that a philosopher should rule the ideal state because they can see truths others cannot. He famously used the allegory of the cave, and the divided line in these sections, which highlight the knowledge philosophers seek to give others. Books eight and nine discuss Socrates’ views of government, including his despise of democracy, as he feels the people do not know how to rule a state. With a sharp turn, book ten discusses poetry instead of justice or the state and ends with the discussion of immortality. Although Plato may be representing his own ideals through Socrates, he creates a clear picture of his beliefs in philosophers and guardians in The Republic.

REVIEW:

Philosophy and Plato’s style of dialogue exhausts me, and I feel as though I had no clue what Plato meant throughout The Republic. Plato uses indirect wording to construct his view, hindering readers from understanding his views. Often, The Republic feels like it includes the fiction work depicting a conversation among friends and the non-fiction work of complicated political philosophy. Socratic dialogue may interest readers, but Plato includes distracting comments from side characters while explaining a difficult concept. Many readers may feel overloaded by how much Plato attempts to pack into The Republic and confused as no clear answers or philosophies emerge from the text. Aside from the overwhelming amount of information in The Republic, readers can appreciate Plato’s allegories in books six and seven, which offer relatively easy-to-read language and understandable lessons surrounding Plato’s views. Readers who enjoy metaphors, fables, or intelligent conversations would enjoy The Republic and may gain knowledge of Plato’s despise of democracy and love of philosophers. In comparison to Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick, Plato’s explanations and logic seem to fall short of modern standards. While Nozick also utilized complicated language and distracting stories, he also bolstered his views with well-written logic and explanations, an element Plato lacks in his writing. Plato far exceeds Nozick in his use of metaphors and allegories, which make up the majority of The Republic. Overall, Plato’s language, while captivating, exhausts readers while they try to understand his complicated philosophies, which ultimately reject democracy and tyranny and embrace a future led by philosophers.

 

TEXTS: 

 

SUMMARY:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a dystopian fiction novel where the society is deprived of knowledge and the access to books. All books are ordered to be burned by people called "firefighters". The firefighters go along with their job, but without realizing the disturbing problem with it. Although one firefighter, Guy, starts reading and learns that reading isn't as bad as his society may think. 

 

REVIEW:

I liked the ideas in this book, although I felt like some aspects like characterization could have been executed a little better. Similar to L’Engle, who wrote A Wrinkle in Time, I thought that Bradbury was really good at building the setting with the plot. I think that more mature audiences would like this book, such as teens or young adults. I found it interesting that this book is banned in some districts. I noticed that The Giver was also banned in some places, although I felt that was slightly more justified as there were a few unsettling scenes.

While taking her to rehab, Shuichi notices something on the medical chart in the office. There is one spiral in the human body, one that Shuichi's mother does not know about, in the human ear. Shuichi knows that if his mother finds out, she will try to remove it and accidentally kill herself in the process.

(I love the bit of foreshadowing that Junji Ito adds into the story by making the ear canal area that has the spiral into a pronounced shape of a snail, foreshadowing an event that will take place later on, and it makes sense realistically because it does sorta look like a snail in real life).

While sleeping, a centipede crawls into Shuichi's mother's ear. She wakes up and screams, flinging the centipede away. It curls up into a spiral, and Saito's face appears in it. Saito tells her that there is still a spiral on her body, and says how he wishes to crawl into her ears.

In the morning, much to Shuichi and Kirie's dismay, she tries to get back into the medical rehab ward to see the medical chart and check if there's a spiral in her ear. The doctor, predicting this, had taken the chart down after her first visit.

<<TW Below - Self Harm, Suicide>>

That night, she grabs a pair of scissors and stabs herself in the ears. She fatally hurts herself, and is in a state of constant of vertigo until she dies.

Her body is cremated, and another black spiral cloud forms above Kurôzu-Cho, before spiraling down into dragonfly pond.

<<TW Above - Self Harm, Suicide>>

Conjoined review of the first two chapters:

Uzumaki draws you in with its fantastic visuals and intriguing characters before it hits you like a truck and reminds you, "This is a horror story." It may be hard to believe but the first two chapters are arguably the most tame out of the entire 20-chapter series. It gets much worse from here, fast. Shuichi's mental state starts to show signs of deterioration, and he becomes depressed and a recluse.

First two chapters rating: 10/10
Overall series (1-19) rating: 9/10

Comparisons to Coraline, It, and The Shining:

Uzumaki is far more gorey and disturbing than all 3 of the previous novels combined. While Stephen King and Neil Gaiman use shock horror and suspense perfectly, Uzumaki hits you in the face with the dark reality that this is not a happy story and it sticks to that. The book version of Coraline comes close to the imagery that Uzumaki portrays, but the major difference is that Junji Ito draws the visuals out so there is little left to the imagination in terms of scaling down the horrific imagery. The suspense and tension in Uzumaki leaves the reader with a chill shiver down their spine as each page shows a new amalgamation or descent into madness.

Unlike the other authors, Junji Ito does not explain his creatures or where they came from, like Beldam in Coraline, Pennywise in It, or the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Ito leaves the interpretation of his creatures to the audience, and does not explain the origins, goal, or anything beyond the surface level information of the Spiral entity, whether its an entity or a concept at all is never confirmed nor denied. This works wonderfully for Ito's work because if you can explain or figure out the enemy, then you can figure out its weaknesses in order to overcome it. This is not the case for Ito's works, as the monsters are never explained which only adds to the horror aspect.

Critiques:
<<MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES>>

A major critique I have is at the turning point of the series, chapter 12, when the pattern of amalgamation-to-amalgamation death is broken and replaced with the hurricane arc. In this arc, Kurôzu-Cho is nothing but a wasteland at this point and any fast movement, loud noise, etc. will cause a hurricane to form from the person. This breaks the immersive and disturbing environment created by the previous chapters by replacing the monsters with a natural force that in all honesty is nowhere near as chilling as the previous chapters. The hurricanes are used more as a plot device to slow down the characters' progression and speed up the serialization of the series as a whole and reach its conclusion. The hurricane arc is also where the climax reaches its end pretty speedily, with each remaining cast character dying in some way (with Mitsuo becoming a snail-person and his last appearance being when Kirie told him to run down the sea cliffside).

It's unfortunate that each character had their character arc cut short, especially seen in Chie who was someone who originated from outside of Kurôzu-Cho coming to the inside. She's mainly a plot device to show that once you step into Kurôzu-Cho after the spiral's onslaught has started, you can no longer leave. As per plot devices, Chie is a flat character that is unchanging from her debut to her eventual death at the hands of the spiral-tangled people in the row houses. The ending is a little bit unsatisfying with <<ENDING SPOILERS>> instead of unveiling the truth about what the spiral is, Kirie and Shuichi (the last two surviving characters outside of Mr. Tanazaki, who arrived in Kurôzu-Cho at the same time as Chie and is presumed dead but is never explicitly shown to be dead) descending into Dragonfly Pond, which has dried up and revealed a spiraling staircase into the underground. Shuichi gets attacked by a spiral-person and falls all the way down the staircase and breaks his leg when he hits the ground, which is made up of spiral-people corpses.

Kirie rushes down and we are revealed the city made of spirals, elaborate ruins with spiral-people corpses as the floor. It's revealed that the city has a will of its own, which is why it has been terrorizing the city of Kurôzu-Cho at irregular intervals, spanning from once every thousands of years or hundreds of years. We never get to see the inner-city though, because Kirie decides to stay with the injured Shuichi who can no longer walk, and they become one with the spiral city. The spiral staircase ascends to the base of Dragonfly Pond, and Kurôzu-Cho's upperlevel (the actual city of Kurôzu-Cho, not the spiral city) becomes a spiral-like city, with each house contributing to become a spiral-formation. We are left to assume by the ending words that time is frozen in the city of spirals, so Kirie and Shuichi don't age or die but instead are trapped in the same spot of the spiral city for all eternity alongside all the citizens of Kurôzu-Cho. And that's how the final [canon] chapter ends. Chapter 20, the "lost" chapter is only 1 chapter and takes place in an alternate universe that is connected to the canon one but doesn't add that much significance to the story overall besides revealing that the spiral has far more influence than just the small city of Kurôzu-Cho, but extends out into the universe and has corrupted full galaxies at an unfathomably fast rate.

Closing notes/thoughts that didn't fit anywhere else:

The 5 PM alarm always blares whenever someone thinks or talks about leaving Kurôzu-Cho, and the character talking about leaving always responds to the alarm with "I hate that noise! It's like it's piercing my ears!" This ties back directly with the cochlea, the spiral in the human ear, showing that the entity can use sound to affect the people. 

Penpal is from the perspective of an unnamed boy, the reason the boy is called Penpal is because as an assignment in kindergarten the students tied notes to balloons and let them go, the notes requested that whoever found the note became a penpal for the child and wrote back. Everyone got one except for our storyteller. At the end of the school year strange things start to happen to the boy, pictures of him and his mother doing various activities were sent to him. He wakes up one night in the woods with no memory of how he got there with a note left for his mom at home, but the person spelt his name wrong so they moved. 

Spoiler alert: Not long after they move into their house the cat disappears so Josh, the best friend, and the storyteller grab walkie talkies to go look for their cat. The storyteller then finds a crawl space with old clothes and pictures of him, along with some cat food. During this Josh loses his walkie talkie and meowing can be heard through the walkie talkie, the storyteller soon realises that his stalker is living in his old house. Not long after the storyteller had a birthday party, Josh attended but was not himself and the storyteller never saw him again. Years later the storyteller starts dating Veronica, Josh's older sister, one night he left her side for a little and she became the victim of a hit-and-run. While in the hospital Veronica tells him that Josh left a couple years ago leaving a note similar to the note found by the storyteller's mother.  Veronica and the storyteller communicated back and forth through text so from his understanding she had been released and was going to go to the movies with him. She did not show up and a man sat next to him instead. He then got a text saying "See you again, soon", weeks later he learns Veronica died in the hospital and her phone was never found. Then Josh's dad was hired onto a landscaping job to fill holes, but to his horror he dug up a coffin with his son and the man who had hired him in it. The guy apparently kidnapped Josh 2 years earlier and changed him to look like the storyteller. Josh's dad unknowingly buried him and when Josh woke up from being knocked out in the coffin he bit the other guys neck which caused him to bleed out and not long after Josh died too.

Review :   

I thought this book was really good. Full of suspense and plot twists. The book is somewhat like Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde and Cujo in the sense that there are twists that you don't see coming at all. The mystery of the whole book made you want to keep reading and each clue dropped made the book more and more interesting. The most interesting part to me is the name of the narrator is ever actually said and same with the stalker. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants a good horror story.

The Art of War explores the key facets of war that Sun Tzu claims will not fail any leader in a real conflict. Sun Tzu divides his work into 13 chapters, each corresponding with a key aspect of warfare. In the first two chapters, Sun Tzu repeats the importance of preparation for war and introduces the five key elements of war, which include moral law, heaven, earth, commander, and method or discipline. Each element represents a key part of the military, such as “Commander” corresponding to the virtue of wisdom. Chapter three outlines five ways guaranteed to bring victory: the leader doesn’t cloud judgment, the leader can unify the ranks, the leader knows their troop, the leader can work with forces of all sizes, and the leader has their complete focus on their troops and war. Chapters four through nine discuss the tactics of a successful military, such as looking disorganized to trick the opposition and arriving early on the battlefield. The impact of different terrains on warfare, discussed in chapters ten and eleven, varies based on location. For example, battles far inside enemy lands can be beneficial, while troops should avoid battles near swift rivers. The final two chapters contain some of Sun Tzu’s most revolutionary ideas still in use today, which are the ideas of using fire and spies, respectively. Sun Tzu was the first to really suggest the use of spies and warfare, which governments rely on daily today, highlighting one of the many ways The Art of War changed the modern world. 

REVIEW:

I enjoyed The Art of War because of its simplicity and advice without the use of excessive metaphors or stories. In terms of strategy and military tactics, Sun Tzu offers advice I found both highly intelligent and, again, easy to comprehend. Although language use can often be an issue in philosophical texts, The Art of War has no issue using effective language to explain somewhat complex ideas. That simple language makes The Art of War an incredible book to read and allows for its rich content to be fully appreciated. Beginners to philosophy would find it easy to understand The Art of War, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a small taste of political philosophy. 

COMPARISONS/FINAL THOUGHTS:

In contrast to the other books I read, The Art of War uses significantly less complex language and ultimately argues its points better. While Sun Tzu writes more metaphors than Aristotle in The Politics, he includes significantly fewer and easier metaphors than Plato in The Republic. In regard to the use of language, Sun Tzu remains unrivaled by Plato, Aristotle, and, especially, Robert Nozick. Overall, The Art of War utilizes more simple language that conveys Sun Tzu’s ideas in a more effective and intriguing way than Aristotle, Plato, and Robert Nozick. Political philosophy interested me from the beginning of this project, and I found that my interest in it has only grown with time. Contrary to when I began reading, I feel like I have a better understanding of recurring concepts and the approaches different authors take. However, I still think my favorite book in the political philosophy genre is The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. These books are classics in the worlds of both philosophy and history, and I believe that it is beneficial to read at least Aristotle and Plato as their ideas truly shaped a large portion of culture and philosophy today. Other modern philosophers like Robert Nozick and John Rawls are also interesting and beneficial to read. I love reading political philosophy and highly recommend it to anyone who finds it even remotely interesting to understand how governments and states work.

SUMMARY:

Brave New World is about another dystopian society that attempts to perfect humanity. The scientists start with all identical embryos, then put them in different castes and train them so they have certain behavioral traits. 

REVIEW:
I really liked this book and the way the author built up the setting. Since dystopian novels can critique the way society could be in the future, the authors of all the books I read this year did a great job at building up the world in a way that the plot was less confusing. Although, after reading this book I was left wondering about a few of the author's choices of characterization, similar to in Fahrenheit 451. I really enjoyed all of the books I read this year, and I loved   reading some of the most well known dystopian novels.