Columbine

I am sitting at my kitchen table, my head in my hands. My husband is surreptitiously watching me from the living room, unsure what, if anything, he should be doing to help me. I am not crying, nor have I asked for anything. In fact, I probably haven't said anything out loud in several hours.  

Finally I look up.  
"How much," I ask him quietly, "do you know about Columbine?"  

I don't have to say anything else. Everyone in America knows what "Columbine" refers to, and my husband is no exception.

I asked him what he knew about it, about the shooters and their motives, and without hesitation he parroted the media story that we’ve been hearing since it first happened, back when we were in 5th or 6th grade and school shootings were nearly unheard-of.  

That story can be summarized as two boys, possibly involved in the Trench Coat Mafia, are outcasts, victims of years of bullying and abuse. At the end of their senior year in high school, they decided to fight back against the jocks and others who had hurt them, seeking revenge specifically against those who had wronged them. They terrorized a school and ended up committing suicide when they were done.

The problem is this: all of this information is wrong.

Columbine, written by an investigative journalist named David Cullen who was on the scene when the news first broke and followed the story for years, walks the reader through both the day of the shooting and the year-long choices and psychological issues that lead to it. He looks at every media story, every myth that's become fact, every horrifying element of the tragedy in an attempt to show what actually happened, how those boys got there, and ultimately, help prevent it from happening again.

My husband's story, the media story, is a easy if horrific one to accept: these kids were pushed to the edge and walked into that school with vengeance in mind.  I don't like calling it easy to understand, but it is true; thinking that they had targets makes people feel like the gunmen had a purpose, that they were acting out of some twisted revenge fantasy, that they could possibly have been, in some sick way, justified in their actions.
Back in 1999, the media made the choice to put forth an understandable lie, one that the average person could understand even as they were repulsed, instead of an incomprehensible truth. But when Cullen opens Pandora's Box into their motives, when he peels back the layers of their own words, psych evaluations, criminal records, and more, the truth is laid bare.

These two boys didn't have targets. They weren't intending to shoot up their school. The reality of Columbine, what the media never really revealed, was that Columbine was supposed to be much, much worse. It is true that Eric Harris was the mastermind behind their plan, that Dylan Klebold was more accomplice than partner, and that both boys lived with violence and death on their minds. But what is also true is that the boys were trying to kill every single person in their school -- trying to out-do the Oklahoma City bombings in deaths, actually, and had obtained guns merely as a back-up plan -- and it was a combination of faulty wiring and blind chance that kept so many more from meeting their ends that day.

This fact makes their choices and thus the result nearly impossible to understand.

And it is for that reason that Columbine, the novel and the event, is one of the scariest things I have or will ever encounter.

This photo of Columbine High School is the only image you will find in this post. Plenty of images of that day live online; my blog won't be one of them. 

I’ve heard it said that schools are haunted by Columbine.  You bet your life they are -- the ghosts of Columbine march up and down hallways across the country, inspiring intruder drills and hotline calls and referrals to counselors and principals.  

But those ghosts are most scary because they hint at the possibility of the next Columbine, the next Sandy Hook, the next Virginia Tech.  And they scare schools because, deep down, we aren't sure how to prevent it from happening again.  

Until about two weeks into my teacher career, I was unfamiliar with Intruder Drills, an unnerving phenomenon designed to prepared students and staff with what to do if someone unwelcome or dangerous entered our building.  I’d never had one at my private, all-girls high school, and with good reasons: while most school shooters statistically are white, as were most of my classmates, most school shooters are also male.  Since we lacked that element, my principals must have assumed (correctly, thus far) we were safe.  

My first intruder drill passed without incident.  But a few weeks later, that same cold, emotionless voice came over the intercom and announced that my school had an intruder.  For about twenty dark minutes, we legitimately thought something awful had happened.  We were wrong -- the alert had been set off accidentally.  I’m sure intruder alerts get accidentally set off all the time, and we were certainly lucky, luckier than too many other schools where shootings have occurred.  

Intruder Drills are a necessary evil of our current society.  They work well against the Adam Lanzas of the world, those who do indeed enter uninvited and kill.  

But my concern after reading Columbine is this:  Intruder drills don’t work as well against the Eric Harrises and Dylan Klebolds of the world -- those who can walk in as students and (perhaps) choose to walk out as murderers.  

Of course the Adam Lanzas of the world are scary -- they are unpredictable and totally foreign.  But to me, as a teacher who interacts with students on a constant basis, the Erics and the Dylans are far more terrifying.  I witness kids full of hate, kids full of anger, kids who never make any kind of threat or write anything off-putting -- those things that I could report to the school and make those above me aware of just how nerve-wracking and scary some students can be.  Few of my students are like that, and for that I am extremely grateful.  But I have seen them, and wondered.  

The unavoidable fact that I cannot help picturing this school as my own does not ease my trepidation.  When Cullen discusses how the boys put the bombs up against the columns in the cafeteria, I imagine it as the cafeteria of the high school where I teach.  When they shoot up the library and science classrooms, I imagine my own library and science classrooms.  When Patrick Ireland breaks through and climbs out a window to attempt a fall to safety, I picture firetrucks and paramedics clustered outside my building, while above a student crawls out of the front and broken windows of my school.  In some ways, that is more traumatizing for me than simply reading about the events, because that is truly what is so terrifying about Columbine: it could be my school.  

There is potential for it at every school, no matter how many times my principal says he believes we have a safe school (which I agree with).  That doesn't change the reality: Columbine could be my school, could be any school in America.  

Occasionally, as part of a unit about social issues and their solutions, I show Bowling for Columbine, the Michael Moore documentary that attempts to deal with the issues and aftermath of Columbine.  He’s largely about ruffling feathers, I get that, and usually I use it to talk about logical fallacies in arguments (it’s an excellent resource for that!) and how to make connections beyond the simple scope of a topic.  Every time I show it, we talk about school shootings: about how unprecedented Columbine was, how unexpected and terrifying, and about how it changed some fundamental parts of education and its settings.  No matter how much I talk with them about it, no matter how many times I get on the soapbox, the novelty and outrage it sparked never seem to fully click.

At first I wondered why this was.  And then the truth of it dawned on me: School shootings are normal for my students; they are used to hearing about them.  As horrifying as they are, as emotionally as students respond when it happens, school shootings are no longer out of the ordinary.  

I have trouble accepting this.  I recognize its truth; these shootings, and the expectation of further and quite possibly unpreventable violence, are perhaps the worst part of American society, worst because people are used to them, and when people get used to something, they can let it pass without comment, without it inciting change.  When something becomes normal, it becomes okay.  It loses its moral obligation for us to fix it, to solve it, and that should never happen with school shootings.  The issue desperately needs to be solved, but my concern is that it never will be.  

It may be a microcosm of American society and politics in itself.  After all, a conversation started after Sandy Hook about gun control and mental illness treatments in America.  But nothing came of it.  Politicians started shouting about the Second Amendment and others started shouting about the American Disability Act and discrimination and others started shouting about conspiracy theories and hoaxes and pretty soon actually solving the issue sank back into the turmoil of American social  problems.  

I understand some of this; it’s not an easy issue to discuss, let alone solve, and too much of what motivates these shooters is deep and complex and beyond the abilities of any one group (be it schools, lawmakers, mental help professionals, or others) to handle.  But doesn’t that just mean we need more cooperation, less shouting and finger-pointing?

This questioning process, the what if's and what can we do's, are a natural repercussion of violence like this. But it's time for that to change and for us to truly say, "never again," and make it the truth.

Please read this book.

And don't just trust my opinion: New York Times Book Reviews: Columbine

Final Note: This post took me a very, very long time to write. A great deal of this reservation stems from my struggle with the subject matter; this book scared me, a lot, and being a teacher only makes it harder to process.

Inferno

I have loved previous Dan Brown novels -- he tends to write engaging characters with incredibly complex and interesting stories. Oddly enough, I always liked Angels and Demons more than his other works, even when The Da Vinci Code clearly did more for culture. All the ideas of religion, the tensions in the Church about Mary Magdalene that were brought to the surface, made for fascinating reading, especially for a lapsed Catholic like me.

But it's been a long time since I've read those books, and so I wonder if I've somewhat romanticized them in my head.

Upon opening up Inferno, I was somewhat surprised. The novel is new, so I expect growth in the writing, but instead I've been finding work that's much more clunky that I remembered.

Inferno's protagonist, Robert Langdon, carries on Brown's previous work; its plot centers on the same rather unrealistic idea of a Harvard symbologist (Langdon) solving mysteries/murders while young, hot women fall for him. I've always pictured Langdon as a tall, handsome but rather pudgy older guy, which may not be accurate -- but it certainly wasn't dispelled when the movie cast Tom Hanks as Langdon. But I digress.

The language here, at least starting out, feels different. Maybe it's just because I'm not into the heart of the story yet. But it's very stilted, very formal and stuff, and truly rather un-fun to read. I don't feel any emotions coming off the page; instead, everything reads very clinically and cold. 
The more I read, the faster things pick up; the characters start to flow, and the plot opens up into something almost as complex and mysterious as Brown's previous novels.

What I love most about Dan Brown's books is the level of symbolism he reveals. I'm an avid reader, and was raised as a Christian even if I'm lapsed, so I loved the controversy The Da Vinci Code created, all the spin-offs and conversations that were raised as a result. So much of that conversation had never really been out in the open, and the novel's provocative inquiry into the realistic nature of the Christ story certainly opened that door.

Now, in Inferno, Brown tackles Dante's classic story. I've read snippets of The Divine Comedy before, but that's about it. I probably own a copy somewhere, but I've never thought to read the whole thing -- The Inferno is, after all, the most famous section and the most studied, so that's the only section I've ever thought to touch. Here, that section is clearly the focus, with some of the rest built in, but thankfully Brown includes enough details and background so that, if you haven't read the whole story, or even just The Inferno, you can still easily understand and appreciate its depth.

The research Brown puts into his books in order to set them up is truly incredible -- the man must have (or deserves!) a degree in art history and possibly conspiracy theories as well. The basics of Inferno -- Dante's journey into Hell; Virgil as his guide; the nine levels, each divided and punished according to their sins -- I've always understood; those basics are flooded into pop culture, even to the point where I have a Nirvana t-shirt that has the 9 Circles of Hell on it. But there is so much more to The Inferno, and then even more to the rest of the story, than I had ever realized.  Then, just like in Brown's other books, the works of art incorporated into the plot of the novel both add clues and intriguing details and provide a visual guide to the mystery at hand. Some of these pictures I had to dig up because I had no idea what they were, and to that end, it really helped to have an internet connection as I was reading, because someone out there took the time to put together all the images necessary to understand the story. The link is here; the images are in chronological order for the plot, so be careful about reading ahead if you check it out.

This is the type of image -- Botticell's interpretation of Dante's Infero -- is what you'll find on that site.  I can't overemphasize how helpful this was to understanding some of the discussions of art in the novel.  

The basic plot, as I hinted at before, is Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor solving mysteries based on his knowledge of symbols and art. I know that's a little unrealistic, at least to me, but bear with me; it's sometimes a stretch, but most of the time Brown makes it work. Frankly, if you're reading Inferno, then you're probably like me and have read some of the other Langdon novels, so you're used to this blip.

In this iteration of that plot, Langdon wakes up in a hospital bed with amnesia, having no memory of the previous few days or his discoveries and explorations of Florence, Italy. A benevolent doctor, Sienna Brooks, takes pity on him and helps him both figure out what happened to him and escape from those who are searching for him. Underneath this story is a conversation between Elizabeth Sinskey, the fictional head of the WHO (World Health Organization), and Bertrand Zobrist, a scientist and a genius intent on solving the issue of overpopulation. These two butt heads over this issue early in the novel in a flashback, and it becomes clear that this is the focus of the novel.

As Langdon tries to escape from whoever is seeking him (that point isn't clear until later), he and Brooks gradually uncover evidence that Zobrist has created something dangerous; it's unknown exactly what he created, but all information points to it being very, very bad. With the many symbolic references to the Black Death in the 1300s, including Zobrist's obsession with Dante's Inferno and all its deeper meanings, I suspected early on that Zobrist had reincarnated the bubonic plague.

Spoilers coming soon! Don't worry, I won't give ALL the twists away.  

Langdon and Brooks spend the majority of the novel dealing with the deep symbolism of Dante's Inferno, and a number of short flashbacks to Langdon's Harvard lectures help the reader put some of the more complicated levels together. Ultimately, they do find what Zobrist was working on -- but they are too late (in a twist I didn't see coming and rather enjoyed -- usually the hero swoops in an saves the day! Not this time.).

Zobrist's plague, which has been already been unleashed by the time Langdon locates it, isn't the Black Death; it's a sterility plague, one that is fast-spreading, afflicts at least a third of the population, and is thankfully fictional. Despite the WHO's positive outlook, the plague is basically unstoppable and the future of humanity is uncertain.

I'm not sure how I'd feel if I suddenly found out I was sterile, especially as the result of some lunatic engineering a virus. I don't want kids for a whole host of reasons, none of which is sterility (that I know of), but I still have the option, if I change my mind. Losing that opportunity might be a god-send -- I can never get pregnant! yay! -- or an absolute curse -- my god, I can never have kids... -- I simply don't know.

This hypothetical plague brings up lots of potential questions, both personal and affecting humanity as a whole.

So before I go any further: NERD ALERT!

Even though it wasn't with humanity, I have already seen this story play out via Bioware's trilogy Mass Effect. This game's deep backstory is part of what makes it so amazing, and the history of its races has some intimate connections to the events of Inferno.

Bear with me because this is pretty deep nerd territory: in Mass Effect, a sterility plague has been unleashed on the krogan, a semi-reptilian race of warriors and tribes. The krogan were considered weapons by the salarians, who gave them technology and lifted them out of their formerly primitive lifestyles in order to use them to win a war. However, the krogan rebelled, expanding their empire and population aggressively and fighting back against salarian control. Eventually, to preserve themselves, the salarians enlisted turian (another alien race) help and together, they designed and delivered the genophage, a sterility virus that afflicts almost all of the krogan population. (I'm simplifying a little here, especially in regards to motivations. The full story is on the Mass Effect Wiki.)

SPOILER ALERT: This genophage is remarkably similar to the plague unleashed by Zobrist on humanity in the imagined future of Inferno. He offers it as a solution to overpopulation and its range of effects; after it infects everyone, roughly 1/3 of human is rendered sterile. The main characters, Langdon and Sinskey, eventually come to the conclusion that this is probably okay, even when accomplished by unethical means, and everyone is happy. The plot resolves on a very positive note, full of acceptance, which is a little heavy-handed, even for someone like me who agrees that overpopulation stands as one of the most serious issues facing the world, one we're going to have to own up to eventually.

In the Mass Effect universe, the genophage has rendered the entire race of the krogan infertile, and, having been around for more than 1000 years, the krogan are on the verge of extinction.

Before the genophage, the krogan had an extremely high fertility/birth rate; females could produce over 1000 fertilized eggs per year, meaning their population was constantly on the rise. After the genophage, suddenly only 1 of those 1000 eggs was surviving, and the population plummeted.

Look at the United States in comparison: our fertility/birth rate is around 2 per 1000 women, a number that's fairly average for a developed country (undeveloped countries seem to have higher birth rates). Considering our population of roughly 330 million people, that's a lot of births, even with a relatively stable population growth rate (meaning enough people die to balance out births). If you then take that number of children born, and make 99.99% of them stillborn, you have the krogan genophage. Inferno doesn't paint quite such a stark picture of infertility, but the idea's the same.

Faced with infertility, the krogan as a race have not banded together to find a solution or support each other. Instead, they have devolved into small warring tribes where males rule and fight over the few fertile females that are around. There are no labs searching for cures; there is only violence. Everyone is treated with distrust and paranoia automatically, and prejudices run deep. Even more krogan head off-world to become mercenaries or thugs, causing their population to dwindle still further due to unnatural causes.

It's a fate that I wonder if our own race would be doomed to, given that Brown's story was true and a large section of humanity was revealed infertile. I can see humans focusing on those who were fertile, encouraging them to have as many kids as possible instead of rejoicing in the more sustainable population.  I can see wars and anger breeding more problems, instead of the common enemy of extinction pulling humanity together.

Zobrist meant to curb humanity's self-destructive tendencies, much as the salarians and the turians meant to do for the krogan, and yet I don't think humanity would appreciate his actions.

So many other elements of the world tie into overpopulation, including my personal opinions and choices on having children. The world of Inferno provides the opportunity to muse on our own future, and I am left hoping that we wise up before we have to face the issues overpopulation can bring.

Ashfall

My guilty pleasure has always been disaster stories.  I absolutely love them in any form.  I've seen Armageddon at least 20 times, The Core is one of my favorites, and I may be the only person out there who enjoys 2012.  My dad even bought me a collection of 'B' disaster movies for Christmas this year.  So when a friend recommended Ashfall, all she had to say was, "There's a supervolcano" and I was in.

I loved the whole story of this novel, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy (mostly, I'm hopeful that it doesn't pan out like other YA trilogies I haven't enjoyed lately, that would certainly be nice).

What's most interesting is that, as much as I liked this book, I don't have a ton to say about it.  It opens with the explosion of the supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park, a fictional event with absolutely true backstory and possibility.  The main character, Alex Halprin, is home alone in Cedar Falls, Iowa, when it blows, and the story unfolds as his trek across the state to find his family, who were on a vacation in northern Illinois at the time.  Along his way, he encounters plenty of post-apocalyptic dangers as well as makes a friend in Darla, a mechanical genius of a girl who eventually joins him on his journey east.

It's a well done story -- I kept expecting the standard encounter with the farmers who've been eating visitors that seems to show up in end-of-the-world narratives, but it never did, never fell into cliche as it could have easily done.  The characters seem fairly realistic, and more importantly, they are well-balanced to their situation.  The backstories -- Alex's taekwondo work and Darla's mechanical gifts -- fit their origins: Alex has been learning the martial art since he was a kid, and Darla grew up on a fairly isolated farm.  Neither seems forced, like Mullin decided those would be useful skills after a catastrophe and thus imposed them on his characters; instead, they feel organic, just hobbies of two people that ended up being more useful than their previous comfortable lives would have suggested.

Ashfall makes me want to read its sequels, ending on just the right enticing note to keep me going.  There isn't much I found overwhelmingly amazing about it, nothing where I was say you MUST go out and read this book immediately, but it is a good read.

What was incredibly entertaining was hearing this author speak.  My awesome school librarian had arranged for him to visit us, which inspired me to pick up the book, and after I enjoyed it so much, I made sure I took my students to hear him.   (Actually, several of my students asked if we could go see him before I had even heard about it. I was really proud.)

Mike Mullin proved to be a fabulous speaker.  He was very enthusiastic, running around before the presentation with a taekwondo board and grabbing students to break it.  After he goaded one of my students into breaking it, they then poked me until I tried it out -- it was pretty fun! :) With that kind of start, the kids were already involved, and Mullin clearly wanted those kids paying attention and talking to him.  He asked them questions and shouted and pulled volunteers,  all stuff that helps kids actually stay awake and listen to what he had to say. And his message was one that even I found inspiring -- all about the value of hard work, how taekwondo and writing and getting better at anything takes practice, and he even brings in some of the psychology of practice and how to become an expert at something.  Of course, he also talked a lot about supervolcanoes (which are super interesting!) and his novel, and at the end he even broke a concrete block!

I loved seeing him speak.  He comes across like such a fun, geeky writer-guy, someone who is so happy to be doing something he loves and sharing that enthusiasm with not only his fans but also just young people in general.  And he was inspirational even to me, reinforcing that sometimes-sagging motivation I experience to work toward my own goals.  I have to hope that my students were listening :)

Mullin actually broke a cement block during his presentation, as part of his taekwondo skill set. Awesome! 

As one student put it (after we'd gone to see him and were back in the classroom), "He's super engaging.  I wasn't bored at all!"  That's high praise coming from an 18-year-old.

Seeing a professional writer is a cool chance for my students.  Not at all of them care, and that's fine, but those who do can really benefit from the opportunity to see how writing can influence the real world, how English has value out in the real world.  Sometimes they get so caught up in the cycle of grades and colleges that they ignore the practical value of being able to think critically and analytically, of being able to think creatively and have fun with language.  It gets lost in the shuffle of credits and graduation, especially at the end of the year.  And it's something I don't want to get lost, something I try very hard to make sure doesn't get lost.  Thankfully, all it takes sometimes is 49 minutes with a professional like Mike Mullin to bring that all rushing back.

Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant

Divergent was a stunningly entertaining book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  The story utilizes a basic distopian future with a young adult narrator, but the sum of its parts is so much more than that.  (That is, until I read the rest of the trilogy, which I will get to.)

In this distopian future, the city -- really, the world, from the perspective of the novel -- stands divided into five factions, each with its own view on how to approach the world.  Amity wants peace, and thus their people face the world with a calm, cheerful manner at all times.  Erudite seeks knowledge, the home of scientists and researchers. Candor values honesty above all else, creating transparent if sometimes blunt people.  Dauntless values bravery and courage above all else, leading its people toward risks and adrenaline rushes. And Abnegation, the starting home of Tris Prior, displays selflessness, caring for the poor and the politics and putting their own lives last.

These factions generally do not interact; children choose their faction at 16 based on an aptitude test, sometimes staying in their original places, sometimes leaving their entire lives behind.  These aptitude tests show one result, meant to make choosing an easy decision. After they pass through initiation into their chosen factions, there might be some basic interaction of the groups, but overall one associates with their faction and none else.  There is one other group, the factionless, who remain on the edges of society like untouchables.  No one sees them, no one interacts with them -- other than Abnegation, who often care for them out of their desire to help others.  These groups create solid dividing lines in society, lines are aren't challenged or changed, or even questioned, for countless generations before Tris Prior shows up.

The symbols of the five factions

Born as Beatrice Prior, an Abnegation teenager who isn't sure of where she belongs, Tris has an interesting aptitude: she is Divergent, a test result meaning she could belong in multiple factions and one that is entirely closeted in this society.  Until Tris gets this result, she's never even heard of Divergence, nor has she heard of its inherent dangers. When someone doesn't fit, they are dangerous -- a thematic idea that's played out many times in literature and film (and one that is central to not only this book but the entire trilogy. More later.).  As a result of her results and her growing feelings of discontent in her Abnegation home, she elects to join Dauntless, a faction known for its courage and risk taking, not to mention its obsessions with tattoos, black, and coming to abrupt, relatively youthful ends.

Tris's experiences through Dauntless initiation comprise the majority of the book.  She struggles -- she is slim and short and not dangerous-looking in the slightest -- and her growth and improvement into a competent, brave fighter is slow.  And if you don't come out on top during initiation, you fail, thrown out into the wilderness beyond the factions to become one of the factionless, the untouchables.  So her situation has an element of desperation to it, a desperation compounded by her own desires to prove herself, to become something beyond her selfless roots.

As I read this book, my thoughts almost automatically went to The Hunger Games, and I'm sorry if that's too obvious.
There are many deep similarities to these two series, but ultimately they play out in different ways, especially in the first book.  Both novels have similar protagonists: teen girls who are tough, who aren't quite sure what to do with their emotions, who don't quite know their places in the world.  Both novels have a similar series arc: a distopian future, the ultimate overthrow of the system, the ideas of oppression (though not necessarily from the same sources.  Both novels focus on similar growth: protagonists finding strength in themselves, their hesitations with love, the absolutely fearless ideals they eventually subscribe to.  And of course neither novel offers the full background necessary to understanding the current societal situation, though both offer enough clues that the reader can piece together what's going on outside the main character's life.
But I find this situation, in Divergent, more understandable, more possible, and more in line what that I observe and understand in human nature.

Plus, I like Tris better.

Katniss, the lead character of The Hunger Games trilogy (for those who have been living in a total absence of current pop culture -- for which I would not blame you in the slightest), is a wholly good person.  I'm sure her potential as a role model accounts for at least a small amount of her incredible popularity.  She's worked for much of her life to support her family, sacrificing long hours and any semblance of a social life to take care of her mother and sister.  Katniss is definitely pissed about her lot in life -- a dead father, scraping together food to survive, a distant mother who struggles to care for her children -- but she also recognizes what she had to give up and why she had to do it.  While I enjoy the Hunger Games trilogy immensely, something about Katniss's perspective has always slightly annoyed me.  Just slightly.  Maybe because, while I might admire her steadfast devotion to her family, I find that, to me, people who are always good, people who always choose the right things regardless of circumstances, are not always fun to be around.  I suspect that this is simply because I am not inherently a good person, at least not in a selfless way, and so those types force me to acknowledge the weaknesses in my own character (something no one likes to do).  Don't get me wrong: I try to be a good person, and I believe that I succeed reasonably well.  And I really like this series and I do like Katniss; she's just not the most relate-able, realistic character for me.

Tris though is more real to me, probably because she's more like me and so her growth and changes can reflect what I may have wanted in another life (one where I was much more bad-ass, I should add).
Tris isn't sure of her place in the world; she finds herself wanting in regards to what those around her expect, and she wants a more exciting life than the one she currently has.  That is a position I have found myself in, especially the idea of a life beyond my current one.  And like Tris, I have learned how to make choices to move myself toward that life instead of living in slightly uncomfortable complacency.

In her growth, Tris finds a place inside herself where she is strong, where she can face her fears, where she can acknowledge the cruelty she sometimes finds there and where, interestingly enough, that cruelty can have a place.  She's not an overall cruel character; rather, she's a tough character, and as the novel ends she is starting to find the balance between that cruel edge within herself, the bravery she's learned as part of Dauntless (as she inevitably chooses), and the selflessness she was originally taught as part of Abnegation.  After all, people who can be truly brave often have to be just the slightest bit cruel in order to do what is necessary.
In a way, Tris is more of a role model type of character for me, especially in her continuing growth in Divergent.  I've never been one to have heroes like celebrities or athletes or entrepreneurs, but I do have an admiration for people and characters who are at peace with the multiple parts of themselves.  That peace is an incredibly hard thing to accomplish, something that I don't think a lot of people, myself included, can claim.  Tris certainly doesn't start here -- she must fight her way toward that kind of acceptance and peace -- but her movement toward that ideal is, to me, a much more realistic path that many walk.

I am not sure how this story will translate into a movie, just as I was unsure about the Hunger Games.  Frankly, I hated the first Hunger Games movie and still now have not seen the second one.  I disliked the crazy camera motion in order to keep the rating PG-13 instead of R (as the violence of the actual novel would necessitate), and I found the loss of the internal dialogue of Katniss's experiences made the movie feel empty.  Since Divergent is also told from that first person perspective, I am concerned about seeing the movie.  Tris's internal life is rich with her ideas, her struggles, her changing world and life.  If that gets cut and left behind, that will change the story.  So while I think the events of the novel would translate well, I'm not sure if the character will.

I'm also interested, from a more personal perspective, to see Tris's influence over pop culture.  The Hunger Games had such an incredibly teen following, and huge marketability, that immediately resulted in shirts and souvenirs and little mockingjay pins everywhere.  Divergent, and really the faction Dauntless within Divergent, is all about adventures and risk taking.  Their people, and Tris included, love tattoos and fighting and crazy adrenaline rushes, and those things tend to be frowned upon by the parents of many teens.  Some of Dauntless's ideals, such as facing your fears and deal with life's problems with courage, should be commended, and hopefully those will overshadow some of the more 'negative' things.  But I'm curious to see how the elements like the tattoos play out, especially if the movies attract the same audiences as The Hunger Games.  I'll be on the lookout for Divergent-themed tattoos in the coming year or two.

Thus ends my thoughts on Divergent.

Now, I want to think about its sequels: Insurgent and Allegiant.

I was not nearly as fond of these two sequels as I was of the first novel.

Less depth exists in these two novels combined than in the first.  The overarching themes -- those about cooperation and the division of people along semi-arbitrary lines -- certainly carry value, but those themes are overshadowed by the sad states of the stories themselves.

Insurgent, as valiantly named as it is, does little beyond fulfilling the necessary, predictable plot lines left at the end of Divergent, which ends on what I can only describe as a brilliant note.  The whole novel focuses so much on Tris's initiation into Dauntless and so little on the strife between the factions themselves that the ending twist -- that of Erudite using Dauntless as mind-controlled zombies to take down Abnegation -- comes as a complete surprise.  I'm usually pretty good at predicting endings, but this one blindsided me.

However, its eventual result in Insurgent was totally predictable, taking the series in a direction I was not happy with.
Just my opinion, of course :)

They are both big books, and so I'm going to summarize; in summarizing, I must simplify the plots a bit.  Events in the novel are more complicated when they are spread out over 400 pages, but sadly complications don't necessarily equate to complexity, and this story sags.

The basic gist of Insurgent is this: after Erudite uses the Dauntless to effectively wipe out Abnegation, there's a lot of turmoil amongst the factions, specifically over who should get involved and on which side.  While that turmoil distracts everyone, the factionless rise up and eventually take over Erudite.  Their aim is to eliminate factions entirely -- to destroy the system they were cut out of for so long.  And... that's basically the entire book.  Sure, there's a lot of smaller drama, and I've skipped over a few major moments in favor of keeping some mystery alive, but there's almost no depth to the story and very little character growth.  Instead, there are a lot of plot "loops" that are mildly interesting but serve no real purpose -- such as when Tris tries to sacrifice herself to end a mind-control threat from Erudite.  She turns herself in to Jeanine Mathews, the villain from the first novel, and after some experimentation and the like, Erudite decides to kill her.  Her friends from Dauntless and Abnegation break her out at the last moment, and she ends up back exactly where she started before she turned herself in.  There's no progress, and instead the incident serves to create useless conflict between Tris and her brother, Caleb.  And without progress in a story, getting through the final book in the trilogy proved to be quite a feat.

At the very end of Insurgent, Tris, Tobias/Four, and the rest of their group manage to escape the city and head out into the world beyond their own. They are soon picked up by the people outside the city -- thanks to the constant hinting, the reader knew there was someone out there, even if no one has any idea who that might be.  They abandon the city and the factions and factionless, most clearly in an attempt to move beyond their conflicts but also in a "seek and ye shall find" kind of search for answers about their history.

There is where the final book, Allegiant, picks up.

Allegiant opens with such a sudden change in style that I want to warn readers off once again:

I'm going to ruin the ending of the series here. Seriously, don't read on if you don't want to know.  

This entire series has been written in 1st person, from Tris's perspective.  Now, suddenly, Allegiant is written from a 1st person dual perspective, switching back and forth between Tris and Tobias. There's no reason for this switch -- the story has progressed just fine from Tris's perspective til now -- except one: Tris is going to die.  The story must be able to go on, and if an author kills a first person narrator, that's not possible.

I can't really say I was surprised; as the story progresses, Tris becomes ever more self-righteous, and in distopia stories, that often leads to death (usually through some form of self-sacrifice). In doing so, I find her more grating; as she becomes less a person and more a paragon of doing the right thing, she becomes less admirable and more unrealistic.

Tobias's perspective gives the final novel of this trilogy a little more depth, especially given he and Tris's growing relationship.  However, it's often hard to tell who is talking; they're living in the same areas, dealing with the same enemies and conflicts, so not much of the story really differs no matter who you are reading.  Some subplots, like Tobias's involvement in a radical underground group, do add more to one perspective over another, but the switching still gets confusing.

The plot of the final book revolves around a discrimination story: those who are genetically perfect, the Divergent of the factions, and those who are genetically damaged, a leftover of the wars of previous generations.  Those previous generations, at it turns out, include us -- America, and much of the world, descended into war and eventually took to genetic modification in an attempt to fix things and continue valued traits.  When things continued to get worse, and with a rapidly dwindling population, the government decided to test out different living situations to heal those who are genetically 'damaged.'  One of these situations is that of the factions in Tris's city.

Out in the real world, the government basically monitors those in the cities, but those who are genetically damaged are considered inferior to those who are genetically perfect.  The damaged are also blamed for society's past problems -- their deficiencies caused the wars and violence and pretty much any other social problem out there.  So now, they can only hold the crappy jobs, and they are routinely and casually discriminated against.  This includes the facility where Tris and Tobias end up.

Once there, and once the truth is revealed, Tris spearheads the movement to accept those who are damaged, in the face of the genetically perfect people who have rescued them and run the facility.  That's the central conflict, but with lots of little tendrils of plot branching off.

This basic idea works pretty well as a foundation; it's a discrimination story, about judging people for who they are on the inside and not for things they can't control.  While I find it a little too heavy-handed, it does make sense as a young adult theme (don't forget that Tris is only 16, and Tobias 18).  I suspect that my seniors, who are pretty well educated people by this point, would probably pick up at it at least, but they may not dislike it the way I do.  The themes certainly can seem universal, seem poignant, but it's such an overdone concept to me that I'm not interested anymore. No one is trying to convince me we all need to live in harmony and treat each other fairly; I already wholeheartedly believe that.

I know that discrimination is still such an issue.  Even today, problems based in discrimination -- like gay rights -- still arise, and I know that they need to be dealt with.  But it just seems silly to still be arguing about; people understand that discrimination is wrong, even when they still do and believe in it.  No matter what, the dislike and mistrust of difference is essential to the human condition, and so it will never disappear even when everyone does agree it's wrong.

Ultimately, I'm just sick of having this message shoved in my face, especially from a novel that I did not particularly enjoy. Frankly, George Takei makes the same point in much more clever ways on a near-daily basis on Facebook, and that hits home just as well.

I do love talking to my students about books, which is one reason I love teaching seniors: They're learning how to think right about now.  They have ideas and opinions and it's so neat to discuss those things with them when something, like this series, really gets under their skin.  One student in particular always has great insights into novels, and I always love discussing books with her.  She mentioned  that, in a future with a minimal population and lots of trouble with basic survival, the idea of the government dividing people into independent cities with no knowledge of each other seems pretty unrealistic.  I hadn't thought about it in that way, but she does have a good point, and that's just some of what rubs my wrong about the end of this series.

Overall, the later two novels simply don't carry out the promise of the first.  The uniqueness and abilities in Divergent did not continue into Insurgent and Allegiant. It's not that I hated the trilogy; I was just disappointed by it.

As I reflect back on the entire series -- ignoring how bored I was by Insurgent, abandoning my struggle with the teenage-driven themes of Allegiant, trying to focus on how much I loved Divergent -- I have to think of a classic quote from Abraham Lincoln: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

This is one of my favorite quotes.  I don't think about it often, mostly just on election night or when something really stupid happens and both political parties jump to lay blame.  But these novels bring it back to the surface. When people separate themselves, however meaningfully or arbitrarily, everyone suffers.  The inherent necessity of cooperation allows for survival, perhaps the most mature theme to come out of this series.  Four/Tobias tries to remind Tris of this occasionally throughout the series, but the message is more prominent in the first book.  And no matter how I feel about them all, it does ring true.  When we refuse to acknowledge the value that others bring to the table, we are all lost.

As a final thought: I'm sorry this post took me so long to publish. I've got another in the works from a book I read back in February, and then I should be updating regularly again when the school year ends in a few weeks.  Thanks for your patience; maybe go read just Divergent in the meantime. :)

Looking for Alaska

Let me preface this by first saying that obviously I enjoy John Green.  When I wrote about The Fault in Our Stars, I could not keep myself from giving away just about every little secret, and I suspect that this post will be the same.  Looking for Alaska is only the second John Green novel I've ever read, but I suspect that it will not be the last.

My younger brother gave me a copy of The Fault in Our Stars for Christmas this year, and when he gave it to me, he made an interesting observation.  Like me, my brother is an avid reader and he'll read just about anything -- but apparently, John Green is not for him.  He tried and just could not read The Fault in Our Stars, but apparently his female roommates are just in love with not only that book, but all of John Green's novels.  When I mentioned that I was reading Looking for Alaska, he just rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, that's their favorite one," his tone suggesting that there was no way he could get it.

I'm surprised by this, honestly.  I mean, I have no surprise that his female friends love these books, especially given how much I enjoy them, but I am surprised that he couldn't get into a Green novel.  Here's why: a LOT of Green's main characters are teenage males, and obviously Green is a male author himself.  But my brother, a nice, smart, and relatively emotionally attuned guy who is not too far out of high school yet, found no points of connection with Green or his characters.  I'm not sure what to make of this.  Since this conversation, I've wondered if perhaps I should talk to my students about how they respond to Green's work or ask my librarian if many boys check out his books.  Maybe my brother's aversion to the novel stems from the stereotyping of American males -- they are still often taught to bottle up emotions, a lesson that comes from more than just parents in our society.  Maybe the frankness of the emotions as Green writes them are too much to deal with or are too real and suppressed.  I don't honestly know, and it's especially confusing to me because my brother and I are fairly close; I know he's not emotionally suppressed, nor does he have trouble expressing cares or grief or any other major emotional player in a John Green novel.  Ultimately my only answers are just pure speculation, but I am curious nonetheless.

I don't feel that I'm really giving anything away here (the symbolism of the snuffed candle on the book cover is pretty heavy-handed), but nonetheless: I'm going to spoil part of the book in this post. If you don't want me to, despite all the clues Green himself lays, stop reading now.

The main character of Looking for Alaska, Pudge (aka Miles, so nicknamed Pudge thanks to his super-skinny figure), starts the novel by attempting to change his life.  He moves to a boarding school, away from his traditional but boring high school, leaving to seek what he calls "a Great Perhaps."  He wants something beyond his average existence, and he certainly gets it.

Life at Culver Creek Preparatory High School could be boring, but not with friends like the ones Pudge finds.  The Colonel, Pudge's roommate, instantly adds drama to Pudge's life, and the introduction of Alaska Young only heightens that drama.   Pudge develops an instant crush on Alaska, a crush that can't be realized since she has a college boyfriend.  But that doesn't stop the friendship that grows, and Pudge becomes one of the gang before long.  He learns the underlying rules of the school, and he develops loyalties that are deeper than anything else he's experienced in his life.

Pudge is happy, at least for the most part.  His intelligence is above average and often piqued by challenges that put off his friends -- challenges like his religion teacher's off-the-wall ideas about religion's place in civilization.  Exploring the world is right up Pudge's alley, and he does his best, but he usually ends up spending more of his time playing pranks with his friends.  He is more functional than many of his peers, many of whom drink or smoke themselves silly or struggle in their personal relationships.  Pudge is a character of depth, that much is for sure; in fact, even as I enjoyed getting to know him, I wondered at times if perhaps Green had written him too well, too wise and reasonable to be realized as the mere high schooler he is.

Sometimes while reading I wondered if he was quite real, and then I watched Alaska die.

Any novel (or at least the good ones) that deals with death, especially the death of someone close to the main character, must deal with the five stages of death and grief.  In order to earn the respect of a reader, the author must demonstrate that rudimentary understanding and application of psychology, lest someone cry foul when they read it.  But even with that in mind -- knowing that I'm expecting that Pudge will go through each one, knowing that the stages change order and repeat and move about, knowing from sadly personal experience what makes those stages real -- even with all of this in mind, Alaska Young's death feels real, like I too was her friend.

Part of what makes us human is how we deal with death, and the characters here are no exception.  Sadly, I have watched too many teens deal with death -- a close friend lost her father when we were only 16, and my district and students experienced the very sudden loss of three students at the beginning of this year.  We all experience the same horror, the same disbelief, when death occurs, and we all travel through those stages.  Death is a part of life, and its handling is an important part of what makes us human.

Sometimes, like Pudge and the Colonel, we struggle immensely with the 'why' of death.  Alaska's death leaves an enormous "why" behind: the boys honestly don't know what happened, why she drove off in such a hurry in the middle of the night, how she didn't see the cop car she fatally collided with, what the white tulips in the passenger seat mean.  The second half of the book is their investigation into Alaska's death, and it chronicles not only their discoveries but also their struggles with denial, with anger, with mind-numbing depression.  Like many teen boys, Pudge and the Colonel sometimes face death by taking their lives into their hands.  This is the stereotypical teen reaction: I am invincible, so even in the face of loss, I am not going to back down.  They do crazy things, and sometimes I had to step away to process just how dumb they are being. (This feeling is familiar as a teacher, but nevertheless, I don't enjoy it.)  But at other times, they make decisions that are heartfelt and warm and filled with reverence for their friend.  It's a moving and heart-wrenching thing to witness, but an impressive accomplishment for John Green as an author.

With all of the crazy behavior of this novel, I have to wonder at the comparison between this novel's high school existence and my own.  This is a common thought for me; as a high school teacher, I see crazy teenage behavior literally constantly. In fact, just today I watched multiple students receive gigantic out-of-school suspensions for drug-related issues.  And while that may be an extreme example, and I certainly have never regretted my decision to forgo drug use in any form, I do sometimes wonder if my high school experience wasn't quite normal. Some tiny part of me reads a book like this, watches my students do these crazy things, and wonders, Should I have been doing stuff like this, partying like this, before? when I was that age?

In Looking for Alaska, that crazy life seems to be what Pudge is seeking.  He had a relatively boring high school life before he moved to boarding school, with boring school-only friends and not much happening on really any level (or so the exposition of the novel would make it seem).  When he finds friends, especially those who are smoking and drinking and having lots of sex and stuff like that, he's happy. He doesn't necessarily engage in all those behaviors, but he obviously wants to engage in some (like sex) and experiments with others (drinking and smoking, just to name two).  And he immerses himself in friendships that revolve around those vices; if Alaska and the Colonel aren't drinking or smoking, it's a rare scene.

This is Alaska's justification for smoking while studying for a pre-calc test: the cigs might kill her, but dammit, she'll be able to do calculus.  

Is this what high school was supposed to be like?? Did I miss some crucial jumping off point for parties and drinking and smoking somehow? Despite all the evidence, I have to doubt it. Watching my students get in trouble, watching some of them lose a lot just to experience these things, tells me no. And really, how much I loved high school tells me no as well.  I really did genuinely enjoy my high school experience -- I realize that's a fairly common sentiment in American society, one that can be symptomatic of an inability to let go of the "glory days" of being 16-18.  But that's not what I'm trying to express; I have no desire to repeat or go back to high school. I enjoyed my experiences though.  I had a lot of fun playing around in the theatre department and poetry magazines, being challenged by savvy teachers and writing crazy arguments that were probably less awesome than I thought. I had a lot of fun meeting some of my best friends and ultimately dating the man who became my husband.

But if I could, would I change any of that, exchange it for parties and drinking and all that crazy stuff that Pudge and the Colonel and Alaska seem to find so crucial? No.  I know this is related to the kind of person I am, but still: I wonder about why this is the mainstream picture of high school that we so commonly receive.  I wonder if, indeed, people's high school experiences were actually like this, or if this is just a projection of what we all assume high school should have been, even if we didn't actually get it.

Final Note: I know this post jumps around a bit, and for that I'm sorry. It took me a long time to process and write, and so the transitions became a little rough out of thinking and necessity.