Post#8: ISU Novel: The Color Purple

The Color Purple is basically a novel telling the story of Celie. Celie is a black women, that lives in southern America. She has to face many obstacles, like rasicm, being abused by a man who is believed to be her farther and is just known under the name Mr.____. When she turns 14, she is forced into marriage. Her children also get taken away. From what I have read so far, Celie and Aminata from the Book of Negroes are in a very similar position and, there is no doubt that both of them face a ton of Obstacles in their lives. The structure of the book is also similar, because the whole story is told about the character and focuses only on their lives. I am exited to finish the book and to write about the connection to the book of Negroes.

Post #7: Favorite Quotes

1:

“You must learn respect… Then you must learn to hide your disrespect.” (Page 25)

Aminatas dad says this to Aminata in the first chapter of the book. I think, it plays a huge role in the book, because of various reasons. First of all, it does have a big impact on the Aminatas character development. Throughout the book she needs to hide her disrespect a lot of times, which makes her life easier sometimes and even prevents her from getting killed. Aminata always has some privileges at some point, on the slave ship, with Mr. Lindo and now also in New York. These privileges are mainly cause by her respectful way to communicate with people. Personally, I think, that this quote is my favorite from the whole book and everybody can learn a little bit from it.       

2:

"That evening, Chekura brought a calabash of water and some soap made from shea nuts, and offered to help clean the wound on my thigh" (Page 45)

This quote is from where Chekura and Aminata just became friends and where Chekura is still with the kidnappers. Just like here, Chekura keeps helping Aminata and gives her food and other important stuff, like in this case a crème. Chekura is essential for Aminata to survive. This quote bonds into the theme of Love. Throughout the whole book, Love is a big theme. It plays a big role in everything, plot development, character development and also the general plot of the book. This book would be boring without this component.

3:

“ I had never before wanted to kill a man. But I would have killed Robinson Appleby then.” (Page 209)

This is right after Aminata gets her baby taken away. This shows on of the many obstacles Aminata has to face throughout the book. This is how all the book is structured, there is always some spark of hope, which then gets destroyed at some part in the book. The loss of her baby makes her refuse to work and so she gets sold to Mr. Lindo, who is a really nice person to her, so it did have something positive at some point. This ties in the theme of Hope, which occurs throughout the book. The loss of her child also does kind of form Aminata as a character and makes her stronger kind of; she starts to handle her losses much better then before.

4:

“With all the Negroes watching, I had stood up to Appleby. I had that one victory and I would remember it.” (Page 201)

This quote is when after Aminata marries, she gets beaten and shaved by Appleby. This shows, that although Aminata went through so much, she still keeps her courage and stands up to Appleby. In these times, it is very hard to keep the courage. There is no point of living after losing courage. Aminata also shows, that she still believes in herself and does hope to life a better life at some point, which she will have. The theme hope is once again involved in here. This quote is very important to me, because it expresses, how it is always possible to keep some courage and self-respect also in though situations.     

  

I don't really have fifth one yet, but i will work on it.  

Post #6: Obstacles

I had a pretty good and easy life so far. I only had on Obstacle i can recall and that was when my grandpa died. He was my a absolute favorite person on earth and i really loved him a lot. He was very sporty, pretty young for a grandpa and never really sick, therefor his death was so surprising for all of us, but especially to me. It was the first time, that I actually experienced death. It took me around one year to really get over it and it did definitely change my perspective on life and death.

Post #5: Milgram Experiment and Zimbardo Experiment

The Milgram's Shock Experiment was made by a psychologist named Stanley Milgram. In that experiments Milgram measured the willingness of study participants to obey an instructor who told them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. One volunteer was the "teacher" and asked another volunteer questions. If the answer was wrong, the teacher would need to give the other guy a electric shock. The results were shocking: Around 65% of the "teachers" went as far as 450 volt electric shocks, that is enough to kill a person. The experiment showed, how easy it is to manipulate people and what some people are able to do when they are under pressure.
It relates to the Book of Negroes, because the white people trading with the slaves are in a similar situation. Chekura is in a similar situation, when he is forced to work with the slave traders in the first book.  

Post #2: Quick Write

Which essay did you like best?

I really liked the "In the Trenches" essay by Charles Harrison. It is a part of his book, "Generals die in bed." I liked it because of the style of writing, he used a lot of rhetorical devices, which made in very good to read. He uses a lot of Similes and Sense images, which is very effective for the reader to put yourself in that position.  He does a really good job in describing the war and as a reader you can really imagine how the war was. I also really like the very short, but very effective sentences. I also liked the theme more then in the other two essays.

Post #1: Introduction.

Hey :),

My name is Philipp, I am 17 years old and was born in Hamburg, Germany. I have one brother, who is 15 years old. My passion is soccer. I love to watch it a lot, but also like to play myself with some friends. I also really like to watch other sports, like tennis and american football. Although I am not a great fan of literature, my favorite book is "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins. I do really like to watch movies and series, my favorite film director is Quentin Tarantino and his movie Pulp Fiction, for me, is the best movie ever made. 
My goal for this years English class, is to improve my writing in general and to be specific, my essay writing. 


Philipp