Final Blog, 18-20, William Currey

First of all, I see a clear parallel in the trains of Jews during the holocaust and the train that The Silent One sends off the edge of a cliff.  Do you agree? What is the significance of this comparison?  Would he be justified to do this if he did kill the vendor he meant to?

"Every one of us stood alone, and the sooner a man realized that all the Gavrilas, Mitkas, and Silent Ones were expendable, the better for him.  It mattered little if one was mute; people did not understand one another anyway" (233).  What do you think of this statement?  What changes our narrator’s mind and pushes him to speak?  Also, if you want, who is the man on the other end of the phone?

Last but not least, here's John's last blog question of the year:
Finally, something from Thrower's class playbook. I would like you to acknowledge one or two (but no more) of your classmates for something she/he/they did this semester or this year that you appreciated, or learned from, or enjoyed, or helped make the class better.  Something you would feel comfortable in acknowledging and thanking a classmate for.

Jake blog chapter16-17

1, Our boy goes from someone who incessantly prays with the hope of amassing the greatest number of Days of Indulgence possible, to someone who wants to harness the powers of evil, to someone who does not believe in a God or the supernatural. Gavrila teaches him that he has the power to dictate the events in his life, and this is a powerful and at first foreign idea for the boy. So what do you make of the way the communist system is depicted here? Do you see it as an improvement of the religious system, more of the same, something worse, or something entirely different that cannot be compared?

2. Why do you think Mitka is able to shoot the villagers but not the dog? Is this Kosinski drawing a line between humans and animals?

THROUGH 15 -Alice

1.  "Now I understood everything.  I realized why God would not listen to my prayers, why I was hung from hooks, why Garbos beat me, why I lost my speech.  I was black.  Why hair and eyes were as black as these Kalmuks'.  Evidently I belonged with them in another world.  There would be no mercy for such as me.  A dreadful fate had sentenced me to have black hair and eyes in common with this horde of savages."  This reading included many a horror.  We saw a five year old girl raped.  We saw countless women abused in the most deprived ways, and we saw an eleven year old boy lose hope.  What I want to hear, though, is what you think he's trying to say hear.  Is it better to be a Kalmuk or a village person?  He seems to consider the Kalmuks far worse than Garbos and the townspeople who raped and murdered Ludmilla.  Is there a difference other than their coloring?  Who do you think is more evil?  Can evil be quantified?  Where's the line between forgivable and unforgivable?

2.  "So that's what love was: savage as a bull prodded with a spike; brutal, smelly, sweaty.  This love was like the brawl in which man and woman wrested pleasure from each other, fighting, incapable of thought, half stunned, wheezing, less than human." That last question was a bit of a doozy so for this one I just want to ask if you think love exists in this world.  Or in general.

Questionable Blog Post Jaliwa? (Ch. 11)

This isn't exactly the position our boy hung in, but it's pretty close. Imagine how ripped he must've gotten. It's a shame really. Our boy obviously has talent; he probably could've gotten Hitler a medal in gymnastics at some point. If only he wasn't racist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm only going to ask once broad, multi-faceted question.

1: A quote that stood out to me this chapter: "God had no reason to inflict such terrible punishment on me. I had probably incurred the wrath of some other forces, which spread their tentacles over those God had abandoned for some reason or other."
Reading this quote, and the entire chapter for that matter, I feel so bad for our boy as he seeks savior in a God that either doesn't exist or really doesn't like him. It becomes obvious to us that there will be no divine intervention to save him. Yet, even as he's hanging in the air, 10 feet away from his death, he prays and prays and prays. It's not as if he is the only one that seeks assistance from a religious force even after he's been ignored. It's also not as if this is only a problem in these poor villages. Millions of struggling christians around the world do the same thing, and millions of other well-off Christians struggle to justify or simply turn a blind eye to the evil done on people of seemingly good faith. So my question: What makes our boy and the peasants so attracted to religion? What makes them keep going back to the church, even as their prayers are ignored? Connect this to the superstitions of all the villages our boy has traveled through as well. What makes village poeople continually use grinded horse bones and lice as a medicine when they can see it is literally making them sicker? Finally, is Kosinski trying to make a point about religion and superstitions by having our boy so easily believe in all of them? Is this a comment on humanity in general, like so much of this story is?

Blog 12: through chapter 10

Violence in this book is undoubtably prevalent and although terrible, becomes sort of expected as the novel progresses. One thing however still surprises me in its prevalence and affect on the world around the boy. That thing being superstition which is cultural, yes, but to me it seems to fit into the story almost too well.

1. So are the superstitions just there to add to the culture of the setting or do they add to the overall narrative? If so, how? And what themes (if any) do they play into? Give an example or two.

Continuing with the discussion in class about how the boy is being affected and changed by his experiences, I think chapter 10 highlights a clear indication of this very change. One moment specifically stood out to me and that was when the boy describes an officer: “his face was in the sunshine now, and it had a sheer and compelling beauty, the skin almost wax like, with flaxen hair as smooth as a baby’s. Once before in a church, I had seen such a delicate face. It was painted on a wall, bathed in organ music, and touched only by light from the stained-glass Windows”.

2. What do you make of this description? Is it significant to the boy’s development and how he sees people as well as himself? Is it surprising that this would be his outlook on race especially pertaining to his own given what he's gone through?