SA Blog Post John Carter of Mars

In the adventure book John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author uses symbolism in the characters to represent a societal problem. I believe that a societal problem Edgar Rice is trying to portray in this book is racism. Many instance in this book shows a hidden type of racism.

One of the first examples of the hidden racism is when they capture the Princess of Jedak, Dejah Torris. The Martians that captured her are called the Green Martians because they are Green.The princess Dejah comes from Helium which is filled with Red Martians. Both of them are always fighting against each other. They all have different beliefs and feelings. They would do anything to destroy one another. The green men believe that they are superior and that they should enslave animals and the great white apes. the red men have opposite beliefs. They both also have different birth laws. This reminds me of the two political parties as well as racism. The Green men are kind of Republicans and how they want to be the rulers and enslave the "lesser" beings. Back in the Reconstruction Era in the United States, the Democratic Party was for slavery. But the Democrats and Republicans switched so now the democratic beliefs are republicans and the republican beliefs are in the democratic party. The Red men would be Democrats nowadays.

Another example of a hidden symbol of racism are the people on Mars that they call blacks and the white apes. The white apes are the slaves kind of that work underneath Mars. They are kind of the reason Mars has no real work like cropping and all those things. Also they treat the blacks differently than the others. I think this is a symbol for racism because of how white men used to treat African Americans. They used to treat them differently.

I think the book John Carter of Mars is filled with symbols from the author that signify Racism.
This was a very good book from an amazing trilogy. Better than the movie.

Argument Essay

A recent popular question has surfaced the youth of America. That question is, should some young adult fiction books be banned? Well, some YA fiction books should be challenged by adults and teachers, because the themes and topics that are discussed in YA fiction are to gruesome, images and descriptions of books are to grueling to look and imagine and they give thoughts to the kids reading it.

            The first reason YA fiction books should be allowed to be challenged by adults is because the content is gruesome. For example, according to the article “Darkness Too Visible” by Megan Cox Gurdon “So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.” All of these topics and themes are in YA fiction nowadays. All of these topics that adults don’t even talk about normally, are being introduced at age 12 to young adolescents that are making the switch from fairytales, short stories and kids books to the horrid YA fiction realm. These are not all of the topics that are far more grueling ones such as murder, drugs, rape, sex, and etc. All of these topics sound like things from a police report. Aside from these horrid topics YA fiction is filled with profanity. According to the article “Should Young Adult Books Have Age Ratings?” by Husna Haq “ A recent study by Brigham Young University found that young adult bestsellers have twice the rate of cursing of video games and characters who swear are typically portrayed as wealthier, more attractive, and more popular than their clean-mouthed counterparts.” Which means we are letting our children read lines and lines of dialogue filled with words that if our kids said we would ground them. So what’s the point of protecting our kids from video games that contain violent topics and profanity, if they are already reading this in books?

            Another reason for challenging certain YA books is that they contain vivid descriptions and images of grueling things. “stomach clenching detail” (Gurdon 1) is the descriptions they give. These so called “book” descriptions sound like excerpts from horror movies rated R. For example in the book “The Hunger Games” kids are forced to murder each other with weapons until one is left alive for entertainment. Also in the book “Tweak” by Nic Sheff  which about a young man who struggles with substance abuse and is high on drugs like meth and heroin and likes to live the wild life having sex with girls and not caring about his health. Kids have vivid imagination. I could only imagine what kids would picture once they read about kids killing other kids, or a needle in someone’s arm injecting drugs into their veins. Some parts of books are very detailed descriptions that are inappropriate. For example in the various YA books such as again “The Hunger Games”, “Legend” by Marie Lu and “Divergent” there are description of death that are very detailed.

            Finally challenging YA books should be allowed without question is because it leaves kids with bad thoughts. Other people may think that people that are going through a bad time and have problems will find comfort and will be inspired by reading the same thing in YA fiction. One person is Sherman Alexie who wrote the article “Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood” which he states that his YA book has “inspired students” because “it was the student speakers who told the most important stories about survival.” While this is kind of true some kids that are struggling find comfort and are inspired after reading a YA book others don’t. Some kids might get the wrong idea. For example if a child were to read a book about drugs and they saw that no matter how much harm he had gone through he had been happy with himself and his choices, the child might think that drugs are good that they make you feel good which is not the case. Kids are easily influenced by what they hear and see. A bigger influence is their books. Not everyone is influenced the same way. We are all different people. Also Patrick Ness says that “Teenagers look at the Internet, they look at the news, they look at pornography on the internet, they look at violent movies on the Internet.” Yes this is true teens are aware of all of these things but why are we addressing them more? Shouldn’t we prevent them from at least reading about these things. Also not all of the demographic is for teens.  More kids are reading YA. Shouldn’t adults have the right to protect them?

            In conclusion YA books should be challenged without question because they portray gruesome and inappropriate themes and topics, their descriptions and images are gruesome and they leave negative thoughts. This debate could go on and on but it all goes down to the point where if kids can be protected from reading these things at such a young age, then they should be.

LEGEND by Marie Lu *SPOILER*

       In the book Legend by Marie Lu the main character is Day. The basic plot of this story is that Day is a young rebel kid who likes to steal and cause havoc throughout the Republic. One night he goes into a hospital to steal medicine for his sick brother and gets framed for killing a Republic official. June a young republic prodigy makes it her mission to capture Day. This is a very thrilling story and mysterious one. I believe that the relationship between Day and his family is strong.
       One of the reasons that I think the relationship between Day and his family is strong is because Day almost died for them. "I don't care, I just got to take care of Eden" Eden is sick with the plague. This is the main reason he went to obtain the cure in the hospital. He had to sneak into a Republic infested hospital filled soldiers just to get one vial of medicine.
        Another example would be when Day reviled himself to his family because they thought he had been dead. He told them to hide under the house because the Republic officials were coming. He was the first to come out fighting so his family can be okay. This was a very sad and devastating part of the story because even though Day fought against the officials they captured his two brothers and viciously murdered his mother in front of him. This part made me die a little inside.
        Finally his brother had a great and deep relationship with Day because he died for him. Day was sentenced to be put to death but June tried to help Day escape. So June broke his brother Daniel out of his cell and then, went to get Day. Day was knocked out and unconscious so they needed to buy time. Daniel took Day's bandana and ran towards the arena to make them kill him instead of Day so his little brother could escape. That's love.
         In conclusion Day's relationship between his family and himself is very strong, emotional and deep. He would do anything for his family and his family would do anything for him even though they didn't know he was still alive.