Cameron Santoro

Blog Post# 2

10/11/13

The Scarlet Ibis Reaction

The Scarlet Ibis was a very interesting story. It was about a brother and his younger brother named Doodle. This isn't a usual story, Doodle was born with many problems, he can’t walk, his heart is to small, and it is just hard for him to do much. The story is masked with lots of symbolism that makes it very serious.

The first thing I am going to address is what is a scarlet ibis? Well, a scarlet ibis is a beautiful bird with a crimson color. In the book Doodle is a scarlet ibis because even though he looks different he is a very good person on the inside and has a good spirit. The narrator is not. He doesn't like Doodle at all and he even says he wanted to smother him when he as just a baby. If this is not bad enough, he is embarrassed to be Doodle’s brother because he can’t walk. He sets out to fix that problem, but not to help him, he wants to do this so Doodle, he is being selfish and is doing this so he can have a brother who could walk. Towards the end they are becoming closer together and we think that they love each other, but then tragedy strikes. When they are in a forest in the rain the narrator runs away from Doodle. Doodle can’t keep up and cries for his brother not to leave him, but he continues on anyway. when the narrator comes back he finds Doodle’s body, he died from exhaustion. Only now does the narrator realize what he has done. He had a beautiful person in his brother and then he killed it like a fool.

Since the story takes place in the fall, I am going to end this argument with the thought that since fall is the season of death, Doodle’s death represents the beauty of nature leaving us like Doodle left the narrator.

Escape From Afghanistan Reaction

Cameron Santoro

Blog Post#1

24 September 2013

Escape From Afghanistan Metaphors

Metaphors are important to the writing process. Many times if an author needs to paint a picture in our minds, the will use metaphors. In Escape from Afghanistan by Farah Ahmedi, she uses metaphors to paint a picture of what Afghanistan looks like and what the people and area feel like( the only thing I knew about this place was that Osama lived in caves there). Ahmedi uses metaphor to describe a bus trip along a windy road near a river a” if someone laid a long ribbon along a zigzag path on the bank of the river.” By using this the author has given me a better understanding of what these experiences were like and that keeps me interested in the story.

Another thing that kept me interested in the story was examining the difficulty Ahmedi had in leaving Afghanistan. She was trying to leave a country run by the Taliban, who would kill someone for listening to music. In addition to all of these things she had to literally scale mountains with her asthmatic mother. All of these things made me appreciate my freedom even more and made me take things in perspective. If this person could do all this then the very least I can do is help my mom with groceries, help my little brother get ready for school, or at the very least try harder on my homework.