This one was a somewhat enjoyable read. Unfortunately all the morals and things in the book that I would normally blog on are religious things, which I refuse to blog on. I dislike any form of religion being inserted into anything involving education, particularly my education, and I especially despise Christianity, the religion that deliberately hindered the acquisition of knowledge with threats, assasinations, bribes, and other forms of corruption. In addition the supposedly "good" Christians have massacred millions, perhaps billions, of people throughout history simply because they didn't share the same beliefs and then said they were justified because they were doing "the will of god." I put the Holocaust on their death toll as well, since the religion Germany was trying to promote by slaughtering the Jews was Christianity, and so far as I know the Christian church didn't exactly oppose these actions.
Therefore I outright refuse to discuss the religious concepts discussed in this book in this blog, which is part of my schoolwork and thus part of my education. This might be slightly irrational or unreasonable, but I will in no way involve religion in my education, and that goes for all religions that exist today, even the ones I don't have any reason to loathe. The only exception I can think of is to talk about religions in a historical context, and that's not talking about the religion that's talking about history.
Moving on, the book was rather enjoyable when the religion is taken out of the picture. I found some parts funny and some parts to be ridiculous, but touching nonetheless. My only real complaint about the book (apart from the constant you know what) was that whenever Owen Meany speaks the writing is in all capital letters. Being accustomed to an all caps sentence indicating somebody was yelling and was angry and trying to pick a fight with me, the all caps sentences in the book inspired feelings of anger and frustration in me, even though I was aware that nobody was actually screaming or angry.
TAKE THIS SENTENCE FOR EXAMPLE, YOU PROBABLY THINK I'M SHOUTING AND AM ANGRY RIGHT NOW, I'M NOT, BUT DEEP DOWN THIS PROBABLY IRRITATES YOU IF YOU'RE USED TO CHATTING OR WRITING ON THE INTERNET. Logically processed the sentence simply is an indicator of Owen's strange voice, but regular people have half a brain that processes things logically and half a brain that doesn't. Those halves don't work in completely different worlds, they both play a role in processing information, so no matter how much you rationalize the all capital letter sentences, if you are used to all caps indicating anger and people yelling at you (and people screaming at you irritates you, which for most of you I'm sure it does) then you will involuntarily feel slightly irritated of angry. The book is jam packed with Owen Meany speaking in all capital letters, and it forced me to stop and let my logic oriented brain rationalize the information and calm me down. Seemingly stupid as it may be, I would have enjoyed the book more if the author had italicized the words or written them in a different font size or something other than hitting the caps lock button on the keyboard.
Well I would say more about the morals in the book, but now that I think about it I realize they were ALL religion based. So now that I have given at least a little material to think about after reading this post I think it would be a good time to call it quits for this blog post.
Sorry that I can't bring myself to ponder the merits of these religious morals, but the anger religions inspire in me is so great it borders on being irrational, despite my good reasons. So until next time farewell (the next one will be science based, so I'm sure it will turn out much better than this)!
As you know I had a long well formed response that somehow got lost in cyberspace. errrgh.
ReplyDeleteSo this will be a much shorter response, because I am falling way behind.
First, I don't think you can vehemently reject writing on religion then proceed to mention religion in every paragraph. How you managed to write 5 paragraphs and barely mention the book is amazing. You may do well in college, unfortunately for you I need more. Make sure you respond thoughtfully.
Now, You may not like religion. Lucky for you I am not making you take a religion course. However, if a book lends itself to religious discussion, it's not up to you to decide you aren't doing that.
Countless books have imagery and topics that are based in religion. You don't have to agree but to discuss topics intelligently and with depth you need to have an understanding of religions and be able to analyze those symbols.
I recently read a book about a young jewish artist who had to learn about christian symbols in art in order to become a great artist. You can choose to learn to discuss religious symbols for intellectual sake or you can choose to be a closed-minded bigot. BUT you don't get to make that choice until after you've discussed this book in its due depth.