week 4:3
The next chapter is the next morning, at around ten. George and Lennie had gone to the ranch, and they were being showed to the bunk house by and old man who worked there. the boss comes after a while, and yells at them a little for not being there the night before, but he seems like a nice enough guy. tough, but nice. he tells them to go out after dinner with the guy named Slim. Another guy (named Curley) shows up and you can tell he's trying to pick a fight with Lennie, and leaves. after talking with the old man, they figure out the Curley has a severe case of small-man syndrome, and is often trying to pick fights with bigger guys to prove himself. he also tells him how Curley just married a pretty, pretty lady a month or two before, and is already having to fight for her. she comes around looking for curley, and after she's gone (she was drop-dead gorgeous) george agres witht he old man that she's one of the biggest tramps he'd ever seen. They also talk about the black stable man. After a while the other workers get back, they meet Slim and Carlson, and they run off to dinner.
The fisrt chapter of this books starts describing a small part of the Salinas River (a few miles south of Soledad) where two men have stopped for the night. it quickly goes on to center on the two men, but i really like how it...stops to smell the roses, if you will. it describes the temperature of the water, the beautiful willows on the side of the small river, and the general atmosphere of the area.
It goes on to the two men, George Milton and Lennie Small. George is always telling Lennie (who is somewhat retarded) what to do, whether it be to go and get firewood or to just shut the heck up. From their conversation, you learn that they had just come from a town up north called Weed, and had aparently been running from the men there, because of something that Lennie did. Lennie was having fun with a dead mouse, which brings this conversation on. He says he just likes petting it, because it feels nice, and George says that's just how they got in trouble, Lennie had liked the way a woman's dress felt in Weed, and the woman thought that Lennie was tryin' to do somethin' to her, and that's why they got in trouble. You gather that that wasn't the first time that that had happened, either. They don't go up to the ranch where they're gonna work, they spend the night there. Lennie has George (after george rants and raves about how he could be so successful if he didn't drag Lennie around everywhere) tell him a story he has heard over and over again, about how George and him are different from the other ranch hands, how they stick together, and how they're gonna get a house and a farm and live off the fat o' the land, etc.
You want it to be true, but you know that it's never going to happen.
Ok, let me explain. I was going to do my blogs about "Anthem" by Ayn Rand, but i can't seem to find my copy of it, so I'm going to do it on "of mice and men" by john steinbeck.
John Steinbeck was born in Salinas California on February 27, 1902. He spent most of his life in southren california, and most of his books are set in his home region of the Salinas Valley (a place where agriculture is a main business due to the climate as well as the richness of the soil. There are many migrant workers there). Many of his stories deal with the many farming and ranching operations in the Salinas valley, such as The Grapes of Wrath, Of mice and Men, among many others. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, and died in New York in 1968.
Of Mice and Men gets its name from a famous poem by Robert Burns titled "To a fieldmouse," (I think). It is about a mouse that spends much time creating a home for herself in a field, preparing for winter, and just when she has finished, a farmer comes and plows up the field where her home is. the famous line "The best laid plans of mice and men..." from which the title of this book comes talks about how people's dreams often conflict, and are shattered by the whim of another. it kind of gives yo a feeling for how happy this book is going to be!
week 3:3
I am going to read "Anthem" by Ayn Rand fo rmy next book.
Ayn Rand was a Russian immigrant, born in 1905, saw both Russian revolutions, was very disproving of the communist revolution, and emigrated to the United States and changed her name to Ayn Rand. She was discovered by a Hollywood director on the street and was able to see a firsthand account of American pop culture. She was the founder of the philosophy of objectivism, which centers on individuality and the individual.
Ender wakes after a while, and is sick. he is delerious. He has been stressed out for so long about the game, to find that it was not, that he just destroyed and entire species. It is a good thing that he is sick in bed for a month, though, because the earth had broken into war back home (just like Peter and Valentine had thought that it would), just as the people of different nationalities on Eros did. there was fighting everywhere, and Ender woke after it had stopped. At the end of it all, the world had been brought to peace (though there were still hostilities) by his brother Peter, who was now the leader of the world hegemony. Ender decides that he can't live on earth anymore, and he and Valentine go off on the first colonization ship that leaves earth. Ender is to be the governor of the colony.
While exploring, Ender finds the scene from the fantasy game that he would always play at battle school, with the giant. he follows the landscape, and finds a cacoon. a bugger cacoon. It talks to him telepathically.
Ender writes a book about Bugger life, to make people not hate them, and signs it "Speker for the dead." He then writes a book about his brother Peter. They are both published anonymously, and become instant favorites. Ender vow to find anew place to put the bugger cacoon, so they came come alive again.
The end
One morning when Mazer wakes up Ender, he tells him that today he is going to have his graduating test. if he wins the battle today, he will have been the only person to ever have passed Rackham's tests.
Rackham tells him all this, and also tells him, to stay true to a rel invasion, the battle simulator will be set up with a planet.
Ender goes in to his room and sees a plethora of fleet commanders, waiting to watch him. he puts on his headset, greets the others, and they wait for the simulator to load up. They see and infinite number of enemy ships surrounding their home planet, which is an almost yellow color. Ender does not have a clue. in his anger at the teachers for pitting this against him, his 85 sluggish fighters against the enemy's fleet of around 10,000 top-of-the-line ships. He almost wants to quit and go home, but then he remembers that they need him. He sees himself wet and cold in the bathroom with Bonzo, who was trying to kill him. He remembers his fight against stilson back on earth. he realizes that he must beat them. He remembers his last battle at battle school, and he stops. He hears Bean say "Remember, the enemy's gate is down," and it all clicks. he was going to beat them using their own rules, and make them not want him, just like he had at battle school. He sends them straight into the enemy, cutting his way toward the planet. he pushes and pushes them, and right as the enemy is about to destroy them, he fires the little doctor at the planet. it hits it, and everything except the starships watching the battle disintegrates.
All the commanders in the room around Ender start cheering and weeping. Ender doesn't understand, he had just broken their rules, he had just destroyed a planet in their simulator, which they had told him not to do. Mazer tells him that it's all over, and Ender realizes that all the time that he had been fighting the "simulator," he had been controlling actuall ships in actual battles, and that he had just actually destroyed the bugger home planet. he goes to his bed and sleeps for days.
Ender goes on to the battles against Rackham. It is very intense. they are outnumbered hopelessly, but they are able to gain victories. Rackham grows slightly angry at Ender telling him that he needs to be winning by more, because while in the simulation, more reinforcments are coming, he only has a limited number of ships. Ender, in turn, pushes his officers a bit more. one day, during a battle, Petra breaks. she just couldn't take the pressure, she started weeping and bean had to take over her command as well as his own.
Ender is now one officer less than before. he has to work with those that are left, and the strees is finally getting to him. one morning, he wakes up to find his hand bloodied, he had been frantically gnawing on his own hand in his sleep.
The battles just get more stressful.
I hate this part. Even though Ender has been miserable theis entire time, this is the first time that it has shown the real pressure that is being heaped upon him, and how he is truely and utterly miserable. it's just horrible.
After a while, ender goes to the simulator. Rackham tells him about how they've got new weapons on it for him to use, including one that would undo things on the moleculer level, and it's range would increase with the mass of the things that he was destroying. He also learned that, as the simualtor pilots that he was commanding were none too smart, he would be getting some real soldiers he could trust to be his commanders. Then he put on his headset and heard the voices of all his old friends from the years before at battle school: Bean, Alai, Petra, Dink, Carn Crby, and all his old toon leaders from dragon army. they had finally given him his friends back.
It's just too bad that they now have made him so intent on his purpose that he no longer has time to be happy.
After a month of training with them, Mazer rackham shows him a video of their last battle, from the enemy's point of view. he comments on how they look like the bugger fleet. They had reached the point in their working together that they were able to flow together perfectly, matching the fluidity of the bugger fleet, but they were better because eac ship was it's own personality and could react individually to each situation, unlike the bugger's hive mind.
Rackham tells him that the test begins now, to see if they are ready. He tells ender that he will now be the enemy, Ender will have to defeat Rackham in a series of battles to pass. And he can't loose any.
Ender never sees anyone except Mazer Rackham any more. He is Ender's sole teacher, and Ender learns alot. He learns alot about military tactics and other things, but mostly he learns alot about the Buggers. Mazer Rackham, when Ender asks him why and how he was able to defeat the Bugger fleet in the second invasion. Mazer tells him that he just got a lucky shot. Ender asks what this si supposed to mean, and Mazer tells him about his theory that the Buggers have a hive mind, much like the ants that the buggers are compared to. This means that the reason that they were able to comunnicate instantly with their minds, like Graff had been telling Ender before, was that all the buggers were just part of the queen. This is why Mazer was able to defeat the bugger fleet by just taking down one ship, when the queen was killed, so were all the others.
This explains alot, like why the buggers didn't even put up a fight when all their ships were being boarded, and why even in the undamaged ships they were all already dead. Rackham also tells that that's why Eros has such low ceilings, it was caved out by the buggers, and the humans took it over after the war.
It also talks about how Rackham is still alive, when the second invasion was 80 years earlier, he had been traveling faster the speed of light for a while, blah blah blah, same old sci fi reasoning.
I really liked this secton, even though it was alot of exposition, it really made you think about how Ender could beat the buggers.