First, this book makes me feel all sorts of things, mostly annoyed with the language and bluntness that Stephenson uses. His languages makes him and his characters, especially Hilo seem arrogant. To get a little more specific let me bring you to page 56 where he begins to introduce Juanita, Hilo's ex-girlfriend. In creating this character or talking about her he purely refers to the thoughts that Hilo has about her. At first he talks about how she was a "dour, bookish, geeky type who dressed like she was interviewing for job as an accountant" - to me this made me immediately disassociate myself with Juanita as a character. And then later he goes on to talk about how she is actually a genius and this made me feel a little uncomfortable with my own feelings. Because, after all I rejected the geeky girl and like the genius girl - I confirmed for myself that I should never judge a book by its cover.
Also, during the same time as Hilo is talking about Juanita he is speaking about Army life and states a quote that is often very true in reality "there is a certain small town that grows like a boil on the ass of any army base" - My feelings in reaction to this quote were actually those of humor because I find that there are these little shitty towns outside of every army base that are the armpit of America. Within a few paragraphs this book has be ashamed at myself to laughing - very unusual.
Another passage that I found very interesting, was a passage on page 58 where Hilo says "Military. Black kids didn't talk like black kids, Asians didn't bust their asses to excel in school. White kids...didn't have any problem getting along with the black and Asian kids" In this one simple quote Stephensen brings to light many of the stereotypes of today - If only we could all be "military"
To be honest I found it hard to have empathy for that characters in the book because they novel just seems so fake to me... this world that Stephensen is describing is so far from my own reality that I find it hard to imagine. If I had to pick a point I would refer back to the story of Juanita - page 59 - when it describes her getting pregnant a very young age. As weird as the passage is, I think that any woman has empathy for another woman that gets pregnant when she doesn't want to be - well at least if the other woman is not a complete moron.
Don't be mad that I wrote from the beginning of the book, I was the first to post! And thats really as far as I have gotten so far :)
Friday, October 23, 2009
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Just like you, it is equally as hard for me to feel any empathy for any of these characters because the story just seems unreal and I have not been thrown into any of these situations that these characters are put into. Instead, I feel more sympathetic than empathetic. I do feel sympathetic for Y.T. when she becomes pregnant at a very early age. I can clearly see why she doesn’t want her parents or anyone to figure out that she is pregnant at that age. Obviously, as me being a guy and that I am already 19 years old, I will never know what it feels like to be pregnant at an age younger than 15, so I can’t relate to her situation and feel empathy towards her.
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