Entry #1- The Sun Also Rises

Simile- "For a man to take it ("The Purple Land") as a guide-book to what life holds is about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter Wall Street direct from a French convent, equipped with a complete set of the more practical Alger books" (page 17).

Alright so here we go again!!!! So I haven't found this book to be interesting so far. I definitely thought "The Things they Carried" was much better, but it is still too soon to know for sure.

Here, Hemingway compares Cohn's obsession with "The Purple Land" to a middle aged man going from a convent to Wall Street. I don't know about anyone else but I think that would be a funny sight to see! The man would be lost and totally out of place. I guess this is how Cohn became. He got so wrapped up in trying to live out this book that he lost track of reality.

Sometimes I think that people today get wrapped up in what could be and they try to live by a book, song, or movie. I think this is ridiculous. All of these paint unrealistic images. We have to pave our own path in life and make it what we want it to be. Life is an unending maze and no book, movie, or song is going to help us find our way out in one piece.

Entry # 1

Simile, page 6: "how the poor guy just dropped like so much concrete. Boom-down, he said. Like cement."

Alright so here I go first blog of the summer and now I have 2 days to get 20 blogs in and over 100 pages read before I leave! :)

The first chapter was interesting to say the least. I was worried at first that the whole entire book would be similar to the lists that were given in this chapter, but thank god it is not! So I did find something to write about by page 6. Kiowa is telling a story aout Ted Lavender and how when he was shot he was "like cement." This simile gives the reader an illusion so they can also see what Kiowa saw when his buddy Ted was shot. It gives the reader insight so they can also feel the sudden shock and death of Ted Lavender.

I think this simile is effective because if you imagine concrete or cement, you imagine something extremely heavy and lifeless. Like the cement, Lavender fell very heavily and I also believe that to the other men, he became lifeless in the blink of an eye. I also imagine that for Kiowa, it was easiest to imagine Lavender as a lifeless piece of cement than to look at his friend and see what he had become and to blame themselves like Lieutenant Cross had.