Characterization: Zoe

Mind lost in her headphones, Zoe's head moves unconsciously to the beat only her ears hear. Her dirty pink converse jut inward at the toe, looking like an awkward symbol for girl pride. Fashion is one of her fortes, whether she's bleaching her old jeans or making an amazing find in Dumpster Value's dollar bin. Her hair is continually morphing, growing shorter every few days rather than longer.

Creativity comes easily to Zoe, whether she's playing guitar or coming up with irrelevant references to slip into the conversation. She's smart and funny, but a bit of an introvert. She doesn't go out of her way to flaunt her insane amount of awesome, but she can be loud and in your face when necessary. There's a lot to Zoe Whorton, and I am impossibly happy to be friends with her.

an early memory

My childhood was riddled with various mishaps, much of which were apparently not as branded in my mind as I hoped upon reading this week's blog assignment.
However, I managed to remember this one birthday I attended. . . . In the good ol' days of playdates and early grade school, I went to my best friend's house for her birthday sleepover. We spent the night in her tree fort with a few other girls. Early in the morning, we woke up and started laughing and screaming and telling jokes and having a marvolous time. We were awake and wanted the rest of the world to know.
The neighbor's apparently heard, for our roucous was halted by the arrival of a policeman. All the rest of the girls pretended to be asleep, but when he called out to us, someone had to go talk to him. So I picked myself up and peered over the edge of the treefort. I spoke with him for a moment, informing him that "We're okay, thank you very much sir." My friend's mom came out and I slunk into the background with a feeling of exhilaration. We were in trouble, but I had done what was needed.
Needless to say, our yelling contests were put on hold indefinitely and we spent the rest of the morning indoors, but my trust in myself grew considerably that morning.

the jungle: motif

Upton Sinclair uses the motif of Jurgis to explain about the corruption of Chicago's factories in the early 1900s. Jurgis is an honest man in the beginning, believing in that hardwork pays off. He goes off to work in a terrible slaughterhouse, making hardly any money, but keeps his game face on. Gradually events unfold and he realizes how the system just wants to break him down.

Motif was used so heavily because without Jurgis' transformation, the book would have no point. Packingtown takes healthy, strong immigrants and forces them to work faster and harder under dreadful conditions and then not have any benefit. They lose their jobs or are broken down until they starve or have some catastrophic injury that prevents them from going to work. Upton Sinclair was exposing the harm that industry was causing Americans all for the sake of profit.

outside reading

I've been liking The Jungle more than I thought I would. Although it was a bit slow to get into, it's definitely kept me interested now. I think the most prominent literary element may be irony. But I'm not sure. The whole America seeming like such a great place to live and work, and then turning into the worst place imaginable, seems pretty ironic to me. It may have been writen in this manner because that's how Upton Sinclair could get his point across--that the US meat industry is/was terribly messed up.
The tone of The Jungle is pretty grim. Bad things happen to good people, and then continue getting worse and worse and worse. The working conditions are atrocious, not to mention awfully graphic.