Author Archives: Wenqing Z.

Artistic Tribute to The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold

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The Lovely Bones is one of my favorite books. The main character, Susie, tells the story from a unique point of view– she is dead, and tells the story of her dear ones from Heaven above. The concept of Heaven and the usage of flashbacks are the highlights of this book.

What will happen to a family that loses one of its members? What will happen when this girl dies but still has the chance to watch her family while she’s trapped in her perfect heaven?

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Inside the snow globe on my father’s desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf. When I was little, my father would pull me into his lap and reach for the snow globe. He would turn it over, letting all the snow collect on the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, “Don’t worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He’s trapped in a perfect world.” (The Lovely Bones prologue)

-Wenqing Z., 10th grade

Authors We Love: Kurt Vonnegut

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Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most important black humor authors in American history. There was a time that every college student passes by the classrooms with a Kurt Vonnegut book, and I would like to say that it was a Vonnegut’s age that, however, already passed. How many young people know that Kurt Vonnegut was a great author just like Mark Twain? Do they ever meet his works before they appear on their schools book lists? It is a pleasure for me to know this author, and I want to share what I got from him with you.

monkey_house_coverThe book that introduced me to Vonnegut is Welcome to the Monkey House, a collection of Vonnegut’s short stories. I believe that many of us teenagers will be reading this in high school, and I suggest reading it carefully with some knowledge about the author. It will not only help you with your school essay but also inspire you deeper meanings of the stories.

As a German-American, Vonnegut’s life was not easy during the time of World War I and II. He loved peace but later decided to fight for the U.S. in World War II. Almost died on the front, his experience in war led to one of his best works, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). However, he was still been treated unequally even when he fought for equality. “Yes, and even today there is a sort of San Andreas fault line running between German-Americans and Anglos, but fainter all the time.” He stated in his last work, A Man without a Country.

man_without_country_coverWhy did Vonnegut consider himself as a man without a country? His works are well known by his humor, but Vonnegut decided to change his style in his last book, stating, “You get just too tired, and the news is too awful, and humor doesn’t work anymore. It may be that I am no longer able to joke– that it is no longer a satisfactory defense mechanism.” (A Man Without a Country, 2005)

For me, every Vonnegut story I read connected to Vonnegut’s life. For example, Vonnegut’s short story, “Harrison Bergeron,” explains Vonnegut’s understanding of equality, and you can see the connection. Vonnegut wanted equality and fought for it, but at last he did not achieve what he hoped for. When the main character Harrison frees himself from all the trashes that lock him, could we say that Vonnegut had the hope to free himself from the bias of people around him? Did he ever imagine crushing the labels that people put on him before knowing him as a human being?

As a great author, Vonnegut influenced a generation. However he was not a happy man- almost struggled for his whole life, Vonnegut did not meet his end happily. He fought for what he believed with humor, and he died.

So it goes.

-Wenqing Z., 10th grade

Book Review: All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque

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all_quiet_coverAll Quiet on the Western Front is a novel about a young soldier’s life during World War I. Or we can say that this book records how a young man walks toward the battle field with proud and excitement to how he crushes to the ground with a tired heart that is harmed by the crying guns. He does not fight for his country, but for his life and the lives around him. However, just like many soldiers, he cannot and does not have the will to escape from something worse than death.

The novel is by Erich Maria Remarque, a German author who participated in World War I himself. Became a soldier when he was 19, Remarque was sent to the western front to fight with France. There he was wounded and sent to hospital, where he spent the rest of the war. During his time in the hospital, Remarque talked with lots of soldiers that were sent to be cured or to be left to death; his own experience with the stories that he heard from others led to his great works.

Why do people put themselves on the battle field? What is the reality on the front line? What happen to them each and every day? What is the thing everyone faces that is worse than death? What is WAR? From the perspective of the main character Paul Bäumer, Remarque showed the real meaning of war- it is a competition with death and a process of losing everything you had.

“We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial- I believe we are lost.”

“We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.”

Once All Quiet on the Western Front was published, it sold 2.5 million copies in twenty-five languages in first eighteen months. Although Nazi Germany burned the books before World War II and Remarque was exiled, his works still remained popular in both German and the world.

“He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.”

– Wenqing Z., 10th grade