Similes and Metaphors

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Simile: A figure of speech in which two fundamentally unlike things are explicitly compared, usually in a phrase introduced by like or as

Metaphor: A figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something in common

http://grammar.about.com/

Similes:

1. "I pick up the locket, resigned to sealing the deal, and the strangest thing happens--my hand, it just clamps shut like the Jaws of Life." (9) 
2. "Actually, that's not quite true--right now she doesn't have it, but it's hibernating under her skin like a bear, until it decides to roar again." (10)
3. “Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed.” (12)
4. "He wraps me in his arms, Kate caught between us like a gasp." (38)
5. "The last thing I see as I run out of the room is my mother pushing the nurse's call button over and over, as if it's the trigger to a bomb." (61)

Metaphors:

1. “My dad also says that when flames are licking at your heels you've got to break a wall or two if you want to escape.” (14-15)
2. "When you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail." (22)
3. "A woman," I say, "isn't all that different from a bonfire." (48-49)
4. "When she is tied to the bed, I am her eyes and ears." (58)
5. "A heroin-thin boy with enough rings in his eyebrows to resemble a shower curtain rod approaches with a pad." (91) 

My Keeper

     I am a keeper to my brother. We both look out for each other. I make sure he doesn't do anything he might regret and he makes sure I don't get hurt. I make sure no one makes fun of him. We are very close in age so I think that makes us close. He is my little brother and I feel like it's a job for all older and younger siblings to look out for each other.

My Sister's Keeper

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Jodi Picoult is an American author. She was  born and raised in Nesconset on Long Island, and moved to New Hampshire when she was 13 years old.She wrote he first book when she was five. She is now married to Tim Van Leer and has three kids who live Hanover, New Hampshire. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodi_Picoult

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My Sister's Keeper is about a girl named Anna Fitzgerald who has an older sister named Kate. Kate has leukemia, because of that Anna was born specifically to donate any thing Kate needs. Kate had relapsed a couple of times and now she needs a kidney. Anna doesn't want to give the kidney because it could kill Kate and effect Anna's life so Anna sues her parents for the right of her own body. I think this book will be both sad and very good. I have already started to like it just by reading the first chapter. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Sister's_Keeper 

Crazy Goof Dies Alone in the Wild (essay)

“A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness,” (London). This is not the idea of a normal place to travel. For 22 year old Chris McCandless it’s a dream. Chris disappeared after his college graduation to go live out his dream. He hitchhiked from his home in Annandale, Virginia all the way out to Fairbanks, Alaska. A couple years after his death, Jon Krakauer wrote a book about his adventure called Into the Wild. His adventure has caused many debates. I agree with most Alaskans, Chris McCandless is a fool.

            Chris is stubborn, irresponsible, and an idiot which resulted in him dying. He didn’t tell anyone exactly where he was going, just that he was leaving. “During graduation weekend he casually mentioned to his parents that he intended to spend the upcoming summer on the road as well. His exact words were ‘I think I’m going to disappear for a while,’” (Krakauer, 21). No one thought anything of this and a couple days later he disappeared. Why would people, like Krakauer, think this is a smart, heroic move? This is the first mistake out of many that Chris made.

It all came from his parents. He has made these many mistakes from his parents. It started off with them ignoring the fact that he was telling them he was leaving. “His exact words were ‘I think I’m going to disappear for a while.’ Neither parent made anything of this announcement at the time, although Walt did gently admonish his son, saying ‘Hey, make sure you come see us before you go,’”(21). Why would they not immediately act on this? Any normal parent would be concerned about their child if they said that. Then again Chris is very stubborn, which brings me to my third example.

            “‘Chris was good at almost everything he tied, which made him supremely overconfident. If you attempted to talk him out of something, he wouldn’t argue. He’d just nod politely and then do exactly what he wanted,’”(118-119). This brings me to my third example of why Chris is a fool. Even if Chris told someone about his trip, they would probably try to talk him out of it but he wouldn’t listen. He still would have died because of how stubborn he is. He took everything too literary which lead him to his death. What is heroic about that? The way he thinks makes him a fool, not a hero.

            As for the people who look up to Chris, who knows what is going on in their heads. Most people find it unfair that critics hate Chris because he made a few mistakes and died in result of them. Before Chris left for his trip, “he would shortly donate all the money in his college fund to OXFAM America, a charity dedicated to fighting hunger,” (20). While on the trip he would abandon his car, burn the money he had left, and continue with little more than a rifle, 10 pound bag of rice, and some books. People believe that this is a courageous move to do and that a lot of people can’t do what he had done. Do you know why people can’t do what Chris had done? They don’t want to get killed! Think about it. All he had was a rifle, 10-pound bag of rice, and some books to read. That is not much for a couple of months in Alaska with no one around, no item to contact help, nothing around. Why do these people think that he was courageous, it’s lack of common sense.

            Many people who agree that Chris McCandless was a hero say that critics are only against Chris because he was unprepared. I proved that wrong. Chris had no back up when he got in trouble, his parents let him go, and he was very stubborn. People have no idea that there is much more foolish actions, including that he was unprepared. Why do they think that Chris is a hero? He did not make many minor mistakes. He made many mistakes which became a big mistake that no one can undo, death. Just remember the top rules that any normal thinking person knows. Don’t go without telling someone exactly where you are going, always make sure you have enough supplies, and bring two or more companions.

            

Characterization of Chris McCandless

Chapter and page #	Description/quote from novel	What impression you get about Chris with this character trait or description?
Chapter 1, pages 1, 2, 4	“Eighteen, maybe nineteen at most. A rifle protruded from the young man’s backpack, but he looked friendly enough.” “Five feet seven or eight with a wiry build, he claimed to be 24 years old and said he was from South Dakota.  He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the edge of Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and ‘live off the land for a few months.”	Chris is not physically fit for walking into such a dangerous environment.  He seems a little crazy.
Chapter 2, page 12, 14	“A peek through a window revealed a Remington rifle, a plastic box of shells, eight or nine paperback books, some torn jeans, cooking utensils, and an expensive backpack.” “Virtually no subcutaneous fat remained on the body, and the muscles had withered significantly in the days of weeks prior to death.  At the time of the autopsy, McCandless’s remains 67 pounds.”	Chris was did not have nearly as much things as he needed to. He was not well prepared.
Chapter 3, pages 16-18	“McCandless was smallish with the hard, stringy physique of an itinerant laborer. He had the kind of sensitive good looks that woman made a big fuss over. He was nearsighted and wore steel-rimmed glasses. He looked hungry.” “McCandless quickly became enamored of Carthage. He liked the community’s stasis, its plebeian virtues and unassuming mien. That fall he developed a lasting bond with both the town and Wayne Westerberg.”	Chris was strong and handsome. He had a kind of intelligent look, too. Carthage was like a second home for Chris.
Chapter 4, page 30	“He was wearing long shorts and this really stupid hat. He looked pretty pitiful. He was a nice kid. And he was big-time hungry. But real happy.” “He was a really good kid.  We thought the world of him.”	Chris seems like a teenager. He is never well feed. Bob and Jan were like his second parents.
Chapter 5, page 40, 42	“I don’t think he ever hung out with any of the employees after work or anything. When he talked, he was always going on about trees and nature and weird stuff like that. We all thought he was missing a few screws.” “A pretty nice guy. Didn’t like to be around too many people. Temperamental. He meant good, but I think he had a lot of complexes. Never said much. He’d get moody, wouldn’t like to be bothered. Seemed like a kid who was looking for something, just didn’t know what it was.”	Chris is shy and doesn’t like people much. He seems like he needs a lot of space.
Chapter 6, page 50-52	“He was polite, friendly, and well-groomed. He seemed extremely intelligent. I thought he was too nice a kid to be living by that hot springs with those nudists and drunks and dope smokers” “Franz grew increasingly fond of McCandless. ‘God, he was a smart kid.”	Chris is well-educated and has very good manners. He has a very good impression on people.
Chapter 7, page 63, 67	“He was kind of shy at first. He acted like it was hard for him to be around people. He was a big eater. He was a good cook, too.” “Once Alex made up his mind about something, there was no changing it.”	Chris is stubborn and gets along with people once he gets to know them.
Chapter 10, pages 101-102	“His hair was long, and he had a beard. Chris almost always had short hair and was clean-shaven. And the face in the picture was extremely gaunt.”	Chris had changed a lot. He didn’t care what people thought because he was in the wilderness.
Chapter 11, page 107, 111	“Even when we were little, he was very to himself. He wasn’t antisocial- he always had friends, and everybody liked hum- but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn’t seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely.” “Chris had so much natural talent, but if you tried to coach him, to polish his skills, to bring out that final ten percent, a wall went up.”	Chris could entertain himself with nothing but himself. He was also very stubborn and liked to figure things out on his own.
Chapter 12, page 118-119,	“Chris was good at almost everything he tied, which made him supremely overconfident. If you attempted to talk him out of something, he wouldn’t argue. He’d just nod politely and then do exactly what he wanted.” “He could be generous and caring to a fault, but he had a darker side as well, characterized by monomania, impatience, and unwavering self-absorption, qualities that seemed to intensify through his college years.”	Chris was stubborn, but he was polite about it. He was just like his father.
Chapter 13, page 128	“Chris stares at the lens with the same pensive, recalcitrant squint, as if he’d been interrupted in the middle of an important thought and was annoyed to be wasting his time in front of the camera.” “Chris didn’t think twice about risking his own life, but he never would have put Buckley in any kind of danger.”	Chris is caring about others, but not so much about himself. He overthinks a lot of things, which means he is always in a deep thought, so he doesn’t like to be bothered much.
Chapter 16, page 158-166	“Alex was clean-shaven and had short hair, and I could tell by the language he used that he was a real sharp fella. He wasn’t what you’d call a typical hitchhiker.” “Although McCandless was enough of a realist to know that hunting game was an unavoidable component of living off the land, he had always been ambivalent about killing animals.”	Chris was not meant to be an outdoors man. He hated killing animals.
Chapter 17, page 180-181	“By design McCandless came into the country with insufficient provisions, & he lacked certain pieces of equipment deemed essential by many Alaskan. This has been regarded as evidence not just of stupidity but of the even greater sin of arrogance.” “Because both were perceived to have lacked a requisite humility; both were thought to have possessed insufficient respect for the land.”	I agree he had some stupidity in him. I don’t agree that Chris had an insufficient respect for the land. Krakauer wrote a whole chapter about how Chris took time and absorbed the beauty of the land around him.
Chapter 18, page 199	“Chris would never, ever, intentionally burn down a forest, not even to save his life. Anybody who would suggest otherwise doesn’t understand the first thing about my brother.” “He is smiling in the picture, and there is no mistaking the look in his eyes; Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God.”	I find Chris smart and stupid at this time. I totally understand that he never wanted him to burn down a fire but he should have down something else. I mean look where it got him, at least he did in peace.

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