Thoughts on Unbroken, the film

I am very interested in the thoughts of those of you who have seen the film. I have many.

SPOILERS AHEAD, if there is such a thing as a "spoiler" here.  You read the book, right? But if you haven't seen the movie and want to have your own, fresh reaction, you should read no further.

I won't include all of my thoughts here, but I'll try to get things started by saying I thought it was very good.  You know that I was prepared to be disappointed; the trailer made it look saccharine, maybe trying to hard to be inspiring.  I was surprised that the trailer was actually misleading.  For instance, when The Bird says "Don't look me in the eye," and then Louis does.  That was a false edit.

So I was prepared to be disappointed, and I wasn't.  I felt the material before the war was rushed - Jolie had to prepare so many of Hillenbrand's themes, and many of them were shoe-horned it.

I didn't object to the life raft scenes, but I felt the high point of the movie was the long third act, the POW material.  Of course, I saw some changes that I didn't love.  The one thing I missed most was the plot of the prisoners to kill Watanabe.

I'm sure you have strong opinions about when the movie stops telling the story.

I have many more thoughts, but now I invite yours.  Please write your thoughts as posts and respond to each other in comments.

Fight club easy read?

In many ways, Fight Club could be considered an "easy read", but with the complexity of time and comparisons create a complex outlook. From the beginning, the vocabulary seems simple, and the words flow with little extra thought. But as I read I continue to struggle with the different time shifts. Especially in the beginning of the book, I was struggling to understand the context. But as I read on, I began to understand the quick time transitions in the book.

Fight Club and Old School Similarities

Fight club and Old School similarities
 F.C- I want to explode my appartment, everything that keeps me from what I could be.
 Old School- Main character puts on a facade at his all boys prep school with super high expectations. He keeps secret that he's Jewish because Jewish boys were allienated, there are unspoken social rules.

Moral vs. Survival

In the Road, by Cormac McCarthy, people have turned to cannibalism to survive. This is a common theme that is presented, but the main characters refuse to follow this trend. They claim to be the "good guys," and while there are other principals involved, how would you deal with this? Would you become a cannibal and resort to such horrific things?

Community in Oscar Wao

I am reading the book "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," the story on the life of a young, nerdy and socially inept Dominican immigrant, Oscar Wao, who has moved to the United States and is now living in a poor, hispanic neighborhood in New Jersey, and trying to integrate into American culture. One central theme in my book that I would like to discuss is community. The idea of a community, and those in your community is a huge social factor in the lives of Oscar and his family. Part of the reason is because of his Dominican heritage. In the Dominican Republic, barrios (aka close-nit neighborhoods) had to stick together to support one another financially, as well as protect from outside threats like gangs, drugs and the Trujillo regime (he was an evil, cruel dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for much of the 20th century). Oscar lives in New Jersey now, but he is still essentially living in a barrio-the residents are almost all other poor Dominicans who look out for each other. But something that is interesting and unique about my book is that for Oscar, his community is a stifling, negative influence on his life. Usually, we read about strong communities that stick together to benefit one another. But that is not the case in this book. The amount of outside involvement in Oscar's life is a major detriment. Oscar and his sister are being raised by a single mother, who is hardworking but crazy and often physically abusive. His sister rebels from a young age, and goes through periods of being goth and emo, and starts drinking, doing drugs and dating much older men from a young age. These combined with the fact that Oscar is extremely shy, overweight and socially inept, a stigma against Oscar is soon established in the community, and so far in my reading Oscar has been unable to overcome it. Does anybody else have books in which community is a major theme? And if so, is it the typical, strong and supportive community, or something else?

What's the Deal with the Lack of Punctuation

As I began reading The Road, I was taken aback by the lack of punctuation. I've never read a book that had a blatant disregard for basic grammatical rules. It must be a contemporary thing, I thought. Because every bizarre thing must be a contemporary thing. So I decided to research it.


The first thing I typed into my browser was "lack of punctuation in contemporary literature." What I learned is that this technique has been going on for quite a while. I came across a list of the top authors who didn't use punctuation. Cormac McCarthy sat at spot number three, alongside contemporary authors, such as Junot Diaz, and classic authors such as James Joyce.


So it's not exclusively a contemporary style of writing. But why would anyone ever write without commas, or semicolons, or QUOTATION MARKS. Personally, I think that they are a helpful tool.



Cormac McCarthy thinks differently. In an interview with Oprah, he called quotation marks, "weird little marks," (sorry had to use them there, Cormac), “I believe in periods, in capitals, in the occasional comma, and that’s it,” McCarthy told Oprah. “I mean, if you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate.”


Although I do appreciate McCarthy's minimalistic views, I can't help but yearn for some quotation marks every now and then. Conversations are like a puzzle; the reader is forced piece together who's talking based on character traits, and then pray that the characters are just trading off lines. 


Occasionally, however, I appreciate his lack of quotation marks. Cormac has huge masses of conversation in The Road and if there was punctuation, the page would be clumped, crowded, and frustrating to read. He frees the page from the repetitive "he said," "and then he said," "one he said this, he said this." On page 10 of The Road the man and his son are talking:


Can I ask you something? He said. 

Yes. Of course. 

Are we going to die? 

Sometime. Not now. 

And we're still going south? 

Yes. So we'll be warm? 

Yes. 

Okay. 

Okay what? 

Nothing. Just okay. 

Go to sleep. 

Okay.



To everyone reading a novel without punctuation-- what do you think that the story gains by leaving out these, "weird little marks?" Does it make the page look cleaner, prettier, more enjoyable?

Masculinity in Fight Club

Much of Fight Club revolves around the role of men in this society and their conquest to find their identity. With the development of the first fight club by the narrator and his friend Tyler Durden, men from around the city join to take out their anger, come face to face with fear and pain, and learn to overcome even their largest of problems becoming a "man." Many reviews of this book boil down to men simply fighting to feel power and strength within them, as well as a somewhat facetious view of men, and what is takes to be a "man," in modern society. This book does not seem like a story that a openly homosexual author would write, which leads to further questions in this theme through the book.  Even looking over the character list of the book will show you that there are only 1-2 female characters. As I read the book, I notice more and more that these woman are viewed in a  negative light and even made to look crazy.