Colwyn DiNeve (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sugarandice) wrote2010-09-13 07:06 pm
sugarandice) wrote2010-09-13 07:06 pm
Entry tags:
Essay for English 12
OOC: Yes, he really made me write this. Not really up for comment, except from Mr. Moreau. Just figured I'd post it since I wrote it.
One for Sorrow
By Colwyn DiNeve
One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for girls,
Four for boys,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret
To never be told.
One for Sorrow, by Christopher Barzak, revolves around two characters: Adam McCormick, a 15-year-old high school student who is a bit of a loner, and Jamie Marks, another 15-year-old student who used to sit next to him in computer class but who is murdered in the first chapter, and subsequently comes back to visit Adam.
Jamie does not haunt Adam, as that would imply that his presence is somehow upsetting or disturbing. Adam welcomes the presence of the ghost, who is as solid as if he were living, but always cold, and bearing the appearance he had upon death, which is pale, with a bloody, crushed temple, and covered in dirt. They sleep in each other's arms and form a sort of co-dependent symbiosis, where Adam helps keep Jamie alive, and Jamie slowly lures Adam into death, although Jamie does not seem to understand that he is doing so.
Adam's home life is a mess, as his mother has been paralyzed in an accident caused by a drunk driver, and then subsequently befriended the driver. His brother is constantly his stoned, and his father is a construction worker who can't seem to hold down a steady job, so finances are always tight. Feeling like he doesn't belong, he does not object when Jamie suggests that they leave.
He first goes to hide out in is sort-of girlfriend Gracie's closet. Gracie is the girl who originally found Jamie's body, and is one of the only other people who can see Jamie. She plans to run away with Adam to California, but they get stopped at the train station and have to turn back.
Eventually, Gracie ends up betraying Adam's trust, just as he feels everyone else but Jamie has done, and so he leaves all of them behind to go live in an abandoned church with an increasingly ghostly Jamie.
As Adam dies, he stops feeling cold, and stops needing to eat as much. He relies entirely on Jamie for company, who disappears for longer and longer periods of time, and when he returns needs increasingly larger doses of sustenance, which he takes in the form of words. To stay warm, Jamie must burn memories, and so he asks Adam to tell him stories all the time to replace the things that he has lost. He frequently cannot find the word that he's looking for, and Adam must supply it for him.
As time passes, though, Adam starts to see that he will not be able to keep Jamie with him forever. It's cemented when he actually dies, and Jamie has to revive him by giving back some of the words that Adam had previously given to him. He finally tells Jamie that he can't give him what he needs, and that Jamie needs to cross the bridge between the world of the living and of the dead. If he doesn't, he will continue to fall apart, and become one of the skinless wraiths that haunt the dead space, looking for words.
When Jamie leaves, Adam tells him that he will see him again, and then returns to the world of the living, but he continues to hold Jamie in his heart.
For me, this book seems to correlate with the position of the Old Races in society currently. For Adam, Jamie is the secret to never be told. To me, in our sheltered community of Pelham Place and Pelham Hills, we are the secret that society hasn't been told.
The truth of it is, we are a secret even to ourselves, in some ways. No one seems to know why the Old Races have returned. We know the mechanism, the experiment that caused dormant genes to become active, but no one knows the reason that the experiment was conducted, or what purpose we are intended to serve.
Recently there has been a movement to start mainstreaming Old Race children with mundane children, but again, we don't know what purpose this is supposed to serve. Just like Adam and Jamie found that they could not maintain a friendship between the living and the dead, that they could not exist in the world together, it seems as if there is no real way to reconcile the differences between the Old Races and the mundane world.
We have abilities that mundane people do not, and having grown up with mundane parents and a mundane brother, as well as a druid sister, I know that there can be a lot of resentment between mundanes and their Old Race counterparts. My brother Rhys is less than a year younger than me, and all of our lives, we have been at odds. He hates the fact that my sister and I are different, special, and he is just an ordinary kid. I can't imagine how it would be for Old Race students surrounded by mundanes who didn't want them there.
At the same time, I do understand that consistently keeping the Old Races separate could set a dangerous precedent. After all, it was determined that "separate but equal" was not the way to handle feelings of animosity between the races. We have learned by the displacement of native people onto reservations that putting those who are different into their own communities does not work. How can we learn to exist next to each other if we are consistently kept separate? As more and more Old Race children are born, there is no way that we can continue to live as we have been.
As Adam learned, there are no easy answers, and one cannot simply run away from one's problems. I think that as time goes on, we're all going to learn that there are no easy answers to how this should all be handled. Mostly what we're going to have is more questions, and no idea who to go to for answers.
I'm a senior this year, and unlike mundane high school seniors, I can't just pick a major, go to college, and get a job. It's not that simple. I don't know what the future holds for me, because I don't know what whoever has masterminded the return of the Old Races plans, if there's any plan at all. Of course I have ideas about what I would like to do with my future, but I have no way of knowing if any of them are even remotely possible.
In some ways, I envy my brother, but I suspect it's not nearly as much as he envies me. The trouble is, I have no idea where that leaves us, much like Adam had no idea where it left him when he had to let go of Jamie. I guess only time will tell.
One for Sorrow
By Colwyn DiNeve
One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for girls,
Four for boys,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret
To never be told.
One for Sorrow, by Christopher Barzak, revolves around two characters: Adam McCormick, a 15-year-old high school student who is a bit of a loner, and Jamie Marks, another 15-year-old student who used to sit next to him in computer class but who is murdered in the first chapter, and subsequently comes back to visit Adam.
Jamie does not haunt Adam, as that would imply that his presence is somehow upsetting or disturbing. Adam welcomes the presence of the ghost, who is as solid as if he were living, but always cold, and bearing the appearance he had upon death, which is pale, with a bloody, crushed temple, and covered in dirt. They sleep in each other's arms and form a sort of co-dependent symbiosis, where Adam helps keep Jamie alive, and Jamie slowly lures Adam into death, although Jamie does not seem to understand that he is doing so.
Adam's home life is a mess, as his mother has been paralyzed in an accident caused by a drunk driver, and then subsequently befriended the driver. His brother is constantly his stoned, and his father is a construction worker who can't seem to hold down a steady job, so finances are always tight. Feeling like he doesn't belong, he does not object when Jamie suggests that they leave.
He first goes to hide out in is sort-of girlfriend Gracie's closet. Gracie is the girl who originally found Jamie's body, and is one of the only other people who can see Jamie. She plans to run away with Adam to California, but they get stopped at the train station and have to turn back.
Eventually, Gracie ends up betraying Adam's trust, just as he feels everyone else but Jamie has done, and so he leaves all of them behind to go live in an abandoned church with an increasingly ghostly Jamie.
As Adam dies, he stops feeling cold, and stops needing to eat as much. He relies entirely on Jamie for company, who disappears for longer and longer periods of time, and when he returns needs increasingly larger doses of sustenance, which he takes in the form of words. To stay warm, Jamie must burn memories, and so he asks Adam to tell him stories all the time to replace the things that he has lost. He frequently cannot find the word that he's looking for, and Adam must supply it for him.
As time passes, though, Adam starts to see that he will not be able to keep Jamie with him forever. It's cemented when he actually dies, and Jamie has to revive him by giving back some of the words that Adam had previously given to him. He finally tells Jamie that he can't give him what he needs, and that Jamie needs to cross the bridge between the world of the living and of the dead. If he doesn't, he will continue to fall apart, and become one of the skinless wraiths that haunt the dead space, looking for words.
When Jamie leaves, Adam tells him that he will see him again, and then returns to the world of the living, but he continues to hold Jamie in his heart.
For me, this book seems to correlate with the position of the Old Races in society currently. For Adam, Jamie is the secret to never be told. To me, in our sheltered community of Pelham Place and Pelham Hills, we are the secret that society hasn't been told.
The truth of it is, we are a secret even to ourselves, in some ways. No one seems to know why the Old Races have returned. We know the mechanism, the experiment that caused dormant genes to become active, but no one knows the reason that the experiment was conducted, or what purpose we are intended to serve.
Recently there has been a movement to start mainstreaming Old Race children with mundane children, but again, we don't know what purpose this is supposed to serve. Just like Adam and Jamie found that they could not maintain a friendship between the living and the dead, that they could not exist in the world together, it seems as if there is no real way to reconcile the differences between the Old Races and the mundane world.
We have abilities that mundane people do not, and having grown up with mundane parents and a mundane brother, as well as a druid sister, I know that there can be a lot of resentment between mundanes and their Old Race counterparts. My brother Rhys is less than a year younger than me, and all of our lives, we have been at odds. He hates the fact that my sister and I are different, special, and he is just an ordinary kid. I can't imagine how it would be for Old Race students surrounded by mundanes who didn't want them there.
At the same time, I do understand that consistently keeping the Old Races separate could set a dangerous precedent. After all, it was determined that "separate but equal" was not the way to handle feelings of animosity between the races. We have learned by the displacement of native people onto reservations that putting those who are different into their own communities does not work. How can we learn to exist next to each other if we are consistently kept separate? As more and more Old Race children are born, there is no way that we can continue to live as we have been.
As Adam learned, there are no easy answers, and one cannot simply run away from one's problems. I think that as time goes on, we're all going to learn that there are no easy answers to how this should all be handled. Mostly what we're going to have is more questions, and no idea who to go to for answers.
I'm a senior this year, and unlike mundane high school seniors, I can't just pick a major, go to college, and get a job. It's not that simple. I don't know what the future holds for me, because I don't know what whoever has masterminded the return of the Old Races plans, if there's any plan at all. Of course I have ideas about what I would like to do with my future, but I have no way of knowing if any of them are even remotely possible.
In some ways, I envy my brother, but I suspect it's not nearly as much as he envies me. The trouble is, I have no idea where that leaves us, much like Adam had no idea where it left him when he had to let go of Jamie. I guess only time will tell.