The last book

We should end a semester on this because this one story has little pieces of multiple hero stories built in. Salman Rushdie took the stereotypical ideas of hero stories, placed them all in this little book, and then covered them up with fancy names and descriptive details. He played up a lot of these ideas and at first glance you would not realize their importance, but then you notice that he placed them in the story for a reason. Also, this story contains the hero’s journey in full. “Notes from the Underground” started off following the whole hero’s journey, but at a certain point, the underground swayed off the path of what a hero is. This book, from beginning to end, follows the path, as well as makes the path larger because he encounters so many different trials he must face in order to accomplish his ultimate goal of saving his father. Also, another example of something that is incorporated within this book that we have learned about throughout the semester is an anti-hero, or someone who doesn’t have the usual heroic characteristics. In this book, Mudra, the shadow warrior was this. When we first met him we were scared of him, but then he ended up helping us defeat the Chupwalas. Also, a lot of the books we read were written a very long time ago, and as we noticed with Dark Knight, our villains have changed, and the heroes have also. It was good to finish the semester off with a book that didn’t involve a mythical monster, or a book written in 1600. While this book had some interesting and make believe things in it, there was also a sense of us being able to connect with it much more than we could “Beowulf” for example. Also, it was good to see that the hero didn’t have to be a 30 year old man, and instead it could be the little boy, or even the girl page. Lastly, it was a happy book, and it is always great to end on a good note in everything you do.

At the end of class today, you also told us to write about the question “ why read stories that aren’t real.” I think the answer to this is it makes us feel better. If we read a story about a perfect romance, it makes us feel better about it actually being possible some day. We can look back and say “hey that couple did it, it can happen to me.” Same can be said for anything. You could read a book about a man who was not well off, but then something amazing happened to him, and before he knew it things were turning around for him. It just gives the reader a little hope in the future, because sometimes when you watch the news you think there is no hope at all for what’s going to happen next. It is basically for the same reason people used to listen to hero stories a long time ago. They didn’t know what was past their town, so if they had a hero to believe in who could fight what ever monsters lurked on the border of their town, they could easily sleep at night.