The Maze Runner - James Dashner

I've been trying to move away from teen/young adult fiction and focus on more university level books. However, everytime i go in my local bookstore it's like there's a magnet in the cover of this book so I finally caved and bought it. The Maze Runner is Dashner's 2009 dystopia, which has now been made into a major motion picture. There was no doubt it would be an amazing book with 11 awards and 9 other nominations for book awards so I was buzzing to finally start it, and I was in no way let down. 

This book can be seen as a beautiful blend of Divergent and The Hunger Games (other great examples of teen dystopias). From the moment Thomas wakes up with no memory of anything but his name inside the Glade surrounded by a load of complete strangers it's impossible to not be hooked. Dashner is the master of all cliff hangers with almost every chapter having one, making it impossible to put it down and wait for the next chapter. As a book lover who always reads to the end of the chapter this made it impossible to stop reading, and is the reason the first night I picked it up I didn't sleep. (Dashner, I blame you for my need to nap in school). 

Granted the parallels between The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Maze Runner are well defined, but personally that just tells me that between them Collins, Roth and Dashner have established the perfect recipe for dystopias. The post-apocolyptic setting, mixed with a young hero/heroine fighting an authoritarian regime and a battle for life and death as a blend clearly work - so i say hey, why change it? But much in contrast to Roth and Collins, who gently guide us into the action and brutality, Dashner throws us right in at the deep end. With no clue of who's controlling the 'trial' and why it's been set up all we know is these boys are in the Glade and they either die there or conquer the maze. 

I feel Dashner may have slightly evil tendencies because as if a gigantic maze isn't tough enough, the walls move every night creating new paths. Discovering these paths is left down to "the Runners" a position Thomas is eager to be promoted to, for good reason. With Thomas's help the Gladers are closer than ever to escaping the maze. In contrast to The Hunger Games, the boys are not being pitted against each other, it seems more like the boys are being tested to see if they are able to survive as a group, however Dashner leaves the real intent of the trial a mystery!

Supporting himself as King of the Cliff Hanger, Dashner's astounding double ending left me confused for days and unable to start another book. I have been guilty in past years of ignoring prologues and epilogues because they've never felt as thrilling as the rest of the novel, and honestly with The Maze Runner ignoring the epilogue may have been in the best interest of my own sanity. Of course this is all in jest, Dashner's use of the epilogue is impeccable and I've never read an epilogue like it (at least in the few I've actually bothered to read, oops). "The subjects will be allowed one full night's sleep before Stage 2 implementation", my first response was something along the lines of 'what? There's a stage 2? As though surviving for yourself for 2 years as a teenager isn't hard enough!' But credit where it's due, if it hadn't been for this epilogue, as much as I enjoyed the novel, I probably wouldn't have been so eager to read the sequel.

Dashner has a fantastical skill with words (and cliff hangers, if you hadn't noticed) making The Maze Runner an impossible book to put down. Normally I would refrain from discussing film adaptations but I feel like to a degree the movie actually did Dashner's work justice, obviously as a book addict it can never beat the paper version, but all the same The Maze Runner is a brilliant read and a fantastic film. It's a 9.5/10 for you Mr Dashner!

The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter

This gothic short story is definitely a far cry from my normal choice in texts but it was 42 pages of brilliance. Carter bases this text off the French legend of "bluebeard" casting the Marquis as Bluebeard, killing his wives and keeping their corpses in a secret chamber. Carter's language choices are extremely harsh, and really spins an intense attachment to the heroine of the story and a hatred of the Marquis. The text is twisted in so many ways and really is quite shocking when you read it. The feminist messages within it, despite not being subtle, are woven meticulously in with the plot achieving something many feminist authors struggle with, creating an engaging story even when disregarding this theme. 

Perhaps one of the most interesting questions Carter creates is what room does the text actually consider to be the 'Bloody Chamber'. When the heroine is in the forbidden room she directly refers to it as "this bloody chamber", however, could she infact be referring to their marital chamber? Especially as Carter points out within the text is, “There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer.” Every time the heroine is in her marital rooms there is an air of shame about her, her despisal of seeing herself in the mirrors surrounding the room suggests an embarrassment in her actions and presence in her room. After they first consummate her marriage the first thing mentioned is the blood, could 'the bloody chamber' really be in reference to the room in which this monstrous man took her virginity. The "blood" being symbolic of the death of her innocence and purity in the world, despite considering herself naive she is intelligent enough to realise the only reason the Marquis was interested in her was her innocence. Does she call this bedchamber bloody because she feels there is no going back now the Marquis has managed to entice her with petty romances? 

Carter takes a very different approach to the traditional fairytale ending of 'happily ever after', however breaking the rules of conformity the Heroine doesn't get saved by her Prince Charming. Instead she was saved by her mother, a clearly feminist message, but also a message defining the maternal bond of mother and daughter. As though the mother could sense the desperation of her daughter whilst facing her imminent death. The image of someone storming in on horseback and shooting the bad guy dead is an image generally associated with males at the end of a very tale - you just have to look at every disney film and how rarely it is the princess is saved by a female! However, another interpretation (and a much better one in my opinion) is that the ending is actually a lie. The ending is seemingly too quick and perfect, the last section of her future life with the piano tuner seems too perfect for the rest of the text and instead appears dream like. As though a fantasy that she is holding onto, to make her struggle easier. 

To conclude, this work of Carter's is truly incredible and instills the want to read it over and over and discover more of  the words. For this reason, I would rate it 9/10

Hatred of Books in The Handmaids Tale

While I'm on the roll of talking about hatred of books within books I thought I may as well make it three in a row, as mentioned in my last blog post it is a theme in Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale. Books are banned in Gilead which means any chance to read is valued greatly by Offred.

The only book allowed in Gilead is the bible but even that is “kept locked up ... it is an incendiary device”. The bible which is traditionally seen as a sanctuary to religious individuals instead is feared as a dangerous item. This is the fear that if the women had access to the bible the could educate themselves to the point where there is the risk that they could stand up to the men. The society is infact contradicting itself here as it claims to be highly religious and functions the way it does because it’s ‘what God would want’ yet they don’t trust the bible and instead make up the content of the bible.

Throughout the text Offred relies on one phrase to help herself survive this oppression she faces, “Nolite bastardes carborundorum”, a phrase she finds scratched into her wardrobe by a previous Handmaid, which is said to be a schoolboys slang for 'Don't let the bastards wear you down'. Offred goes on to recall this phrase as part of her prayer though stating “I don't know what it means but it sounds right”. It is as though because she has no access to written language her passion for it is diminished to simply a superficiality, using the words based on how they sound or look. Her desperation to rebel against the regime is based on insults that she has no clear understanding of. As a young woman who doesn't know latin you can imagine her simply seeing “bastardes” and assuming it equates to the English dysphemism (which she is right to assume) and decides the rest of the claim must be insulting enough to use against the men she hates.

The only word Offred is allowed to read (disregarding the inscription in her wardrobe) is the word “FAITH” that is stitched into the cushion under her window. There’s a sense of irony behind this word being chosen as the only thing she can read is a religious idea, which seems contradictory to the fact of they lock the bible up – this supposedly fully religious society in Gilead seems to be very uncertain in their own faith. Perhaps they only allow this single word because its very simple and difficult to manipulate and use as a base for rebellion – simply a message to have faith in regime. It being under the window is like suggesting look out at the beauty in the gardens and have faith, be inspired by God’s glory to trust the regime. 

Inkheart - Cornelia Funke

I don't know what it is at the moment but I'm in love with books confronting the theme of the 'danger' of book; first with The Handmaids Tale, then Fahrenheit 451 and now onto the list Inkheart! I won’t lie (and this is shameful as a self-proclaimed bookworm) I had been avoiding this book for the size, but mainly because I watched the film when it first came out and really didn't enjoy it, but after having it on my bookshelf for years I finally caved and I'm so glad I did. I've always loved fantasy and as my favourite fantasy novel is Funke’s Reckless, I was desperate for her not to disappoint and she really didn’t. Mo, one of the main characters, has the power to paint beautiful pictures when he reads aloud from books and Funke achieves this skill on every page of the book, making it really difficult to put down. 

Inkheart’s characters are so lifelike it’s hard to choose a favourite and I feel Funke was presented with a battle of trying to match her real characters (Mo, Meggie, Elinor, etc) to characters who had been red out of Inkheart (Capricorn, Basta), as fantasy book characters can afford to be far more eccentric and so are easier to style up than characters who are meant to relate to reality. However, I think Cornelia meets this challenge incredibly and some of the characters that haven't been read out are better than those who are. All this being said, my favourite character by far is Basta (which shocks even me as I normally despise the more formidable characters), his twisted nature holds something enthralling I just can't put my finger on. On the surface he’s presented as a shallow man who has eyes only for his knives and desperation for Capricorn’s approval. I think one of the benefits of Funke only presenting us with small sections of Fenoglio’s Inkheart means a whole lot more of the characters is left to the reader’s imagination. To me Basta was the deepest character in the text because he had so many personality pitfalls, making the reader question why he was like that, and where did it come from?

If ever there was a book full of allusions Inkheart is that, each chapter being started with an extract from another text. Cornelia Funke said in her ‘Inkfolio’ notes that she “chose to use quotes at the beginning of the chapter because it was so relevant to Inkheart to have the voices of other books within it”. I feel these extracts give so much to the text, somehow these passages from other texts add to the content of the chapter they prelude. It also makes for a nice break from a book of such length, it gives you a break every now and again to dip your toes into books you've perhaps never heard of, and for me it also provided new editions to my summer reading list (particularly the Princess Bride).

The whole novel is written in 3^rd person though Cornelia Funke was still writing from particular characters perspective. The characters that the perspective the story is told from changes regularly and the first time it did it I found it hard to adapt because it’s not clearly indicated if you're not fully concentrated. Although I feel the change of perspective made for a more interesting narrative, it also made for quite awkward reading. However, this is a very personal issue with the text and with everything else in the text it’s a very minor issue.

All in all Inkheart is a brilliant text, full of beautiful images of everything mentioned. Although at first I was terrified by the length and thought I'd never get through it, recently I've probably read it faster than any other books because it was just so enjoyable. Any faults in the text were simply down to me and very minor. I wish the story within Inkheart (Fenoglio’s Inkheart) actually existed. Funke presents the lesson I'm always trying to convince my friends of that there is always more than just paper and ink to a story, and she presents it in the best of ways. I've adored this book and can't wait to read the following two novels (despite hearing bad reviews) but for the first in the series a perhaps slightly conservative 8/10! 

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

The temperature at which paper burns.

This 1951 piece of dystopian literature is a brilliant classic in which roles as we know them today are completely reversed. Firemen, who in our society we associate with putting out fires, and saving persons and property, instead burn the books that have been outlawed, and for this reason is most clearly associated with the tensions that come with book burning (with relations to historical context such as Nazi Germany). We're never told why these books are banned but there are some factors that Bradbury suggests: a general decreased interest in reading (due to increased access to media) and factors contributing to hostility towards books (from envying those who possess more books, holding more knowledge). The afterword tells us of Bradbury's sensitivity towards any attempt to restrict his freedom of speech and the mind (a view I hold close to my heart also, personally I see oppression of the mind as one of the worst forms) and he sees it as hostile and intolerant.

If ever there was a brilliant first sentence of a text Bradbury masters it with this novel, "it was a pleasure to burn". He creates the tone of firemen's attitude from the start of the cliche 'ignorance is bliss', the fireman live a simple existence leaving them no need to be challenged, a simply black and white world - burn them, purge them, purify society. There role is intoxicating, they essentially have the hands of God creating purity by banishing these books. 

One of my favourite narrative methods Bradbury uses is his imagery, using animals, insects and birds. The most famous of this imagery is that of the phoenix, however personally I prefer the more subtle images such as the firemen driving a beetle, "yellow flame coloured beetle". The beetle (insect) connotes progress, simplicity, solidarity and protection, all factors which we can see in the regime:

• Progress - the general theme within dystopian literature is the journey towards a utopia. This regime is occurring because they saw previous life (with freedom to literature) as failing and so a need to progress towards a better future (without books).
• Simplicity - the nature of this regime is somewhat simple: burn books, purify world.
• Solidarity - the dependance on all the firemen working together in order to reach the 'end goal' and the way the story of burning books seems to stop after we discover Montag's secrets.
• Protection - protecting the world from the 'evil' nature of literature (as the society is meant to perceive it).

A traditional method of characterising a group of people as evil is dressing them in black (as can be seen in other texts like The Handmaids Tale, or even the Death Eaters in Harry Potter), Bradbury extends this method to making everything around them black too, "external burning black pipes ... charcoal hair ... soot-coloured brow", this blackness is essentially all firemen being coated in the same corruption. 

Bradbury's poetic prose creates a powerful text that has gone down as a dystopian classic, alongside others such as Orwell's 1984, that still provides a shocking message of the potential threat technology contains even over 60 years after it's first publication. Bradbury manages to create tremendous imagery on every page which led to the book taking me longer than it probably should have because I had to digest all Bradbury's ideas. I strongly recommend this book to anyone if it's just a simple summer read or a more indepth study (eg. I'm using it for A-level coursework), it can work either way and in a studying circumstance there is so much to write about it makes essays easy. In my eyes Bradbury is a literary master and I look forward to reading many more of his works, for this specific text I give it a 9/10.

The Handmaids Tale - Margaret Atwood

The Handmaids Tale is Atwood's dystopian classic exploring the theocratic nature of the Patriarchal Republic of Gilead. This novel tells the tale of Offred's life within the oppressive parallel Atwood predict's for America's future. The class divisions and excessive oppression within this text raise many questions about the truth behind the likelihood of Atwood's assumptions, and raises great amounts of fear to many critics. This novel, which will reach it's 30th anniversary next year, has become renowned for it's context drawing attention from many feminist critics. There is so much to discuss about this text I'm going to break it down into several smaller blog post.

My brief review of this novel is that it is a fantastic piece of dystopian fiction, with a very hard hitting and often depressing tone. The bounce between memories and the current events in Offred's life can be complicated to understand, but regardless of this it is a reasonably easy read. I would strongly recommend this to anyone who enjoys dystopian fiction of any age that views themselves as a reasonably mature reader and I would give Atwood a 9/10 and I definitely plan to read more of her works!

The Role Of Women in Gilead

The roles of the females in this novel are crucial to all readings of it and can expose a lot about the social hierarchy by simply looking at their names and their clothing:

• The Wives are always dressed in blue much like the Virgin Mary would wear, suggesting that their only role is to nurture a child and have no part in the reproductive system. This emphasis of keeping the Virgin Mary's image within upper class females is represented in the Daughters wearing white until they get married. White connotes purity and innocence which is promoted among the highest class of women from a young age, a sense that all higher class women should present themselves as a Holy symbol. The top social class in this society is also like the highest class in the bible and should maintain chastity. 
• The Handmaids are characters based off of the story of Jacob's wife in the Bible, Rachel, who when she failed to conceive a child for Jacob insisted he slept with his handmaid, this is used as the society's justification for their treatment of the handmaids. The handmaids continually dress in red; red as the colour of fire and blood is commonly associated with danger, energy, power, passion and love. The red could be interpreted as a reminder of their past, like a sign hanging around their neck pronouncing their shame, due to it's interpretations as passionate and love filled. It is also symbolic of the female body maturing and the Handmaids only use for their reproductive purpose and when that ability ceases to exist and they can no longer bear the child for the Wives they become useless, Unwoman (lesbians, feminists, nuns, sterile women who are politically dissident whom are exiled to the colonies to work and die).
• Later in the text we journey to a 'club' with Offred where we meet a group of women called Jezebel's. This name again is inspired by the bible, where Jezebel was denounced by Elijah for introducing the worship of Baal into Israel (1 Kings 16:31, 21:5-15, 2 Kings 9:30-7). The name Jezebel in the modern context has come to be a female known for their corruption and ill-attitude. The Jezebels in the Handmaids Tale are a mixture of Lesbians or attractive, educated women, something the novel makes clear is unwelcome in this biblical republic, and consequently are disregarded and their only purpose is as prostitutes, they are the corruptive force behind the social hierarchy in the reproductive system. Their only clothing provided is the degrading, sexualised out fits of 'previous times'.
• The Aunts are in charge of training the handmaids taking this role, as they are infact the only literate women still allowed in Gilead. The Aunts are always dressed in brown, a colour which connotes warmth, comfort, a set of connotations that is seemingly contradictory to  the harsh nature of the Aunts enforcing the corrupt regime on these young women. However, brown also connotes conservatism, a political idea we can see reflected in Gilead. The traditional idea that a women's only role in society is to be a house wife; cook, clean and provide a man with child. Aunt's take the place of the handmaid's mothers as it  is believed their own mothers are the corrupting force in their upbringing, the Aunt's are transforming the handmaids into their new lives and training them out of their previous attitudes.

Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe is a piece of 18th Century Literature influenced by the life of Alexander Selkirk. Who was a a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on the Pacific island called "Más a Tierra" in Chile. It has gone down in history as a phenomenal classic, and it is well deserved of this title. In it's most basic form it is the story of a boy going against his fathers wishes (that he become a lawyer) and instead follows his dream of going to sea. Encountering multiple counts of bad luck Crusoe eventually ends up abandoned on a desert island with all his shipmates killed, leaving him to find a way of successful living with the constant fear that he could be murdered by savages. 

This novel plays to everyone's childhood dreams of living your life on an exotic island far away from any other civilisation. A concept that has been explored in many other works of literature (such as "Lord of the Flies") but not to such powerful levels as Defoe achieves. Each word Defoe writes leaves you hanging on in the hope that Crusoe may find some human company or fear that he will run out of things to survive or come into danger with savages. Defoe develops Robinson Crusoe as an intelligent man who despite his unlucky circumstance learns how to build a canoe, make bread and endure countless lonely years. 

In his novel, Defoe not only manages to encapsulate the tantalizing tale of a shipwreck he also illustrates a moral and religious dimension to the novel, published in the preface as instruction to readers of God's benevolent wisdom. During a hallucination Crusoe receives the message "Seeing all these things have not brought thee to repentance, now thou shalt die.”  and consequently turns a large portion of his life to studying God's word taking his ignorance to the Bible in his youth as the reason for the circumstance in which he finds himself in. Here links can be made with further religious imagery in such ways as Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden after committing the first sins. 

In my personal opinion Defoe's greatest achievement within this novel is his characterisation of Friday, the 26 year old savage Crusoe saves and turns into his servant when he is about to be eaten by other cannibals. From the start Friday is presented as a loyal servant never appearing to question the authority Crusoe claims over him. Friday can be interpreted to represent all natives of America, Africa and Asia who would later come to be oppressed by European Imperialism (of which Robinson Crusoe is representative of). One of my favourite and most touching moments of the novel is when Friday is reunited with his father, his passion and animation is in strong contrast to Crusoe's emotions to his family, and Defoe translate the archaic image of a family reunion in such a touching manner it reduced me to tears.

I have to admit I disliked the ending to Robinson Crusoe, however, it is necessary to the narrative Defoe develops. The main reason my feelings towards the ending are negative is due to my desperation to explore more of Crusoe's life and see him reunited with many characters (most significantly Xury, my favourite character). Yet the way Crusoe finishes his novel is intelligent and makes sense with the way the rest of the novel is narrated, "I may perhaps give a farther account hereafter" being the last line. Defoe narrates the account of Crusoe's life on the island as a journal so this is a logical, and creative, way to end the text as well as creating every authors desire, the reader looking for more pages after the last pages. And with me Defoe achieved this, leaving me sat flicking through the last pages (in my edition being a Glossary and Notes) searching desperately for an extension of the plot!

To summarise, in Robinson Crusoe Defoe creates an incredible piece of art following the life of a lone sailor successfully leaving the reader hanging on every word. Defoe's language, as can be expected from an 18th century literary master, is quite complex and so I would recommend this book to more advanced readers (specifically A-level and upwards). Defoe achieves a brilliant novel, and although at times it lulled or the language got in the way, it is one of the best books I've read, thus I would rate it 8/10.