1. This is the second dystopian novel we have read this semester, following The Giver. How I Live Now targets older readers, but how else is it different? Compare and contrast these two works, thinking about the setting as you write.
· In The Giver the protagonist of the story was a close teenage boy and in How I Live Now it’s a close to teenage girl. The setting is very different because one is England and the other was more like a make believe place. In How I Live Now the people from England are faced with a warlike going on around and they are forced to move to another place for protection. In The Giver the community is ran by leaders that decided what the people’s feelings and what happened in the community, therefore hate or negative feelings didn’t exist there. Daisy and Jonah had similar objectives to reach a certain place. Jonah planned his escape versus Daisy acted more of impulse because of the situation that around her at the time.
2. Identify one passage in Meg Rosoff’s how I live now that shows what makes this book unique in terms of the author’s writing style:
· “It was getting like Walt Disney on Ecstasy outside the house what with squirrels and hedgehogs and deer wandering around with the ducks and dogs and chickens and goats and sheep and if anyone looked totally disoriented by this whole war thing it was them.” (pg. 53)
· I feel that Meg Rosoff’s writing style is written in a way that will entertain her main audience which is teenagers and young adult. The language she uses is not dramatically so sophisticated like other novels that sometimes cause boredom.
3. Meg Rosoff got the idea for writing this novel while listening to this song, “Life During Wartime” by the Talking Heads. Check out the lyrics and discuss the ways these inspired her: http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/life-during-wartime-lyrics-talking-heads/967af7336a98b8d1482568b0002cc4ef
· The lyrics talk about the life that people would live or go through will they lived to survive life during wartime. In the case of Daisy, she moved to England to live with her Aunt Penn because in a way she was living wartime with her stepmother. Then once in England, she faces wartime and was taken with Piper to Mrs. McEnvoy to live. While being there, the females were put to work from sunlight to sundown. Things get out of hand the night they kill Mayor M and Joe and they are forced to leave there to a barn where the army men, until the opportunity arises where Piper and Daisy escape. They sleep during the day and travel during the night. Some of the things that Daisy and Piper relate to how they lived while the war was going on and while they were on the run to get back home to Aunt Penn’s house. They saw trucks with gun instead of vans like the lyrics state but almost the same.
4. Discuss the specific issue Daisy faces in this novel. She doesn’t consider herself heroic. Do you? Is this novel a Bildungsroman? {A Bildungsroman means "coming of age" novel.} Justify your answer with examples from the novel.
· “We’d both been bitten by something or other in the night and it didn’t improve my mood to have a face covered in itching welts and wild hair and no toothbrush and also to feel so grubby from not having a bath in ages. I was glad I was too thin to get my period because that would have pushed me over the edge.” (pg. 123)
· “The temperature dropped fairly quickly now that it was September and although it wasn’t exactly cold, weren’t exactly SAS troops either and I didn’t think we should be stuck out without shelter so we stopped while there was still a little light and managed to tie the rope from a tree to a stick we jammed deep as possible into the ground like a peg, and hung the plastic over it and weighed the edges down with stones.” (pg. 122)
· I don’t think she considers herself heroic because she doing what her heart was telling her although she always was watching out for Piper’s life and trying to reach their goal destination. I would have to say that I would consider her heroic because she was still a kid and a city girl. She wasn’t used to living in the suburb. She learns to adapt to the wild life while on the run. When she lived in the city, she wasn’t used to anything of this. She adapted to sleeping outdoors, making fire and cooking with the little they had, and learning how to navigate on foot and with a compass.
5. Discuss the relationship that develops between Daisy and Edmond. Is this a love story? What happens to Edmond in the end? What do you see happening next?
· Daisy and Edmond develop and close bond at the beginning which day by day starts to become a more of love relationship. I don’t think they meant for it to happen but things just got out of hands and couldn’t control their feelings towards each other. I think that it is love story even though we might think it’s about the story about war and the survival. At the end of the story Edmond is suffering because he suffered starvation and it’s believed that he witness the killing of the people at Gateshead, although he hasn’t come out and said it. He hasn’t told his family how he survived after he and Isaac split and what made he become the way he is now. Daisy states that her life is where she lives now, which is there with Isaac, Edmond, Piper and Jonathan, therefore I think that she is going to help Edmond recover from the tragedy he witnessed and they will live a couple.
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