Moving On

So, yah now down to the real business of blogging. With the new book, "All that Lives" there is a great undercurrent going on with the themes of the book.

Family, for one. Within the text, the main story is not about the poltergeist (if you can call it that) but rather about how it affects the family, hurting them or uniting them. At the beginning of the book the family seems like a very sturdy thing, they support each other but aren't very intimate. With her father, we get hints that he is sexually abusing her but it is never said out right, for example he carries her up to bed, and then "lies with [her] through all the night" but she is always in admiration of him and her brother who "reminds me oft of father in his manner" and yet, she is afraid of him, and would never defy him. This is that typical kind of family secret that is under the covers but never surfaces. This family is a very profound depiction because it does show the multiple sides of a family. One where when the spirit attacks they rush to each other's side and protect each other, and yet one that has secrets that can tear them apart. Throughout the story we see how the spirit breaks the family down. It tortures them, threatens them, reveals things to each other, like when Betsy started kissing her beau, the spirit told the entire family almost. It killed their father, and drove away two of her brothers, and in the end it left her alone and depressed for the rest of her life.

It's actually kind of strange,but the being actually seems to bring the family together at times as well. During the attacks- they are always there for each other. They prayed together always, ate together, and bonded through their fear. At school they defended each other and essentially became each other's closest friends and companions as everyone else slowly started to pull away. It brought out a strength in Betsy and her mother that would never have been highlighted in their daily lives.

So that's one theme, the others will come later, this one is long enough.

Okay.

Wow. it's been so long since my last blog! Ah, i'm so lazy. Okay so yah, forget the turning of the screw-for now. I had to return it to the library and had to pay LOTs of money to return it, so I'm gunna wait awhile before i try to rent it again. But in the meantime. I've been reading " All that lives" by Melissa Sanders-self (the book Michelle donated in the yankee christmas swap-so thanks to her) and it's a novel about the Bell Witch. Okay, so the premisis of this story is that there is a young girl named Betsy Bell, and it begins in 1815. She is tortured by this spirit thing, and at the beginning (i've aleady finshed it) the book was super scary. The sprit makes these crazy howling noises and shakes her bed. And every night it wakes her up and scares the poop out of her. And her brothers can hear it too, so they call for thier dad and he comes and lights the candles, when everything gets lit up, the noises stop. The spirit does this for a while, but then it proceeds to get more and more violent. Soon it starts to shake her bed and pull at her hair. And it gets more and more violent until it literally takes possesion of the house. Then it can speak and interact with the family, so for a few more years it goes on haunting the Bell family. Except in an annoying bratty kind of, not so much with the scaryness. So a couple of things i'm gunna be focusing on with this book are-themes, style, common traits between this and the "shining" and the part of "turn of the screw" that i read. so I'll get back soon with a more indepth and basically better blog.