Today we are watching the Disney adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time which from what I have heard from people who have watched the preview or even the movie appear to agree that it was not very well done. For the most part, the adaptations of novels that I have watched before appeared to be fairly well done. I enjoyed the Narnia movies so far, but that may be because I had not read the novels. But the others, like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, did not really bother me either but that may also be because I read those books when I was much younger and maybe didn't fully appreciate them and the movies were supplementary to the parts of the books that I may not have fully understood.

The book itself was an okay read. Although the audience intended was more or less children, the novel itself still kept me interested. I also had to keep in mind that this novel was the first in a series so not everything that was brought up during the story was going to be answered in the end. Which nothing really was. They managed to save their father and then her brother. Besides that it appeared everything was pushed into the next book.

The end itself bugged me a little bit because well it happened over two pages. Usually a climactic ending becomes very descriptive and builds suspense, and it seemed to me that this ending was rushed.

I hope that the movie is better than what people say.

Dissapointed with the end

I really enjoyed reading Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, however I was not overly impressed with the way the book ended. Although the book was written with the intent that the reader reflect on the idea that everyone has to die at some point I still felt that it was very depressing and I suppose not what I usually get out of a book.

I was hoping for somewhat of a happy ending that could have been something along the lines of clones finally acheiving some sort of rights. Instead, the book ends off with clones being worse off then the beginning of the novel because the attempts to better their lives, like Hailsham, just fall apart. At the very least he should have left us with more hope that something could have turned it all around for them. As cheesy as it sounds maybe he should have made Kathy pregnant or something along those lines. This would ultimately prove that they were no different than any other human and would be a positive step towards providing them with more ethical treatment even though I agree it would have been kind of tacky.

Another thing that bothered me a little bit was that everyone died and Kathy was left alone. We can assume that she did end up going through her donations. After being a carer for so long she had seen all her friends complete and now unfortunately has to go through hers basically alone with no one who she is overly familiar with.

It just seemed that everything that could make this book extremely dissapointing and depressing did in fact happen, causing me to realize that I was hoping for something that ideally would not be a reality. I suppose in reality that this is most likely what would actually happen and there really would not be much anyone could do about it. In addition, we, being the non-clone society, would be those who are benefiting from the situation would likely not care or even know what was happening.

In the end it seems that since we really get to know the students and become sort of attached to their lives we are really sympathetic for them when their lives start to fall apart. In reality, if this were occurring to this extent, we likely would not be so sympathetic because the benefits of this process would be that our friends and family would be living longer healthier lives with these donated organs.

Cloning

As I began reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, the narrator Kathy is talking about one of here donors, and refers to a time when she was telling him about her school Hailsham saying "the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his." This quotation sparked a memory of my own that brought me back to a movie that I had seen when I was about sixteen called The Island, directed by Michael Bay.

The reason this quotation made me think of this movie was because this movie has to do with the idea cloning human beings and using them to provide organs for the humans they were cloned from. In the movie they have childhood memories programmed into them so that they do not realize they are clones. There is a lot of other cover up to ensure that the inhabitants of the facility do not realize that they are clones as well.

As I read further into the novel it kept reminding me of The Island, because the guardians seemed to be keeping secrets and not really elaborating on things that seemed important to Kathy and her peers. I kept reading about donors who were having to recover from what I thought was an operation which kept reminding me of movie.

I started to predict the direction of the book and felt that it would turn into a very similar story line where these students in Hailsham are going to try to dig deeper into what is really going on at this institution. They may be in the same situation as those in The Island where they are basically being grown to donate organs to their genetically identical human counterparts and hope to find a way out.

Although this book is fiction it does raise some very interesting questions in scientific studies being done today. Technology today has been developed to the point where organisms can be cloned and are on a day to day basis for many different reasons. However laws have been imposed to prevent cloning of humans due to ethical factors that would create very unsettling feelings among the earthly population.

I due believe in the near future however that this issues will become very real and will cause some very dramatic discussions. Maybe not in the sense where humans are being cloned to donate organs but just the organs themselves being grown in a lab, or possible another organism close to a human such as a pig, so that someone in need can be genetically matched to ensure a heart or kidney is not rejected by their body.

As great as it sounds, there are also negative aspects to the positive ones that occasionally put into question the ethics behind some of the methods used and I doubt that they will ever be cleared up.

...but - a freak

The line that stood out most to me as I read this novel was the one found on page 188, "She would no longer be an extraordinary women, no more the Greatest aerialiste in the world but - a freak."

This line stood out as a very interesting line in the novel because it implies a different version of what we may consider a freak but leaves the word open for interpretation. Personally, Fevvers, would be labelled as a freak whether she was a fraud with fake wings or not. Either she was actually born with them and they do work and she is actually a freak like something we saw crafted in "Geek Love" or they are fake and she is a freak because, well she has fake wings.

It seems as if we can label these two cases physical and mental freakishness. Physical would apply to the case where her wings are real and Fevvers herself has been physically been born a freak. The mental style would be the situation in which they were not real and had been created in order to add to her performance. This to me would be labeled as mental because the person or character has crafted this idea, costume or persona in their mind expressing what they picture when they think of freak.

These styles do not just apply to Fevvers however and I think it applies to the people we see everyday in our lives. The term freak can mean so apply to many different things with varying degrees depending on how a person interprets the meaning. Some people see freaks as those people born with monstrous characteristics or deformities that would be under the physical side. Other people would disagree and just see this as unique and not really freakish. A freak could even be that guy who wears pink. A freak is the other category that you put people in when you are unsure what group they would belong too. Then again, I suppose it may be different for everyone.

Geek Pride

The Oxford dictionary defines pride as "a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from achievements, qualities, or possessions." The feeling of pride appears in all the characters throughout the book but does so in very different manners.

For example, Arty would be the best example because throughout the entire book he is striving to achieve and become the number one act. He wants to bring in the most money through his ticket sales and cannot stand when his sisters are able to out due him. To achieve this he has to use the qualities which become very valuable possessions as the story progresses. When people infringe on his success he really takes it to heart and is almost jealous of others abilities and successes.

His father, Al, takes pride in knowing that the reason his carnival was saved was because of the family he carefully crafted. Using his wife Lilly and some ethically borderline concoctions of drugs and household cleaners he was able to create children with deformities providing him with new acts to bring in money. Lil also takes pride in knowing that these children, as messed up as they may appear on the surface, will always have jobs because of the unique qualities that she has given her children.

The siamese twins, Elly and Iphy, play the piano exceptionally well due to the training that they have received. They, like Arty, take pride in the success of their show and do wish to improve it at times by adding their personally written songs but do not show the same sort of obsessive characteristic.

Chick simply takes pride in using his telekinetic ability to prevent people from feeling pain. He is able to stimulate areas of the brain to eliminate feelings of pain. Beyond that he almost does not have much of a personality because he is put to work from such a young age.

Olympia does not have the gifts that her siblings have. She is a little person and has a hunchback sort of hump. These qualities are not enough to provide her with her own show so she is put to work to help the others. She takes pride in feeling needed by her brother, Arty, but is always looking to be needed by others. She even gets offended when individuals do not require her help or punish her by not allowing her to help. Since that is really all she can give, it is all she is really able to take pride in. Later in the book when she becomes pregnant she does seem to be very satisfied with the whole situation and is very fond of her daughter even though she is not involved in a motherly way with Miranda. She interacts with her from the sidelines as a friend instead of a mother.

The Binewski family all take pride in their achievements throughout the book and all do so in their own individual ways. Each character has a different form of pride since their qualities or reasons for their successes vary greatly.