Term 3 Roar Blog

Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston

Summary:

            Saturday morning of April 26^th, 2003 and Aron is Mountain Hiking a Dirt road of the Grand Canyon. He states that normally he wouldn’t be carrying 25 pounds of equipment but its only because he’s doing a 30 mile long circuit, then he begins stating the kind of equipment that he is carrying “three locking carabiners, two regular carabiners, a lightweight combination belay and rappel device, two tied slings of half-inch webbing, a longer length of half-inch webbing with ten prestitched loops called a daisy chain, my climbing harness…” (Ralston 14). He begins to hike and comes in between little drops no more than 20 feet high. He meets up with this one drop that has a boulder the size or a large bus tire, after a few examinations to prove that if he holds on to it that it will hold his weight, it passes so he goes for the move. Half way into it that rock moves from its normal position and starts to fall towards his head, his first instinct was to cover this head with his arms but the boulder just takes him with it.  Time slows down as he falls and so do his reactions to it. At the end of it all his right hand is jammed in between the rock and the canyon wall. Aron starts by having flashbacks of times were he planned climbing trips and how he had created a list of mountains over a certain altitude and how he climbed about 50 of those mountains in 2002. He shares the story of the best climb that he had which was Conundrum Basin because he skied down it and went back to the natural hot springs that was at 11,200 feet above sea level. 50 hours of him trapped have passed and he has half of the water bottle full and he decides to drink his urine to see if it’s drinkable. He states “The sharp saltiness is repugnantly tangy and bitter. My face wrinkles into a knot. Surprisingly, it’s not as horrible as it could be—I don’t gag or puke” (Ralston 76). Stories of the search that his family was doing are shared. For example, when Arons’ mom cracks the password to Aron’s email account to see if any of the latest emails can lead them to finding Aron. 120 hours or 6 days have passed and the idea of amputating his arm comes to mind, he follows the idea and starts cutting his arm with the pocket knife that he had. While cutting his arms he finds nerves that he has to cut that also send excruciating pain that is unavoidable. By 40 minutes of cutting he is free, and walks about 6 miles and meets up with a family that was hiking the canyon. The family supplies Aron with two Oreos and a bottle of water and also call up for rescue.

Quotation:

“The next three seconds play out at a tenth of their normal speed. Time dilates, as if I’m dreaming, and my reactions decelerate. In slow motion: The rock smashes my left hand against the south wall; my eyes register the collision, and I yank my left arm back as the rock ricochets; the boulder then crushes my right hand and ensnares my right arm at the wrist, palm in, thumb up, fingers extended; the rock slides another foot down the wall with my arm in tow, tearing the skin off the lateral side of my forearm. Then silence.”(Ralston 36).

Reaction:

This quote just caught my view once I read it.  I just find it amazing how time slows down when he’s falling down so he experiences the fall with more detail, though his reactions also slow down he still was not able to do anything. At the end of it all this drama his hand was stuck between a rock and the Canyon wall or as some may call it “the Hard Place” which is on the title of the book.

Film title/Release Year:

127 hours, 2010

Director/Adapted by:

Danny Boyle, Aron Ralston

Main Characters                                                  Actors

Aron Ralston	James Franco
Kristi	Kate Mara
Megan	Amber Tamblyn
Aron’s Mom	Kate Burton

Film Techniques                                                      Example

Long Shot	1.      While Aron prepares his hiking tools in the house.
Point of view shot	1.      While Aron drives he makes eye contact with a cyclist. 2.      As Aron runs down the hill to help the two girls that seemed lost.
Establishing Shot/Pan	1.      As Aron cycles the dirt road it shows the environment and at the same time that camera pans.
High angle shot	1.      When Aron fell of his bike, the camera looked down at him.
Track/Dolly	1.      When Aron is stuck with the rock, the camera moves away from him as he screams for help.
Montage	1.      As Aron tries to chip away the rock with the pocket knife that he has.
Close up	1.      Every time Aron did a video so incase he died he would leave it behind

Additions/subtractions:

·         The title of the film was not shown until 20 minutes after because it was when he got stuck with the rock.

The vivid pictures that were described in the book are shown on the movie.

Term 2 Roar blog

Leonedis Pena

1/6/11

All Souls by Michael Patrick Macdonald

Summary:

            Michael Macdonald grew up in our very own Boston in the 90’s. During those times gangs ran the streets with high murders and drug trade levels. This was around the time when Whitey Bulger, a notorious mobster ran the streets of South Boston. This first part of the story is  when he is going around his neighborhood with a news reporter retelling some landmarks in South Boston that meant a lot to him like for example the St. Augustine’s grammar school, the boys and girls club and Darius court. Michael explained how he became an activist that worked to lessen violence and crimes in neighborhoods such as Roxbury and Dorchester which were “the black places that my neighbors thanked god they didn’t live in” (Macdonald 5). Michael also shares the story of why his mom bought a shotgun because hoodlums that hanged around outside their building kept terrorizing them and that the smaller kids were sent to their grandparents’ house in case something does happen so that they would not get hurt. It is 1976 and riots around Boston were breaking out everywhere. Macdonald does a great job at explaining his perspective, and at how he was getting tired of the news, the police and everyone else who was part of these riots. The same things were happening every time a Black would be attacked by a group of Irish or a White would be attacked by a group of Blacks. Also many vehicles were being turned over like public transportation buses and police cars. He explained the view of “I started to see things fly through the air: pipes, bricks, bats and even a hubcap” (Macdonald 89).  On the September of 1980, Macdonald’s mother gets shot by a stray bullet. Macdonald keeps mentioning a show called Dallas and a phrase that was very popular in those days which was “Who shot J.R.”. When Macdonald was in the ninth grade, a neighbor from three buildings down was holding his family at gun point, he found this out because when he left school he saw that his street was barricaded and that his family was watching a live coverage of the scene. He was a high school dropout because he had missed so many days that they made a deal with him that he would be promoted to the next grade if he left Latin school and went to Madison Park High school In Roxbury. Later on his mom said he was sleeping his life away and convinced him to go back to school to get his GED and take the SAT’s. He got into the University of Massachusetts.

Quote:

            ““These candles burn for my brothers.” I stopped and took a deep breath. Then I spoke up. “Davey, Frankie, Kevin, and Patrick…” And for all souls” (Macdonald 263)

Reaction:

                It is a very emotional quote because he is remembering all of his siblings that have died, that is the hardest thing to do because you are the most close to your brothers and sisters that to anyone else. You can tell it is very hard for him when he states “I stopped and took a deep breath” because it shows how big of an impact this is to him. This is the last sentence of the reading and the last two words are the title of the book, so I believe this book is for his past siblings because those are the souls he talks about.

Term 1 Roar blog

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

Summary:

            Steve Harmon is a 16 year old in the Manhattan Detention Center being held on trial for a murder he might of have done. He’s in  his cell and he talks about how anything you do a person might not like it and suddenly say they are going to mess you up, that’s all they talk about in that place “messing you up”. They want to charge Steve with the death penalty but the judge thinks that’s a little over board and wants to give him life in jail, which is also bad because he is still young and is being charged with adult charges. The story starts and Steve connects this part of his life as walking into a movie with no plot and no beginning, and black and white, and then he states to himself that he can probably make his own movie and writes it in the little notebook that the jail is letting him keep. He is writing this “movie” as it is happening. Not only does Steve write about the trial and his time in jail but at the same time he gets flashbacks from before he was in all this mess. The next scene opens up with Osvaldo in the stand saying his part of the story, and then asked questions about his history. Later they move to a scene in the Visitors’ area in the Detention Center in which Mr. Harmon which is Steve’s dad is talking to him, tear eyed. Next your find a letter that Steve wrote explaining that he has never seen his dad cry like that because he wasn’t crying like he a though a man would. Then Steve asks himself why he is there when he never did anything to Mr. Nesbitt the owner of the drugstore that died while the robbery. Later on Henry and Bobo get testified and both indentify one person which was James King and Steve Harmon. We find out that after Bobo and James robbed the store they had spent some of the money on fried chicken and then split the rest and that Steve never got a share of that money. They finish another day of the trial and then Miss O’Brien, who is Steve’s lawyer, visits Steve and somehow Steve thinks that because Miss O’Brien was patting his hands that it symbolized for her not having more hope on them winning the case. The next day Steve and Moore are testified and nothing new is introduced that we didn’t know, the trial is over and when the jury reads the verdict they say that they found James King and Bobo guilty but Bobo was already in jail, Steve Harmon was found not guilty.

Quote:

            “I hate this place. I hate this place. I can’t write it enough times to make it look the way I feel. I hate, hate, hate this place!!” (Myers 46).

Reaction:

            The style of this story is script like because he is really writing it as a movie. In between you can read some letters he wrote of a certain day during his time. Since Steve is 16, of course he is going to hate the Detention Center because no one likes to feel threatened whenever you do something. There’s going to be some parts in your life in which you don’t feel like you belong and I think this is a perfect example of that because at his age he should be in school and not being held on for a crime he might of had committed. Throughout the book what changed his ways was the way he noticed how people would be around him, for example his father when he cried Steve was puzzled because he never thought a man cried like the way his dad did. The monster was what steve was becoming while his time in prison; he would look somewhere and get scared because probably someone was giving him the dirty look or he would start talking to himself.