“How To Be a Poet” is a poem by Wendell Berry. The poem is supposed to be about reminding himself how to be a poet, but when you really read into it you find it’s really about being an apt human being. He speaks about a few abilities which human beings can have which in abundance can make you a successful person. Being a skilled reader, and obtaining a lot of knowledge, will be extremely beneficial and helpful in becoming a successful person. Also, Berry speaks about how rare certain key qualities can be, specifically he says, “You must depend upon / affection, reading, knowledge, / skill―more of each / than you have―inspiration, / work, growing older, patience.” Things like inspiration, and patience are very difficult things to sustain, and so while they are very useful in becoming successful, they are a lot more impractical to continuously rely on.

The second stanza, I believe, speaks a lot about people’s relationships with really anything. Berry writes, “There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places.” This, to me, speaks to that fact that no relationship is completely ruined, and it can always be salvaged. Hence the no unsacred places line, I understand it as no matter what you said or did there is always a possibility to turn over a new leaf. I also believe this can definitely relate to our current situation because there is a lot of division in the world at the moment and we could all benefit from turning over a new leaf. Instead of thinking of something as unsacred, think of it as desecrated and it simply must be righted, not forgotten and left alone. If we all believe in this idea, which in simpler terms really means to not hold grudges, we’d be much happier as a whole society and much more united rather than divided.

“Today, When I Could Do Nothing” is a poem by Jane Hirshfield about her experiences not being able to go outside for the first time. Specifically, it’s about her rescuing an ant and returning it back to where it belongs. To me, it speaks about the loneliness of staying at home because of the fact that normally people think of ants as an annoyance, but because now she has nothing to do, nothing to think about, Hirshfield decides she might as well help the ant out and put it back where it belongs rather than squashing it as most people might’ve done. This definitely also relates to what we are currently experiencing and helps us to help understand the feeling of not having anything to do. The line, “silence enough to fill cisterns,” I feel really speaks to the reclusiveness of staying at home, that you literally couldn’t hear anybody, or anything, as if you were in a world all by yourself with no one to share it with. The ant could also resemble Hirshfield as well in this case, because of how the ant is all by itself, lost, I could see how you could feel confused and disoriented in this time.

Not only does the poem portray loneliness, she adds to it with a sense of uselessness as well. Through the lines, “The morning paper is still an essential service / I am not an essential service,” she makes it seem as if she were futile to the cause. As well as, talking about not being able to contribute anything. I feel like a lot of people can relate to this feeling, the feeling of wanting to help and feeling like you’re doing nothing, when in reality just staying at home is a huge contribution. Doing that, however, can almost seem as if you’re not doing anything, but this isn’t like a natural disaster, where there is a real tangible and observable way to help victims, it’s a totally different ball game. One where the best thing you can do to help is stay in your home with all of the members of your household and limit yourself from going outside because in reality there is no safe time to leave your house until you can easily get a quick test, or get vaccinated. Overall, I think everyone should know that if you’re staying home you’re doing a great service to your community, and if you’re lonely, just know it won’t last forever.

“Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes is a poem about continuing through life even when there is an obstacle, using a staircase as a metaphor.  Specifically, it’s a mother telling her son that her life wasn’t easy and neither will his, so he must persevere and keep going. To be precise, it’s about the struggles of living in a society with underlying racism and how a black mother has already experienced what it’s like to live with systemic racism and she has to tell her child that because of his race he will automatically be less fortunate the others and face a more difficult life because of that systemic racism. The underlying meaning of this poem is especially pertinent in the current U.S. In fact, just yesterday a video of a black man being suffocated by a police officer over a non-violent offense surfaced, this wasn’t a one time thing either and it happens way too often especially for a 21st century society. This is the real meaning behind the poem, that the son needed to be told that not only is life hard in the first place, but because of the color of your skin it will be that much harder.

At first, the poem seems like a simple one, it seems as if it were a more pessimistic approach to life, the opposite of our first poem of the week, which detailed ideal qualities, however this poem refers to the fact that you have to get back up and continue, when life has you down. It uses the metaphor of the stairway to represent life and how there are cracks, chips, and other blemishes in the staircase, displaying the obstacles of life in a physical form. In a way, I like to consider it a stairway to heaven, because it resembles life, so you could think that you’re climbing to heaven with the staircase, and at the end of the staircase you’d consider that death and then whatever you believe in will happen, for my example I used heaven. The most interesting line from the poem is, “And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair,” this, I feel, refers to the fact that variety is the spice of life, it’s not completely see through, like a crystal stair, but it’s all in the grey, and that’s what’s so great about it. Overall, this poem is a great big metaphor for life, describing systemic racism, obstacles of life, and what makes it so great.

Kindness is a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye detailing how beneficial it is to experience kindness and how useful a tool it is for us humans. Also, she tells how, to experience the importance of kindness, we must also experience the negativity sorrow can bring, before we can truly understand the value of kindness. In the poem, she also uses metaphors for food, which I feel can relate to kindness through the aspect of bringing people together. For example, the use of the metaphor, “like salt in a weakened broth,” when describing dissolving into the moment, the metaphor isn’t used in a situation to describe kindness, however I feel that Nye purposefully put metaphors relating to food in the poem because of how it has similar effects on people. She also describes the different aspects of kindness, for example she describes learning empathy through this metaphor, “Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness / you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho / lies dead by the side of the road. / You must see how this could be you,” this, to me, is talking about empathy and how you must understand the experiences of the Indian, putting yourself in his shoes.

In terms of the current events, I definitely think kindness has huge importance. For Covid-19, kindness is crucial, especially the empathy part, we all need to understand how important it is to continue to stay isolated and understand how it could affect others if we don’t. Also, understanding the economic impact and how some people have lost nearly everything due to the pandemic, that’s why we need empathy. For the murder of George Floyd, white people need to find the kindness, most importantly empathy to fix the system we have right now, because as much as some people want to believe, it’s not fair. Kindness is essential to create a fair and equal justice system, because at this moment in time it’s not. After countless murders of unarmed black men and women it’s clear it’s time to change. For the people who don’t understand that is exactly why empathy is important because while I can never fully understand what it’s like to be targeted because of my skin color, at least I have the ability to feel empathy and understand, at least, that we need change. Overall, kindness is crucial for understanding and supporting people in times of need.

In terms of the current events, I definitely think kindness has huge importance. For Covid-19, kindness is crucial, especially the empathy part, we all need to understand how important it is to continue to stay isolated and understand how it could affect others if we don’t. Also, understanding the economic impact and how some people have lost nearly everything due to the pandemic, that’s why we need empathy. For the murder of George Floyd, white people need to find the kindness, most importantly empathy to fix the system we have right now, because as much as some people want to believe, it’s not fair. Kindness is essential to create a fair and equal justice system, because at this moment in time it’s not. After countless murders of unarmed black men and women it’s clear it’s time to change. For the people who don’t understand that is exactly why empathy is important because while I can never fully understand what it’s like to be targeted because of my skin color, at least I have the ability to feel empathy and understand, at least, that we need change. Overall, kindness is crucial for understanding and supporting people in times of need.

In Into Thin Air, there are many passages which tell the somber, tragic, story of each of the some 12 climbers who died on May 10, or the days after. Using sensory details Jon Krakauer is able to describe the ferocious storm, as well as the extreme conditions of simply climbing Everest in general. Simply saying that the wind was strong, and the wind chill was below zero is weak, it provides no feeling of what that would be like. To understand what those climbers were going through that night is essentially impossible, however the writing of Into Thin Air does the best at it. During the night, Neal Beidleman and Klev Schoening, described the tramp down the mountain with several clients in tow, some of whom they didn’t expect to survive the night, to find they couldn’t locate Camp IV and would have to spend the night in a notorious storm on Everest. “Biedleman and Schoening searched for a protected place to escape the wind, but there was nowhere to hide. Everyone’s oxygen had long since run out, making the group more vulnerable to the windchill, which exceeded a hundred below zero. In the lee of a boulder no larger than a dishwasher, the climbers hunkered in a pathetic row on a patch of gale-scoured ice. ‘By then the cold had about finished me off,’ says Charlotte Fox [a client on Scott Fischer’s team]. ‘My eyes were frozen. I didn’t see how we were going to get out of it alive. The cold was so painful, I didn’t think I could endure it anymore. I just curled up in a ball and hoped death would come quickly.’” p.216 The sensory details, which to me is amazing that these survivors had the mental capacity to remember such vivid details, provide the ability to understand the extremities of not only climbing Everest, but being blindsided by a storm tens of thousands of feet above sea level. For reference, at a windchill of a hundred degrees below zero, it would take a mere 5 minutes for any body part to be frostbitten if exposed. Not only that but as Fox says, “My eyes were frozen,” this means that it was so cold that the water in the cornea of the eye froze, which can eventually result in the loss of the eye. Krakauer also writes, “the climbers hunkered in a pathetic row on gale-scoured ice,” this line provides even more to understand the grave situation, the fact that not only is it already freezing, as one would expect at the cruising altitude of a commercial airplane, but the wind is so strong it ripped the snow from the mountain, leaving only ice in its place. All of this combines to create conditions so painful that you would wish that, “death would come quickly.” So extreme that you would lose all hope, and simply give in.

Jon Krakauer’s first hand experience of this disaster gives him a unique and special understanding of the events of the book. His first hand accounts offer the most accurate and neutral description. This experience also gives him an edge while writing, because he can remember exactly how each moment felt, or as many moments as he can remember, and translate them into writing, using extreme details, similes, or metaphors in order to most accurately describe that climb. “At 6:30, as the last of daylight seeped from the sky, I’d descended to within 200 vertical feet of Camp Four. Only one obstacle now stood between me and safety: a bulging incline of hard, glassy ice that I would have to descend without a rope. Snow pellets borne by 70-knot gusts stung my face; any exposed flesh was instantly frozen. The tents, no more than 650 horizontal feet away, were only intermittently visible through the white out. There was no margin for error. Worried about making a critical blunder, I sat down to marshal my energy before descending further.” p.201 The fact that what he is writing is entirely authentic and isn’t a simple statement of facts, as if it were a Wikipedia article makes the book more compelling, because he really participated in the climb completes the book as a story. There wouldn’t be a protagonist, or plot, or setting had it been written by an outsider with no real idea of what happened. The book becomes more of a high-energy story, rather than the monotone article you would expect had it come from a third party who interviewed the survivors. All of this amounts to the ability to have empathy, and compassion for these characters, rather than studying the facts of an event with no real purpose.

As the reader, I feel drawn into the text through the vivid details, creating suspenseful moments which create the total immersion into the text. To be quite frank, anybody can tell a mediocre story about their climb on Everest and have it be interesting. However, to get someone engaged and immersed into what you’re writing, it takes someone with the skills of Jon Krakauer. Not only do the events of that fateful day create anxiety, and tension within the reader, but the extreme detail and eloquent writing makes the reader want to get to the next page that much more. We become attached to every single one of the people that Krakauer meets along the way and he himself as well. “A moment earlier I’d noticed that wispy clouds now filled the valleys to the south, obscuring all but the highest peaks…But unlike Adams, I was unaccustomed to peering down at cumulonimbus cells from 29,000 feet, and I therefore remained ignorant of the storm that was even then bearing down.” A great example of suspense being created here, this is a prime example of foreshadowing and one that creates that gut feeling where you just know something bad is about to happen. The reader wants to yell at Krakauer to get off that mountain as fast as possible. The moment of relief from summiting the mountain is short-lived, because even though Krakauer subtly points out those “wispy clouds” the reader can infer what will happen and is on the edge of their seat, waiting for what’s going to happen. My favorite part of the passage is the fact that he says, “that wispy clouds now filled the valleys to the south, obscuring all but the highest peaks,” because you can really imagine how ominous that would seem when viewing it from the top of Everest. Everyone knows when the clouds come rolling in, something bad is about to happen, and Krakauer utilizes that perfectly to create suspense, leaving the reader hungry for more.

In “Into Thin Air”, Krakauer uses foreshadowing to create lots of suspense, even though we have a basic understanding and what will happen, he is still able to create suspense through foreshadowing. Krakauer writes that they began to talk about the different groups of climbers that had came this season and how there were many who were very incompetent, listing the Taiwanese expedition, and the troubled South African expedition where their con artist guide was exposed forcing the 3 experienced South African climbers to resign. There was also a “solo” (he had hired many Sherpas to carry the load) Norwegian who was particularly inexperienced. “The solo Norwegian, the Taiwanese, and especially the South Africans were frequent topics of discussion in Hall’s mess tent. ‘With so many incompetent people on the mountain,’ Rob said with a frown one evening in late April, ‘I think it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll get through this season without something bad happening up high’” (p.104) This is major foreshadowing and even though we already know what is going to happen it still raises suspense. Krakauer methodically places these quotes that he remembers from the days leading up to the disaster in order to generate suspense and it also makes the whole thing more eerie because the climbers were aware that something bad was probably in store from the beginning. 

Krakauer writes in 1st person point of view, creating a diary-like feel, you understand the whole experience of Mount Everest not just a panic filled night of disaster. All the events leading up to the tragedy are explained, and sometimes you forget you are reading about a disaster and you just get immersed in the experience of Everest itself. First person really puts you in the author’s shoes and provides you with an authentic experience of Everest, from the amazing views, to the excruciating pains. “By the time I removed my crampons to walk the last hundred yards to the tents, the sun felt like it was boring a hole through the crown of my skull. The full force of the headache struck a few minutes later, as I was chatting with Helen and Chhongba in the mess tent. I’d never experienced anything like it: crushing pain between my temples―pain so severe that it was accompanied by shuddering waves of nausea and made it impossible for me to speak in coherent sentences. Fearing I’d suffered some sort of stroke, I staggered away in midconversation.” (p.85) The first person point of view provides a whole new insight into his experiences on Everest. We learn all the negatives to climbing such a mountain, and the pains caused by being at such a high altitude. The experiences that Krakauer has had in first person point of view adds to the story, and makes it more like a diary than a tragedy. Things like his headache give just a little something more to the overall experience when reading.Into Thin Air is a very suspenseful and thrilling book. Krakauer puts the reader on the edge of their seat and creates lots of suspense and anxiety through the events in the book. For example, even though we have basic knowledge of the events that took place there is still plenty of suspense during an event like Krakauer walking through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall. “The movement of the glacier in the Icefall has been measured at between three and four feet a day. As it skids down the steep, irregular terrain in fits and starts, the mass of ice splinters into a jumble of huge, tottering blocks called seracs, some as large as office buildings.” (p.79-80) Krakauer is able to create suspense through his description of the Khumbu Icefall and how dangerous it is. The reader begins to feel anxious for Krakauer as he travels through the perilous Khumbu Icefall. He makes the reader feel scared for him because of how good of a job he does creating suspense while he traverses and describing how dangerous the Khumbu Icefall is.

Into Thin Air is a nonfiction account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster by Jon Krakauer, which details what was at the time the deadliest season of all time on Mount Everest. There are many flashbacks in the writing, Krakauer starts off in an intense, high-energy situation near the summit of Mount Everest, but uses many flashbacks to give the story context and provide an exposition for the story. For example, he starts off the story with him on Mount Everest on the day of the tragedy, but there isn’t any context provided so he uses a flashback to provide the reader with the reason why he is on Everest in the first place. “In March 1995 I received a call from an editor at Outside magazine proposing that I join a guided Everest expedition scheduled to depart… If I were going to travel to the far side of the globe and spend 8 weeks away from my wife and home, I wanted an opportunity to climb the mountain.” These flashbacks help to inform the reader on what is going on, and provides a history of Everest and the author so you can better understand the tragedy. If the story provided absolutely no backstory and was just a recollection of the tragedy then it would be a horrible book that didn’t make sense to anybody except the author. With the addition of this backstory, we understand how Krakauer felt and how dangerous Everest is, as well as tons of other information which was crucial to the understanding of the book.

I believe that Krakauer writes about Mount Everest and many other mountains, but mainly Mount Everest in a mystical, fantasy way because of his love for mountain-climbing, and his childhood dream of climbing Mount Everest like his idols had. When he is on the plane, he has to get up and decides to take a look out the window. When he sees the Himalayas he is fixated looking out the window, especially once he finds Mount Everest. He is mesmerized, and describes it, “The ink-black wedge of the summit pyramid stood out in stark relief, towering over the surrounding ridges. Thrust high into the jet stream, the mountain ripped a visible gash in the 120 knot hurricane, sending forth a plume of ice crystals that trailed to the east like a long silk scarf.” Mount Everest is described as beautiful, but also dangerous, this essentially sums up what I believe he thinks of it as well. Krakauer, I’m sure, adores Everest and thinks it’s beautiful and magical, but I also think he understands how dangerous it can be. Especially after the tragedy, I think Krakauer still marvels at the sight, but now understands the major price that is paid to climb it.

As a reader, we experience Krakauer’s love/hate relationship with Everest and learn the dangers of climbing, but also the marvels of it as well. “There were many, many fine reasons not to go, but attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act一a triumph of desire over sensibility. Any person who would seriously consider it is almost by definition beyond the sway of reasoned argument.” p. XⅥ This perfectly describes the feeling portrayed to the reader by the book, Everest is a feat that is extremely desirable, but also incredibly dangerous, so the only reason you’d want to summit it is out of pure desire, in fact so much desire that you’re willing to go against common sense, and just say f— it I’m gonna do this. The reader is made to feel like, Everest is only for the people who either don’t care about their well-being or are so full of longing that they’ll risk anything to climb to the so-called “top of the world”

A Long Way Gone is a memoir by Ishmael Beah based on his experience with civil war, and child soldiers in his home country of Sierra Leone. At 11 years old, he and his friends are avid dancers and love to sing and dance to rap music from the US. He is on his way to the main town of Mattru Jong where the talent show he is attending is happening when he learns that his hometown has been attacked by rebels. This is the first time he has been affected by the war and he is dumbfounded by the violence caused by the rebels. He doesn’t really understand why they’re attacking the citizens when they are rebelling against the government. 

“The last casualty we saw that evening was a woman who carried a baby on her back. Blood was running down her dress and dripping behind her, making a trail. Her child had been shot dead as she ran for her life. Luckily for her, the bullet didn’t go through the baby’s body. When she stopped at where we stood, she sat on the ground and removed her child. It was a girl, and her eyes were still open, with an interrupted innocent smile on her face.” (p.13)

 The author’s point to show the ruthlessness and violence of the rebels is displayed very clearly in this passage. The fact that the rebels are shooting without discretion, at woman and children nonetheless, shows the mindset of the rebels and the fact that they didn’t care who they were shooting at. 

After they had returned to Mattru Jong people began to hear reports of the rebels coming to attack, and the rebels even sent messengers to report to the town that the rebels were coming, but each time the reports were false, until they did.

“The sound of guns was so terrifying it confused everyone. No one was able to think clearly. In a matter of seconds, people started screaming and running in different directions, pushing and trampling on whoever had fallen on the ground. No one had time to take anything with them. Everyone just ran to save his or her life. Mothers lost their children, whose confused, sad cries coincided with the gunshots. Families were separated and left behind everything they had worked for their whole lives.” (p.23)

These passages support the fact that the rebels were unwavering in their killing of innocent people. They show the ruthless, sociopathic, and brainwashed soldiers actions in the Civil War of Sierra Leone. These events would be seriously detrimental for a kid to witness. For example, having to run from the rebels as they’re attacking the village and being shot at would have many negative effects, such as becoming extremely paranoid or suffering from mental illnesses such as PTSD. The passages continue to confuse me while I try to understand why the rebels are killing innocent people.

The author uses a lot of imagery to display the atrocities of the rebels and to better show the purpose of the story through detailed events such as all of the rebel invasions, and killings. Ishmael’s childhood will be affected by witnessing trauma and going through traumatic events such as these. PTSD can be caused by events like these and it is especially worse that children have to witness events like this. The first person point of view and imagery help to understand what Ishmael thinks of the killings and various other things. These literary techniques give us an example of how a child would react to and deal with traumatic events.

This is an example of the rebels and the ruthlessness of them to force children to become soldiers.

Eventually, the boys got to a village named Kamator, where people knew them and they were welcomed and allowed to stay, finally. Even though it was relatively close to Mattru Jong, which was still rebel occupied they decided to stay there. Everyone knew that the rebels would eventually attack, but no one thought anything of it. For three months, they stayed there and worked, until one night when the rebels unexpectedly attacked. They attacked during prayer, but the imam never left, so the rebels decided to burn him alive. “The semi-burnt body of the imam, as Kaloko had described it, was there in the village square. I could see the pain he had felt by looking at the way his teeth were bared. All the houses were burned. There wasn’t a sign of life anywhere.” (p.45)

This is a great example of what the rebels have done to rob them of their childhood. Not only the fact that these children have to keep running constantly, but they must witness things like a burnt body, it’s hard to think about, much less look at. Things like these can cause serious mental illness, and it’s just not appropriate for anyone to see, much less kids. Living in Sierra Leone at this time would strip you of your childhood, no matter what. Either you would witness these atrocities, potentially become a soldier, or die. There were no other options, no having fun and not having a care in the world. 

.As they were walking they spotted a bird who couldn’t fly and decided to eat it. That night they were walking and heard voices, so they immediately ran to the bushes to hide, only when they got up after the people had passed they found one of them, Saidu, had fainted. They were carrying him to the next village when he woke up. However a couple of days later when they were all waking up, they realized Saidu hadn’t. This time however was much more grim than before. “But Saidu didn’t move. He just lay on his stomach, his face buried in the dust. His palms were turned upside down and they were pale. The man turned him around and checked his pulse. Saidu’s forehead was sweaty and wrinkled. His mouth was slightly opened and there was a path of dried tears at the corners of his eyes down to his cheeks.” (p.85)

Another great example of losing your childhood, not only because of the death, but because of the fact that they aren’t even capable of being in the road when another group passes. They are living in constant fear and can’t even come into contact with others because of the dangers that come with it. Saidu also dies and I would be amazed if all of the crazy dangerous stuff they do and are forced into would have something to do with it.

The author’s use of descriptive language helps me to envision all of the hardships the characters go through, and that gives the ability to see how they are stripped of their childhood through this war. This war which benefits no one, at the end I don’t see how anyone could claim victory. The sensory details make it much easier to analyze because of how well Beah is able to place you into the scene, rather than just having it be words on a page to the reader, it is lively and mesmerizing.

Ishmael and his friends had arrived in a government-occupied village called Yele, and said they finally felt safe in that village. However, the longer they spent in the village the more they began to feel unsafe again. Eventually, the lieutenant of the group in the village announced that all the boys and men in the village would have to report to him tomorrow and get their gear because they needed more men to fight. So, the next morning as he is changing into his new uniform his pants are taken and put into a fire of everyone’s belongings. 

“I took off my old pants, which contained the rap cassettes. As I was putting on my new army shorts, a soldier took my old pants and threw them into a blazing fire that had been set to burn our old belongings. I ran toward the fire, but the cassettes had already started to melt. Tears formed in my eyes, and my lips shook as I turned away.” (p.110)

 In the book, the cassettes are very representative of childhood. After his cassettes are burned, he loses a lot of his innocence and his childhood is essentially taken away from him. He is brainwashed by the Sierra Leonean forces to become a killing machine. He is convinced that the rebels are at fault for all of his problems and he is encouraged to kill as many of them as possible, even though some of them are only children like him and are in completely the same position as him.  He becomes addicted to not only the drugs he is being given to him by the army, but the gunfights and killing that comes with being a soldier. He even states that he lost all sense of his surroundings once he killed that first person in his first gunfight and how easy it was for him to slit a man’s throat in the competition he participated in to kill the rebel the fastest.

Once Ishmael is picked up by the UNICEF officers and taken to their facility. He arrives there and is very defiant. He and most others who have been taken from the battlezones are extremely resistant to any attempt to normalize them again, Ishmael is confused by what is happening. He believes that he should still be fighting because he is so severely affected by all of the lies and propaganda spread by the military. He meets a nurse who works at the facility and she becomes the first person he has opened up to. They become friends and eventually she buys him a gift.

“She threw a package at me. I held it in my hand, wondering what it was and why she had gotten it for me. She was looking at me, waiting for me to open it. When I unwrapped it, I jumped up and hugged her, but immediately held back my happiness. I sternly asked, ‘Why did you get me this Walkman and cassette if we are not friends? And how did you know that I like rap music?’” (p.154)

The cassettes here represent childhood as well, after he receives the cassettes he starts to accept the fact that he was being fed propaganda in order to make him a better soldier. The workers at the UNICEF facility always said, “It’s not your fault,” whenever they did something harmful, but the kids always hated it. Although after the cassettes were given to him, he began to believe what they were saying was true. He also began to dream about his family after he received the cassettes. They were like a lifeline to his childhood and when he saw them he returned to his normal self, like a ghost leaving the body of Ishmael.

The plot of the book revolves around the cassette tapes. Once he loses them, he becomes a monster, with no empathy, but when he has them he is just a boy again and he regains his innocence. He was without his cassettes for the darker parts of the story, and with them he seemed like a normal kid living in a rough place. Ishmael’s sanity relies on his cassettes as they are the link between him and his childhood and innocence.