Monday, December 20, 2010

Life As We Knew It.

Life as we Knew it by Susan Pfeffer foretells a journal told by Miranda, the main character, and her life story throughout. In this book, a unusual meteor hits the moon and somehow alternated the climate of the world. Miranda had to do some major shopping and fell in love, and her family became desperate.

I find the book completely similar to Hurricane Song. Heck, the people were so desperate that they had to get lots of toilet paper. Lots and lots of toilet paper. In the book, people were left to stay in a large stadium called the Superdome because of Hurricane Katrina. This is a...dome. Obviously. Violence and loss of food became a major issue in both books; although in Life as we Knew It, violence would be referred as fighting against family members. Oh, and, loss of food wasn't much of a deal in Miranda's family (they stocked up in supermarkets as if the world was going to end in 2012), but became an issue in other cities that Miranda thinks she should be generous to give food for.

Conflict occurs all over in the book - most that start with different perspectives, in my opinion. For instance, the time when Miranda and her mom argue over having Dan as Miranda's lover. Miranda thinks that her opinion is correct because she can do whatever she wants to do in her life (at least before her death, ehem)(And, I mean, she's a teenager. Her levels of estrogen are raising! Puberty! YAY!). However, her mother's perspective is that she's going to die if she gets pregnant, and possibly get STD (this was a nice assumption I made because she talks about kissing frequently in the certain book). She also exaggerates that the family won't have food either if Dan was "in the way" of getting needed material. Both are really correct, but since a parent is always right, I go with the mother's perspective. It also makes sense since there were almost no doctors at all, and going beyond to pregnancy is just...stupid. STD's is also a really bad thing to get.

4 comments:

  1. Personally, I don't think that Life as we Knew it is similar to Hurricane Song at all. Miles was trying to find himself, who he was, what he would do, and if he would play the drums or not because of his dad. In Life as we Knew it, Miranda only gets closer to her family. She doesn't have an epiphany as to who she is or not. And the ending was bad in my opinion, they didn't tell if the world ended or not which really bothered me.

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  2. My connection is completely different - the main reason I described Life as we Knew it being similar to Hurricane Song was because the characters were tied to survival; it's not entirely the same. Sorry I didn't mention that.

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  3. were they really tied to survival, I think more the need to survive was killing them, if they didn't have to survive, they wouldn't be in this place, but I don't know, I would rather not be close to my family then almost die like ten times, but what do you think?

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  4. I completely agree to this, but I think that dieing is much worse. In reality, I think that too - why do we live when we need to do the things we hate? But we'd affect everyone around us. Thinking about how your family and your friends all sobbing and in sorrow. I think that if I die, I wouldn't make it inconvenient for someone. But it might.

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