Opal Dream vs Pobby and Dingan

Today, our class finished to watch movie "Opal Dream" which is film version of the book Pobby and Dingan. I was very shocked that this book has the film version, and as soon I watched it, I was shocked again because there were several differences between the book and the movie.

First, many parts that were in the book not appeared in the movie. Also many parts that were not in the book were added in the movie. Those parts were not that big and important. I think to make a movie with the whole book, information in the book was maybe too much, so they cut those scenes out and added the scenes that were easier to express in the movie and regarded as a important scene to director. Especially in the movie, they added more conversations and detailed situation about the trial of Kellyanne's father. 

Also the ending scene in the movie was ambiguous while the ending in the book was very obvious which was die of Kellyanne. I think the director wanted to give a impression and chance to think about it but I read this original story already, so it was not actually impressed to me.


Lastly, the atmosphere of the book and movie was different to me. The book was kind of sad but the movie was not that sad. I think it is because in the movie, it simplified the process that Ashmol tried to do a funeral for Pobby and Dingan which makes the air of the story sad and emphasize on the tragicalness as well as the funeral scene.


To conclude, I liked the book version more. As always, I think the movie which is remake version couldn't contain all the feelings and atmospheres of the book which is original piece. The movie hastened a little bit to try to develop the whole book's plot. 

Galileo, the Bible Killer!

It was not that boring than I thought! This Saturday, I went to the fall production play Life of Galileo written by Bertolt Brecht and performed by Cheshire Academy's varsity players. Saturday was the finale of the show and that was my first time ever to watch the play in my life. I heard some sounds that the show was really boring but I was excited to see it though. When I arrived at The Black Box Theater where the play is performed, there were so many parents of players I guess. They were carrying bouquet. There weren't many students like me. Later, I heard that there were many students at Friday performance. Anyway, I found a sit and waited for the beginning. 

Life of Galileo is about life of Galileo but not his whole life. It is from his later years to his death. His experiments with telescope which was actually not his invention but his student's idea and the evidences that prove sun is still and Earth is moving were threatening the Church, which was resulting in his inquisition and his recantation of his scientific findings. 

As soon as I heard the first line of Galileo, I was shocked that it was not like an amateur. I am not expert in acting and I don't know that much of it but I can say she was really impressive although she acted the role of man. Some players were not really good but it was fine :) In addition, everything was very new and fun to me. For example, 10 minutes of intermission and a little term between chapter to chapter that applause comes out and stage managers are arranging the structure of stage. But to me, contact with audience was really impressive. They didn't actually talk to audience but they sometimes make eye contact and in this play, they throw the thing to audience. I got the brown paper that was used in the play. "Sorry I hit you." was written on the paper by the way haha. I liked the way they think the audience as a part of the stage. 

However, I was really confused because I didn't know who is who. Some people had more than one roles and there was not big difference between the characters except clothes. They just changed their clothes and acted different roles. I think there were not enough players to act one role per person. It is sad reality :( Also as a non-native speaker of English, it was so hard to follow the plot. Their words and pronunciation were unusual for me. I could partially understand what they were saying so all I could do in order to follow was guessing with their motion. But it was fine, it was great motivation that makes me study English haha. 

I want to recommend this play to others. I think it is worth 2 hours of our life. It is actually hard to understand for people who are not familiar with English and it is kind of boring topic, it will be property in our mind and afterward it would be helpful in our life.

About Brecht!!!

Yesterday, I researched about Galileo because there will be a play called Galileo in our school by varsity players. Today, I am going to tell a little about the playwright Brecht who wrote Galileo. 

Bertolt Brecht was a German playwright, poet, and theater director. He was born February 10, 1898 in Germany and died in August 14, 1956 at age of 58 because of a heart attack. He was the first child and he had one younger brother, Walter, who was born in 1900. He was a sickly child. He had a heart problem and a facial tic. So he was sent to a sanitarium to relax. At age of twelve, he suffered a heart attack but soon he recovered and continued his education. 

 His writing skill was outstanding. When he was around age of sixteen, he wrote a local newspaper, magazine and also his first play, The Bible.  By nineteen, he left the school and started doing clerical work for the war. He wrote poetry when he was a student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as a medical major. After military service during World War I, he abandoned his medical studies to pursue writing and the theater. 
He had written many good plays but among them there are four great plays were written between 1938 and 1945. These included, for one, The Life of Galileo, which is going to be performed in our school. 
In his life and works, he experimented with Dadaism and expressionism in his early plays, but he soon developed a unique style that suited his own vision. To get that vision, two world wars and Bible affected him maybe. His works still have huge impact nowadays. There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices.

About Galileo!!!

From this Thursday to Saturday, our school's varsity players are going to perform a play called Galileo by Bertolt Brecht. So I researched some information about Galileo.

Galileo Galilei, who is often known as just Galileo, was an Italian physicist, mathematician, engineer, astronomer, and philosopher. He had achieved so many things in numerous fields especially science. He was born on 15 February 1564 in Pisa, Italy and was the oldest of six children in his family. He died on 8 January 1642 after suffering fever and heart palpitations. 

When he was young man he studied medicine at the University of Pisa and later he became a professor and chair of mathematics at the university. He also made several discoveries in physics such as "Principle of Inertia" which was similar to Newton's First Law. 
Then he became interested in optics and astronomy, and in 1609 he built his first telescope and begun making observations. Most of his observations were opposing the Church's belief so eventually he angered the Pope in 1632 because he published a book that was openly stated his idea that disagree with the church. He was first imprisoned, and later confined to his house near Florence. 

However his publishing was not ended. He continued to write about physics. "the laws of mechanics will be the same for all observers moving at the same speed and direction with respect to one another." This fundamental concept later formed the basis for Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. He was one of the scientists who began the Scientific Revolution in Europe and his works are playing significant roles nowadays. 

Meaning of the Quote

At the very first of the book Pobby and Dingan, there is the quote "The secret of an opal's color lies not in its substance but in its absences." which means the true meaning of opal in this book is related with something that is absent. Then what is the absence this quote is talking about?
I think it means the absence of trust, trust between the family.
In terms of the family, at first, all the family members except mother not belived Kellyanne's imaginary friends Pobby and Dingan. Father was just caring about an opal, which he never couldn't find. He was just caring about being rich. As soon as he lost Pobby and Dingan and worsely, he got arrested, his family became completely desperate. Kellyanne got sick and mother was crying whole day. That was because they didn't trust each others. Later, Ashomol went to the claim in order to find Pobby and Dingan, he started to believe the existence of them. He found himself calling Pobby and Dingan as if they were real. And he found the opal which is believed as Dingan's bellybutton. That was because he believed it. The true color of the opal turns in to real when the family members started to believe each other.

What I like and dislike about Pobby and Dingan

Eventually our English class started to read new book which doesn't contain the war related content and the Islamic things. Honestly, for the whole quarter period, our class went over the book and poem that has such a serious and profound topics so I was little bit getting bored with those. I am so glad to read another book that is truly enjoyable and easy to understand. And those are actually the reasons why I like this book "Pobby and Dingan".

This book is about the girl Kellyanne who has imaginary friends called Pobby and Dingan. Her mother understands her to play with them. However many people including her brother Ashmol and her father see her as a weirdo and don't understand her. I like this kind of book which talks about a young soul's pureness. It reminds me about my childhood memory. Although I didn't have imaginary friends like Kellyanne, when I read this book, I feel like I am going back to my child time. Anyway, if someone asks me that I like this book or not, I would definitely say I like this book.

This book is I think the first book that I felt easy to read. I don't fully know about this book yet because I didn't finish reading this book, but the plot was not so hard to understand and interesting. Also the words that used in this book were mostly easy that I didn't even use a dictionary when I read. If there was a word that I didn't know, I could easily guess the meaning of the word with the context though. 

I like the plot of this book so far. As I said above, it is truly enjoyable book. I am pretty sure that it took less than two hours to read sixty pages of this book. That is because I enjoyed to read it. Page turned fast than other books that I had read. Not only it has the interesting story but also it has some parts that made me think too. For example at the first of the book, Ashmol says "Things that never exist can't be dead". (Rice, 3)It made me think about it. 

I like pretty many aspects of this book but if I must have the thing that I dislike about this book, I would say the language of this book. I like the fact that it doesn't have that hard vocabulary but it is bit hard to understand slangs of Australia which uses little bit different kind of English than America. I can understand in terms of conveying vivid and actual life of Australian people and their culture. But I think there could be better way not to confuse the readers who are not from Australia. However that is just for some parts of this book. For instance "I noticed one of the blokes was holding his face...." (Rice, 42) The author used the word "bloke" for meaning the men. 

This book is the one that took my mind with its words. I didn't have hard time with it and I didn't get bored which is big deal. I said it has some words that hard to understand as a non-Australian, but still I like this book and I would highly recommend this book. By the way Mr. Huston, a Mathematic teacher, likes this book too. 

Real Hero Called Father - Revised

“KABOOM!!!” “Run!!!” “Down with the King!!!!!” Age of revolution is inevitably chaotic. Likewise Iranian Revolution was very chaotic. Also, there is a book about that chaotic revolution. "Persepolis" is the book that was written by Marjane Satrapi who is an Iranian-born French novelist as well as illustrator. It was originally published in French, and it has been translated into several languages including English. The story is divided into two books and the first book that I read is about Marjane’s childhood and the second book is about the story from her high school life to moving to France. “Persepolis” also has a film version. And it was nominated for 2007 Academy Award. The book "Persepolis" has many characters inside. All the characters play important roles in this book. Among them, I choose to write about Marjane's father. He was a brave person. He got almost arrested by government because he engaged in the demonstration and took a picture of it even though it was strictly forbidden at that time. He was also being strict and hypocritical sometimes like the incident about their maid, which made Marjane confused. However the most important thing is Marjane’s father plays a role of her hero because he always stood beside her and gave her comfort and courage to live and make her own voice.

The first reason why I think he is a hero is because he is “a hero” which Marjane wants. At first, she didn’t think he was “a hero” but later on she realized that her father was a hero. According to the book, one of Marjane’s friends said “I wish he were alive and in jail rather than dead and a hero” (Satrapi 86). Her father was martyr which means a hero died for the country. However she wanted her father to be with her rather than be a hero. Because death of father was really hard to tolerate to young girl. After Marjane listened to that, she realized. Unlike her friend's father, Marjane’s father was always with Marjane and did her favor. He told her story of the history and about their family. Marjane was really interested in that kind of story so afterward, he kept telling her fun story next to her. In addition, when he and his wife decided to go to travel to Turkey, Marjane asked them to buy westernized culture stuff such as Michael Jackson badge, denim jacket, newest Nike sneakers and posters of American singers. Those were highly banned products and if they were exposed, it could be led to serious problem but he took a risk and bought them for her. Those were all because he loved Marjane so much.

Another reason is because he tried to give her comfort and courage. At last of the book, he decided to send Marjane to Austria because he worried so much about her safety in this country. Of course, Marjane didn’t want to go with giving the reason she is too young to go alone. He said to her that he truly believes her that she will do it valiantly rather than convince her logically. “We adore you! Don’t ever forget who you are!” (Satrapi, 148) he said to Marjane in order to give her sincere mind of him which made Marjane comfortable and courageous. On the way of airport and in front of the door, the only person cried was her father. Not only at the airport but also every time Marjane said that she wanted to do a threatening things, he truly worried and tried to prevent it. Furthermore, when Marjane's teacher said her dream is inappropriate, he didn't care and rather he understood her. I think that beliefs of her father on Marjane made her to be more outspoken and independent than any other girls.

Marjane’s father is a person who gave comfort to Marjane just for standing beside. He is “a hero” and “a true father” to Marjane. He was being friendly but sometimes being strict, he even made me curious about if there is any father like him in this world. To be honest, there were not so many of his part in this book. However his impression was big enough to distinguish. If Marjane’s father was one of a hero of country, what would Marjane’s future be?



Works Cited
Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story Of A Childhood
New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2003