Beatrice, Virgil, and the case of missing justice.

             Beatrice and Virgil is a book about surviving evil. this book ventures into the idea that the holocost has not been told threw mediums of fiction. In this book, Yann Martel opens our minds to violence, hatred, love, justice, and torture. The deeper you go into this book, the less justice you will find. this book, has two different stories in it. the play, and henry's life. and their is injustice in both. 


            This book has two main characters. Henry, a writer who helps his "friend" the taxidermist finish a play he has been writing his whole life. the deeper you get into this book, the more you learn about the play. the more you learn about the play, the stranger the play gets. The play, also has two main characters. Beatrice, a donkey, and Virgil, a howler monkey. Bother are symbols of real people. victums of the holocaust. In the play, you first learn that beatrice and virgil are hiding. they are hiding from people, they are hungry. they do not know where to go. and they are on a gigantic striped shirt. literaly. In the first scene the Taxidermist asks henry's help on, the taxidermist describes there being three signs that say "ATTENTION" "FELLO CITIZENS" and "BEWARE" and they describe the two animals. each sign ends in something humanistic like "untrustworthy" or disposed to dishonesty" this is not fair because beatrice and virgil never do anything bad in the play. they do not show any violence or harm to any other people. Beatrice does tell his story of what hapend when he got arrested. he was tortured. drowned. beaten. nailed to a floor. and was put threw other ruthless manuvers. in the play, beatrice and virgil create a hand gesture much like the the one hitler supporters used. beatrice and virgil even deside to name the experiance they go threw "the horrors" and the taxidermist even says his play is based on the fact of murder. but it is not this that i found the most stricking are  the "Games for Gustave" at the end of the book that really throw me off and break my heart. it is painful to know that those are really questions people had to ask themselfs. And it was not right that they had to. 
i believe Yann Martel was trying to make a point in all this. he wanted us to realize just how bad the holocaust was then. how unfair it was. he brought up a point in my mind. What does justice after horrible atrocities, such as the Holocaust, look like? Is it ever too late to achieve justice?  how are you able to bring justice to the millions that were tortured in this epidemic, and the 6 million that died?


          on the other side, of this book. the taxidermist does something really unjustified. Henry wants out of the play, and tries to walk away,but the taxidermest reacts. and for the fist time. henry sees him smile. all henry wanted was to walk away from the play. but the taxidermist would't let that happen. justice plays no part in this. The taxidermist dies happy, and henry is left to pay for it.

Yann Martel

The author of life of pi comes back to haunt me again. With his sequel Beatrice and Virgil, his writing style becomes stranger than ever. His imagination becomes ferocious. In this book, Yann Martel goes into one of his strongest believes: There are not enough written medium fantasy on the holocaust. This is what he believes as an author, and as a main character in a book (Henry) 

The whole beginning of the book starts off as what seems to be an author’s appreciation. Don't be fooled.

There were so many things running threw my mind when I read the beginning. I kept thinking, and thinking, and thinking about WHAT type of story it was. I had all these facts about the character and they all matched up to the author, and his life in some way or another. And I know it all means something. Yann Martel seems to have a reason for all these repeats and overlaps. 

          The story starts strong and weird. To me, it felt like dialogue. Like someone was actually telling me a story, and there was so much detail. –I think it is important to note that this story is written in the third person- I know Yann Martel wrote this book just the way he did for some very strong purposes. Nothing that seems random in his books are. There is a reason for everything in his books.

When he wrote this, Yann Martel was thinking about the reader, he was thinking about HOW he was going to be able to keep the reader reading, keep them interested. But at the same time, he wanted to tell a story. He has so many metaphors and themes and morals, it’s hard to keep track of them all. And it is hard to really understand what he is trying to tell us. Yann Martel’s books are very deep, and they have many layers of intensity in them. You can dig into one and find that there is a mythical purpose behind the coffee shop Henry (the main character) works in. But if you explore more into what that means, I'm sure that you would find a moral reason to the mythical reason of the coffee shop. And IM POSITIVE, if you are really motivated enough to really tunnel threw all of that and more. The moral will in someway or another, tie back to the holocaust.

“Why is it you see the holocaust in everything?”

-I believe that this is probably one of the most important quotes in the book. For one, there aren’t many quotes. Two, it is Henry’s wife talking to Henry. And three, following it, describes how Henry doesn’t see the holocaust in everything. He sees everything in the holocaust.

Themes and questions I have begun to track threw the book:

Taxidermist? What’s that? thats so random.

A donkey and a howler monkey...that’s so random.

Animals? What’s with all the animals?

Lots of morals on zoos. 

Theo, I bet he's going to become a very big element in this book.

The wife seems really understandable and nice . . .

These books are both placed in places that aren't very distinct. Say someone asks where your book takes place. You wouldn't be able to give a defining answer.

Canada, comes up in life of pi, Beatrice and Virgil, and he authors back round. 

Showing flaws in people threw animals.

ANSWERS/ background research on Yann Martel's book:

In an interview of Yann Martel, he says something along the lines of "every book is somewhat like an autobiography for the author. There has to be some aspect of fiction that is at least based off of some truth,” He Also said that he used this technique to lure the reader in. I can Beatrice and Virgil, and not only [physically but morally lost their way.

He had a whole reason behind their names, and the adventures they went on. For example, the reason behind Beatrice's name is that it means paradise. This is a very important key fact in this book. He also uses animals instead of humans because the book is holocaust fiction, and by using animals, "we know animals, but you know nothing about them" -which according to Yann Martel, allows your disbelief to be suspended.

"When you look at the holocaust, you need those kinds of guys"-Yann Martel

An Awful, Awful DYNNE

SO I've just finished reading The Phantom Tollbooth, and i can tell you -just by  looking at my annotations- This. Was not. A simple book. There are Soooo many things to follow. To the naked eye it may just seem like a whole bunch of word play, themes, trick questions, rhetorical questions, questions you ask yourself everyday, questions you don't ask yourself everyday, connections to the world, purpose, conflict. . .lots of conflict.(exetera) This book does give you a lot to think about, weather you would be seven or seventy. And yea, it would take a VERY long time to organize everything that is going on in this book, and to really get to the bottom of exactly what Norton Juster was trying to tell us about the world.
All this is way too much for someone like me to really put all together in just a measly week's time, so basically what i did, was prioritise these three concepts:

• changes in Juster's writing style
• Monarchies and empires
• conflict and character disposition. 

In the beginning of the book, i kinda think that the writing was pretty cold, like, its very straight forward and in a way, i think it was pretty boring. I usually prefer books that establish a character overtime or one that you have to really have to understand and learn about threw the text. but no. Norton juster just came right out with it:

"There once was a boy named Milo,"

There's really not much to it. Then four pages later, he's in a new world. In this new world, there isn't much description, and most of all that happens is world play. But then i saw a change, and it sorta made me stop reading and be like "wait." The description in this book seemed to stand out, as if most of it was replaced with dialogue and suddenly it pop ed up and was like "HEY" to my face. It just didn't really match up to the rest of Norton Juster's writing style in the book.

Monarchies and Empires. As i learned more and more about who this Norton Juster guy really was, i discovered more and more patterns and symbolism in the book. For instance, when i learned that Juster had practically just returned from war when he wrote this book, i started to look for conflict and symbolism that would relate to war and freedom and rights. And sure enough; there were tooooooons.
-rhyme and reason
-azaz and the math mathematician
-silent valley
. . .you get were I'm going with this.

Conflict and character disposition.

Every kingdom, valley, island, or whatever Milo and Tock ended up landing on had a problem. A problem that the people were unhappy with and needed solving. however the leader of each land also had a problem, a problem that only rhyme and reason were able to work out. the problem that the villagers had were all very simple and easy to solve, they could probably be ended by just about anybody. But for some reason Juster had to send Milo on a mission to do it himself... Why?
Maybe it was to build character, i haven't really looked into that yet, but one thing i do know is that Milo is a very complex character and Norton Juster is definantly trying to say something threw him.
Like, he enters a whole new world that he knows nothing about and ends up on a very dangerous quest.
Now, if this was me, i would be flipping out and crying, and trying to find my way back home. But no. Milo stays, and i don't think that for the majority of the book, you ever really know were he stands on weather he likes the world or not, or weather he wants to go back home or if he wants to stay.

"there once was a boy named milo who didn't know what do do with himself-not just sometimes, but always. when he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. wherever we was he wished he were somewere else."

I'm guessing Juster did this to show change in Milo. He didn't seem to want to back and he didn't seem to want to stay either. all he really mind about was weather he was lost or not. And the answer to that was, i think, something along the lines of "maybe".