Reader's Journal-Fiction

#11                                                     Reader’s Journal                                            11/8/11

Dear Mrs. Zrihen,

            I have just read the book Tortured Spirit: A Short Story by Joshua Scribner. The genre of this book is in the category of fiction, and is a short story. A short story is a book that is shorter than a regular book. You can read it in one sitting and it mostly focuses on one plot and on one main character. In this book, the main character is Kellan. Also, the book has many characteristics that really made me think it was part fantasy. This is because it is highly imaginative, in which it is where the book uses strange or unusual characters, setting, and plot and would never happen in real life. Even though it didn’t take long to read, it wasn’t one of my favorite books…

            There were many strategies I used before, during, and after reading this book. Before reading, I analyzed the ratings other people gave this book so that I can see several opinions people had on the book before I read it. Also, I checked if the author was known and if I was familiar with another book he wrote. While reading, I kept track of the short literary elements that the author squashed in the text on a sticky note. This would be so that it would be easier to write my readers journal when I was done reading. Also, I reread parts that seemed confusing to me. This book was very hard to understand because of the author’s choice in characters and plot line. After reading, I made inferences and drew conclusions about the information I read. Also, I critiqued and discussed the book with myself so that I can reflect on the book and write my readers journal.

            Honestly, there weren’t so many quotes from the book that sparked my interest. Although, the one that really took my attention was located in the middle of the book (kindle).

“Two woman has died, and she thought no one cared. The other two didn’t care because they were callous. She didn’t care because she couldn’t right now. Right now, she had to survive whatever this was, and then she could care. What was this? Was it a dream? It had to be. She wanted it to be a dream, and she never wanted to have this dream again. Kellan opened the next door. Another door stood in the distance, but before that was something that took away her bravery. “Look at them,” Black said. “They’re beautiful.” They weren’t beautiful. They were, in fact, the ugliest things shed every seen.”

I chose this quote because it was a time where there was a little bit of a mystery and an action scene. It clearly made me what to read further into the book to find out what Kellan was looking at and what position she was in. This quote has significance to the book because this page is the starting of the climax in the plot structure!

           

            The characters identified in this book were extremely bizarre. For example, the characters were referred to by their hair color! This made the book hard to understand because it seemed hard to remember what character was which. The main character is Kellan. Kellan is a round, protagonist because she is described in detail throughout the book. Also, her characterization differed from the beginning to the end of the book. In the beginning, she was very confused and afraid of many things. This all changed when she met other characters, which had the same problem as her; they influenced her to be braver and more willing towards the situation they were in. The other main characters had no characterization. I wouldn’t say the other characters were round, but they defiantly weren’t flat or foil characters. This is because the book didn’t thoroughly describe them but it did mention them multiple times in the book. The red haired girl and the old lady (who gave them hints on how they could escape but then tricked them) were the only antagonists of the book. The Blond and Black haired were protagonists. There were no foil characters mentioned throughout the story.

            The settings varied throughout the book. Kellan woke up in strange places every morning, but usually she would end up in a cafeteria, where she was for most of the book. There was no time or any weather conditions mentioned. The social conditions were to find the person who can open the doors that randomly appeared. These doors acted as a challenge to get out of the cafeteria, in which they were trapped. The tone was to feel curious and the mood I felt while I read was defiantly confused and curious with the chose in setting and who the characters were. Sadly, there was no theme, motif, and moral in this book because there was no series behind it and the rest was not mentioned. The point of view was written in third person limited. This means that the narrator only knows the thoughts and feelings of only one character (Kellan). The author’s purpose was to entertain the reader with a fictional story and the authors perspective was objective, and unbiased because the author has no opinions. The pattern of organization was chronological order because the events in the book occurred in order of time.

The plot structure of this book was very short and hard to configure! The exposition occurred at the beginning of the book, where Kellan wakes up in a cafeteria and discovers that there are other people like her, who appear in different places when they wake up. The rising action started when all the main characters found out that they were trapped in the cafeteria and they couldn’t find a way out of it. Also, they met this old lady, who sat in one of the tables and she told them that there were going to be doors that would pop up or disappear suddenly. She told them that only one girl from all of them would be able to open it. The climax was when Kellan opened the door and strange creatures popped out from it, until they realized the doors were no help. The falling action in the book was when Kellan and the other girls became “zombies” because of a pill they had to take. This caused them to have extreme pail skin and no pain with an existence of a new source that didn’t require air. Finally, the resolution concludes the book with the whole thing being like an act! The whole situation that they experienced throughout the whole book seemed worse then it really was. They were basically all spirits, being tortured. I think that the conflict was character. vs. self, internal because Kellan tries to escape and find the reason to why she woke up in odd places.

            There weren’t many signs of figurative language but I was able to identify a few. “Red sniffed the air, like a hungry dog” is a simile. “She was frozen” is a hyperbole. Unfortunately, that was the only figurative language I was able to identify in my short reading.

All in all, this book was okay… it wasn’t one of favorites but it also wasn’t my worst. I wouldn’t really recommend this book to anyone because the whole plot structure and story line was just odd and it was really hard to understand who the characters were and what was happening throughout the entire book! I rate the book a 4-10 because I was interested at very few times but bored and confused most of the time… even though I didn’t really like this book, don’t be afraid to give it a chance!

Love,

Joelle Ben-Nissan