Chapter 2 -- Nice to Eat With You: Acts of Communion
Everyone eats. Consuming food is a essential part for living, and often times in real life people don't really put much thought to it. But in literature, a meal scene usually has some meaning - or why bother writing about something that we all just do, almost automatically? Describing a lunch meetup or a dinner date of two or more people is useful because it can show the relationship between the people involved. Sharing a meal is a symbolic act, because there must be some sort of reason they are eating together, whether the reason be because they are best friends, or because one person is secretly trying to food-poison the other.
Butter by Erin Lange shows indifference through one "last meal". The novel is about an obese kid called Butter who declares to eat himself to death live on the internet. He was tired of all the eyes watching him eat in the cafeteria as if he was an animal in the zoo. Nobody really knew him or listened to what he may have to say - but as the threat brings him fame and popularity, Butter clings on to the hope that finally, people might listen to him and even really like him for once. Ironically, he needs to go forward with his plan in order to keep the attention and admiration; and in the end he realizes that his suicide show is nothing different than when he ate lunch in the cafeteria with the people curiously looking at how he ate. Although Butter makes new friends and becomes popular, there is still a distance between him and his observers, or fans across the other side of the screen, who doesn't understand anything about Butter himself and merely takes the whole thing as entertainment.
Chapter 11 --...More Than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence
There are two kinds of violence found in literature - one caused by the characters and one out of the hands of the characters. The first one has a person doing the action, hurting himself or someone else, usually with a reason behind it. For example, in Butter, Butter attempts suicide because he said he would do so to gain attention and now he can't take it back anymore. But the second kind of violence lacks the existence of the "guilty one" and the background story of why that person did what he did in the first place. In Dog of Flanders, Nello's grandfather dies and Nello is left alone with his dog - but grandpa was old and sick from the beginning, and it was not like someone murdered him. The plot focuses on what happens after someone's death or injury in this type of violence, while many stories with violence caused by characters concentrate on the rising action part and even have death as the resolution of the story like Grendel and Things Fall Apart.
Chapter 15 -- Flights of Fancy
When The Wind Blows by James Patterson is a science fiction novel about children genetically modified to have wings. As Foster says, wings and flight are usually the symbol for freedom - but the kids that appear in this story lives a life far from it. Max, Matthew, Wendy, Peter, Icarus, and Oz all have beautiful wings; but at the School, an illegal and mysterious institute where they are all confined, flying was absolutely prohibited, and rebels were 'put to sleep'. Aside from Max, who manages to escape the School at the beginning of the novel, nobody had experience in flying, and they were left trapped in a small cage. It is not until Frannie and Kit, two earthbound wingless but brave adults, rescues them from the abandoned School that the 'flock' were finally were able to fly together.
Chapter 21 -- Marked for Greatness
Butter in Butter is overly obese. Being 423 pounds, nobody really sees who he is on the inside - just that very fat kid that ranks the Most Likely list as the one most likely to die of a heart attack. Butter blames his size on genetics, because his uncle is really big too; but deep inside his heart, Butter knows that it was more of a mental thing. Avoiding to look at his obese fat son Dad took a distance from Butter, and to make up for that sadness Butter stuffed himself with comfort food which turns out to be the only way Mom knew how to soothe or "support" him. But did he ever try communicating with his parents before? Did he ever take action to make real friends? Butter realizes that he blamed things on other people, that he needed to look at himself and face squarely with his problems, and as the story progresses on, he loses 37 pounds in just three and a half weeks.
Chapter 26 -- Is He Serious? And Other Ironies
Killing yourself is something that you do when you are desperate and hopeless in life, but ironically, the suicide threat that Butter declares makes him want to live from the bottom of his heart. He does not have any friends, his father acts as if he never existed, people look at him with eyes full of pity and disdain - until he creates a website promising that he will stream his last meal on the internet. Although he expected indifference and ridicules, what Butter receives are a lot of positive comments and excited fans saying they would totally watch. At school, he is invited to eat at the popular kid table instead of the lonely cafeteria corner he usually eats alone in. He gets a chance to talk with the girl he secretly admired and stalked online for a long time too. But all of these encouragements and relationships happened because he said he was going to die, assigning himself an expiration date of either his popularity or his life, and Butter forces himself into the point where he cannot go back.
Everyone eats. Consuming food is a essential part for living, and often times in real life people don't really put much thought to it. But in literature, a meal scene usually has some meaning - or why bother writing about something that we all just do, almost automatically? Describing a lunch meetup or a dinner date of two or more people is useful because it can show the relationship between the people involved. Sharing a meal is a symbolic act, because there must be some sort of reason they are eating together, whether the reason be because they are best friends, or because one person is secretly trying to food-poison the other.
Butter by Erin Lange shows indifference through one "last meal". The novel is about an obese kid called Butter who declares to eat himself to death live on the internet. He was tired of all the eyes watching him eat in the cafeteria as if he was an animal in the zoo. Nobody really knew him or listened to what he may have to say - but as the threat brings him fame and popularity, Butter clings on to the hope that finally, people might listen to him and even really like him for once. Ironically, he needs to go forward with his plan in order to keep the attention and admiration; and in the end he realizes that his suicide show is nothing different than when he ate lunch in the cafeteria with the people curiously looking at how he ate. Although Butter makes new friends and becomes popular, there is still a distance between him and his observers, or fans across the other side of the screen, who doesn't understand anything about Butter himself and merely takes the whole thing as entertainment.
Chapter 11 --...More Than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence
There are two kinds of violence found in literature - one caused by the characters and one out of the hands of the characters. The first one has a person doing the action, hurting himself or someone else, usually with a reason behind it. For example, in Butter, Butter attempts suicide because he said he would do so to gain attention and now he can't take it back anymore. But the second kind of violence lacks the existence of the "guilty one" and the background story of why that person did what he did in the first place. In Dog of Flanders, Nello's grandfather dies and Nello is left alone with his dog - but grandpa was old and sick from the beginning, and it was not like someone murdered him. The plot focuses on what happens after someone's death or injury in this type of violence, while many stories with violence caused by characters concentrate on the rising action part and even have death as the resolution of the story like Grendel and Things Fall Apart.
Chapter 15 -- Flights of Fancy
When The Wind Blows by James Patterson is a science fiction novel about children genetically modified to have wings. As Foster says, wings and flight are usually the symbol for freedom - but the kids that appear in this story lives a life far from it. Max, Matthew, Wendy, Peter, Icarus, and Oz all have beautiful wings; but at the School, an illegal and mysterious institute where they are all confined, flying was absolutely prohibited, and rebels were 'put to sleep'. Aside from Max, who manages to escape the School at the beginning of the novel, nobody had experience in flying, and they were left trapped in a small cage. It is not until Frannie and Kit, two earthbound wingless but brave adults, rescues them from the abandoned School that the 'flock' were finally were able to fly together.
Chapter 21 -- Marked for Greatness
Butter in Butter is overly obese. Being 423 pounds, nobody really sees who he is on the inside - just that very fat kid that ranks the Most Likely list as the one most likely to die of a heart attack. Butter blames his size on genetics, because his uncle is really big too; but deep inside his heart, Butter knows that it was more of a mental thing. Avoiding to look at his obese fat son Dad took a distance from Butter, and to make up for that sadness Butter stuffed himself with comfort food which turns out to be the only way Mom knew how to soothe or "support" him. But did he ever try communicating with his parents before? Did he ever take action to make real friends? Butter realizes that he blamed things on other people, that he needed to look at himself and face squarely with his problems, and as the story progresses on, he loses 37 pounds in just three and a half weeks.
Chapter 26 -- Is He Serious? And Other Ironies
Killing yourself is something that you do when you are desperate and hopeless in life, but ironically, the suicide threat that Butter declares makes him want to live from the bottom of his heart. He does not have any friends, his father acts as if he never existed, people look at him with eyes full of pity and disdain - until he creates a website promising that he will stream his last meal on the internet. Although he expected indifference and ridicules, what Butter receives are a lot of positive comments and excited fans saying they would totally watch. At school, he is invited to eat at the popular kid table instead of the lonely cafeteria corner he usually eats alone in. He gets a chance to talk with the girl he secretly admired and stalked online for a long time too. But all of these encouragements and relationships happened because he said he was going to die, assigning himself an expiration date of either his popularity or his life, and Butter forces himself into the point where he cannot go back.