Blog Post on Ripley Underground

I am about halfway through Ripley Underground and I think it is really good. A while ago I read the first book, The Talented Mr. Ripley and thought it was excellent. In this blog post I wanted to talk about the similarities and differences between Ripley in both books.
In The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley is unsure who he is in the world. He doesn't know who he wants to be yet, and is a freelancer without a home or job. But, in Ripley Underground he knows what he wants. He has a beautiful mansion in France, and is married with lots of money. He looks back on his other days as signs of how weak he was. He is more relaxed and is not as worried about police or detectives as he was in the first book. However, there is a five years difference between the two books, and it is clear he knows who he is. I noticed throughout the book too, that Tom did some things that the old Tom Ripley would also do. One example is when he passes a homeless man on the street he offers him a cigarette, something the new polished Ripley wouldn't do. Another example is when he imitates a painter named Derwatt, who killed himself in Greece, but Tom has to pretend he is still alive. In almost all of the talented Mr. Ripley, he imitates a man called Dickie Greenleaf. I think that Tom Ripley loves to imitate people seriously, and that consciously or unconsciously notices small things about people. He notices things such as a ring on someone's finger saying their married, little things that normal people wouldn't notice.
Some of the differences between the new and old Tom Ripley is what he thinks of art and fine things. In the Talented Mr. Ripley, he would hardly care for a good painting or wine. In this book, he lives a life of luxury, and I think this has also taught him about the morality of people. In the first book, he was more crazed, and when he got angry there was no stoping him. In this second book, Tom Ripley has more restraint and he realizes that killing people isn't always the answer. There is a Detective called Waston and he is investigating Tom Ripley about the disappearance of a man called Murchison.(Who Tom had killed.) I was expecting Tom Ripley to kill Waston, or at least considering harming him, but instead he made up answers and played along.
I think all these similarities and differences show how Tom Ripley has grown as a character, whether in good or bad ways. Like I said at the end of the Talented Mr. Ripley blog post, some people never get caught. I think at that time I was seeing Tom Ripley as more of a bad guy, but now I realize that some times, he is just desperate.

Blog Post on Doctor Who And Philosophy

The overall main idea of the book Doctor Who And Philosophy is discussing the idea's that the TV series conveys. They talk of the controversial issues that arise in Doctor Who, but not just about Doctor Who in general. The book mentions time travel, both the possibility and how time travel would be possible, and because the doctor can regenerate, they talked about regeneration and how it would be possible. This was written by many different people, and each had different opinions. One writer, Greg Littmann believed that regeneration is when the physical aspects of a person might stay the same or change, but the mental aspects of a person change the much. He says,"If you looked at The Doctor, he might look the same. But really is that how you identify someone? He might look the same, but his personality is different." This shows that the Doctor changes after each regeneration, even though he is the same person on the outside and in the way he behaves. In terms of time travel, there are many different theories. Many people believe that time is always occurring, and so that time travel would just be like stepping from one place to another, without disturbing anything. There are many other theories too, saying that time travel could erase your existence, such as killing your grandfather in the past, would you be born?
The authors use craft moves by connecting what their chapters are about to their own lives. They talk about how they discovered Doctor Who and what it means to them before starting to talk about the scientific info and facts. In the beginning of the book it says,"whatever doctor that abducted you into the world of Doctor Who". This creates a humorous tone that invites readers to continue reading the book. I think the authors want readers to think deeper about Doctor Who, and not just about the characters, but how Doctor Who is made up. They want us to explore possibilities and think about a side of Doctor Who most viewers have never seen. They want us to feel intrigued by the massive world of Doctor Who.
What I will take away from this book will not only be more information about Doctor Who, but how much I have learned about science fiction. Not only did I learn more about time travel and regeneration, but I can apply this to science fiction shows I watch. Now when I watch an episode of Doctor Who, I will be able to understand the themes that pop up. My thinking has been changed by growing larger, and being mistaken in the idea that their is not much to know about the philosophy of Doctor Who. Many of the passages I didn't mention were also very interesting, such as what we consider something "horror", how something is called "beautiful", and how we define species. This is not alone about Doctor Who, and I think that someone who didn't even watch the show could still find this a very good read. Some more things I want to know is what the characters in Doctor Who think, besides the Doctor, because the book was more focused on outside knowledge. All in all, I thought it was a great book and would recommend it to anybody, whether they watched Doctor Who or not.

Blog Post on Dracula Part Two

I just finished Dracula and I noticed some of my ideas from my earlier blog post had carried over and some had not. I had discussed in my previous blog post on how before we knew Dracula was evil, could we tell? As the book goes on, we begin to realize there maybe darker things in play, when Mina (Jonathan's wife) friend is acting very strangely. But it isn't until very late in the book when the characters realize that Dracula is a vampire.
And now, when Dracula is described, he is nothing like he first was. This is a quote from when the characters first meet Dracula, "his eyes held hatred beyond what anyone could imagine, he was the very creature of loathing and hate." This is very different from what he is described earlier, as being normal. Dracula is now pictured of a scary, bloodthirsty monster, one that is absolutely terrifying. The book has grown very darker too, because there are more scary elements. This is a quote from a night of a very bad storm, and a group of people are seeing a ship in the waters struggling to fight the storm. "And as the spotlight (from a lighthouse) looked upon the ship, we realized that the man on the steering wheel was dead and lashed to the wheel." This is quite chilling, in my opinion, because to see a corpse seemingly steering a ship would scare me. This shows how much darker the book has gotten since the beginning.
The characters have changed very much too. Jonathan Harker, who started a practical businessman, is now a shell of his former self, and is very scared and scarred by what he has been through.  Mina, his wife was once very silly, is now a very strong women who is determined to bring down Dracula at all costs. The way everyone works together reminds of modern times, when groups of kids and adults work together to fight a monster. I think this shows some of the lasting effects Dracula has on the real world.
And when they finally defeat Dracula, there is not peace at first. They lost many people to Dracula, and they feel that the past will never really leave them. As the characters changed and developed they grew stronger and wiser, but also got exposed to some of the worst things in life.  I think they made the right choice, because in the end they saved the world from a very horrible threat.

Blog Post on Dracula

I am have just started reading Dracula, and I find it a very interesting book. I have decided to focus on one of the characters in the book, a very obvious choice, Count Dracula. Although I am not that far in the book, I have decided to ask an imposing question. How do we classify characters in a book as good or bad, based not on their actions and personality but on how we see them in the book?
Obviously, everyone knows that before we even meet Dracula we know he is a vampire, and that he is evil. But imagine reading this book without this prior knowledge, would we be able to tell he was "evil"? I looked closely through the text and noticed a few things. When Jonathan (a business man who comes to visit Dracula to help him deal with paperwork for he has just bought a house) first meets Dracula, we can tell he is a strange man. Jonathan describes him as lean and tall, dressed all in black. He also described more of his finer points, with me having my past experiences identify as clues he is a vampire, "His mouth was fixed and rather cruel-looking, his ears were pale and extremely pointed." These remind me of other descriptions of vampires from past series. Now, this relates to the question I said before, Dracula's personality and description do not suggest anything out of the ordinary. However, this part of the book has a very tense tone, one that might suggest it is leading towards action. I feel that even someone reading this book for the first time would get a sense that something was amiss.
Dracula personality is described as courteous and gracious, Dracula being very welcome to Jonathan who has traveled very far. Even though Jonathan has a sense that something may be wrong, Dracula's calm nature exterminates those suspicions. As Jonathan stays longer in Dracula's castle, his uncomfortable feelings do not arise, for Dracula is very kind to him. But me as the reader, see this as weird and that something has been wrong.There has been little action in the book for a long time now, and that usually means when the next action occurs it will be big. Although, Dracula has not done anything wrong, nor has the way he has been described suggest he has done anything wrong.
Furthermore, I made an inference that the author (Bram Stoker) made Dracula seem scary before he had done anything bad. This makes me realize that we judge characters more on how the author sets them up rather than how they behave. As I also mentioned in my question, Dracula has not done anything bad, but because of our knowledge of this book and that anxious tense mood of the story we might start to guess he is in fact, abnormal. I think that this was on purpose to show how later in the book how evil Count Dracula is. My last idea is this reminds me of what we did in class on author's purpose and craft, because the author purposely created this tone to let readers in on what would be the evilest and worst character in the book, using the craft of a very dark and scary tone.