Buckley AP Lit

“You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.” - Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary Flaubert's words do a successful job of describing the reading experience in regards to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Chabon does a really good job of taking you through the tumultuous events of the 20th century from Sammy Clay and Joesph Kavalier's perspective. Through reading the story you start to feel a connection with the characters and sympathize with them in their situations, personally I started thinking about certain parts of the book throughout the day. Once I really got into the book, it became a real page turner for me. When Flaubert says we dally with the details, I found that to be true. Whether...

           The ending of the novel took me by surprise a little bit. After Joe had left for the extended period of time, Sammy created a life and family in his absence. He grew close with Rosa Saks even though he never had the same connection as Joe had but nevertheless, they had a strong connection. Their relationship was described as partners and that seemed fitting since they were both working together to raise Tommy. For Sammy to just leave all of that behind was a little surprising since he clearly had a strong connection with Tommy as well. Right before he left, he stood in Tommy's doorway thinking about their past together and all the time they had spent together. He seemed to have fond memories of Tommy's childhood and he especially seemed to value their relationship.  When Sammy laid in bed with Tommy and they had a moment to talk, Tommy still referred to him as his dad. This was after he had learned that Joe was his real dad and for Sammy to ...

         Joe Kavalier has a plenty of difficult decisions to make but he makes a lot of poor decision, and he is very impulsive with his decision making. He doesn't take enough time to process what is happening before he makes his decisions. For example, when he was at the bar mitzvah and he received information of his brother's ship sinking, he decided to participate in an act that Harry Houdini would typically do. This decision was impulsive, and he was likely trying to kill himself. The decision to kill himself was obviously a poor decision but he made that decision quickly. He didn't stop and think about Rosa or Sammy, he just decided to lock himself in a crate and submerge himself under water. It seems pretty clear that he decided he want to kill himself since apparently the handcuffs hadn't been tampered with and he had made no attempt to get out of the crate.          Similarly, Joe Kavalier continued to make impulsive and ba...

                While Joe is in New York, he finds a lot of success with his comic books, and they seem to become the next superman comic that everyone is looking for. This was the result of his one goal of obtaining enough money to allow his family to travel to the United States and join him. Joe manages to get a job with Sammy at Empire comics after showing off his exceptional drawings and comics. At this stage of the book, Joe has managed to make upwards of seven  thousand dollars which in his mind should be plenty to get his family into the United States. However, this task proves to be extremely difficult as the United States began to limit the number of visas they were handing out. It was a frustrating situation for Joe since he had the money but he lacked the connections and ability to obtain visas for his family. In his attempts to get his family to join him, he met with Herr Milde where he learned his father had died several wee...

        If I were to write a six-word-story about what is happening in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier Clay, it would be, Josef's struggles in traveling to America. Part one starts with Josef finally making it to America and meeting Sammy, however, it goes into his whole adventure of making it to America which was not a simple feat. The fact that his family had to give up so much of their wealth and belongings merely to get a ticket for Josef to the United States is interesting and unfortunate. It shouldn't have even been Josef's fault that he got kicked off the train because I'm sure many other people didn't see the latest guideline. It is unfair to Josef that he didn't initially get reimbursed for the ticket as it wasn't necessarily his fault that he wasn't prepared: he already had everything in line as he mentioned, aside from the new rule put in place in the morning. That was his initial struggle following the struggle of his family getting a tick...