I actually really enjoyed how this book ended; I enjoyed it because it wasn't overly cliche and I wasn't really expecting it (I say that in a light sense because I did consider it as an ending.) The last parts of the book were the most intense as well; SPOILER Shuya, Shogo and Noriko made their way to a rendez vous point while also trying to avoid the only other survivor left. The personalities of these few characters has been so fleshed out throughout the book that you can't NOT be affected by the things that happen to them. With Shuya, one of the stronger points is when he's staying at the lighthouse with the girls after his tumble down a hill. When inside, he's completely oblivious to the girls in the other room who are talking kindly about how he's doing. There's one girl, however, who saw Shuya kill someone earlier in the book and wanted to poison him. On accident she poisoned another of the girls and one by one they were all killed by each other. It's kind of a hidden message though, it shows how people's personalities can completely flip under dire circumstances.
As for the end of the book, I liked the ending. It was nice and left you with a good feeling but at the same time it wasn't TOO happy. It didn't smother you with its happiness. In fact, it's kind of a bittersweet ending. I don't want to give it away completely but I have to say that it almost brought me to tears. The book overall actually connected of what we're learning in history right now, that being the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. The story in Battle Royale took place in an AU (or Alternate Universe) in which China is now under a totalitarian government. The things that these children had to go through is sickening and very close to how things were under a dictator. I'm not saying that anything like THIS happened, but it wasn't a very easy society to live in. I digress though, i'll have to talk more about it in the final book review.
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Showing posts with label Battle Royale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Battle Royale. Show all posts
Battle Royale letter
First of all, I want to mention how saying that I wanted to read a happy book was a lie, the book I read wasn't happy at all (pretty much). There were a few small humorous moments in it but I don't think it depressed me any less than Schindler's list would have. I'll start off saying that I couldn't annotate, unfortunately, I had borrowed the book from the friend who requested it from me. If I was able to annotate it I probably would have kept track of deaths and payed more attention to things near the beginning (like I would have written on the map in the front of the book.) As for now, I'll say how fucking awesome this book is. Although it's not heart-wrenching or tear-jerking, Battle Royale is a fantastic book filled with different points of view as well as different opinions and emotions.
The parts of the book that I liked revolved around Shuya and his friends Shogo and Noriko. They were the most intense points because the book follows them more, giving you a greater connection with them. I love how you can sense Shuya's growing affection for Noriko and vise versa. Their personalities are very three-dimensional and it's almost as though you can connect with them. Another thing that I like with the book is the relation to what we're learning in school currently, that being the Holocaust. In the book, they live in a new Asia ruled by a totalitarian system under a dictator. This is a lot like what it was like back then (as well as what it's like in North Korea currently.) When you think about how cruel the officers were towards these innocent teenagers, it relates a lot back. I didn't come across many questions during the whole thing, the book made a lot of the moments very straight forward so there was no confusion. I generally.. skipped the parts that didn't have to do with Shuya and the gang, sometimes their deaths were really interesting (such as the couple who committed suicide as well as Shinji and his friend) but most of them just kind of mowed each other down.
The only real question I would have would be what someone would do in that situation. I'm not sure what I would do myself, I think I'd try to get a group with my friends and then hide out; then i'd probably let everyone else kill each other so that I'd only have to kill one or two people? Most of the time though I would just hide, try not to get myself killed. I can't really speak for that though because it isn't happening, if it were I'm sure I would act a lot differently than I thought I would. A lot of the people in the book went insane, not trusting anyone and killing their own friends; it was a very depressing thing, mostly because you could see it happening in real life. When people are under that kind of pressure then they'll do practically anything, kill their own brother or sister just to stay alive. It's amazing how dearly caring we are for our own lives. I'm just going to bring this back to what the holocaust survivor told us; he told us that during the holocaust he wanted to die, that he would rather die than receive torture, he said that his faith was so strong that if his God wanted him to die than it was not his choice. That kind of faith is a little inspiring, it seems so selfless and nice; the people in the book seemed a little selfish, only really caring for themselves. Only Shogo, Shuya and Noriko seemed to care otherwise. Read More!
The parts of the book that I liked revolved around Shuya and his friends Shogo and Noriko. They were the most intense points because the book follows them more, giving you a greater connection with them. I love how you can sense Shuya's growing affection for Noriko and vise versa. Their personalities are very three-dimensional and it's almost as though you can connect with them. Another thing that I like with the book is the relation to what we're learning in school currently, that being the Holocaust. In the book, they live in a new Asia ruled by a totalitarian system under a dictator. This is a lot like what it was like back then (as well as what it's like in North Korea currently.) When you think about how cruel the officers were towards these innocent teenagers, it relates a lot back. I didn't come across many questions during the whole thing, the book made a lot of the moments very straight forward so there was no confusion. I generally.. skipped the parts that didn't have to do with Shuya and the gang, sometimes their deaths were really interesting (such as the couple who committed suicide as well as Shinji and his friend) but most of them just kind of mowed each other down.
The only real question I would have would be what someone would do in that situation. I'm not sure what I would do myself, I think I'd try to get a group with my friends and then hide out; then i'd probably let everyone else kill each other so that I'd only have to kill one or two people? Most of the time though I would just hide, try not to get myself killed. I can't really speak for that though because it isn't happening, if it were I'm sure I would act a lot differently than I thought I would. A lot of the people in the book went insane, not trusting anyone and killing their own friends; it was a very depressing thing, mostly because you could see it happening in real life. When people are under that kind of pressure then they'll do practically anything, kill their own brother or sister just to stay alive. It's amazing how dearly caring we are for our own lives. I'm just going to bring this back to what the holocaust survivor told us; he told us that during the holocaust he wanted to die, that he would rather die than receive torture, he said that his faith was so strong that if his God wanted him to die than it was not his choice. That kind of faith is a little inspiring, it seems so selfless and nice; the people in the book seemed a little selfish, only really caring for themselves. Only Shogo, Shuya and Noriko seemed to care otherwise. Read More!