Milkweed+Synopsis

6-17-08

This time we talked about Jerry Spinelli's writing style We said that he wrote in a vanette because he wanted to make the situation seem real. He wanted to write a ook about the holocaust where he gave real backround information in a realistic fictional story. This is Milkweed. Now for the story, mischa celebrated hanakka even though he thought he was a Jew. But now that he was with Janina"s family who were jews, uncle shepsal was trying to make him realize that he is a jew. He and Janina kept smuglignig in the ghetto until one day, Shepshal told Mischa to take Janina and never return. That is what Mischa did, he took her hand and they8 wlaked beside the trian uuntil the jackboots found them and took Janina away. Mischa was dumbfound, so he walked his life across the tracks to the oven. H mat mnay farmers along the way with his lost ear that uri shot off. uri aproached him and tried to shoot his head but missed and hit hit hin in the head. What we talked about this time was rel;ated to the Eq. Sarah wrote how the lack of food in the ghetto related to the eq. A loss of food can bring out the worst in peo0le, meaning that anger or anxietyy can brin gout the worstv in people. In the book some people even fought others for the food. We also discussed the characters. Mischa: nieve kind of ignoraant lets people push him around. Janina: Follower, and sometimes a cry-baby, she needs to grow up. The rest of Janina's family are mostly smart leaders, sometimes with an attitude they help Mischa realize who he really is. http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/child_warsaw.jpg

On Tuesday in our group Ashley came up with good questions to think about during our discussion's. we thought about if Misha's stealing would be considered good or bad. we thought and discussed for a while and came up with that since Misha either stole or died then stealing to him would be considered good. It was like that during the Holocaust. People had to steal or else they wouldn't live. In that scenario it would be considered a good thing since they have to do it to survive. another question Ashley came up with was could Uri be working with the Nazis? this question was debated about in our team. some said yes and some said no. those who said yes said it because Uri was not around most of the time and when Misha was captured Uri wasn't there with them. This made us feel suspicious about Uri. Michael the Character captain described Misha as a clueless boy. we agreed on this because most of the time Misha didn't know what things were or what was going on. For example Misha didn't know that the Jackboots killed Jews so he tried to impress them by standing tall and still.Adrien was the literary Luminary and he connected the story to the EQ. He stated that people having power will cause people to be bad since they take advantage of the amount of power they have. Sarah related the book to the world. She stated that what was going on with the stealing and poor people during the Holocaust is still going on today. for example the poor people today steal food to survive just like back then. Kevin the historian bought in pictures of the place of warsaw and a map showing where it is:

http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=67966&rendTypeId=4

5/12/08 MM. Today, we discussed ideas about what the Holocaust was really influenced by. We didn't know that anti-semitism was already taking place in Germany, before the Holocaust. After the War, the only people the Germans could blame were the Jewish. Therefore, Hitler, a normal man, came along and pushed this idea of the Jewish being the bad people. He forced on Propoganda, making his word law, and the Germans a "perfect" race. Yet, where the Germans really perfect? Another idea was that we made a text to world connection, to the Darfur Genocide. All these people, even though they are of a different color, they still both got killed by their own people. They had to run for their lives, and pray for salvation. Their lives are influenced by fear, and they are still running as we speak.These people are dying and we aren't doing the best that we can to support them in their time of need. People think that one person can't do anything, but if Hitler had that much power over the Government and such, we have the power to fight back and make a difference We had many key ideas during our conversation: + The Jewish and the people of Darfur are different, but they had the same goal +Is happiness drived by our will? Misha pushed so hard just to try and make Janina happy. +Love is will and happiness and emotion all in one bundle, such as the love Mr. Milgrom showed Misha, even though they weren't the same family, he took Misha in.

picture Link:http://students.hightechhigh.org/~aburtson/30461616_3.jpg Information Link: http://students.hightechhigh.org/~aburtson/hum_essay_martinez.html