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Lit Circle 5/29 [|Milkweed]

By discussing our ideas and the work we had done for homework in class, my group reached a few important conclusions about the book and the EQ. We agreed that the main character's parents must have died when he was very young, and he is still a little kid. He is not stupid, just naive and not educated. Also, we agreed that Uri wants him to remain ignorant of things that are happening at the time because he doesn't want to expose the main character to the horrible things that are being done to Jews and Gypsies at the time of the late 1930's/ early 1940's. Another point we talked about was what the jackboots were doing in Uri's and the main character's neighborhood. We agreed that after they came, they stayed and were mean to Jews. Even though the Jews weren't being taken to concentration camps yet, they were being treated horrifically and humiliated. We agreed that the reason no one tried to help the Jews or stop the Jackboots from mistreating them was partially because people were scared of the Nazis. In other words, we reached discovered that fear brings out the worst in people. In our discussion in class, we came up with a few important things about the book and also the EQ. We said that the people who are non-jews probably did or did not accept the fact that jews were being taken away and killed. We said that the reason why so many people didnt do anything was becuze they were too afriad to do anything to help. This shows that fear, brings out the worst in people. The non-jews who did not accept the the concentration and the killings and the other stuff, were probably afraid to stand up  for the jews because they did not want to risk their own lives and be killed. We also came up with the reason why Uri acts like the way he does towards. He watches out for Misha, but he can be somtetimes violent; he acts like an older brother. Like Uri, will hit Misha and then tell him to never do anything stupid, he's mean about but you get the message that he cares. Today in our discussion we discussed the character captain. Julian decided that Misha wasn't stupid, he was just uneducated. He is actually pretty smart because he can tell which houses are better to rob and he does that by looking for houses with little kids playing outside and if it is a nice house or not. He also decided that Uri is obviously smart and he is very mature. Also, we cant really tell how smart Uri is, since he is seen through the eyes of Misha who will always think that Urie is smart since he looks up to him. THe quote that Aditya choose was the part where the Jew was accused of stealing the horse off the merry go round and was hosed down. He said that it was not a good thing that people thought about the Jews, that they were all the same and "interchangeable" since everybody is different and they only decided that a Jew did it because they were against Jews at the time. Alicia was the historian and she wrote about Warsaw. It is in Poland and it is the capitol. After the holocaust, 85% of the city was destroyed and Poland even considered moving the capitol it was so devastated. Most of the resistance in the holocaust occurred in the Warsaw ghetto. At least 56,065 people were killed in that town or sent to concentration camps. Aditya Nihalani: In our group discussion, we had a very interesting conversation. One thing we talked about was the fact that Janina's family isn't very fond of Misha but they still continue to help him. They let him sleep in their small house in the ghetto. One thought that we discussed about why they might be helping him because he provides them with food a lot of times. He always steals food from other people and markets and brings a lot of it to them. Another thought we had discussed was one that Ms. Sarah came up with. This is very general. Sometimes, when enemies are fighting another force, that force brings them together. This is illustrated in the text. Misha and Janina's family aren't exactly the closest of pals, but the severe hatred of the Nazi's brought them together. I added the thought to the conversation that it depends on how much the 2 groups in question interact with eachother. If they just don't like eachother for minor reasons, they could easily be brought together. However, if they have a severe hatred for eachother, they would probably not help eachother at all. Shaquille brought up another interesting point that Misha wasn't really as stupid as he seemed because Uri told him many white lies, but Misha didn't believe him a lot of times. This idea has been brought up before, but in a different context. In our discussion in class, we discussed Misha's perception of things. Some questions of the philosopher were "What does the Cow symbolize?" It is not real, and is probably just a symbol of hope for Jews, perhaps implying that they will not be so hungry anymore if they find it. However, Misha actually looks for the Cow. Another example of Misha's lack of comprehension affecting his actions is when he disobeys Uri all the time. He doesn't realize that Uri is just trying to help and Misha does not really realize how dangerous what he does is.  Shaquille Khan: Today in our group discussion we discussed the character capitan, which was Sofia. Sofia said that Misha was not very responsilbe and she also said that Misha was a theif and smuggler. The reason she said this is because Misha is very risky and does so many dangerous things, however she said Misha seems to be more responsible when Janina is around. Sofia also talked about Janina, and she said that Janina likes to copy Misha and if she sees Misha do something she woyuld try to impress h im or take it the the "extreme". Sofia also said that whenever she is smuggling and he tells her to stop she kicks him and doesnt listen to him. Our philosopher Aditya had asked a very great question, and it was very arguable, the quesiton he asked was: In one part, Misha finds a Milkweed seed on his shirt while hes sitting next to an actual milkeweed. Why is it so signifcant? Julian had argued that he thought that it meant Life, and some of the other people in the group didnt think so.