The Last Story

I think that we chose to end this class with this book because it encompasses a large amount of what we've studied in class. The biggest part that it covers is the hero's journey. Haroun went through every step of the hero's journey and most of each step had many events, people, and objects that could be added to the step. Haroun begins with an unusual birth of being an only child. His call to action ends up being to save his father, to save the twilight strip, and many others along the way. His spiritual guides are Mali and Butt (up until his brain is fried). He gets the mystic weapons of the bite a light and the wish water. He ends up having a plethora of trials along the way, most being in Kahani and most but not all is he able to succeed in. I also think that this book was chosen to finish the year off because it brings us back to remember an archetypal hero. The book is also the first book that we've during this semester that has a world full of fantasy and unreal things. This book is sort of like Alice in Wonderland in that respect. Another interesting thing that the book had to offer was it’s real world and fantasy world connections between the people. This answers the question the book poses at the end about why we listen to stories that aren’t real. The question is open ended but the characters that relate to each other in each world seem to hint that we read about fake worlds so that we may relate them to our real ones.

Female heroes

I would have to say that female heroes are something that we have today but some aren’t valued as much as others. For the one’s that we do value, it mostly seems to heroes that entertain us, not the ones who here in the real world making a difference. Female heroes that are valued are mostly ones like Superwoman or Storm from X-Men. These heroes aren’t really classified because of their sex. We don’t even really notice they’re women because the fact that they are doesn’t really matter. We just think of them as heroes that can do the same things that male ones can.

There are female heroes who attempt to make change in this world but it seems they’re mostly viewed as jokes. For some reason the first person that comes to mind is Sarah Palin. She’s somewhat of a hero to people everywhere but it seems she’s also a joke to everyone. Here’s this woman trying to make change for the better and we all think of her as the Eskimo from Alaska. There is Oprah however. Oprah is a female hero that everyone loves. She is someone that people notice as a generous, rich WOMAN not just a generous, rich person. It really al depends on who you look at. For the most part, it doesn’t seem like female heroes are noted for being women. The heroes who know what they’re doing and don’t try to promote their feminism seem to be notice less for being women since they’re just being themselves.