His perspective, being in the first person narration, influences me because it shows how different the different time periods were specifically for him. The integrity of the book would not be as interesting if it wasn't as personal to this specific character, "Of course were the same stairs I had walked up and down at least once every day of my Devon life" (pg. 11). This quote portrays how personal the book is going to be and how it pertains specifically to his own life and memories. This book keeps me wanting to read it more because of the fact that you want to know what specifically happened to him and how it impacted his life and the people around him who we got to know in this first chapter. His retrospective in this book, when he goes back in time and shows it like it's the present time, adds another level to the book and the understanding of the book. The way the author looks back and shows you the different time periods and memories in his life portrays a whole different world where everything was different, "But, of course fifteen years before there had been a war going on" (pg. 9). This quote shows how different the worlds were only fifteen years earlier. The author keeps mentioning war in both a literal and metaphorical way, throughout the chapter. First, he talks about how there was an actual war going on when he was in school and how difficult that made his childhood. But, he also talks about how the school was a war and how everything in the school was so beaten up when he was a kid that it looked like it went through war. The way the author talks about the school and when he goes around the school and memories come flooding back shows the integrity of the book in a way where he was in war, but it was also one of the best parts of his life. Overall, in this chapter the author conveyed the message excellently about how different his two lifetimes were, in war and in school and then not in war and coming back to his old childhood.
Questions:
1) Do you think his life before in his childhood was better or do you think it's better now?
2) What makes you want to keep on reading this book?
3) Do you think the memories that came flooding back were good or bad? Why?
I think these were memories triggered by his surroundings, and they weren't necessarily good or bad. For example, when he found the tree with the scars and limb hanging over the river, he remembered when Finny and himself jumped off of it. He recalled, "With the sensation that I was throwing my life away, I jumped into space. Some tips of branches snapped past me and then I crashed into the water," (Knowles, 17). This probably was't a landmarking memory of his past, it was simply triggered by his surroundings.
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