Tamara Montano
Blog # 2
September 13, 2010
Reader Response and Descriptive Writing for BMU chapters 3 and 4
Chapters three and four mainly focused on the after affects and emotions that were involved because of the death of Lupito. Antonio started to spend more and more time with Ultima as time passed. She had showed him how the herbs and plants could heal and do good for the people. Lupito learned how to pick plants and herbs; he learned how to use the herbs and how he should give respect to all of the earth.
Antonio had a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings going through his head throughout these chapters. Lupito’s death really made him think about life and afterlife. He wondered if Lupito would go to hell for what he did. He wondered if his own father would go to hell for the things he did. “But, Ultima, how can he go to communion? How can he take God in his mouth and swallow him? Will God forgive his sin and be with him?” a quote from chapter two. Lupito wondered so much about God and who could go to heaven and what would cause a man not to be able to go to heaven? Ultima reassured him that it is not our place to judge, a very wise statement I thought.
Antonio analyzed his parents relationships; he wondered how two people so opposite like his parents could marry. Reading this sparked a memory of my parents. My mother and father were also very different. I remember one camping trip, we were headed out to San Juan River. My dad was pulling our 5th wheel on the back of his white and green diesel truck. Camping trips were always fun and peaceful but the drive up was far from fun and peaceful. The whole trip my sister and I listened to my mom and dad argue about how fast my dad was driving, how close he was getting to the railings, so on and so forth. It was a continuous argument. I tried to shut out all the noise as I was trying to take a nap; but the sounds of the high pitch tone in my moms voice along with my dads constant words of wanting to be right continued to fill my head. If this wasn’t bad enough as we started up the mountain the 5th wheel started to screech, and as the minutes passed it felt as if we would never get there. As we made our way up the mountain road the loud sound of the rumbling truck vibrated in my ears and the noises seemed to get louder and more annoying. We finally made it up the mountain in what felt like days, but when we got there the noises stopped. I could hear the birds chirping with the wind blowing through the mountains making the sound of waves washing up on the shore. I could smell the fishy water along with the deep green smell of the fresh pine trees and different nature life. It was peaceful at once. I looked to my parents and they had stopped arguing, they were both happy to be there and the peacefulness of the out doors seemed to calm them down. Only a few moments later my parents were happy as could be and were enjoying the outdoors as well as each others company. Like Antonio, I also wondered how my parents could be so very different but yet they married and seemed to make each other happy.
The death of Lupito hit the whole town hard. It was a rough time for both the men and women. Rumors started to fly about the death of Lupito. Everyone had a different story to tell. This reminded me of being in mid school when there was always a different story being told. The 100% truth of a story that was soon turned into everyone’s new “exciting” versions of what “really” happened; which ended up being about 1% truth and the rest made up stories to make the seemingly boring situation into a new exciting and unreal story.
As I read on in chapter four, I found myself having to reread the text over and over again to understand what the text was trying to say. The cursing in this chapter was overbearing and made it difficult for me to read and fully understand what I needed to know. I caught myself trying not to read the curse words in my head as I read through the text but time and time again I failed. When I finally got over the minor detail of the cursing in the text I was able to understand what I was reading and truly feel as if I was there. It made me anxious for Antonio as he was wondering what path to take. Should he choose the way of his mother and become a priest or the way of his father of becoming a Vaquero? As I read on in the text I felt as if Ultima was also giving me advice. At such a young age Antonio was not yet called to know what he wanted his future to be and the same applied to me.
These chapters were absolutely great to read. I felt as if I was really in the story. I pictured myself walking with Antonio and Ultima looking for new plants and herbs. As I read on I could almost smell the different herbs. They were very strong, almost as if there were hundreds of different smells running through my nose. These chapters were written in such detail and had such great descriptions. I found myself wishing that I would some day be able to write in such a way that I could capture my readers by making them feel as if they were in the story.
I liked your descriptions of the camping memory- good sensory details. However, there were a couple of organizational distractions in this post.
ReplyDeleteAlthough you included transitions at the beginning of most paragraphs, the post may have felt more smooth with some of them in different places. Since this is pretty far over the word count, I would have taken out the 2nd to last paragraph, which seemed to distract from the rest of your paragraphs and presented information not necessarily relevant to your post.
I think that you will benefit and should take notes from our day on economical style, which will help you begin to pare down your writing to only the most essential parts. Looking forward to the next post.