The W or Memory of Childhood is a book with two stories, the first being W, and the second being The Memory of Childhood. W was a fantastic story of a man who was on the search for a boy but came across a mysterious island (W) and quickly emerged into their society. W is not the pretty island we think, however. Their morals and sins are based on a game like the "Olympics," and people must survive, but only the fittest do. This shocked me, and the details in the story made the island come to life. The second story is a memoir of Perec's past childhood. He is confused because he has many gaps in his memory and cannot remember his childhood clearly. This fogginess is something that I believe definitely is from PTSD from the war and violence when he was a child. I learned in my psychology class that the brain would adapt and forget specific memories if they are too painful and cause a blockage in your memory. This is apparent in Perec's story as he continuously mentions how he forgets and doesn't remember his childhood exactly. He believes he has a vague idea of his childhood but cannot put the pieces together. It's like looking through foggy glasses, and most things are blurry, but no matter what you do, they never clear up. I tried to figure out how the two stories were connected while reading, and it was so confusing. Until I came across this quote, "when I was thirteen I made up a story … [It] was called W and it was, in a way, if not the story of my childhood, then at least a story of my childhood." After that, I realized that the story of W is not complete but like a symbolic story of his childhood. These ideals were what he had to do as a child to survive and be the fittest. This W voyage is a story of his childhood, and his brain is using what he can to remember his childhood by creating the memories into "fictional" stories that aren't really fiction at all. The way it jumped back from story to story made it harder to follow along, but it made them feel more connected. If we simply just read the W story and then his memoir, I feel that the effect of the two stories forming and creating each other would not be as apparent. My question for this text is, do you think the author decided to include alternating chapters to connect the stories more in the text? And How do you think this helped shape the story's themes/similarities to be more connected?
In the text, Society of Reluctant Dreamers, Agualusa challenges the meaning and importance of dreams. In the book, they have the ability to appear in people's dreams, and one character, in particular, can dream about people he hasn't met and future things that haven't occurred yet. He can dream about the future. He uses this power to appear in everyone's dreams in Angolan to overthrow the government, a one-party state. This power over dreams is bizarre and not what we usually think dreams are. Dreams are funny, confusing, metaphorical tales that we become aware of in our sleep that don't always make sense and can arise hidden feelings or motives we would not know when we are conscious. In the Society of Reluctant Dreamers, this dreaming is not a mere confusion or weird story in our heads but a movement to defeat politics and the political authority at the time. This creates a collective dream among the whole population of Angolans and gives people the courage and b...
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