Novel "Zero Starting Life in Another World" by Tappei Nagatsuki

Categories: Novel

Essay, Pages 5 (1055 words)

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Something that impacted me was a novel called "Re: Zero Starting Life in Another World," by Tappei Nagatsuki. It's a fictional story about a person who lives in a fantasy world who has the ability to relive events after his death. I chose this novel for entertainment but mainly for its characters and how they progress through the story given the circumstances that stand before them. In the novel there was a scene where the main protagonist was in a state of despair after reliving the same events over and over, unable to overcome an obstacle to move on.

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He was contemplating giving up and abandoning his friends, he was begging for his trusted companion to run away with him as he knows that if they continue on it will eventually lead to their demise. At this point in the story I could feel the despair within the character and actually want him to not give up and have him succeed very badly but on the other hand, could sympathize with him on giving up and leaving the way things are.

I couldn't decide whether he should give up or not, giving rise to a conflict in my head of whether I want the protagonist to continue on trying to save his friends at the cost of his sanity or run away with his companion living a peaceful life leaving his friends behind to their demise. This scene made me question myself on what I would do if I were the protagonist which is both thought-provoking and emotional at the same time as the characters I grew to love are set in a dilemma where the protagonist has to choose who to save, himself or risk saving his friends.

I think given the choice I think I would have chosen the former.

Anyways I personally think reading could be entertaining and thought-provoking such as the novel I described previously. Though I myself don't often read, I think reading books can be fun at times but it could also be boring if something doesn't interest you. Give the school summer reading for example, in my high school I was forced to read books over the summer and had a set of books to read that all disinterests me, books like The Jungle or Black Boy. Sure these books may be considered classics, but for teenagers, I don't think it's that interesting. I mean who chooses to read a book about a struggling black family or a corrupted meat packing industry in the '90s? Maybe it's just me but that type of forced reading made me get turned off by books and does the opposite effect of getting young people to read. Of course if people like these books more power to them, but what I'm trying to say is if we were able to choose what to read it would get more people to engage in books. And I'm not talking about giving a choice of reading Macbeth or Lord of the Flies I mean like books that the reader wants to read and they themselves choose. I would think high schoolers would jump on board the idea of writing essays about the stories they love and read passionately about than writing an essay on how the meatpacking industry changed regulations.

In "How to Mark a Book," by Mortimer Adler he describes that owning a book is not simply purchasing it and reading it, it's when a person reads and annotates it. To own a book is to have a person who reads and takes their time with it, and goes through the process of what the author is trying to say or portray then mark it down in the book so that the reader can fully appreciate every word or passage the author wrote. In "Improving note-taking skills," by Purdue University it gives advice and tips on how to organize your thoughts and ideas when taking notes in class. It also talks about how to utilize note-taking more efficiently, by giving pointers to reread your notes after taking them within 24 hours and summarize your understanding of those notes to fully grasp what you wrote. For "Introduction: Ways of Reading," by David Bartholomae, Anthony Petrosky, and Stacey Waite, they describe reading as a way to make students critical thinkers and readers. That reading shows their true colors when the students aren't talking about what the author wrote in the book per se, but what was the author's line of thought when writing the book when the words the students are saying are no longer what the author wrote but what the author may be thinking or their approach on subjects. To question why did the author choose to write about their subject in this manner.

Well given light to the information provided through these articles I understand more or less about what schools are trying to teach. Although can't they have a better approach than forcing us to read books made from the Shakespearean era? Even after knowing this and how reading classics could help students become critical thinkers, writers, or readers, I don't think most students will become any of those if the classics are disinteresting to them. Nevertheless, I'll just have to begrudgingly read these "classics" because I have to.

Reflection On Power

In Hooks and Grande's stories, they both face the problems of being in the minority. They both go into a university where they have issues regarding how others take their situations for granted. In Hooks's story, she is met with white people who disrespect their parents in a casual manner and seem to backtalk their parents like it's a normal occurrence. This is not normal for Hooks as she was taught to always look up to her parents and respect them for what they've done for her, so the fact that the people that surround her backtalk their parents who gave them the opportunity to get into a university is foreign to her and can't understand it. She later delves into how the university tries to make the students there privileged, but at the cost of losing core values which she learned from her parents. So with that in mind Hooks clings onto the values learned by her parents but is treated as rebellious from the university and her peers.