Book Read: Brisingr by Christopher Paolini
A Different Childhood
When I compare my childhood with that of Eragon’s, I feel that my life has been very boring compared to Eragon’s. Eragon’s life (until this book) was full of adventure. When he was still quite young (in the first book), he found a dragon’s egg. This egg hatched into a dragon he named Saphira. Together with Saphira and several other people, Eragon embarks on countless adventures to fight the evil Galbatorix and his minions. He encounters many difficulties and challenges, but every time he never fails to succeed (except one or two times). Even if he fails, he will not give up and will still go on and try to defeat Galbatorix. My life, on the other hand, has been very dull. I follow the same routine almost every day; nothing interesting ever happens to me. The closest I got to adventure is going to a theme park. I wish I could go on many exciting adventures like Eragon and meet more people.
Differences and Similarities Galbatorix and Eragon
Eragon and Galbatorix are both different and similar in several ways. Eragon and Galbatorix are both good at using magic and are also one of the very few dragon riders left. However they use their powers differently. They have far more differences than similarities between them. Galbatorix is a cruel and power-hungry dictator. He killed off all the remaining dragon riders after he realized that they were a threat to his power. He kept the heart of hearts of the dragons whose riders he had slayed to make himself more powerful. He also does not care about the lives of the people who serve him. One example is in Brisingr, when he had several hundred of his soldiers made immune to pain so that they could fight more people before dying. This shows that he was ruthless and only cared about killing his enemies, no matter how many of his own servants die doing this. Eragon, however, is the opposite. He is concerned about the lives of innocent civilians and even tries to refrain from killing his enemies. He feels bad when he is forced to kill people, even if they are trying to kill him. He is also kind. When he had a chance to kill Sloan, a person who had betrayed him, he chose not to, instead sending him to the elves kingdom to spend his life there.
Battling Varaug from Eragon’s Point of View
My thoughts crashed against a mental wall that was Varaug’s mind. His mind was so complicated, so incoherent; I feared I would go mad if I spent too much time battling him.
Suddenly, I felt that I had lost control. Varaug seized the chance, pushing past the barriers in my mind. I felt an excruciating pain surge throughout my body, and I could not do anything about it. I struggled as much as I could, but my efforts were to no avail; I could only stare at Varaug’s physical form, unable to do anything else.
“Yes!” Varaug cried with glee. “You are full of light! You will be able to feed us for a long time!” At that moment, Arya grabbed his wrist and broke it into three. She fell to the ground and rolled away before he could heal himself. I saw her gasp for air as she reached for her sword. The shade growled and pounced on Arya, wrestling for control of her weapon. Arya screamed and struck Varaug’s right temple with the pommel of her sword.
The shade looked as if it had fallen unconscious and Arya made full use of that time by scrambling back to her feet and backing away. I felt him lose control over my mind and I continued my attack on his consciousness, trying to restrain him for a few moments.
Varaug rose to his right knee, face contorted with loathing.
“You can’t kill me!” he said with anger in his voice. “I’m a Shade!” I doubled my efforts to restrain his mind and the Shade faltered for an instant.
“Get him now!” I shouted to Arya. She lunged forward, sword pointing downwards towards Varaug; sweat glistening in her dark hair.
And she stabbed him through the heart.
The Shade extricated himself from Arya’s sword looking shaken and took a few steps backwards. His skin started to fade and I could see the countless mass of evil spirits contained in him.
“NO!” he screamed in rage. “You cannot kill me!” As he said those words, the dark mass of spirits tripled in size and started seeping through his form.
“ARGH!” he screamed once more and he crumpled to the floor before his form exploded in a blinding flash of light. I had to cover my eyes to protect them from the strength of the light. When it was over, I saw what was left of the spirits fly in all directions, passing through the stone walls of the tower as if it were non-existent.
Why this Title is a Good One
I feel that this title is a good one as it contains an important part of the book. It is also very creative as it will attract a reader’s attention because they will not know what it means. This will add some mystery to the story. Brisingr actually means ‘fire’ in the Ancient Language, but people who have not read the book will not know. One part of the storyline is Eragon’s search for a new sword after Murtagh takes his original one after a fight in the previous book. When Eragon finally gets a sword worthy of a dragon rider, he names it ‘Brisingr’ which is the sword’s true name. Every time he says ‘Brisingr’, the blade of the sword will burst into flames, which hints that the sword is responding to its true name. The writer of the story, Christopher Paolini, probably wanted to highlight the importance of the sword in this book, thus he named the book Brisingr, which is quite creative.
Book Read: Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
Lesson I Learnt from the Story
This book has taught me several things. I learnt that we should always be wary of the people around us. Even the least unsuspecting of things could be the problem. When it was found out that there was a spy at the camp, everyone started suspecting each other. They all thought the spy would be one of those more ‘bad’ people. In the end, however, Silena was found out to be the spy after she revealed the secret to the rest when she was dying. No one had suspected that Silena was the spy. She had not acted like one and even helped out her fellow campers by bringing the Ares cabin into the fight when their leader would not help them because of a minor dispute.
Difference Between Percy and Kronos
Percy and Kronos are two different characters in the story. Kronos is the evil villain who wants to take over Mount Olympus while Percy is the good guy trying to save Mount Olympus from the clutches of Kronos. Mount Olympus is the place where the Greek gods (also good) who are trying to resist Kronos reside. However, they have been tricked by one of Kronos’ schemes so that they will not be able to guard Mount Olympus. Kronos is a power-hungry character who wants to overthrow the Greek gods. This is evident when he rose from the place where he was being imprisoned in, Tartarus, just so that he could reclaim power from the Gods who managed to overthrow him and send him to Tartarus. Percy, on the other hand, is trying to prevent him from taking over Mount Olmpus and overthrowing the gods. He just wants to help save Mount Olympus, unlike Kronos, and this shows when he still wanted to try to warn the gods about Kronos’ second scheme even though Hades told him that there was no way Olympus could be saved from Kronos.
Luke’s Death from his Point of View
I felt I had regained control of myself.
“Please, Percy…” I groaned with difficulty, clutching my burnt hands as I collapsed. Out of my flickering vision, I saw Percy move towards me, Annabeth’s knife in his hand.
“You can’t… can’t do it yourself. He’ll defend himself. I can suppress him; keep him under control while I do it.” I managed to say. Percy looked as if he did not hear me, raising his knife. I felt like I was glowing, like power was radiating from me. Then Percy stopped, turned and looked at Annabeth and Grover. He seemed to be thinking about something important.
“Please, hurry. Time is running out,” I groaned again. Percy brought the knife down, but he did not attack me. Instead he handed the knife over to me. I grasped the hilt, blade pointed backward. I unlatched the side straps of my armour, exposing a small patch of skin under my left arm. I forced all the thoughts out of my head and did it.
The pain was unbearable. I felt I had lost myself. Pain seeped out of me and I screamed like I had never done before. The sound was foreign to me but yet it felt so familiar. Light burst forth from me and I couldn’t even bear to open my eyes and look at myself. I knew something was leaving me; yet I felt like I was leaving my body too. Then everything turned black.
When I awoke, Percy, Annabeth and Grover were standing over me. I felt something I had not felt in a long time.
“Good blade,” I croaked. When I heard myself, I couldn’t recognise the voice. It sounded so different. I felt like I was not going to be able to breathe much longer. I heard Annabeth’s voice. I tried to tell her how sorry I was but she silenced me. With much difficulty, I told Percy what I wanted him to do, and I think he nodded, but I wasn’t sure because all I could make out were a few blurred images. I struggled to breathe; it felt like the same thing as just now was happening once more, but there was definitely something different. I felt so cold. So very cold. Then warmth. Everything went black again.
Why I liked the Ending
The ending is good because it finally explains the prophecy. All through the book, everyone has been thinking that the hero mentioned in the prophecy is Percy, but in the end it was actually the most unsuspecting of people, the ‘bad guy’, Luke. ‘The hero’s soul, cursed blade shall reap’. This line in the prophecy was talking about Luke. He had chosen to save Olympus but had killed himself to do it. He was the hero, not Percy. The cursed blade was Annabeth’s knife; cursed because it was the knife he had given her along time ago and he betrayed her by helping Kronos. ‘A single choice shall end his days’. Percy had chosen to give the knife to Luke, and that was the choice that allowed him to get rid of Kronos, but unfortunately at the same time, sacrifice his life. ‘Olympus to preserve or raze’. By sacrificing himself, Luke had saved Olympus. Rachel had been right when she said that Percy was not the hero. It was Luke.
This question is very open-ended. Almost every person has a different emotion he or she wants to eliminate. For some, sadness would be that emotion. Won’t everyone be happier if they cannot experience sadness? However, if you cannot experience sadness, you would not treasure the happy moments in your life so you might feel sad as there is no more ‘happy’ as everything feels the same.
On the other hand, if you are an emotional person, you would want to eliminate happy and this just makes things a whole lot more complicated which is why I am not going to bother to explain this unbelievably long and boring (not to mention utterly useless) sentence so I will just leave this as some food-for-thought.
In the working world, anger and frustration are very common emotions. Wouldn’t anybody feel frustrated if you have just been missed for a promotion despite working at that same place for ten years? Wouldn’t you also feel angry if that promotion was given to a rookie who had just started working a month ago? I know I would if that happened. No one wants to see all their hard work go to waste.
For me, I would not eliminate any emotion even if I had the power to. I feel that every emotion has a purpose. For example, frustration can be a bad thing, but it also could be a good thing. It can make people give up but it can also spur them on and encourage them to try harder. Nobody likes frustration, but it is an essential part of our lives.
Another example would be jealousy. If we feel jealous of someone, we will want to be better than that person. Then, we will try to beat that person in what he or she is doing. That way, we will be able to improve ourselves. See? Jealousy is not that bad after all.
I feel that all emotions should be appreciated. Without sorrow, there wouldn’t be happiness. Without frustration, there wouldn’t be satisfaction. We need all these emotions to be a proper person. Each person is different because of the emotions that they choose to strive for; and for those that they neglect. I am not in place to answer the question because everybody has a different answer.
“I am lying”. Now this is a really tricky question. However, it is not that hard to solve; although the answer is a bit hard to understand because it is just repeating almost the same thing just that it is worded differently so as to give it a different meaning.
Alright, enough of the long-winded sentence. This is my explanation of the answer, put as simple as I can put it. If someone said, “I am lying.” it would not be correct because if you are lying, you are not telling the truth. A liar would not tell the truth. Therefore, ‘I am lying’ is the truth and by saying that it means that you are lying, which makes this a whole lot more confusing.
Let me try to explain this again if you did not get the first explanation. If you say, “I am lying.” it is not exactly correct. When you say, “I am lying.” you can’t be lying because if you were lying, you wouldn’t say that you were lying because if you are a liar, you would not be telling the truth. Understand?
To the second half of the explanation. If you said, “I am lying.” it would also not be correct because if you were telling the truth, you would not say that you were lying and by saying that you are lying, it would mean that you are no longer telling the truth and that you are now lying instead of telling the truth because liars don’t tell the truth and you just said that you were lying which means that you are not telling the truth which means that you are lying.
Wow. That’s really complicated. I hardly even understand what I am writing. Give me one more chance to explain, this time with help from the internet. If the phrase ‘I am lying’ is indeed true, it would be false because I said that I had told a lie when I did not. However if I had said that I was lying when it was false, I would be telling the truth when I said that I was lying because I did lie about lying.
So do you understand now? If you still do not, which I find very hard to believe after so many attempts to explain the answer to this age-old philosophical question, here is the ‘brilliant’ yet short answer t: If the statement ‘I am lying’ is true, it is false. When the statement ‘I am lying’ is false, it is true.
Now you would most likely be able to understand this explanation. If you still can’t, too bad, because I am not trying to explain any more.Reference (an enormously long one just like the sentences in this post) note – it is one sentence, not a few:
http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=gCRrVOawWZUC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=i+am+lying+true+or+false&source=bl&ots=nEFY5uLcw9&sig=8dzif7XuQsFY942BKn_hwpDJQ5o&hl=en&ei=2Q4ySsLsIqCQ6AOerdnLBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA116,M1
To find out the answer to this philosophical question, you must first go back to its roots. What is friendship in the first place?
Friendship takes on many different forms, from helping your friend up when he falls or letting him copy you homework without telling your teacher *wink* (I think I am guilty of the latter. Being both the one who copies and the one who lets others copy. Hey, that’s called class spirit!).
Friendship is normally a special bond shared by people who have similar interests (I’m not talking about your average fan club). A real friend wants to see you improve and grow in life (and occasionally the need to borrow your money without returning). Unlike a real friend, a ‘fake’ friend will only stay with you as long as you are of some use to him.
A real friend will stick with you no matter what happens. When you break a window in school because you kick a football way too hard, he won’t run away with the rest of your team when they see that bad-tempered teacher running towards you with a snarl on his face. He will stay with you and help you ‘deceive’ the teacher to make him think it was your teammates who broke the window so that you will get the least amount of scolding possible.
A real friend will not get jealous when you get good grades (Okay fine. But just a little). Neither will he tease you when you fail that mathematics test (Yes, I know. Maybe a fair bit. It’s only natural for that to happen.). A real friend will never put on an angry face and stomp off in a huff when he notices you have thirty more marks than him. Only a ‘fake’ friend would do that kind of thing. A little competition is good but you must remember not to take things overboard. If your friend wants to borrow your notes because he missed class, you should lend him your notes if he is your friend. Don’t try to sabotage him and tell him that there were no notes as this can only bring things downhill.
Lastly, a real friend will help you up when you fall down. He won’t be so bad as to leave you on the floor with passers-by staring awkwardly at you (although, you’ve got to admit that’s pretty funny). He will help you to your feet and support you to wherever your original destination was. A ‘fake’ friend, however, will most likely just ask you to get up by yourself and get to where you were headed by yourself even though you have a nasty gash and blood trickling down the side of your leg onto the pavement.
We should treasure our friends and stay loyal to them if they are indeed real friends. If they tell you secrets, you shouldn’t go around telling the whole world (name here) likes (name here). Keep those secrets to yourself. If that person told you those secrets, he meant for you to keep them secret. Otherwise they wouldn’t be called ‘secrets’. If the person trusts you enough to tell you that, you can be sure he thinks of you as a friend. Don’t ruin your friendship over secrets.
Everyone needs friends. Even the richest of people would still be lonely even though they had all that money because they had no friends. We need someone to share our experiences, feelings, etcetera with. No one can live with everything bottled up inside of them. Remember your true friends; do not get tricked by those who only pretend to be your friend.
Should we criticize people and or opinions they have?
Eek. That’s another tough one.
After much thinking (although it was only 10 minutes), I decided that the answer is both a yes and a no.
We should respect others peoples’ actions and opinions. You wouldn’t like someone coming up to you and slapping you just because they did not like the way you felt about something. However, if the thing that you did is wrong, you should accept the criticism and act differently in the future.
If you are the one who is criticizing another person, stop and think before you act. Is what the other person is doing that unacceptable and wrong that you have to tell that person off? Put yourself in that person’s shoes. Would you get angry if another person told you off for something that you did? Remember that you must put your perspective from the other person’s point of view, not your own. You would naturally say that it is right to criticize the other person as you are not the person that is being criticized.
You might not know it, but the person who is doing the thing that you think is wrong may have a good reason for doing it. For example, if you are in a car driving to a hospital to see your dying relative whom you are very close to and you are scolded by another driver for cutting into his way, what will you feel? If you are any normal person, you would most likely think that this person is being very unreasonable.
However, if you were the one who is criticizing the person who just cut into your way, you would probably feel that the person who cut into your way is being stubborn. This shows the different points of view that each driver has towards a certain situation. The driver who cut in would think that he should not be criticized as he was just trying to get to the hospital as fast as possible to be with your loved one during the person’s dying breath.
On the other hand, the driver whose way had been cut into would very likely think that they were right to criticize the other driver as they had wrongfully had their way cut into.
This brings us back to the main point. If we criticize people, it should be because we care for them, not because we want to upset them. When you criticize a friend, you might think that it is for that person’s own good. The friend might take it differently. The friend might think that you don’t want to be his friend and just want to upset him.
If you really care for the person, criticize him out of the good of your heart. Whether he chooses to accept the criticism, it is his own choice. If he gets angry over it, it shows that he is not really your friend as he does not accept criticism which is for his own good. As I have stated earlier in this post, whether we should criticize has both a yes and a no as an answer. After all, it is a philosophical question.
What is beauty? Beauty is an often under looked simple six-lettered word with a several meanings.
To some, it is how someone looks on the outside. The media (television, magazines, etcetera) cares more about how ‘beautiful’ people are on the outside than on the inside. If a man helps an old lady across the road, do you think the news will include it in its prime time news update? On the other hand, if a celebrity supermodel had helped an old man across the road, the magazine would probably have a headline which reads ‘hot model is kind too!’.
To others, it is how someone is on the inside. This is the more important side of beauty. If someone looks very nice on the outside ;), but is really …… how should I put this…… empty on the inside, then the person is really not worth knowing. If you have someone who is ‘empty’ as a friend, it is quite useless as there is nothing to discuss. It is more important side to have inner beauty than to have external beauty because we are our actions and if we look down on others it wouldn’t matter if we are stylish or not. We would just be ugly on the inside.
Also, beauty is classified differently for every person. For example, when a person sees a tree that towers over all the rest in a forest, he might say that it is a beautiful thing in nature. However, a different person might say that the tree is just a tree and there is nothing beautiful about it. This is because they each have different views of the tree. The tree can refer to anything; from soccer to computers; some love them while others think they are useless. One person might say, “What good is kicking a ball around a field for ninety minutes?” However a soccer fanatic would say, “Soccer is a brilliant game that requires strategy and power.”
Beauty also depends on your state of mind. If you see a painstakingly hand-crafted vase and you have just won an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy, you will most likely say that it is beautiful. In fact, you might just say that everything you come across is beautiful, right down to the disgusting looking clump of something on your plate that your canteen calls ‘beautiful special-of-the-day’. If you had just failed all your tests, you would have definitely screamed that the vase was the ugliest thing that you had ever seen and that you would rather eat that disgusting looking clump on your plate than buy it at a bargain sale at 99% off.
Imagine if you had just been awarded $10000000. Wouldn’t you say that life was beautiful? But what if that money had been inherited from your parents because they died of a terrible accident when they were only 60 and 55 years of age? It would be likely that you would say that life sucks.
In conclusion, beauty is not what the magazine says in its 100-beauty tips issue, it is what we make of ourselves. Everyone has a different perspective of beauty; you just have to find your own.
The bell echoed throughout the hall.
“It’s time,” the man said in a gruff voice.
“Alright,” Jim replied solemnly, never lifting his head to look at the man. He couldn’t bear to. It was going to be his last time.
“The judgement is final,”
“I guessed so,”
“You’re getting an F for that examination,”
