Seventh Meeting: Subway Tracks

My analysis for this meeting was kind of weak, I realized. However, this is sort of justifiable, seeing as what Chris did for the majority of the reading was groaning and jumping into active subway tracks to find his pet rat. Because of this lack of meaning, our discussion was not very deep. However, since we had a shorter class time due to the vocabulary test, our discussion stayed on the book the entire time.
I was very passionate about Chris' behavior during the meeting, however. One must wonder what they taught in his school if they didn't include anything about not jumping onto active subway tracks. I found this point in the story completely idiotic, as Chris knew that the subway train would be coming, and that if he jumped onto the tracks, he would get run over. However, because his pet rat ran onto the tracks, he decided to get it and made me loathe him a bit more. Liana answered that he just couldn't see anything but getting Toby back. Still, though, my respect and empathy for the character has dropped.

Scribe Post #2

Today's main discussion was on Chris' relationship with his parents. We got quite deep into this topic. There was an argument today about their parenting skills. Jerry said hat both of the parents were terrible, while Liana stated that they tried their best. In the end, a consensus was made, that both parents try, but they often fail. An interpretation of their viewing of Chris was made today: that Chris' father sees him as someone who will fail often because of his autism, and so everything must be made easy for him. This allows for Chris' father to be more patient with him, and thus have a better understanding and relationship. However, this also leads to him not seeing Chris as a son, but more as a burden. Chris' mother sees her son as a normal child, and this leads to frustration for her, as he constantly performs under her expectations. Neither parent understands who Chris really is, a child who is very good at math and science and will probably benefit society as a scientist in his later years. They view him as an unmanagable son who can't understand feelings, or go into places with a large amount of people, like a normal child.
There was a new understanding of Chris' relationship with his father that was reached. Chris does not actually "love" his father; he sees him as a caretaker. He trusts him, but, as seen from when Mr. Boone revealed that he was the one who killed Wellington, once that trust is broken, Chris takes an extreme feeling of fear for his father. He neither loves his mother either: when Chris does not have his father to depend on, he goes to his mother instead. The group agreed that Siobhan is more of a mother figure to him, but because she is at school, he does not view her directly as his mother.

Fifth Meeting: Author Plot Holes

In today's meeting, we Chris' mother and Chris' displays of emotion. The group discussion went off-topic for a bit, but we got back to it quickly. I noticed a weakness of mine and my other group members: we cannot find any symbolism in this book at all. We do not know what it is supposed to represent, and believe it to be just a story from an autistic boy's point of view. When confused about the why Chris' mother wouldn't just call the family, I offered the interpretation that the author wouldn't be able to fit that into the story and just left it out, for the better. I asked whether or not Mrs. Shears and Chris' dad had a relationship together, before he killed Wellington (which was a rather unrealistic move in my opinion; if Chris' dad was going out the front door, why would he move all the way to the back to get a garden fork to stab the dog?) for it says that they were "friends," but I did not know if it was a romantic friendship or if they were truly just friends. Also, I asked if Chris had a photographic memory, for he seems to be able to memorize things well. I came to the conclusion that he does, and for it says that he remembers things like a movie strip.

Fourth Meeting: Reading Ahead...

Unfortunately, yesterday while I was doing the reading assignment, I did not realize that I was supposed to refer to the entry for March 18th for my reading, not March 24th. Because of this, I was unable to ask some of my questions in today's meeting, without giving out any spoilers. As I already submitted the p.100-126 reading assignment to turnitin, I'll submit the p.84-99 assignment for next time, and instead have the discussion with this week's paper.
Today, I realized, I really need to stop reading ahead. Unfortunately, this revelation came a bit too late, as I am already almost done with the book. Due to this, I have some strength in knowing what is going to happen in the later sections of the book, and I can answer some questions about it, but also, I have been accidentally giving out spoilers on what will happen. Our discussion mainly focused on Chris' mother. We noticed several things about her, including the fact that she spelled some words wrong in her letter, which led us to wonder whether they were mispelled because she is uneducated, or because they are Britishisms. Also, we wondered why she never called Chris, instead of writing him letters, but came to the conclusion that it would look better plotwise to have letters, tangible proof that his mother is still alive. The class time for these discussions was used fairly well, better than it has been used.

Scribe Entry

The main focus of this meeting's discussion was the emotionless attitude of Chris upon finding out that his mother cheated on his father. A point was offered about Chris' autism, that he was born with so much logic that he simply cannot display normal signs of emotion, and if he is feeling conflicted, then he will just groan and find a place to be alone, or sometimes fight. A counterpoint to this was that Chris didn't even groan at finding out that his mother cheated on his father, which would conflict the normal person very much. However, it could be that Chris doesn't understand commitment very well, and doesn't think much of his mother cheating on his father, and just wants to know what happened for information purposes. To him, his mother is still dead, and it doesn't matter what happened before she died. We reached the last mentioned concensus on this topic. The topic did not dig very far, as we do not have much to perceive Chris' character yet, as he hasn't done anything monumentary in a while. The topics mainly kept constant during the period, sometimes veering off into other branches of literary discussion, though.

Third Meeting: Super Good Day

For this meeting, our group was only able to keep discussing the book until we finished the questions and analyses we had. It was hard to keep up on the discussion after that, and we fell back into reading the book. However, after some urging, we went back to discussing the book and actually found some more things that we were confused about and could be discussed. One of my questions were answered with a response of Chris doesn't understand deeper meaning and I realized that I had not thought this way before. Chris only understands what he sees, he cannot make inferences or assume anything, which is why he has such faulty interpretations of people. Also, we made an inference on what orange squash was, a British term which Chris has referred to a couple of times. We believed it was a soda-like drink, and upon further research, we were right.

Second Meeting: Prime #s

As we had actually read the book for this period, we discussed our questions and comments about a supposed "meaning" in the book (even though the narrator has already stated that he does not understand meaning, so there will be no meaning in the book). I showed some strength in my knowledge of autism (the main character is autistic, so this can help to understand some of his actions which seem strange to regular people). This can also help to understand his character and certain things he seems to make ritual of. However, I was sometimes unable to make sense of his ridiculous generalizations of people and ideas. I offered a prediction of mine that Mr. Shears and Chris' mother had an affair and left their respective spouses. This inference proved to be right, based on the current reading assignment. Our group used the class time fairly well, and after we had finished discussing the passages, had started reading the next assignment.