Marika Blog # 2

            The first book I read was The Boy Who Dared and the protagonist is Helmuth. Helmuth is non- religious but his family is not Jewish and his grandparents are Mormon. He is a teenage boy who is confused by Hitler and doesn’t know who to believe, the British or the German? He was part of the Hitler youth and spoke two languages. He went to jail and was executed for, distributing leaflets telling the truth about the war. He is stubborn but amazingly brave, when he went to trial for allegedly distributing enemy propaganda he took all the blame so his friends wouldn’t be put through the same agony he was subjected to. Helmuth has many motivations for his actions, he wanted people to hear the truth and he wanted to make a statement. I don’t have any questions for Helmuth because My questions were answered when I finished the book.

The book I am reading now is Marika and the protagonist Marika she Lives in the town of Budapest located in Hungary. She is very stubborn but brave and stands up for what she believes in. She speaks three languages and can write. Marika is very spoiled whenever she gets a nice gift she turns it away and says she doesn’t want it, like her china doll and her new dress. She understands that she is Jewish by blood but was raised in the Catholic Church. When her father shows her an article about Hitler she is confused as to why that article would affect her family? Marika so far doesn’t have any motivations yet because she hasn’t run into trouble regarding the Nazis. My questions for Marika are how will she run into the Nazis? And if she does run into them, will she end up in a concentration camp?

            The protagonists in my book club books are very different in the sense that one is Jewish by blood and lived in Hungary, and one is a Hitler youth who lived in Germany. But even though these two characters are extremely different, they have just a few things in common. Number one, they both speak multiple languages, the one language they have in common is German. Number two, they are both stubborn yet brave. Number three they both have families that they don’t always understand but still love. These two Characters are extraordinary in their own ways.

            The protagonist’s may be different but the ways the books are conveyed are very similar. The way both of the books look back on what has already happened is similar. But the difference is that The Boy Who Dared was written in 3^rd person and Marika was written in 1^st person. The characters are seeing the war from different perspectives but they are both watching the war unfold. These books are similar yet different in different ways.

Marika Blog # 1

The book I am reading is Marika by Andrea Cheng. The protagonists name is Maria Schnurmacher; her nickname is Marika. Marika is Jewish but was raised in the Roman Catholic Church. The book starts off with Maria making fake birth certificates for her and her family saying they were “Katolicas”, or Catholics. Then she talks about how one summer when she was six they went to their summer house in Vac, and they came home to find that her father had put up a wall that separated him from the rest of the family. Next her Nanny threw away Marika’s favorite doll “Maxi” because she said it was leaking to much saw dust. In the book Marika is confused as to why her family hates there last name. Her uncle tries to explain to her that it is Jewish, when they are Roman Catholic. Next Nanny Mitzi Neni gets fired because Marika’s father wants her to learn French and Mitzi Neni has already taught Marika German. So Apa, Marika’s Father hires Colette who speaks French. One day Marika’s father makes a surprise visit and leaves her some books and one turns out to be French, and it is about a boy and a girl. Colette reads the story and gets an idea. She sneaks out of the house to see her boyfriend when she gets caught by Marias brother and father. After that Colette was fired and sent back to France.

            The story takes place in Budapest, Hungary in the mid to late 1900’s. The protagonist is a young girl named Marika. She lives in an apartment with her mother and brother with her father Apa living next store. Her Uncle is also part of the story he gave her Maxi and helped forge the birth certificates. Currently in   the book, Marika is not in school but knows three languages and can write very well.

The problem in the book is that everyone in Marika’s family is Jewish besides her, her brother, her mother and father, and her uncle. The war hasn’t started yet but her father and uncle know it’s not good to be Jewish. Even though she was raised and baptized in the Catholic Church her last name traces her back to her Jewish heritage. This doesn’t help her family and her father knows it. I think that later in the book somehow the Nazis will find out that Marika and her family are Jewish.

The Boy Who Dared Inferences

The book I’m reading is called, The Boy Who Dared. It’s about a boy named Helmuth who lives in Germany. Right now he is in one of his flash backs, about how Hitler came into power and how the war started. These are two of my inferences that I think are very possible ideas that could happen in the upcoming text.

 My first inference is, Helmuth will become a German soldier and regret it. There were multiple instances where he was admired by Nazi soldiers, which made him want to be like them and fight for the fatherland. Helmuth is young when this is happening. One day a storm trooper talks to him and this is what the narrator says, “Someday he will fight for the fatherland.”(pg.16) This is a hint that later in the book he will somehow serve Hitler. This is one of a couple examples that lead you to the idea of Helmuth becoming a soldier. One of my questions is, why does he favor Hitler so much? What leads Helmuth to believe so much in Hitler at such a young age, besides him and his family always struggling for money?

My second inference is that Helmuth will start to reject Jews and his friends to become a soldier. Something that might instill the thought in Helmuth that Jews are bad is the fact that, his school shunned a Jewish kid and he went along with it. I think this quote really supports this; “We must defend ourselves against Jews and their worldwide plot to take over Germany.”(pg.29)  Also all around him, shops owned and run by Jews were being closed with signs posted by soldiers saying that, “Germans! Do not buy from Jews! World Jewry is out to destroy us!”(pg.31)and this is all because Hitler believes that Christianity is a basic principal and if you’re not Christian you shouldn’t be alive. These things could all make Helmuth reject Jews. The questions I have about this is, how important are Jews to Helmuth? Does he have Jewish friends? These are two questions that make me think about Helmuth and were his decisions will do to him.

      These I’m interested to find out if these inferences come true in the text. These ideas make me think. There both plausible because there are little ideas in the text that could lead to these ideas. I wonder if they will come true.

The Boy Who Dared: Blog entry # 1

The Boy Who Dared starts off with Helmuth on death row, in Berlin Germany. The book goes back and forth between him being 17 in a prison cell, to flash backs of his childhood in Germany; the book is also in third person. It starts with him in his cell worrying if he would be executed that day. His first childhood flashback is about him and his family living in Hamburg. He and his mother are walking in town with a bunch of Nazi soldiers and Helmuth being asked if he wanted to fight for the fatherland. Then he’s back in his prison cell, and another memory comes. Its 1932, He’s playing with his toy soldiers and talking to his two brothers, Hans and Gerhard. Then his grandparents start talking about Hitler and how Opa thinks Hitler’s a lunatic. Then his Prison Cell slot opens and food is pushed through, he thinks about how all of Germany was poor and how Adolf Hitler promised to make it better. It continues to go through a sequence, Hitler is elected chancellor and everyone’s happy, then the government building in Berlin is burned by communists, and Jews are discriminated against. The narrator is showing how the war unfolded from Helmuth’s point of view.

The protagonist in the book is Helmuth he is German and grew up in Hamburg Germany. When he is seventeen he is living in a Prison cell waiting to be executed. Helmuth grew up with his mother Mutti and his two older brothers. They all lived in a small flat next store to his Grandparents. His Grandparents names are, Opa and Oma. Opa doesn’t like Hitler as this quote comes to show, “Only if that lunatic Hitler comes to power.”(pg.9)On the other hand Oma is just scared of him because of all the power he seems to have. These are the Characters so far in the book.

The setting is in Hamburg and Berlin Germany in the early 1900’s. Helmuth’s Jail cell is another part of the setting because the narrator talks about the stench, and how this bucket is used as a toilet. He has memories of Hitler coming into power and taking over. Right now in the book there isn’t a distinct problem besides Helmuth being in Jail and Hitler being in power. Also i think a problem is that Helmuth is to immature to understand what Hitler is doing.