Summer Reading

The book I chose for the summer reading assignment was a slightly abridged version of The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I found it to be an excellent book, and it is the primary reason that I have bought several more of Solzhenitsyn’s works that I plan to read this year. I greatly enjoyed the authors writing style, and it was a very interesting and, at times frightening and shocking, read.

First, some background on the author and book. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a soldier in the Soviet Red Army before he was sent to the Gulag concentration camp system for ten years for expressing anti-Stalin sentiments in a letter to a friend. After his release, he wrote several books about the Gulag system and his experiences in it, including The Gulag Archipelago, In the First Circle, and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. He was eventually exiled from the U.S.S.R. and lived in the United States before returning to Russia after the break up of the Soviet Union. The Gulag Archipelago is a three volume set of books that takes the reader through Stalin’s concentration camp system, describing all aspects of the prisons from the guards, prisoners(or zeks as they are referred to in the book), transportation, types of camps, food, and so on.

Solzhenitsyn is an amazing author. His writing style is fairly easy to read and he is capable of conveying so much feeling and emotion through his writing while still being incredibly informative. He also has this way of describing the horrible events that would happen to a prisoner leading up to and in the Gulag system that gets across how terrible it was, while still making the reader want to continue with the book, even as the conditions and tortures grow worse throughout. This book can at times be depressing and frightening; Solzhenitsyn does not skirt around or sanitize what happened in the concentration camps at all. He describes in detail the different methods of physical and psychological torture and how every facet of camp life was designed to break prisoners. It is frightening to realize that people were and are capable of doing such horrible things to others.

I found the book to contain tons of interesting information and connections. I learned a great deal about the Gulag prison system and was able to connect the information in the book to what I’ve learned from school, other books, and my trip. In addition to writing about the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn also slips in some information about Tsarist Russia and older Russian history, which often connects to the events in The Gulag Archipelago in some way. Often he compares the leniency of Tsarist prisons to the Gulag system, saying that only a few thousand at most were executed in the reign of the most brutal tzars, while millions died every year in the Gulag.

One problem that someone reading this book might have is understanding some of the references the author makes. Solzhenitsyn occasionally refers to events in Russia’s history, and although some of these events are explained, it is helpful to have at least a basic knowledge of Russian history before reading this book. This would help the reader full comprehend and enjoy it. Other than this, The Gulag Archipelago is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it, especially to those who have taken Russian History.

Is Google Making Us Stupid

I found this article to be interesting, but on the whole, I don’t agree with what the author is saying. The idea that technology can somewhat alter the way we operate and think makes sense to me, but I don’t think it does to the extent that the Nicholas Carr, the author, seems to believe it does.

Carr’s assertion that the Net is at fault for his decreasing “capacity for concentration and contemplation” is, in my opinion, not backed up well enough. As he says in the article, there is no scientific results that back this up and in my personal experience, use of the Internet does not, at least significantly, affect a persons ability to concentrate and contemplate. I use the Internet every day for various purposes, and I don’t feel my ability to concentrate and comprehend while reading has been reduced.

Another problem I had with article was the assumption that the change that is cause by the Internet will be a bad change. Carr gives several examples, including writing and Gutenberg’s printing press, of technology that was predicted to have negative effects, but which actually turned out to be very useful and not as bad as initially thought. These new forms of technology did have some negative side effects, but the positives outweighed the negatives. History often repeats itself, and I expect that this trend of largely positive change from new tech will continue with the Internet; the positive aspects that we take on from it will outweigh the negative effects it might have.

Skunk Dreams

When I started reading the intro of Skunk Dreams, I really did not quite understand what this reading would be about; the introduction didn’t give much indication on the topic of the essay. After getting going on it, I started to bring together all the separate parts of the essay and see the connections between them. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, both because of the Louise Erdrich’s writing style and because of the topics discussed.

While reading this essay, I couldn’t help but think of the film The Matrix. Many of ideas that Erdrich mentions throughout this essay that involve dreams and reality are similar to the ideas of dreams and reality in the Matrix. One quote that she used from David H. Lund particularly stood out to me: “It is, of course, just an image body, but it serves as a perfectly good body for the dream experience. I regard it as mine, I act on the dream environment by means of it, and it constitutes the center of the perceptual world of my dream.” Essentially the same situation is occurring in the Matrix.

A question I had after reading this and thinking through it a bit was: If in a dream we accept our dream body as real and as our own, then how do we know that we aren’t also part of a dream? We accept our body as real and our own, just like we do with our dream body, so how do we know that this isn’t a dream. Kind of a weird idea, and I don’t believe that to be the case, but it’s an interesting thought.

Anyway, moving on, the author’s writing style is another major factor why I enjoyed reading this article so much. Her use of creative and vivid descriptions to show the reader how she experienced something or how she thought or felt, instead of just telling them what happened, made it much easier to get an idea of what she was experiencing. Her description of skunk spray especially stood out to me. She goes into great detail, saying that it is not a “…mere smell. It is more on the order of a reality-enhancing experience.” and then giving further description of what the “reality-enhancing experience” is like. She also did an excellent job of tying the very different, disparate stories and ideas that make up this essay together into an captivating and fun read.

Talk of the Town

I enjoyed reading both John Updike’s and Susan Songtag’s articles. They are both fairly well written, although at times it can be difficult to completely understand them. The topic of both is the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center on 9/11, but that is where the similarity ends. Each author takes a different view of the attacks, and a much different view of the cause and effects of them.

To me, Updike seems to be much more optimistic and positive in his article, or as much as one can be when writing about the attacks, than Songtag was in hers. He ends his article on a positive note, describing New York as beautiful despite the damage done by the attacks. He also devotes a paragraph to talking about freedom and how it is worth fighting for and that the attacks were part of the “risk” that is the “price of freedom.”

Songtag has a much different view from this. Her article is actually criticism of that way of thinking after the attacks. She asks, “Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower…” She clearly doesn’t view the attacks as the “price of freedom.” She sees them as a reaction to the United States’ actions and policies, not because we are a “free country.”

I personally agree with most of what Songtag has to say. The terrorist attacks were not against “civilization” or “liberty” or anything like that. They were a result of the actions of the United States in the Middle East, and the failure of U.S. intelligence to uncover them before they happened. However, I don’t agree with her that it was a bad thing that politicians from different groups appeared to work together with little or no argument after the attacks. As she says, argument and disagreement are important parts of a democracy, but in times of crisis like the 9/11 attacks, I believe a show of national and political unity would be better to show the world and the people of the United States than arguments between politicians on what to do next.

About Me

Hello, my name is Jacob Aehl, and I am a student at McFarland High School. It’s kind of difficult to completely describe yourself in a short essay, but I’ll do my best.

First, I’m a different person, or at least I’d like to think I am. I can’t really describe why I feel that I am, I just do.

I greatly enjoy listening to and playing music, although I wish I was better at the latter. I currently play saxophone and bass guitar, and I used to be able to play violin. Genre-wise, I usually enjoy listening to all types of music, although I do have my favorites. My favorite artists at this time are Green Day, Michael Buble, a Russian Orthodox choir, and Nathan Angelo.

Some other interests I have are reading, playing football(real football, not American football), painting and model building, Academic Decathlon, running, studying history, studying Russian, and spending time with friends. I have many more interests, but listing them all would take a long time and would also make this essay much longer than it needs to be. I enjoy reading history related material and science fiction. A couple of books I’ve read recently that I’ve enjoyed are The Gulag Archipelago and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, both by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

After high school, I plan on going to college, hopefully at the UW Madison. At college I am going to study Eastern European/Russian history and culture, and continue to study the Russian language. During and after college I eventually plan on re-visiting Russia and living there for at least a year, probably longer.