Bond, James Bond: A Man For All Times

So this is my final rough draft of my English Literature paper. I hope you enjoy it! And to the other students on the blogs, if you read my paper and comment I will read yours and comment. Thanks!

Fiction subgenre: Dystopian societies

With the tremendous popularity of The Hunger Games, there has been a rise in the interest in Dystopian literature: literature that portrays a bleak future society. I've recently read and discussed with my roommates books like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. Both of these involve government takeovers.

Fahrenheit 451 has a very interesting theme to me though. Bradbury suggests that the absence of literature will be our downfall. He paints a world where people have no interest in reading. They are more interested in TV walls. Suicide attempts are common. Firefighters do not put out fires - they start them to burn books. I started thinking about this and the importance of literature in our lives. Literature has the power to challenge our ideas and make us think more deeply about the problems in ourselves and society. Bradbury suggests that we will not have our freedoms taken from us, but will voluntarily give them up in favor of momentary happiness. I'm so grateful we live in a country where I can walk to the library and check out copies of the Bible, the Quran, and the Tanakh all at the same time.

What do you think of dystopian literature?

Patterns Followed, Patterns Compared

I am starting on my fourth Bond novel now and I have seen the movies let say around a hundred times. I think it is safe to say that I would be able to notice some sort of pattern by now. Recognizing this pattern will help me see the important points of the Bond texts and will help me develop a better paper for my literary analysis class. In the Bond films the pattern is pretty simple. In all of the films with the exception of the first film there is a pre-title sequence where either a quick action sequence is shown or something that teases the plot of the film (included here just for your enjoyment is the pre-title sequence from Goldfinger arguably the best of the Bond movies):

The opening chapters of the novels however are usually quite different. In traditional novel style the Bond books open up with a lot of exposition explaining characters and building a good background for the plot.

Fiction: Romance genre

I read A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks and I have to say, it was one of the few times when I thought the movie was better than the book. I was disappointed by Sparks's use of near-cliche stereotypes. Landon isn't just popular; in the book, he's the class president. He isn't working with Jamie on a play; he invites her to the school dance because he needs a date. Jamie doesn't just volunteer; she works in an orphanage. I can't tell you the last time I saw an orphanage in North Carolina, but okay.

What I liked about the movie was that you see Landon's transformation and realization of his potential without cringing. In the book, I couldn't stop cringing. It's full of high school drama and cliches. His foreshadowing makes the plot twists too obvious. Even the plot structure is strange. There is not much of a climax, and the book seems to go straight from rising action to falling action. Overall, it was a disappointment for me. The movie was a better, more modern adaptation with the basics of Sparks's story.