Can you repair a broken heart? January 22, 2010

                                                                

After reading this novel, I personally do not feel as if the characters really repaired any of the harm going on in the story. It seemed as if it was death after death and nothing was really getting resolved or fixed. There is so much damage and hurt done to the characters that nothing anyone could do or say could repair what they were feeling. Aunt Trudy leaving and moving to Vancouver, I believe was a good idea. She was having a hard time coping with her brothers death, and she had to leave behind what was haunting her everyday.I believe that the only true ‘repair’ in this novel is that Lisa finally finds out the mystery of her brothers disappearance. Lisa knows that her dear brother is dead and gone, though this is not what she wanted to find out, her just knowing that he was actually gone would help her later to move forward in her life with no questions or suspicions that her brother may still be alive.

Overall I believe this book was filled with so much damage, the majority of it could not be repaired.
– Rach

Coping

I think that most or maybe even all of the characters are coping terribly wrong with their problems. Alcohol and drug abuse is one of the main sources that the characters in this novel decide to ‘cope’ with their problems. Throughout the book Lisa goes through a ton of tragedy, and has to cope with more problems than anyone should have to go through at her age. After Uncle Micks death, her Grandmother (Ma-ma-oo) passing away, and her brother going missing, Lisa slowly looses her way in life, and turns to drinking, partying and doing drugs to try to take away the pain. Lisa is also a smoker, and tries to keep this from her parents, but eventually fails. After her brother goes missing, Lisa experiences two weird things I thought stood out to me the most. One being, that she sees a little red headed man sitting on her dresser, sometimes before she goes to bed. Lisa believes that when this man visits her that something bad is sure to happen. The second being, a word that Lisa is constantly reminded of and a word that she keeps hearing when she is conscious, sleeping, sober, and high. This word is La’es, which means ‘go down to the bottom of the ocean’. No matter how drunk or high she is, the pain never leaves her and gets worse everyday. Eventually Lisa changes her looks, cuts her hair off, and starts to hang out with Frank and his friends, the ‘bullies’ from school. When all of this changes, she drops out of school, moves to Vancouver where the partying starts. She slowly gives up hope that her brother will return home safe, and looses faith in herself and her life. What Lisa does not understand is that no matter how hard things are for you, there is always someone going through something worse, and she should never give up on herself, and someone who means so much to her.

After a childhood in a residential school, Aunt Trudy is left with the horrific memories of the abuse that was done to herself and Uncle Mick. To cope with these problems, Trudy tries to drink away her problems and becomes very physical towards the ones she loves. Along with the incident with Josh and the beer bottle, and pushing him down the stairs, Aunt Trudy says some very awful things to her daughter Tabitha as well. There is a time in the novel when Aunt Trudy says some stabbing words to her daughter when she is drunk in front of Lisa. Though Tab says nothing, and walks away subtlety, Lisa opens her mouth and calls her aunt a drunk, and points out that she should not be talking to her daughter that way. After arguing, Lisa comes over in the morning to find that Aunt Trudy has no memory of anything said the night before. She gets so drunk that she wakes up forgetting the night before.

Lastly, we have Uncle Mick. Staying in the same residential school as Trudy, Mick went through some very tough times as a child. Though he is scarred, he does a very good job at hiding it and bottles all of his feelings up inside. Though he has had a few rough times coping with himself, he has tried his best to move on with his life, and to forget about what was done to him.

 

Breaking Reactions

There were many characters who went through the injustice in the book together, but each character reacted to them in different ways.
Aunt Trudy and Uncle Mick were put in the same residential school together and were treated terribly with each other close by. I think that the fact that they had to go through such a horrible experience together, it would have built up a closer friendship between them, and it could have helped them stay alive and get through everything. Though they went through this together, Aunt Trudy and Uncle Mick have reacted differently towards life after this experience. Aunt Trudy is an alcoholic and smokes heavily to help cope with the memories that haunt her everyday. She has done many crazy things to people such as hitting Josh, her boyfriend, in the head with a beer bottle. After Uncle Mick’s death, Aunt Trudy and Josh fight about the possessions he has left behind. This fighting leads to Aunt Trudy throwing Josh down the stairs and breaking his leg. After Aunt Trudy finally gets her mind together and realizes what she has done, she picks up the phone and calls 911. She eventually leaves with Tab and moves to Vancouver.
Though Lisa and her immediate family were fortunate enough to not have to go to residential schools, they still have the stress of helping out, listening to, and dealing with the issues or problems Aunt Trudy and Uncle Mick are left with during the coping process. Lisa has a hard time coping with her surroundings and the life around her, and drops out of school. She moves to Vancouver and this is when the partying begins, along with drinking and boys. She goes about everything the wrong way, and makes her problems worse along the way.
– Rach 😛

Taking Back Yesterday

                                                     

The problems faced within the resedential schools, are beyond repair. No one can take back the sexual assult done to those innocent children. No one can take back the physical abuse, or the verbal abuse done towards the youth. The damage has already been done, and it will effect the First Nations People forever. The fact that they were treated any differently because of their religion, beleifs, or race, upsets me, but to know that they were treated so inhumanlike, disturbs me. To know that another human, such as myself could inflicked pain on another so heavily is beyond unbeleivable to me and it makes me disapointed in my own countries past.

As Kaprise says, reducing or cutting taxes doesn’t compare to the abuse they underwent and the government will never be able to make it up to the natives.

As Lisamarie dealt with her problems, drinking her days away and partying her nights away, she slowly began trying to clean up her act towards the end of the book. She tried to quit drinking but with a visit to Aunt Trudy’s house, failed to do so. But the fact that she tryed to do so, shows that she knows she isn’t handling things in the best ways and is aware that she has done something wrong. 

Lisa was also going through the problem of dealing with her gift of communicating with spirits. She see’s a little leprican/troll-like red haired man appear when someone is in danger, and after the deaths of her grandmother (Ma-ma-oo), Uncle Mick, and brother Jimmy has them appearing during times in her life. At first she think’s she is going insane and question’s whether she is dreaming or not, but towards the end of the novel begins coping with the fact that she has a gift.
– serena

A Better Way

                                                                 

                                                    “We need freedom from the problems that surround us.”

Each character coping with their problems in the novel Monkey Beach, had chose to deal with their pain in the wrong way. Drugs, Alcohol, and Violence are not the way to solve any of your problems no matter how severe they are, and therefore the characters just ‘dug them selves deeper.’ There problems worsened as Uncle Mick had a breakdown at Aunt Edith, Aunt Trudy got kicked out of the village, and Lisamarie almosts gets herself killed.

I think that if they all talked about there problems with one another they may have found a way to move on with their lives. I noticed that Uncle Mick kept all of his emotions bottled up inside and i thought that maybe with all of Aunt Trudys drinking and partying that the two of them should have talked about there experience and found a way to put it behind them. They could have found a better way to deal with it together, rather than alone thinking that no one could possibly understand the torture they went through.

dealing with the pain

                                                                            

“Sometimes you give up. That’s the way it is when your mourning.” (Ma-ma-oo,Robinson, P.290)

We all have our own unique ways of coping with the things that hurt in our lives. With me, I prefer listening to music and going on long walks.  The characters in Monkey Beach turn to very different alternatives such as abusing drugs and alcohol.

When Lisa’s grandfather (Ba-Ba-oo) was physically abusing her grandmother, Ma-ma-oo sent both Uncle Mick and Aunt Trudy to residential schools. As Tab states, “Mick and mom went, and it fucked them up.” (Robinson, P.254)

 As a result of the torture from the school, Uncle Mick became a ‘chain-smoker’ having one cigerette immediately after another to releive his stress.  It seemed to me that he held a lot of his grief inside and never really told any one how he really felt about his horrible experience. He felt that no one would or could come close to understanding what he went through. Holding how he felt in,  lead to a very dramatic outpour of emotions:

“What’s wrong?”
“Wrong, What’s right?”
“He’s gone crazy.” Uncle Geordie said.
“Crazy? I’m crazy? You look at your precious church. You look at what they did. You never went to a residential school. You can’t tell me what i fucking went through and what i didn’t.”
“I wasn’t telling you anything!” Aunt Edith said. “I was saying grace!”
“You don’t get it. You really don’t get it. You’re buying into a religion that thought the best way to was us white was to fucking torture children.”
(Robinson,P.109-110)

He mellowed up after this inncident but he should have talked to someone about his feeling’s and eventually he may have been able to move forward with his life.

Aunt Trudy took a worse road then Uncle Mick. She took to heavily drinking and partying. She figured she could drink her pain away but that clearly didn’t work as she was more miserable then she would ever have been if she had handled it a better way. The abuse she underwent in resedential school, not only effected her life but hurt everyone around her. She started dramatic attention-grabbing fights with Aunt Kate and pointlessly yet consistantly screamed and bossed Tab(itha) around. Tab understood that she was very drunk, and didn’t say anything to the horrible things said to her, but when Lisa snapped back at something rude said to Tab, Aunt Trudy called her a bad name but hadn’t remembered a thing the next day. To top all of that, she violently  attacked her ‘fiance’ Josh, smashing a beer bottle over his head, and pushing him down a set of stairs, therefore breaking his leg. This effected both Josh and Tabitha, as they were dismissed from the reserve.

Lisa Marie didn’t go through the horrible experience of a residential school, but the loss of who seemed to be three of the most important people in her life. Her Uncle Mick, grandmother (Ma-ma-oo) and her brother, Jimmy.

With all the emptiness in her life from her missing family members, she took to endless partying which included drug and alcohol abuse.  She consistantly smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol beverages with her poor choice of friends. A lot like Aunt Trudy she tried to drink her pain away but only made it continuesly worse. She ended up cutting all of her hair off as to what she called ‘a way of mourning’ and smoked a lot of marijuana. She did this all to forget, but remembering is an important way of coping. She should have realised her family wouldn’t have wanted her to take to these poor decisions, but to of wanted her to remember them throughout her life and live on, happy and sucessfully.

Ironic Isn’t It? January 21, 2010

“The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.”, Robert A. Heinlein said this 1978. He had written many books about sicence fiction. He was also know as “the dean of science fiction”.

If Lisa Marie had of heard these words maybe it would have been one of those things that just “clicks” in your mind and maybe it would have helped her a bit more when she discovered the fact that her brother had vanished, dissapeared and was not coming back becuase of some altercation with a “friend”.

This quote suits this book very well because if only Jimmy, Lisa Maries brother had know about the hatred that Josh had kept inside he would have saw it coming. The irony comes from love and trust, whether you trust some one more then you love them you are still never going to make it out alive becuase the pain and suffering you engage in engulfs you and in the end your stuck in a constant battle. Ofcourse you die eventually but it shouldn’t be at such a young age. Lisa Marie now has to suffer for the loss of her brother and the hatred she now holds for Josh, Aunt Trudy’s so called “fiance” .

– Taylor 🙂

Monkey Beach V.S Whirligig

 

Over the past two weeks, I have read two novels, one completely different than the other. Monkey Beach and whirligig. Two seperate stories, yet somehow relating. Both of which, have suffering, self discovery and forgiveness.

 

The suffering in Monkey Beach, was toward the natives and how they were treated by the government, as well as people of different religions. This pain affected everyone’s lives and will never be laid to rest. Whirligig however, had a different sort of suffering. While Brent’s attemmpt at suicide failed, death was in the air. A teenage girl, Lea, was struck by Brent’s runaway vehicle and was killed that very night. The pain and struggles that Lea’s family experienced was heartbreaking. Though the suffering in these books were different, death played a major role in each one. Lisamarie lost family members close to her, and friends of Lea, lost a loved one.

 

At an early age, Lisa marie had a gift. The kind of gift, that allowed her to talk to spirits. She had a difficult time accepting this and discovering the meaning of it all. As time went on, she began harnessing this power and was able to use it to her advantage. Now, she would listen to what the spirits were trying to warn her about, opposed to running scared and avoiding the signs of danger. By doing this, she learned more about herself and became comfortable with the spirit world. Brent on the other hand, had another gift. One that would spread to joy to people across the United States. He had the skill to build whirligigs. He would have never guessed, that he had the talent to put together a contraption as odd as a whirligig, and would never have known, if Lea’s mother hadn’t sent him on his journey. When he first set off on his expedition, Brent was at a roadblock in his life and he couldn’t imagine how his life could get any worse…but as his travels continued, he met new people and learned to appreciate life and what this world has to offer.  He becomes more aware of himself, as well as others and how to deal with the problems that are bound to come his way.

 

Without forgiveness, what would our world be like? It would be filled with grudges, hatrid and sadness. This is why forgiveness is so important in our everyday lives. Lisa Marie looses sight of what is important, as her life is spun in a different direction. She moves away, starts fresh and lives a life she never thought she would. In this case, it was a negative experience. When she returns home, she is forgiven for the mistakes she’d made while on her detour and learns to forgive others. This was a life changing experience to her benefit, as well as her family’s. In Whirligig, Brent sent an apologetic letter to Lea’s family, espressing his thoughts and hoping for the least bit of forgiveness in return. The letter was mailed back to him, with one new added feature. The stain of a cigarette being crushed onto the page. Brent assumed this meant that the forgiveness he had been praying form, would never come. On the other hand, Lea’s mother responded with a different approach. She was much more suttle, as she had accepted Lea’s death and was in the process of moving on. In exchange for forgiveness, Brent was asked to place four whirligigs in the United States, with some sort of representation of Lea on each one. He was desperate and agreed to the task. He completed his journey faster than expected and enjoyed himself along the way.  Lea’s mother forgave Brent for his actions and he forgave himself for giving up on life. He discovered that with forgivness, comes relief and with relief, comes happiness.            

 

-Kaprise

Restoration. Complete? January 19, 2010

 

    Was there Harm that really needed repairing?

 To be honest i really don’t think that there was much repairing in the book, let alone the fact there was harm.  There were some harsh things but I really don’t think that there was much harm as some people would like to think there is.  People are drunks and drug addicts but of course people make stupid mistakes liek running away but it doesn’t really change unless they decide to change on the inside and out.

    I think that the only way people could really restore their harm was by making it worse. Uncle Mick had night terrors about Cookie ( Cathy) his lover, and it led him to death. He wasn’t paying attention, so he got stuck in a fighing net, which led to the death of being eaten by seals.

     The only way Aunt Trudy learned how to be “normal” was to get kicked out of her own village and had no family left to stand by her after Uncle Mick passed, and she went on an even worse drunken adventure. Jimmy was missing, Ma-moo-oo and Uncle Mick, passed away and she felt like she had nothing left to live for, which was sort of true. She was a vicious drunk and couldn’t see that even her own “fiance” Josh was getting sick of her “freak outs”.

    Lisa.  Smoker. Delinquent? After her mother and father left, in search of her brother she was left at her Aunt Trudy’s. She got into drinking and smoking, just like everyone else in the village. She shortly discovered that jsut because other people do it, doesn’t mean she should. I think realizing that everything happens for a reason really helped her, and life goes on, you can’t stay stuck in the past. 

    I think that this book shows that the residental schools really messed the First Nations people up, and made them hate their  lives even more.  I think that even though it is a new age the government has alot of growing up to do.

– Taylor 🙂

The Land Of The Dead January 18, 2010

The harm the characters experienced in the novel, Monkey Beach, is far beyond repair. How can you put together the pieces of someone’s life when everything has been destroyed?

 

The natives had no way to defend themselves, therefore, they would be pushed around and not given the chance to prove themselves. Everyone deserves a chance and should not be stereotyped because of their colour or religion. The government failed to see this and forced the natives to live a life they never asked for. The blindness of the government, caused pain beyond belief to the people on the reserve and for this, they will never be entirely forgiven. Though the government agreed to free the natives of taxes in their communities, what does this tell us? Yes they know now that they made a mistake, but do they understand the consequences of their actions? Maybe, but do they comprehend the outcome of this injustice? NO. Treating them like they did was inhuman and the best thing they can think of is eliminating taxes?? The situation is ridiculous and should have been handled better.

 

Saying that this mess would take years and years of forgiveness, would be an understatment. The natives deserved better and we, as a nation, should now put our ancestors mistakes behind us and put this descrimination to an end.

 

-Kaprise

Is there really a point in coping? January 16, 2010

Copping isn’t really the point.

.

Residential Schools and The Coping? <– Check It Out.

I don’t think that anyone in this book is coping well with the events that happen to them and the people they are close to.  Lisa doesn’t cope well with her brother disappearing or her Uncle Mick and Grandmother passing away. She turns to drugs, alcohol and cutting a large chunk of her hair off  as a last resort and doesn’t pay attention to anyone around her. She feels like she has lost everything and has nothing left to live for, but in the end she was wrong people do care for her but she is to ignorant to see it.  While coping wtih her loses she also has to put up with the night terrors that bring a little red-haired man to sit on her dresser.  Lisa also hears the words ” ‘ La’es ‘ ” meaning  ‘go down to the bottom of the ocean’. Whether she is concious or not. These words haunt her day and night. No matter how high or drunk she gets the nightmares and flashbacks worsen. After her parents leave her to live with her Aunt Trudy and Tab, as they go in search of her brother Jimmy, she listens to tales Tab tells her and begins to ponder whether she is really worth living with or if they will ever find her brother.

Aunt Trudy as well doesn’t cope well with the things she has expierenced outside and inside of the residential schools. She was rapes and assaulted but no one doesn’t really seem to understand why she is a drunk and why she throws tantrums out of no where.  No one was there except Uncle Mick who she could confide in. When he passed she was heart broken not only becuase of how he died but because of the fact that she would have no one to speak to about her problems and flashbacks from the Residential School dilemmas. When Mick passed her alcohol obsession got worse and tore her family apart.

The people in Kitamaat ( Monkey Beach) all have their own way of coping, sure its normal but not in the ways they do it. Drinking, partying, smoking and running away from their probelms when they aren’t perfect isn’t the right thing to do because realistically nothings perfect and they just need to realize it, before things take an even more dramatic turn for the worse.

– Taylor 🙂

Are the characters coping well with their problems? January 15, 2010

I’m not sure that Lisa is coping well with the loss of her brother. She’s always having these nightmares that are seeming to worsen. They usually lead to her seeing the creepy little man who likes to sit on her dresser when she opens her eyes. La’es is one thing she keeps hearing, conscious or not. It means go down to the bottom of the ocean…maybe that’s where her dear brother Jimmy is. Drowned and dead, caught up somewhere like how Uncle Mick had been caught in the fishing net.

Aunt Trudy is still drinking heavily and I’m kind of waiting for her to drink to much and maybe drown in her own vomit or something. I’m also worried about the people around her, mainly Josh and Tab(atha). She is very violent when she is drunk and has minimal control of her actions. She could hurt them…again. She has already beaten Josh, broken a bottle over his head and finally he was pushed down a set of stairs and his leg was broken. Tab is always taking her mothers shit. She’s constantly yelling at her and in a way making fun of her so Tab feels really low. Tab could snap eventually because she just sits there and takes it. I think she should say something back or try to talk it out with her mother…even if she is drunk (which I’m sure is a very hard things to do: reason with a drunk)

 

Since Jimmy is still missing Lisa’s parents are still in a constant state of worry. By now I’m thinking he’s dead and possibly they are too. They just want their son back so they don’t have to worry about his being missing anymore.

I can’t even begin to imagine the torture they are going through.

I can’t imagine how it must feel to be drunk all the time, unaware of what your actions are.

I can’t imagine how it must be to be picked on by your own mother.

I can’t imagine how scary nightmares are when they repeat and say the same message over and over again.

I just can’t imagine.

La’es, la’es, la’es.

React or Run Away?

   Do you react or run away scared?

 

 

    There are many characters in the book that were involved in the issue of injustice.  Many of these characters went through terrible things at the residential schools and it is affecting them now as well. They throw many tantrums and have very serious problems that make them want to hurt their families even though they weren’t there and didn’t know what really happened unless they tell them.

    In the book Aunt Trudy had went to the residential school with Uncle Mick,  and they both went through some very tramatic events.  Aunt Trudy after being assaulted and screamed at, when she arrived back home she had turned into an alcoholic and throws very large tantrums which get her into alot of trouble with her children and the rest of the family.  In one of her drunken episodes she gets mad at Josh (her boyfriend )  for arguing with her over Uncle Micks trophy’s he left when he passed.  The drunken arguement got worse, and Aunt Trudy broke a beer bottle over Josh’s head and threw him down the stairs.  After a couple minutes she got her mind back together and calls 9-1-1 and he is taken to the hospital.  Aunt Trudy ruined things for her and her families life, she got evicted and she moved away from her family and friends in the village and moved to Vancouver.

 

    Uncle Mick had also went to the residential school and met a girl he fell in love with her name was Cookie (a nickname for Cathy). She knew that these schools weren’t right and she chose to follow the rules and in doing so she got kicked out of 3 Residential Schools.  At the age of fourteen she told one of the nuns

 ” ‘ You honkies want woemen to be like cookies, all sweet and dainty and easy to eat. But I’m fry bread you bitch, and I am proud of it. ‘ ”  (Robinson. 145.)

 Her brother Barry had nicknamed her Cookie one day and it stuck. Cookie had got sick of people telling her what to do and she broke up with Uncle Mick and later died.

    The First Nations people took a ride for the worst from 1900 – 1973, now that it has ended they are scared but no longer treated as badly.

 

– Taylor Whyte 🙂

In Search Of The Elusive Sasquatch

 

Drinking, partying, smoking, running away…do these seem like good solutions to deal with problems? No, but unfortunately these are the most common strategies the characters in Monkey Beach choose to use. What they fail to understand is that by coping with their problems in this manner, results in even more problems on top of thier original cocerns.

 

There are so many other options they could consider. Including talking to friends and family who are dealing with the same problems, that way, they would understand what they were going through and help them see that life goes on wether we want it to or not.

 

One solution Lisa used to cope with her uncle Mick’s death, was cutting a  large portion of her hair off. This helped her move on, though it may have been strange, it was a reasonable solution. No one was hurt and it made her feel relieved, so why not?

 

Everyone has thier own way of coping with loss and pain and this is completely normal. It just makes more sense to deal with it in a more mature way. Sure drinking may clear the mind and ease the pain for a few hours, but what happens after the fun is over? Nothing changes. Having a more suitable solution and sorting everything out in a more appropriate manner will help conquer the problem forever, rather than one night out.

 

-kaprise

How are the characters reacting to the issue of injustice?

 

Aunt Trudy pretty much broke down after being released from her prison like hold in a Canadian Residential school. She had been brutally abused, physically and mentally. She resorted to heavy drinking to forget all the bad things but it still hurts her to talk about it.

Uncle Mick was shot on one of the reserves. The woman he was having tea with had called the police on some Goons (Guardians of the Oglala Nation). They had been doing things she disagreed with and one day over enjoying a simple cup of tea they showed up and decided to shoot their guns off around them to scare her into silence.

Lisa’s Aunt Lisa also went to a residential school but not much was said on what her experiences were. It kind of leaves you to speculate on what happened.

Uncle Mick’s wife/girlfriend Cookie(Cathy) also went to a residential school. She fought against the system and dropped out of at least three. She yelled back at the nuns and told them she’d never be one of those perfect cookies like the high and fancy, well-mannered white girls. She said she was fry bread and she said she was proud of it.

“You honkies want women to be like cookies, all sweet and dainty and easy to eat. But I’m fry bread, you bitch, and I’m proud of it.” (Robinson, 145, 6-7)