Thursday, October 25, 2007

outside reading final

Running with Scissors

You can’t let people get you down. If Augusten Burroughs would’ve let people get him down I don’t think he would have made it through life as well as he did. Augusten wanted to tell people that sometimes life and people suck. But if you have a good outlook and don’t let things get you down it wont be that bad.
Not letting things get you down is important and Augusten shows this in this quote, “I walked off to my room, where I selected an outfit for school and carefully arranged it on hangers at the front of the closet. I would wear my favorite polyester tan pants and a blue shirt with the vest cleverly sewn on. If only I had a pair of platform shoes my outfit would be complete. Still, knowing my clothes were ready gave me a sense of calm. I could control the sharpness of the crease in my double knit slacks, even if I couldn’t stop my mother from hurling the Christmas tree off the porch like she did one winter. I could polish my 14k gold-plated signet ring with a Q-tip until the gold plating wore off even if I couldn’t stop my parents from throwing John Updike novels at each other’s heads.” (19) He says this right after his mom and dad get in a huge fight. He doesn’t let his parents fighting get him down, he just goes off and does what he loves.
Augusten is forced to live with his moms shrink for while and he uses imagery to describe how terrible this house is, “We got out of the car and I shielded my eyes from the sun as I scanned the house. The pink paint was peeling off, exposing veins and patches of bare wood. All the windows lacked shutters and were covered with thick plastic, making it impossible to see inside. And the lawn-at least what was once a lawn-was nothing more than firmly packed earth that had the look of heavy foot traffic. Parked crooked in the driveway with the nose touching the corner of the house was an old, gray Buick Skylark. It was missing all its hubcaps.” (39-40) When he describes the inside of the house it’s just as bad. But once again he just doesn’t let anything get him down and he makes it trough the week he has to live there.
One time Augusten did let his mom get to him, but he channeled his anger very well and he and his friend Natalie make a hole in the kitchen ceiling because Augusten said “I need high ceilings”. So him and Natalie took down the chandelier and started hacking at the ceiling. It was humorous and after Augusten was no longer angry and him and Natalie laughed there problems away.
In conclusion Running with Scissors was a very good book with a great message, don’t let people get u down and u should be just fine. Overall I didn’t really like this assignment but I’m glad I read this book.

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