In Night, Wiesel recounts some of the attrocites of the halocaust, which he had experianced first hand. At an early age he wanted his father to move from his home town of Sighet in Transylvania, but his father was resistant to move. The Jews of Sighet heared news of the war, but it never bothered them. They were out of German reach--or so they thought...

There are many terrible things depicted in this book, for the most part it is not too bad. There are some parts however, in which you might have to stop reading for a moment. That is, if you have the picturing mind that I do when I read. Overall this is a very sad story, and the fact that it is true makes it worse. Reading this will open the eyes of many, for they will see how bad the world can be.

I recommend reading this book. I read it for a class, but I would definatly read it on my own. 

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I've often wished I could meet up with a Reading Group. There are some books that deserve more than solitary reading and there are readers like me who would love to share the pleasure and the humour together and discuss the issues that remain after the book is closed.

This week I read a book recommended by a friend and I know if we still lived nearby we would definitely have taken a coffee break together for that very purpose. It was a good read, it was thought provoking and it was inspirational.

It is a novel, initially a moving story about Mack, and a tragic experience which left him drowning in sadness and empty of faith. Eventually he learns to walk on the water in a manner of speaking. If you have ever asked God "Why me?" or "Why her?" or attempted to help someone else who has asked these questions then you will know that there are no easy answers.

Wm Paul Young has written a novel in which life's hardest questions are gently woven into the fabric of the story as Mack begins to understand the mystery of a loving God who lets bad things happen to good people. In the process the nature of the Trinity is presented in a simple and profound way. However this is a book about relationship and not religion and it will change the way you think about God.

It reminded me a little of Pilgrim's Progress because it is about a man's journey towards spiritual maturity. Although it is a work of fiction it is obvious that the author is writing from his heart and sharing truths he has learned himself from a similar journey.

This book has left me challenged, comforted and inspired. I needed to read this at the end of what has been globally a very difficult year.

If you read it please come back to me with your views, I would love to hear them…

Lord of The Flies author, William Golding uses symbolism to portray humanity's problems in a different and not so clear way, making the reader think about the book more carefully and not just flick or skim through the pages. The use of Piggy's death in the novel was a necessity. It needed to occur to demonstrate the effects of uncivilized behavior in our modern world.

The boys land on the strange, exotic island when was has broken out and they are in threat of being killed. An atomic bomb has exploded. For their own protection, a group of boys were being flown over an island when their plane was shot down. Releasing the passenger tube, the plane explodes and most of the boys land safely on the island. The story then revolves around the way the boys organize themselves without any adult presence or intervention. Their behavior often reflects the behavior of adults in the real world. Including such behavior as:

• The battle for power
• Responsibilities and organization
• Prejudice
• The need to worship higher being
• Conformity to rules for safety

Piggy is a main character in the novel. He is portrayed as a fairly well mannered child using typical English school boy speech. He is incapable of performing the duties and tasks that the other boys perform due to his asthma. This makes him vulnerable as an easy target for ridicule. Jack Merridew, on the other hand, is an outspoken child who takes pride in his role as choir director; however, his pride and greed overtake his mind in the lust for power and competence against Ralph, the elected chief, and Piggy who think of great ideas and is a rationalist.

The main problems which contribute to Piggy's death commence early in the novel when Ralph is elected as chief. Jack becomes jealous as he thinks he is better than the rest and should be chief. It was the conch (a twisted long sort of shell that makes a deep sound when blown) that led to Ralph's leadership. The conch helps to make Ralph appear strongest, not necessarily physically but intellectually. The conch is a representation of authority and power. Ralph, Piggy, and Simon represent different aspects of a civilized world the boys have left behind. Jack is a bully who commands through brute force. The others follow blindly.

The hatred towards Ralph and Piggy is built up over the period of time, culminating with Piggy's death and then continuing until they are rescued by the sailor, who is a representative for the world. This hatred is based upon the lust for power and Piggy's use of common sense. Jack becomes jealous and envious of the two friends because he did no think of the idea for a fire. He did not see the great need to be rescued, thus Piggy's death is caused partly by jealousy. Jack gets most of the boys to accept his philosophy “who'll join my tribe and have fun?” as they reject the moral standards of civilization. This can be compared to city gangs of today who reject the common standards of civil society and act according to their own wills, desires, and passions.

Conformity plays a major role in the novel. In the beginning, Jack's boys conform to become a choir, Jack being the choir director. When Jack is given the responsibility of finding food, the choir again conforms to follow Jack and they become hunters. This form of conformity becomes a threat to Piggy and Ralph as the hunters are prepared to do anything that Jack asks of them. They become savages and thus through their conformity and not having any individuality, they kill Simon and Piggy.

Jacks lust for power and leadership is the cause of separation between the groups of boys. This symbolizes the establishment between two opposing parties, one representing a good cause and the other evil. In this instance, Ralph, Piggy and Samneric (Sam & Eric-twins) seeing the need to keep the fire alight to be rescued; Jack and the other boys seeking more for fun, adventure and hunting. Thus Jack, using fear, is able to control the boy's minds through deception, against Piggy. This fear which is created mainly by the thought of “the beast” Jack is capable of establishing a link between the boys natural instincts to act upon their own will and not to act upon a fear of something or someone. This fear is created among themselves and the "beast" is a symbol of themselves and man. Taking into account the things which man has done, especially the new war which has put them in the situation in which they are now. Jack uses this fear to his own advantage. Piggy in a desperate situation is murdered brutally by a falling boulder, unleashed by jack's boys from the top of a cliff. This demonstrates clearly, the hatred Jack has towards Piggy.

Piggy representing a thinker and not a doer in life's society, is noticed by Jack to be a threat and thus seeking vengeance to get his own way, Jack set up a night raid on Piggy and Ralph. The aim, to steal Piggy's glasses. Their goal to steal the glasses is successful and in a vain and foolish attempt to get his glasses back, Ralph and Piggy find themselves in an awkward situation. What starts out to be a pleasant approach soon turns into a tragic death. As Piggy is struck by the falling rock, the conch is smashed into many pieces. This demonstrates that all hope of civilized authority and order being returned to the island has been destroyed, shattered and left to blow in the wind.

Upon reading the novel as both an adventure story and as a perspective on humanity's actions and problems, we come to the conclusion that Piggy's death is indeed of great importance and significance to the novel and is the unique symbolic outcome of man's own faults and difficulties. We can see that the death of Piggy was brought about by many evil problems prevalent in our world today, including pride, conformity, hatred and selfish intent.

Boyd's book calls this mode of thinking the "blueprint" model, and finds it raises more questions than it answers. He proposes instead his "warfare" model, in which free will has a valid place. He believes his view is closer to the way the early Church thought, a view that was pushed aside by Augustine and later writers.

He points out firstly that if our view of God is inconsistent with God's ultimate revelation of himself in Jesus Christ, then it's a false view. Jesus spent his life fighting evil; a God who incorporates evil into his "plan" for our lives, is a different God entirely.

Boyd's warfare model takes into account all the variables of our lives. Our world has an infinite number of laws, and these impinge on us. God made it this way; He can't undo His laws on a whim; we must be able to rely on the basic stability of the world.

God's creation is stable but He still intervenes in it - Jesus is the prime example of intervention. However He can't shift creation around at our request - other people may be asking for something entirely different! Mix up five billion people who all think they're the centre of human existence, and you get huge complexity. Neither can He change the will of people in a moment, though through His Spirit He draws them, influences them. He also has the unseen spiritual world to deal with.

God has given us free will, (otherwise how could we love Him in any true sense?) but the unseen spirit world, both angelic and demonic, also has freedom to work. Boyd is very strong on his readers understanding the reality of the spiritual realm, where much of the angelic host is in rebellion against God and causes havoc. We ignore this at our peril. Westerners tend to put the spiritual realm aside, blaming humanity's propensity for evil, but Boyd shows there's more than that.

It's hardly surprising, then, that we can't always understand why our prayers aren't answered, why accidents happen, why certain people struggle throughout their lives when others seem not to. Boyd has great concerns about people who profess to know why something bad happened, or why God didn't answer a particular prayer.

If this seems to make prayer more complex than less, it does. However, it also gives us hope that when particular prayers aren't answered, it isn't necessarily our fault, either because we didn't pray enough, or because someone didn't have enough faith. I found that Boyd's arguments for his warfare worldview actually made me more willing to pray. Perhaps for the first time, I was more aware of the complexity behind answering any prayer, and the need to persist in prayer to break through the variables that may be hindering it.

Boyd is very concerned to make sure we understand prayer is of absolute importance, both in regard to our relationship with God, and in seeing things change, but he is realistic as to how much they can change. Some prayers won't be answered, because God cannot change something that's against his will. Some prayers won't be answered because God allows Satan, for a time, to work - such as in Jesus' death on the cross, or Paul's thorn in the flesh. Some prayers will take time to be answered because other things have to change first - people's hearts, for instance - or because there is a spiritual element that needs to be overcome. He quotes the Daniel story more than once, where the angel informed him that his prayer had been answered, but was delayed for three weeks.

In the last chapters he spends some time dealing with the verses that appear to argue for predestination, and deals with them well. I thoroughly enjoyed this book for its good sense, and its willingness to admit we don't know everything!

Published by IVP, 2003 - $27.95

There are plenty of other books out there that contain witchcraft and magic in them, yet religious leaders don't attack them. Plenty of our fairy tales contain mentioning of magic, but those are a perfectly acceptable thing to read to our children. Most of the fairy tales that contain magic are aimed at a much younger demographic than those of the Harry Potter series. If we take the same reasoning that we take with Harry Potter, than we should all get together and have a good old fashion book burning and try to undue the damage that has already been done.

When it comes to the issue of Harry Potter and Satan using them to draw young kids into witchcraft and away from the Lord, it makes me want to hurt myself since the whole idea is riddled with fallacies. The “witchcraft” in Harry Potter is completely different from that of real witchcraft or Wicca. Many followers of Wicca itself denounced Harry Potter since it gives people a false portrayal of what it really it is. Anyone who compares the witchcraft in Harry Potter to Wicca. is either functionally retarded, or knows nothing about the book series at all except that is contains magic and is popular.

That brings me to my next point, Harry Potter's popularity. I think that's one of its main reason it's been attacked by religion and religious leaders. Religion has always condemned what's popular. Look at rock and role, people thought it was the end of our youth. Same goes for comic books, radio, and TV. The church has always feared what's new. Its always had an opinion on what popular and new, even it doesn't concern them in the least bit.

Many people will defend Harry Potter with the morals and good teachings it possesses If you've even. Some people however, twist this defense into an offense. The people who do this have it ingrained into their very soul that Harry Potter will give birth to the end of the world and inspire the some young kid to eventually become the anti-Christ. They say Satan puts this small grain of truth and morality in it in order to deceive us even further. Honestly, if these people weren't condemning Harry Potter, they would be condemning something else, these people are just bigots.

There are plenty of other books out there that contain witchcraft and magic in them, yet religious leaders don't attack them. Plenty of our fairy tales contain mentioning of magic, but those are a perfectly acceptable thing to read to our children. Most of the fairy tales that contain magic are aimed at a much younger demographic than those of the Harry Potter series. If we take the same reasoning that we take with Harry Potter, than we should all get together and have a good old fashion book burning and try to undue the damage that has already been done.

What really makes me sick about the people who have nothing better to do than to condemn Harry Potter, is that they are hypocritical. They condemn Harry Potter because it contains Harry Potter and turns the morals and principals it teaches into seeds of the devil's deceit. Yet they praise Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia because of their Christian symbolism. If you applied the same reasoning to these series the one they do to Harry Potter, then we ought to build a time machine, go back and time, and stone Tolkien and Lewis for such blasphemy. Because following this logic, they are even worse. They dare to mix Christianity with witchcraft and sorcery! Hypocrites I say!

Most of the arguments people present as to why Harry Potter is wrong and evil are either stupid, full of bias, or full hypocrisy. So we should either start concerning ourselves with something more important than warding of the so called evils of Harry Potter, or get to work on a time machine.

This view is that no matter how many chances humanity gets, humanity will always revert back to old sinful ways, even when the potential of goodness is present. This says a lot about humanity, particularly that humanity will always destroy itself and its surroundings (nature even?), even when given a second chance.

All that remains for Dr. Heidegger are the “dead subjects” from past experiments, possibly including his own wife. These events may refer to the precious nature of the one life humanity gets to live, the one that is sometimes destroyed by our “experiments.” Even so, the drive of curiosity mixed with the ignorance of our past will lead to humanities ultimate destruction.

Visual differences made acceptance even less accessible. To have an extra finger or toe must have been looked on as being very odd in the 1800's because it was uncommon. People like Barnum traveled the world in search of human anomalies for his circus acts. Even today seeing a person with an extra digit is unusual but it should not characterize the person as being strange.

What is enjoyable about the book is that it can be considered to be an extension of what might happen if there was a nuclear catastrophe and how life might change. One sees how life gets simpler and that older dwellings were broken down and used to create homes that were more like community centers. This might very well be the scenario given the lack of proper building materials should an actual nuclear war occur.

The reader learns about how puritan David's grandfather and father are and how his uncle would have him promise not to talk about the ability to communicate without talking. We learned about his friend's mother who also asked him to promise not to talk about Sophie's "mutated" feet. One gets the message that the boy is going to be more at odds with the traditional way of thinking that he inherited because of his acceptance of "mutated" people and how he can communicate differently with them.

Is David like any other normal boy wanting to know what the real difference is between being with someone who has an extra toe and who doesn't? As his experiences with his world widen, he meets other humans like one from the Fringes who looked like his dad. But this person had long spindly legs, which was more visible than just seeing an extra toe. One wonders what David must think about his dad getting pale when spotting his double.

Would this have been a twin his who was separated from him when humans mutated and was then forced to live on the outskirts of their civilization? This is a question that one can ask when thinking about how people migrated in the story after a nuclear holocaust and one can only imagine that David knew very little about this. At the same time given the way he submits to his father's ridicule, we can only guess that David is not going to suggest any relationship his family might have with "mutant" human who knew his father's name.

All David knew was through his family; about the stories they passed down that people had somehow mutated and lived on the other bank. The bank symbolized then the margin of accepted human society in the future. As the story progresses the reader finds out about how David lives and how his world became a centre that would be used to combat the invasive forces of the people from the fringes.

I think that lord of the flies is a microcosm of the world in that wars were started by people who were willing to do anything for power and they are the people like jack. But I also think that it is a microcosm of the Garden of Eden because they are civilized at first and even roger doesn't try to hurt other people. Then the beast, a representation of the devil, comes in the equation and everything starts to get hectic until Simon walks up the mountain and finds out that the beast doesn't really exist and goes to tell every body else and gets killed.

In the morning when they all deny Simons death you know that the innocent little boys playing games that you start with have turned in to the very thing they were trying to hide from and kill as the beast. In all I think the lord of the flies is more then just an adventure novel but a microcosm of human nature.

The dehumanizing treatment slaves got was physically exhausting and often very painful. Frederick Douglass wrote about many events when the dire images formed the mind of the reader make the book very challenging to read. A particularly harsh vivid image comes to mind when on page 52, the torture and mistreatment of a slave-woman is displayed with these words: “He made her get upon the stool and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his internal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes… red blood… came dripping to the floor.” The slave-owners did not get as much physical pain as they imposed upon the slaves to try to make them comply the orders of a supposed superior race. History shows that the slaves tried to fight back violently only found death. All this graphic pain and evil is depressing and even embarrassing, but a much deeper and complicated pain and evil was inflicted directly in the souls of the participants.

Most people would rather have corporal damage rather than mental and emotional. The psychological harm that slavery caused took its toll on slave-owners almost as much as slaves. Slave-owners who understood freedom and felt empathy towards the slaves were also corrupted. The readers can presence how the monster of slavery itself wrecked families by intimating that the thought of a group's dominance is an ethical belief. Douglass is able to show this devastating feature on page 81 when he writes “ My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by someone else.” Husbands dominating wives is a clear demonstration of how slavery licensed certain people to command others. In addition, the inferiority complex that some slaves were left with can be attributed to this home wrecking devil. Master had their slaves trained by force to act in a more convenient way for them, they would accuse slaves of misbehaving and punish them “To all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never a word.” (Pg. 60-61) This way of raising the slaves allowed their owners to keep them insecure and ignorant so that they would not know how to get out of that horrible deep hole and it had an impact that still lasts until today.

Nowadays, African Americans hold the whole issue of slavery in their favor and even grandchildren of slaves are getting capital that is supposed to somehow repair what the government did to their ancestors. The problem with that system is that it is teaching a race that slavery can be “repaired” which sounds completely incoherent. Slavery has not ended and it is seen in this country everyday with exploitation of people who their bosses even dare to call workers. An evil so big can only be fought with education and knowledge like Frederick Douglass decided to do. Besides showing how evil slavery is, he presents a possible solution to an issue of racism and cruelty.

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , proves that the system of slavery imposes the most evil power into humans, leaving them with a frightening apathy towards the “inferior” races. Not only did slavery make slave-owners be evil by beating slaves but it also destroyed homes and damaged the souls of all who participated in it. Frederick Douglass wrote “I was broken in body, soul and spirit.” On page 105, showing how the material is not all, and there are many ways to get hurt. The long lasting impacts of slavery are seen today even though Douglass suggested a good way to get rid of it. Therefore no matter where, this narrative should always be present in one's mind, to remember what the world once was and not allow it to ever go back.