Final Blogging Assessment

Short Quote

In the Book Thief a quote from my previous blog, "Most Important Quote of the Chapter", was: "There were the erased pages of Mein Kampf, gagging, suffocating under the paint as they turned." (Zusak 499 of 1178)

Hitler burned books of Jewish content and replaced them with books such as Mein Kampf, whose purpose is to instill hate for Jews in the German people. Then Max Vandenburg, the Jewish refugee in a little German girl's house paints them over with words used to tell a story to her, everything opposite of Hitler's intentions. Zusak conveys this idea by personifying the pages of the book using such powerful words as "gagging" and "suffocating". It seizes the reader's attention; there is no way the reader can skim over Zusak's message. 

My Voice as a Writer

From my post, "Most Important Quote of the Chapter," I wrote,

"And because Max is Jewish and Liesel was German, Max believed that instead of giving the book to the book worm, Liesel, he would instead influence her with Max's Jewish life, which is something Hitler would be 'gagging' over. " 

Here, I put "gagging" in quotes to show an allusion to the highlighted quote in my blog post. I tie  together my argument with the quote to show how Hitler would have reacted if he knew what Max had done to his "masterpiece". 

"This is a powerful video on how words change people's view of the world. 

There are entire corporations in the world based on words and their impact. "

In the same post, my diction is casual which creates a conversational tone, inviting my reader to share my opinion. And although I utilized casual diction, I was still able to present a powerful message without detracting from it. 

Videos Can Show the Power of Words

In my post, "Most Important Quote of the Chapter," I embedded a viral video (with over 19 million hits) which was short, keeping the reader’s attention, and closely tied to my topic on the power of words. Besides my link, which lead to another website on the value of words, the use of technology, such as videos and pictures, help the reader comprehend ideas in different ways that give people a break from the long paragraphs, and is similar to visual evidence that help support a position or view. In this case, my video was about how changing words on a sign could help people donate more and that, in turn, benefited those who needed it. I wanted to tie that with how Hitler used words to instill hate while Liesel and Max Vandenburg used them in the opposite way, showing how it could be a double-edged sword.