BOOK RESPONSE

I recently just picked up the graphic novel version of Heroes, and I found really interesting. In Heroes, Every character is important, they are not "Just another person." They are special. Pete can fly, but he doesn't know how people would react if he told them. The knowledge that he is important, and "meant for something... Bigger" boosts his self confidence in a huge way. He wants to be somebody big, lately he has been left behind standing alone in his brothers huge shadow of fame and importance. But what can he do? His brother is a congress man.

People often want to think of themselves as important somehow, somehow different than everyone else. It would be pretty crappy if you knew that you were nobody and couldn't do anything about it. But that's not true, even if your not destined to help safe the world like Pete, your still special. No one else deals with the same stuff you do everyday, there are certain things that we have all done, that would make others piss their pants if they had been in our position. I'm not sure if this is what really makes everyone important, and different, but it is definateley a part of it.

Pete has this thing about that he is meant for something bigger, than everyday life. I'm not sure but doesn't that sound kind of like destiny? When you are meant for something bigger, something you can't control, that's destiny. Destiny plays a large role in Heroes. Hiro, a japanese man who has just discovered his immense power to bend the time and space continuem teleports himself to New York and discovers a comic magazine that displays his future on its very pages. I think this is destiny, when your future turns out as predicted, it means that you were meant to do something, something that you have no control over.

If you have no control over your life, and what will happen to it and in it, then that is pretty scary? Yeah, even though it would be cool for me too know I was going to be a hero and save the world, it would also be scary to me. I like to be confident that I can do what I want to do, that I have a reasonable amount of control over what happens to me and what I do. But in most heroic stories, like heroes, it was the heroes destiny that makes them succeed. This means they had no power over it. If you have no power over your life, then it is not even your life, you are like a chess piece, or a person in the matrix, there is no point in living. If it is not your life to control.

Does having a destiny really mean that you don't have control over your life? In Heroes Hiro had a destiny, but he still had to work through problems, and use all his strength and mind power to get to where he wanted to go, and to do what he had to do. I think that maybe the characters in Heroes aren't being forced to do anything, they are being led along a guide lines that somehow is predicted what they will decide to do. Destiny isn't a stiff future that you must take, it is more of a loose guidelines that helps you decide right from wrong.

If destiny actually was something that you would end up doing no matter what, then it would suck, everyone would have a stiff position in society, from the moment they were born. Destiny is more like a little guy from the future that is telling you what you did, so that you can do it again. Destiny is hard to understand, I think that in the real world, destiny is more a guideline of what you would most likely do in a situation, based on your values.

SEVENTH SON

I am currently reading a book called seventh son. The book is really interesting because it is about the times when people were immigrating to the Americas when white people first found it. But there's a twist, this is about those times, but it's fictional, there's all sorts of folklore and magic in it. I think one reason that I find this so intriguing is because I already know the events of that time preiod so I have a good idea of some of the elements of the story. This makes it much easier for me to focus on understanding the more complicated parts of the story.

So yeah, it is a really good book, I am only about half way through it so I still am missing some parts of the story, but the issues and the plot is starting to come together for me now.