Reading Response 10/27

            I absolutely love the short novel “Ghost” by Paul Auster, it left me with many wild imagination and it has an interesting main character, Blue who was hired by White to spy on Black. One thing that caught my eyes that Auster did was using color for names. I believe there’s a hidden symbolism behind this. For example Purple, a woman which Blue talks to in the bar to console his loneliness whenever she misses the Future Mrs. Blue(EX-Future Mrs. Blue now) is interesting, because NEXIUM, the Purple Pill, offers relief from heartburn where in this case Purple was being used by Blue to comfort his broken heart. Also the name Black was chosen because of the mystery, deception, and the unknown. Blue is the symbol for understanding, which is ironic because all Blue was doing throughout the novel was trying to understand Black and White and the whole situation.

            In the novel “Welcome to our Hillbrow“ by Phaswane Mpe , the narrator takes the reader to the crazy, dangerous neighborhood(portrayed by media) of Hillbrow located in Johannesburg in South Africa. In the first chapter Hillbrow: the Map the author kept repeating “Welcome to our Hillbrow…” or “There’s Hillbrow for you!” What I find the most interesting that the author did was the way the narration was made, the book is in a third person narrative point of view based on You, the readers are being placed in the story and the narrator is talking to you.

            Both novel intertwine in many ways, one thing that caught my eyes was the use of a certain location and bring many series of story in it. For example Auster told many stories because of the Brooklyn Bridge, this reminded Blue of his Father who’s age is Identical to the bridge, and the last time he stepped in the Bridge was with him. Then Blue’s thoughts transitioned to John Roebling whose name surprisingly has nothing to do with colors, he designed the bridge and died before its completion from gangrene with an ironic ferryboat accident where his son Washington continued his work. Blue’s thoughts again transitioned into his father and how he was a cop and wore a blue uniform, then his thoughts transitioned again to the skin accident where the boy’s father died in a skiing accident then later on found his father while skiing and he looked younger. In Mpe’s novel he relates a lot of historical events to what happened in the Soccer World Cup 1998, and in 1995 when Bafana Bafana defeats the Ivory Coast. Then it transitioned to the story of a man who died of strange illness that was suspected as AIDs that initiated a wide spread of Xenophobes.