Miles, you have good questions! Value them by writing them down in your book or here. Asking them in class is always appreciated by your teachers. Then you are sparkplug for class discussion.
I wonder why all units were called back to base there must be a very big emergency that will be a big deal through out the story. I imagine them rushing them back to give them very important information.
Why are they going to war and who against. pg 90- They are going to war against the Chups who are lead by Khattam- shud. They are doing this because the Chups kidnapped batcheat and they want save the ocean from poisons that are spreading rapidly.
How did Princess Batcheat put herself into a situation where she'd be kidnapped?
How are the two sides of the moon different? (Chups on one side, Gups on the other)
What's between the two sides of the moon?
The chups side is a "perpetual night" with never ending darkness or night.
On the gup side it is constantly bright and sunny.
How are the two wolrds polarized? Both the two peoples have totally different views on life and on how to live it.
How did Rushdie's experience of being silenced by Muslim extremists get incorporated into this book?
How did the Satanic Verses get him into trouble? Is he Muslim himself?
What does blasphemy mean? Was the Satanic Verses playful like this book?
Is Khattam-Shud like Osama Bin Laden?
Chapter 9 -- The Dark Ship:
Is Haroun going to face the Chups, especially Khattam-shud?
Isn't he the big one? A shadow-self, can be in two places at once? That's so crazy.
Rushdie has a British accent. Did Salman Rushdie live somewhere else? Great question -- he was born in Bombay (British India), went to college in England, moved to Pakistan, then back to England.
My Q: Why does Haroun want to help? Miles: He wants to help his father get his story-telling powers back?
Why does he think he can do something about it?
Miles: Why does Khattam-Shud, and the Chups, want to silence stories? They can't talk and the Chups don't. Mudra in his culture aren't allowed to talk? What does he do instead of talking? He has these "crazy hand motions" that communicate with Haroun's father, who interprets and translates them. He uses hand gestures because he only whispers and you can barely understand him. It would keep them knowing the good of stories, and how they help their awareness.
In Rushdie's book, Satanic Verses, I feel he may have specified what groups of people he thought may be too extreme, like Muslims. Obviously this outraged all extreme muslims and they were demanded to kill Rushdie on sight if they got the chance. Due to everything he went through because of this book, I feel he wrote something that was not referring to a certain race, religion, or nationality, but I feel like he was talking about how being too extreme just cause you think something is wrong can go bad and very far. Like how just because the Chup leader does not like stories, he eliminates talking for his whole people.
We edited the above paragraph to better appreciate your ideas, to experience them without distractions. We fixed up spelling, punctuation (commas), word usage (specific on --> specified), the capitalization of book titles, religions, the pronoun I, sp homonyms: cite/sight, to/too,two] Miles: "I feel like I'm constantly losing my place" when I move from the paper copy to digital copy. Sometimes I put my finger on the page." (Another pointer would work, too. Doing editing with Google Docs might help, too, especially if I or your teacher[s] highlighted errors in red.) "Editing is just boring. I'd rather be doing something else, something active." Hmm, you favor books that have a lot of action. Do you like this book? Miles: "I'm kind of enjoying this book." Suggestion: find connections to real life, wikipedia, asking questions in the book, with me, with your teachers, in class, that will make it an active experience, being an active reader.
Questions on Friday, 8/13:
How could the Chupwalas on the dark ship be "detached shadows" and not people?
I like how they "switch on the darkness"!
While Rushdie was writing satanic verses he blatantly talked about the worlds people who were way to extreme, for instance muslims. Once he was being hunted for multiple years by all extreme muslims he realized that he would have to hide it when he wrote about extremists in his stories. That is why in Haroun and the Sea of Stories no paticular religion or governemt is mentioned, just the chups and the gups. When he does this he can still express himself about when he thinks of extremist but does not get him into trouble at the same time.