Simone

Vestibular - refers to your sense of balance. Your sense organs that tells you which way is up and which ways your head is accelerating is the [|semicircular canals]. They are closely related to your hearing. "He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull created out their reckonings." (15)
 * Pages 1 - 40 Vocabulary **

"He's been struck by lightning. Can't we help help? Papa  No. We can't help him.  The boy kept pulling at his coat. Papa? he said.  Stop it.  Can't we help him Papa?  No. We can't help him. There's nothing to be done for him. (50)" I connected to this part of the book because there have been times in my life when ive seen homeless disabled people walking or sitting along the street begging for money or food, and I always feel like I have to give them money because I don't know how I would survive or have the drive to survive if I was homeless.
 * Pages 41-89 Connections**

"In the night a stormbroke in the mountains above them and came cannonading downcountry cracking and booming and the stark gray would appeared again out of the night in the shrouded flare of the lightnight. The boy clung to him." (48) I connected this to my life when i was smaller because I was, and still am very afraid of thunderstorms. Especially when their is a lot of thunder and lightning. Even til this day, sometimes if the storm is bad enough I will crawl into bed with my mom when I feel scared, so I understood how the little boy was feeling and how being by his father made him feel a sense of comfort and safety. "They came upon themselves in a mirror and he almost raised the pistol. It's us, Papa, the boy whispered." (132) ths shows you what months living on the street surviving day to day will do to you. Makes you think twice about the way homeless people look.
 * Pages 90- 135 Quotes **

"There were times when he ssat watching the boy sleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasn't about death. He wasn't sure what it was about but he thought it was about beauty or about goodness. Things that he'd no longer any way to think about at all." (129) What do you think he was really crying about? group: He's crying about everything. It's taking a toll on him mentally physically and emotionally. It isn't easy.

"There was yet a lingering odor of cows in the barn and he stood there thinking about cows and he realized they were extinct."(120) WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED TO THE COWS? How did they become extinct??? What is killing off so many people, any predictions so far? The bad conditions of the climate contaminated the grass - killing off many animals (cows) because thats their only source of food. "When he got to the pines he knelt and laid him in the fritty duff and covered him with the blankets and sat watching him. He looked like something out of a dathcamp. Starved, exhausted, sick with fear." (117) Connection to the holocaust How do you think the old man survived all this time without having the shelter, strength or food/water that the boy and man have been lucky enough to find? He survived the same way the boy and the man did, except he said that he ate like an animal and that they wouldn't believe the things that he'd eaten.
 * Questions: Pages 136 - 185 **

Why didn't the three men kill the little boy and his father? Are they good guys? They weren't good guys, but they didn't feel like there was any use in killing the two boys. Would you consider the father to be a good or bad guy? Obviously he's doing a lot to keep his son alive, but he said that when he saw the old man he wouldn't have helped him. If the little boy was not there with him, do you think that the man would have killed and ate the old man - had conditions been worse (food wise)?

The mood of the dad makes him seem like he's going to be a cannibal - he's very nonchalant If the son wasn't there he would only care about himself - if he had been alone and he saw the old man he would have eaten him The only time we've seen in the book the father being nice is when the son told him to do a good deed, or if it was for his son, so without the son we think that he would be considered as a "bad guy Portico - a structure consisting of roof supported by columns and piers usually attched to the porch.  "Double stairs that swept up to the columned portico." (204)  Vigilant - to keenly watch for danger  "we have to be vigilant" (217)  When the man was dying he was always asking the little boy to run out and get things for him because he was too weak to get it himself. This reminded me of when my mom had the flu and couldn't do things for herself because she was really weak.
 * Pages 185-235 Vocabulary **
 * Pages 236 to the end: Connections **

When the dad had died right in front of the little boy, i connected that to when my grandfather was dying, and he had gotten so weak that he couldn't even get out of the bed to use the bathroom, he couldn't walk, and he couldn't really talk that much without coughing a lot.T That was how we knew that he was about to die. Me being about 6 at the time, i related to the little boy and how he felt after losing a loved one.

Another connection i made is when I had gotten into a really big arguement with one of my friends at school, and since I was mad at her nobody really talked to her so she was often the odd one left out of the group, but when i realized that it was really making her feel bad, i decided to patch things up between us so she didn't feel so bad about herself. I connected this to the part where the man man the theif take off all of his clothes because he'd stolen the cart, but he ended up looking for him and giving back his clothes because he felt bad.