The AIDS Crisis

Last Tuesday, I attended the talk “Activism and Resilience During and Since the AIDS Crisis.” Mr. Matthew Burns, Dean of Students at the University of Rochester and a member of the Out Alliance gave the talk. Although this talk was mainly about the history of AIDS and how the disease affected the LGBTQ+ community, Mr. Burns talked about a lot of issues that we have talked about in class. Continue reading “The AIDS Crisis”

Finding Justice Without Death

In Zone One, there is death written into every page. One death in particular from Zone One has really stuck in my mind — Gary’s death. His death is vivid and violent, and it seems to mark when Zone One falls. I have been pondering an important question: does Gary (and the other characters we have read about in our other novels) “deserve” to die?

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A Controversial Issue

Like others in class, I have also been thinking about the morality of killing the skels and stragglers, human beings who have been completely changed by a horrible and seemingly incurable disease. What bothers me most about them, and the idea of a “zombie” in general, is that they are human beings that need to be killed if anyone not infected wants a chance to live. Continue reading “A Controversial Issue”

A Thank You Note to Everett

When I finished Zulus, I was left confused and (unsurprisingly) disappointed. Like I mentioned in my last post, it is important for us to examine why the novels we read make us feel the way that we do. We can simply close the book and walk away from it, we can read something that we know may be more fulfilling, but little growth will come from doing that. Continue reading “A Thank You Note to Everett”

What does it mean to be “healed?”

As I was reading the end of Home, I came across the quote that I knew I would pick as the one that meant the most to me from the novel. The quote struck me because it not only has a lot of significance to the book, but also to the overall topics that we are discussing in class. The quote I chose was a popular one; several other people also chose it (or at least a part of it) and I think that goes to show just how significant it is.
Continue reading “What does it mean to be “healed?””