Welcome FHS students! Please check your FHS gmail! We'll use this blog to talk about our summer readings. Sign into Google with your Fairview Schools login. Speak, Never Fall Down, and The Age of Miracles discussion questions are all on this page. Scroll down to find each novel's questions. Then, click on Comment link following the questions you wish to answer. Click on the page links on the left to access additional information.
Discussion Questions for All Novels
Saturday, June 15, 2013
The Age of Miracles 9: The slowing affects the whole planet....
9. The slowing affects the whole planet, but the book is set in southern California. How does the setting
affect the book? How important is it that the story takes place in California?
The slowing is a catastrophe that affects the entire world, but the author chooses to focus mainly on how it affects southern California. The setting of this book has an immediate affect on the characters, the plot, and the conclusion. I believe that there are certain reasons that the story takes place in California causing this book to be so fascinating and intense. For one, California is located in a first world country. On page 164, the head of the Red Cross announces, “The developing countries are going to be the hardest hit. These countries simply lack the financial resources to adapt.” If the book had been based in a developing country, chances are that the plot would have been about starvation and fear more than adaption. Another reason the book is set in California is that California is accustomed to catastrophe and the drama that comes with it. The West Coast is well known for devastating earthquakes and is also stereotypically overdramatic. Anything could signify the end of the world. Julia’s mother is a drama teacher as well as the character most worried about the slowing. There are probably thousands of people in California who are similar to Julia’s mother. California is also well known for hippies, vegans, tree-huggers, and granola-heads. These types of people most likely chose real-time over clock-time. Therefore, the book was more easily able to display the discrimination that went on between real-timers and clock-timers. Julia had three real-time houses on her street, while in other parts of the world; there might not be real-timers for miles. Because of it’s drama, power, and diversity, California is the perfect setting for the end of the world.
I think that Bryce's post really helps people that had no idea why this book was set in California, to understand the significance of the setting. Before I read this I could not fathom a reason why the setting of California would be any different from having it in Georgia for example. Now I understand the real reason why this book was set it California. I think her best idea is where she connects the reputation that California has of being a hippie state to the real-timers being discriminated. This post really helped me understand the setting more than I would have imagined.
I believe it is very important that the story takes place in southern California. Southern California is a place where you can see the most dramatic effects of the slowing because of its weather. One effect of the slowing is that the increased lengths of day and night caused extreme temperatures which then caused weird weather phenomena. In the story, it caused snow to fall. As Julia puts it, “I looked out the window: snow. This was California, sea level, spring.” In California spring snow is nearly an impossible event. If the book was set in Erie, spring snow wouldn’t be something that Julia would be amazed about; it would have been just another ordinary occurrence. Southern California is also a very sunny place, and since the sun played an active role in the effects of the slowing, the book is able to clearly show the slowing’s effects from a first-person perspective. After the Earth’s magnetic field is damaged in the story, everyone had to stay away from the sun in order to avoid getting seriously burnt. Since southern California is a sunny place, this fact caused more problems for the characters than if the book was set in someplace like Erie or Seattle. Also, this sun caused intense heat and dryness which killed vegetation at a fast rate. Once again, such a dramatic affect would not have been able to be seen in Seattle. Another effect of the slowing is that whales began to beach themselves. California is right next to the ocean, so the characters get to see the beached whales for themselves. If the story took place in Oklahoma for example, the characters clearly would not be able to experience this aspect of the slowing; they would just be able to tell the reader of what they heard was happening. Finally, California is the optimal setting for this story because I believe that it would have more real-timers than other places in the United States. The stereotypical Californian fits the type of person that would want to become a real-timer. In a large city like New York, most people would be forced to be a clock-timer because it is such a schedule-based, busy community. In suburban California, you have the freedom to live on real-time, because the community is much more laid back. If the story was set in a different place, you wouldn’t have been able to see all of the drastic effects of the slowing, so southern California was the perfect setting for this novel.
In the Age of Miracles, the setting is placed in southern California which is located closer to the equator and means that the area is more warmer and tropical. During the book, there is a worldwide catastrophe that causes the earth to slow down it’s rotation. This terrible phenomenon is called the slowing. The slowing causes many issues that can be seen very clearly in southern California because it has a very diverse range of species and topography including deserts and oceans. The setting is thus crucial to the plot because it is here that you can see almost every change that has happened. In the book, it says that the slowing caused birds to change migratory paths and fly to different areas that they are not common to be seen in. It also causes the birds to die due to a shift in gravity in which it makes it harder for birds to fly and hunt and survive. This then leads to an increase in insect life since there are no birds to keep the population sizes in check. Also, The slowing causes an increase in the amount of time the sun is shining and the amount of time it isn’t shining. This problem causes plant life to die because they can not survive for so long without sunlight, but when there is too much sunlight, the plants get burned and dehydrated. This process is also aided by the fact that the setting of the book is closer to the equator and that means that the climate is naturally warmer and makes plant life that much harder to survive. Another problem due to the slowing is that the tides grow higher at high tide and lower at low tide. Due to this, there is flooding along the coastlines of California and homes need to be evacuated. Also, along the coastlines, there is a lot of whale beachings because the tide takes them further inland and then strands them when the tide recedes. This also makes the setting of the book more important because the coastlines add so much more drama to the plot. During the book, the magnetic fields are also deteriorating which causes the sun to leak radiation into the atmosphere and cause illnesses and extreme sunburn during sunlight. California is a good setting to demonstrate this because it has a lot of sunlight already and causes more problems to surface about how people can’t go out in the sunlight. The change in the magnetic field also creates a change of where the Auroras are seen. It causes a shift of them to the equator and creates the Aurora to be seen from southern California. Therefore, all of this change happening in one area makes southern California a perfect spot for the book to be set in.
The reason why The Age of Miracles takes place in California is so it can show how drastically the world climate has changed. Though I am sure that the weather changed a lot in other areas on earth, it seemed like California was the most significant. Over the course of the story the weather seems to become increasingly unstable. This problem especially shows later in the book when it snows. The final difference is when earth’s magnetic field decays and radiation runs all over the sky. It makes the formerly welcoming and vibrant environment of tropical California virtually inhabitable. It also shows how much the environment is being damaged by the slowing. Several birds move to California before eventually all dyeing off. If this had been in a country not so close to the equator, we probably would not have gotten this insight. Same thing goes for the whales. The whales would not have turned up somewhere like Asia or Europe, so we needed it to be California so this problem could be revealed to us. This also was the setting mainly because California is in a first-world country. Even though the book said that the slowing affected third-world countries the worst, it was much easier to relate to those in California because that was a scenario that we were used too. If it had been a third-world country, the lifestyle that was being changed wouldn’t be the same as ours. This is an important factor when the writer needs a reader to be invested in the characters of his book. The setting of a book is just as important as age, personality, and experiences when it comes to making a character relatable. To me, that's where a setting may be most effective. To see such a pleasant place like California become so nasty and dangerous shows me just how much the slowing has destroyed the world.
Bryce Yahn
ReplyDeleteThe slowing is a catastrophe that affects the entire world, but the author chooses to focus mainly on how it affects southern California. The setting of this book has an immediate affect on the characters, the plot, and the conclusion. I believe that there are certain reasons that the story takes place in California causing this book to be so fascinating and intense.
For one, California is located in a first world country. On page 164, the head of the Red Cross announces, “The developing countries are going to be the hardest hit. These countries simply lack the financial resources to adapt.” If the book had been based in a developing country, chances are that the plot would have been about starvation and fear more than adaption.
Another reason the book is set in California is that California is accustomed to catastrophe and the drama that comes with it. The West Coast is well known for devastating earthquakes and is also stereotypically overdramatic. Anything could signify the end of the world. Julia’s mother is a drama teacher as well as the character most worried about the slowing. There are probably thousands of people in California who are similar to Julia’s mother.
California is also well known for hippies, vegans, tree-huggers, and granola-heads. These types of people most likely chose real-time over clock-time. Therefore, the book was more easily able to display the discrimination that went on between real-timers and clock-timers. Julia had three real-time houses on her street, while in other parts of the world; there might not be real-timers for miles. Because of it’s drama, power, and diversity, California is the perfect setting for the end of the world.
I think that Bryce's post really helps people that had no idea why this book was set in California, to understand the significance of the setting. Before I read this I could not fathom a reason why the setting of California would be any different from having it in Georgia for example. Now I understand the real reason why this book was set it California. I think her best idea is where she connects the reputation that California has of being a hippie state to the real-timers being discriminated. This post really helped me understand the setting more than I would have imagined.
DeleteI believe it is very important that the story takes place in southern California. Southern California is a place where you can see the most dramatic effects of the slowing because of its weather. One effect of the slowing is that the increased lengths of day and night caused extreme temperatures which then caused weird weather phenomena. In the story, it caused snow to fall. As Julia puts it, “I looked out the window: snow. This was California, sea level, spring.” In California spring snow is nearly an impossible event. If the book was set in Erie, spring snow wouldn’t be something that Julia would be amazed about; it would have been just another ordinary occurrence. Southern California is also a very sunny place, and since the sun played an active role in the effects of the slowing, the book is able to clearly show the slowing’s effects from a first-person perspective. After the Earth’s magnetic field is damaged in the story, everyone had to stay away from the sun in order to avoid getting seriously burnt. Since southern California is a sunny place, this fact caused more problems for the characters than if the book was set in someplace like Erie or Seattle. Also, this sun caused intense heat and dryness which killed vegetation at a fast rate. Once again, such a dramatic affect would not have been able to be seen in Seattle.
ReplyDeleteAnother effect of the slowing is that whales began to beach themselves. California is right next to the ocean, so the characters get to see the beached whales for themselves. If the story took place in Oklahoma for example, the characters clearly would not be able to experience this aspect of the slowing; they would just be able to tell the reader of what they heard was happening. Finally, California is the optimal setting for this story because I believe that it would have more real-timers than other places in the United States. The stereotypical Californian fits the type of person that would want to become a real-timer. In a large city like New York, most people would be forced to be a clock-timer because it is such a schedule-based, busy community. In suburban California, you have the freedom to live on real-time, because the community is much more laid back. If the story was set in a different place, you wouldn’t have been able to see all of the drastic effects of the slowing, so southern California was the perfect setting for this novel.
In the Age of Miracles, the setting is placed in southern California which is located closer to the equator and means that the area is more warmer and tropical. During the book, there is a worldwide catastrophe that causes the earth to slow down it’s rotation. This terrible phenomenon is called the slowing. The slowing causes many issues that can be seen very clearly in southern California because it has a very diverse range of species and topography including deserts and oceans. The setting is thus crucial to the plot because it is here that you can see almost every change that has happened.
ReplyDeleteIn the book, it says that the slowing caused birds to change migratory paths and fly to different areas that they are not common to be seen in. It also causes the birds to die due to a shift in gravity in which it makes it harder for birds to fly and hunt and survive. This then leads to an increase in insect life since there are no birds to keep the population sizes in check. Also, The slowing causes an increase in the amount of time the sun is shining and the amount of time it isn’t shining. This problem causes plant life to die because they can not survive for so long without sunlight, but when there is too much sunlight, the plants get burned and dehydrated. This process is also aided by the fact that the setting of the book is closer to the equator and that means that the climate is naturally warmer and makes plant life that much harder to survive. Another problem due to the slowing is that the tides grow higher at high tide and lower at low tide. Due to this, there is flooding along the coastlines of California and homes need to be evacuated. Also, along the coastlines, there is a lot of whale beachings because the tide takes them further inland and then strands them when the tide recedes. This also makes the setting of the book more important because the coastlines add so much more drama to the plot. During the book, the magnetic fields are also deteriorating which causes the sun to leak radiation into the atmosphere and cause illnesses and extreme sunburn during sunlight. California is a good setting to demonstrate this because it has a lot of sunlight already and causes more problems to surface about how people can’t go out in the sunlight. The change in the magnetic field also creates a change of where the Auroras are seen. It causes a shift of them to the equator and creates the Aurora to be seen from southern California. Therefore, all of this change happening in one area makes southern California a perfect spot for the book to be set in.
The reason why The Age of Miracles takes place in California is so it can show how drastically the world climate has changed. Though I am sure that the weather changed a lot in other areas on earth, it seemed like California was the most significant. Over the course of the story the weather seems to become increasingly unstable. This problem especially shows later in the book when it snows. The final difference is when earth’s magnetic field decays and radiation runs all over the sky. It makes the formerly welcoming and vibrant environment of tropical California virtually inhabitable.
ReplyDeleteIt also shows how much the environment is being damaged by the slowing. Several birds move to California before eventually all dyeing off. If this had been in a country not so close to the equator, we probably would not have gotten this insight. Same thing goes for the whales. The whales would not have turned up somewhere like Asia or Europe, so we needed it to be California so this problem could be revealed to us.
This also was the setting mainly because California is in a first-world country. Even though the book said that the slowing affected third-world countries the worst, it was much easier to relate to those in California because that was a scenario that we were used too. If it had been a third-world country, the lifestyle that was being changed wouldn’t be the same as ours. This is an important factor when the writer needs a reader to be invested in the characters of his book. The setting of a book is just as important as age, personality, and experiences when it comes to making a character relatable. To me, that's where a setting may be most effective. To see such a pleasant place like California become so nasty and dangerous shows me just how much the slowing has destroyed the world.