Sorry. I was actually meaning to post this the same day as the other Vital Vocab uploads, but uhh, then the writer's block hit. Whoops. :/ So now, I get us up to date with Vital Vocab (until next class, that is).
Note on the prompt: we're reading The Book Thief in class, by Markus Zusak. For those who don't know, The Book Thief has a very unique quality about it: the book's narrator is Death himself. It's actually really interesting but ahh, more on this later. I have an assignment to do.
Prompt: How does the stereotypical concept of death differ from Zusak's character, Death?
Vocab Words (underlined): arbitrary, antithesis, aesthetic (adj), accentuate, abridge
Gramar Focus: their/there/they're, semicolon
Isaac Bade-
I sat there, watching rain run down the window pane. No, not run. Not just run. It flew; it hurtled; it cascaded down the window like lemmings off their cliffs. Like the raindrops were frightened of the thunder. Go, they screamed. Hurry! We've gotta get out of here! And that would have been a sight to behold. From the inside.
I was locked out.
I was drenched to the core.
I was noticing a pattern.
My dear Aunt Gaile was indoors in her chair, dead to the world, crossword and [barely] abridged dictionary in her lap. She said her naps were completely arbitrary, so why did she always take them right when I was coming home? Whenever I was out, she was alone in the house, and insisted on locking the door; I just had to wonder why she couldn't find me a freaking house key. I knew there was a drawer of them somewhere.
I sat on the front steps, a wet wind blowing just to accentuate the frigidity of the air. Lightning flared in the sky and I pulled a notebook and pen out of my backpack, starting to sketch the storm on lined paper. Wet lined paper. I didn't mind, so long as I could make it aesthetic (and of course, I knew I could; I could draw a cartoon of a crushed beer can beside a highway and give it class). So, pen quickly but gently to paper, I started to draw.
There I was, locked out of the house, trying not to tear through soggy notebook paper, when I saw her: my polar opposite. My antithesis.
Erica Wells. We'd been best friends through elementary school. She lived just up the street; in summer, we were inseparable. But when middle school came, she branched out, and I branched...in. And then came the Disaster, and I just branched in more. She came to try and talk to me about it, and I completely exploded at her. I hadn't spoken to her since. They're all looking at you. For years, I hadn't been able to shake the thought.
Erica disappeared up the street without looking at me. I had trouble looking at her, too.
I read a book once from the point of view of Death. Not death the event, like when someone dies, but Death the person, the character, he who collects departed souls. "It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible," he said. "Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away." He claimed he wasn't painful or violent, like the event of death. He said he was but the result.
I think I like it better that way.
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