Themes of Broken

          I just finished reading Broken by Kelley Armstrong, which is in the "Women of the Otherworld" series. while I was reading this book I noticed that a lot of lessons popped up throughout the book, and after finishing the book, I decided to think of a main theme/lesson. Instead, I came up with two main themes because I think that they're both really good examples in this book and are important. The themes I came up with are: Think before you act, and never give up no matter how hard something is. I know that both of these lessons are really common and kind of obvious and easy to tell in a book, but throughout the whole story line of the book, these were the two messages that kept popping up.

          The first message I came up with, to think before you act, was what I came up with because in the book, because of one careless thing that Elena did, she opened a portal that unleashed a pair of zombies and a killer, all because of one careless thing. Elena retrieved the From Hell letter and was curious about what it said because it's a legendary letter, so she took it out of its package to open it. Then a mosquito landed on her arm, and Elena's husband, Clay, swatted the mosquito but somehow got Elena's blood on the letter, opening a portal from the Victorian Era, unleashing two zombie thugs, fatal diseases, and a deadly killer. Because of this one mistake, they had to spend a long time (the whole book which is rally long) just trying to close the portal. If Elena hadn't wanted to read the letter or Clay hadn't killed the fly, they wouldn't have gotten into as much trouble as they did. A specific quote that shows how they didn't think before they acted is: " 'You know what I really feel like doing, though? Climbing to the top of the CN Tower, busting out a window and shouting 'I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. I apologize unreservedly.' '... 'Wasn't your fault,' Clay said. 'I squashed the mosquito.' "
          The second theme, to never give up, was what I thought of when I thought of how Elena acted throughout the whole book in general. First, throughout the whole book Elena was pregnant, and she wanted to just quit so many times, but she never gave up in the end. Second, near the end of the book Jeremy wanted everyone to go back to Stonehaven where they live, but they still hadn't closed the portal, so Elena snuck out and finally closed the portal. She didn't give up on closing the portal, even though Clay was sick and she was in no condition to fight. But she still closed the portal successfully. A quote that showed that Elena wasn't leaving and was determined to close the portal is: " 'We're going home, where I can do that.'... My fingers dug into the mattress as my stomach flip-flopped. Home? We couldn't leave. Not now." This shows how Elena didn't want to leave yet and still had to close the portal.

Romeo and Juliet Favorite Quote

          For this post I decided to focus on a very specific quotation in the play. This quotation is in Act 1, Scene 2, Lines 99-100. The quote is: "One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun/Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun." This quote really caught my eye when I was reading the play specifically because of the message behind the quote. First he says, "One fairer than my love?" implying that there is no one prettier than her, which is really important, and it's sort of a hyperbole, because........ Well, he just said that there is no one prettier than her. That's pretty big.

          Then he says, "The all seeing sun/Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun." What he's saying is that even the sun, if it could see, never saw anyone more beautiful than her since the world started. This was the part of the quote that I really like, because first of all, it is a really strong quote, and it has personification and a hyperbole in it. The sentence is really strong because at first he said that there is no one prettier than her in the sentence before, and now he's saying that even the sun, that can see everything, has never seen anyone prettier. The sun is huge and is above the earth, and if it could see it could probably see everything, so saying that no one is prettier than her out of everyone that the sun has seen is super huge, because the sun would be able to see a lot of people, and she would have to be incredibly beautiful to beat everyone else.

          This last sentence has two literary devices, personification and hyperbole. The personification is when he says: "The all seeing sun/Ne'er saw....." he's saying that the sun can see and can see everything, which is personification, because the sun is a thing and can't really see, much less everything, so it's given human traits. The hyperbole is in the whole line, in fact, the whole quote, because he's first saying that no one's prettier than her, and then he's saying that the sun has never seen anyone prettier than her since the world begun. This is supported by how strong the quote is, which I explained in the previous paragraph. It's a hyperbole because it's exaggerated a lot.

          The basis of this quote is saying how beautiful she is, and it's so exaggerated and is such a powerful quote that it really caught my attention. I thought this quote was really important, because of how strong it is, and the massive amount of literary devices in just two sentences.