Fiction Reading Response to The Kill Order by James Dashner

            Sun flares have hit the earth, destroying everything that stands in its way. In the book "The Kill Order" by James Dashner Mark and his friends have to fend for themselves if they want to survive. But now that the sun flares have stopped Mark has to survive what comes next and it isn't easy. In futuristic books characters go through hardships that one can only dream of.

            Mark and his friends suffer a lot throughout the book. Sometimes Mark gets all caught up in everything that is going on. "Mark had fallen into a trance, watching as the strangers with their odd outfits and their menacing weapons come out of the Berg…What had happened to the Mark who could act fast? Who had survived the year…after the flares ravaged the earth?” page 21. In the book the characters go through some pretty horrible things. Since the book takes place in the future the characters have to deal with different types of things then we do today. In addition to the horrors that experience they are also exposed to some more sorrowful things. “If it’s truly something as global as sun flares, then the little hope he held out for his family is gone.” page 98. Mark is forced to think this negatively, if he has too much hope he will end up hurting himself more in the long run. Lastly Mark has seen some horrible things. “Mark was horrified. He shouldn’t have been-he’d seen more dead people in the last year than a hundred morticians of the past would have seen in a lifetime.” page 55. What this quote is saying is that Mark has seen more people who have died then a hundred funeral directors see in their lives. The sun flares killed many people and Mark saw many of them being killed.

            In sci-fi books characters experience situations that different from those that we experience today. Reading these book can make one appreciative of what they have. Life has its ups and down and you never know when everything around you is going to change. Things just change quickly in front of your eyes before you even realize what is happening.

Nonfiction Reading Response from UpFront

The article "How the Murder of Four Teens Started a War" by Patricia Smith describes how the killing of these four teenagers sparks a fight between Israel and Hamas. Hamas is a Palestinian group that controls the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory in Israel. There has been tension between the Israelis and Palestinians for six decades. The tension started after World War II when the U.N. decided that Jewish people needed a state for themselves, Israel. In fact there is so much tension that even the slightest wrong turn will end up in some sort of fight.

Before the article even starts you see pictures of the four teenagers who were killed: Israelis- Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Palestinian- Muhammad Abu Khdeir. These pictures show that these boys were happy, innocent people and the author put these pictures here to make you feel upset about what happened to them. In describing how the Palestinian was killed Smith says, "Khdeir was bludgeoned with a wrench and then set on fire." Smith uses imagery to get her point across. She also uses loaded words like bludgeoned, to beat someone repeatedly, to show the reader the horrible things that people do. To prove her point even further Smith uses this quote from Shibley Telhami, a political science professor at the University of Maryland. "The murder of the four teens 'are horrible under any circumstance...But in and of themselves they would not have dragged the sides into this fight if both sides weren't ripe for an explosion.'" Smith put this in the article to show the readers that something like this was bound to happen sometime soon.

            The fact that people felt the need to kill teenagers to get attention really struck a chord with me. I think that it is completely unnecessary for these teenagers to be killed. It also made me realize that people will go to extremes just to prove a point. In all, I agree with the author that the initial four killings shouldn't have happened. What started out as a few deaths turned into a huge fight between the two countries and ended with the killing thousands of innocent people.