Response to Group B Prompt

What is your topic for the research paper? How does this topic currently impact American culture (or another country, if that's where you're going with this)? How is your book/show/movie different from all of the other books/shows/movies out there like it? How is it unique? What specific cultural issue will you be addressing in your research essay and why is it relevant TODAY.

The topic for my research paper is the film Star Wars and how it has created what seems to be a endless supply of products for merchandise companies and marketers to utilize. The impact on American culture is that it has swamped stores with products, sometimes of questionable quality, yet consumers continually purchase them based on a face or name, which is to be portrayed as a bad thing, because it removes the artistry out of the movie business and the public mindlessly purchases useless things as a result of the high profile films. What separates Star Wars from movies it that it was the first to capitalize on this and in a bigger way than any other film. The specific cultural issue that I will be addressing is consumerism, an aspect of American and Western culture that is sometimes criticized as being indulgent.

Response to Group F Prompt

"Do you think it was a good idea to add the chapters about Walt (Chris’ father) and Krakauer as individuals? What did it do for you for your views of the novel? Did anything change your opinion or did it support what you already thought? Why?"

I think it was a great idea to add these chapters into the book. The chapters about Chris's family were not as effective on me because I had felt that Krakauer had basically been hinting at what the issues there were for most of the book. I knew that Krakauer was going to include some of his own life experiences into the novel, because he says that in the author's note. When I finally got to his two chapters, I was blown away. I had not been expecting anything like that. The connections between their experiences were so good and the emotion with which he told his own story kept me riveted. For me, it only added to the credibility of the novel, which I had held in high regard before this. To me it specifically addressed one naysayer who he quoted on page 71 as saying, "Krakauer is a kook if he doesn't think Chris 'Alexander Supertramp' McCandless was a kook". All of a sudden, with his own hiking adventure in the book, Krakauer becomes a very reliable and experienced kook doesn't he? To me, putting that chapter in the book showed that, 1)Krakauer knows what he's talking about when it comes to people venturing into the wild alone and 2)Krakauer knows what it feels like, and what goes through one's head, and what motives a person may have to go into the wild alone.