Blog #9 Quarter 2

The next few chapters in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are about Mr. Norrell trying to get rid of all of the street magicians. First he tries to get a Department of Magic established in the government, but they tell him that they are in the middle of a long and bloody war, and also that he is currently the only known magician. Therefore they don't have the time nor the resources to spare for 1 single magician. So then he goes to the mayor of London and the mayor agrees to help him pass legislation to get rid of street magicians in London. All of them leave except the most famous and well-loved of the street magicians, Vinculus. Therefore after many attempts to remove Vinculus, Mr. Norrell finally sends Childermass to get rid of him with spells. However Childermass doesn't like Mr. Norrell's methods of getting Vinculus to leave so he decides to deal with him with a different way. A way which I will find out about in my next reading.

Like I mentioned in my previous blog, Mr. Norrell doesn't like the idea of other magicians in the world and I personally find it quite funny that he is so insecure that he needs to get rid of all the fake magicians, who don't even have a hope at doing magic, away from England to therefore boost his standing among others. I also predict that Vinculus will surely be back, because he just seems to be popping up back in the story and I don't think they can leave him alone for the rest of the book (Just like I also think that Mr. Segundas must not have disappeared either because he seemed to be the main character in the 1st few chapters, he was there so much). Also Childermass somewhat gives me the impression that he is much more than just a man who handles some of Mr. Norrell's affairs. He seems too clever and just too mysterious to be just that, so I think that we will be seeing a lot of him also in upcoming chapters.

Blog #8 Quarter 2

I read the next few chapters of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and there has finally been some sort of plot developed! In the chapters I read in the last few days, strange things start to occur. The servants of Lady Pole and Sir Walter Pole start seeing a forest outside the mansion when there isn't a forest for 4 miles. They also start hearing the sad music and seeing a man with lots of white hair and a green velvet coat. Then the head servant of the household, Stephan Black, meets with the man that all the servants seem to be seeing and the man invites Stephan to his ball that the Lady Pole will also be attending. Then the Lady Pole and Stephan Black become more depressed and cold like they are living in a fog and they continuously have dreams of the man and his palace. Well none of this really made sense when I read it and was actually quite creepy, but most of it is explained in later chapters. We learn that the man is actually the fairy that Mr. Norrell called to to help him resurrect the Lady Pole and when he said he was going to take half of the Lady's life he really meant that he would let her stay in the human world and then at night he would pull her into the fairy world, but she became dull, distant, and cold in the human world because to her the human world was so very boring compared to the fairy one. The fairy also pulled Stephan Black along for the ride because he was so impressed with him and the fairy now plans to make Stephan a king in the fairy world. It's sort of confusing to understand, but I like it because the fairy is the closest person I have seen to an antagonist in this story so far. Meanwhile Mr. Norrell is attempting to rid England of all street magicians whom he considers rubbish.

One thing that I found amusing in the book is how Mr. Norrell is so boring to everyone and he even knows it so he keeps Mr. Drawlight and Mr. Lascelles with him at all times and they make small talk with all his visitors, boast about Mr. Norrell's achievements, relay Mr. Norrell's opinions on magic, and they also keep his guests entertained. It's like these two are Mr. Norrell's very own publicity agents!

Not only is Mr. Norrell very boring, but he is also very selfish. He claims to want to bring back magic to England and yet it is mentioned a few times how he doesn't want other magicians in England. So how exactly can he claim to want to restore magic to England? And are all his followers that blinded by his power that they don't see his selfishness and how he doesn't REALLY want to bring magic back to England? It's like they want to support him just because of his power and fame, not his ideas or morals and even though his supporters try their hardest to stand by and follow his supposed "want to bring magic back to England" he doesn't even stand by this idea. It's quite confusing and I don't really think that Mr. Norrell can really be the protagonist of this novel anymore because he seems to have more characteristics of an antagonist. So I think that Mr. Norrell either has to change drastically or another hero must have to appear somewhere in the novel.

Blog #7 Quarter 2

Over the break I have read quite a few more chapters of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but it is a very long and slow moving book so I'm still struggling to figure out what the plot is exactly. However in the part I read this past couple weeks, Mr. Norrell starts using more magic in his now not-so-new London setting. First because he wants to help in the war he goes to talk to Sir Walter Pole, a Minister who is about to be married in a few days time, but Sir Pole rejects him saying that magic is not respectable and not serious. However when Sir Pole's finance dies a few days later, Mr. Norrell brings her back to life by calling up a fairy and the fairy agrees to revive her but only if he can have half of her life (not quite sure what that means, but I'm sure I'll find out later in the book). So, Sir Pole, being ever so grateful and now with a new appreciation towards magic, allows Mr. Norrell to help in the war effort. At first they have trouble finding something for Mr. Norrell to do, but soon they have him blockade all the French ports with fake ships to the French are too afraid to go out and in that time period with the French trapped, the English are able to accomplish a lot. So Mr. Norrell is a hero again and now he begins to do magic a little more freely in London, but soon after he gets a visit from London's most famed street magician (street magicians are thought to be nothing more than con artists) who tells Mr. Norrell a prophecy . Mr. Norrell, however doesn't believe him and throws him out before he can even finish his long prophecy. Then the scene changes entirely to the story of Mr. Strange (as we later learn; Jonathan Strange's father) and how horrid and greedy he was. However he dies at the end of the chapter and that's it. As I said before even though this story is a tad slow moving, it is also somewhat choppy and it really didn't make much sense to switch to that chapter then switch right back to the story of Mr.Norrell in the next.

I also mentioned a few posts back how the author spells choose, chuse, well she also spells a few other words differently, like:

• sopha = sofa

• surprize = surprise

• shew = show

• stopt = stopped

So I thought, okay this is a little unusual, and then I remembered how I went on a People to People trip to Australia a couple years ago and they made us research different topics about Australia and one of the kid's project was the differences in slang terms in Australia and America. So I looked up my book on the Internet and the book that I'm reading is the first American version of Susanna Clark's book because she is British and therefore used the British spelling of certain words. I never really thought that people would spell words differently in different countries and its very interesting to think about. Her spelling also adds more to the setting of the book because the book takes place in Britain and the author spells in "British".

Blog #6 Quarter 2

In the next few chapters of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Mr. Norrell gets more used to London society and goes to much more social gatherings with his new friend, Mr. Drawlight. We also find out much more about Mr. Drawlight in this chapter, he is a very sociable man and very optimistic, but nevertheless he is also very poor and it says in the book that “Even his friends can find no good qualities in him.” However Mr. Norrell takes a liking to him and Mr. Drawlight takes him to all of the social gathering so he is busy every day, but at these gathering people are starting to tire of Mr. Norrell and wish he would actually DO some magic, not just claim to be able to do it. We also meet Mr. Drawlight’s good friend, Mr. Lascelles who is a nonbeliever of Mr. Norrell’s skills and takes to asking him questions just to find amusement in Mr. Norrell’s answers. We also later learn that Mr. Norrell wishes to help the government in the war against the French, so he goes to talk to Mr. Walter Pole, the Minister.

We also see the first mention of Jonathan Strange in the book in a footnote at the bottom; he is referred to as Mr. Norrell’s pupil. However, I think that it will be a while until we hear of him mentioned again because as you may have been able to guess this is a very slow moving book. I also think that even though Mr. Norrell is starting to become more acclimated to the London social scene, he still doesn’t understand it any more than he did before and I don’t really think that he ever will because he is just so different than the people like Mr. Drawlight and Mr. Lascelles.

Blog #5 Quarter 2

I am continuing to read the book Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and today I wanted to post about how, even though this book is about magic and magicians, it's not as popular as other books about magic, such as Harry Potter for example because of the author's (Susana Clark) choice in characters. In Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling writes about a young orphan boy who grows up against major odds against him to be the savior of the wizarding world. Some aspects of this book are similar such as the idea of magic and the fact that Mr. Norrell "saves" the magic world by bringing back magic to it (still no sign of Jonathan Strange yet), but others are very different which is what I think sets this book apart from the more popular books, like Harry Potter. First of all the main character in Harry Potter is a boy who eventually grows into a teen and he is full of bravery and adventure. I think that this is where Susana Clark went wrong, so far at least, the main characters appear to be stuffy, old philosophical types of guys and that really isn't very fun for teenagers (the intended audience) to read about and they're also not very adventurous. So where can the fun in the book be with this type of character? I also don't think that Clark put her main characters against enough obstacles (so far at least) because they aren't orphans or abused like Harry Potter is, they are well off rich men, that have everything going for them except maybe age.

Annotated Bibliography Post

Andre, Claire, and Manuel Velasquez. "Kidneys for Sale." Santa Clara University. 2008. 9 Dec. 2008 .

This article is written by two authors of a newsletter called, Issues in Ethics that is run out of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics in Santa Clara University. Just by knowing this it is clear that the authors devote a lot of time to studying and researching different ethical problems. Their article, Kidneys for Sale, discusses two differing reasons for allowing and not allowing the sale of organs. First they argue that we need to be able to sell organs to prevent deaths, but then they counter this argument by saying that the rich will benefit while the poor will suffer with the sale of organs. This article also focuses a lot of the justice and morals of an organ market.

Richards, Radcliffe J. "Commentary. An ethical market in human organs. (Controversy)." Gale Cengage Learning. 17 Mar. 2003. 9 Dec. 2008 .

This source was actually originally taken from a medical magazine/journal which specifically focuses on medical ethics, so therefore this is a great and very reliable source for my research paper. This article very thoroughly discusses the issue of organ sale and goes more into detail about the ethics of it because it was published in a medical magazine/journal, more medical professionals are more inclined to read it and therefore the wording is more sophisticated and the author assumes that the reader already knows the basics of an organ market. So this article will be very beneficial to my research paper when going into the finer details of the viewpoints of organ selling. The author explains the history of the ethical debate of the sale of organs and then goes on to discuss the validity of reasons and opinions both for and against a free organ market. This article talks more about the actual debate of the sale of organs rather than the viewpoints.

Blog #4 Quarter 2

In the next chapter of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Mr. Norrell goes to London. First off in the chapter we learn more about Childermass, apparently Childermass is very knowledgeable and Mr. Norrell relies on him to know what is going on in the world, while he himself sits inside and reads his books. So Childermass has told Mr. Segundas to write an article about Mr. Norrell's great magical feat and send it to the London newspaper. This is so Mr. Norrell will become very popular in London even before he gets there and Childermass is right, that's exactly what happens. Next Mr. Norrell actually does move to London in a house that Childermass has bought him and he is invited to a party, so he takes this as a chance to show other people that being a magician is a very honorable profession, just like a doctor or lawyer. He goes to the party, but you can easily see that he is very out of place and he just wanders everywhere not talking to anybody, but but soon finding a book to read instead. However soon he hears 3 gentlemen talking about him and one (who we later learn is Mr. Drawlight) claims to know him. Therefore Mr. Norrell goes up to talk to them and Mr. Drawlight tells him that he watches Mr. Norrell's house and that he said that he knew him already because he could tell that they we going to be great friends.
When Mr. Norrell moves to the city he thinks that there is a huge difference between London and his country town of York and I think that this was true back then, but now I don't think that there is that much of a difference because now, someone who lives in the countryside can just hop on their truck and they'll make it to a Wallmart or Target pretty quick. I do however think that it's true about what he said about the house sizes, the houses do seem to get smaller as you move from the country into the city because they get more packed together. I also really didn't like Mr. Drawlight because he seems sort of creepy and stalkerish by the way he watches Mr. Norrell 's house and he also seems as if he's just trying to get close to Mr. Norrell because of Mr. Norrell's popularity and that doesn't seem like the best foundation for a friendship exactly. But I predict that Mr. Norrell will become friends with him because he's not really used to the people in the city yet and their ways so he won't understand what Mr. Drawlight is trying to do (mooch off of his popularity).