Rough Rough Draft of Extended Definition

I changed the topic last minute so here is what I have so far...

Throughout my life, for as long as I can remember, I have tried to live a healthy lifestyle. But wait, what exactly is healthy? It is a word that we throw around loosely a lot. Everyone has their idea of what healthy is but according to the dictionary, healthy is possessing or enjoying good health or a sound and vigorous mentality. This definition circles around the word health too much. Health in the dictionary is the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; especially free from physical disease or pain. There is more to being healthy than just possessing a sound body, mind, and spirit. Healthy is all about balance. The saying of too much of a good thing is a bad thing can be applied here. Too much exercise or eating too many vegetables, things that we often consider to be healthy, is unhealthy. We need rest to recover and other food groups to have a properly functioning body.

Diaz Lunch and Lecture

I really enjoyed having Junot Diaz on our campus last week. He is an incredibly smart man with a lot of insight to many more topics than just writing and art. His story of immigration to the United States and how he and his family made it in America is very interesting. I could listen to the guy for hours. I can't believe that I did not have any idea who he was before this class. He provokes me to think in different ways and see things in new lights. I plan to buy his collection of short stories, "Drown", in the near future.

Part One of "The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"

Diaz's novel is very innovative. I have never read a novel with such a format, it provides multiple narrators, thus different points of view. The story is good but I also think a big reason he won the Pulitzer Prize is because of his innovation. There is no other novel like it. This would have to be a big strength. Despite the multiple narrators, it is unclear in the first part is exactly who is narrating. It takes away from the story because Yunior is contradicted once Lola narrates. As a reader, we question what Yunior says is legitimate and actually happened. The narrators set up the story for us and give us a lot of background on the characters. With this we can foreshadow what is going to happen. Diaz does not use quotations or italicize the Spanish words which adds more authenticity to the stories being told. Some of his sentences are written differently than others. Some do not have complete subjects or predicates but it works because the reader still understands what is going on.