In the summer of 1975, thousands of audiences screamed in terror for 124 minutes as they watched a 20-foot white shark shred countless victims to pieces. It’s needless to say that the film Jaws by Steven Spielberg kept many watchers out of the water for months and set a precedent for shark fiction. However, more recently, author Steve Alten has taken the idea of a murderous marine predator with a nasty craving for human flesh and expanded it to create a novel that has made readers shiver everywhere. The book Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror is, by far, the best shark novel I have read, and that includes the original Jaws, which the famous blockbuster was based on. But, more than the idea of an underwater killing machine, what caused me to dig my nails into the back cover of the book the most was the scientific way in which the author depicts the resurrection of a 70-foot shark that lived millions of years ago.
The novel deals with a submersible pilot turned marine paleontologist named Jonas Taylor who, after seeing what he was sure was a Megalodon shark in the depths of the unexplored Mariana Trench years before, has dedicated his life to proving that the gargantuan fish is still alive. By doing this, he’s ruined his marriage and any other social connection he might’ve had before the incident. However, when an opportunity to explore the trench one more time comes up, Taylor’s need to know if he was right about the shark proves too strong to resist. He submerges himself in the object of his nightmares for the last few years once again, only to realize that he was indeed correct. Shortly after, disaster strikes. Through a tragic mistake, the mortally wounded male Megalodon Jonas encounters gets tangled in the wires of the submersible and is dragged up. A hungry female, which just happens to be twice as large as the male, sinks its teeth into its mate and is pulled up as well. The male’s blood protects the female from the cold barrier above the trench that has kept these monsters in captivity for millennia, and the female is released into an environment that isn’t built for its presence. To make matters worse, she’s pregnant.
It wasn’t the idea of man messing with nature only to have nature fight back that lured me into reading this novel, since, as can be seen in novels like Jurassic Park, this is an overused theme. Instead, it was the way the author depicted the carnage with scientific detail that interested me the most. He made the prehistoric shark come to life by explaining its bodily functions, how it survived undetected for all these years, and even what it ate during its million-year captivity in the Mariana Trench. The author goes as far as to depict some chapters from the point of view of the monster, thus giving the reader a heart pounding depiction of how the leviathan analyzes its prey, hears its heartbeat, smells its blood, and ultimately sinks its endless rows of razor sharp teeth into its flesh.
The originality of the book also caught my attention. Although, as I mentioned before, the theme of man interfering in nature is overused and, one might say, even cliché, the story Steve Alten built around it is such a crazy and original idea that it sounds almost insane enough to be true. The extensive knowledge on the extinct fish and its modern cousins that the author prides himself in doesn’t help the case, as it contributes to the books terrifying verisimilitude.
However, all the amazing features this novel possesses pale in comparison to the intense, fast-paced storytelling abilities of the author. Alten keeps the reader with their hands ready to flip the page with his suspenseful way of writing, and finally rewards them with a climactic final showdown between Jonas and the creature that has ruined both his life and countless others; a finale that is as far-fetched but at the same time as believable as the rest of the novel.
This book may not have taught me deep lessons or caused philosophic, thought provoking quotes to pop into my head, but it has definitely introduced me to a way of writing and storytelling that is extremely entertaining. A way of writing that an author can use to take a story that would seem cheesy and unbelievable, and turn it into the terrifying object of nightmares. I recommend the book to anyone who has the opportunity of reading it, but I retract the recommendation to those who have a weak stomach or an intense fear of the sea. Why? Let’s just say, Jaws has got nothing on Meg.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Two-Faced Craft-Rafael Mendez
Being that putting down ideas on paper is an intriguing topic, it’s only natural that people make movies about the art of writing. In fact, many movies have been created that focus on this area of the arts. A lot of these bits of filmmaking reflect how writing is powerful enough to change somebody’s life. As a writer, I can definitely tell anyone who asks me that this is true. When I took up the craft of writing, which occurred at a very early age, it completely dominated and guided my life, not only helping me express myself so that others may relate, but also teaching me things about life itself that I would use in the future. This is the reason that two films on writing spoke to me on such a powerful level. The films I’m referring to are the film Capote and the film Freedom Writers. The two different ways these films deal with the way writing changes people struck me as vastly contrasting but equally believable.
The film Capote deals with the attempts of writer Truman Capote to create a book based on a group of killings that occurred in 1959 in Kansas. More importantly, though, it deals with how everything he had to go through to complete this book changed his writing career and his life. In the movie, Capote finds himself intrigued by an article on a duo of criminals who broke into the house of one Herbert W. Clutter and slaughtered him along with his whole family. He travels to Kansas to interview those he could on the killings, all this in the hopes of writing an article for the New Yorker. Taking a fellow writer he made when basking in the triumph of his famous novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, along with him, Capote finds himself caught in the maze that is the mind of one of the killers and finds such an intricate puzzle of information that he decides the killings can’t be covered in an article, and instead decides to write a book.
He becomes so obsessed with his piece that he continues to pay for the criminals’ appeals in the hopes that they will tell him how the killings occurred, an event that happens to be the only bit of information they’ve held back. Finally, in a desperate attempt, Capote decides to stop paying for the appeals, this only after he poured years and years of effort into getting inside the mind of one of the killers, to the point of developing a sentimental relationship with him. In fear, they reveal the important information. This is when Capote realizes that, to have an end for his book he needs to let the actual end of the story play out. Now knowing what he must do, Capote lets the trial go on. The criminals are convicted to hang and Capote is forced to watch the men whom he owes his greatest work of fiction drop from the gallows. This event destroys Capote, who realizes he’s alienated those he loved in the quest to write his book. On top of this, the fact that he had to convene with these men, who were awaiting the grim reaper, while he got to walk out free every day deeply affected him. After the events, Capote was never the same again. He also never wrote anything of consequence after In Cold Blood was published.
This way of expressing how writing changes someone shows a vast difference from the way it was portrayed in Freedom Writers. In this film, a teacher from the middle-high class of society decides to teach Freshman and Sophomore English at a public school. The students belong to the lower classes and live during the time of the Rodney King riots. This coupled with lingering hate between races that has always been there causes the students at this school to form cliques based on their culture. Cliques that harbor a deep hate for each other. However, Erin Gruwell, their new teacher, tries to teach them about writing. After several failures, she decides, as a desperate attempt, to ask the students to keep journals. She tells them that they must write everyday, but that the decision to share their work lies with them. Slowly but surely, these students begin to spill their hearts onto the pages, and, with time, they share what they write in class. The viewer then begins to see that these students start making better choices in their lives, and eventually break the boundaries formed by racial and cultural hate. The movie covers the jumping over of several hurdles in the lives of each student as well as their teacher. Many of the outcomes of the choices these young people make in the face of these challenges are clearly linked to their writing.
One more mountain to climb is presented to both the characters and the viewers, as the students near the end of sophomore year. The curriculum says they must take another class with another teacher when they advance. In protest to this, the formerly aggressive students unite and urge their teacher to talk to the head of the school board. In one last attempt, Erin Gruwell meets with the woman in charge and makes a passionate plea. Upon reading the published works of Gruwell’s usually under achieving class, which consists of a short book titled “Freedom Writers,” the woman decides that the students will stay with Gruwell for both junior and senior years. Many of these students then go on to be the first in their economically handicapped families to earn college degrees, and some even follow Gruwell when she goes on to teach at college.
Watching both these movies opened my eyes to the various effects and outcomes of writing. As a writer myself, I appreciated the two different views since they present how writing can be used as a tool or a noose. In the first film, the author found symbolic death in his writing, since the shock of what he had to go through obliterated the amazing artist Truman Capote was, while in the second film, the authors found life in their writing, breaking the stereotypes of society and the expectations of almost everyone by using pen and paper to make a difference in their lives.
The film Capote deals with the attempts of writer Truman Capote to create a book based on a group of killings that occurred in 1959 in Kansas. More importantly, though, it deals with how everything he had to go through to complete this book changed his writing career and his life. In the movie, Capote finds himself intrigued by an article on a duo of criminals who broke into the house of one Herbert W. Clutter and slaughtered him along with his whole family. He travels to Kansas to interview those he could on the killings, all this in the hopes of writing an article for the New Yorker. Taking a fellow writer he made when basking in the triumph of his famous novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, along with him, Capote finds himself caught in the maze that is the mind of one of the killers and finds such an intricate puzzle of information that he decides the killings can’t be covered in an article, and instead decides to write a book.
He becomes so obsessed with his piece that he continues to pay for the criminals’ appeals in the hopes that they will tell him how the killings occurred, an event that happens to be the only bit of information they’ve held back. Finally, in a desperate attempt, Capote decides to stop paying for the appeals, this only after he poured years and years of effort into getting inside the mind of one of the killers, to the point of developing a sentimental relationship with him. In fear, they reveal the important information. This is when Capote realizes that, to have an end for his book he needs to let the actual end of the story play out. Now knowing what he must do, Capote lets the trial go on. The criminals are convicted to hang and Capote is forced to watch the men whom he owes his greatest work of fiction drop from the gallows. This event destroys Capote, who realizes he’s alienated those he loved in the quest to write his book. On top of this, the fact that he had to convene with these men, who were awaiting the grim reaper, while he got to walk out free every day deeply affected him. After the events, Capote was never the same again. He also never wrote anything of consequence after In Cold Blood was published.
This way of expressing how writing changes someone shows a vast difference from the way it was portrayed in Freedom Writers. In this film, a teacher from the middle-high class of society decides to teach Freshman and Sophomore English at a public school. The students belong to the lower classes and live during the time of the Rodney King riots. This coupled with lingering hate between races that has always been there causes the students at this school to form cliques based on their culture. Cliques that harbor a deep hate for each other. However, Erin Gruwell, their new teacher, tries to teach them about writing. After several failures, she decides, as a desperate attempt, to ask the students to keep journals. She tells them that they must write everyday, but that the decision to share their work lies with them. Slowly but surely, these students begin to spill their hearts onto the pages, and, with time, they share what they write in class. The viewer then begins to see that these students start making better choices in their lives, and eventually break the boundaries formed by racial and cultural hate. The movie covers the jumping over of several hurdles in the lives of each student as well as their teacher. Many of the outcomes of the choices these young people make in the face of these challenges are clearly linked to their writing.
One more mountain to climb is presented to both the characters and the viewers, as the students near the end of sophomore year. The curriculum says they must take another class with another teacher when they advance. In protest to this, the formerly aggressive students unite and urge their teacher to talk to the head of the school board. In one last attempt, Erin Gruwell meets with the woman in charge and makes a passionate plea. Upon reading the published works of Gruwell’s usually under achieving class, which consists of a short book titled “Freedom Writers,” the woman decides that the students will stay with Gruwell for both junior and senior years. Many of these students then go on to be the first in their economically handicapped families to earn college degrees, and some even follow Gruwell when she goes on to teach at college.
Watching both these movies opened my eyes to the various effects and outcomes of writing. As a writer myself, I appreciated the two different views since they present how writing can be used as a tool or a noose. In the first film, the author found symbolic death in his writing, since the shock of what he had to go through obliterated the amazing artist Truman Capote was, while in the second film, the authors found life in their writing, breaking the stereotypes of society and the expectations of almost everyone by using pen and paper to make a difference in their lives.
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