Prize Fiction Reading Log
Name:_Phoebe Carrona_ Date:__9/13/24_ Entry # __3__
SOURCE IDEAS:
1/ “Love, Pure and simple. None of them gave a thought yet to what people beyond the island saw as their polluted blood. Even after that shameful visit from the doctors. Soon enough, she thought. Soon enough, Pharaoh will come after us like he always does. She thought of the Hebrews leaving Egypt, Pharaoh’s army at their heels…-the kings and marching armies and poking and prodding doctors of the world.”(81-82).
2/“Those are my pictures, they’re portraits of those people– and official documents, he said. They’re not for you to turn into a bunch of dirty jokes.”(56).
3/”Matthew Diamond imagined the doctor’s mother sitting in a parlor with tall, bright windows, in a dark velvet dress with lace at the cuffs and neck, the doctor with his arm resting on the mantel as he prodded at the fire with a poker. He would never dream of saying, Mother, there are some measurements I need to take…”(53).
SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:
The author harding is referencing the Hebrews being forced out of Egypt in relation to the visit from the doctors, and that a form of Eden which is a paradise to Esther Honey, which is the island. This could be a symbolic intrusion that the doctors are taking humanity out of Apple Island. These steps from the mainland almost like a bite off the island and the islanders. It disrupts their “eden” in a way by taking the human and peaceful part from the island. Through forcing humanity from the islanders by giving them “Medical” examinations calling them “idiotic”, lazy, indifferent, as the finding of such examinations by measuring their humanity and specifically their humanity towards the mainland. Yet the doctors only focus on the physical attributes instead of the personality and the talents of the islanders. The people on the mainland taking and making the portiatrs into crude jokes just based off of the gaze of the pictures and what was said in the article. I do think that one thing in this entire book that has shown other references are from King Lear(I’ve only watched a 3 min video about this) from Shakespeare, and that is in Esther and her sister Abby. in a more messed up way because of their fathers actions.
QUESTION:
How are the people on the island treated differently and in inappropriate awe by the doctors?
How much foreshadowing perhaps in the italics show what is going to happen to the islanders– it seems very much an intrusion and a warning from the author?
Why do you think incest is a theme and how does it refence to the islanders being forced away from paradise?
