Monday, January 12, 2009

History

Okie so let me preface this by saying that pretty much the only books I read are historic, preferrably historical fiction. I love history, it's my favorite. But here is what happens to me every single time. I just finished reading 1776 and watched the WWII movie Valkerie (both excellent might I add).
I know the stories well and so just learning about the characters more and more was awesome. But even I know what's going to happen and it's already set in stone I still get sucked in to the story and root for the good guys! You want them to win so badly and it's almost more devastating when what you knew was going to happen happens anyway. For example in Valkerie.... I'm not giving away the story line here but there is a coup against Hitler and, again not giving anything away but it doesn't succeed. But it's SO sad because the entire time you see how creeptastic Hitler is and you are hoping that something bad doesn't happen and Tom Cruise succeeds! But alas, history hasn't changed and neither did the historical biography of the story. Every single time this happens and I don't know if I can stop. It's just a weird phenomena where you root for the good guy even though you know what's going to happen. I think it's just the effect that a book has one you, or a movie for that matter. You get into the story and forget yourself. You just focus on the characters and their feelings. You get lost in their own personal story and forget the world that you know and think about.

3 comments:

Abbey said...

Doesn't it suck when you realize that dang, this crap actually happened and there were real people that this was happening to? Not just a dude whose name was in a book you were forced to study from in HS? I say forced because that's what HS was for me. Maybe not for you. Good thing I grew up huh?

Kara said...

I really wish you were going to be in one of my classes, Heidi, that's exactly how I try to get my students to look at history, and you already do! That's the biggest way for history to come alive, I think, is to realize that even though we know the ending, at one time people didn't and they really had no idea how this stuff was going to end. If you can put yourself in that mindset, history becomes so much fun to study!

Heidi said...

Are neither one of your classes going to go online? That's sad! Ha I didn't know I was doing something special. We all like different things Ab, for the most part you and I like different things but that makes it fun.