More Than This by Patrick Ness

          In the book More Than This by Patrick Ness, the main character Seth, bottles up his emotions for most of the book. Filled with guilt, confusion, and sadness affects him. His flashbacks make it much more difficult than it needs to be to get over heartbreak and the guilt clawing at the back of his head. 


        Seth deals goes through with a lot of sadness and pain throughout the story - Mostly when he gets in his head and remembers all the horrible things that happened before his suicide. Seth keeps having flashbacks to moments where his boyfriend and himself were together. All the memories are vast but in the end, he remembers why he killed himself. His last straw was when he found out Gudmund wasn't even technically his at all. Seth's life was crashing down little by little and he was miserable. "I thought Gudmund was my more. It didn't matter how crap everything else was." Guilt. Seth is filled with guilt for what happened to brother. The idea that his parents blamed him for everything was always in Seth's head. "I'm going to let you choose. I'm going to let you choose which one of the two of you comes with me Seth." "I thought if I said he could take Owen, I'd be able to raise the alarm  better." His thoughts eat at him until he speaks what he's feeling. But, there's still confusion. Seth doesn't know where he is or why he's there, and neither do the other two people there - Tomasz and Regine. Waking up bandaged in a coffin isn't ideal. They all got hit - or shot - in a certain part of their head that kept them away from everyone else - everyone else is also in a coffin but in a prison near Seth's house.

     
        I, myself was confused for a bit by this book but not for an immense period of time. The author portrayed all these emotions and more very strongly. The characters face difficulties but manage. The flashbacks helped a lot because after them, the characters show how they feel about remembering certain moments.

Blog Review

http://extremelyslappy.blogspot.com/2014/12/how-do-characters-interact-with-those.html

I read Jessica's response to 13 Reasons Why, and I chose to read this specific one because I had read the book, and wanted to see another person's view on it. As I read Jessica's response, I kept in mind that she was responding to a question; How do characters interact with those in higher power? The examples she used definitely benefited her ideas. They were carefully picked out because in this book, there are many examples to discredit the characters, but Jessica chose what fit the question and did it justice.

As stated before, I did read the book. I never thought about about how characters would interact with people in higher power. I agreed with all of Jessica's points because they were accurate. She mentions how in-denial Clay (a main character) is about the truth and how that makes him a clear character that deals with someone being in higher power than him. "Some people who typically deny or try to be oblivious that there is someone higher than them." This statement made me rethink what happened in the book, because it applies to Clay perfectly. Throughout the whole book, he was clearly in-denial and was unaware of why Hannah had included him in the tapes. Jessica also mentions how Courtney's (another character) actions make her the person who is faced with higher power. "Ignoring and even becoming nervous to the truth is a normal reaction to have when faced with this higher power." The paragraph on written about Hannah was definitely my favorite because it was so accurate. Jessica mentions how Hannah is determined on to overthrow and overrun those that are in higher power than her. The rumors she dealt with, which led to her suicide, where made by people who had more power than her. Overall, the descriptions, examples, and Jessica's own interpretation were really strong and all went together. I think that's why this post stood out to me.

This post made me think about how the question being asked and answered applies to many other things. In the real world, there will always be someone who is considered higher or more powerful than you - And that affects you or it doesn't. In books, the main character is dealing with a problem that is troubling them because they feel they can't do anything because the problem is bigger than them; hence higher in power. As well as movies; in movies there will be a big dramatic problem that's eating the character(s) away, until it is solved (for awhile) and then it can come back and start bothering them again.