The Overall Reading Journal of The Body

    Every boy has an experience with his friends of doing something that exceeds the limits of everyday lives. Usually, Boys start talking about something stupid or shocking that originally came up just for entertainment, but sooner or later, they start to realize that they are actually planning for such thing to happen. This is a quintessential element that makes the boys to do something crazy, which is very similar how the protagonists in the 'The Body' were put up to a situation of actually finding the body. And after this journey, they start to feel that they have become more of a man than a child.
    There were many things the story told us, but the most outstanding scene was when Chris tells Gordie about a teacher who took the milk money. Even though he gave the money back, he was betrayed by an adult and got all the blame for it. This is an impressive scene of Chris's coming-of-age that makes him form distrust against adults, including the repected ones. At this scene, I had a thought that one of the categories that differenciates children from adults could be whether or not he or she has 'trust' toward the society.
    Somebody asked me recently, "There must be something you did in your middle school that went over the limits, right?", which was kind of an odd question to give an answer to. The things I thought unbelievable at the time could be expressed as something that doesn't have much value inside it, just as Gordie said in the book, 'The most important things are the hardest things to say'.
    Well, as I thought about it carefully, I had such experiences all right, but it really didn't start with my friends. But it did influence my thoughts which became: 'If there is a will, there is a way'. If you want to do something against the rules, it is easy for you to work alone rather than hanging out with your friends from the first place. After having some know-hows, you can start telling your closest friends about the crazy things you did. In retrospect, I shouldn't have told them those things because I figured out that right after I graduated, I became a legend in the school.
    Of course, the insaneness of a plan was so insignificant compared to the incident that the protagonists go through in 'The Body'. However, for guys who are stuck in the dormitory everyday can start their adventure with small steps.

(Adding : One thing I managed to do after three years of experience was being able to crack inside the dormitory anytime I wanted, including the times when we were not supposed to enter. Second thing I managed to do was to skip almost every evening self-study times. From seven to nine, we were obliged to stay in the school for self-studying, which I rarely attended especially in my last year of middle school.)

Reading Journal on the first 30 pages of 'The Body'

    Stephen King is the author who has bright ideas that can make any readers entertaining. Shawshank Redemption was a great story to read, but the new story I recently started, 'The Body', really got my attention. Mainly because it was a Coming-of-Age story, or in German, Bildungsroman. From the definition of Merriam-Webster Dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bildungsroman), the term Bildungsroman means a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character. The origin of Bildungsroman comes from German, from Bildung, meaning education and Roman, meaning novel. Quintessential example of Bildungsroman are: ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J. D. Salinger, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee’, and of course, ‘The Body’ by Stephen King.
    Coming-of-Age story conveys its theme of 'Boyhood to Manhood' usually by changing the attitude or the way of speaking at the end of the story. So far, I haven't reached the point where such dramatic changes in the protagonists' psychological development happen. Yet, I could take a glimpse of the facts that are set for the author to face an eventual change. The main part of the story starts when Vern says, "You guys wanna go see a dead body?". The innocent idea that finding the body will make all four of them heros is a thing that  belong to kids, especially when they are kids who are about to enter junior high. This idea would most likely 'fall from innocence' as the subtitle of 'The Body' mentions. Because learning to respect a dead human being is one of the things that teenagers should go through during adolescence. Because adolescence is the time of setting one's view of values, every single experience the one go through could work as a vital part in forming one's thoughts.
    In this story, four main characters appear each from different backgrounds. Their roles in the group differs from another and each of them are expected to undergo different kinds of Coming-of-Age. The most expected coming-of-age is Gordon's coming of age. This is because I was deeply resonated by his story of a dead brother. Since he was considered an "Invisible Man' by his parents after his brother died, I believe that his behavior would be different from the other guys when they come to see the dead body. Overall, the first thirty pages of 'The Body' made me feel desirable of reading the book. I look forward how the story is going to show the theme of Coming-of-Age.