The
End (5/23-6/4): Reflection & Synthesis
This week you will be finishing your books.
As you read I want you to think about how the book ends in relation
to how it started. Imagine if you could create a memorial to honor
something from this book.
1. How did the main character change?
2. What are the important ideas (conflicts,
character traits, people, places) that you would want to include in
your memorial?
3. How would these ideas be represented (what
symbols, colors, materials, etc would you use)?
Posting assignment:
Posting assignment:
-
Answer the questions listed above.
Post your idea of the most significant/important
thing to memorialize from your book (consider both the perspective
represented AND the main character). Explain WHY you would want to
memorialize those traits, actions, etc.
-
Respond to other posts by asking questions, providing memorial suggestions, or offering your opinion.
Helmuth changed in many ways. He started out liking Hitler and his ideas. He wanted to fight for his country and be a good German. As the book went on he had to start dealing with Hugo's narrow-mindedness. He started to form his own opinions. He gained the ability to take everything with a grain of salt. He started to feel as if he needed to rebel against Hitler. He was only gaining strength from there. When he got caught he took the blame even though he knew he would eventually die. He started as a weak boy who could not tell what was true and what was not, and formed into a strong man who could decipher the truth and lies.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with that. Helmuth changed a lot.
Deleteit defiantly take a lot of altruism to risk your life to try and save millions of others
DeleteAltruistic is the perfect word to describe Helmuth, especially at the end when he did what he could to save his friends. I also think a part of his downfall was that he was also a bit naive. Do you think he REALLY understood the risk he was taking when he started?
DeleteI don't think he did. Helmuth was still young when he started, and hadn't seen much of the world or the Nazi's injustice. It wasn't until his arrest that he finally saw lots of the Nazi brutality. Sure, he knew about the war, and the BBC told him about all the dead soldiers. But that was just something that he vaguely knew in the back of his mind. His easy declaration of "if somebody is caught, they should take all the blame" shows that he didn't know what would really happen to people who rebelled against the Nazis.
DeleteI would want to include the prison that Helmuth is in. I would also like to include the train the the boys where on to get to the court. I would like to include the conflict between Helmuth and the Gestapo. I would like to include the conflict Helmuth had with himself about bringing the boys to see the Rola Radio. Finally, I would like to include Rudi, Helmuth, and Karl.
ReplyDeleteI would also include the words of the letters that Helmuth made.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good idea wish I thought of the letters before I posted my comment
DeleteI would make a wall, similar to the Vietnam memorial. I would hang red letters with the words of Helmuth's letters on them. The wall would be dark to represent the feeling of the time that they were in. I would also put pictures of Rudi, Helmuth, and Karl on the wall. I would chisel facts about each of the boys on the wall. I would put ink on the wall to symbolize the triumph of Helmuth and his friends.
ReplyDeleteI was going to write something similar until I read yours.
DeleteThey didn't really triumph because they all died.
DeleteGood point. A morbid and depressing point, but still a good point. Also wasn't Helmuth the only one to be executed by the Nazis? I know that the rest of them died eventually, but was it really because of their actions with the pamphlets?
DeleteThe main character Helmuth has changed quite a lot throughout the book but the biggest way he changed was his thought about the war. His opinion of the war changed from the beginning of the book was he wanted to become a soldier and fight for the fatherland. This later changed and At the end of the book, he disagreed with what Hitler and the Nazis did and how they were lying to all of Nazi Germany. I think he really started to change when they made it illegal to listen to the radio as well as when he met the man from the concentration camp and he had told him that he had sworn (by force) not to tell anyone what happened to him in the camp. When he told Helmuth he really started to change his opinion of the war and why the Nazis were wrong.
ReplyDeleteFor my memorial, I would create a room that looks like Helmuth cell and put a silhouette of Helmuth sitting at the table listening to the radio. On the opposite wall, I would but a bunch of people to represent the people that suffered in the concentration camps. The room you wouldn't be able to go in but there would be a window like in prison or the cover of the book so that people could look in.
ReplyDeleteFor my memorial, it could be a radio program, on the BBC listing all the people who died resisting the Nazis. The radio program is because of Helmuth’s original act of rebellion, listening to the radio. The program being played on the BBC is because that’s the station Helmuth listened to illegally. And since the memorial would honor the dead, it lists all the lives lost fighting the Nazis, including Helmuth.
ReplyDeleteWould the radio announce all the dead people on a loop or would they be written on the radio.
DeleteNo, the names of the dead would be played on a loop. Of course it would be a very long loop, since there were lots of people killed resisting the Nazis.
DeleteHelmuth changed a lot throughout the book, but the most prominent change was his growing rebellion throughout the books, and his undying(sorry, that was a bad joke) loyalty to his friends. In the beginning, Helmuth was a loyal Nazi supporter, and told that soldier that he would fight for the Fatherland. Eventually, he realized that what they were doing was wrong, and starting producing the pamphlets. As for his loyalty to his friends, they weren't that good friends to start with. But they grew close, and Helmuth trusted his friends enough to enlist them in his rebellious activities. In addition to that, he took the majority of the blame for his actions, and was the only person out of their group to be executed.
ReplyDeleteHelmuth changed so much throughout the books because he started out following all of the rules and thinking that he would become a soldier for the fatherland. He learned much more and decided that he disagreed with many of Germany's decisions and actually started speaking out against Germany. As a physical change he also died, so that was a major change.
ReplyDeleteFor my memorial I was thinking about making a prison cell with everyone who died in the concentration camps names all over the wall. Inside the prison cell it would be filled with light because many of these people tried to shed light on Germany's wrong doings and even though they died they still made a change in the world.
ReplyDeleteI would make a model of it either online or a physical model and add color to make it so you can see the light.
ReplyDeleteif i were to make a memorial i would put a table in the corner of the room with a radio and a chess board. on the other side of the room i would put a old metal bunk bed with badly knitted blanked blanked. on the ceiling of the rooms i would have names of those who passed away in the holocaust. the walls wood be gray with wooden floor.
ReplyDeletei would put a metal bunk bed with a badly knitted blanket on it*
ReplyDelete