What kind of power hierarchies are displayed in your independent reading life?

     While I did my inquiry on this question I finished the book Be More Chill . This book is about a boy named Jeremy that is on the social outskirts and all he wants is to be popular and he finds the perfect way. He gets a pill called a "squip" that goes into your brain and tells you what to do to become popular and cool. After he has taken the squip everyone starts respecting him and treating him like he is an actual person making him feel better about himself. In the beginning of the book I thought that the squip was the thing in the book that held all the power but I soon learned that the people that could resist the squip were the most powerful. This book showed how it is good to be human and knowing that can make you have the power in the situation.

     In the book Be More Chill  I thought that the squip held all the power because everyone wanted it and it was like the ultimate cool person that would make your life so much better. But I soon figured out that the person with the most power was Jeremy's best friend Micheal. Why I think this is because Micheal was the only one who was able to resist the squip's power even when he knew about the squip he still didn't get it even though he was in the same position as Jeremy he was strong enough to see that the squip would not do him any good and that it was better to be human. The person that had the second most power was Christine, Jeremy's crush because even though she didn't know about the squip she was in some ways still able to resist it. She didn't like Jeremy any better and in some aspects she even disliked him more after he got the squip because she could see the way he was actting wasn't normal or cool just unlike everyone else. The person who had the third most power was Jeremy because even though he realized it kinda late he still realized the the squip wasn't helping him and that he had to get rid of it because it was not human like. The person who has the least power is Rich because he was not able to resist the squip at all and ended up dying because of it. 

     In conclusion, Be More Chill  showed how it was good to be human and that sometimes you think that a character has the most power but as the book goes on their real self starts to show and you see the real situation. 

                     

Where do you see social justice themes/idea popping up in your independent reading life?

Where do you see social justice themes/idea popping up in your independent reading life?

In the Divergent series by: Veronica Roth some of the characters belong to a group called the Factionless they struggle for food and are not in a good place economically, they are like the people that struggle today economically. In these books the factionless live in the "fringe" like outside society and they do the menial work like bus driving and the dirty work for very little money and food. The Factionless are mostly separated from the people in their official factions and they hardly see the Factionless. This reminds me of our world today how the upper and lower classes are so separated. The divide is not right and any people have said so like our new mayor Bill de Blasio  and in the Occupy Wall Street protest to give a few examples. The Factionless often didn't pass the test of their faction and then got kicked out and were then Factionless and banned from joining another faction and can't find a way to join back in society. When many people lose their jobs it is hard for them to get back up and recover and find a new job. Especially since housing is so incredibly expensive and no one is making less expensive housing  and jobs are so scarce and hard to find these days. Many of the jobs Factionless are given aren't good enough or high paying for them to support themselves and also they do not have any housing for Factionless. Today many people have jobs that aren't paying enough for the labor  and many do not have things such as benefits. It is unjust that many people have to struggle through everyday life to get money and that there is such a divide in between the upper and lower class.