Q1 Free Response 3

This week I read 24 more pages of “Vienna Prelude” by Bodie Thoene. Elisa has just arrived in the Austrian Alps except without her father, Theo. The Gestapo forced him off the train and made him return home. The Gestapo think that if Theo remains in Germany, the family will be forced to return. They want their money which at the moment is stored in various banks in other parts of Europe.
Meanwhile in the mountains, Anna, Elisa’s mother, and the family are worried sick about Theo. They also worry that their secret will be discovered. They have told Franz and his family that they are from Vienna, not Germany. One night Franz discovers Elisa in the barn. She tells him a little of her story and how she is worried for her father. Franz in turn tells her that his brother, Otto, is not completely loyal to Austria. He favors Hitler and his communist ideas. This information is vital for Elisa’s family’s survival.
The next day Anna and Elisa go into a big vacationing city in Austria. They make reservations at a hotel, visit a doctor, go shopping, eat lunch, and most importantly renew their visa to stay in Austria. They also make sure some German Gestapo see them and write some letters to Theo. By going to this city they hope to fool the Gestapo into thinking they are here. This will hopefully buy them the much needed time to figure out what they are going to do. They know that returning to Germany is the worst thing they could do.
Theo on the other hand is worried that his family will return to dangerous Germany. He also knows that his family’s return would be the end of them and wants to protect them. The ironic part in all of this is that when Anna sends him a letter letting him know that they will be staying in Austria longer, he is too busy writing them a letter pretending he has died. He hopes this will keep them from coming. The letter he did not read would have let him know that they were staying in longer and relieve all his fears. This book is very captivating and I look forward to reading more.

Q1 Free Response 2

This week I read seventeen pages from the book “I Ain’t Comin’ Back” by Dolphus Weary. The book is a memoir of Mr. Weary’s life growing up in Mendenhall, Mississippi. He grew up in the 1950s and 60s, a time of great racial segregation. Being black and poor, his future did not look very bright, yet his mother wanted each of her seven kids to grow up to get a good education.
Over MEA his year, I have to opportunity to go on a missions trip to Mendenhall. It is one of the areas most devastated by poverty in all of the United States. Because Mr. Weary did choose to go back to his home town after college, there is now a school, church, and a few other buildings started by his organization. When you enter this town you see that on one side of the railroad tracks live the rich white people. These are the homes with lawns, flowers, white picket fences, and there live people with steady jobs. On the other side of the tracks live the poor, African-American people with houses that are falling apart, and money only to buy necessities.
One quote that stood out to me in my reading this week was, “When you grow up like that, you don’t dread not having things- you dream about having them” (2,14). He went on to talk about how for us, everyday we get the choice of what we want to eat for breakfast. Eggs, toast, waffles, honey nut, fruit loops, bacon, banana. Growing up, the thought of even getting to choose between cheerios and honey nut was a dream. He never had a real bath tub with running water, and never used a shower until college. He never had ice cream until he was ten. They did not have the money to own a freezer in their house.
This really made me think of how blessed I am. Not only could I eat ice cream every night if I wanted to, but I also could have the choice of what kind of ice cream I wanted to eat. Looking in my freezer today we have chocolate and vanilla ice cream and frozen yogurt. If my shirt rips, it is okay because I have fifty some others in my closet and dresser. In Edina, most of us are very well off. But there must to be some among us who do live in some sort of poverty, even if they are not as extreme as those of Mr. Weary. What can we do to help these people within our own town and country?

Q1 Free Respose 1

This week I read eighty-two pages of Vienna Prelude, by Bodie Thoene. The story takes place in Eastern Europe in 1936, just as Hitler is taking power in Germany and Austria. The story follows the lives of many different people living in and around Berlin as they cross with the life of wealthy Aristocrat Elisa Lindheim. While she is by heritage half Jewish, she is a practicing Lutheran and did not inherit her father’s Jewish looks. She plays in a professional orchestra in Vienna, Austria, where she goes by the last name Linder as to be able to perform on all stages, since Jews were banned from performing. Throughout the novel, as people pass in and out of her life, we know things about them before even Elisa knows they exist. This makes it easy for us to tell how these people will play a significant role in her life.
There’s Franz, the mountaineer in the Austrian Alps, whose family will be opening their home for a few weeks to a family from Berlin. We as the reader quickly realize that it will be Elisa’s family staying with Franz while they find a safe place to escape the Gestapo.
John Murphy, an American reporter, is stationed in Berlin to report on the Nazi’s rise. He feels as though the rest of the world is not paying enough attention to the wrongs happening in Germany, and takes it upon himself to attempt to help at least one Jew. That Jew we soon realize will be Elisa.
There are many more characters that enter and leave Elisa’s life throughout the novel. Thinking of this, I began to wonder what our lives would be like if they were a book. We would know who we were about to meet before we saw their face. We would know what we would do in the future before we went to college. There would never be any need to worry because you could just skip a few pages ahead and see what happens next. But would life then really be worth living? Is it not the twists and turns, surprises and suspense of life that keep us getting out of bed each morning to face a new day?
Elisa faces constant fear and much uncertainty. These are the things that make her strong. If she were to know her family would escape successfully, she would not have fought so hard to help them. It is our uncertainty of the future that makes us brave and forces us to want to improve ourselves.

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