Indian Killer was the last one that i thought i wanted to read. but once i started the novel, i found it very hard to stop. i read it quickly and was intrigued by the mystery. it went very fast for being over 400 pages. i felt myself getting attached to characters quickly and dissapointed when i found out they were killed. everything was easy to imagine, i felt as though i was watching a movie in my head. in the end i guessed the "indian killer" right, but did not expect what comes after. over all one of the best books i have read.
even though im a biracial individual, i still have a hard time grasping the idea that the racial tension is still a huge component to an Americans life. i cant name a time were i felt that my race had any contributions to the way i was or was not treated. maybe i have just been blind or foolish towards the issue. i do not think Indian Americans were so innocent though, i hated the way that they too discriminated. they made it as though you had to be a full blooded indian in order to understand their lives and culture. marie in particular criticized value of books simply because they were edited or co written by a white man.
i found it interesting that aaron and his friends went around assaulting any indian simply because they assumed his brother was killed by one. this is what we still do today and this book was written in 1995. after 9/11 we target and suspect any one who may look like they are from the middle east. i think being conscious of an enemy is smart but foolish to assume.
i think the reason i loved the book so much and found it so easy to read was the fact that im a criminal justice student and i minor in psychology. john helped me relate both to the book. him being a serial killer who is also having some serious psychological problems. the author did a good job at kind of hiding or masking the issues at the begininng but i think as the story progressed and johns need to kill increased he became more and more detached from reality. i would have liked to seen him arrested and tried to know if he would of got away with it due to insanity.
Though I liked the book it was not a quick read for me. I must admit I started it Friday night and had to finish it today obviously but I read for a good amount of time and I just felt as though it was never going to end. I agree what you said about becoming attached to the characters I felt the same way. I even became attached for John and became deeply upset when he started killing people. All in all I felt the book was written very well and kept my interest, but I would not want to read it again or anything.
ReplyDeleteI like the book to but it was not a quick read for me either. I fall asleep at times to but found it easy to jump right back into the book once i picked it up again. I also became attached to John and wanted to know what was going on wioth him when I was reading about the other characters in the book. I read fast to get to John. I wish there was more written about him even tho the book was about him. I would have loved to have read more history on him or about his dreams of living with his birth family.
ReplyDeleteI also found it a fast read and very enjoyable. The characters were very easy to get attached too, especially John, since he was the main character. John I believe was not the Indian killer. If he was, he would have killed Jack Wilson on the skyscraper. The Indian Killer was never revealed, because it was supposed to be more symbolic. He stood for struggle among races.
ReplyDeleteI found this book really enjoyable. I read through this book pretty quick it was easy to get into it. When you were were talking about the violence and racism that was some points that the author was trying to make. I think the author was trying to educate us on those topics. I see this still hapening today like with people applying for jobs and along ago whenever you tried to go in a resturant they could choose not to serve you. This reminds me of the movie remember the Titans whenever they wre trying to eat in a resturant and the owner refused to serve them. also, On the job application they always ask what your race is that shouldn't matter. That proves that this is still going on today.
ReplyDeleteI loved this book also! I read it all in one day, and found myself disappointed when it was over. Not because of the way it ended, but because I would have liked the story to keep going. The character I found myself attached to most was David Rogers, who clearly had a huge heart and did not discriminate against the Indians at all. It seriously upset me when he was killed, but obviously I knew that it was not the Indian Killer, due to the manner in which he was murdered. A character that really annoyed me was Marie. I found her intolerable. Standing for something is one thing, but constantly having a guard up and being rude to others is another. There were ways in which she could have fought for her cause without hurting David Rogers feelings, disrespecting Dr. Mather, and having an overall grudge against all non-Indians.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good point when you talked about Aaron and his friends expressing an enormous amount of prejudice towards the Native American ethnicity. People do still show prejudice in our culture. I've heard many comics including those from Middle Eastern descent joke about not wanting to sit next another Middle Eastern man on an airplane because of what happened on 9/11. They joke and I feel bad in saying this but I imagine that I would get nervous if i sat next to a man fitting the description of a Middle Eastern terrorist. Hopefully this skewed view will be altered in time however I do not see Americans changing very quickly.
ReplyDelete