What are you all’s overall thoughts on Borden now that we finished The Forbidden Zone?
I was talking with Morgan a little about this and I’m curious to see what everyone else thinks.
Personally, I think I liked it. The book evoked such a visceral reaction from me that often times I couldn’t tell whether I was angry or happy just have gotten the chance to read I text that made me feel so strongly.
Did anyone have any similar reactions?
This book tore me to SHREDS! I don’t know if maybe that is because we have been reading really intense things all semester and it is beginning to wear me down like these men get worn down by war. But something about this book really upset me and angered me and broke me in a way I have not had a book break me in a while. It made me sick, it made me sad, it made me want to curl up in fluffy fuzzy blankets with my dog and just cry for a full day.
I think the writing was amazing. I think Borden did a good job of presenting these stories. I think Borden did a good job of breaking my heart.
OH MY GOSH. PREACH. Borden, you’re a heart breaker…but like…in a good way.
I’ll admit that I did not like this book that much at first. The first half the book was mainly imagery without any dialogue. I do not like books with very little dialogue. Later on, however, I began to like this book. I first started to really enjoy it when I read the En Fant story. Now that being said, it is still a very emotional and heartbreaking book. This book did a really good job of being realistic in the sense that it pointed out that these men were just sent out to die. I am sure many of the soldiers felt this way, that there was no purpose for them. I’m sure that as time went on, even if they had a strong sense of nationalism, that the horrors of war made them become hopeless and fighting machines just doing what they’re told to do. Borden made the argument that these soldiers should not be seen as Christ making a sacrifice because Christ had a good purpose for His death and was not forced into it. Whereas many of these men were forced into fighting and could not leave when they wanted to. They were just doing this because they had to and for many of them, if they survived, they still had hard lives even after the war ended.
I had really mixed feelings about this book. A part of me struggled following the style of writing she used, and as a result I was initially turned off from it. But as I got more used to how she wrote, I was able to pick up more about the messages she presented and the power of her language. I ended up writing my second paper for the course on Borden. I focused on how she presented both a surreal and real representation of war through her strategic use of language to implement writing techniques such as repetition, breaking the fourth wall, and the personification of death. While it was far from my favorite book that we read this semester, I will definitely admit that writing my paper gave me greater appreciation for Borden and what she accomplished in her stories.