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Seventh son

After Thrower described what the devil look like. ("horns of a bull.....claws of bear....hooves of a goat... his voice is the roar of a ravening lion.") Alvin respons, " And you call us superstitious."(Ch13 pag 209,210)

Superstitious. A belief, not based on human reason or scientific knowledge. They believe the devil is live and destroy some people life. People don't think of that when they don't "believe" in anything then blame the fault on the devil. Many profess Christianity and claim to believe the Bible—reject the idea that a real Devil exists. Like The broken mirror with its bad luck, the ladder, or the black cat. Like the moment you sneeze, the person besides you has to come up with "god bless", is same thing.

Coming of Age

I think that Alvin in a lot of ways is experiencing a coming of age story. He is starting to realize his powers more and more. I think a big moment in his coming of age is when he gets visited by the stranger after sending the cockroaches into his sisters room for revenge."And then in his vision he was one who lived, one who got away from the looming, stomping boots, under the beds, into the cracks of the wall."p.61. Also he is coming of age because hes realizing that hes different from other people with some of the things he can do. Things like crack the rocks perfectly, and fix his wounded leg. The last thing that really shoes his coming of age is him deciding to remove the bone from his leg. This shows how mature he is and how he can think ahead and decide the best thing to do even if it is painful at the time.

Good v.s. Bad

    In the book seventh son I find it very hard to determine who is good and who is evil.  For most of the book I had no idea what the purpose of it was, but I finally realized that it is based on American past time and includes people with magical powers.  It's kind of weird and hard to understand, however intersting because it is partially beleivable.  It is said that the Miller family isnt religious and they may practice withcraft.  this means that the devil is possibly present and the visitor thinks it is inside Alvin.  For example. Reverend Thrower sais, "I'm prepared to deal with the anger of the unfaithful," "It's the victim of deviltry that concerns me, not the foolish and superstitious family." (Ch. 13 pg 201 & 202) I believe that the Miller family is superstitious however they are with God.  I think the Visitor and Thrower are both evil because they want to kill Alvin.  This quote explains that Thrower is trying to reverse what is really going on, on Alvin because he has special magical powers.  The Millers must be careful becuase Thrower and the Visitor are deffinately not with God.

Our Identity Is Born

    The frontier was an essential part of American history. The U.S developed good qualities along with many bad ones.  We expanded our territory, spread our ideas, made a lot of enemies, and most importunately we developed extremely huge egos on the frontier. The Indian wars is definitely the most horrible event that took place on the frontier. The Americans fear of Native Americans lead to genocide which killed many people. Fear of Native Americans is constantly shown in Seventh Son. In one part Reverend Thrower discuses his fear on the frontier when he begins to think, " The Red would fall upon the settlers and  destroy them; scum they might be, but they were mostly English scum, and the vision of the Red's savagery made his skin crawl." (Page 39) This shows how people viewed the Natives and as we discussed last quarter, fear leads to disaster.

Themes In The Seventh Son

I find it interesting how two very parallel themes, religion and magic are used together in this book.They do somewhat go together though, considering when Jesus used to heal people (assuming you believe) of diseases, and that could easily be considered magic even if it does contain religious undertones. The whole family, with the exception of the father, actively go to church and participate, but also they use their abilities in their own home. According to Rev. Thrower, these powers are an abomination and against God, but the Millers are still confident enough in their faith that they can practice religion and basically magic. It's interesting that the reverend is basically contemplating murder, yet he is still able to judge others based on things he doesn't fully even understand.

Seventh Son of a Seventh Son

    It is long thought throughout history that a seventh son is especially lucky and that the seventh son of a seventh son has healing powers. This stems from the Religious importance of the number seven. Seven is a reoccuring number throughout many of the worlds religions that signifies great importance. The number seven represents perfection or completeness. In the Christian Bible God created everything and in a matter of seven days, insisting that their god created a universe that was perfect or complete.

    Orson Scott Card used the number seven in his fantasy world that exists within Seventh Son. Alvin is The seventh son of a seventh son, he has the abbility to see heartfires and the power of the elements, he also has healing powers. When his leg was smashed, the outcome back then on the frontier would most likely be death being as there wasn't any kind of safe surgery. Often times a simple wound would result in death because advances in medical technology hadn't been made to easily allow for surgery to be sucessful, there was no annestesia or numbing agents to take away the pain. Alvins healing ability saved his own life, he knew where to heal himself but he couldn't see exactly what was going on inside him, his smashed  leg was healed up in a metter of days but there was one spot he couldnt heal on his bone, a bad spot he needed surgery to cut out.

7th Son- Taleswapper

Most people wouldn't have thought that Taleswapper could help Alvin piece his destiny together. His remembrance of stories may seem boring and dull to some. Most would just think he was a nosey old man wanting to know your business, but in the end he ended up being one of the main pieces that helped alvin realize his knack, and what may be expected of him in the future. Taleweeper was smart enough to know that what may seems like noting can be the most important thing because he always looked at the small details. When Alvins parents told him that his recurring  dreaming was noting at all, Talsweper knew that a recurring dream had to be something. In the book he stated that a recurring dream is always trying to tell you something.What most would ignore he payed attention to. I think that we could all learn from him in the novel because he was a very attentive man. He proved that what may seem like nothing is most likely something.

Seventh Son Discussion~Reverend Thrower and The Millers

Why would Reverend Thrower have such a negative view of the Miller family?  Well my opinion on this subject is mainly because of Alvin Sr. himself.  He doesn't believe in God and this goes against everything Reverend Thrower believes in.  HE hates teh fact that he has tried multiple times to convert the nonbeliever but it has never worked.  He feels like a failure in the eyes of God.  

When it comes to Faith, he sees her as one of the biggest sinners of the family.  Why? Because she practices "witchcraft" of hexes and whatnot.  These acts are against God and of the Devil. And everyones knows that the Devil is a Fallen Angel and goes against all of Gods' plans to make the world a better place.

   Then there is Alvin. Thrower is stuck on teh idea, that the Visitor gave him, that he must convert Alvin Jr. from his evil ways and stop being the Devils' Advocate.  In chapter 13, Thrower was going to perform the surgery on Alvin to get rid of the bad part in his bone.  His plan was to "accidently" cut a main artery and Alvin would therefore bleed to death.  Nothing but pure Evil.  But for some reason, he was not able to stay in the same room as the saw and the knife so he just left the house.

Thrower can say all he wants, but he shouldnt even be attempting to kill a ten year old child.  Not even God, would give him the power to kill another human.  He may call himself a man of the Word, but he should know this truly. 

What is More Important-Individual or the Community

Community is the key to surviving in the frontier because in order to survive the harsh conditions and the struggles that you would face you need to have people around to help.  In the Seventh Son there are many examples of this thoughtout the book.  One example that shows this was in the very beginning of the book, when the Miller famliy was trying to cross the Hatrack River.  Their wagon gets off course and crashes against the side of the river and the blacksmith comes and helps the family get out and gets the mom to the house so she could have the baby safely. 

Another good example of community is when the town is raising the church in the square.  It would have never been done if there wasn't a community around them.  Every one helps out and brings their one talent to it.  "Right up against the building, most of the men were tying ropes to the north half of the ridge beam, so the could lift it into place."(36)  All in all in order to live in the frontier and survive it you need a sense of community around you.

The Seventh Son

In American Studies class i am reading a novel called "The Seventh Son".It is about a young boy by the name of Alvin Jr growing up. One of the questions that we were asked is What is more important on the frontier – the individual or the community? My response to this is that the community is more important than the individual.

During this novel, the people in the town basically depend on each other. For example, when they went to get the millstone. The all contributed to moving the logs down so the millstone could just roll down without being stopped.

Another example is when Alvin Jr stopped the millstone from rolling down with his leg. He knew that it would be painful but he did it anyways just to help out his family memebers. He messed up his leg, breaking bones. He sacrificed his well being for a millstone. He is demonstrating that his family is more important than his well being.

In conclusion that is why i think community is more important than the idividual itself.

 

 

superstitious

In the novel The Seventh Son, the devil is described to a young man named Alvin.  The describer states that the devil looks like "the horns of a bull, claws of a bear, hooves of a goat, and has the roar of a ravening lion."  The young man replies to this saying "An you call us superstitious."  From this conversation between two characters, i wonder if ones self can believe in a religion and at the same time, not believe it is indeed superstitious... 

Within the novel itself, a family called the Millers, see themselves as a superstitious family, The local Reverend "thrower", also see's it this way.  As a reader, in some sense i see the Reverend himself as a superstitous person.  He tries his best to force a religion onto a young man, who is uncapable of understanding the figure "god".  Is this how he should spread such a godly religion? i think not.  Along with that note, he wishes to kill the young man because the thinks he is the devil.  Being a man of god, could he take gods power into his "own" hands to kill one of "gods creations"?

In some sense i belive that the image of god we ourselfs have created is somewhat superstitious, no human on earth has ever seen this "God" but we still believe he is there.  Other cultures have many gods..doesnt it seem unnessesary to have multiple gods that withhold the same powers? could it not be possible that one "god" created us all, and not the the power of multiple "gods"?  For that matter, wouldnt having "A" god be superstitious enough? i believe that this "god" might just be a figure of the human imagination, and at the same time just a figure of history, not actually a person.

The frontier helps The American Identity.

The frontier helps the American identity because living and surviving out on the frontier makes us look better to other people who don't know what we have to go to live. Living out on the frontier is a difficult thing to do because its a free for all type of living, move there with your family, looking for land large enough for you, create a house, and live against the wild and thrive and there are many threats to your life and your families. Animals, other people, or sickness. If other countries who think we are just lavished and all of our people are rich, I feel like they will give us respect for what a majority of people have to do to live. The idea of a rugged individual is created from men living out on the frontier. People who are rich and always inside living the "cozy" life aren't going to be much of a rugged individual. I also feel that being a rugged person is looked at by other people from other countries as being a group of people that they don't want to deal with, or they would want to ally with them. Frontier is something that not all countries population have to go through that we the people have to go through.  

Reverend Thrower

I think that Reverend Thrower is somewhere inbetween good and bad. I believe he has good intentions, he just seems like he doesn't have the self confidence he needs in order to be the powerful leader he's expected to be, especially in a society where religion plays such a huge part in it. That's why I think that he is so influenced by the visitor that keeps visiting him and talking to him about Alvin Jr. Does Reverend Thrower really believe that there's devil in the Millers house? Or is he told to believe that? He even says, in chapter 13, that he is weak.

Views On Seventh Son

My views on Seventh Son is that at first I didn't like the book. I thought that it was boring. The only things that excited me was the chapter about surgery. Reverend Thrower is the one who is eventually going to kill Alvin and give him surgery. Alvin's leg is broken and hurt, skin and flesh was torn. This happened in the other chapter with the millstone. That chapter was basically about how they were cutting millstones and taking them home. Alvin always had secret powers. He couldn't use his powers to heal his leg so he ended up being hopeless and staying in bed all day. Here is a quote: "Im scared to die, Taleswapper, but it got inside of me and I can't get it out." (p.194)  He is talking about how the devil is in him from his leg being hurt and he is crying out that he is scared of dying. He stresses that he wants his leg removed because he can't live with the pain.

Coming Of Age

Alvin experienced coming of age in the novel. One example would be when he made the roached go into his sister's room and were able to control them to do whatever he wanted them to do. "Sure enough, a few of the roaches started skittering under Alvin's door, and then more and more of them, and finally the whole troop went off in a single great cavalry charge under the door, through the wall, their bodies shiny and glowing in the candlelight, guided by their eternal insatiable hunger, fearless because Al had told them there wasn't nothing to fear."(pg 58) Alvin realized that he hold control over the roaches at this point and he was going to use them to his advantage to get back at his sister. Coming of age is similar to other kids because as you get older you realize that you have to take more responsibility and learn to be independent. Kids cant rely on their parents all the time they have to do things on their own.