| this is my book report: review
........tell me what u think
January 8, 2004
The novel I read was The Crow, written by James O'Barr. James O'Barr is a self-taught artist. He first started creating his work while stationed in Berlin for the Marines. During then, he was given a job to illustrate hand-to-hand combat maunuals. He is inspiried by many different sources, for music: Iggy Pop, Ian Curtis and Robert Smith. Such writes also include Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe and A.A. Attanasio. Before he enrolled in the Marines... the basis of the character and story of the Crow was due to a personnel tradegy that happend in his life. Due to a drunk driving accident, someone very close to him died in that accident. To express his feeling out, he wrote the Crow.
"My character Eric[The Crow] is able to return from the grave because some things just cannot be forgiven; and I believe that there could be a love so strong that it could transcend death, that it could refuse death, and this soul would not rest until it set things right."- O'Barr
The main character of the story is a man, who just got murdered and witnessed his fiancee being raped and murdered by ruthless thugs. He dies.. and then returns to find the people who killed him and his fiancee in revenge and retribution. "I always saw The Crow as a fixed story, never a continuing character like in the superhero books..."- O'Barr The theme of the novel was basically good versus evil. If you look at it at a deeper and more emotional aspect, it was really man versus himself. Since they killed his fiancee, the one he truly loved, and thus tried doing something to fix it. In reality he fixed nothing, I think Eric(The Crow) should have just accepted his and Shelly's(his fiancee) death and find her in the afterlife, instead of coming back to life and killing his killers. He probably got more pain and suffering when he came back alive to experience the pain over again. Although he did get Shelby back at the end, what he did was kinda useless. James O'Barr said he felt worse after writing this then to begin with after that tragic and personal death. So I think just accept whats there. "Real love is forever." So if its there, its there.
Overall i thought this book was good. Yet don't confuse this with the movie. I thought the movie was greatly done. The book overall still had its negatives to it. For one, in the book and movie.. he seems to just be basically killing everyone for the crime they commited. Of course done for the love of Shelly, its was alot of him be vigilante. Also in the book, theres plenty of foreshadowing, of happy times him and Shelly had, some where irrelevant, but it worked with the whole story. When Sherri was introduced, Shelly's characted basis the movie, I personnaly thought it was a good touch. To have a little girl in remembrance of Shelly, I think its remarkable how accurate in life it would be. If you lose someone, you don't nessarilly replace them, but you still see them in other people. With James, his work is that little girl. Also his pet cat Gabriel is in also remembrance with Shelly. When he finllay got his retribution he let go of Sherri and Gabriel, and his hate for the murderes. All what is there was what he had in the beginning, the real love that was between him and Shelly.
I would recommend this to anyone from teenagers to whenever. Since this book deals with true love and revenge, any one can relate. Thats what strenghtens the whole book, because the feelings Eric had for Shelly, anyone can relate to it. Maybe that the fact he came back alive and unleashed his hate and unger through the powers of a crow is hard to believe, its something we all wanted before; to get revenge. I say read the novel first before you see the movie, its good to see what the original writer had in mind. It makes you think how strong love is to one person or another. |
