Graeme’s Comments (group member since Sep 16, 2016)

Graeme’s comments from the S.S. Rebel Alliance (Silent Sustained Reading Discussions) group.

In A Study in Scarlet, a major theme is death/dying. It is a mystery and suspense book, so murder and death are simply inherant in this genre. In the opening five chapters, it is introduced that a man is murdered and Holmes is responsible for solving the crime. Holmes is not shaken by death; he sees it on a nearly daily basis. Seeing dead bodies doesn't seem to phase Holmes, although Watson seems to be moderately uncomfortable. I think it is cool reading about a main character who is not phased by death. I myself have been in circumstances which have desensitized me to death, and I find his lack of qualms and his calmness around death relatable.

Once again in Confessions, Perkins is struggling with the concept of what he is doing. He still feels remorse for indirectly causing the death and suffering of millions living in third world nations.

The theme of alienation and isolation are currently heavily present in John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman. About three quarters of the way into the book, Perkins begins to take a deeper look at and act upon the feelings of shame and guilt growing inside him. Several times throughout the book he Perkins is referred to as a man between two worlds. On one hand, he has a conscience and feels remorse for the crimes he committed for the government. But on the other hand he feels that he may to some degree be helping the people of the nations he works in and enjoys the prestige and money from the job too much. He feels disconnected from the world around him and feels that he doesn't belong in the common populous or with the government. I'm not sure what he will do from this point forward, but he is finally contemplating the direction he needs to take after questioning his decisions since his original indoctrination into his line of work.

In Confessions of an Economic Hitman, author John Perkins describes his experience as an economic consultant at Chas T. Main, an engineering and power generation firm subcontracted with the Central Intelligence Agency. For the record, all the information in the novel is factual and is really occurring in the real world right now. On the theme of cruelty and oppression, the chapter I most recently concluded discussed an Iranian man, who is left anonymous, who worked as an "adviser" for the Shah of Iran. The man, referred to only as Doc, had his nose cut off for dishonoring the Shah. That seems very cruel. The theme also applies to the book in general, not just one chapter. The entire premise of the book is that the CIA uses economic consultants to recommend infrastructure projects to the leaders of foreign countries. The idea behind that is that should the foreign nation agree to the project, the consulting company, like MAIN, charges exorbiant interest rates and, long story short, indebts the foreign country to the consulting company, like MAIN, which indirectly financially enslaves the country to the CIA, and in turn, the United States Federal Government. Perkins provides anecdotal and written evidence claiming that should the leaders of foreign nations refuse to accept the loans for the infrastructure projects, the CIA sends in people called "jackals" ie hitmen, to assassinate the leaders. For example, see the President of Peru who was killed in a CIA car bombing and the former democratically elected President of Iran who was killed and replaced with the autocratic Shah, the man who tortured his own people and advisers. The scariest thing about this book is that all of this actually happened.