Novel Study On Be More Chill g6t1a

March.27th, 2007

ESL Project

Kyle Chou

NOVEL STUDY ON “BE MORE CHILL” A NOVEL WRITTEN BY NED VIZZINI

An ESL Project by Kyle Chou Ms.Waliszewska’s Block H Class Complete Date: March 27th, 2007

-1-

March.27th, 2007

ESL Project

Kyle Chou

INDEX TITLE PAGE……1 INDEX……2 SUMMARY OF THE STORY……3 SETTINGS OF THE STORY……5 PICTURES……6 THE PROTAGONIST - JEREMY HEERE……7 RATE ON THIS STORY……8 REVIEW OF THIS STORY……9 THE THEME OF “BE MORE CHILL”……10

-2-

March.27th, 2007

ESL Project

Kyle Chou

SUMMARY OF THE STORY “A fresh, spontaneous, and original voice……It’s fun, wacky, outrageous. I just couldn’t stop reading.” Judy Blume

T

his is a book about a high school student - Jeremy Heere’s life. It contains a lot of fun, excitement and unusual events. It’s unpredictable; you’ll never know what will happen next. This book is divided into three parts. The first part is PRE-SQUIP. Jeremy was not popular at school, but he had a crush on Christine, a beautiful girl in his math class. Unfortunately, there were some rumours about him and Christine. And at the same time his humiliation sheet, a sheet where he wrote about the humiliations he had experienced, has been discovered by his classmates so everybody in his school thought he was a complete geek. Jeremy resented the discovery. However, his life got changes after he heard “SQUIP” from his friends Rich and Michael. SQUIP, a pill-sized supercomputer, supposedly helped you to be cool. Jeremy started looking for more information about the SQUIP, and where he could get one. He finally found the information in a bar, but they had already sold out all of the SQUIPS. Their manager, Ghana told Jeremy that he could find the last one at his brother’s, Rack’s Payless Shoes Store in Menlo Park Mall. He also found out that a SQUIP was about 600 bucks. He didn’t have that kind of money to pay that. He tried to sell his aunt’s Beanie Baby on eBay to get some money, and he ended up with 640 bucks in his pockets. With this money, he went to Payless Shoes, explained to Rack why he wanted this SQUIP. Rack finally sold the last SQUIP to Jeremy. Jeremy swallowed the SQUIP, and the change of his life began… The second part of the story, SQUIP, began after Jeremy took the SQUIP. He was suffering after he took the SQUIP because the SQUIP had to

-3-

March.27th, 2007

ESL Project

Kyle Chou

organizing the information in Jeremy’s brain. After the process finished, the SQUIP started talking to Jeremy, he told a lot of things of how to let him be the coolest guy in the school; including change the clothes, the way he walk and talk (instead of saying “Damn it.”, use “F_ _ k.”). The result was: he did become the coolest guy in school. He got more friends, learned how to drive a car (SQUIP taught him), and even date with all the hottest girls (not Christine) in school. Everything was going so well that Jeremy felt very happy and believes that his choice wasn’t wrong at all. However, the things started mes after the crash on the SQUIP because Jeremy drank a bottle of beer at a party. The SQUIP told Jeremy that everything would be fine and told him that we will make a plan of how to get go out with Christine, is to ask her out during the show in front of 300 people. Unfortunately, their plan didn’t work out and the relationship between Jeremy and Christine had been destroyed. After that, the SQUIP told Jeremy that this whole mess it’s all its fault, but Jeremy said it is too late - his life has been ruined up. At the end of the story, they decided to tell the truth to Christine - the SQUIP, and everything. The last part - POST SQUIP - of this story is very short, only a few phrases in a chapter: So here you go Christine. It’s not a letter; it’s a whole book. I hope you like it. This is what this book; BE MORE CHILL is all about……

-4-

March.27th, 2007

ESL Project

Kyle Chou

SETTINGS OF THE STORY “Vizzini anatomizes high school lust and social scheming without any condescending reassurance. If it weren’t so funny, his first novel might be too painful to read.” New York Times Book Review

T

he setting of this story it was not written by author. However, after you read this book, you’ll have an idea of when and where this story was began and how long is this story approximately. First, when was this story happened? Take a guess on that, I guess it’s happened during 2003 to 2004. The reason is this story had a lot of advanced and developed electronic machines; like computers with internet, video games, cell phones, and a lot of modern manufactures. And also, this book is published in 2004 and the world in this story has a lot of common as the world we’re living now (except the SQUIP), so that’s why I think the story was based during 2003 to 2004. Second, the period of this story I guess it’s about 3 to 4 months, because it can’t be more than that. There were not much events happened in this story. So logically, Jeremy spent one month found the SQUIP, one and a half months talked with the SQUIP and became the coolest guy in the school, one month got into trouble with the SQUIP and started planning the plan to ask Christine go out with him, the last half of a month the whole plan was mes and Jeremy decided to tell everything to Christine. That’s what I guessed, though. The last one, I think the place of this story was in Middleborough in United States. Jeremy’s school in this story was Middle Borough High School, so the place of this story was the areas around Middle Borough High School.

-5-

March.27th, 2007

ESL Project

Kyle Chou

PICTURES Town of Middle Borough

Middle Borough High School

Jeremy Heere

-6-

March.27th, 2007

ESL Project

Kyle Chou

THE PROTAGONIST - JEREMY HEERE “Quirky, funny, and dead-on…Imagine Holden Caulfield with internet access.” New York Post

J

eremy Heere, the protagonist of this story, was a totally high-school dork. He wanted to be cool so he could get the attention from Christine, the girl he can never have. But at the second part of the story, after he took the SQUIP, he did become the coolest guy in class, he even got the hottest girls in school (not Christine) to go out with him. He was really enjoying in this whole cool thing…he believed that everything would still be awesome and it never ends. However, Jeremy discovered that there was a dark side of the SQUIP. People can’t control their life, which is impossible. Even if you can predict what will happen in the future; you still can’t control or predict other people’s minds. This could end up with disastrous consequences. Normally, every high-school student desires to become famous, cool, and popular in their friends. So sometimes they’ll try to do some foolish thing to get their friend’s attention. Sometimes including smoking, taking drugs, and being a rebel to their families and teachers…in the result, lots of them ended up with regret and disappointment. At the end of the story, Jeremy realized one thing: what your inside looks like it is more important and valuable than what your outside looks like. And that’s what I believe in my life.

-7-

March.27th, 2007

ESL Project

Kyle Chou

RATE ON THIS STORY

9 OUT OF 10

T

he whole story and the way author expressed the idea and feelings were interesting and funny.

Another one important reason is that this book gave me an idea of how today’s English modern novels looks like. I only read and studied old-fashioned English when I was in Taiwan from my English text book…The communication of English in nowadays has a big change, eh? The reason of why it didn’t get 10 because I think the author could describe a little bit more on the thing he tried to tell us…or maybe he just wrote this book for fun.

-8-

March.27th, 2007

ESL Project

Kyle Chou

REVIEW OF THIS STORY

A

t the first time I saw this book, I thought this was just another novel talk about teenager’s problems like a lot of other books did. But when I was reading this book, I found a lot of excitement in it that I couldn’t stop reading! My favourite part of this book was the dialogue between Jeremy and the SQUIP. It just like the SQUIP could tells you what might happen next, but you’ll never really know what will happen in the future. On the other hand, I learned sometimes you have to do things on your own, not to rely on your parents or friends. You have to think carefully what you’ll go to do and how to do it. Generally, people needs some time to become more mature because you’ll get more experiences when you have to make your own decisions. Sometimes you will get lost in your life, and suffer in it. That’s how you become more mature because you’ll realized what is the thing you desire most, what it feels like when your achievements don’t meet people’s approved……and a lot of lessons from every experience. That’s how a boy comes to be a man. You’ll learn more things from your life, and become a brave person to face the chaos of society.

-9-

March.27th, 2007

ESL Project

Kyle Chou

THE THEME OF “BE MORE CHILL”

I

think what the author wants to tell us is: you can’t always proceed without a hitch, even you have something really powerful, you still can’t predict what will happening in the future.

In the story, Jeremy took the SQUIP and became the coolest guy in school, but it also let him get lazy, relied on the supercomputer, SQUIP. And the result was even SQUIP can’t compute human’s behaviour, Jeremy regrets the way he used SQUIP to help him became cool…his conscience has been masked by the desire to be cool. All of us have to grow up, not only physically, but also mental. The person you’ll living with till the end of your life is you; your personalities and your abilities. Working on yourself instead of working on others, we have to become more self-aware about our lives…we’re not kids anymore, are we? It’s the time to get both freedoms and responsibilities…

- 10 -