Reflection of the project

Dear Reader

The novel that I choose to read was The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks. The way that I figured out what my expository essay was a bit… odd. I started thinking that I was gonna write about apprenticeships and what they are, then as i was reading I started thinking that the subject I was so set on working on would be extremely boring, interesting, but boring. The subject of coups came up as I was reading the book, because I have always known what a coup was but i have not really seen one executed in a book, I am willing to concede that it may be because of my limited reading that I have not seen one but still the reason I choose coups was because I rarely read about one playing out.

I had a love hate relationship with my research because I wanted to focus on the older style of coups back when monarchies were still a style of government, so it was a bit difficult finding information about a coup that was not recent. On the other side of that problem, when i found information that was useful and about the time period I wanted it from I was ecstatic and couldn’t wait to read more about it, that feeling didn’t happen often.

I think that writing the genres was the most fun part of this project but just because it was fun and I enjoyed it does not mean that it was difficult. My first genre was one that was made in class as we talked about the book of characteristics which was a collection of writings that personified traits and things such as depression or creativity. I wrote about foresight because as I read The Way of Shadows I noticed that the main leader of the coup need a ridiculous amount of foresight and then it stuck in my mind along with the idea of a room full of calendars. The next genre I wrote turned out to be my favorite because of the odd route that i took to writing it. I learned that an obituary was a genre style we could write in and I thought that that would be perfect for a book about assassins and assassination, so I started researching what a “proper” obituary looked like and then I started working. I realized after my first line of text I was writing a murder report so I kept writing for a bit and I discovered it was much more interesting and fun to write a murder report than an obituary so I decided flesh out the idea a bit more and that is how my second genre came out, it also happens to be my favorite of the ones I wrote. I then wrote a letter from one character to another, I did that because I felt like it would be interesting and difficult at the same time, also because i liked mirroring the book because the same character wrote a letter to the same receiver and I felt like it would be somewhat interesting to do a “First Draft” of it. The last genre was just a quality , I enjoyed writing it and that is why I did it no real reason other than that.

My golden thread, if it can be called that, is based off of a line of wisdom from Kylar’s( the main character) master which is that word always gets out. I liked this bit so much that I made my golden thread the idea of word getting out, but I may have made it too subtle. The places where I have this idea brought up are in the crime write up where the word of the murder has gotten out and that rumors are spreading, in the qualities this is shown through gossip ruining foresight's plans and how secrecy tips gossip off foresight so he can spread the word, and in the letter I had it be about the writer telling Kylar that he would learn about what pushed him to be a part of the coup either from others or maybe from his own lips… if he survives. I did put some thought into it but it seems to be really hard to notice if you aren’t looking for it, so maybe my execution of the idea  was poor.

All in all I think that all of this project went well, except for the expository essay, working on that sucked and although I really liked my subject matter, I was exhausted and stressed by it which kind of unbalanced my last week of high school. I still think that this was my favorite project of them all this year.

-Brenden Miller

A coup 'd what?

A coup d'etat also known as a Coup, a putsch, or an overthrow is a sudden attempt by a small group of people to take over the government usually through violence. A coup is called successful when the small group of usurpers is able to take power and establish their dominance, but when a coup does not fail completely, as in when a member of the original continues on, nor succeeds a civil war usually is the consequence. A coup usually is one of three forms and can be typed according to how the coup occurs and holds power, or the military rank of the lead usurper in situation.

In the novel The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks, Weeks establishes that a major problem that is occurring in the plot is the impending coup of the current royal family and the fact that this coup will allow an invading empire to come in and assume power in the resulting chaos.  The coup that occurs in the book is “successful” in the storyline allowing the invading empire to come in and take over without a large hassle. The coup that Weeks has in his book is a good coup that has requirements of what makes a coup into a coup, but it falls short of truly being a coup because of the way that  Weeks writes his story, which causes the coup to only be partially complete. The coup was on the path of success but it is technically a failure because the small group did not take power over the government and it instead was a stepping stone into an invasion by another country “Khalidor ment to take the castle tonight” (Weeks, 476).  

One of the largest parts of the definition of a coup is that it is performed by a somewhat small group of people with the desire to overthrow the current government. The coup in The Way of Shadows meets this requirement somewhat easily with the group totaling around five members who are working separately towards the same goal. A coup is also characterized for its use of violence in order to cause the change in power to occur, there are bloodless coups but they are not what is being used as criteria for what makes it a coup. Weeks meets this requirement as the book goes on by having almost every event that is related to the coup be bloody, for example in the book one of the member of the group that is performing the coup ,Lady Jadwin, violently murders the next heir to the throne “He was being stabbed to death. By a woman. It was embarrassing, really. He was the prince” (Weeks, 341).

The Encyclopedia Britannica states that the chief prerequisite of a coup is that part or all of the armed forces, the police, and or other military elements are controlled and this is because the control of the armed forces would help in the take over, one example of this being the military coup that occurred in Niger in 2010 “A military coup in Niger led by Maj. Salou Djibo ousted the elected government of Pres. Mamadou Tandja on Feb. 18, 2010” (“Niger in 2010”, Encyclopedia britannica) . The coup in the book seems to both meet and miss this part of what makes a coup a coup, The group of people who are causing the coup do not really have control over armed forces like Maj. Djibo , but they are opening the path for allied forces to come in and take over soon after the coup has occurred.

Week’s coup meets the requirements of a good coup well especially in the violence department , “ Roth believed he would take over the castle quickly, and he wanted to be able to personally decide whom to kill and whom to add to his own government” (Weeks, 509). Weeks attention to detail about the coup with mentions that the people in town have not noticed that is occurring shows that this coup has been written well and is being executed the way that it should be in the book, showing that it is a good coup. The fact that it is a good coup does not change that fact that the author holds all the power in their novel, so the coup does show what happens if a coup is mostly successful by having most of the noble houses wiped out, but some of the old government survives leading to resistance that will bloom into war. Weeks wrote a good coup that only failed because he wanted it to for the sake of his story, otherwise the coup was so well executed that it would have held up in the real world if the magic was not involved.

look a bibliography!

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "coup d'etat (political intervention)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 15 May 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/140445/coup-detat>.

"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte[64]." 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Marx 1852. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 May 2014. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/>.

"Thai military seizes power in coup." BBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2014. <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27517591>.( grain of salt with it)

Weeks, Brent. The way of shadows. New York: Orbit Bokks, 2008. Print.

A line cut

Prince Aleine Gunder, age 20, crown prince of  Cenaria, was found dead due to multiple stab wounds in the back at the Jadwin estate. The time of death is currently unknown but has been narrowed down to sometime after the fight between one Lord Kylar Stern and the soon to be Duke Logan Gyre and Lady Jadwin calling that there was an assassin in the estate. The identity of the murderer is still unknown but the list of suspects is substantially lacking in members. The known suspects in this case are Lady Jadwin herself due to her being at the scene of the murder with a blood soaked dress, Logan Gyre due to allegations that his best friend the prince has been having illicit affairs with his fiance, finally the young lord who was engaged in the fight with Logan Gyre has been identified as the murderer by one of the servants, a girl named Elene Cromwell, she has been placed in the dungeon for accusation of a noble as the law dictates. The family wishes to keep this incident private, but word already seems to be getting out about the murder and rumors are growing quickly.

This title is a secret

Secrecy is a quiet lady but that is not a bad thing, the reason she is quiet is not because she is shy or has nothing to say, it is because she has everything to say but does not wish to. Secrecy loves to know that she knows things that others don’t know and the only time she is truely happy is when she learns a new secret. Secrecy has a teasing streak that is a mile long and she loves dropping small hints that she may know something important until others ask her directly, then she just giggles and places her fingers on her lips is a “shush” motion. The person who seems to always be teased by her is Curiosity, he is the only one who has not wised up to her ways because he always hopes that one of her hints may be something great and that desire to know if they are a useful is what keeps calling him back. Secrecy always pays attention to anything that Gossip says so that she can learn new secrets and so that she can mess up Foresight, her favorite victim, because it lets her lean Foresight’s plans and then with a few words she can let Gossip know what she wants him to know and he can spread the word from there, because the only time she is willing to reveal what she knows is so that she can learn even more.

A letter from a dead man to a soon to be dead one

Dear Kylar

If you are reading this it means one of two things, you killed me or I have not gotten around to killing you yet. I am writing this out of some odd feeling of… I don’t know, I think it’s called regret maybe, anyway this is where I am telling you as close to a goodbye as you're going to get from me that doesn't involve a piece of steel between your ribs. I hope out of these years of training if any one of my sayings has gotten stuck in your thick skull it is this, “Relationships are ropes. Love is a noose”. Well it looks like both of us are waiting for our execution I guess what I am trying to say is that you are the closest thing to family that I have had in a long time and I am sorry that you have to pay the price for this but well… I don’t expect to lose.

Any gear you may need for this night is on the walls including your “inheritance”, I don’t want you thinking for a second that you lost to me because I had better gear. Also as a bit of incentive so you don’t ditch town, your best friend will die tonight if you don’t intervene. This is my goodbye son, I’m sorry it has to go this way, but they have something that i can’t afford to lose so i am stuck helping them as for what it is, well if you live past tonight you’ll hear about what it is eventually, maybe even from me.  Besides I always said i would kill the king instead of work for him.

-A Thorne

A woman with quality

Foresight has a room that is full of calendars in her house, some that are for dates that are months away and some for years down the road. She has a house that she shares with Patience, who she is content to while away the hours until one of her plans are in need of her sometimes ally, sometimes enemy Action. Foresight’s favorite phrase is a simple “I Told you so” and she always seems to be saying it to her younger brother Hindsight, who refuses to admit that he was wrong. She understands that not everyone enjoys her company as much as they do Action’s but she also knows that without her Action has trouble being the life of the party.

Unlike Patience who is willing to calmly watch the time pass, Foresight has an almost obsession with time. She seems to always be looking so far ahead into the future that she forgets where she is in the present, which causes Patience to have to often stay near her so that she does not miss her own plans for the future.

The only person who spends more time with Foresight than Patience is her brother Hindsight. When the two hangout they always bicker about what happened and what is going to happen, never what is happening.

There seems to be only one person who can get under Foresight’s skin and that is Gossip, he seems to always catch wind of whatever foresight is planning and waiting for and his first response is always to tell anyone and everyone, which naturally ruins Foresight’s planning because suddenly all the things she was planning around are now changed.

No matter what happens to her plans she knows that either she will start a new plan or others will ask her for her input, because no matter the plan whether it is something as small as going to the park later or as grand as toppling empires, without her assistance they will always fail.