Journal 2: Paula by Isabel Allende

I am starting to enjoy reading this book after getting used to how Allende moves from her memories to the present where she sits in the hospital. I've always had trouble transitioning from one idea to another, or in relation to this, from the past to the present, but Allende's transitions are sometimes in the same paragraphs which is not how we were taught how to write. This I find pretty cool because she does not write in a very structured format. Her memories sometimes jump from being six years old to sixteen to ten years old, but I like this because when I write or speak, my thoughts are usually scrambled and not well put together.

I liked how Allende used personification to describe "death" coming to get Paula.
"DEATH LAID ITS HANDS ON YOU MONDAY, PAULA. IT CAME AND POINTED to you, but found itself face to face with your mother and grandmother and, for now, has backed off. It is not defeated, and is still circling round, grumbling, in its swirl of dark rags and clicking bones." (pg 92)

Two days ago, I read a poem called "Incident in a Rose Garden," and it also involved the personification of Death. In this poem Death was, like Death was in "Paula," a dark, raggedy, bony person coming to take the life of a man. For known and unknown reasons, death, to all or most of us seem to be the same when we think of it. We describe death as a cold, dark, bony person/spirit coming to take our lives instead of something to look forward to and not be afraid of.