GraceLand: Final Thoughts

"There was a message in it all somewhere, he mused a point to the chaos. Bu no matter how hard he tried, the meaning always seemed to be out there somewhere beyond his reach, mocking him" (307).

This project was not only a much larger time investment than I could have imagined, but it was equally as much work as it was rewarding. I found myself enjoying the novel much more since I was focusing on smaller chunks of the text, teasing out more detail than I regularly would have. Additionally, writing as I went made me consider things differently than if I had attempted to write one long paper on the book retrospectively. Abani's narrative was as dark as it was beautiful, and the words would sometimes wind themselves into vivid strands of poetry, just to transition into gruesome, unsentimental instances of violence. Upon finishing the book for the second time, I was left with even less of a feeling of hope, but that doesn't bother me. The passage I know that Abani was faithful to his characters by ending it the way he did. I think the above passage indicates perfectly how the novel felt as a whole.