Lit Circle Meeting #2

• The main focus today was taking in the first section of the book and clarifying everything that we read. We talked about many questions we had and the ones we wrote down such as how old is Jimmy? or why had the Bohemian family moved to Nebraska with no experience in farming.
• Mike thought that Jimmy was a few years younger than Antonia, while Kathy and I thought he was the same age as Antonia but people made sure he wasn't scared because they weren't there when he came of age. The second big point we had a disagreement on was why had the Bohemian family moved to the country side. Mike and Kathy thought it was because it was cheaper to live on a piece of land than in the city, while I thought the family had wanted to get away from their past and try something new.
• We did not quite conclude our opposing views, but we all respect each others thoughts.
• On some of our debates we refereed back to the book to clarify our thoughts with the group. By doing this we definitely got a deeper meaning out of it than reading it the first time. We got a sense of what life was like on a farm in the early 1900's in America and how it was largely formed by immigrants.
• The conversation stalled twice. We recovered both times by asking questions of the top of our heads that weren't written down. This method ensured a fresh debate started the conversation quite smoothly.