Everyone knows pain. The world is cruel and does not discriminate when it comes to loss. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, black, white, straight or gay. Everyone experiences loss in their life, whether it’s a loved one, a job opportunity or even your house. Loss is illustrated differently in the novels “The Things They Carried”, a compendium of the Vietnam experiences from the point of view of a platoon, by Tim O’Brien and “The Catcher in the Rye”, a coming of age novel, by J.D Salinger.…
“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.” quotation by Franz Kafka. In the novel “Speak”, written by Laurie Halse Anderson, there is a girl named Melinda Sordino a freshman student that lost her friends because she called the police during a party where she was raped by a guy named Andy Evans and ever since that day she has changed into another person.…
Whether one decides to believe in fate, destiny, free will, or anything else, one thing is always true: people make choices. Every day we make choices. They can be small ones, like choosing to tip five percent more at a restaurant or choosing to wear a green tie over a blue one. But many of the choices a person makes are larger than these, choosing a field to major in, or choosing a spouse, perhaps. Clearly, our choices are important because they determine our character and future, but they are also important because many, if not all, of our choices, directly affect others and the people around them.…
“Don’t be sorry for the truth. A harsh truth is less damaging than a tender lie, and the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves.” In the story, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and the article, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, both main characters are poised as hero’s. In The Giver, Jonas is selected as the receiver of memory. After many months of training, Jonas’s realizes that there is more beyond what he has learned in his community.…
The realizations I had after the tragedies in my life led to how I began to write poetry. When my husband died I had no right to any money at all and was expected to marry another man to restart my life. They were being cruel and forcing me, but I rejected all the demands and disobeyed them. I coped with all my emotions, reactions, and realizations by writing about them. In fact, the first few poems I wrote were about my dear husband.…
You sit down to read a book to let your imagination go and you realize that the story you are reading is bringing back memories instead. Every story has different impressions on each individual reader depending on the reader’s experiences. In reading Sherman Alexie’s fictional memoir War Dances it brought back memories, anxieties, and disappointments that created mixed emotions within me. A part in the story that brought back a memory is when Alexie describes a scene between the narrator and his Native American father.…
A Book that Shaped Me: Remember Me by Irene N. Watts Remember Me is about a girl named Marianne who is Jewish and is living at the time of the Holocaust (1939-1945). Marianne has to leave her parents and go with other children on a train called Kindertransport (Kindertransport were trains that brought Jewish children to safety in Britain during the Holocaust). When she gets to Britain, she has to go and live with a stranger named Mrs. Abercrombie Jones. Strangely, Mrs. Abercrombie Jones acts like a mother to Marianne even though she is very disappointed when she sees that she was to take Marianne into her home while she was expecting someone else.…
The book “The Things They carried” by Tim O’Brien was about the Vietnam war. One of the things that is in the book is that there is more than what is just on the surface of the war. It puts a personal spin on the dry material that is usually read about wars. Tim O’Brien was in the Vietnam war when he was a young man, and he uses these experiences to write both fictional stories and nonfictional stories about this war. When a person is about to start reading this book they must go into it prepared.…
Universals Although the human race has numerous unique cultural opinions, all parents have an ideal role and pressure that their society places on them. For most children, their father is a significant impact on their life and character, and can influence them regardless of whether their relationship is negative, positive, or even neutral. Many people have at least one father figure in their lives who expresses affection and warmth whether it is by handing monetary gifts, upholding strict standards, or sacrificing anything for their young ones. However, some children must take a psychological toll due to an abusive relationship with a guardian, or maybe their guardian is absent.…
Looking Forward Rather than Behind “I heard what he had gone through, and would continue to go through until he came to rest in earth.” (Baldwin 121) A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin both work as literary reminders that living in the past is not emotionally healthy, and that pain from the past permeates into present day life. The texts beg the question: Can the past ever be fully forgotten or overcome?…
A Reflection: The Danger of a Single Story As most people, my story consists of an abundance of struggle, trial and error, and also lessons. These challenges, in addition to the lessons, have brought upon stress, anxiety, and even depression into my life. They have made me question myself to the point of insanity, avoid meeting and accepting new people into my life, and even fail to uphold the bonds I had previously made with both relatives and peers. However, I cannot be defined and bound to the “single story” of my anxiety. There are many more complex stories that represent me even more adequately than the ones that correspond to the struggles I’ve faced; as there are many more stories significant to other various people, places and things…
Kala sprinted through the jungle back to the treehouse. She quickly met her mother when nearing the treetop home. “Kala? What’s the hurry? Where’s Henry?”…
Elizabeth Gilbert, famed author of Eat, Pray, Love, once wrote, “You spend a lot of your life having people tell you to follow your passion… passion is hot, it burns. Every day, you can’t access that… instead, follow your curiosity.” After graduating from Terra Nova High School in 2002 I decided to leave my home in the San Francisco Bay Area and move to Las Vegas to pursue better economic opportunities. For the past 13 years I’ve had the opportunity to closely interact with the diverse population constantly coming in and out of the city through my full time job at the Wynn Resort. It was through these frequent daily interactions that I became interested in human behavior and decided to follow my curiosity by enrolling at College of Southern…
Everyone has a rough life! For me and Stephen King, we have faced and continue to face almost the same rough experiences. Everyone finds another thing to work on to forgot about their problems; that is what Stephen King did. In Stephen King's memoir, he replaced his problems with writing. Being a writer, he experienced bad events that gave him the opportunity to write about what he faced.…
Remembrance “Too many people think”, Skylar whispered under her breath. She was stuck in her English class with others whom she just simply referred to as imbeciles. It was a slow class that seemed to never end. The clock ticked, but no time passed. A dark room with little color.…