The Things They Carried=The Most Well Written Book In the World

As many of the females in this class, I was a bit skeptical when I heard we would be reading a book about the Vietnam war. Yes, I do fit into the sexist stereotype that women hate violence. Anyhow, I sat down that first night with my book and figured I'd give it a shot. The first ten pages seemed to be just lists and lists of items that the soldiers carried with them, as well as their specific weights. The entire time I was annotating "Really? TMI. I DONT CARE." However, as the book progressed, these objects they carried started to be more than just things. He started to write about the emotions the men carried with them, and the kind of weight that was to "hump" around with them. I found this gradual segway to be absolutely brilliant. From that point on, this book hooked me.

The stories are random, yet meaningful. Predictable, yet completely suprizing. Filled with literary devices, life lessons, and ironic humor, this book exceeded my expectations by miles. The story that stood out to me the most was the one from our most recent reading assignment. The story of the village that got destroyed. When the soldiers saw a house that was destroyed, they found a girl dancing outside, in silence, with a peaceful smile on her face. It was as if she was finally content. Later on, when the soldiers were heading back, one of them decided to mimic her dancing in a way that made a joke out of it. None of them had understood why she would dance when her family, house, everything was in ruins around her. A ritual they figured. But as he pretended to be this girl, one of the other soldiers picked him up and threatened him that if he was going to do the dance she was doing, he better do it right. Obviously, this story is random, but I believe there's also a underlying meaning. Through this story, he's trying to demonstrate that even if everythinga round you has fallen to pieces, mourning and feeling sorry for yourself is no solution. People need to move on and be happy with what they have no matter what, especially these men who are fighting in Vietnam. This story was eloquent, beautiful, and very creative. I absolutely love it.

The Timed Writing

Money, money, money. All we ever want is money. Want to know why? Because people are greedy. It's in our nature. But is that a statement that can be generalized for every single person on this earth? Is that the sole motivation for what we do and how we do it every single day of our lives? I think not. Hazliff, you're about to be proven wrong.

In his essay, he started out by saying, "Literally and truly, one cannot get on well in the world without money." Well isn't that a mouth-full. What an ignorant statement. How could he possibly apply this to every single person on this earth? First off, some of the happiest people in the world are poor (and yes, this is a fact. I researched it for my definintion essay on happiness). Secondly, people get by everyday without any kind of money. The fact is, when you don't have money, you get creative. People, in general, have the inner motivation to do whatever it takes to survive. Believe it or not, money is not a necessity for everybody--food, water, and a roof over your head? Yes. Money? Definately not.

This essay was quite ironic as well, because second hour Mr. Genova had just been talking to our class (in spanish of course :) ) that the people who live in Denmark are some of the happiest in the world. Why is this? Because there are not extremely rich people, or are there any poor people. Everybody is able to live comfortably, have a steady job, and be equal with eachother. It's not called communism...what they call it is a form of socialism they call "humanism". They love thy neighbor and think of eachother as equals. I think that's what really matters. Not who has the most money and "prestige" because of that money.

The other thing that made me mad about his essay was that it was hard to follow. In the second sentence he said, "to be in want to it (money), is to..." and then the entire rest of the essay was examples of this. Not once did he repeat this, or phrase it a different way. It was just statement after statement! It got so confusing, because every time you read a sentence you would have to think to youself, "to be in want of money is to..." and then you could actually read the sentence to make sense of it. Overall, I think that was a very boring, repetitive way to form an argument.


Overall, I give this essay a thumbs down. Not only is it overgeneralized, but it's poorly written. I have to give him credit for accepting the belief that humans are all selfish and greedy, which without a doubt true for most, but definately not for all people.

Karin's Birthday and The Party that Needs to Occur Tomorrow in AP Composition

As everbody heard today on the announcements about ten thousand times...IT'S KARIN'S BIRTHDAY! Yes, phenomenal :) And It was very sad to see that she DID NOT bring in treats like she said she would. So...in the spirit of her birthday/AP Composition Friday Food Day, and Discussion on the Floor Day, we should all have a "party" for Karin's birthday! Everybody bring in food and hopefully we can have our discussion about the book on the floor/eat yummy food :)

Yay!

Technology and Protests

Okay, am I the only person who read this and said "WHAT?" Honestly, what was this man thinking? How can his argument possibly make sense in his mind, because I'm pretty positive that technology doesn't decrease student's ability to organize a protest...it actually improves it. Kids today are nothing like what they were back then, and although protests don't happen as often as they did back then, they still happen--just in different ways. Kids can get the word out about what they feel, and to more people, any day of the week anytime (just update your facebook status!) I don't think this author had any idea what they were talking about, personally. It made me really mad...

Martin Luther King Essay

All I have to say is--WOW! I thought this was one of the most powerful persuasive essays I've ever read. When we did the assignment in class today trying to find the different rhetorical/literary strategies he used, I found so many on just one page it was insane! All of his points were strong and backed up, and his explanation on just and unjust laws (definition essay anyone?!) was brilliant. My only complaint about this would be that he really lost it at the end. I can't stand it when people conclude an essay by talking about writing the essay itself. LAME/VERY FIRST GRADE HELLOOO? I mean, I don't think he needed the whole "I meant to write a letter but this is more like a book" pun. Really? I think we can see that MLK, you don't really need to point that one out...But anyways, I thought this essay was the most enjoyable to read, the easiest to annotate and get greater ideas about, and was very quick to get through considering the length.

So note to anybody who pretended to read this but didn't actually--READ IT. It's phenomenal. :)

What Is Poverty?

When we were assigned both of the readings on Poverty, I figured they would be really boring and repetitive to read--I was wrong. They both were completely unique in their own ways and really were quite enjoyable to read. The first article assigned was slightly longer but went much more into why the word "poverty" is overused and, frankly, oversympathized. The writer used healthcare as an example that they later branched off from and expanded past just that, but mostly it was based off that. They said that the people who are considered "poor" or "in poverty" were really not suffering, they were just not as rich as the upper class. They still had food, water, nice homes, and even entertainment. The sad thing was that they were completely ungrateful for all the government was doing to make sure they had all of these luxuries they hadn't even worked for. I was shocked to hear that when they couldn't afford a good house or entertainment that the government would literally just had them those things without any reimbersement required. Why? Because they wanted their society to be considered the "wealthiest".

The second article, writen by Parker, was literally the complete opposite argument. She described exactly what poverty meant (sometimes a little too much information and detail was shared). It was descriptive, and quite disturbing to read exactly what poor people deal with on a daily basis. Whether or not it is representative of everyone considered "poor" is uncertain, however. Parker started it out by saying the reader should not make this article into a giant pity party, and that it was just meant to show the truth. I found it hard as I was reading it to believe some of the things said (such as the whole sour milk bit..eew!), and I found myself thinking overexagerations were being made. It did seem like Parker was trying to get the reader to feel bad for the poor, and it worked.

Overall I really enjoyed reading both articles views on what poverty is, and I feel like I have much more of an understanding of what goes on than I had previously.

"Sound and Fury"

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I found that movie extremely fascinating! It's wierd because I've almost forgotten there are so many deaf people out there because going to McFarland High School, we have one deaf girl in the entire school (hows that for diversity eh?). The struggles they face on a day to day basis is just so saddening. I can't imagine not being able to hear music, nature, words... any of that. I feel like there would be no point in living--which is interesting because during the movie the father of the deaf girl said that he was overjoyed when he found out his daughter was born deaf. I was shocked to say the least. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that he would wish that kind of difficultly upon his own daughter!!

There were a lot of intense arguments, and I tried to put myself in the deaf family's shoes to see where they were coming from, but I just couldn't. It was too extreme for me to try to reason with the fact that they don't want to provide their daughter with the best, most fair shot at life as the rest of the world has. How could you sit by and watch your child go through the struggles you yourself went through being a deaf child, and still reject the most phenomenal gift any person could give to a deaf person--a cocliar implant.

I was really relieved to hear; however, that a couple years later the entire family besides the father decided to get cocliar implants. Though it took them a long time, they finally saw that that's what's best for everybody.