Farenheit 451

Question: In this clip Beatty states that the books are dead, but the woman says that the books are alive. > What does Montag believe about books? > What do you believe? > Explain your reaction in one paragraph.
Montag believes that the books are alive and that they can speak to people. He believes that books shouldn’t be burned and that people should be free to read them. I don’t think that books are alive. I think that they can relay ideas and tell people things, but I don’t think that they are alive because they only relay the idea of the author and don’t create the ideas themselves.

Conflict : Become a doctor of psychology. Choose one character and identify the internal and external conflict for the character. > Explain these conflicts in one paragraph from the book by giving examples from the text.
The character I picked is Montag. Montag had many conflicts. He was struggling with himself, trying to decide whether to do what he thought was right or to do what the media and government told him to do. He thinks about whether burning books and sending the owners to the asylum is right. He says, “I-I’ve been thinking. About the fire last week. About the man whose library we fixed. What happened to him?” “He wasn’t insane.”Pg.33 He also has a conflict when he kills Beatty. He tells himself that Beatty wanted to die and that Beatty let Montag kill him. He says, “Beatty wanted to die.” Pg.122

Song: Choose a character and decide what contemporary song would apply to their life. Quote a few of the lyrics and explain why you chose that song for the character in one paragraph. You may use the internet to quote 1-3 lines from the song.
I chose Faber. The song I chose is called “The times, they are a changing”. I compared it to Faber because Faber is thinking about how it used to be and he still everything to be how it was with him still as a English professor. A line form the song is “For the times they are a-changin.”

Which book would you save? In one paragraph write a plea to save one book from the flames. Explain why that book should be saved. (Choose a book other than the Bible.)
I would save Hamlet by William Shakespeare. I picked it because it would show how the people lived in that time period and because it is by one of the most famous authors to ever live. Another reason why it shouldn’t be burned is that it would not only tell about the time period in which it was written but it would also show what people in more recent times read and how it affected their culture.

Persuasive essay

Persuasive Essay
Should marijuana be legalized in the United States? Many people believe that marijuana should be legalized, because it would help the faltering economy of the United States. Another reason they think it should be legalized is they believe that they have the right to smoke marijuana. However studies show that legalizing marijuana would increase consumption by 40 percent. There are three reasons that we shouldn’t legalize marijuana. Firstly, it would greatly increase the amount of people taking marijuana. And secondly, after we legalize marijuana, what would we legalize next? Lastly, since we have been fighting drugs for decades, why should we give in now?
The first reason not to legalize marijuana is that it would increase the amount of consumers of marijuana. Legalizing marijuana would likely result in an increase of this the consumption of this substance by nearly 50 percent. If we legalize marijuana we encourage many more people to smoke marijuana which is detrimental to one’s health. Do we want to encourage people to get sick?
The second reason is that after we legalize marijuana what are we going to legalize? In the early-mid 19th century, the United States government placed a ban on the manufacture consumption and selling of alcohol in the 18th amendment, the 21 amendment repealed the 18th and again made alcohol legal. After we legalize marijuana what are we going to legalize? Cocaine?
Thirdly, we have been fighting the use of marijuana since 1937, when the U.S. Government federally prohibited it. The U.S. has been fighting drug use since before WWII. Are we just going to give up now, because we think it might make the economy better?
If we legalize marijuana we could be injuring many of our own citizens. Don’t vote to legalize marijuana; don’t vote to hurt your fellow citizens. Should we legalize marijuana? We shouldn’t legalize marijuana.

Response to Literature, Danny Deever

Response to Danny Deever
Across the world and even across countries, the languages and even ways people speak those languages are very different. An obvious example of this is the English spoken in the South of the US compared to the English spoken in the North of the US. The class or profession of a person also changes the way they speak. An example of this is the difference in accent of a janitor and a lawyer. Authors use Dialect, a literary device that uses the way people to talk to show where the poem takes place. Rudyard Kipling uses Dialect superbly in his poem Danny Deever to show where and to whom the story takes place.
The poem opens with Files on Parade, asking his Sergeant, “What are the bugles blowin’ for?” His sergeant answers, “…They’re hangin’ Danny Deever, you can hear the dead march play, the regiments in ‘ollows square, their hangin’ him to day…”(1,5,6). Kipling opens his poem with a strong example of dialect. In the first line, he drops the “g” from the word “blowing”, this eludes to the fact that the poem takes place in England. In the fifth and sixth lines, Kipling drops more letters, imitating the way a working class Englishmen would talk. This makes it clear that the poem takes place in England, among the working class. Kipling never states, “This poem takes place in England, between to workmen”. He uses dialect to show us where and when it takes place.
Through out the poem, the author continues to imitate the way a working class Englishmen would speak. Lines 14 and 15 are a very good example of this, “They’ve ‘alted Danny Deever by ‘is coffin on the ground; An’ ‘e’ll swing in ‘arf a minute for a sneakin’ shootin’ hound”.
In Danny Deever, the author shows where the story takes place using the literary device, Dialect, and he also shows to whom the story takes place. He shows both of these without stating them outright, but simply implying them.

The Last Sineater

The Last Sin Eater starts out with the funeral of Gorawen Forbes, Cadi Forbes’ grandmother. When the Sin eater, Sim Gillivary, enters the cemetery, everyone turns their backs away from him; they believe that if they look at him, they will be cursed. No one in the village will associate with him. Even the sin eater believed that if he touched anyone they would be cursed. In pg 242 he says, “I’ll not touch the lad and bring more sorrow on him!” Everyone is convinced that he is evil. Even he says on pg. 241, “I am sin.”
Everyone in the village thought that he had turned into a monster, and that he was evil. But Sim wasn’t evil or a monster. On pg 253, Cadi says, “…Thinking to see some kind of monster as we’d all been led to think he was. He was a man.” He was a normal man, with normal feelings. He would spend hours talking to the woman he would have married if he hadn’t become the sin eater. Cadi says in pg 13, “His voice was so deep and tender and sorrowful…” He was an actual person.
After Sim came back to the village, and Fagan made his speech, everyone respected him for what he had done. He had lived alone in a cave for 22 years, eating people’s sins for the rest of the village. He had wasted 22 years of his life, and after that, he still helped the man that was responsible for his exile. On pg 313, Angor says, “we’ll abide by whatever ye want to do.” People respected him for helping the rest of the village even when it was torture for himself.
The sin eater is a character that thinks more about what is good for everyone else and not for himself, he isn’t selfish at all. He ate people’s sin, even though those same people shunned him. They thought that he was a monster but he was an actual person, and he cared about them even if they despised him.

Lord of the Flies

Nathan Peace
December 6, 2009
English 10
Lord of the Flies Project

 
Jack: This food tastes so good after eating just fruit and bland pork on the island.
Me: What type of fruit was on the island?
Piggy: I thinks it was some sort of banana, but I’m not sure. My auntie would know.
Jack: Well, we would have been feasting on wild boar if RALPH hadn’t been so obsessed with his stupid fire.
Ralph: If you had kept the fire going we wouldn’t have had to worry about food, we would have been weeks sooner.
Jack: Me and my hunters got you meat, and this is all the thanks I get?
Piggy: If you had kept the fire going, we wouldn’t have done that to Simon!
Me: What did you do to Simon?
Piggy: We were scared, and it was dark! We couldn’t see properly! We thought he was the beast, sneaking around like that!
Ralph: It was that stupid dances fault! Jack, why’d you start making us do that stupid dance?!
Me: What dance? What did you do to Simon?
Jack: Well we were all on the beach and then we started dancing around the fire. After a while we started chanting, “Kill the pig! Slit her throat! Bash her in!” like we use to do when we were hunting. And then Simon came out of the jungle, and we thought he was the beast so we all attacked him and stabbed him to death with sharpened stakes.
Piggy: See it was that stupid dances fault!
Jack: Shut up Fatty! If that had been the beast, and we had let it come, then it would have eaten all of us! We killed him in self defense!
Me: So what happened after you killed him?
Ralph: He got washed out to sea, and then Jack’s tribe stole Piggy’s specs and our fire.
Jack: We needed fire, and there were only a few of you and lots of us, so we needed it more than you!
Ralph: We would have given it to you if you had asked!
Piggy: And stealing my specs is like making me blind! You don’t know what it feels like to be blind!
Jack: Shut Up Fatty!
Piggy: Why should I? You don’t have the conch!
Jack: Well, were not on the island, so SHUT UP!
Ralph: When we were on the island, we found a conch, and whenever we had an assembly, you could only talk if you had the conch. It was to keep everyone from talking at once. And whenever we were going to have an assembly I’d blow into the conch and it would make a loud noise like some sort of instrument, and everybody would hear it and come to the assembly spot.
Me: Oh, I understand. What happened to the conch when you left the island?
Jack: Fatty forgot it.
Piggy: Stop calling me fatty! Piggy is bad, but fatty is worse!
Jack: Fatty! Fatty! Fatty!
Ralph: Leave Piggy alone.
Jack: I don’t have to listen to you, you’re not chief!
Piggy: Please pass the pork.
Me: Here you go. What was this beastie thing like? Did any of you ever see it?
Ralph: Me and Jack did, it was a massive hairy thing, and it had massive wings too. It chased us the whole way down the mountain. It almost caught us, but we got away in the end.
Jack: I think it grabbed my arm, it might have just been a vine, but I’m pretty sure it grabbed my arm. We ran the whole way, it was really fast, and it almost caught us.
Me: Who else saw it?
Ralph: I think some of the little ones saw it, and Samneric saw it too.
Me: Who’s Samneric?
Piggy: It was what we called the two twins, Sam and Eric, because they did everything together, so they were pretty much like one person.
Jack: They were keeping the fire going on top of the mountain and then they saw it on the rocks. It chased them down too I think.
Piggy: Well, we should probably go, we have school tomorrow.
Me: Thanks for coming.
Ralph: Thanks for having us.
Jack: Goodbye.

Compare and Contrast Essay

Public transport vs. Private transport
People are beginning to live farther away from their place of work but still commute daily. Better forms of transportation account for this growing trend. Both public and private transport is improving. Many people use public transportation such as busses, while others choose to drive their own cars. These two forms of transport have many differences, but they also have many similarities.
Busses and cars are both modes of transportation, and they both will get you were you’re going. They both allow people to work farther away from their homes, and still commute relatively easily. Both are also quite common across the world and are available at all times.
Despite their many similarities, busses and private cars have many distinct differences. Private cars are generally more comfortable than busses and you are insured a seat in your car opposed to a bus which may be full. Another benefit of driving your own car you is that you can park exactly where you want opposed to a bus which only stops at designated places. Cars can also be faster than busses as you do not have to stop at bus stops and the average speed of cars is higher. Cars can also follow a more direct path than busses and can take highways unlike busses. You can also take road trips or move stuff in your car, unlike a bus.
Busses have benefits too though. Busses are usually cheaper than cars over the long run. If you own a car you have to pay for gas, parking, a mechanic, tolls and other costs; none of these apply when riding the bus. You can take a bus from anywhere; you can’t use your car if you left it at home. You don’t need to worry about a place to park when you get somewhere, this can be a very big help if you live in a large city. A problem with busses is that you don’t have any privacy, which you would have in your car.
Both forms of transports have positives and negatives. I think that sometimes a car would be more useful and other times a bus would be more convenient.

The Good Earth

Do you think that wealth is important? Many people long for wealth and riches. However, The Good Earth suggests that riches destroy traditional values, and cause people to become more greedy and lazy. Here are three reasons that wealth destroys traditional values and morals; if we don’t need to work, we won’t; if we never have worked, it is hard to start; and we have more time and money to spend on things that are amoral.
The first idea is that if we don’t need to work we won’t. In the first place, the reason most of us work is because we have too, not many of us work because we enjoy it. How many kids would go to school if they could stay at home and watch T.V. all day? How many adults would work if they could stay home and get a pay check? If people could subsist without working, they wouldn’t work. So when people get rich enough to not work, they don’t which leads to a lazy lifestyle, contradicting traditional values. This is portrayed in pg 167 of The Good Earth; Wang Lung doesn’t work because he is rich enough that he can just sit back and live off the work of his laborers.
My second Idea is that if we never have worked, we won’t want to start working. If you have done whatever you wanted whenever you wanted for your whole life, you won’t want to start working, and won’t know how to work. In the Good Earth, this is shown by the young lords of the House of Hwang. They never had worked as children, so they grew up to be irresponsible and lazy adults.
My third point is that the richer people are, the more money and time they have to spend on things that are against traditional values. The richer people are, they have more free time and in that free time they need something to do, often they do amoral things it their free time. In the Good Earth, when Wang Lung gets rich, and has plenty of free time, he starts going to a local tea shop, at this tea shop he meets a prostitute, and becomes obsessed with her. He becomes so obsessed with her that he buys her and spends large amounts of money and time on her. He begins to neglect his children and his first wife.
Now that we have examined whether or not wealth can corrupt you moral values, don’t let wealth corrupt you moral values. Wealth isn’t bad, just the results can be. Make sure you know how to work, and that you are willing to work. How important is wealth?