Lord of the Flies on Leadership (Post 1 & 2)

Being a leader is a funny thing. Most people expect leadership to amount to happiness, being liked, and an overwhelming amount of appreciation. Leadership is not all that it is cracked up to be.

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant." -Max Depree

Depree describes how different stages of leadership can be very opposite of each other. To me, the "in between" is when things fall apart. Each leader has a way that they want things to go. He has already defined this, and spoken to his followers about it. The success of the overall running of the proposed plan lies on the followers. After all, one person with out support, cannot over rule two people with the rest of the world backing them.

Leaders and followers are constantly competing for each others roles. They want "power". Power as described in the dictionary means the ability to do or act and the control over other people. People strive for this. The European Journal of Social Psychology describes this yearning as "strivings to increase one's sense of agency (personal power) by decreasing dependence on others, rather than by strivings to increase power over others (social power)". On page 102 of Lord of the Flies, Jack and Ralph are competing for their position in a hunt to find the beast. Jack tells Ralph "This is a hunters job." Ralph replies by saying "This is more than a hunters job, because you can't track the beast. And don't you want to be rescued?" Ralph reiterates his point many times by saying the simple line "Don't you want to be rescued?" The competition between Ralph and Jack brought strain on the island. People did not know how they were supposed to feel. Deep down inside, they wanted the power that Ralph and Jack were competing for.

On page 117 in Lord of the Flies, Ralph and Jack are faced with the dilemma to give some of their earned power to someone else named Piggy. Ralph made the decision that it was best for the group to return to the main camp and shelters rather than continue searching for the beast. If they were to have continued searching,  Piggy would have been left to watch the small children called littleluns. Piggy would have taken a small amount of control. The earned leadership was hard for Ralph and Jack to give up.

Jack spends the majority of the book fighting for power with Ralph. Jack wants to be chief: he wants the control that Ralph has. On Page 127 in Lord of the Flies, Jack says "I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you. I'm not going to be apart of Ralph's lot- I'm going off by myself. [...] Anyone who wants to hunt when I do can come too." Jack had reached a breaking point for himself. He had mixed views with Ralph on the ways that they should survive. I believe that Jack had finally thought he would be better off on his own where he could control his own impulses and rely on himself completely. This follows completely what the European Journal of Social Psychology states that the yearning for power is. He wanted to have things his way. But he wanted people to follow him and take part in what he believed. Jack was tired of relying on Ralph for guidance and trust.

The Lord of the Flies displays the competition between two similar people. We can not accept to come second as a human; we yearn to be first. It is not possible to not be dependent on other people yet we cannot accept that fact. When a person can not accept being second, power falls apart.

The Lord of the Flies models my assumption that power must fall apart completely. The children try to create a society similar to their previous one: the one that they believe is perfect. The children create rules and traditions similar to those of the normal world. Together, the children began to run a successful government. Jack's inablitiy to not have complete power destroys this government. The children are put in split decisions that none of them are capable of handling. Until they are rescued, they are in a form of war.

A blogger on the Huffington Post suggests that "A service is inaugurated today and four weeks later it already begins to lose quality and is restricted" This is what happened in the case of the children on the island; everything became normal for awhile and then it was not important. At first, the kids strived for normalcy but once it was there, they did not care about it.

As individuals, we strive for power, and for independence. In order for everyone to be happy with a society, it must fall apart. There is no place that everyone is truthfully happy. Author William Golding shows this through the main characters in the book Lord of the Flies; Ralph and Jack.

Role of Fear Vs. Role of Hope

Fear and hope play an important role in the way we live and our everyday lives. Our fears send us in a certain direction in making decisions in our lives, but so do our hopes. Fear and hope intertwine. The society that we live in, instills fears such as punishments but not only do they imply fear, hope in form of reward is always there.

Seth Godin wrote an article about the hope that the market brings us. He says that "What marketers sell is hope. The magical thing about hope is that it makes everything work better, every day get better, every project work better, every relationship feel better." In this blog post, Godin is describing the American Dream . The American Dream requires hopes for better things.This the reason why our ancestors came to America. In order for us as human beings to be happy and successful, we need to turn to hope for encouragement. Whether our encouragement is our salary, a win, a relationship, or the hope for something to not happen.

When we hope for something to not happen, we are fearing that it will happen. Nobody can be fearless. Not even heroes. In an article written by James R.Fleming about the book What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Ourselves and Our Society, he describes a hero as "someone who rises above his or her fears and limitations to achieve something extraordinary." We can all be a hero. In order to achieve this mass of success, we must discover our fears, defy them, and hope that everything from that point on will come in our favor.

Even though Fear and Hope are opposite emotions in how they effect us, if we have one, we must have the other. In a discussion over the book Hiroshima, Mallory Rabehl stated that "Fear is the initial thought. Hope comes next." she said that "you act first in fear and next with hope that it will be okay." When lifeboats are put on passenger ships, the company is fearing that if there is an accident then the lives on the ship will be at risk. By putting lifeboats on the ship, they are hoping that if something bad happens, the life boats will be there to protect the people. The book Unbroken demonstrates this. This book is a story of survival Louie Zamperini. The plane that Louie is flying in, is going down in the middle of the ocean. Thankfully, the plane carried an inflatable life boat that saved his life. In this situation, everyone of the plane faced death. They hoped for survival. With a mixture of luck and perseverance, Zamperini  makes it out alive.

The world that we live in, influences the hopes and fears that we have. It manipulates our emotions. This is something that we cannot control. We can barely control our personal fears and hopes let alone defy all of them. Our hopes and fears control our personality, whether we are the hero or the bystander, whether we are looking for a positive or negative outcome (rewards, punishment), and the quick decisions that we make in a time of fear. Hopes and Fears are intertwined by all of these reasons. The emotion is unavoidable. 

Growing Old in the Cold: An Observation On a Boys Squirt Hockey Practice

I. Preface (Leighton):

Growing up in a hockey arena has made an inevitable impact on my life. As a child, I learned discipline and commitment from it. It was something that I hated with my whole heart and slowly I learned to love. Hockey is a sport that in order to become good, it takes years upon years and lots of work. Similar to most of the older hockey players in Buffalo, when I enter the Buffalo Civic Center, I automatically recognize almost all of the adults and the people who work there. Spending so much time at one place brings everyone closer together. It’s like a family. Everyone cares for each other.

There is a significant difference between the boys’ hockey program and the girls’ program though. These differences are evident in the ways that boys act towards the game, the way that they are coached, and their different personality towards hockey. Girls and boys are very different and that is inevitable. While observing the Squirt Development Camp, I expect that the practice will be much more aggressive than a female practice and the lines that the boys will form will be relative to their individual skills. I also expect that at the end of the practice, they will play some sort of competitive games.



I. Preface (Jillianne):

When I was younger I would view the sport of hockey as a functional opportunity to get away, and enrich my mind and skills. To this day it plays a big role on my everyday life and I have never strayed away from the idea that it is enriching and developing. The Buffalo Hockey Association is a place where everything is an organized, everyone is familiar with one another and with everything, and everybody shares one common interest, hockey.

As you are at the younger levels, the association is co-ed, the years the genders split, are the key stages in a childs hockey career. I have partaken in the girls program, and I barely had enough time to keep up with my own team, let alone watching the boys. Here and there our practices will share ice time, but the halves divide along with the teams. There is an obvious reason why the genders split, and that is because of the vast amount of difference.

As for the differences, I assume that before the drills/ individual warmups and such, I think knowing boys, they know the abilities that they are most confident in and they will try and show what they can do off. Which means the ones that can skate the fastest will spend most of time skating, and for the boys that have a good shot will sit at the net and keep shooting. The boys that are playing the game for fun will be socializing. I think the superior players and the players with most potential will definitely show. At this young age of developing skills for the future, the kids are more focused on what they can do to make them individually better, not a team. So I believe that in small games or scrimmaging when a kid gets an opportunity to have the puck, he will use it and not think about passing it and letting someone else have a chance.



II. Background Information:

The Buffalo Civic Center has two ice sheets. One of the arenas is referred to as the “new” rink. This ice sheet is the most renovated rink the center has. The new rink was added on to the original complex which is referred as the “Peterson rink”, or the old rink.

Most hockey players, ameliorate themselves, by following a certain path of levels in the hockey association. The first level is called Mini-mites. In mini-mites, you stay local by only playing in your city. It is meant for kids age 7 and under. Mites, is very similar to Mini-mites, but it is designed for kids that are 9 years old or younger. Traveling hockey begins after Mites when you reach either Squirts, if you are a boy, or U10’s if you are a girl. Skaters are at this level for two seasons. For most people, their Squirt and U10 season occurs while they are 9, and 10. After this, the boys move on to Peewees and the girls will advance to U12’s. Alike the other years, players stay at this level for two years. During the seasons when they are 13 and 14, boys will play bantams, and girls will move on to play U14 hockey until they are 15. Some, choose to play High School Hockey when they reach the U14 level depending on their preference.



III. Observations:

When we first walked into our local Buffalo hockey arena, we were immediately surrounded by cool air. We made our way up the bleachers of the new arena, to the top of the stands and into the observing bench. The players had just gotten on the ice, and were coming on the ice one by one. They were doing individual warm-ups. We first noticed that a few of the players have a different colored hockey socks then most. Two players had red socks, and one player had blue. We presumed that this meant that these players may have partaken in an out of season team prior to this practice. We then noticed a girl in this squirt practice, which was very unusual. She was skating around by herself, and we noted her as the ‘Lonely Girl.’ Everyone else on the ice were males, including the coaches,

During the individual warm ups, the net would slowly fill up with pucks from the players shooting the. When there were no more pucks left to shoot, the players would go into the net and grab a puck just for themselves, even though they are already in the net and could easily take out the rest. We presumed that the players only worry about benefiting themselves as a player.

There were five coaches on the ice. One coach blew the whistle and all of the kids gathered around him. He was bearded, and held a clipboard so we assumed he was the head coach, and we called him the bearded coach. The bearded coach was making hand motions and drawing on a white board, and then motioned for the kids to line up against the wall. Once all the kids were in their places, the bearded coach blew his whistle and the kids started their first drill.

The first players started to skate, and then we heard someone yelling. We noticed that a coach in a grey hood was already yelling at the kids to “GO!” we labeled this coach as the ‘yeller coach.’ Looking at the players lined up on the board a few of them were talking to one another, and the lonely girl budged someone in line. Lonely girl found a friend now, and she keeps talking to him smiling, and laughing. When the boy she was talking to closes the conversation she stands back a few steps and stares at him. When she was backing up she tripped and fell, a sure sign of a 10 year-old crush. It is now the lonely girls turn to start the drill and she doesn’t know what to do. She then has to restart the drill, which is one of many side effects of a crush.

After this drill that took up the entire ice, the bearded coach blew the whistle and everyone met in the middle. He called off names and everyone he called off went in a separate spot on the ice. Each of the four stations did different drills and had different coaches. When the players reached the yeller coach’s station, their body language was much different than it was at any other station. The kids at this station began to mess around and show a disinterest in the drill they were taking part in. Yeller coach continued to yell as the skaters went through the drill. At all of the other stations, the boys were attentive. We then concluded that the players had a lack of interest in the coach, rather than the drills.

While observing, we noticed that while the players were waiting in line for a drill, most of their focus was spent on messing around. Many kids were tripping each other, throwing punches, and just conversing. We made the assumption that because these players are only 10 years old, that this behavior was their way of having fun during a hard practice.

At the end of the practice, the players took their jerseys off, and met in a huddle to do a cheer. We assumed that the cheer brought unity to their team. Once the cheer was over, coaches and players stayed on the ice to pick up pucks, and move the nets. When the zamboni backed out onto the ice, both the players, and the coaches got off of the ice.

IV. Conclusion:


Watching a squirt practice, brings out very many differences between a normal girls’ hockey practice and the average boys’ hockey practice. Most girls at age 10 would not be doing particular things that the boys took part in. Our practices were run from one end of the ice during a skills clinic rather than using the entire ice during the whole practice. Boys actions during their practice were much more aggressive and competitive than any practice that the two of us have taken part in.

The Squirt players all proved to us that they are still deficient in their listening skills, and their attention spans. The players cared about the drills that they were about to attempt, but waiting in line patiently, posed to be a problem. There inability to pay attention while waiting, was something that we looked past when we were making preconceptions. We assumed that it would not be a problem. Even though the players were corrupt to each other during their practice, they all left as one team.

Buffalo Hockey Association has allowed for everyone who is a part of the association, big or small, to be brought together over the common bond of hockey. No matter who can be seen in the Buffalo arena, there are always people there that genuinely care for the sport.

Insecurities

Bigotry and judgment are the height of insecurity.

Jasmine Guy

The book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe describes how life is all about your insecurities and how it is important to overcome everyone one of them. But before you can overcome insecurities, you must discover them first. This book, shows the life of Okonkwo and his struggle to discover himself.

Okonkwo, is a well known man in his tribe who had both wealth and status. Along with his status, came many wives, many children, and many problems. He hid his insecurities the same 
way as modern leaders do today. On page 144 of Things Fall Apart, Nwoye betrays his father by saying “He is not my father.” Okonkwo kept this to himself and did not tell anybody about this experience. He wanted to hide all of his insecurities and everything that made him feel like a failure.

Life is about discovering the person that you are, and following the set of values that you create for yourself. Many people find out what they believe in during their adolescent years. I believe that this is the time that people discover how they feel about the world and every problem in it. You begin to discover your life, because you have begun to experience it. You begin to understand all of the horrible things that can happen to yourself and other people. At this point in your life, the actions that you make, have consequences.

Being a child, consists of copying idols, wanting to be exactly like your parents, and learning from the mistakes that you make. As a child, in most cases, you have very little responsibility. As you grow up, things that were told to you in your childhood are put on display. Some of these things have different meaning now. You set different goals for yourself then your parents had for you. Your adolescent years, are about discovering these goals. Okonkwo discovered his goals for his life a little bit earlier than most people. He described his father as a failure. On page 13 of Things Fall Apart, Achebe describes this by saying "[Okonkwo's] whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness." The rest of the book follows about revealing the person that Okonkwo was.

The entire plot of Things Fall Apart describes how a person finds himself. Okonkwo pushes his goal to never be a failure or to be somebody who is was lazy and opinionless to the maximum. Slowly but surely, he begins to fall apart. He tries to make his son feel the guilt of not being a true "man". The culture that Okonkwo was raised in, made him believe that because his father was not the most powerful, and although he did not always speak his honest mind, he was not a man. One of Okonkwo's sons begins to follow in his fathers footsteps and he has difficulty dealing with it. This was one of Okonkwo’s insecurities.

Life is short which means that by the time you find yourself, you have little left to live. It is not possible to be your honest self when society and people that you love are constantly expecting change and better things from you. Society causes you to become more insecure with your struggles within yourself. Everybody has a clear destined path, but it takes time and experimentation to find out which path that you belong on. Every mistake that you make on your quest to find your path can become an insecurity if you let it. Overcoming insecurities, requires you to be 100% devoted to the goals that you set for yourself. Being confident in yourself, your likes, and your goals, is most important about being secure with yourself.

Ethnography Preconceptions

Jillianne Hovland and I will cooperate together in the completion of our ethnography project. The main focus of this project is to observe the differences of our experiences throughout youth hockey. Both Jilli and I grew up playing hockey in Buffalo but as we have gotten older, the program has changed dramatically. We grew up playing girls hockey through the Buffalo Youth Hockey Association. Girls and boys programs are completely different in this association.
The goal for the project we are beginning, is to identify how the Squirt Player Development Camp is run, how the boys react, the atmosphere of the people playing and observing along with their comments, and also the ice sheet and how it is used. To complete our observations, we will be observing their practice and conducting interviews with three to four of the boys and also two coaches. We will be in contact with the coordinator of the Buffalo Civic Center as our broker.
As I have grown up in the association, I know how much of the girls program is run and how it works. I do not have any brothers or any relatives that play boys hockey for our association. USA Hockey has implemented  ADM  (American Development Model) into youth practices. Both girls and boys use this model in certain practices that are usually done weekly. Another thing that happens in youth hockey is that before tryouts there is a series of practices that are considered "clinics" to prepare you for tryouts.
I have many preconceptions as I begin to think more about how this observation will go. First off, I believe that at the beginning of practice the boys will come out and show off all their moves and spend the beginning of their practice socializing with their friends. The better stronger players will line up towards the front of the lines. Next, I would assume that because it's a development camp, the majority of the practice will be individual skill based. I believe that at least 10 minutes of the practice will be competitive games and races. When we interview the players, I feel as though some will feel stressed with the thought of preparing for tryouts and finding out the teams that they will spend their year on, where as other boys will feel excited for the season and not have a worry in the world to which team that they make. The coaches that we interview will share a different take on these camps. They will notice all the incorrect forms and "bad" things that the kids they are coaching are doing wrong.
Overall, I feel prepared to start observing and learning about the boys youth hockey program. I have quite a few preconceptions that may or may not be true. Playing girls hockey, I have a background that will help me piece together what is happening on the ice and understanding the reactions with different people.

"I Am From" Poem

"I Am From" Poem 

I am from hockey sticks

from antibacterial soap and disinfectant wipes

I am from the brick rambler

with a warm vanilla scent

I am from the apple trees

The river birch

whose long gone limbs I remember

as if they were my own.

I am from Christmas gatherings and a large family

from my Dad and little Larky

I’m from hand-me-downs and organic food

and from the nightly news.

I’m from “Santa Claus is coming” and “nice jobs”

and Bob Marley music

I’m from weekends in a hockey arena

I’m from Minnesota and Germany

Pineapple water and tacos

From our trip to Hawaii

with the clear and wavy ocean water

whose pictures are kept close

In my heart forever.  

Happiness in Unexpected Situations

"I, the son of a dear father murther'd,

Prompted by revenge by heaven and hell, 

Must (like a whore) unpack my heart with words 

And fall a-cursing like a very drab, 

A scullion! [...]

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,

Have by the very cunning of the scene

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim'd their malefactions [...]

Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks;

I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,

I know my course. The spirit I have seen

May be a devil; and the devil may hath power" 

-The Tragedy of Hamlet (2.2. 1660-1674)

Grief and sorrow are the backing force behind why people feel that they deserve justice. Grief and sorrow have another side though; they can be formed from guilt. The quote from act 2 scene 2 in The Tragedy of Hamlet, show both sides of grief and sorrow. Hamlet is grieving over the death of his father and he feels that his fathers murder is not just. That feeling of revenge puts him in a position where he wants to get back with his uncle who killed him.  Later in the verse, Hamlet describes his plan to make his uncles guilt come out. Guilt eats you up and causes you to feel sorrow for what you have done in the past. Hamlet has realized this and used it against his uncle. Hamlet's mourning process continues throughout the story.

Grieving and mourning is a long process that brings back memories, and brings along horrible days of mixed emotions. Everybody has a "bad" day every so often, and that is what the mourning process is; an accumulation of bad days back to back. In those days, you say things that you don't mean and you act in ways that you normally wouldn't. Hamlet says that "I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us" (3.1. 1817-1820). Leading up to Hamlet's speaking, he had a relatively bad day. He had taken part in a disagreement with Ophelia who is what he believes to be the love of his life. Hamlet had made this comment about himself that he may not have said if he were in his normal state of mind. 

In this time in the mourning process, everything that at one point made you feel happy, seems to turn against you to become grief . Shakespeare describes this as "The passion ending, doth the purpose lose. The violence of either grief or joy, their own enactures with themselves destroy. Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament" (3.2. 2086-2089). Essentially, this means that grief and joy may bring us to action but, when the feelings of grief or joy are done, our encouragement to continue acting, disappears. This causes us to realize that joy turns into grief.

Nobody can go through life only grieving over the death of somebody such as a father or mother, nor could they go through life having endless joy. Everybody gets hit with melancholy or happiness at least once in their life. This is the cycle of mourning. You experience grief, sorrow, guilt, revenge, justice, and finally, happiness. Bad times start the mourning cycle, and good times end it. Each time something major happens negatively to you, the process restarts. You will find happiness once again though. The No Fear Shakespeare version of The Tragedy of Hamlet, says that "Joy turns into grief  in a blink of an eye, and grief becomes joy just as quickly. This world is not made for either to last long in, and it's no surprise that even our loves changes along with our luck" (3.2. 185-190). Joy turns to grief and grief turns into joy just as easily.

Justice

Justice, as defined by the dictionary, means something that has the quality of being just. That something, must be rightful and lawful. Even though most people know the dictionary’s definition of justice, many people believe that justice is similar to revenge or to becoming "fair" with another person. Justice requires a punishment when revenge comes into play. This means that to receive justice a compromise must take place.

Most compromises are brought to courts across the world. In every court case, there are two parties, the defendants party and the plaintiff party. Because there will always be two parties, how can justice be attained?

"An eye for an eye" is an older way to phrase justice. If you are a drunk driver and you paralyze a man that you hit while driving your car, although you may serve a few years in jail, how is it just to the person that you paralyzed? If the judicial system were to utilize the eye for an eye analogy of  justice, your punishment would be equal to the crime that you committed. The society that we live in, makes a smaller compromise of justice by sending people to jail for reduced periods of time. Often times, the compromise does not bring closure to the victim.

Human beings need closure; we crave the feeling that a person who has hurt us will feel the same way that we feel or have felt in the past. We have an emotional side to the things that have affected us, therefore, justice is a very difficult thing to attain. It is nearly impossible to make a perfect compromise with the right amount of punishment that will please two different people or two different groups of people.

Punishment is the driving factor behind why people avoid committing crimes. Punishment is necessary though when justice needs to be reached. On page 4 in the book The Republic, Plato describes that “When a man thinks himself to be near death and cares enter his mind that he never had before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is exacted there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he is tormented with the thought that they may be true: either from the weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd quickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to others.”

You cannot simply reach justice in any court case. You cannot undo what you have done. If you deal drugs and get caught, you will never reach a just standpoint from anything in the world because you cause an abrupt change in the way something or someone operates for each use of your drug. If you murder someone, you will never reach justice either because you will never be able to bring back the person that you killed. People forgive and forget, but you cannot undo an action that you have committed.

Nonfiction Project (Fear)

Fear is a complex subject. It is different to every person that you will speak to and each of these people will be afraid of something different. The project that Jillianne Hovland and I conducted, had a goal to discover and learn more about the secrets of fear and how fear effects people differently.

Together, we tackled the broad subject by learning about how stories effect different people. We interviewed Bob Gasch, who is a storyteller in our area, to learn about fear and surprise that he uses in his stories.  This is the interview that started our story; it gave us an excellent base to begin further research.

Continuing in the process of creating this project, we looked at different websites that focused solely on fear and how to understand it. What we took out of this is that there are two main types of fear but it all serves the same purpose; the purpose of the feeling of fear and its emotions is to keep us out of danger and harm.

The next step in forming our project was by far the most difficult. It required us to interview many different people on their fears and how they effect them physically, mentally, and emotionally. After each interview, a conclusion was drawn about fear. Every time we had an interview, the conclusion had very similar characteristics about their reactions to fear, but there were very many that had no resemblance of each other whatsoever.

Most people felt a pit or a drop in their stomach when their fear was brought into play. People who's fear was taken by surprise felt the fear a different way than those who put themselves into the situation. The surprised cases became nervous and developed a fear that has lasted for many years. People who were expecting the situation, described their feelings as a "huge adrenaline rush", and even an "adrenaline high". They liked what they were feeling.

I hope that when people listen to the podcast, they take out that fear is different to everybody. You cannot judge somebody because of what they are afraid of because everybody is afraid of something. I would also hope that people would be better informed of what they are feeling and how that it effects their body and their emotions.

During the creation of this project, I have not only learned more than I expected to, but I have discovered more things about different people. I now know why I like to watch a scary movie or go on a roller-coaster that may make me sick. This project forced me to pursue one topic and learn as much as I could about it. I accomplished what I wanted to discover about fear.

 

To Kill a Mockingbird #3

There is nothing that can prepare you for a sudden impact. There is nothing that can prep you for dying, and there is nothing that can prepare you for an answer that determines the rest of your life. In a court case, there are only two people that know the real truth; but that doesn't mean that these two people don't use this power to make the other person guilty. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson is convicted of raping Mayella Ewell. The court case that they endure have lasting impacts on how their life is bound to continue.

"[...] Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we are paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple." Miss Maudie replied in a conversation with Aunt Alexandra.

"Who?" responded Aunt Alexandra.

"The handful of people in this town who say a fair trial is for everyone [...] The handful of people with background, that's who they are."

Page 316 in To Kill a Mockingbird

Tom Robinson was an African American man on trial against a young white lady. Maycomb county is a very racist place; there are very few people that believe in equality. The people that do, knew how biased the trial actually was. On page 295, Atticus says "[...]In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins." This means that no matter how hard Atticus and Tom had tried to win the court case, no matter how little or much evidence was used, Tom Robinson would be guilty of the crime.

Tom Robinson tries to escape where he is sent after the trial. Atticus describes the incident on page 315 by saying "They shot him. He was running during their exercise period. They said he just broke into a blind raving charge at the fence and started climbing over." His family, friends, and all of the people of the community had never expected him to die. You cannot expect death, and because you can not expect it, it makes it very difficult to accept.

There is nothing that can prepare you to lose something that will put you to death. No matter how hard that he had tried to expect the outcome of the case, you still hope for the best. Rejection, is one of the hardest things that us humans can face in our lives. No matter how hard that we try to accept that something is missing from our lives, or that we will be taking our last breaths soon, we can't. We cannot face it.

 

To Kill a Mockingbird #2

The struggle for many people in the Jim Crow era was discrimination. If you were Caucasian, you faced the decision to support the African-American community or to jump on the bandwagon and treat the African-American community as a disease. On the flip-side, if you were African-American or of a different race, you either had to accept being treated like a disease or you could stand up for yourself. This is the story of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Atticus was a thorough man; he knew what he wanted and he didn't let anybody stand in his way. Atticus portrays a belief of equality on pages 182 and 183 by standing up for Calpurnia, his African-American nurse by saying "[...] I don't think that the children have suffered one bit from her having brought them up. If anything, she's been harder on them in some ways than a mother would have been... she's never let them get away with anything, she's never indulged them the way most color nurses do. She tried to bring them up according to her lights, and Cal's lights are pretty good-and another thing, the children love her."

Anybody who believes in equality, believes in social change. The Jim Crow time period, revolved around people who wanted changes in racism and the people who wanted others rights to remain the same. Discrimination had reached a new level. People were not only shunned singularly but they were shunned by associating with the "wrong" people. Scout, who is a school-age child, was discriminated against as well. In a conversation with Atticus on page 139 she says"[...] Most colored folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong." Scout faced many unexpected comments from different parts of the book when news got out that her father was supporting a African-American man in a legal case.

The social pyramid in this time went as so: the lowest level being the people of color, then the lowest Caucasian class, then the middle class, and finally the richest Caucasians made up the first class. Atticus, by supporting the African-American man in the court case, supported social change. This means that his views on the decades leading up to the current, were different than what the average person chose to believe. Your perspective on things develops overtime which greatly affects how you choose to believe or how you act.

This is similar to what is happening currently in our court systems; we are deciding whether we stick with the past or we move on to the future in marriage rights. Of course, this is not as large as the discrimination of different people in the Jim Crow era but there are two definite groups that are trying to make marriage the way that they want it to be. This is an example of social change; the group of people supporting same-sex marriage is trying to be able to own the right to marry and to have their opinions voiced.

To me, To Kill a Mockingbird is a story about voicing your opinion and standing behind what you think is right and in the grand scheme of things, that is what life is about. Life is about defining yourself because you want to be able to choose who you want to be. People want to be thought of beyond their social ranking, their education, or their race. People want to be thought of as themselves. To Kill a Mockingbird in my perspective is the story of Scout following behind in Atticus's footsteps by watching him stand up for what he believes is right and by learning how to choose what she wants in life so that she can achieve it.

To Kill a Mockingbird #1

Each day you are forced to make difficult decisions. You are forced to decide if you are going to stand up, or blend in. As children, you believe very much of what your parents also believe in. When somebody says something that goes against what you were raised to believe, your instincts set in. It is in that moment that you say something that you are going to regret. Maybe you don't regret it, and maybe it is then, that you make somebody think like they never thought before.

Jean is a young girl growing up in the 1930's in a small town in Alabama. She is not your average girl though; she has grown up with more relationships with other guys. Jean is not afraid to have a voice, or use vulgar language at that. She owns a gun, and is not afraid to adventure. But, her words and her thoughts occasionally get her into trouble.

On page 110 of To Kill a Mockingbird, Jean's cousin Francis began an argument on Christmas by saying "If Uncle Atticus lets you run around with stray dogs, that's his own business, like Grandma says, so it ain't your fault. I guess it ain't your fault if Uncle Atticus is a nigger-lover besides, but I'm here to tell you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family". Of course, like most people, Jean did not respond very ladylike. The first thing that she said was "Francis, what the hell do you mean?"(Page 110)

Later that evening while Jean's uncle Jack was cleaning her injured knuckles, she asked him what a whore-lady was. Jack responded without telling her what it really had meant and by covering it up with a story. These few comments, changed how her uncle Jack perceived children and his thoughts on marriage. Jean overheard a conversation that Uncle Jack was having with her father Atticus. It is then that Jack says that " Your daughter gave me my first lessons this afternoon. She said I didn't understand children much and told me why. She told me how I should've treated her-Oh dear, I'm so sorry I romped on her."(Page 115)

Jack reflected on the things that he had done. He recognized how in over his head he was when it came to dealing with children. It is incredible how the one small argument had affected so many people that Jean had been around. She stood up for what she believed in and made a major impact on many peoples lives because of it. I believe that the moral of this section in the story is that you can choose to stand out and impact other people or you can observe and not leave a footprint or change how other people believe.

Taxes For China (Claim, Evidence, and Warrant)

If the US government raised the taxes on the wealthiest Americans, there would be very little impact to our countries economy and economic growth. Taxes should not be raised because we will simply be bringing the poorest American citizens up to the middle class, and the wealthiest citizens back down. By raising the taxes, we will be limiting the number of people that can afford to by products produced in the United States. This would cause our country to continue in our recession because no jobs would be added.  These products would not be purchased because items that are produced in America more frequently have a much higher starting value than those produced in other parts of the world including China, India, and Japan

Since Walmart began to sell products from over seas, there have been 7 million manufacturing jobs lost in the United States. As Walmart continues its search for low prices, it will continue to put even more people out of jobs. By raising the taxes, we will only be supporting these large companies and the countries that manufacture their products. The manufacturing buildings that sell their products in national/global stores, are located in places in the world where they can get away with having cheap laborers, and have poor working conditions.

If our government follows through with their current plans to raise the taxes, our country will simply be lengthening the duration of our recession. It is a necessity to create more jobs in America. Raising our taxes is only going to create these jobs in other globally noted regions. It is important that we begin making our own American-made products which will create more jobs in our manufacturing sector. This will then help our overall economy because our government will not carry the burden of supporting the lower class. As this happens, our economy will see major economic growth. At one point, we will cease to experience major, never-ending recessions.

The American Dream is not currently achieved in society as it has in previous decades. People who came to the "New World", came for prosperity, independence, and a new beginning. They came to do better than their parents had. Our job force has slowly transferred from a time of manufacturing industries to the current reliance on government and service jobs. If you work in the manufacturing industries, as did our parents and grand parents, you will have a consistent salary. As our global populations increase, more products are needed. Many of the countries that we trade with, take advantage of the amount that we consume. The United States needs to capitalize on the fact that we consume more than any other country in the world. One way that we could create jobs for the people to follow in our footsteps, is by expanding our manufacturing sector to the level that they were in previous decades. By raising our taxes, we will only be increasing the number of people not accomplishing the American Dream.

Taxes for China (Satire)

The United States of America becomes further in debt every year. Because of the current economy, more and more people become homeless or turn to welfare for financial support. As our society becomes poorer and poorer, it is very important that we change the way that our country is being run. One way that we could do this, is by making an equal American. To do this, it would be essential to raise the taxes on the richest people in America.

Americans need the money to support other economies around the world by buying their cheap knockoff products, refined foods, and the drug trade.  Wal-Mart opened its doors as an all American brand; now, you could walk in and barely find anything, including produce, that was grown or made in the United States. Drug trade happens everywhere in the world and it puts food on the table for many families. In the United States, we spend billions upon billions of dollars trying to stop drug traffic and trade by creating laws. There is little to no effect of these laws based upon the fact that there has been very little change in the street prices of different drugs.

Because the United States is in major debt, by eliminating the large problems of educating, and protecting people from the problems of the world, our government would save billions of dollars. Our world wide economy would thrive because cheap labor will be necessary in new parts of the world that are yet to industrialize. As an effect of the industrialization of the world, we would also create more skilled jobs for scientific discoveries and inventions. This would start a brand new process that the world has yet to discover.

1. The more wealthy would be taxed more


2. Redistribution of wealth


3. The previously less wealthy have more money to spend


4. Drug trade, knockoff products, and refined products have and increase in sales


5. More jobs to produce the products/further industrialization


6. More scientists for more research, discoveries, and inventions

The suffering of Americas poorest, is not near of what the poorest children of China face every day of their lives. It is important that we buy the things that they are making inside of the factories. By supporting the larger companies over small businesses in the United States, we would be buying Chinese products that would help these children and their families. Another huge example of why we need to pay more taxes to the poor, is because having 5 bathrooms in your house, takes a big toll on the water systems of our country. By making the richer poorer, we would help our water systems and our electrical systems in our nation.

As you can see, it is necessary for a change in the way that the United States runs its taxing. By bringing the richer down and the poorer up, we would have more money to spend on global economies rather than the money spent in the heart of our country. The United States as a whole could produce more by itself, and it would lower the percentage of Americans out of work. Nation wide companies would have a greater income with the rising amount of money that the previously less wealthy could afford to spend. The United States of America is in great need of a change. Raising taxes on the wealthiest, is a great way to solve it.

 

Non-Fiction Project With Jilli Hovland

Why do you go to a scary movie? How can the fear that you feel, haunt you until you go to it and hear the whole story? Fear is an emotion that many storytellers bring in to make their stories more interesting. Why storytellers do this, and how they make people come back to this fear, is what Jilli and I will be uncovering in this project.

People go these movies for a statement. They come out of the movie almost peeing their pants but because they went, they feel a sense of accomplishment. Is this the reason why people watch or listen to these things? Do other peoples experiences of fear make yours seem smaller?

What's the science behind it? The brain works in weird ways. Many people get an adrenaline rush when they watch or listen to scary things, could this be the reasoning behind why storytellers and writers share their stories this way?

While researching this project, we'll look at the psychology of fear and how the brain reacts to these triggers along with interviewing many storytellers, and learning about other peoples experiences with fear. We will show our work in this project by making a podcast of our discoveries including the personal experiences of other people.

So what really does make people come back for more? Do people prolong this fear or do they search for it? What makes people like fear? Everybody has their own personal experiences with this odd emotion. Maybe their is no distinct, straight-forward answer, but we will find the answers to many things that make up this subject.