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Archive for May, 2010
by maddiedrdg0910 on May 25, 2010 at 6:08 pm · Filed under English
Think about it – something as small as a mere spark could set the flame to a blazing fire. It’s the same thing with writing. Something as small as the look on a parent’s face, or a sentence written by an author, or the way someone said something can branch out into an idea for a whole story. The writing pieces I have done for English were all inpired by something in my life – whether that inspiration be big or small.
Your own experience – “Moral Obligation…Maternal Instinct?” was inpired by my experiences with working in groups and feeling that its my duty to take care of the people around me – and I will admit, it goes a little too far sometimes.
Other people’s lives – My piece titled, “It Goes Without Saying” was inspired by my brother. He really messed our family up at one point, but who knew I’d get a great writing piece out of it? After all, God closes one door and opens another.
Your geneaology – I know it doesn’t look it, but “The Light” was inspired by the genes I got from my mom. She raised me to think we should be nice to anybody and everybody – and Micheal Fowlin just built upon that.
Where you live – The piece “Sanctuary” was inspired by the woods in my backyard. Though I didn’t live through the Depression, my mom did, and she told me all about it. When she told me the stories, for whatever reason, I’d always think about the long stretch of woods I lived by, and it’s a perfect place to go when things get overwhelming.
Mothers and Fathers – My mother may be one of the strangest people I’ve ever met, and I love her for it. She’s also in a way immature, which ultimately colors my life, along with her’s. “Spring Fever” is purely about my mother and her childish, but inevidably loveable passion for spring.
Vacations – Okay, so camp isn’t considered a vacation. Well, it is for me, and that’s all I’m concerned about. This may have been the worst day I’ve had at camp during the seven – going on eight- years I’ve spent there. Well, at least it’ll give me something worthy of remembering…and I know I won’t be looking back and laughing about this one anytime soon. “A Not-So-Happy Ending” is all about vacation time gone wrong.
History, research, books, and other sources – Again, where my inspiration came from doesn’t really fit into any of these categories. I got the idea from a song by Death Cab For Cutie. The song is touching, but one line talking about smoke in the sky made me reflect back on the way we treat our planet. I’m extremely opinionistic about the way humans live, so this was a personal writing piece for me. “Too Far Gone” may have been the only essay I’ve written that almost brought me to tears in the process.
by maddiedrdg0910 on May 23, 2010 at 5:17 pm · Filed under English
Let’s say inspiration was as abundant as the air we breathe. It never runs out – there will always be an endless, yet vital supply. You can find it literally anywhere you go, and we use it all the time. Its produced by everyday things, like trees and plants. Who would have thought such a common thing would be so necessary? The assembly I attended at Parker Middle School recently made me recognize an unbelievable amount about the way people get inspiration for writing.
One of the main – and the biggest – point that Kathleen Benner Duble discussed at the assembly was that inspiration for writing can literally come from anywhere. She told the students to really open their eyes to the world and listen to things we would otherwise ignore; when she did, she wrote whole books off of it. This can help students because they’re pretty unexperienced, so learning how to become more observant and creative will really help them become better writers. Now she wasn’t saying that a whole story will pop up and hit you in the face one day. She’s saying you can find little facts or stories that will spark an idea for a longer writing piece. And that’s exactly it – without a little imagination, creativity, and determination, you’ll never get a good writing piece out.
You can’t buy a box of cake mix and put it in the oven expecting a fully frosted three-tier cake to come out. You have to add more ingredients, including patience, to get the final product. The same goes for writing something. You can go out and find an inspiration anywhere, but you have to have patience, determination, creativity, and imagination to come up with a worthy writing piece. This was without doubt the most eye-opening assembly I have ever attended since even I was in grade school.
by maddiedrdg0910 on May 19, 2010 at 8:47 pm · Filed under English
You’re a quiet person. Go onstage and speak at an assembley with hundreds of expectant, critical eyes upon you or shrink back into the shadows like a frightened animal for the rest of your life? If you were corageous, you’d make a different decision than if you were shy. This is what’s happening in Jerry’s case in The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier. Jerry is both determined and apprehensive; his apprehension fanning the flames of his determination. These two traits are what make him choose the things he does.
Jerry Renault is determined, which feeds into his apprehension. Two things made him this way. On page 20, a at the bus stop says, “You’re missing a lot of things in the world, better not miss that bus.” This scared Jerry, making him apprehensive about how his life will turn out. On page 63, it says, “He didn’t want to be the mirror image of his father. The thought made him cringe. I want to do something, be somebody. But what? But what?” His father sits there everyday after work – nothing exciting or even different happens. Jerry is afraid he’ll turn out like his father, which makes him determined to change his future.
The fact the Jerry is both apprehensive and determined greatly influences his decisions. His determination and apprehension are what make him decide he wants to be different than his dad when he grows up. On page 6, it says, “Know what? What? I’m going to make the team. Dreamer, dreamer. Not a dream: it’s the truth.” Jerry decides that football will be what will make him different than his father. This gives him something to work for, and make him determined. He is also apprehensive because throughout his life, people are giving him reasons to worry about his future. The two things that make him apprehensive are when the boy at the bus stop calls him “Square Boy”, and when he sees his father “sleep his life away”. He’s worried that he’ll end up the same way; wasting his life away. He wants to do something greater.
by maddiedrdg0910 on May 12, 2010 at 7:23 pm · Filed under English
Get up at six, try to fill in the void where your happiness and energy used to be with coffee, drive to work through an ocean of clunky, chlostrophobia-inducing cars and reltentless honking, try to find a parking spot – no such luck. Oh great, late again. Walk through the rows and rows of cubicles to your seemingly identical one while phones ring and fingers tap on keys. Come home, attempt to get a decent sleep,wake up with blood shot eyes, do it again. Ah, the wonderful world of routines. Where will you get in life with a routine? Some might say far, I say fatigued.
It’ s true that most of us wouldn’t make any progress if it weren’t for our every day routines. They keep us on track; ensure we’re getting the things done that need to be done. You could say I have a slight routine to my day – wake up at 6:30, do my hair and get dressed, eat breakfast, go to school, come home, be showered by 7:30 and then go to bed around ten. It’s what lets me to do my homework, shower, and do whatever else I need to while still allowing me time to be with friends. That’s what I like about routines. Shanna said, “I think routines are helpful; they help you stay busy; without them, you would be lost.” However, after a while, routines can start to wreck your life.
Sure, routines can help kick start you into getting yourself situated and earning good grades, but when you grow up, routines can dry out your life. Everything loses its flare when its been done repeatedly. Stitching yourself to a routine also keeps you from experiencing new things that could help you exponentially in the end. Also, you could loose all will power to do anything in life if your routine is sucking the juice out of everything. Olivia seems to agree with me. She said, “Routines might be good at first, but after a while life gets boring.” Not only does life get boring, but not allowing room for mistakes or exploration will prevent you from learning valuable lessons and new expreiences. Personally, I’m all for routines – but only up to a certain time limit.
by maddiedrdg0910 on May 6, 2010 at 8:57 pm · Filed under English
The pressure builds and builds, as if the force of graivty is mulitplying and you feel like your head’s about to explode. You can barely function, let alone make decisons. There are always the limitless, heavy expectations and pressures of your friends, family, and teachers hanging around your ankles as you try to move on with your life. This is what happens to every teen, especially Dade from “Star Food” by Ethan Canin. His mother is pulling him one way, while his father is pulling him another. What’s a kid supposed to do?
Like any other kid his age, Dade is doing what is normal and expected from us. He’s trying to please his parents. On page 151, he says, “To appease my father I cleaned the electric star…I thought about limited fame and spent a lot of time noticing the sky.” He wants to clean the star so his dad will be pleased by him, but wants to please his mother also by looking into the sky and trying to discover something. This is normal for every teen, and I don’t think any teenager would try to discover something worldly like his mother wants him to.
The main reason Dade is trying to please his parents is because they both piled great expectations on him. On page 148, while pointing to the bad side of town, his father said, “You’re going to end up on one of those curbs.” He keeps trying to get Dade to stop day dreaming, (well, it’s day dreaming in his eyes) and to start working harder around the store to ensure that he’ll have a steady job as an adult. However, his mother keeps telling him her high expectations for him, which frankly are the exact opposite of his father’s. On page 149, he says, “She told me she kew in her heart that one day I was going to be a man of limited fame. I was twelve years old.” The mother not only wants him to live up to her expectations, but tells him she knows he will. This makes the pressure worse, because if he doesn’t then he’ll seem like a failure. Dade is just a normal teenager trying to please his parents, only in his case, he’s having a lot more difficulty then the average teen.
by maddiedrdg0910 on May 3, 2010 at 4:14 pm · Filed under English
The bird needs to fly from the nest at one point, but how can he do that if he needs his mother’s support to guide him? If the bird has been following his mother’s rules for his whole life, then what happens when he has no rules to follow? The obedient fledgling will soon turn into a disoriented, lost mess of feathers. Every teen out there with possessive parents faces this problem; we’re all birds getting ready to leave the nest.
In my opinion, every teen has to defy their parents sometime or another. A little rebellion teaches independence. And no, that doesn’t mean I want you to go get a tattoo and hijack a car instead of going to school. I’m talking about making your own decisions and refusing their suggestions on which school to go to, which friends to have, or how dress. You may not make the perfect decisions in the beginning, but it goes without saying that mistakes just make room for improvement. The majority of parents’ rules are for your safety, so use common sense and follow the ones that ensure your viability.
I’ve never done anything that bad, and neither has my mom or dad, but the other people around me sure have. My brother has done some things that I’d rather not mention and appropriate for school, which also built upon me. Believe it or not I’ve even learned from his mistakes. But the story that both surprises and gives me hope is my uncle’s. My mom can’t remember it in detail, but one night, he decided he was going to sneak out. He slithered out the basement window into the cold, black night and off he was. Too bad he got caught and my grandpa nailed the window shut. Not I’m not sure that he learned from this mistake, because he still ended up doing all the unmentionable things that all teens do, but he grew up to become a wealthy, married, independent man. That’s where I get the hope for my brother. He went through a period of rebellion, only it was behind my parents’ backs. Well, like my uncle, he was caught and grounded for over a year. And he sure did learn his lesson. I saw a huge difference in his outlook on the kids he was hanging out with, and I have complete faith in his success. We all have no idea what’s going to happen to that one, but my mom always said he’d end up doing great things, and I believe that, too.
The teen stage is a critical time for personal development and a time to sort out your thoughts and take care of yourself. When you force the shape of this period into the guidelines of your parents, it fades away and slumps into dependence. Teens are required to make mistakes; it’s what we do. And believe me, I’ve made quite a few of them – and frankly, I’ve never repeated any of them. I can still remember crystal clear the first time I snuck out, swore online and had my parents find it, kicked the car door (more than once), and went through a goth phase; all of these which my parents either condoned or punished me for. And I’m only 13. The fact that I’ve done these things ensures that I’ll never do them again, so by defying my parents, I am building upon myself. If you always follow the rules, you’ll feel lost without them when it comes time to go off on your own.
by maddiedrdg0910 on May 2, 2010 at 7:58 pm · Filed under English
The smoke billows into the sky, the plumes staining the clear blue backdrop a sickening, lingering grey. You hear the stories of the polar bears’ shrinking land while the scent of gasoline burns your nose as a constant reminder of the impact us humans are having on our helpless planet. You stumble over the garbage strewn over the ground with cars horns blaring in your ears and cement beasts towering over you, blocking out the sunlight and suffocating you. Not only does the setting disgust you, but the behavior of the ones responsible for it is repulsive. To me, the Griffin’s opinion on human nature in The Griffin and the Minor Canon by Frank R. Stockton is spot on. And no, it’s not a good one.
The Griffin’s opinion on our behavior is exactly right. He thinks we’re greedy, ignorant creatures. And he’s dead right. On page 142, he says, “I have had a very low opinion about you ever since I discovered what cowards you are, but I had no idea that you were so ungrateful, selfish, and cruel as I now find you to be.” The Griffin thinks that people care for no one but themselves, and in most cases, that’s painfully true. As embarassing as it is, the first concerns that go through any person’s mind are about the well being of themselves. On page 143, he says, “There were only two good things in this town: the Minor Canon and the stone image of myself over your church door. One of these you have sent away, and the other I shall carry away myself.” The Minor Canon bends over backwards for the people of the town, and they take him for granted and even take advantage of him. I could never admire an opinion about human nature as much as I admire the Griffin’s.
The Griffin is by far my favorite character in The Griffin and the Minor Canon, mainly because of how insightful he is. He sees how shameful our behavior is – which only someone from another species could point out, as we’re too ignorant to take a step back and see for ourselves what we’re doing to the people and world around us. We destroy the planet, and think nothing of it until it starts to backfire. It’s well deserved if you ask me; we had it coming ever since…well, the beginning. Sure, the cavemen were harmless, but come on, they were half monkey. I’ve never seen a monkey liter. And don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty too. I think mine and the Griffin’s opinion of human nature go hand in hand – our ignorance to each other leads to our impact on the planet. And the sad thing is that we’re too far gone to clean up our act. But we’ll have wiped ourselves out of existence by time the blackhole that the sun will become swollows our whole solar system, so it’s okay.
