Guns and Power

This week we began to read the collection of stories by Chimamanda Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck. Each short story in the book reflects an individual experience or tale in the British colony of Nigeria in its colonial era. In the story "The Headstrong Historian" an African woman of slave descent by the name of Ayaju has very modern ideas about the white people who were able to take over their region so easily. She believes that unlike how they would have people believe, The British were not able to conquer because they were a better people, but because they had better guns. This continues to support a theme this year of knowledge and advanced technology leads to power. Ayaju believes the British system is not better, but they have the superior weapons to back themselves up so it has become a region ruled over by the Europeans. She wants her own son to learn about this system and receive a European education because then he will know their language, and how their system works so he can beat it.

Reeducation

The Chinese reeducation by the communist party after World War II was a significant part of recent history in the East. With the new age of communism China adopted this new government which dramatically began to change the lives of the Chinese people. With this revolution thousands of city people were relocated to the country to learn the ways of their ancestors in farming. Da Sijie writes the story Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress providing an eye witness report of the process of reeducation and the hardships these people encountered. The author provides a more intimate version of history by using some fictional characters and allowing the audience to fall in love with them. This makes everything that happens to them and what they experience all the more real. Also these characters being only in their teens connect to me a lot more than a history book would as even though they live in another time on the other side of the world, I can still relate to them. I can connect to the story. A real event I never experienced so insane it might as well have been fiction. However reading this book, I feel as if I am sitting on the great mountain in the China in reeducation.

The Second Quarter

So far this year in English Class has gone pretty well. I know boring start right? But I think I have gotten off to a steady start in English my sophomore. My teacher Mr. McCandless has not thrown me for a loop yet and I seem to be holding on well. My writing has been getting better in respect to structure and putting my ideas in a logical order that flows. We have read a lot, most of it being short stories which I have really enjoyed along with the poetry we have been analyzing. I am doing well with the quizzes on all of the material and I think my annotations have become a lot more thorough. I just think that as our class moves into the next quarter that as long as I continue to work hard and improve the results will as well. With more effort in some areas, the rest of this semester will be even better than the first.

The Ban on Knowledge

For this weeks journal entry I did some research on a rather controversial topic that has been relevant for thousands of years. Books. I know I was surprised too. Although literature is not the kind of controversy people are used to today like immigration policies or hate crimes, books are a significant source of controversy. I found famous classics that have been deemed illegal in some place in the world with famous names like John Steinbeck and Kurt Vonnegut. In fact one banned book I recently read was actually The Complete Persepolis. As an English class we went over this book and someone or some group in the world thinks it deserves to be censored and taken off of shelves. They do not think it is suitable literature accusing it of such crimes as adult themes or "explicit" substances like alcohol. Or it could be banned for something as small as conveying a negative theme like sadness or depression. While many think they are protecting society from dangerous literature, this censorship of knowledge seems to only remind me in other times in history such as Nazi Germany and the Communist Revolution in China. In my own opinion there is no good reason for destroying or hiding literature.

Buck Up

The prompt this week is a very thought provocative one. Society seems to believe we have to shield children from failure with the idea that "everyone is a winner." I disagree with this standard as it is hardly relevant in real life. As early as junior high school I was startled with the truth that people keep score and not everyone wins the game.People have tried to shield their children from failure and losing only to not prepare them for the rest of their lives in which not everyone wins at the end of the day and not everyone is equal. The sooner people get used to this truth that life is not fair and accept it the easier it will be for them to deal with it and actually be more successful by not expecting victory to be handed to them on a sliver platter. We cannot raise a generation of wimps and they need to learn how to buck up because life can be harsh. Trial by fire is the way I see it and if our kids never get burnt, they will never make it through the challenge.

I could stay or I could leave...

I could stay or just leave. Walk away from it all. A choice that I often make without thinking of the potential impact in taking that crossroad. A choice we have discussed in our class as part of the short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas". A place in which few, brave souls choose to walk away from their past and into their future.

In my life I have encountered that fork in the road many times in which I had to decide whether to maintain a steady course, or take my life in a new direction. When I graduated from middle school I left many friends, teachers, and parts of my life behind. I chose to walk away from that past and into a future I was not sure of at the time. I did not linger on what I no longer had or the close friends I would not see everyday. I had been so close to that place because after all I had chosen to stay many years before. In third grade my parents switched my sister and I into a private school in Huntington Beach called Pegasus. Being so young I was not happy with this sudden change and wished to go back. However, as the year came to an end and my parents asked, I was in love with my new surroundings, and wished to continue my education there next year. I did not walk away and I stayed with my new school where I thought in a way was where I was first taught how "to learn."

Many crossroads in life can be challenging to overcome and to decide. Sometimes the choice right for one can be difficult to accept and you cannot continue. But even though its hard I personally have learned. All that is left is to choose. Choose to stay, or leave.

Culture of Fear

Watch enough brutality on TV and you come to believe you are living in a cruel and gloomy world in which you feel vulnerable and insecure. In his research over three decades Gerbner found that people who watch a lot of TV are more likely than others to believe their neighborhoods are unsafe, to assume that crime rates are rising, and to overestimate their own odds of becoming a victim. They also buy more locks, alarms, and- you guessed it- guns, in hopes of protecting themselves. 'They may accept and even welcome,' Gerbner reports, 'repressive measures such as more jails, capital punishment, harsher sentences- measures that have never reduced crime but never fail to get votes- if that promises to relieve their anxieties. That is the deeper dilemma of violence-laden television.'"

Barry Glassner has a very interesting theory of the media and its impact on society. However, I would have to say I agree with his studies. Television, newspapers, and magazines broadcast violence and chaos to the public. With the power of exaggeration and telling only a single story they are able to convince an entire population we live in a very dangerous world. It takes away our happiness and instills fear resulting in the bulking of security and people building up walls both physically and socially. The results of these "warnings" from the media ends up being quite ironic as the security meant to protect is often the very assist of a burglar breaking in.

It is an insane reminder of the power of entertainment and print and how heavily it can influence the day to day lives of  many people.

Smoking kills. The words my generation has grown up hearing our entire lives. Sometimes it feels like I cannot go a single day without seeing an advertisement on television or in a magazine forbidding me to light up. Sometimes it even makes me wonder what could be so bad, what could deserve so much negative attention that it receives negative connotation the moment it is mentioned. But I live in a different world than just a few decades ago when it was just a normal part of life. I never had to see the people struggling with emphysema or the lives torn apart by tabacco addicitpn. With a family full of heavy smokers I am no strangers to the ash trays, lighters, and smokey rooms. Pictures like the one above truly amaze me. A simple image is able to convey such a deep and important meaning not truly capable with words. Visuals are so effective and advertisements like this one were the reason smoking is a trend that as died out and no longer take the lives of the people it affected.

Hey MTV welcome to my crib. This is a blog dedicated to the my life and writing in literature. Let me just start my introducing myself. I am your average 15 year old guy living in Orange County, but I like to think I have a unique past. To give you some history I'll start with my parents who met and graduated from the University of Virginia in the class of '93. Their jobs took them across the Atlantic to London, England where both of my twin sister and I were born several years later. After four years we all moved again back to the America and California. My younger brother was born shortly after and we have lived in Orange County since then. My sister and I went to a standard public school until the third grade when we switched to Pegasus a more academically challenging private school in Huntington Beach. We loved it there until we graduated as the class of 2014 and were off for high school. I am currently a sophomore at Sage Hill High school where I take a rigorous academic schedule and participate in two varsity sports, I am also involved with several school clubs and groups. But that doesn't really tell you who I am does it? I'm just a chill guy who's just trying to make it through each day without any regrets or messing up too bad. Anyway hope readers can check back as I'm going to be posting some more. I'll see you later....