Self-made Man

Willy Loman lionizes his brother, Ben, as a self-made man whenever he tells the story of how Ben walked into the jungle when he was 17 and walked out when he was 21 and he was rich. He looks up to his brother so much that he does not see any fault in him. In Willy’s eyes, Ben is everything that Willy hoped to become. The life Ben led is the life that Willy wanted to have, but that wasn’t in the cards for Willy. Now, because Willy didn’t lead the life he had hoped to he is almost forcing his dream upon his two boys, Happy and Biff.

Malcolm Gladwell’s opinion on the self-made man issue is that a person’s drive strictly comes from how they were brought up. The parents, grandparents, other children, the background from which they are being brought up in, and the culture determine your drive for success. Gladwell would disagree with Willy because he was brought up with the same parents, same background, and same culture as Ben did because they are brothers. As Gladwell sees it, they should have the same drive for success because Willy had all the things that Ben had.

            From what I understand, Howard Roark sees that a person’s success comes from how hard they worked and what they deserve. To Roark, Ben played all his cards right and he played them with the drive he acquired on his own. Ben worked hard to get where he got and that’s how he made himself, so he is a self-made man.

            I believe in self-made men and women to an extent. In my family if we want something we have to work for it, and we make sacrifices, but we aren’t handed anything on a silver platter. My drive for success is completely different from everyone else in my family because I want different things, what makes me strive to be my best and reach for my goals is completely different from anyone else because I’m my own person. The people, culture, and background I am raised in are also huge factors too. I also know that I wouldn’t have the same drive I do right now if I was born into a different family. The people around you push you and help you strive to be a better version of you, so you aren’t doing it on your own. You didn’t make you, other people had to help you out along the way and that is who you are.

MY INVENTION

THE BEST INVENTION IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!!!

My invention wasn’t given a name because it is simply too amazing to limit it to something as silly as a name. My invention is designed to take your temperature request and send it to our little friend on the sun, who will then let the sun know that it needs to get its act together and make it warm outside. It will listen to what ever you want. Lets just say a certain English teacher gave you a research chunk that was due in two days and you would really like it if it would snow so you could have a day off or even a 2 hour delay to get your chunk done our little friend on the sun would love to help you out in your time of need and he would politely ask if the sun could go away for a day and make it snow just enough to ensure a snow day. Another scenario is that prom is coming up and you need to get a tan so that you can wear a really pretty prom dress that does wash you out, well no need to fear, just type in your request and it will be nice tanning weather so you don’t need to go get skin cancer from the tanning bed.

            It would be a great invention and it would make the world a better place because everyone is so much happier in the summer. In the winter its freezing and most of the time its too cold to go outside so you have to spend 95% of your time in doors, which isn’t fun and it also makes you very pale and all you do all day is eat and get fat. But in the summer everyone is outside being active. You can go to the pool, work in the yard, read outside and get a real tan. In the winter everything dies, which makes people sad and depressed until it gets nice again so with my invention it would decrease obesity and less people would be depressed. I think I’m going to need to get a patient on this invention because it’s kind of amazing and I’m pretty sure Albert Einstein is jealous.

Their eyes were watching God

http://padlet.com/wall/tcvgho81we

Narritive.ly

Silvia was a seventeen-year-old boy from Rio de Janeiro. He was a normal boy who lived in the favela and spent his time writing for his schools newspaper. Within 24 hours he went from being a normal boy with only 180 followers to 29,000 followers. On the day that was the scariest day of his life, when the two huge gangs joined forces and fought for one cause, Silvia became famous. Drug dealers ran his small town and he knew that if they were in charge then you had to play by their rules and if you didn’t then it meant bad news for you. They were hosting the Pan-American Games so the police tried to take over and get the cocaine dealers under control, but they went about it the wrong way. The two gangs that ran that area joined forces and fought against the police. Silvia and a couple of his buddies started correcting the media when they got the street names and things like that wrong. Suddenly everyone wanted to know what was going on and they had a better perspective and knowledge of the people and of the area then the media and news reporters did. Since this incident the government paid attention to them and gave them the funding they needed. They got a $131 million cable car system installed that provided transportation for 12,000 people and the number of homicides have dropped by 80%.  In the years following it Silvia has become an actor on his favorite show, Globo, and he was selected to carry the torch in the Olympic Games in London.

            This story is important because it’s a true story of a boy who grew up in and around violence and drugs and was able to make it out of there and pursue his dreams of being a journalist. It gives hope to the kids who think that there isn’t any way their dreams could come true.

 I think that human-interest stories do deserve to be called news because that’s what te news should be about. It should be showing us what good things and some bad things that are happening around our nation. It should show and give credit to those who work hard to make this country a better place, not some celebrity who does something stupid like twerk on national television just for attention. If we didn’t make such a big deal about what stupid things our celebrities do an actually give some attention to everyday people that make up our country, then maybe, just maybe our celebrities wouldn’t do half the things they do.

             Believe that this form of journalism is better then CNN and FOX because its more real then those other news channels. It is giving someone like you and me a chance to tell their story and maybe give others hope. Half the time I feel like whatever is on the news is “sugar coated” and they are just telling the country what the government wants us to know and we have to believe it because if we don’t then what are we going to believe?

            I think that Narritive.ly definitely helps promote equality because it doesn’t matter who you are, what gender you are, or where you came from. It gives everyone who wants to tell his or her story a chance to tell it. That’s something that you don’t always have an opportunity to do. With websites like this it helps those who don’t think they have a voice, voice their opinion and tell their story. 

 

http://narrative.ly/patchwork-of-poverty/spokesman-of-the-slums/ 

The Killers: The Plan of Attack

A few weeks after Max and Al tried to kill Ole Anderson, everything seemed to settle down. Nick and George went back to working the diner like they usually would and Ole Anderson seemed to be living his life just as he had before… or at least that’s what it seemed like.

            Ole Anderson felt like he was unsafe since Max and Al knew where he lived so he decided to move. He bought an old cabin type house right outside of town. It was placed back a long gravel driveway with woods surrounding the house. He had about a 200 yard radius around his house of grass before it turned into woods.     

            One afternoon Ole Anderson was sitting in his living room watching the newest Duck Dynasty when he heard a gun shot. “ Man, that’s the third time I’ve heard a gun go off this week. And it isn’t even hunting season!” he said, talking to himself. He started getting jumpy and anxious, but tried to play it off like nothing was wrong even if the only other thing living in his house was fluffy white cat, Leo. The next day he called up his nephew, Colton, to come stay with him for a few weeks. After the nightmare he had last night, he didn’t feel safe living there by himself.

            Colton came that following Monday. Colton can use any and everything as a weapon if it was completely necessary. This is the exact reason Ole Anderson called him.  Once Colton got settled in Ole Anderson told him why he was there. Colton was glad that his uncle had called him. That night Colton heard rustling in the bushes outside his bedroom window and went to check it out, but nothing was there. In the morning Ole Anderson woke up to Colton rigging the place with traps.

“What the heck are you doing, boy?” Ole Anderson asked, rubbing his eyes.

“ Last night some crazy things happened outside and I’m pretty sure those guys that tried to kill you before have found us.” Colton explained as he was placing the 50-pound weight in its position above the door.

            Trying to act as calm as possible Ole Anderson stumbled to the garage where he retrieved a shovel.

“Here,” he said, handing the shovel to Colton, “ go out and dig a deep hole in front of my bedroom window and cover it the best you can to make it look unnoticeable.”

            Doing as his uncle had asked Colton dug the hole and made it look the same as it was before. Ole Anderson was on edge all day. The next day he got a letter letting him know that they were coming and this time he had no chance of getting away. He was scared but knew that if he got the cops involved they would find out what he did in Chicago and he would be dead one way or the other. That night when Colton went to sleep Ole Anderson gathered his things and remembered that Colton had rigged the front door and knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to go out that way. He decided to go out his window so he didn’t wake Colton up. He has forgotten that he told his nephew to dig a hole as deep as he could outside his window in case they tried to come in that way. Ole Anderson fell into the hole meant for his murders and broke both legs. Even though he tried screaming and yelling for help nothing worked so he decided to go to sleep until morning. Then he knew that Colton would find him and get him out.

“Uncle, uncle where are you?” Colton yelled right before he found the note. “Ohh… he left, well I guess I should go too.”

            Colton gathers his things, takes down all the booby traps, and goes home.

MODERN DAY HUCK FINN

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a story that is difficult for my classmates and me to read and understand as is for most people my age. Although it has a good story line and it is very interesting, I think the part that looses most people is the idiom it is spoken in. With me as the director of a modern day Huck Finn movie, I’d make quite a few changes. To start things off I’d keep the original story line but I’d move the time frame up some years to the 1920’s. Why you ask? Well the only logical answer would have to be because it’s the roaring 20’s, who wouldn’t want to live in that time period? Take the up coming Great Depression out of the picture and it would be splendiferous! The language and attire would be modified to the time period as well. The setting would be on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina because this is where the Charleston dance originated from and cities were the place to be in the 1920’s. Huck would live on a small farm a little ways outside the city and he would have to go to school in the big city. Huck would be forced by Widow Douglas and Ms. Watson to participate in all the dance contests such as the Lindy hop, Charleston, and the Black Bottom. That means the only time he would ever set foot in a nightclub was when a dance came around and even then he refused to dance. He thought he was too “cool” to dance. When Huck and Jim decide to run away instead of building a raft and going wherever the current took them Huck would enter himself in a “gruesome” contest (how he would explain dancing contests) and his plan was that he would win and get some money out of it. In the meantime Jim would hide in the alley behind the dancehall because he was black. At this time, even though slavery was abolished, it would be considered a crime if they saw him there. Their get away car would be a fire red steam car. They do great until they meet up with the Duck and the King. They capture them and take them to Atlantic City, New Jersey where no one respected or abided by the prohibition law.

CAST:

Huck Finn……………………………………………………..Eric Dane

Jim……………………………………………………..Gabby Douglas

Tom Sawyer……………………………………….Macaulay Clukin

Huck’s Pap………………………………………..Jimmy Evans

The Widow Douglas……………………………Meryl Streep

Ms. Watson…………………………………………Meredith Monroe

The Duke & the King…………………………burglars from Home Alone

Mary Jane………………………………………….Miley Cyrus

Colonel Grangerford……………………………..Peter Fancinelli

I chose Eric Dane aka Mark Sloan from Greys Anatomy to play Huck because he gives off the vibe of a bad boy but you can tell he is sweet and soft inside. I chose a boy version of Gabby Douglas to play Jim because she is strong and independent and she does what she is told. Macaulay Clukin (Kevin in Home Alone) will play Tom Sawyer because he is clever and is good at coming up with extravagant schemes. Jimmy Evans (Alex Korev’s dad in Grey’s Anatomy) will play Huck’s Pap because he does a phenomenal job at playing the part of an abusive drunk. Meryl Streep (Helena from a Midsummer Night’s Dream) will play the Widow Douglas because she is laid back and sweet. Meredith Monroe (Andy from Dawson’s Creek) will play Ms. Watson because she is strict and likes things to be done right. The Burglars from Home Alone will play the King and the Duke because they are stupid and they make silly mistakes. They also end up getting caught and taught a lesson by a child. Miley Cyrus will play Mary Jane because at the end of the last song she was sweet and sensitive just like Mary Jane was when she heard about the slave families being split apart. Peter Facinelli (Carlisle Cullen in Twilight) will play Colonel Grangerford because in Twilight he is an experienced doctor that everyone looks up to and is afraid of at the same time. The Cullen family is also in a feud with the wolves just like the Grangerfords are with the Shepherdsons.

I do realize that the selection of actors and actresses is very vast, and they would have to be put into a time machine so their ages match their parts.

            Now-a-days people aren’t as racist as they used to be, but that doesn’t mean that everything is rainbows and butterflies. Everyone seems to think that white people are so different and superior to black people just because of their sink color. When in reality we aren’t as different as we think.

            After reading “Stuff White People Like” I realized that most of what’s on their list is true. Take a second and think about the differences between white people and black people… what comes to your mind? I think of music, schools, sports, and where we live. Music you think black people would listen to rap and heavy metal bands where as white people would listen to classical or country. Sports people think that black people are automatically better at sports then white people are. Blacks and whites live in different areas. When you think of a black persons home people for some reason automatically think that they would live in “the hood” and that white people live in cities. And last but not least schools. People just start assuming that white people have to go to private rich kid schools while black people go to poor run down schools, which isn’t r\true at all. “Stuff White People Like” makes it seem that all white people care about is school and that we always have to be smarter then the other white person. In a way that can be true sometimes but that isn’t how every white person is.

            Mark Twain makes it perfectly clear that Jim is an uneducated slave. It’s obvious in the way that Twain makes Jim speak. It is completely stereotypical that a black slave would be made to sound like he is uneducated and dumb. Sure, back then when there were slaves most of them weren’t fortunate to receive a quality education, but some of the lucky ones did learn how to read and write.  Twain makes Jim seem very inferior to Huck even though he is so much older than Huck.

            It is horrible how our society can put dumb stereotypes on black people if they can’t afford a good education. People automatically think that just because they are black they can’t afford a good education when there are white people who are in worse situations then some black people. The color of your skin has nothing to do with how smart you are or what kind of education you have. Unfortunately there are some people who don’t allow blacks to have a quality education, but there aren’t a whole lot of them out there. I do not just assume that someone hasn’t gotten a quality education because of his or her skin color. There might have been other times when I have believed a stereotype but it has never been about someone’s education. From my understanding stereotypes play a big role in our society whether it be a dumb blond or an uneducated black, no one deserves to have a stereotype put upon them. 

Goodbye internet

Day 1

            Today is the start of fall break. That means no school for a whole week! It also means that I have to give one of the luxuries of life up for the entire week. I’ve noticed that I use the Internet quite a bit so I think ill give that up.

 

Day 2

            So, it’s the second day of break and also the second day without the Internet. Yesterday went very well I didn’t feel the need to get on my computer at all. I spent the day at a walk in memory of my mom’s friend and then I watched movies with my family. Over all it was a great day!

 

Day 3

            Today was very difficult. I though I’d be fine with out the Internet but I was wrong. I wasn’t feeling the best so I stayed home and slept for most of the day. Being inside and having nothing to do but watch TV is torture. I guess I could have done some of my homework but who wants to do homework on break? Certainly not I!

 

Day 4

            Even though yesterday wasn’t the best I still kept my head up and didn’t use the Internet. Today was better. I went to AJ Jolly park and played basketball and football with Madison, Wes, Mark, Garrett, Chase, Charlie, Joe, Shelly, Jade, and Olivia. It was a great time. It didn’t even cross my mind that I hadn’t gotten on Facebook, youtube, or pinterest.

 

Day 5

            I’ve realized that I don’t need the Internet to make me happy. Not being able to use it has only benefited me. It gives me more time to do things like be with my friends and be outside in the fresh air. With that mentality today was very successful. I went to Elizabeth’s house and watched movies the night before, then the next day we went to her dad’s shop and rode quads. It was so much fun and we got extremely muddy. Over all it was a great day.

 

Day 6

            Today I went to visit Elizabeth after her surgery with Shelly, Erin, and Abby. We sat with her for a while until she fell asleep. For the most part I had busy morning, but I still had the rest of the day in front of me. While sitting at home trying to figure out what to do I almost got on Facebook. I completely forgot about it, but don’t worry I got out of it before it had the chance to completely load. Thankfully we have slow Internet out in 12 mile!

 

Day 7

            I had a busy day today. I went on a college visit to Morehead with Wes and Olivia. I was gone all day and didn’t have a chance to get on any social media website, mostly because I don’t have a smart phone like most of my friends, I don’t get wifi on the road. The college seemed nice and as far as not getting on the internet goes im doing better then I thought!

Day 8

            Today was the last day I had to abstain from the Internet. It’s only Saturday, but tomorrow I have to blog about my experience so I guess it’s allowed tomorrow. Today was harder then expected. I wanted to get on and see what the world was doing and how everyone’s break was but I couldn’t. I came this far I couldn’t give up now. I decided that instead of tempting myself I went out to my tree house-away from the computer- and started reading A Walk to Remember. It’s an amazing book.

 

Day 9

Well, i’m writing this blog and i’m very proud of myself. i went for an entire week without getting on the internet. i never realized that i had gotten on it so often until i wasn’t allowed to anymore. it would have been harder for me if i had a smart phone or something that would allow me to access the internet on the go. over all i am glad that i gave it up but i’m also glad it’s over. i will definitely try to spend my time doing other things that are more productive. if we weren’t given this assignment i wouldn’t have given it up, but i might think about giving it up for lent.