1984 report

1984: Conversations with my Dad

 

1984 is an ancient book from my perspective. I’d never heard of George Orwell before I started reading it and I wasn’t psyched about reading it when it was assigned. I felt that other novels about the future, like the Hunger Games or the Giver, were better. So I asked my dad the big question: Why does everyone seem to think 1984 is sospecial.

 

And I asked him because as sub-psyched as I was, my dad was uber-psyched.  “That’s a great book,” he told me.Naturally I mocked him for a day or two, but then I asked him – what’s so great about it? I wanted to know.  Some of what he told me I understood.  Some I didn’t – and I know I didn’t because he was absolutely clear when he explained everything and then told me that I didn’t understand.  So here’s his unvarnished wisdom.

 

He told me that the book was “prescient.” I have spelled it correctly so you can look it up.  He told me that Orwell had foreseen a world of surveillance, of manipulated language, of powerful governments that managed public opinion.  He talked about Black Mirror, the new series on Netflix, thatshows how we all disappear into screens just as the people do in 1984. He told me that in Britain, most people didn’t even have TV in 1948, so it was pretty cool that Orwell foresaw its impact. I understood all of that.

 

Then he told me that the book was daring. I asked him what he meant and he told me that most books now have happy endings. In the Giver, Jonas escapes – probably. In the Hunger Games, Katniss lives to fight another day. But in 1984 everyone is tortured until they can barely remember what their name was or what they used to love and value.  He suggested I look up the war on terror to find out about that and I probably will at some point. I think I got that bit.

 

Then it got weird.  He told me that he had read this book when he was 13 and there was one thing he hadn’t understood. He hadn’t understood why Winston had thrown everything away for Julia. Then he grew up and then he understood.  He still remembered the passage in which Winston’s “eyes were anchored by the freckled face with its faint, bold smile.” He says he understands now but that I couldn’t possibly.

Banning Books Argument Essay

Banning Books Essay Adrian Greensmith 802 Many people starting at a young age find a way of escaping life through literature. Reading a book before you go to sleep, curling up on the couch with a novel, these are all frequently used ways to calm down. But what if a book doesn’t transport you to a happier place, a more fantastical place, but raises issues that may be too dark for some to deal with? Ideas may be opened up to the reader that they had never introduced before, and wouldn’t want to for many years to come. At a young age, school is the place where most kids find an interest in books, and look at the variety of options as they start to branch out from more simple topics and genres. The school library is often the place where children experiment, reading a bit off this and reading a bit of that, monitored up to an extent by the school staff. Lately though, there has been a movement to control what books are available for kids to read in school libraries, banning books for an assortment of different reasons. Such reasons as early exposure and graphic content are being used in the arguments of those for banning books to help restrain kids from reading certain books containing certain content. But, I believe that by doing this, children are only being kept in a bubble, a perfect world. Ignorance is never a position of strength, especially when a child is at a time of discovery and a growth of their opinions. I believe that banning books has an assortment of faults in the plan, and would end up hurting the child even more than if they had been exposed. Many books for younger children (The Lorax, Sneetches) disguise themselves as happy picture books while actually dealing with very current and dangerous problems. Some children may be able to pick up on it early on, but for many the books means something different to them as they grow older, slowly but surely presenting the child with a very real issue. But lots of young adult novels deal with real world problems in a very upfront and brutal way, putting it as it is. This extremely graphic and unsettling way of exposing children to issues through literature might not be for all, and might shock children who had never encountered such topics before, even adults who had viewed them in such great detail. For example, a Wall Street Journal article by Christopher John Warley states that, “No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children’s lives.” It’s true, such vivid description of ideas foreign to a child could be hard for them to grasp, but who’s to say that the experience of enlightenment on the subject won’t help them as they start to look at the world through their own eyes, not their parents. If a child isn’t opened up to the struggles those around them are facing, that restrains them from having an opinion, and ends up making them more fragile than need be in such a time and age. For example, children whose lives are controlled by those they look up to, end up being very similar to their role models. Unfortunately, this ends up with them never becoming an independent person, not a replica of what someone wants them to be. Also, the people banning these books are looking at the subject in the wrong way. Literature shouldn’t be the way a child is exposed to homophobia and racism, it should be through the people looking out for the child, the teachers and the parents. Blame shouldn’t be placed on the books, if anything they should be praised, praised for letting the child know where their boundaries are, how far and graphic they can go. Those who are for banning books say that graphic books can trigger reactions to past experiences in a child’s life, such as a teenager in recovery from self-mutilation reading a book about cutting, sending the reader into a possible rehabilitated phase of cutting. But, this evidence doesn’t actually seem to make sense, stating that someone who cuts would want to read a book about cutting. When growing up, reading books that make you think are the books that set your boundaries, as I stated earlier. A child, not a parent, knows what they can and cannot read and be exposed to. And some may say that a parent’s judgment about exposure is better than a growing child, but truthfully we need to make mistakes and read upsetting things to know where we stand. If those limits are set for us then we will be unable to judge what’s best for us, and only what someone thinks is best for us. For example, a Huffington Post article by Rachel Kramer states that “parents should be active and involved with what their kids are reading ─ in books, magazines, and online. But ‘active and involved’ doesn't necessarily mean dictatorial. Rather, by discussing what children are reading and seeing on television with them, helping them figure out what's fantasy and what's not, and learning that they can, in fact, get along with people who are different from them, parents would do a much greater service to their kids than by simply telling them what's ‘bad.’ ” A parent’s role in a child’s life when they are entering adolescence is to guide them through all the evil parts of the world, exposing them to real life but not throwing them into it alone, nor blinding them to it. But still, according to the library guides of SRGC libraries from 2000-2009, 2500 of the challenges made on books to be banned came from parents, an incredibly larger amount than the second contestant, administrators. Though guidance is needed, a child knows what may trigger them, and has to experience discomfort to know where their comfort level is. The reasoning behind my point of not banning books in school libraries may be hard for some to understand. The concept of exposing a child to pain and suffering to let them find a voice and set their limits is one that some may find unacceptable. Of course, why hurt a child when you can protect them from all the wrong in the world for as long as they live under your rules? Well, in reality, a child will end up more getting hurt if they are protected from needed knowledge as they grow. If the horrible truth of what happens in society is released to the child when they are starting to grow, they will grow with it, but if a child is exposed too late, they will learn to grow around it, constantly without a voice and in possible denial after being released from their fantasy world so abruptly. Works Cited "Banned Books: Censorship Statistics." Censorship Statistics. Santa Rosa Junior College, 31 Dec. 2014. Web. 06 Jan. 2015. Barnett, Bob. "Is Hand Sanitizer Toxic? - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 16 Oct. 2013. Web. 06 Jan. 2015. Bussel, Rachel Kramer. "Banning "Bad" Books Is Not the Answer." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 17 Nov. 2011. Web. 07 Jan. 2015. Farley, Christopher J. "Should Young Adult Books Explore Difficult Issues?" Speakeasy RSS. Wall Street Journal, 05 June 2011. Web. 07 Jan. 2015.

Social Justice Project

 

Social Justice Project

By Adrian Greensmith

802

“Officer Darren Wilson's story is unbelievable. Literally.” Vox.com, by Ezra Klein

 

            America is a nation shaped by each generation, constantly changing as one opinion turns into another. But there are certain constants that have always battered our nation over and over again. One of the most violent and defining problems that America has faced, and is still fighting, is racism.  Every now and then there’s some sort of outrage connected to racism and the whole country explodes in arguments, debates, and riots.

 

Lately, the case in Ferguson, Missouri has been the cause of said outrage. The case as a whole is completely unjustified and wrong, showing the core of America’s racism. The article I read had to do more with the white police officer’s perspective on what happened. And when reading the article, it became clear that he was your average man. There were no red flags that pointed out that he was a racist and a murderer. But in fact, it’s almost impossible to have an understanding of a person in such a crime, for the opinions flying around the social media are putting words into the mouths of everyone who doesn’t already have an opinion. Though no one supporting Officer Wilson says it, it’s quite clear that Brown and Wilson’s race played the biggest role in the shooting. Switch their races and Brown would have been tried and arrested within the hour. And honestly that’s complete injustice, knowing that white police officers really do have the power to shoot and kill a man without being tried.

 

This made me think about how when I walk the streets and I see a police car, I feel more than completely safe. I can’t imagine a scenario where I’m walking home and I view the police as a threat. Should the color of my skin really determine how I view the people who are meant to protect me, to protect the American public?

 

 

 

Looking at my Neighborhood, Park Slope

 

·      When I go to a restaurant, most of the waiters seem to be young white men and women, while the bus boys and the cooks are all Latino.

·       At MS51, when I go out to lunch, I look around and realize that all the white kids are out and about, while a good amount of the less privileged, Latino children eat in the cafeteria every day.

·      The high school admissions process is made so less privileged kids, even if they are extremely smart, are always placed behind the privileged white kids.  Parents who are working multiple jobs and have limited income aren’t able to devote the time or resources to supporting their children in the difficult high school admissions process (visiting schools, hiring tutors, etc…)

·      When I’m late for school I end up taking the bus, and I notice that all the kids who are going to 51 on the bus are Latino, and Park Slope is socially and geographically far from where they live.

·      A majority of the cab drivers are Muslim and speak very little English, but have lived here for many years, showing how little America has embraced them.

 

After going to 51 for so long, going out to lunch has become what I thought was

the norm for almost all of my grade, if not all of it. I understood that some kids didn’t have the money, but honestly I was hardly ever in the cafeteria to notice what was really going on. That is, until last year, when Mr. Arroyo started giving my class a lot of lunch detentions. Spending time down in the cafeteria let me observe all the kids, kids who I had never talked to, eating down there. There were double, triple, quadruple the number of kids I imagined would be eating in the cafeteria because they couldn’t afford to eat anywhere else. And the scariest part of the whole ordeal, the part that just seemed plain wrong, was how almost every single kid down there was Latino.  These were kids who I didn’t even know went to 51. Our socio-economic status differences were so great that I didn’t even know they existed, and I doubt they knew that I did either. And that just enraged me. Kids my age, going to my school, and just because they were brought up in a different environment, I would never even have a conversation with them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listening to the News: Kenyan Women Assaulted for Wearing Miniskirts

 

            This NPR segment I listened to definitely gave me a whole new perspective on the idea of a strict dress code. It tells the story of how women in Kenya are being brutally raped by men in public places after being stripped of their clothes, if they are wearing such revealing garments as miniskirts. Girls my age are always complaining about how they aren’t allowed to wear what they want to wear, which I’ve always considered being complaint worthy, but not necessarily unjust. In Kenya, something so trivial as choosing to wear a miniskirt can cause women to be put through great suffering.  It demonstrates how women in Kenya have no power in their society.  How can women live their life knowing that they mean nothing to their society, that through the eyes of the people around them, they are worthless? What could come after controlling their clothes? If you can’t make even small choices about how you want to live your life, then how can you be considered a free human being? Knowing the many horrific and unjustified acts that take place on this earth really makes one consider what the world will be like in 100 years. Will justice have been sought out, or will life as we know it have changed course for an even worse path?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interpretation and Analysis: Same Love, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

 

            Growing up in Park Slope, an extremely liberal neighborhood with a high gay population, I have been brought up to be accepting of all sexual preferences. This means that when I’m exposed to all the homophobic people in the world, lurking in YouTube comments and over social media, it hurts to know how gays are viewed. More and more people come out and admit they are gay every day, all over the nation, and risk not being accepted by those around them.

 

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, famous musicians in hip hop culture, look at being gay through a different lens than most rappers. Many rappers use homophobic words such as “faggot” as an insult, not addressing how that’s a common word used to damage gay people.  Macklemore’s song is for a cause, an anthem for homosexuals who are being tormented, but he’s using a musical genre not commonly know for doing such. The lyrics describe experiences from Macklemore’s and Lewis’ childhood, telling the stories of stereotypes that plagued their minds and those of their peers as kids.

 

“When I was in the third grade I thought that I was gay, 'Cause I could draw, my uncle was, and I kept my room straight.”

 

In my opinion, this song is mostly about change, and showing to all the people who don’t believe in gay rights that being gay isn’t something that can be chosen, that they are people just like everyone else. As the gay community grows larger and larger, more and more people start fighting it, causing pressure on state governments to decide if they are pro-gay or not. The divide in the nation is not only hurting itself, but the people of the nation. I believe that this song is not only something to listen to, but something that should spread a message, send out a signal, saying that it’s time for a change, its time for justice.

 

 

 

A Connection Between Teenage Stereotypes and a Movie: 21 Jump Street

 

            21 Jump Street is popular movie based on cops going undercover in a high school for a drug bust. While it is a comedy, the movie creates images of teenagers partying all day and all night long, with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. These scenes of intense partying make kids my age look up to that kind of lifestyle and say, “That’s what I want to do in high school.” While watching the movie a kid will look at how much fun everyone’s having with drugs and will want to be like the teenagers taking the drug. Of course, they don’t know what the drugs shown in the movie can really do to you, just that everybody cool in the movie takes it.

           

            The teenagers in the movie are perfect examples of what Hollywood is modeling future teenagers to look up to. Kids will start associating being rich, white, and disconnected from your family with being popular. And there is no contrast between different types of teenagers (unlike such movies as The Breakfast Club which shows a wider variety of students), just countless white, popular teenagers. It sends a message to younger children saying that, to be accepted you have to be a member of a certain class and race.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interview with Simon Dinnerstein

 

Adrian: How do you think the nation has changed socially since you were a kid?  Do you think it is a more just nation?

 

Simon: In the United States the progress towards racial harmony is much better than it was in 1960 or ‘63 when I went to the March on Washington.  It isn’t really great but it’s much, much better. The fact that you couldn’t call someone a poor racial name now is much different than that many years ago.  I think very few people would stand for it now.  But the way we see people is colored by the lens that is our lens and you could see that in the example in Ferguson - whether people saw that young man as dangerous or threatening or a thug varies between the white and black population.

 

Adrian: You talked a bit about going to the March on Washington. What kind of experience was that for you and what inspired you to march that day?

 

Simon:  I thought that march dealt with a specific issue. It wasn’t like you were going to some general idea like the million man march.  It was connected with voting and public accommodations in the South so it struck me a s a very good thing to participate in.  That March on Washington has become a very casual thing but at the time it was not so.  Not everyone went and not everyone wanted to go and I thought it was extremely impressive and it seemed to me that King put it all together in that one speech.

 

Adrian:  Do you think that what King stood for and prayed for has been accomplished?

 

Simon:  Well I think that things have gotten better and there is more opportunity but I don’t’ think its an equal playing field,.  The fact that people are so upset now about this ruling in Ferguson clearly indicates that there are two systems of justice, two perceptions of justice, and I don’t think you can get away from that.  It’s a very complicated country and I think that race is the defining feature of the country even though people don’t want to believe that.

 

           

 

I have always looked at my grandfather, Simon, as being a very wise man. Maybe it’s just his beard, but being an artist, he always has had very observant and unexpected opinions on a variety of topics. He is right to be pointing out that the nation really has become less racist, which not many people consider, but he also knows the hardships that people from different backgrounds face.  In his drawings, his subjects are diverse and he shows their humanity in their faces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interview with Renée Dinnerstein, my grandmother.

 

            Renée, or as I call her, Nonna, is currently a teaching consultant, but has worked in education for many years. She helped inspire my dad to become a teacher, and is still helping him till this day. She has worked in many different areas, but spent much of her time as a kindergarten teacher at PS 321, where I went for elementary school and where my dad teaches. She has views on teaching much unlike a vast majority of teachers nowadays, with a much more hands-on and inquiry based approach to teaching. Her passionate feelings on how modern teaching needs to modified have inspired her to write a well known blog, Investigating Choice Time, which has inspired many teachers to change the way they teach, and she is currently writing a book based on choice time.

 

Adrian: For how many years have you worked as a teacher/consultant?

 

 Renée: I started teaching in 1968 and have been working in education in some form or another ever since then, either as a classroom teacher, an administrator, a curriculum writer, or as a consultant.

 

Adrian: You’ve been in this area for quite a long time.  What have you noticed that’s changed either in a good way for education or a bad way?  Have you noticed any trends amongst the students and where they come from and how they’ve learned?

 

Renée: I think that the changes that have taken place in education depend very much on the neighborhood where the school is located and that’s been a big disappointment for me.  In neighborhoods like where we live, which is middle class, there’s more freedom in the classrooms , less scripted programs for children, often better quality teacher. And then when I go into a neighborhood that is poorer, for a variety of reasons I find children being taught with scripted programs where the teachers don’t get the opportunity to create appropriate instruction for the children in the class.  I will go into a classroom in a more middle class neighborhood and the classroom looks beautiful with carpets and curtains and beautiful materials and then I go into a classroom where the children come from poor and difficult life situations, where they live in shelters and foster homes, and the classrooms are rather sad looking.  If any children need to come into a place of beauty it’s those children.  I find this somewhat frustrating in my work.

 

Adrian: You were talking between the difference in education between classes. Do you think socioeconomic difference affects how schools approach their students?

 

Renée: There’s no denying that in a school in a more middle class neighborhood, children come in with richer experiences, though all children come in with experience.  Nobody comes in with a clean slate.  But the middle class children come in with a lot of language, with having been talked with not just talked to. And that’s what a lot of the children from the poor neighborhoods are missing for a lot of reasons, some because their parents are busy trying to make a go of life, some because the parents themselves are not educated. So they come in with a sort of deficit.  That being said I think that in those schools there are a lot of misguided solutions.  A lot of the ‘solutions’ are that we have to quickly get them into reading, give them workbooks and flashcards.  And the people that make the decisions are missing the point because what the schools need to do for those children is to give them those experiences that they have missed , to have lots of rich experiences in the classroom, to take them on trips out into the world, and then they will be more ready to do the academics that the city, the state and the nation are pushing them to do.

 

 

 

 Links:

http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7281165/darren-wilsons-story-side

 http://www.metrolyrics.com/same-love-lyrics-macklemore.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/11/28/367154315/viral-videos-show-kenyan-women-assaulted-for-wearing-miniskirts

http://investigatingchoicetime.com

http://www.simondinnerstein.com

 

 

 

Life As We Knew It Book Report

Sometimes a drastic change in your life can cause all the people you thought would always be there for you to change. When faced with a huge problem, they may turn against you, or simply disappear. In Susan Beth Pfeffer’s, Life As We Knew It, Miranda keeps a diary during one of the hardest times of her life. The moon is struck off course and comes too close to the Earth, resulting in a massive change in the environment, and in society. Countless horrible disasters occur, such as volcanoes and earthquakes, all things that would seemingly be the largest challenge Miranda would have to face. But throughout the book the main source of Miranda’s problems seem to be coming from things that seem like nothing compared to the scale of how horrific this event is, and the cost it has had on her. The obvious problems are the ones that hit her, but it’s the subtle ones that make her snap, piece by piece. If the people you love change at a time of suffering, it adds to the destruction, showing that when a huge thing goes wrong, so do all the little things. The first thing to break is the relationship between Miranda and her mother. The relationship between a mother and a daughter is a delicate one. Though, as a boy, I do not know this as a fact, it seems as if it is always a battleground between these two. Though the world may be ending, it doesn’t change the heartache that comes along with Miranda and her mom’s serious and frequent fights. Her mother can change Miranda’s mood with just a few words, and with how unstable Miranda is to begin with, the words can just hurt so much more than they used to. For example, at one point Miranda is in town and finds soldiers handing out a limited amount of food. She runs to her boyfriend’s house and brings him back, spending ten minutes doing so. They manage to get the last rations, but Miranda’s Mom gets very mad at her, and yells at her for putting the food at risk by going to get her boyfriend. “Mom makes it sound like that’s something bad,” Miranda complains, “like I can’t have friends anymore, like family is the only thing that matters from now on. If that’s how the world’s supposed to be, I hope it does end soon. I hate Mom for making me feel this way. I hate Mom for making me feel that for every good day, there have to be 10 or 20 or 100 bad ones. I hate Mom for not trusting me. I hate Mom for making me feel even more scared. I hate Mom for making me hate her. I hate her.” These moods, these rants can take up pages at a time, with a whole change in the feeling of her writing, the way she views life. Miranda is trying to grasp at the strings of her old life, the life this major event has destroyed, but Miranda herself is being torn apart by the only things she has, the strings. And the more she pulls and pulls and pulls the farther she unravels, as does her relationship with her mother. Food is one of the things they argue about. “ ‘I skipped brunch,’ I said. ‘I forgot about it.’ ‘You don’t forget about food,’ she said. ‘You fasted yesterday. Today you eat. Those are the rules.’ ‘You sure do like making up the rules.’ I said. ‘You think I like this?’ Mom yelled. ‘You think I like seeing my children go hungry? You think I’m getting any pleasure from all this?’ ” After this set of dialogue Miranda runs off to her room, leaving her mother alone. This is one of the few scenes where you see the mother open up and show weakness and depression. Of course Miranda regrets running away, but their relationship is so precarious that either the fight continues or it disintegrates with Miranda running away, resulting in silence for days. Of course, there is no running away from the moon, but Miranda can always run away from the problems that take an emotional toll on her. But maybe that isn’t always a good thing. A stable relationship with her mom is hard for Miranda to maintain in such troubling times, and can bash and batter her until she can withstand no more. Sometimes a major event won’t only trigger a break in an already faulty relationship. Such a giant change may tear apart the ones that had never been broken before, or maybe those that had never been there to begin with. As the immediate problem of the moon grows and grows, Miranda finds it more difficult to feel the same for those around her than she used to. With her mom times were already tough to begin with, but with her father, their relationship had always been based on simple emotions. Unlike the fights she had with her mom, the anger she feels towards her father is only channeled through her thoughts. It’s the small things that nobody in the book really talks about that set her off, the exact opposite of what happens with her mother. Her Father is the only problem in the book that she doesn’t have to run away from, because he’s already run away. Miranda spends two months worrying about her father, only to be satisfied when his wife, Linda, and he spend a couple days with her. “Jonny asked, ‘Are we going to die?’ Mom and Dad exchanged looks. ‘Not in the immediate future,’ Matt said. ‘We have food and fuel. We’ll be okay.’” ‘But what happens when the food runs out?’ Jonny asked. ‘Excuse me,’ Lisa said. ‘I don't like to discuss this.’ She got up and left the room. Dad looked torn. Finally he got up and went after her. So we were back to us, the us I've gotten used to the past couple of months.” Although all the Dad is doing is leaving the dining table, it symbolizes his leaving the family, leaving Miranda for his new chosen life. Miranda is too overcome with the joy of him being present to mention anything, let alone to get into a fight. But the thought, the feelings, are all still there. A relationship between two people needs to be maintained through a steady set of interaction, especially one so vital, such as the one between a daughter and a father. Miranda’s father is so distant, that it feels as if there is no relationship to begin with, just the remains of what was there. Even before the moon ruined the earth their relationship was too distant. But as major events change what was familiar to a distant memory, and create a terrifying reality, we look for those we love. Miranda needs her father in such a time as this one, and, of course, he isn’t there. He was never there to begin with, but then she was just mad that he wasn’t. As was stated earlier, their relationship had always been based off of very simplistic emotions, those of anger for leaving her, and love for being her father. Now the emotions are so much more complicated than before, with complete abandonment, almost disappointment in her father for leaving. There seems to be a sort a peace she’s reached, presumably due to how long her father’s been gone. Anger seems almost like the better outcome than being at peace with her father’s absence. In times of trouble, we grasp for the people we think will be there to reach out and take our hand. With her mother she got a fight, a smack on the hand. With her father, there just wasn’t anyone there to take it. In conclusion, it seems as if something that poorly impacts your life in one way, will end up hurting you in another way, some sort of unexpected way. “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions”-Hamlet One cannot expect a major event, good or bad, to bring only one outcome. The possibilities of what will hurt and what will heal are endless. Life is not a word, but a novel. One that never ends and only grows and twists and turns and speeds up and slows down until you can’t make heads or tales of it. There are pieces of it that we love, that we read over and over again, but if that page is ripped out, then the novel isn’t complete anymore. If those we all thought would be there for us suddenly change, and are not as we thought they were, that can hurt more than possibly imaginable.

Ashes Report Final

Ashes Book Report Draft

By Adrian Greensmith, 802

            The people you love are the people you’re closest to. For example, parents are the source of joy and happiness in so many people’s lives. But being close to them may make it hard to see them. It may blind you from the truth about who they really are. The short story, “Ashes”, by Susan Beth Pfeffer is about a teenage girl, Ashleigh, and a day with her dad. Her parents are divorced and are still upset at one another. During the story, while eating dinner with her father, he asks her to steal security money from her moms’ apartment and give it to him. Throughout the story, Ashleigh is trying to work out her feelings, while making decisions that could end up hurting one of her parents. I think that the author is trying to portray the quandary a person faces when love and mistrust are in conflict.

One way the author shows how much Ashes loves her father is when she states, in the text, “that winter, it felt like every time I saw my father, the sun cast off just a little more warmth than it had the day before.” I think this shows how, in such a bleak and cold time as winter, her imagination can make everything so much better than a normal day than a day when she’s with her father. All the bad things that are making her unhappy (represented as the snow) are pushed aside by her dad (the sun) who makes her at peace and happy again. Also, all of the planets in our solar system revolve around the sun, therefore making it the center of Ashes’ world. Another example I found of how Ashes loves her dad is when the text states “dad said, ‘you’re the special one, Ashes. You’re the one-in-a-million girl.’ ‘Am I really?’ I asked, not needing the reassurance. I knew I wasn’t a one-in-a-million girl, no matter how often Dad told me I was. But no matter how often he told me, I still loved hearing him say it.” This shows Ashes’ love for her dad by showing how he makes her feel special, feel like he loves her and thinks she’s different from all those other girls. She tells herself it isn’t true, but she loves him for saying it, for knowing that someone believes in her. If she asks him to say it every time, there has to be some part of her that he’s always kept wondering if she really is a one-in-a-million girl. The author shows Ashes’ love for her Dad in many places throughout the book.

           

            One way the author shows how Ashes doesn’t really think she can rely on her father is when Ashes states, while talking about how kind her father can be, “the world might be a better place, but child support checks don’t always show up on time, and I never did get that necklace made of stars.” This shows how, while small things in OTHER people’s lives might be improved by his acts, HER life is just occurring less frequently in his list of good deeds. The necklace, something he promised her when she was little, is now an empty memory, one of many broken promises. When he can’t pay for her childhood, how can she trust him to take care of his old broken promises? Another example I found is after Ashes overheard an argument between her parents about why he called her Ashes. The text states, “when dad forgot to pick me up at school, or didn’t have the money for the class trip, or got all his favorite kinds of Chinese and none of mom’s and mine, I thought maybe mom was right, and dad did call me Ashes just to annoy her.” This shows how when the small things that her dad does that harms her and her mom start piling up, she starts to look at him through her mom’s eyes, seeing the bad inside him. All these things that don’t really seem to matter so much, mean so much more than their actual purpose. Ashes can see how he is almost unable to raise a child, that he can only help one, love one. The author shows how Ashes can’t trust her dad during the story.

            Part of the quandary that Ashes is facing occurs when Ashes has to make a choice that will determine her true feelings for her father. When the father asks Ashes to steal her mother’s money, she has to make a choice, stating whether she trusts her dad enough to know that he will pay her back, or to take it all away, and leave the father empty handed. For many years Ashes has always only thought about these feelings, considering who was in the right, her mother or her father. But when it comes down to Ashes to make a real decision, the right decision, she is clueless. This also shows a change in her feelings towards her father. As shown in the beginning, her father made her day a better one, a brighter one. But now, at the end, as Ashes is shown who her father really is, we, the reader, are shown how she really feels. Her discomfort, her thoughts of betrayal, her feeling of being lost with no one to guide her where there should be two people, all are based upon the money. For example, in the text it states, “ Ten Andrew Jacksons stared right back at me. They offered me no advice on what I should do.” This shows how there is no authority figure to help her, not even the person that the American people are meant to trust, a president. Another example is when the text states, “ I looked out the window and saw only ash gray sky.” In the beginning of the book the sky is always sunny when she was with her father, though it’s all in her imagination. Here the sky represents what the father looks at her to be; Ashes. She saw ONLY ash grey sky, no sun, no storm. She stopped thinking about what she thought of her father and started imagining what he thought of her. A final moment of uncertainty is represented through this moral dilemma about the money.

            In conclusion, if you take the love and hate, and smash them all together until they are fighting for control of opinion, you have what Ashes is going through. During the story, Ashes’ decisions will either oppose her dad or make things better for him. And, without being selfish, she is trying to figure out the option that doesn’t harm her, where unfortunately there are none. Many authors have trouble with balancing such emotions as love and mistrust, especially when it’s between characters with such an emotional connection. Pfeiffer manages to keep the character feeling a perfect balance between the two throughout the story, until it’s the character’s turn to control the balance. She’s dealt with this issue for her entire life, but only in her thoughts, not her actions. When her dad reveals himself to be the man he is, the desperate, troubled, unreliable man her mother left for those very reasons, instead of the good doing, charismatic, self-esteem man she always thought he might be, she has to make a choice no kid, let alone a daughter, should have to make. When I think of love, trust is always hand in hand with it, especially with those held close, like my father. At such an age, I cannot imagine not thinking only of love, not trust, when I think of the people I hold close to me. Is it possible to have a balance between the feelings of love and reliability? That’s what the author is trying to show throughout the entirety of “Ashes”.

ELA Book Report

Summer Book Report

One of the books I read this summer was C.S Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It's about four children (Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy) who find a magical wardrobe that leads them into another world called Narnia, where a struggle between good and evil is being fought. Peter, Susan and Lucy decide to join Aslan, a lion who is the leader of the good Narnians, while Edmund goes on a journey to find and help the White Witch, the leader of the evil Narnians, and is the ruler of all Narnia, who has cast a spell on Narnia so that it is always winter but never Christmas. The four children are the only people who can break the spell when they are all together in the thrones of the capital of Narnia, so the White Witch repeatedly tries to find and kill them. Edmund rejoins the other children, and a final battle is fought, in which the good Narnians are the victors, and peace and joy is restored in Narnia. The children stay there for many years until they are in their twenties and thirties, remaining the rulers of Narnia, but eventually return home to find that no time has passed, and they are little children again.

One huge aspect of this book is how creative and imaginative it is. The creatures in the book create a whole new level of fantasy, with wonderful human and animal sides to them. For example, two of the many talking animals in this book, Mrs. Beaver and Mr. Beaver, are different from any other creature in the book, or in real life for that matter. While they can talk and understand human ideas, the way they are described and talk makes you never forget that they are beavers. They are a perfect proportion of human to beaver. All of the animals in the book speak and act exactly as one would imagine. They all are different and special, even if they only appear once or twice. There are also many mythical beasts in the book, which creates a sort of perfect combination of things you wish were true. For example, Tumnus the Faun is a creature which has been in mythology for hundreds of years, but C.S. Lewis manages to modernize it. Also, along their journey, the children see all sorts of creatures from the past, mostly from Greek mythology, such as Harpies and Giants. The creativity of this book is definitely one of the most major parts of what makes this book so enjoyable.

Another thing that makes this book so interesting is the clear concept of good and evil that is portrayed. For example, the second the children enter Narnia, it is clear who is evil and who is good, and the difference between the two is quite clear. All the White Witch says and does has some immoral message to it, and all her minions are creatures and mythical beings who are known for being evil, while Aslan always does the logical thing, and tells the children what the right thing to do is, and all his creatures are proud and good to all they see, other than those who threaten them. But what makes everything even more interesting is how Edmund actually decides to join the evil side, and lets the reader see a whole more tempting side to evil.  It then also shows how he soon realizes his mistake, and is miserable. On his journey to evil, he shows how his motivations change along the way, and his thoughts change from those of a normal yet slightly mean boy, to those of a haughty and evil prince, and how he starts to turn against his brother and sisters along the way. A huge part of this book's interest is the way C.S. Lewis shows good and evil.