In the article “Swimming for Her Life” by Kristin Lewis the main character Yusra Is a 18 year reefuge who is a olympic swimmer who faces many problems early in life. She and her sister had to flee their country because of terrorists and war. There where not many countries that would allow refugees into their country. So they had to hire a smuggler to get them to germany. While they rode on a boat to greece The motor stopped working so yusra and her sister had to jump in the water and push the boat for three hours. After they got to Greece they had to walk for 25 days to get to germany. Finally they got there and they were very luckie to find a refugee camp. Then when the olympics started they announced that there would be a refugee swim team.
Lynne met an Egyptian swimmer, and he explained what to expect in the English Channel, especially the cold. She got used to the cold by wearing only sandals, shorts, and t-shirts all day. When she got to England, she needed to find a pilot to help guide her through the waters. Her pilot, recommended that she swim from England to France. During the race, at 11pm, she bumped into bunch of lettuce and she fight against the current. She was determined to break the world record. To finish the race, she had to land on the rocks. When she did, she had lots of cuts from the rocks and mussels. She broke the record with 9 hours and 57 minutes. When she swam Cook Strait, she was a bit stubborn and angry at her dad and coach, but she finished the race. She was the first to swim the Strait of Magellan, Bering Strait, and Cape of Good Hope. It was hard for Lynne to swim the Strait of Magellan because they occurred a few problems. She could barely stay in the cold water for two hours, the storms didn’t help out the situation, and when she almost made it to the shore, the whirlpool almost dragged her in. She got help out of the water and felt accomplished. When she was swimming the Cape of Good Hope, she almost got eaten by a shark. During her
Questioning looks, dirty gazes, and the snide babbles were all too accustomed to Ruth McBride, when she walked down the street with her tow of children. James McBribe, one of the dozen children from her two elopements, was often ashamed as well as scared. They had to prolong the worse racial monikers. His mother, who was white, maintained unattended, “Whenever she stepped out of the house with us she went into a somewhat mental zone where her attention span went no farther than the five kids trailing her,” McBride subsequently wrote “My mom had absolutely no interest in a world that seemed incredulously agitated by our presence. The remarks and stares that we heard as we walked about the world went right over our head.” Her indomitable spirit and her son’s recollections became the basis of “The Color of Water”. In the work there is a great presence of God and the fortitude he unconditionally sends, especially to Ruth. Although Ruth’s clout frequently surpassed her circadian problems, she would more regularly rely on God for her vigor.
Education should have helped students; however, Derrick Jensen considers current educational system as inefficiency. Schooling offers students tools to live in “the real world”, but then, he questions “what sorts of beings we are creating by the process of schooling” (3). In Walking on Water, Jensen states that “we are told that standardized testing must be imposed to make sure students meet a set of standardized criteria so they will later be able to fit into a world that is itself increasingly standardized” (5). School gives out standardized tests among different subjects to examine how well each student knows about facts and information, and then, uses test scores to evaluate students’ abilities; also, this is how society estimates each
Desire as Power, and Stripping it through sexual means in The Swimming Lady and The Disappointment.
How do humans find ways to create empathy for others in modern society? With the walls that people build around themselves and the way society is constructed, empathy for one’s the fellow humans can be quite rare. In the collection of short stories We Live in Water by Jess Walter, the author constructs tales of troubled characters in a way that allows the reader to feel empathy; two of the author’s stories that exemplify this empathy are “Anything Helps” and “The Wolf and the Wild”. The short story “Anything Helps” tells the tale of a homeless man’s journey to buy his son a Harry Potter book as well as dealing with his own inner conflicts. “The Wolf and the Wild” is the story of a rich ex-con who works with kids for community service and his struggles to find his place in life after his own demons with his job and family. Jess Walter uses interior monologue and dialogue within
In John Cheever’s short story, “The Swimmer” he conveys the transformation of the character through the use of the literary element of setting. The story begins in an American, middle class, suburbs. After what seems to be a night of partying and drinking. Neddy Merrill, the main character initially appears very optimistic; he has a perfect family, high social status and very few problems in his life. In spite of his age, he feels young and energetic therefore decides to swim across town through the neighborhood pools. However, his journey becomes less and less enjoyable as the day unfolds. The water become murky, uninviting and he becomes exhausted. Also the people in his surrounding become less cordial including his mistress who wants nothing to do with him. His voyage then comes to an end when he arrives to an empty, abandoned home. The central idea suggests that an unhealthy obsession with the materialistic aspects of life can lead to alienation.
In “The Swimmer” by John Cheever, Neddy’s view of reality is drastically different from his neighbors. Neddy thinks that the entire story takes place in the time of an afternoon, when in reality many months have passed. Even though Neddy is stuck in the past, his neighbors and the rest of society move on, and at first it causes slightly awkward sympathy, but later he finds himself completely alone, his family, friends and neighbors having left him behind. Neddy’s situation illustrates that the passage of time is inevitable, and even if one chooses to ignore time, it will move on without them.
In, A Place Where the Sea Remembers, several events take place to describe the little city of Santiago, Mexico. This town is just south of the border by El Paso, Texas. The book focuses around a lady known as the Remedios. She is a very old healer that helps people with their problems of love, hate, etc. She is the "good" in the book, whereas El Brujo, the warlock, is the bad man in the book. This book's other strong point is that it has several short narratives that focus on one, or a few citizens of Santiago. A few examples are, Candelario (the salad maker), Marta (16 year old that's pregnant), Fulgencio (the photographer that loses all of his equipment) and Don Justo Flores (left his wife and kids and now it haunts him when one of his daughters die). In these stories, these people go threw hardships and ordeals that teach us, the readers, how to or not to deal with life when it isn't looking UP.
A women doing life is a book that talks openly about women in prison. The author of the book who is also an inmate is known as Erin George. She explains vividly about women life in prison and what she was going through as an inmate. The book also gives other stories about other female inmates. The book presents a realistic of what women goes through on daily basis in prison. The issues addressed are both physical and psychological challenges. She talks on behalf of those women facing challenges on daily basis in prison. The books explain life events that tragic and heartbreaking those changes later to be uplifting and humorous. She gives a story of how she is able to cope and manage in hard situations. The women’s humanity inside the prison is well shown in this book as they try to make ends meet in their daily life. This book is vivid and very compelling for women. It is one of the best contributions of the author in literature. The book has a virtually flawless pedagogical approach. The author’s writing is to a great extent excellent and it has helped in creating awareness in literature about the historical context of women in prison. It explains beyond the little information presented in the media about women life in prison and the challenges they face as inmates.
"The Swimmer." Short Stories for Students. Ed. Kathleen Wilson. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1997. 278-294. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 29 Jan. 2014.
The article, “Toddler’s image stops us in our tracks,” written on September 2015 by Beth-Giat reported a horrible tragedy to hit a family. Ben-Ghiat wrote, “Images of migrants’ suffering, and of humanitarian rescue, have filled our news for more than a year now. They have become such a common sight in the media that we hardly see them. Then, one image comes along that stops us in our tracks: a toddler, lying dead on beach in Turkey.” Ben-Ghiat says that people have grown used to the tragedies, but those images of the child lying on the beach, touches even the toughest person at the core. The image is painful to watch. Imagine if that was someone familiar. The child’s mother and and brother died as well. The only surviving member of the family, the child’s father, brought their bodies from Turkey back to the the city the family fled from for burial. The journey doesn 't always have a happy
“The Swimmer,” a short fiction by John Cheever, presents a theme to the reader about the unavoidable changes of life. The story focuses on the round character by the name of Neddy Merrill who is in extreme denial about the reality of his life. He has lost his youth, wealth, and family yet only at the end of the story does he develop the most by experiencing a glimpse of realization on all that he has indeed lost. In the short story “The Swimmer,” John Cheever uses point of view, setting and symbolism to show the value of true relationships and the moments of life that are taken for granted.
In the book “How I Live Now” by Meg Rossoff, the main character, Daisy, is faced with war, love and tragedy all at once. In Daisy’s battle to stay alive she realizes that love exists and recognizes that Oslo is where she belongs. Already knowing her limitations, Daisy comes to an understanding that eating and not being anorexic is okay. Her determination moves the reader in a way that changes what they think of her. It shows that tragic events can change someone in the simplest ways.
Swimming has been my whole life, since I jumped into the pool for the very first time. I loved every aspect of swimming from the adrenaline running through my body during my races and getting to spend even more time with my friends and my sister, and the stress of big meets coming up in the schedule. Except everything didn't go according to plan after the first day of school when I got home and I saw my parents sitting by my sister on the coach and my sister was crying.
Describe any small or significant changes experienced during and after this process. Did this project help address your stress?