In the book Letters to Jennifer by James Pattersons, there is an important lesson that Grandma Sam teaches to Jennifer. While Jennifer remembers the summers she spent at her grandmother’s house and all the important lessons Sam has taught her, Jennifer remembers the time she was about to leave and her grandmother gave her a jar to fill up with seashells and sand. Jennifer kept coming back and Grandma Sam kept sending her back outside saying the jar wasn’t full. Finally Sam told her to fit the large shells and rocks in first, then fill it with sand and smaller shells that would fall into the cracks. Sam told Jennifer, “that living life was like putting the beach into a jar. The point wasn’t to fit everything in; it was to attend to the most important things first- the big, beautiful rocks- the most valuable people and experiences- and fit the lesser things in around them” (Patterson 88). This really stuck with Jennifer throughout her life. When something important came her way she shoved the little unimportant things, like the newspaper, out of the way and focused on the big things, Sam and Brendan.
Jennifer is a writer that writes three columns every week for a newspaper based out of Chicago. Everything is going smoothly in Jennifer’s life until one day she receives a call from a friend of her grandmother saying that her grandmother has been admitted to the hospital and is in a coma after tripping and falling. Jennifer packs her bags and rushes down to Lake Geneva to visit her grandmother.
After returning to her grandmothers house for the night, she finds a bundle of letter addressed to her held together with a piece of old yarn. As she opens the first one she reads that the letters tell the real story o...
... middle of paper ...
... was about to begin-real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life” (134 Patterson). She realized that all challenges thrown at her is making her a better person. weights- The weights symbolizes Jennifer’s strength. She was going through hard times, she lost her husband in an drowning accident, her grandmother was coma, and she finds out the man she is in love with has brain cancer. Sam writes, “I just want to tell you this one important thing. Don’t shut out love for good” (78 Patterson). She decides to stay with Brendan and help him fight some of the most important battles in his life, and to remember her grandmother in a special way by naming her baby girl Sam.
Summary and Response to Barbara Kingsolver’s “Called Home” In “Called Home”, the first chapter of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver presents her concerns about America's lack of food knowledge, sustainable practices, and food culture. Kingsolver introduces her argument for the benefits of adopting a local food culture by using statistics, witty anecdotal evidence, and logic to appeal to a wide casual reading audience. Her friendly tone and trenchant criticism of America's current food practices combine to deliver a convincing argument that a food culture would improve conditions concerning health and sustainability.
Human; relating to or having characteristics of a person(Merriam-Webster). A human is truly just a soul combined with characteristics of other people, and this is proven by Jenna Fox; the main character in The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. After finding out what her body is made up of, Jenna along with other characters think she is not human. Despite this Jenna Fox has always had the key elements it takes to be a human been. Jenna for one has a past and memories that make up her life even after the accident. More importantly it is unfair to call her a “monster” when she shows characteristics similar to that of other humans. Needless to say, Jenna just as any other human isn’t perfect, and she later learns that in order to be one hundred percent human she must have the same chances of succeeding in life as any other human would. Jenna Fox is human because she has a soul regardless of her differences.
Throughout life people encounter a numerous amount of obstacles, some of these obstacles can be tougher than others. These obstacles don’t define who you are, how the situation is handled does. In the book The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, Jessica encounters a tremendous obstacle that life could throw at her. Jessica has had to learn to adjust her life from the way that she used to live. Her life is changing and she has to decide if this accident defines who she is going to be while being surrounded by the love and comfort of her family.
In "Our Secret" by Susan Griffin, the essay uses fragments throughout the essay to symbolize all the topics and people that are involved. The fragments in the essay tie together insides and outsides, human nature, everything affected by past, secrets, cause and effect, and development with the content. These subjects and the fragments are also similar with her life stories and her interviewees that all go together. The author also uses her own memories mixed in with what she heard from the interviewees. Her recollection of her memory is not fully told, but with missing parts and added feelings. Her interviewee's words are told to her and brought to the paper with added information. She tells throughout the book about these recollections.
The author of the book, The Ladies of Missalonghi, by Colleen McCullough describes to the reader how Missy, an unattractive woman, in a small town differs from Alicia.
To begin, it is evident today that teenagers love being connected with their friends and family all at the tip of their thumbs. They love texting. According to a study by Amanda Lenhart, 88 percent of teens use a cell phone or smart phone of which 90 percent of them use text message. An average teen sends 30 texts per day. (Lenhart) As shown in this study, teens have easy access to text messaging. In her Ted talks called “Texting That Save Lives” and “The Heartbreaking Text That Inspired a Crisis Help Line,” Nancy Lublin talks about how she received disturbing text messages from young people that mentions how they’re being bullied, wanting to commit suicide, cutting themselves, and being raped by their father. She was exceedingly emotional when receiving these texts. She felt like she had to do something about it. So, with her knowledge about teens and the power of texting, Nancy Lublin created something that would help save these young kids’ lives, the Crisis Text Line. (“Texting”)(“Heartbreaking”)
In “A Rose for Emily”, Charles Faulkner used a series of flashbacks and foreshadowing to tell Miss Emily’s story. Miss Emily is an interesting character, to say the least. In such a short story of her life, as told from the prospective of a townsperson, who had been nearly eighty as Miss Emily had been, in order to tell the story from their own perspective. Faulkner set up the story in Mississippi, in a world he knew of in his own lifetime. Inspired by a southern outlook that had been touched by the Civil War memory, the touch of what we would now look at as racism, gives the southern aroma of the period. It sets up Miss Emily’s southern belle status and social standing she had been born into, loner or not.
Perhaps no other event in modern history has left us so perplexed and dumbfounded than the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, an entire population was simply robbed of their existence. In “Our Secret,” Susan Griffin tries to explain what could possibly lead an individual to execute such inhumane acts to a large group of people. She delves into Heinrich Himmler’s life and investigates all the events leading up to him joining the Nazi party. In“Panopticism,” Michel Foucault argues that modern society has been shaped by disciplinary mechanisms deriving from the plague as well as Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a structure with a tower in the middle meant for surveillance. Susan Griffin tries to explain what happened in Germany through Himmler’s childhood while Foucault better explains these events by describing how society as a whole operates.
One of the central themes in writing of the second generation Asian Americans is the search of identity and individual acceptance in American society. In the last few decades, many Asian Americans have entered a time of increased awareness of their racial and cultural identity built on their need to establish their unique American identity. In the book The Joy Luck Club, which revolves around four mother-daughter Asian American families whose mothers migrated from China to America and raised their daughters as Americans, we see the cultural struggle and differences by looking at their marriages, suffering and sacrifice, and their use of language in the novel.
In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
Marie’s grandparent’s had an old farm house, which was one of many homes in which she lived, that she remembers most. The house was huge, she learned to walk, climb stairs, and find hiding places in it. The house had a wide wrap around porch with several wide sets of stairs both in front and in back. She remembers sitting on the steps and playing with one of the cats, with which there was a lot of cats living on the farm...
Alexander Stowe is a twin, his brother is Aaron Stowe. Alex is an Unwanted, Aaron is a Wanted, and their parents are Necessaries. Alex is creative in a world where you can’t even see the entire sky, and military is the dream job for everyone and anyone. He should have been eliminated, just like all the unwanteds should have been. He instead comes upon Artimè, where he trains as a magical warrior- after a while. When he was still in basic training, and his friends were not, he got upset, he wants to be the leader, the one everyone looks up to.
Throughout life you encounter a numerous amount of obstacles. These obstacles don’t define you, how you handle them does. In the book “The Running Dream” by Wendelin Van Draanen, Jessica encounters the biggest obstacle that life could throw at her. Jessica has had to learn to adjust her life from what it was. Her life is changing and she has to decide if this accident defines who she is going to be while being surrounded by the love and comfort of her family.
forfill her dream. Three months after her mom died, her father got a letter in the mail. It was
The Friday Everything Changed” written by Anne Hart describes how a simple question challenges the