Human beings are the only living species that base their lives around time. We have calendars, we have clocks, and we have created an entire system in order for us to feel like we are aware of everything. The reasoning behind this is that we fear uncertainty. Since we consider ourselves at the top of the living food chain, we hate to feel as though there is something more powerful than us. When we don’t know things, we feel helpless because we can’t do anything to stop it. Whether it be if your crush likes you back, whether there will be a pop quiz next week, or whether life continues after death: no one likes the uncertainty of not knowing something. In the novel A Tale for the Time Being, the author, Ruth Ozeki, brings light to many different concepts but the one concept that stood out to me was this one. Instead of allowing allows her characters to combat the fear of uncertainty instead of fall prey to it. Ruth Ozeki shows us through Nao’s behavior and the suicidal tendencies of her father, through time, and through the helplessness that Ruth feels towards Nao, that it is okay to accept the unknown.
By talking about Nao’s father’s suicidal tendencies and then describing Nao’s behavior towards them, Ruth Ozeki brings up the initial point that people are afraid of the unknown. At one point, Nao talks about her father committing suicide and says, “Not that he’s succeeded in killing himself yet. He hasn’t. But he’s still trying. It’s just a matter of time” (Ozeki 41). The reader later finds out that the reason why he tries to commit suicide is because he cannot find a job, therefore his family is struggling. He had never known this feeling of having no control over his finances, so he was trying to find a way to end the pain and ...
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...It is extremely difficult to control the desire to know everything. Like I stated earlier, as humans, we like to feel as if we have the world in the palm of our hands. As a dominant species, we want to be aware of everything that goes on around us. However, many things will never be figured out because that is the nature of life. In this book, Ruth Ozeki brings that to light and enlightens us with the message that it is okay to accept that we will not know everything. She does it through the suicidal tendencies of Nao’s father and her behavior, through time, and through the helplessness that Ruth feels towards Nao. She teaches us that our lives would be so much richer if we stopped worrying about things that are out of our control and learn to just live in the present. This is one of the best messages a book and I know that many people will begin to live in the Nao.
In the Time of the Butterflies is a historical fiction novel by Julia Alvarez based on events that occurred during the rule of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. This book shows the hardships the Mirabal Sisters had to go through while being part of an underground effort to overthrow the dictatorship of Trujillo. It also shows that ultimately, it was their courage that brought upon their own death. Alvarez wants us to understand anyone and everyone has the potential to be courageous.
There are 23 short stories that all together make up the compilation of Ida Finks book “A Scrap of Time and Other Stories”. All very different and unique in their own way, all tell or reveal different hidden secrets to the reader, but the first story is the most important. For in the first chapter of Finks book A Scrap of Time she reveals to the reader a hidden secret that they should carry with them in the back of their minds as they continue to journey through the pages of her book; the significance of time. For in this first story we see the importance of time to Fink. Not only does she spend the whole first page just primarily talking about time, but she also makes a distinction between two types of time. The first type is a time that
Not that the ideas are wrong, some can be proven as Lopez explains, "You expect to wait. You expect night to come. Morning. Winter to set in.". However when their assumption turns out not true, "they are no longer afraid of its secrets", and the person becomes frustrated. They wonder what was wrong in their guessing, what it was even to begin
In life we go through very hard times that’s just how life circles, but do these problems really help shape your spirit to who you are today and who you will be one day in the future? In the book Copper Sun by Sharon Draper Amari overcomes some of the most complicated problems in the history of the U.S., in which I personally don’t think I would have been able to handle as swiftly and fast as Amari had. With the help of others Amari was able to create a strong backbone to carry her thought out the way and support her in her worst times. Although some of these influences weren’t always the best people such as Clay, he helped shape Amaris future and the theme of the story. Finally, how important where the minor characters on helping to shape the main character’s spirit and inner mind, and after that transaction how where they able to slowly develop the theme/message of the book?
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, it became one of his greatest legacies. In the first line he wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" (U.S. Constitution, paragraph 2). Jefferson wrote these words to give inspiration to future generations in the hopes that they would be able to change what he either would or could not. The word “men” in the Declaration in the early 1700 and 1800’s meant exactly that, but even then it only was true for some men, not all. Women, children, and other segments of the population such as slaves and Native Americans were clearly not included. Jefferson himself was a slave owner and held the belief that women were inferior to men. Though women played no role in the political environment, they were crucial to the development and economic success of the times. The strength, courage and work ethic of pioneer women like Martha Ballard in “A Midwife’s Tale” (Thatcher, 1990) created the very fabric of the community and wove it together so the community could thrive.
The book I enjoyed most in the past year is A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. The story switches back and forth between the diary of Nao, a suicidal teenage girl who is determined to record the life story of her great-grandmother Jiko, and Ruth, a women who lives on a remote Pacific island and discovered Nao’s diary washed up on the shore, as a result of the 2011 tsunami in Japan. After reading a few pages of the diary, Ruth is mesmerized by it and decided to find out about Nao’s life. The book covered numerous themes, including Zen Buddhism, natural disaster, Kamikaze pilots, suicide, bullying, quantum mechanics, and time. But something that intrigued me the most is the personal growth of Nao.
“Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand is a capturing, inspiring, and unforgettable tale. Hillenbrand excels in narrative storytelling, expressing feelings and experiences that are difficult to capture in this style of writing. In this book, Hillenbrand provides a balance between facts and the story itself; she portrays the story by stopping at intervals and going more into depth about different facts that will help the reader to understand. The combination of the two create a story that’s both informative and emotionally capturing. Hillenbrand seizes the readers emotions through the use of morals and themes.
What’s all the ‘hype’ about this “media-controlled universe”? Cynthia L. Kemper writes in her article “Living in Spin” about how the twenty-first century has a corrupt sense of honesty. Her paper, published in “Communication World”, is generally a reaction to her findings about the new age style of communication. She bases it mostly on interviews and supports it by the many quotes weaved between her logic-based trails of thought. Appealing mostly to logos and pathos, she carries a conversational tone with her audience. This tone is abundant in rhetorical questions that she doesn’t attempt to answer. The main purpose of her article appears to be the ‘eye-opening’ factor. Kemper manages to provide a conscious effort to tell people how many different factors have affected the current generation’s ability to speak without ‘spinning’. She quotes the editor of slate, Michael Kinsley, in order to explain that “Spinning means describing a reality that suits your purposes. Whether it resembles the reality we all share is an issue that doesn't even arise”. Simply put, the author that begins her essay with a very intriguing question, “Have 21st Century Communicators Stopped Telling the Truth?”; refrains from clearly answering this very question throughout her work. In the article the author talks about the problems of people ‘coloring’ stories to make them more appealing. Modern day rules allow people to stretch the truth to sell products better among other things. She blames these ‘innovations’ in the world of communication to the new progresses in technology.
In her novel The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey looks at how history can be misconstrued through the more convenient reinterpretation of the person in power, and as such, can become part of our common understanding, not being true knowledge at all, but simply hearsay. In The Daughter of Time Josephine claims that 40 million school books can’t be wrong but then goes on to argue that the traditional view of Richard III as a power obsessed, blood thirsty monster is fiction made credible by Thomas More and given authenticity by William Shakespeare. Inspector Alan Grant looks into the murder of the princes in the tower out of boredom. Tey uses Grant to critique the way history is delivered to the public and the ability of historians to shape facts to present the argument they believe.
So begin the episodes of anguished soul-searching, of horrific "if-onlys" experienced by the family members of countless suicides. Anyone who has faced what Mr. and Mrs. A now grapple with knows that the girl is wrong: they will not be better off, not feel happier, without her. Yet each year, thousands of suicide victims express similar convictions: I am killing myself, they reassure us, for your own good. This thinking – this appeal for selflessness that our society cannot condone – where does it come from? Why, in truth, do people kill themselves?
Have you ever had something of great value be taken from you and then feeling emotionally empty? In Celia Garth, Gwen Bristow desires to share the important message of Celia Garth’s past to the characters and readers. Memories prove that Celia got through the war and the bells provided a stress free period. Her memories were resembled through the bells of St.Michaels Church. The past demonstrated in Celia’s eyes about the war and what the bells reminded her of.
Ann Rinaldi has written many books for young teenagers, she is an Award winning author who writes stories of American history and makes them become real to the readers. She has written many other books such as A Break with Charity, A Ride into Morning, and Cast two Shadows, etc. She was born in New York City on August 27, 1934. In 1979, at the age of 45, she finished her first book.
“When you say 'fear of the unknown', that is the definition of fear; fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and it's genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because we're not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe.” – M. Night Shyamalan
How different are families compared to the past? Lately there has been some major changes in relationships, weather female dominance, or even just having no relationships at all. We also see that relationships are based only on a basis of reproduction and sometimes the child of the relationship is rather irrelevant. In a Temporary matter by Jhumpa Lahiri, the reader can see how relationships have developed with the rest of the world into failing, no relationship, and feminist relationships.
Many people are also afraid of the “unknown”. The unknown could refer to what might happen tomorrow...