Living on Long Island, NY during the Vietnam War with a teacher that hates your guts; this is the world that seventh grader Holling Hoodhood lives in, and in Gary D. Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars, he has to deal with the war, Mrs. Baker, and seventh grade. Holling Hoodhood is a seventh grader with a teacher who hates his guts. He finds out that he likes Shakespeare because since he stays at school on Wednesdays when everyone else is either at Temple Beth-El or Saint Albert’s, he reads Shakespeare with Mrs. Baker, because he is presbyterian and there is no presbyterian school for him to go to, and because Mrs. Baker makes him; he even performs in some Shakespeare plays. Holling has a sister named Heather who loves the Monkees and the Beatles. …show more content…
Later, he finds out that on Wednesdays, he has to stay with Mrs. Baker while everyone else goes to some form of religious school. Then, on one of October’s Wednesdays, Holling is asked to clean out Sycorax and Caliban’s cage, who are the class rats. Unfortunately, the rats escape and run into the wall and ceiling. Months later, Holling’s sister almost gets run over by a bus, but he saves her and gets his name on the front page of a newspaper. In February, on Valentine’s Day, Holling takes one of his best friends, Meryl Lee Kowalski, to a Shakespeare play, and she thinks that it is beautiful. In the ides of March (the 15th), when Mrs. Baker is teaching, Sycorax and Caliban fall from the ceiling, run outside, and are demolished by a bus. Then, Holling runs in track and gets the record of fastest laps. When it is time for April, he wins a race against 139 other runners. Then, in May, Holling’s sister Heather runs away trying to find herself, but gets lonely and scared, so she comes back home. Also, Mrs. Baker’s husband was found because he was originally MIA. And when summer was just approaching, Holling goes on a camping trip and Mr. Baker goes home to Mrs.
The book Trouble,by Gary D. Schmidt, is based on the Smith family who lives in Blythbury-by-the-Sea, which is a small, quiet town by the Atlantic Shore. The family believes that if you build your house far enough from trouble, trouble will not be able to find you. Then, abruptly, their life takes a turn for the worse and trouble finds them. Henry, the youngest of the Smith family, and Franklin, the oldest of the Smith boys, planned a trip to climb the mountain of Katahdin, but now, because of the trouble, Henry sets out to climb it with his best friend Sanborn. On this journey, he meets the person who started the trouble in his family, Chay Chouan, who goes with him. The two characters Henry and Chay have characteristics and traits that are the same, but they also have very different personalities and backgrounds and family styles.
It is often said that the setting of the story can change the character’s mentality and personality. In the classic vignette, A Summer Life, Gary Soto addresses his childhood to adulthood in Fresno in the course of a short vivid chapters. Born on April 12, 1952, a year before the Korean War ended, Gary experiences his life in Fresno of what he describes “what I knew best was at ground level,” and learns what is going on around the neighborhood with his religious background behind him. Later, when he realizes his father passes away, he undergoes hardships which cause his family to be miserable. Growing up in the heart of Fresno, Gary Soto, the author, explains his journey as a young man to adolescence through his use of figurative language and other adventures. The settings of this book revise Gary’s action and feelings around his surroundings.
Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.- Micheal Porter. In wednesday wars by Gary D. Schmidt you can see Holling transform from a boy to a man. He was insecure about himself and didn’t want to end up like his dad. But then he found himself with help from his friends and family You can be your own person, you don’t have to be the person you are told to be, you have your own choices.
Atkinson, Rick. An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Volume 1 of the "Liberation Trilogy." New York: Henry Holt, 2002.
Throughout the ages, men and women have been the center of myths and legends, becoming tragic heroes in large part due to the embellishment bestowed upon them over the ages. Perhaps, though, truth can be stranger than fiction. Pat Tillman was a man of many talents and virtues, never satisfied by the mediocre, striving for more excitement, more meaning, in his tragically short time on Earth, and lived out the phrase carpe diem to the letter. Even Pat Tillman had tragic flaws; his unwillingness to be average, his undying loyalty to family and country, and his unusually concrete set of morals all eventually led to his death. These, whatever the outcome might have been, are not, by any means, archetypical tragic flaws. They are, as Jon Krakauer later described, “tragic virtues.” Where Men Win Glory is not solely a tribute to Pat Tillman. What makes it truly unique is its exhaustively comprehensive history leading up to Pat’s death, and just as important, the events that took place after his death, including the cover-ups, scandals, corruption, falsified documents, and lies that helped, also, to emphasize the themes, of which Pat was the epitome. Pat’s loyalty and devotion to the things that he loved, the use of misinformation surrounding his death, and others’ reactions to what Pat considered paramount in his life all played a key role in the tragedy of a man that won glory.
Conroy displays his life through his novel, The Lords of Discipline, to give readers a visual demonstration of how life connections can transform the entity of a novel. Conroy's attendance to the Citadel, his family, and the South helped influence his innovative writing style.
He now lives in New York City with his wife and children. This novel is based in various High Schools in New York City. One of the main characters Paul, just moved to New York from Saskatoon, Alberta. This novel takes place in the mid 1980’s. At this high school, Don Carey High, none of the students or teachers care about anything that goes on within the school.
reality by showing the War Eagle’s first impressions based on the what they’ve seen. The scenery they saw was something that could be compared to Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and the golden gates were beautiful to them. To outsiders, Lake Windsor Middle School may appear to be a beautiful school district. However, to someone like Paul who used to attend the school, he knows that it’s all a facade and that everything is not what it seems to be. Underneath the face of the beautiful school district, there lay problems such as overcrowding and schedule changes due to the
Fussell believes that the soldier of world war two, "suffers so deeply from contempt and damage to his selfhood, from absurdity and boredom and chickenshit, that some anodyne is necessary", and that the anodyne of choice was alcohol. I would argue that Fussell is correct, especially regarding the connection between the absurdity of the war and the associated damage to soldiers image of themselves as good and patriotic, and the use of alcohol to block out the reality of the war. I think this connection is evident in the interviews presented in Terkel’s "The Good War", especially those of John Garcia and Eddie Costello.
The book Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion (New York, Ny: Harper Perennial, 1990) by Stephen B. Oates portrays a slave rebellion and uprising in the 1830’s. Oates has written many books on American history and his style of writing makes his books readable and popular. He has become a unique storyteller of his time, in his book he tells of a transformation that changed the city of South Hampton, Virginia forever, an unspeakable action heard throughout the whole nation and insurrection. What is an insurrection? It is a rebellion, revolution, mutiny and uprising, a concept that has never lost hope in African-American slaves.
what he noticed about how Americans use non-verbal communication. He said that it is very easy to tell when something is bothering us or we are excited about something. We as Americans follow Albert Mehrabian’s thought on non-verbal communication and show our emotions more with gestures. This was something I learned from the interview because I was not aware of this culture aspect we as Americans hold.
Holling is the only student in his class who is presbyterian. Throughout the novel The Wednesday Wars, Holling Hoodhood is influenced by his teacher Mrs. Baker, his friend Danny, and his sister Heather. One influence in Holling’s life is Mrs. Baker. Mrs. Baker helped Holling for his Cross Country meet.
War has been a constant part of human history. It has greatly affected the lives of people around the world. These effects, however, are extremely detrimental. Soldiers must shoulder extreme stress on the battlefield. Those that cannot mentally overcome these challenges may develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Sadly, some resort to suicide to escape their insecurities. Soldiers, however, are not the only ones affected by wars; family members also experience mental hardships when their loved ones are sent to war. Timothy Findley accurately portrays the detrimental effects wars have on individuals in his masterpiece The Wars.
The Friday Everything Changed” written by Anne Hart describes how a simple question challenges the
It was the second semester of fourth grade year. My parents had recently bought a new house in a nice quite neighborhood. I was ecstatic I always wanted to move to a new house. I was tired of my old home since I had already explored every corner, nook, and cranny. The moment I realized I would have to leave my old friends behind was one of the most devastating moments of my life. I didn’t want to switch schools and make new friends. Yet at the same time was an interesting new experience.