Parents tell their children to think first and act second. Most people forget this as illustrated in Yann Martel’s satire “We ate the Children Last,” written in 2004. It starts out with an operation and humans are given a pigs digestive tract to cure cancer. Because the operation made people eat garbage, they gave it to the poor At this point everybody wants to have this operation. When people started going cannibalistic, the government puts them together to eat each other. This started out as a good thing by curing cancer. After that everybody from the poor to the people administering the operation didn’t pause long enough to consider the consequences. Real world examples of people not pausing to consider the consequences are seen frequently, whether, it be on a small or big scale. Yann Martel is saying that …show more content…
They never pause for just two seconds to think about the possible consequences of their actions. Back to when America found out that Iraq had weapons of mass descriptions people’s first reaction was to attack. This is a do first, think second way. Nobody ever wanted further proof. Neither did the “the French medical team [who] felt vindicated”(par 2) even after “a nurse reported that one morning she found him eating the flowers in his room”(par 1) who saw some signs of negative affects, but failed to pay attention given the better positive effects. People who don’t think things through isn’t just evidence in the average person, but in the more important government officials like the president of the United States. We were quick to start discussion on possible war as an option for this bad proof that Iraq has nukes. Martel points out instances of the government failing to look into the future when “regulatory approval came swiftly”(par 4) for the operation. This ties back to the idea that lack of judgement by people leads to bad results in our government. The idea of fads start to have effects as
reacts to the crosser. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker’s first impression of the swamp
Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate is the story of an African boy, Kek, who loses his father and a brother and flees, leaving his mother to secure his safety. Kek, now in Minnesota, is faced with difficulties of adapting to a new life and of finding his lost mother. He believes that his mother still lives and would soon join him in the new found family. Kek is taken from the airport by a caregiver who takes him to live with his aunt. It is here that Kek meets all that amazed him compared to his home in Sudan, Africa. Home of the brave shows conflicts that Kek faces. He is caught between two worlds, Africa and America. He feels guilty leaving behind his people to live in a distant land especially his mother, who he left in the midst of an attack.
1. In the book, the father tries to help the son in the beginning but then throughout the book he stops trying to help and listens to the mother. If I had been in this same situation, I would have helped get the child away from his mother because nobody should have to live like that. The father was tired of having to watch his son get abused so eventually he just left and didn’t do anything. David thought that his father would help him but he did not.
American consumers think of voting as something to be done in a booth when election season comes around. In fact, voting happens with every swipe of a credit card in a supermarket, and with every drive-through window order. Every bite taken in the United States has repercussions that are socially, politically, economically, and morally based. How food is produced and where it comes from is so much more complicated than the picture of the pastured cow on the packaging seen when placing a vote. So what happens when parents are forced to make a vote for their children each and every meal? This is the dilemma that Jonathan Safran Foer is faced with, and what prompted his novel, Eating Animals. Perhaps one of the core issues explored is the American factory farm. Although it is said that factory farms are the best way to produce a large amount of food at an affordable price, I agree with Foer that government subsidized factory farms use taxpayer dollars to exploit animals to feed citizens meat produced in a way that is unsustainable, unhealthy, immoral, and wasteful. Foer also argues for vegetarianism and decreased meat consumption overall, however based on the facts it seems more logical to take baby steps such as encouraging people to buy locally grown or at least family farmed meat, rather than from the big dogs. This will encourage the government to reevaluate the way meat is produced. People eat animals, but they should do so responsibly for their own benefit.
Michael MacDonald’S All Souls is a heart wrenching insider account of growing up in Old Country housing projects located in the south of Boston, also known as Southie to the locals. The memoir takes the reader deep inside the world of Southie through the eyes of MacDonald. MacDonald was one of 11 children to grow up and deal with the many tribulations of Southie, Boston. Southie is characterized by high levels of crime, racism, and violence; all things that fall under the category of social problem. Social problems can be defined as “societal induced conditions that harms any segment of the population. Social problems are also related to acts and conditions that violate the norms and values found in society” (Long). The social problems that are present in Southie are the very reasons why the living conditions are so bad as well as why Southie is considered one of the poorest towns in Boston. Macdonald’s along with his family have to overcome the presence of crime, racism, and violence in order to survive in the town they consider the best place in the world.
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.
Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of Groupthink: a Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-14002-1.
After the Bomb written by Gloria Miklowitz is a thrilling novel that takes place before, during, and after a bomb which supposedly was sent from Russia by accident. L.A. and surrounding cities are all altered by the disastrous happening.
There are many policy issues that affect families in today’s society. Hunger is a hidden epidemic and one major issue that American’s still face. It is hard to believe that in this vast, ever growing country, families are still starving. As stated in the book Growing Up Empty, hunger is running wild through urban, rural, and even suburban communities. This paper will explore the differing perspectives of the concerned camp, sanguine camp, and impatient camp. In addition, each camps view, policy agenda, and values that underlie their argument on hunger will be discussed.
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.
There is perhaps no greater joy in life than finding one’s soul mate. Once found, there is possibly no greater torment than being forced to live without them. This is the conflict that Paul faces from the moment he falls in love with Agnes. His devotion to the church and ultimately God are thrown into the cross hairs with the only possible outcome being one of agonizing humiliation. Grazia Deledda’s The Mother presents the classic dilemma of having to choose between what is morally right and being true to one’s own heart. Paul’s inability to choose one over the other consumes his life and everyone in it.
As a journalist in 1920 for the New York Herald Tribune, Sophie Treadwell was assigned to go to Mexico to follow the situation after the Mexican Revolution. (Mexican Revolution 1910-1917) She covered many important aspects of the Mexican Revolution during this time, including relations between the U.S. and Mexico. She was even permitted an interview with Pancho Villa in August 1921 at his headquarters. This interview and other events that she experienced in Mexico are presumably what led her to write the play Gringo. In Gringo Treadwell tries to depict the stereotypical and prejudicial attitudes that Mexicans and Americans have about each other. There is a demonstration of how Mexican women are looked at in the Mexican culture and how they see themselves. The play also corresponds to similar events that occurred during the Mexican Revolution.
In the novel “Hunger” by Knut Hamsun, the novel’s narrator is unfortunate enough to go through delusions and pains that are caused by what many people cannot experience in the modern days; state of being hungry. As the novel progresses narrator becomes more intoxicated into state of delusion as the hunger deepens. In many scenes of the novel, narrator relates to God many times. Narrator blames, thanks, and even to talk one-sided dialogues with his imaginary God. While many can think that God doesn’t take key parts in novel and let it slip as just another symptom of narrator’s delusion, the scenes with God being a part reveals that God plays both scapegoat and a person of gratitude for narrator’s outcome for every action he takes. From the passages it can be deducted that both narrator and Hamsun have attitude that God is ominous and act as catalyst in everyday life.
“We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.” -Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Father and Son by Bernard McLaverty 'Father and Son' by Bernard McLaverty is a short story which is set in