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Tim O’Brian waited 20 years to tell this story because he was embarrassed.

It starts with him getting the draft letter in the mail, and then for the rest of the summer that's what he is thinking, but he is also working and thinking about school, and how the ones who want to start a war should be putting their own family on the line, not innocent people.

Then he runs away to the Tip-Top Lodge which is right across from Canada, he wants to run away to Canada so that he does not have to go to the war, but he is embarrassed about what his community will think.

He goes out on the boat with Elroy Berdahl, and Berdahl is willing to take him across to Canada as he goes fishing, but O’Brien cannot get himself to go overboard and run away because he is scared of the embarrassment and so he chooses to go to the war instead.

In the end he survives war and calls himself a coward because he does go to war because he was scared of the embarrassment.

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My connection to the short story is when I was younger I had a much thicker accent than I do now, and I had more than one, I had a German and Australian accent and I couldn’t control it. I wasn’t able to cover them up, and because of that other kids would pick on me because they weren’t used to it, and I was (I think) the only kid with the accent in my school. I would from time to time be sent with German food for lunch and it was awkward on those days because everyone else had lunchables and things like that. Another thing the kids would do is constantly ask me if I knew how to say certain things in German, and I don't know much, I only know a few words, so that was embarrassing to me as well. My great grandma spoke German a lot, so that's where I learned some words, she would sometimes speak English when I was there but she had such a thick accent it was hard to understand her sometimes.  When I got older I blocked out the accents and the language and I stopped eating the food that Germans would eat, because I was embarrassed, but as I've grown up I've learned that it is who I am and that I need to be proud of that and love me for me.

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Write about a time when your courage failed you. What happened? If you could go back in time and change it, what would you do differently (if anything)?

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Write about a time when your courage failed you. What happened? If you could go back in time and change it, what would you do differently (if anything)?

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A time when courage failed me was when I let the fear of being judged get in the way. I went to an audition for an acting group, I had prepared my monologue and knew what I was doing but when I seen everyone watching me when it was my turn, I forgot mine and asked for the ones they had for everyone, it was short and not very entertaining. I did not try my best because after watching the others I knew I wouldn’t get in. I got a call back that day saying the thought I had more potential than what they saw and that they would like it if I came again. If I could go back and change something, I wouldn't have tried my hardest the first time and I would have used the one that I prepared, instead of having to go twice.

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How does imagination help us to deal with reality? &/OR How does it distract us from reality? How can we know the difference?

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How does imagination help us to deal with reality? &/OR How does it distract us from reality? How can we know the difference?

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A Lot of the time our imagination is used to distract us from reality especially if the reality is not what we want because with our imagination we can make things go how we want. Imagination distracts us from reality because your mind wants to focus on the good that is going on, and since you get to create it, your brain tries to focus on it. And the difference between imagination and reality is that nothing goes your way in reality and things are going to be hard and you're gonna run into obstacles. In your imagination you can create whatever and so most likely there will be no obstacles and there will be no hardships and everything will go correctly and according to plan. This can create a false sense of safety because Well you live in your imagination when you leave it and you enter reality you don't know what to expect.

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I agree with the statement that anger can be a positive and negative force, depending upon how it is used. This is because without anger you would never know what calmness really is. Also when you are angry you don’t think about what you are saying, and so what you say is what you feel. This can be like how Lawrence Peter said when you’re angry ‘You’ll make the best speech you;ll never regret’ but also you may say something that you don’t mean to say. So anger can be both positive and negative depending on how you use it. Anger may also cause change like Malcolm X said, because once you get that mad over something you realize that you don’t want it to happen again and so you change to make sure that it will not happen again.

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personal Writing Prompt #1                   

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personal Writing Prompt #1                   

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The reason to change even when you are content with who you are is because you want to be more, you want to see what else could be in store for you. If you don’t go through the trouble of changing just because you were content with yourself it shows that you are not willing to try and change because you might fail and lose who you were before. In Things Fall Apart Okonkwo did not want to change anything about who he was because he did not want to be seen as weak, but this is what caused him to end up hanging himself. If Okonkwo was able to change and realize that caring for people would not make him weak, more people would have helped him and listened to him. Okonkwo also has an anger problem and so he also needed to work on that dor people to feel fully safe with him.

The Euoropeans showing up to the Igbo people was not because the Europeans where discontent with where they were or who they already controlled, it was because they wanted more people and they did not have the Igbo people yet.

Our God has not vowed to make a change just because we are unhappy with some aspect of our lives. He will not change for us if we are not willing to change for ourselves, because his changing will not help us, we have to change for ourselves. Just like in the novel, the Gods did not change their views or customs, because the people were unhappy, the people learned to live with the way that the Gods worked and were able to be happy that way.

Oftentimes discontent is the first step to action because if you are unhappy that is when you will realize that something needs to change.

In Things Fall Apart even though they were discontent they did not do anything, this is because they white men were already in charge and they knew it. They did not want to hurt them because some of their family members had gone to stay with them and left the clan.

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In your writer's notebook, copy/print the poem and identify images, mood or atmosphere

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In your writer's notebook, copy/print the poem and identify images, mood or atmosphere

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THE SECOND COMING

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The mood of the poem ‘The Second Coming’ by William Butler Yeats is dark and gloomy. This

is shown by how he describes things and the words he uses. For example the quote

‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned’

From the poem depicts a dark image by mentioning how ‘the innocence is drowned’ and how

‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed’. These lines are gloomy which is what he wanted them to be

depicted as.

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How do single stories allow us to construct understandings of others?

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How do single stories allow us to construct understandings of others?

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Single story is allowed to construct an understanding of others of one thing. If we allow ourselves to believe in one single story then that's all we know we don't know that they can be anything else or do anything else. Single stories are damaging to the identity of others. When we are only introduced to one single story and believe that one single story then we tend to be surprised when we meet those people that we read about or whatnot and they turn out to be completely different. This can make the other person feel bad about themselves or ashamed or embarrassed about their ethnic city or about where they came from, because we have defined them as something that they are not.

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Me and my step mom (Amy) have always had an on and off relationship. My biological mother didn’t like me calling Amy mom, so I never did, this has carried on into my teens. She doesn’t push me to call her it but I know it bothers her a bit, it just makes me uncomfortable when I do. We fight on and off with each other because we’re both too stubborn to stop and be the mature one, we like to stand our ground. This creates a tear in our relationship each time, we’ll argue for a couple days then we’ll be perfectly okay for a while, but then it repeats.

Even so, we both understand that it’s something that we need to work on because we want to have a good relationship. There's things both of us need to work on for that to happen and we’ve talked about it. Amy is very loving, she always tries to include me in whatever they are doing, which is nice and makes me happy. She tries to always be there for me when I need it, but I don’t like sharing and talking about my problems and so she respects that.

MOTHER TO SON

by Langston Hughes

Discussion Questions:

What is your favorite passage?

“So boy, don't you turn back.

Don't you set down on the steps

'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.”

Why?

Because she's encouraging him to keep climbing the steps to get to where he wants to be. And to not give up. She is trying to be the person that pushes him beyond what he thinks is his limits so that he can have a better life, so that he knows that no matter what his mom will be there to help him and tell him that he has to keep going.

Based on what the mother says to her son, what kind of a life has she had?

She has had a hard and rough life. She’s had to fight to be where she is. She has been through many lows and has had to pick herself up many times, so she knows how he is feeling and why he needs to keep going.

What message is she offering her son?

To keep fighting, keep getting back up. She is showing him that he is capable of much more than he thinks which will, in the long run, make him a stronger person. She is guiding him, caring for him, and teaching him what he needs to know so that he can get back up and keep going even though it’s hard.

FIRST LESSON

by Phyllis McGinley

Discussion Questions:

What is your favorite passage?

“Men are worriers. It is difficult for them

To learn what they must learn;

How you have a journey to take and very likely,

For a while, will not return.”

Why?

Because it implies that they care about their daughter so much that they are disregarding the fact that she’ll have to go on her own someday. All they want to do is protect their little girl, and that really no matter how old you get, to your father, you’re always going to be his little girl.

What words does the speaker use to describe her father?

The speaker only uses the word ‘men’ to describe her father but for men in general she uses two words.

men in general?

She uses the two words ‘worriors and dragon-seekers’ this it to show that men worry about their daughters and will always look for the scary things in what they are doing, because they just want to keep their little girl safe.

Who has learned the first lesson: father or daughter?

The father. He learned that his daughter “has a journey to take and very likely,

For a while, will not return.” He learned it first because it’s harder for him to come to terms with the fact that his little girl will be all one her own, doing things that would make him worry, when she’s just exploring the world, which can be a scary and harmful place but can also be super loving and kind, it all depends where it is you go and who you meet.

My relationship with Amy connects with both of these poems. This is because both of these poems describe characteristics of people. ‘Mother to son’ is of a mom encouraging her son to pick himself up and be strong. In the poem ‘First lesson’ the daughter is explaining the love and power of a father, or a man.

Mother to son, describes how the mom just wants her son to keep going and get back up. Amy always pushes me to do my best, and when I fall she makes me get back up because she knows “I’ll make it better than she did one day” and I don’t see it now, but I’m sure she has fallen and had to pick herself up many times. She makes sure that I’m strong enough to handle things and that I am able to keep going even if I don't want to and I’m super tired. She helps me understand that nothing is impossible to do. I can keep going when it feels like I can't. I just have to remember who or what it is for. Amy reminds me that everyone has ups and downs, no one is perfect, so I shouldn’t be ashamed of anything. She encourages me to do my best and that even if it's not enough for teachers or friends, it’s the best I can do, and as long as I try my best I can always be proud of myself no matter the opinion of others.

The poem ‘First Lesson’ is of a daughter describing who a father is. She describes them as ‘worriers and dragon-seekers’ because all they want to do is protect their daughter. Amy does the same thing, she does her best to keep me safe. She does it in a way that lets me have my own space, and she understands that someday I will have to go on my own. Just because she understands that doesn’t mean that she does not worry, because she does, alot, she just knows that if she lets me do my thing, I won't go crazy the second I move out. Amy will always worry about where I am or if I’m safe, but that’s a parent's job, it’s the kids job to do things and create trust so you can go out without them being worried that you’re going to do something that’s going to get you hurt.