There is a constant human struggle between the right and the wrong, the long term and the short term, the self and the society. Eat cake now and be fat later? Tell a white lie to protect feelings? Buy products made by child slaves because it is convienent or cheap? The Grapes of Wrath presents these same struggles in a much broader and far reaching sense - specifically how the integration of small farms into large, industrialized units creates a competition for jobs that pits workers against each other. The people who fled starvation in the years directly preceeding the... Continue reading

Chapters five and six of "The Grapes of Wrath" sold the book to me. Not only is the discriptive language subtle and smooth, the charectars are not stiff or distant. More than anything, though, is the plethora of ideas it is selling that drew me in. Particularly, the long tirade on the monster banks eating up the farmers' lives and land. On page 32, the faceless banker explains to the farmer: "The monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die... when the monster stops growing, it dies." Here, the monster is a bank. This short... Continue reading

The most recent episode of ’30 Rock’ was a feminist double whammy. Tina Fey writes the show - which is about a female writer TV writer. Liz Lemon, the main character, cannot seem to find a man, and could easily be called the stereotypical professional woman. The most recent episode was about feminism - it was a feminist show about feminist ideas. In less than 30 minutes, it brought up many issues that are on the minds of cultural critics everywhere. In the show, a supposedly feminist guest writer joins the staff. She turns out to be, frankly, a slut.... Continue reading

Yesterday, I was discussing our feminism unit with my mom. Our conversation went something like this: I of course believe in equal rights. But I was reading the blog Mr. Heidkamp showed us, and they had an article about how sexist a Swiffer commerical was - in part because it depicted a woman mopping." My mom replied, "I think that you're fine with feminism and just hate that they blame the media." It was like the "lightbulb" moment of a psychotherapy session. I like TV, and news, journalism - media as a whole. It annoys me when people blame the... Continue reading

In class, I tried to defend the last few lines of The Great Gatsby as optimistic. I am eternally optimistic on 364 days of the year, and these lines are so wonderfully crafted that they must be good. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … And one fine morning - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." (180) The lines, without any spin, are... Continue reading

In The Great Gatsby, our protaginist spends 5 years creating a fortune and living a fabulous, rich lifestyle. While this is the dream of many people, Gatsby merely uses it as a means for achieving his ultimate, perfect lifestyle: one with Daisy. Then he messes up all of his hard work, looses Daisy, and ends his fabulous lifestyle face down in the pool. I believe two lessons can be gleaned from this. First, no one only wants money and fame. Gold and noriety are a means to achieve greater dreams, or the result of them. Money by itself accomplishes nothing.... Continue reading

Katie Kurtz and I have a dream: to win CTECH. Continue reading

This semester, we have read several books, and they seem to carry some closely interconnecting themes: ostracizing and loneliness. The books presented the sad Holden Caufield, intellectual Frederick Douglass, and abhorred Hester, just to name three. They say that history is written by the winners, but books evidently are always written by the losers. Reading and creating a type of relationship with these characters is an important counterbalance to History class. This semester, reading about people who are sometimes confused or feel alone was refreshing after stingy Englishmen and American politicians. Books, in some aspects, provide a better view of... Continue reading

Everyone who has sat through a world history class has heard of the "bread and circuses" of ancient Rome. The government distracted the people by keeping them fat and happy while corruption brought the higher powers even more power. Today, it's not so much of a problem of bread in our country. (Hey, maybe people only ever get revolutionary when they're hungry? "Let them eat cake," anyone? Taxes on tea?) One could certainly argue that we have a wealth of circuses today along with our bread. Luckily, we have some circuses that keep us in check. Possibly the most fun... Continue reading

Something strongly resonated with me from Frederick Douglass: his connection between education and freedom. It is revolutionary to Douglass when he connects slavery to the robbery of an education. Equality comes from knowledge. This lesson can be applied today. However, in a world where information is at our finger tips it is less obvious how. In the modern day, where every generation living has had widespread literacy and TV, and the internet becoming a staple, we get a lot of information. And people the world over must learn to critically examine what they are told. How does this connect to... Continue reading

While discussing The Scarlet Letter in class today, someone brought up "It must have been no fun to be a Puritan." This, to someone in our culture, obviously true. Puritans would think the posters on Texts from Last Night or the cast of the Jersey Shore were devils on earth. Even when the book was written, in the first half of the 1800s, Hawthorne seemed to disagree with the strictness. He does point out, however, that these were our forefathers. Puritans settled this country, and laid the foundations for all that would follow it. It's somewhat of a stretch to... Continue reading

When I was reading the first few pages of "The Scarlet Letter," I was happy to see a streak of indigence in Hester as she walked to the scaffold. After Abigail in "The Crucible," I was looking forward to a stronger female lead who actually rebelled instead of ultimately conforming and hurting others. However, Hester is actually not as strong as she seemed. She does conform, in the end, by believing her actions deserve harsh and everlasting punishment. Both "The Crucible" and "The Scarlet Letter" have female leads that seem rebellious, but fall short of being truly independent. Maybe this... Continue reading

Recently, in my Philosophy class, we have been reading parts of The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal. It deals with forgiveness: how much evil can a person do and still be worthy of forgiveness? Do we owe others forgiveness? The situation the author was in was uncommon, to say the least. Wisenthal was a Jew in Poland during World War II. He was in a concentration camp. He had watched Germans tear apart his family and kill his friends. Karl was an SS soldier. He was lying on his deathbed from a battle wound, scared, far from home, and too young... Continue reading

After reading Joseph McCarthy's speech on the "Enemies Within" and seeing movie clips about what happened to the blacklisted people of the 1950s, I felt somewhat angry. It seemed insane that the entire American population allowed such blatant violations of citizens' constitutional rights. However, McCarthy had quite a following. People bought into the fact that communists were evil. No one questioned how communism was evil or how it would affect Americans. McCarthy, from what I have read and seen, built his support on a base human emotion: fear. The senator used a basic survival instinct to fulfill a political agenda.... Continue reading

Below, there is a short clip talking about Sarah thoughts on "death panels." It's an old clip, but the fallacy is still there. Palin and her supporter argue that if health care must be rationed, then some people will be left to die because they are not productive. However, if health care was universal and must be rationed, doctors are not necessarily going to deny care to the elderly or disabled. Even in our current system, those of us that are healthier are put at the top of transplants lists and such, but this does not mean we deny opportunity... Continue reading

In the movie Rushmore and the book The Catcher in the Rye, viewers or readers are presented with an Anti-Hero. Ant-Heroes always condone the underdog and ignore the conventionally 'popular' people. Do Americans always condone the Anti-Hero? Look at the show Huge: even in Fat Camp, there are the "popular" mean girls and the nerdy or rebellious main characters. America has a bit of a rebellious streak: the sixties and the American Revolution are two very different examples of this. The Anti-Heroes are reveled; the rags-to-riches stories told again and again. Americans support the average person. We want the people... Continue reading

For starters, I would like to establish that I identify with Holden quite a bit. I somehow miss how people think he is terrible or psycho. Sure, Holden didn't hit the middle of the normal bulls-eye, but would is Ackley or Stradlater more normal? Likable? Holden is not crazy: he's not schizophrenic, he's not manic-depressive, he's not a sociopath. It concerned me to see so many people thought this. Sschizophrenics and sociopaths hear voices and lack a conscious. Holden is neither of these things. I felt like this reflected something in our culture: we want to diagnose everything. It reminds... Continue reading

In Howard Zinn's essay "American Ideology," excerpted from the book Declarations of Independence, he points out the uneven distribution of wealth that has plagued American since 1776. What can you do about the uneven distribution of wealth? It is deep rooted in American society that there are winners and losers. The rich and the poor - in the thoughts of many Americans - are the motivated and the lazy, respectively. With an ounce of thought, however, people can easily see that this is untrue. There are circumstances that determine economic standing. Capitalism and democracy - or Republicanism, if you must-... Continue reading