What I thought about the ending of 'The Road' (project 2)

     I was kind of upset with the ending of The Road but was satisfied at the same time. At the end of the book, the father gets shot with an arrow and ends up dying on the side of the road after telling his son to continue living, carry the fire, and find some other good people to travel with. soon after the boy is on the road, a man comes up from behind him and basically says that he had been following the son and wants to look after him.
     I was upset with the ending because by this time in the book, I kind of felt the love that the father and son had for each other. I just didn't want the father to die there because I wanted both the father and son to find a group of people to settle down with and be happy.
     While I wasn't happy with the father dying, I felt that it was acceptable. the father's job was to keep he son alive and give him hope. I think that he did a very good job of that. He passed on the fire giving the kid hope and a purpose to stay alive.

What I thought about 'The Road' (project 1)

     When I first started reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, I had found it rather slow paced and dull. The reason I found it uninteresting is probably because my judgement of the book before I had started to read it. When I was picking this book, I had a choice between five books. To hopefully get a book that I would like, I read the backs of the books like most people. The Road said something about a boy and a father trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world. After reading this summary, I had imagined that the book would be action packed and full of suspense. It took me about fifty pages to realize that wasn't going to happen. Those fifty and the next fifty pages were the longest pages that I had ever read. After that, I started to really pay attention to the philosophical point a lot more and became extremely interested in that.
     I feel that McCarthy has done an excellent job in describing human behavior when the only thing that you worry about is survival and all hope is gone. Constantly struggling for life and death changes people in a bad way. What makes humans different from other animals is that comparatively, we live very comfortable lives. Many people have nothing to worry about regarding food and water, and we don't have any natural predators that we need to defend ourselves against. When that security is taken away however, we go back to our primal instincts. As can be seen in the book, no group of people cared or trusted any other group and most groups of people resorted to cannibalism just to continue living.
     I also thought that the style of writing that McCarthy used was interesting. There were no names  mentioned about any of the people (except Ely but that wasn't his real name), a great portion of the book was dialogue between characters and no quotation marks were used, and the language used was very formal even between the father and the son. I think that there was one informal word used  throughout the entire book. It was "yeah" said by the father instead of "yes" I think when the son asked if they could leave some place. This was confusing some times but over all I think that it added to the quality of the book.
     I mentioned that the dialogue was unusual, but I didn't expand on that fully. Large portions of those dialogues were simple sentences or just one word answers such as "okay" or "yes". I think that this lack of commonly accepted grammar and the use of simple sentences further show the reader how dehumanized people are becoming.
     Over all, I am very happy that I chose this book to read but think that I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't rushed to conclusions when picking it, and if I had read it slower because I feel that there are some parts of the book that I missed the first time around.

Is Cannibalism Morally Right? The Road (2)

Throughout the book  The Road, there is a group of "bad people" that eat other humans to survive. While discussing this aspect of the book, we decided to make this topic our next blog question. "Is cannibalism morally right?"

I don't think that I would ever turn to caniballism but I don't really know because I am not in a situation where it is either eat another human or die. It is perfectly understandable that in the situation presented in the book, many people that would normally never go near human flesh, would form a group of man eaters. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, in order to reach a level of morality you first need to have your physiological, safety and security, love and belongingness, and self-esteem needs. These are kind of hard to have if you are still struggling to get your next meal. So in order to answer this question, I think that Cannibalism is not morally right but is acceptable in this situation since very few people are thinking about morals when they are starving

The Road: Should the mom have killed herself?

     The book that I chose to read is The Road. This book is about a world post apocalypse where a father and son both try to survive and travel south because thatis where the father says that they should go. With these two main characters, there used to be a woman. She was the man's wife and the child's mother. somewhere back on the road, she couldn't take the uncertainty of life so she killed herself. The question for our group this week is "Should the mom have killed herself?"

      I don't think that it was right for the mom to have killed herself and left the other two by themselves. Her reasoning for her suicide was that she was sure that some horrible death would meet them later no matter what happened and with all of the uncrtainty going on all arund her, she wanted to make sure that she at least had control of her own death. Even though I can completely understand why she wanted to die, I thought that this was incredibly selfish of her and that she shouldn't have done it. If all three of them had just wanted to kill themselves, then it would be acceptable but for her to leave both her husband and her kid by themselves with no one else to turn to for help is very inconsiderate. Now the father and son are left by themselves and it is even harder for them to survive.

A Letter to Parents

Dear Parents,

I know that I am only a teenager and have not yet had any children, but I have been a child and have seen and heard things that other parents do. From personal experiences, I have found out that many parents don't know how to raise children well. While you may think that you are helping your child, chances are, you are just hindering them later on in life.

1. Don't be a helicopter parent.

These are the types of parents that I have seen most often. While you may be helping them out right now by shielding them from all of life's discomforts, you won't be able to keep that up forever. Your children will grow to hate how controlling of them you are, when it is time for them to go off to college, you will be emotonally crushed, and when they are far away from you your children will probably do everything that they couldn't do at home such as drink and do drugs.

2. Don't be the parents that don't care about their children.

These are the most uncommon parents but they still exist. While you shouldn't be a helicopter parent shielding your kids from everything, you should also not be a parent that lets your kids do whatever they want. Don't be the parent that forgets about their child in the mall or doesn't notice when they haven't been at home for the past week. Without a support system for your child, your kid will most likely end up doing drugs, drinking, hating you, and possibly finding you so useless that they kill you for fun or to try and get some reaction out of you.

3. Don't give in to everything that your child wants.

One of your jobs as a parent is to prepare your child for the real world. In the real world, if your child wants something, they will have to get it for themselves. This needs to start from an early age. it is fine to get him something every once in a while but don't go out of your way just to get them something that they can easily get for themselves. I hear about parents that give in to their children all the time from my mom who works in a preschool. They are always the ones that have the hardest time adjusting to being independant which you don't want if you ever want your kid to leave home and have a good life.

4. Don't worry about what they will think about you all of the time.

You are their parent, not their friend. That being said, you shouldn't just do things without thinking of how they feel but at the end of the day, you need to raise them properly and teach them what is right and wrong. You need to teach them manners and punish them if they do something wrong. they may say that they hate you or something just s devistating, but they really do love you and need you to be there for them and help them.

5. Make sure that you are there for them if they need you.

Just be there for them when something bad happens in their life. It is very nice to be able to to talk to someone and just be able to let out all of your emotions.

Civic Duty

People need to start being more respectful towards eachother. When I go out and walk around the city, I see people littering, standing in the middle of aisles of stores oblivous to everyone else, sticking their feet out on the CTA making it difficult to get by, and talking loudly and bothering others.. It is so frustrating to see people doing this. It's like they have no consideraton for anyone else besides themselves. The disrespectfulness of this city is the thing that I hate the most. As far as I can tell, this only hapens in big cities. Almost everywhere else that I have gone, especially small communities, everyone is extremely friendly and are just waiting to have a conversation with you and they are respectful of others. I know that this is a big city and that complete strangers aren't just going to start becoming friends over night, but we need to look out for one another and not just have our own best interest in mind all of the time. There is a lot of room for improvement so until then take baby steps and hold your garbage until you get to a trash can. Move to the side of an aisle or side walk to loiter. Stick your feet out until someone else comes on the train. And try to talk quieter when around others.

Is Povety A Choice?

My family isn't the richest family in the world. My dad had been without a job for about a year and was sending out applicatons every day to try and find somewhere to work. We recently got extremely lucky. Right before his unemployment benefits stopped, my dad found a job and, after about a year of scraping by, we are finally financially stable. In the case of my family,  poverty wasn't a choice. We were not comfortable with worrying that the next bills wouldn't be able to be paid. In All Souls, on the surface at least, it seems as if the Macdonalds want to be poor and they are happy being there. Even though Ma can't provide for her family and they live off of wellfare she seems to get along with almost everyone and seems to enjoy talking to them. However, I don't think that she wants to be there. We could see this when Frankie left for the Navy and Ma was happy that he was leaving Southie. So, no, I don't think that povert is a choice. eventhough 15% of ll Americans live below the poverty line, I don't think that they want to be there. Parents don't want to have to worry about financial issues and they don't want to have to worry about how their kids will grow up. Poverty is just smething that people, unfortunately, fall into and because they don't have anyone else to lean on, they usually stay there and live depressing lives without hope of escaping.

Intigration

Even though many families say that they want everyone to be equal and want everyone to get along, I have learned from personal experiences that this is, at least subconsciously, not true. My family and their friends are almost all white and want their kids to go to a white school or want to live in a white neighborhood. I am not trying to say that they are racist. When these people are out in the streets they have no problem meeting or befriending people of different races. They are just not comfortable with being a minority. These fears that they heave probably come from stories that they heard, and even if they aren't true have been passed down to me.

From what I have seen in the news and from what I have been told, most people don't want to integrate. I'm fine with that. I feel that it is wrong to try and force people to get intigrated. If groups of people are forced to get intigrated, they will still have resentment for the group that they now have to live with. In order to be truly integrated, people will have to reach out by their own will.

Malcolm X

     So far, The Autobiography of Malcolm X has been one of the most enjoyable books that I have read for school. I really like how brutally honest Malcolm is with us. He is telling us things that seem to be hurting him to have to remember such as when he had a conk and how ashamed he was to have burned his scalp to look more white.
     My favorite part of the book so far has been the part where he started to become self educated in prison and his struggle to get rid of his former uneducated street self. I liked this part because it was his transformation from being on the streets to helping out other African Americans. Malcolm began learning after he conformed to Islam. Frustrated that he couldn't write a decent letter to reply to Elijah Muhammad, Macolm began copying words out of the dictionary to not only improve his handwriting but to allow himself to read anything. I really admired how dedicated he was to learning.

King still king?

Martin Luther King Jr. played an important role in helping to desegregate America. I can't even imagine what America would look like now if it hadn't been for him. Still I don't think he should be called a king, I think that Matin Luther King thought that he was just a normal person trying to help out other normal people.

Meaning in my life

I have been recently struggling with finding a  reason for why I do things in my life. Everyday I wake up at 5:30 just to swim or finish my homework, both of which I would rather not do. For a while I thought that I was just doing this so that I could please my parents but now that I am actually thinking about it, I swim and do well in school because deep down, it makes me happy. I like to learn and I actually do like to swim. I think that everyone should do things that they enjoy doing and those things give your life meaning.

Music Review - Good People by Jack Johnson

A song that I really like is Good People by Jack Johnson. I like this song because it is very relaxing but also has a strong message behind it. Good People is about how there is so much misery in the world today. In the song, Jack tells us about television and why it is bad for society. A few of the things that come to mind when I think of television being bad are news stations and stations that show "children's" shows. The News almost always focuses on the negative parts of society such s natural disasters, people gettng killed/raped, and other sources of misery. This can lead to more people killing and hurting others trying to be worse than the previous stories. Other things that are bad about television are stations that show "children's" shows mainly Disney Channel. Kids are new in the world and don't know a whole lot so they learn by observing things around them. By watching shows such as Good Luck Charlie, Jessie, or A.N.T. Farm they are learning that it is good and funny to not listen to your parents, get in trouble, and not do well in school. Unless they have parents that tell them otherwise, kids can carry these ideas into adulthood and then they cn commit crimes and hurt others and not think anything of it. In order for there to be more good people in the world, there have to be good adults setting good examples for children.

Frankly speaking

I recently read the book Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl and enjoyed it very much. Unlike other holocaust books such as Maus, The Pianist, or Night, Man's Search for Meaning described what his experiences were in a much more graphic way. I think that that is what I liked about the book. When I read Maus, the Pianist, and Night but I felt that they were more for children as they told the stories of the author's lives but didn't descrbe it and cencored out what life was really like. Dr. Frankl wrote whatever he was thinking and didn't spare very many details such as when he talked about the jews turning on eachother such as when they took eachother's clothes or resorted to cannbalism, I hadn't heard of that before and it surprised me.