Janie

     Janie is the focal point of the story, without her there is no conflict. Without her there is no conflict. She has spent half her life married, to men she has no emotion for. Every time she has to actually work for a living she acts like she is being forced to move a mountain. She blames the husband for being in a position where she must work. Now while a normal person would either divorce or die, she does neither. She up and left her first husband for her second husband. She did this after speaking with the new man for a day or two. Eventually she celebrated her second husbands death. 

     Her consistent lack of judgement with men is irritating. Running off with a stranger is a foolish way to solve marital problems that have not even been confronted. Running off with a stranger and marrying him instead is even more stupid. Never confronting the marital problems with her second husband is redundantly stupid. On top of that she left her first husband because with him she would have to work to live, so obviously a man dead set on building a new town is a better choice. She is lazy. How can she expect to have a happy marriage when the only time she really talks to her husbands is when she is leaving them or dying. She brought her unhappiness on herself. There is plenty of blame on the two men she has been with (so far in the story), both were unfair and overbearing, but no one forced her to stay with either of them. 

Thankful

 The person I am most thankful for in my sixth period English two class is my teacher, Mr. McCarthy. I've never really liked my English classes, they are boring and either drown you in essays or make you try to pick out meaning from a text that does not exist. Mr. McCarthy makes English fun though, he constantly calls on us in class and forces us to prove not only that we read the material, but that we also somewhat understand it. If the unfortunate student is completely oblivious to what is going on he light heartingly humiliates him. It makes English enjoyable and inspires us to pay attention.
 Mr. McCarthy's tangents also relate to what we are reading and do not make me question all of my life choices as I wait for the painfully long story to end. I personally find the tangents interesting and I have learned a couple new things from them, for example I did not know expecting fathers handed out cigars.
 Mr. McCarthy has made English an enjoyable class, for this year at least. It is nice to enjoy to be able to enjoy a class most dread. I'm happy to say that I not only enjoy English but that I am also learning it at the same time. Never have I liked a class and actually gotten work down in that class, and I am thankful for that.

Hemmingway

Earnest Hemmingway was a very famous fisherman, boxer, hunter and writer.  He invented a style of writing  He ran with the bulls in Pampalona.  he lived in Cuba, Paris, and Oak Park. He was on the front of World War I and II.  He was married four times and had numerous affairs.  He was an alcoholic.  His writings are interesting, exciting, and well written, but I dislike Hemmingway as person.  If i had not seen the documentary and gotten a glimpse of what he was really like, I would believed the masculine facade and never have guessed that he was a whiney, attention seeking, brat.

Not only did he pretend to be a war hero after World War I, in order to seem manly, his lack of loyalty with his numerous wives and friends caused me to lose all respect for him as a man.  Sure he did a bunch of cool "manly" things, but when it came down to the grit and substance that real men have, Hemmingway came up short.  I mean, anyone can shoot a lion, but it takes a real "man" to want fight your friend over a woman you want to sleep with, that is not the woman your married to.    

6 Word Stories

The plane is silent 30,000ft up.

His watch would never be rewound.
The wind shelter doors blew open.
Their last kiss tasted like blood.
Required summer reading list: "Mein Kampf"
Died; old age, on death row .

Me

Hi, my name is Daniel Cleary, but I usually go by Dan.  I'm fifteen years old and, like most of you, I have just started my sophomore year at Whitney Young.  Cross country and track are a pretty big part of my life.  With practice every day and meets Saturday, I spend a lot of time running with the team.  This means that on the weekends I like to spend a lot of time with friends.  I live in the Southside of Chicago, in the neighborhood of Beverly, where I attended Sutherland elementary school.  To get to school I have to take a metra and then switch to the blueline.  Like a lot of families on the southside, and if my last name wasn't enough of a hint, my family is Irish.  One of my favorite things to do, when I'm not out with friends or at cross country, is to eat and sleep. After a long day I look forward to coming home and seeing a plateful of food in front of me.  Afterwards I do homework listen to music and then fall asleep.  Musicians/bands that I like are MGMT, Kid Cudi, Neon Trees and Keys n Krates.  Other fun facts about are that I like winter and all the sports that come with it, I like to laugh and think commuting every morning is fun.

John Proctor-Hero or Stooge

John Proctor was the root cause for the witch hunt in Salem.  Had he been an honest man in the first place and not committed adultery with Abigail, there never would have been any talk of witchcraft.  There would have been no dance in the Forrest, and life in Salem would have dragged on as normal.  All of John's actions in the story are therefore somewhat undermined by his one mistake, flaw, and dishonest moment(s).  I do not think he is a stooge.  He plays an important role in the play and is the only person not controlled by fear or greed.  He is a serious man who only cares about what he has done and without him there would be no conflict, and therefore no story.  He is not the hero either, this is one of the stories where the good guys do not win and the dark side of humanity wins out over all.  John Proctor hangs in the end, as does his wife and dozens of other uninvolved people, in fact the only person that truly deserves to hang, Abigail, escapes the town, after robbing the minister; her uncle and caretaker, Parris.  In this wake people are orphaned, animals uncared for and total anarchy ensues. In the end Proctor will die, and leave orphan his children, all for the sake of keeping his name clear.  A true hero would do everything in his power to stay alive for his children, no matter how unfair it seems or what people think of you.  John Proctor was just an infallible, imperfect man.  He did what he thought was best and stuck to his morals, even after he had broken them.  That is what ruined his ability to be a hero, he had morals, but broke them.  The hero is the person that sticks to their morals until the very end, and John Proctor was not that man.

There Goes The Neighborhood

I imagine that being a Native American and seeing the first people sail to shore would be shocking and intimidating.  The Natives would have never seen a ship that size before, ever, and they would have also never seen sails, which must have seemed almost magical.  The men that came off those ships would be the first white men that anyone on that continent had ever seen.  If I was one of the natives to first see the settlers arrive, I would not immediately grab my bow and fight off the newcomers, I would try to make contact with the mysterious new people. Native Americans did not believe in land ownership, so I would not mind if they used some land that the rest of the tribe did not use.  I would enjoy the technology and trade the settlers brought with them.  I would have even liked the settlers, until they began overstepping their bounds.  As they began to take more and more land,  begin to hunt down other natives, and try to force conversion to a new religion that completely disrespected the belief system the natives had, all trust and respect would vanish and only resentment would be felt.  The natives would hate the settlers for ruining their way of life.

This process of invasion and forced assimilation is similar to what is happening in the Ukraine.  Russia, the larger, more powerful "settler", is trying to take over the Ukraine, the "natives".  For years Russia and the Ukraine existed without any major issues, until Russia wanted more, just like when the settlers wanted more.  Now what is happening is that the Ukraine is fighting a doomed defensive war, just as the natives did, while Russia takes what it wants without regarding Ukrainian authority at all, exactly what the settlers did.