Thunderstorm

Author's Note: I wrote this piece for a warm up one day. It was a stream of consciousness and I kind of went to a dark place with it. The day I wrote this I was sad and so the story kind of went in that direction. This piece was an expression of my sadness that day.

  Standing outside, under a tree during a thunderstorm. Wondering if this storm will ever stop. I am soaked now, cold as a icicle in the frozen tundra. There is no way to get home from here. I am trapped.  Holding my umbrella, I think to myself why am I holding this? There is something wrong with this picture. I knew why. The umbrella could not only keep my dry somewhat for now at least, but it could also really harm me. The thunder is horrendous, harmful, terrifying. I need to put this down away from me where I do not see it, so that I can not pick it up again. Maybe in some since thinking I would get warmer. I step out into the rain and find a place to set it far enough away that if I wanted to get it I would have to walk a ways away. Plus I didn't want to feel so cold. Once I sat it down I sprinted to the tree I was under, the biggest tree in the world, or at least I thought it was compared to my minute size. At that time I couldn't think at all, the only thing that I could see was the rain and all the lightning. I wasn't scared of these storms but now that I was standing in one of them alone I was petrified. Was my family okay? My friends? I didn't know but I couldn't do anything anyway. It was quite to dangerous to do so. The last sound I heard was a huge loud banging sound. It was thunder and then I felt pain and the next thing I saw was a bright light nothing else just that and I knew that I was gone.

Perdictions of My Sister's Keeper

Author's Note: I wrote this piece to express what my thoughts were so far in the book and how I think that it is going to turn out in the end.

Anna, a 13 year old blood donor for her dying sister Kate, feels her family doesn’t appreciate the fact that she goes through a lot being a donor. I can't imagine how hard it would be to have to be in the hospital all the time donating blood for my sister. The thought that no matter how much you hate giving blood, if you don't your sister will die. Its frightening, I mean it has to be.  This is why she filed a law suit against her parents. I believe that even though she has a lot of reason to be mad, and she really is upset about it, I don’t think that her case is strong enough for her to win. I believe that after the case is settled, the parents will come through and give Anna the freedom to choose whether or not her be poked. I think that Kate will insert her opinion and tell her parents that Anna shouldn't have to give her blood if she doesn’t want to. After that, Kate will have to go on a donor list and she will have to wait for a donor. Kate will become more, and more sick, and in the end she will die. Once Kate has passed, Anna will feel as though she isn't loved and that the only reason she was brought into this world was to give blood to her sister. Now that she's gone she is worthless, at least in her eyes.

Sarah's Secret

Sarah walked down the hallway staring at the floor, watching her feet grace the lightly stained hardwood, step by step singing all the way. With every step the floor made more, and more noise, and the hallway got darker, and darker, yet she still sang and walked as if she was clueless of what lies ahead.  The hardwood floor has come right up to bright orange carpeting. She stopped suddenly. Breathing heavily, she looks up slowly, not sure what she'll find. Hand on her chest, she feels her heart beat rapidly. Trying to calm herself, she looks back down at the ground to avoid seeing anything in the room. Again, she looks up slowly only to find a large leather chair in the middle of the room. The walls were lined with bookshelves. It was empty. No one in sight. She walks slowly and carefully, looking around making sure nobody's watching, and finally approaches the chair. She looks one more time over her shoulders, then climbs up the chair, and sits. Her feet barely off the edge, and her little head only a third of the way to the top of the chair; she decides to get comfortable. As she starts to close her eyes and fall asleep she feels a cool breeze graze her head, and blow through her light blond pigtails. It felt as if a fan had just turned on directly above her. She opens her eyes and the lights were bright as the sun shining in her eyes. Blinking, adapting to the light, she squints her blue eyes, only to find her furious father standing there staring at her in shame. She wasn’t sure what she did. Nothing happened. She just sat down in that huge leather chair, that’s it. Frightened, she jumps out of the chair and walks slowly towards her dad. Tears starting to stream down her face, not actually crying, just tears. She doesn’t whimper, not a peep. She walks past him out the door and he follows her out the door back into the hall. The bottom of her pigtails, wet from her tears that she refused to wipe away, head down; she never looks up at her father, she wasn’t allowed. A backhand always follows their eyes meeting. Ever since she's never been able to look anyone in the eye. Her mother is the only person who's ever seen her ice blue eyes, says that you could stare into all day long, but Sarah never lets anyone that close anymore. Nobody.

Racism

Racism. Was it right? In To Kill A Mockingbird, racism was the center of their society. Everything from school, to walking on the streets, even in huge court cases revolved around the color of your skin. This was shown throughout the book. In many cases though, the whites were shown to be worse people than the blacks were even thought to be.

All of the kids were brought up with this thought that racism is okay, that that’s the norm. They were brought up thinking that it was okay to treat blacks like they were less than us whites, like they didn't even exists. Scout was one of the only children that saw the way that they were acting was terrible. She saw that racism isn't right, and that all people should be treated equal, but the most adults didn’t agree. They had grown up that way and weren't willing to change.

One person in the book that didn’t see everyone as black, or white, was Atticus Finch. He saw everyone as equals and gave everyone a fair chance, even blacks. In the big court case when Tom Robinson, who was black, was against Mayella Ewell Atticus stood up for Tom Robinson only stating the facts. He was trying to prove that maybe it wasn’t Tom Robinson, and that maybe, just maybe, they had everything wrong.

Today, racism is seen differently. There is still some racism in the world, but not to the extent that it was years ago. We have gotten past that time frame where racism was okay. People who are racist are in way, frowned upon. That is a time frame in our history that most of us are not proud of, but others grew up that way, and don’t see the problem. Which is one of the reasons why we are still racist. Some people believe that once all of the elderly people who grew up with racism die off, then we will be a better country.

Personality

One mistake. That's all it took for Melinda to be hated by everyone in school. She called the cops at a high school party, and now no one wants to hang out with her. She lost her friends, and she is now she is an outcast. Melinda has to live through this pain everyday, but most of all, she has to try to move forward for the next four years of her high school life.

Melinda calling the cops was the right thing to do, but when you go to a party then call the cops, you are bound to be hated. Melinda didn't realized that what she was doing was that bad a thing until it was already done. I think that calling the cops was a good thing for her. After she called the cops she hit rock bottom, but art was brought her back to reality. Whenever she was drawing she went to this place, where it was just her and the paper and thats all that mattered, which was very helpful when Melinda was feeling down. Most of that was Mr. Freeman. Without him she would go completely insane and be entirely depressed.

Melinda has been lost for her whole life. She was always an outcast, lost in the crowd. Even when she was in the 5th grade she was not sure who she was, or who she wanted to be. Sure she had friends, but she looked to them more for her own sake. Melinda wanted to improve her personality, but instead of looking within herself she would end up being her friends. When she decorated her room with her friends, the room wasn't a reflection of her, it was a reflection of what all her friends wanted her room to look like.

Will Melinda ever find herself? I think if she stays with art she could succeed immensely. With the way the tree drawing effected her I think it could help Melinda to find herself. Maybe if she finds herself she can get some real friends, not some fill in, good for now friends.

The Power Of The Government

How would life be if everyone was the same? If you couldn’t learn, or come to be a better, more successful person. Well  "Harrison Bergeron" and Fahrenheit 451 show very similar plots where this is the center of the characters' worlds, their normal lives. The government is more powerful than anything and everything, and no one could even try and rise above it, no matter how hard they try. In the end everyone is equal, and there is no alternative.

In both stories the characters are to believe that to succeed is a very bad thing. You shouldn't be smarter than anyone else, nor should you try and be better than anyone else. In Fahrenheit 451 if you try to read, the government will have the firefighters come and burn all of the books they can find. When Guy, a firefighter, questions whether he still wants to be a firefighter still, or quit, he feels as if that’s a bad thing, and he shouldn't question authority, but he feels he doesnt have a choice of what to do but because of the controlling government.

One common theme is the government frowning upon one person succeeding more than others. In Fahrenheit 451 the characters are frowned upon succeeding, but they still have the chance to prosper. If they are found reading, the government will burn the books, but they can still learn through other resources, and yet no one has ever tried. In "Harrison Bergeron" they don’t have that choice at all. The government decided that everyone will be exactly the same. All the same rank in beauty, strength, speed, smarts, everything! If you are smarter than everyone else, you don’t have a chance to succeed and become more; you are shrunk to the "normal" standard, and deprived of the successful life you could have.

For me, the main lesson in these two pieces, would be that if our government were to handicap everyone in our society, life would be terribly boring with everyone equal to every single person in society. It taught me that life isn't about being better than everyone else; it's about being the best you can be and to succeed at just that.

A Christmas Carol

"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I live in the Past, Present, and the Future. The Spirts of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone."

In this passage from the book A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens was trying to show how Scrooge was giving up his old way of hating Christmas, and everything that goes along with it. He realizes that Christmas is about giving, and not receiving, but mostly its about family. After this passage in the book, his atittude changed and lead to him being nice and buying that turkey for the pour little boy's family. All of his bad atittude were gone and he loved this time of the year for ever on.