Things Fall Apart

          In the book things fall apart by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo's village is going through huge changes unlike anything they had ever seen before. As white missionaries and settlers move in they try to impose their ideas about religion and law on the local tribes, first by simply suggesting their ideas, and later by forcing it upon them. Most of the conflict in the book originated from the settlers forcing their ideas on Umofia, which influences the village people to react violently.

          In the book, the village of Umofia is ruled largely by religion and that ends up causing many of their problems. This is similar to how tribe cultures are affecting the spread of Ebola in Africa. Many of the cultures in Africa have death rituals that involve interacting with the bodies of their dead which causes the virus to spread to whoever interacts with the corpses. There is an example of this in the book when Ezeudu died. The ceremony involved leaving the body uncovered and having people walk and around it. In modern day Africa, some groups of people are not willing to give up these rituals despite the threat of Ebola. This has caused Ebola to be spread quickly by corpses in some part of Africa.
          Another important topic in the book is tradition and how it changes. One good example of tradition changing between generations in the book is when Nwoye leaves to join the missionaries and Obierika brings Okonkwo the news while he is exiled. "What moved Obierika to Okonkwo was the sudden appearance of his latter's son, Nwoye, among the missionaries in Umofia." page 107. Okonkwo is extremely against the new religion and is furious at Nwoye for joining it, which I think might be one of the reasons Nwoye left in the first place. He had never agreed with his father and joined the missionaries just to spite him.

Ethnography preconceptions

I am doing my ethnography on my friend's catholic church. I have gone to a Lutheran Church all my life and have become very familiar with their traditions. I have always wondered what was different about catholic churches but I have never had the chance to observe a service at one.

        I do have some preconceptions on what the Catholic Church will be like. One thing I think will be different from my church, is that it might be more strict than a Lutheran church. From what I know about Catholics, they pray at home much more often than anyone from my church.

        Some other things I think will be different from my church is the traditions during the church service. I know that catholic churches have some different view over some topics than Lutherans do. I also know that they have some traditions, like confession, that Lutheran Churches do not have. Another difference I expect to see while observing the church, is a less free form service. From what I have seen of catholic churches, which is not very much, the pastors have a script that they rarely vary from. In my church it is not uncommon for the pastor to start a story related to the sermon.

Me as a Writer

My Autobiography as a Writer

By Alec Wakefield

            Deciding when I first started writing may depend on what you consider writing. Like almost all kids I learned how to draw letters, string together basic words in kindergarten, and even construct easy sentences. But it was not until early grade school that I could create a story in my head and put it in words on paper. So it depends if you think writing is creating words, or stories that decides when I started writing.

            Most of the writing I did in first grade that I can remember was non-fiction, although I’m not sure if that is the best description of it. We used to keep journals that we would use to record what we did over the weekend, and I managed to find mine. Most of my journal entries consisted of misspelled words and poorly drawn pictures, and were probably the first stories I ever wrote. At this point in my writing, I did not know how to come up with my own story line in my head which is required to write fiction.

 The first time I remember writing fiction was in third grade with my teacher Mr. Stimler. Mr. Stimler was one of the most influential people for me as a writer, because he was the first teacher who ever encouraged me to write fiction. Writing fiction was very interesting to me at the time, and this is one of the only times in my life that I wrote for fun. I would start a story in class, then bring it home and continue it and ask Mr. Stimler to read it for me. Most of the writing I did at the time was similar to whatever I had read recently, so some of my stories were not very original, but still helped me come to like writing.

The most important part of fourth and fifth grade for me was the introduction of research papers. It started with writing a paper about a state in fourth grade, and the writing a research paper about parasites the next year in fifth grade. For the first time we had to take notes form our sources, and put them together in to a paper. Research papers are still one my least favorite forms of writing because they are so much more time consuming than writing a story about yourself or one you made up. We continued to write fiction during these years, but the research papers were the most notable change.

            Sixth grade was another important year for me as a writer, partly because research papers and projects became not only part of writing/reading class, but also part of history class. In sixth grade we did a project called history day, which is a national competition of history projects and was also part of our grade. This was the first research project that I enjoyed making, and changed my outlook on research papers. It made me realize they were much more enjoyable if you pick a topic you are interested in before the assignment.

            Seventh and eighth grade were not hugely important in my writing, and were more important for reading. We read short stories and novels instead of writing as much. One significant thing that happened to me as a writer in eighth grade was when we blogged about stories that we read. Blogging about the books taught me to reflect on stories I had read, and think about them in different ways. It helped me view stories and events from many different perspectives.

Hamlet blog

In the play hamlet, justice is a big part of the main story as hamlet tries to find out what justice is after he learns that his father was murdered and he finds out that his uncle was responsible. As Hamlet attempts to bring justice to his uncle he finds that justice is more complicated than most people imagine.
 In many ways justice is even more complicated in real life than how it is described in hamlet because most of the time justice is enforced using organizations instead of individuals. This means that for a crime to be punished it has to wait for the organization to decide on the sentence. When an individual enforces justice they can decide on the sentence much sooner, but may have more biased views. The conflict between enforcement by a group which is less biased but takes more time and enforcement by an individual who can enforce justice quickly but is more likely to be biased.
This brings us to my question for this blog, is justice attainable in the real world. Since it is nearly impossible for a person to be completely unbiased, there is no perfect way to determine who is guilty of a crime, how they should be punished, or even if there should be a law against what they did. The only way to make sure that a decision is less biased is to use a group so members of the group can persuade other members who are biased, which means that they are more likely to be unbiased but will need time to discuss.
 That brings up another part of my question, is there a timeline to justice. If a certain amount of time passes and justice is not served to the criminal, can it become too late to punish him? A good example is if you catch a dog chewing a shoe and punish him twenty minutes later, the dog will not understand what the punishment is for and it will just seem like unnecessary cruelty. The question is, does this same property apply to people too. As mentioned earlier, a large group deciding on a sentence would be more accurate but take more time. By that logic a larger group takes longer to come to a decision and will be more accurate, but eventually the group will take so much time that punishing the criminal would not make sense anymore.

found poetry poem

All the army forces assemble,
25 million in all,
Don't comment don't curse,
just report them,
it's a facebook raid.
This is a fight or democracy,
hundreds of pages knocked down.

Article link: http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/2/6083647/facebook-s-report-abuse-button-has-become-a-tool-of-global-oppression

What is Justice

Justice can be defined a lot of different ways depending on who is enforcing it. It’s not always good under some circumstances. My personal definition of justice is the enforcement of social, religious, and cultural norms. In Plato's Republic They define justice as "the advantage of the stronger" which I think means that whoever has power decides what justice is and will shape it to their ideals. This could be good or bad depending on the person in power. Someone with good intentions, who is in power, will probably try to improve the society by enforcing what he thinks are good morals, but someone with bad intentions might enforce morals that help their own personal gain.

According to dictionary.com, justice is “the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness” or “the administering of deserved punishment or reward. “ The second definition is very similar to my definition of justice; except they do not say what decides if something deserves a reward or a punishment. Their definitions of justice also imply that justice is always good when they describe it as “moral rightness”. I personally believe that justice is only as just as its enforcers. For example, before slavery was abolished whenever a slave escaped it was considered justice when they were caught and returned.

One good way to find out what we think justice is, is by looking at how we portray heroes in movies, TV shows, comics, etc. Almost every hero has some sort of ability that everyday people lack, whether it be a super hero who can fly, or a super spy with a razor sharp mine. I think this shows that people believe that only people more powerful than them can enforce justice, and a typical person cannot do it themselves. The problem is, in the real world where there are no heroes, people still have the same assumption that they cannot enforce they look to their leaders to take up the role, and their leaders then get to decide how to enforce it.

Quest English Eight Reflection

          Over the past year I have grown in many ways. I have learned to reflect on a short story or essay more effectively than before. We have read many different short stories like how to tell a war story, the stranger, and many others that have had different morals and messages that we uncovered using our blogs and other writing assignments. I learned to think about a story as I'm reading it and look for foreshadowing and other writing strategies. I have always enjoyed reading, but the skills I learned this year have made it more interesting.

Final Choice Novel blog

          The dystopian choice novel I chose was The Running Man by Stephen King, which was a book about a future society in 2025 where a new form of entertainment in the form of game shows has become very popular. The game shows involve people risking their life for large amounts of money. The main character who is named Ben Richards, is participating in a competition known as the running man, in which he is pursued by a group of professional killers called the hunters. While running from the hunters Ben Richards discovers that the government has been hiding the truth about increases in air pollution which has risen to extremely dangerous levels in recent years. This air pollution has caused a breakout of deadly cardio-pulmonary diseases, which they have labeled as “asthma” to the public. The way the story was resolved surprised me, because instead of Ben Richards unveiling the secrets the government hid from the public to the world, like the reader might predict, it ends with him learning that his wife and daughter were killed by a mob that believed that Ben Richards was a criminal and then hijacks a jet and crashes it into the game associations headquarters.
         I thought that this ending was slightly unsatisfactory because you never find out how or if the problem was resolved like you do in most novels. One thing that surprised me about this book is why Ben Richards chose to blame the games association about his family’s deaths instead of the mob that killed them. Indirectly, it was the games associations fault for spreading propaganda to the public telling them that Ben Richards was a criminal which caused the mobs anger towards Ben Richards. It confused me that after Ben Richards learned his family was dead the author described him as in a delirium but he still seemed capable of planning his hijacking of the plane, and also put thought into who’s fault he believed his families deaths were. I also thought it was odd that he was capable of piloting the plane after hijacking it, even though the book never mentioned that he had any ability to fly one.

Utopia blog

The Utopian society me and my group created for the Utopian society project was called the Gouda Ghetto. Our society was completely based around genetically modified plants that instead of growing wood or fruit grow cheese. The cheese is used for everything from eating to building and has allowed our society to rise above its neighbors to become a utopia. It is isolated from the rest of the world by the Swiss Sea and the montery jack mountains, and has grown a powerful military to defend itself with. Cheese has even become part of the society’s culture, and is used to define social classes.

One of the problems we faced while creating our society was if we would have other food sources outside of cheese. We eventually decided that we would also have vegetable, poultry, and cattle farms along with our farms for growing out modified cheese plants. This way we could widen our ability to produce food in one source failed, and increase our ability to trade with other societies. Another problem we faced was what other than cheese we would utilize as building materials. Eventually we decided we could mine and trade for various metals to strengthen our structures and build our military weapons out of. The final major problem we faced was how to keep the cheese that our buildings were made of from rotting. We decided that we would build tubes within the cheese buildings that contain Freon, and the climate of the region we live in stayed at a relatively low temperature all year round. We also used a sealant on the cheese that kept air from flowing in and out of it freely.

            My group and I also had focus questions about our military and food production. We decided to have a strong military that we would use only for the defense of our society. All of our citizens own and are trained to use weapons in case we are attacked by a neighboring country. We found that it was very easy to cover our second focus question about food production. Our society contains many farms that grow a variety of foods, primarily the modified cheese plants. We have an entire class in society devoted to working on farms, which make up the majority of our economy.

choice book

          For my choice book I read the Running Man by Stephen King. In the story, which takes place in the year 2025, a new form of entertainment has arisen that consists of game shows that people risk their lives in to win huge amounts of money. The main character Ben Richards has signed up for a game show known as the running man to win money to help his daughter who is fatally ill. The running man is a game show in which a person is on the run from an elite group who is trained to track the contestant down. Throughout the contest the contestant is portrayed as a criminal to the public to avoid people helping them. Throughout the book, Ben Richards discovers many secrets that the government and game association has kept secret from the public, such as skyrocketing rates of air pollution, and diseases that have resulted from them. The government continues to do nothing about the pollution and instead allows people to die from lung diseases to maintain their power.
          This reminds me of some parts of our media that discuss things like celebrities and sporting events instead of more important matters. It keeps people from questioning their government’s solutions to problems by distracting them with entertainment. In the book Ben Richards discovers the truth about the pollution problem when he meets Bradley Throckmorton, whose sister suffers from a lung disease caused by the pollution. Bradley has researched the pollution and managed to build a nose filter to protect people’s lungs from the pollution, but when he attempts to spread what he found through Ben Richards, it is suppressed by the games association.  Instead the games associations uses his attempt to spread Bradley’s findings to lower public opinion of him even further, which results in the lynching of Ben Richard’s family. At the end of the book, the games association claims to have nothing to do with his families deaths, but I personally think they did so something to intentionally cause their deaths, and even if they did not, they did cause it indirectly by releasing propaganda to the public to make Ben Richards look bad, which caused them to attack his family.

Vocabulary

Julius Caesar

In the play Julius Cesar there are many different references to leadership and the qualities of a leader. Characters like Cesar, Brutus, and Cassius are compared to show good and bad qualities of leaders and how they can lead to the leader’s downfall. Some qualities I noticed in Cesar are that, like they said in the play, he is ambitious which can be good or bad depending on the circumstances. If he is ambitious for his people it could be good because he would focus on improving life for his people, but if he is ambitious for himself he could try to gain more power for himself and improve life for himself and the people around him, which would make him a tyrant like Cassius and Brutus predicted. One good quality Cesar had was that he was very good at persuading large groups of people, which can help convince a reluctant group of an idea.

One other character, who displayed qualities of good and bad leaders in the play, was Cassius. One negative quality about him is that he was very manipulative, which helped him convince Brutus and the other members of the group that assassinated Cesar to help him. A manipulative leader can convince people to do things that they otherwise would not, without them realizing that they are doing anything. One positive leadership trait that Cassius has is that he is very loyal, especially to Brutus.

The last main character in the play that showed leadership characteristics was Brutus. Brutus’s best leadership trait in the play was his selflessness and sympathy, which in a leader, help the leader focus on the need of his people and not himself. One bad leadership trait Brutus possessed was that he was very trusting, especially of Cassius. This made him very easy to manipulate in to assassinating Cesar. He was especially vulnerable to Cassius, who was very good at persuading stubborn people.