Wake Up and Listen The meaning of life is to find the meaning of life. Is it not? We all go through each day trying to figure out which road out the infinite amount of paths will lead us in a better direction where happiness is prominent and society is flawless. However, not every single human being is going to fit on that narrow, one-lane highway to success. Bad choices, accidents, fate, family matters, society, temptation, anger, rage, addiction, and loss of hope can all be deciding factors in opting to choose that wrong path to self-destruction. The adverse thing is, once you've traveled so far down the road, you get so discouraged that you feel like you can never turn back or make up for the "lost time." The past is there for us to learn from and rethink how we're going to take our wide steps into the future. Ambition and determination are key elements needed in achieving your goals. Nathan McCall goes to hell and back, just to go to hell and back again in every stage of his life. But, without a doubt, he always regains strength and bounces back. Working-class families are anything but lazy. Fifty plus hours a week with an average of two to three mouths to feed and backs to cloth, doesn't leave much time left for sleep let alone family bonding. As a young child, Nathan understood one thing for sure - work equaled money and that you need money to survive, especially in the "white man's world." At age thirteen, Nathan was too young, innocent, and ignorant to the fact that racism existed anywhere and everywhere he went. Working to him at this stage in his life was just that...working. Nathan just couldn't understand why his older brothers put up a fight to go with their stepfather to Sterling Point. ... ... middle of paper ... ...ause white people benefit from the advantages they receive by just being white, they have a power to incorporate change in America to help people who are less fortunate. However, it seems as though they're all too content and it doesn't directly affect them so they find no serious need to worry. Personally, this book has exceedingly influenced my train of thought and set up different tracks in my mind to run on. After the first thirteen chapters, I definitely developed a penchant for this book and couldn't seem to put it down. Maybe listening is what more white people (since they are the majority in power of our government) have to do to better understand the surrounding races and possibly build a better society to live in. If we don't listen, how can we ever understand or even begin to feel what it's like to be apart of racially different community in America?
I enjoyed that the book challenged some of the biggest problems in our legal system, or even society as a whole. There is still a lot of racism going on, and this book was not afraid to exploit that. I enjoy those kinds of readings. They are the things that will eventually spark a change and shed some light on the problems that are happening right now.
This story gives the readers the feeling of ambitions. There might be some misguided individuals out there that have an similar lifestyle to McCall and reading this book would potentially help them seek desire for success. Growing up McCall had intentions of being different. For instance, while he was in prison he recalled back to the time he study so hard for Mr. Brown test. Even his parents knew he was different because out of everyone around his neighborhood he was the only one who attended a white school. Then when he attended a black school he wanted to learned, but got caught in society. Prison was a good place for him because to occupy his time he start reading and learning. Additionally, prison help him develop a sense of inner discipline and self worth. Gail Jardine stated that “ Makes Me Wanna Holler is a journey not just from degradation to accomplishment, but also from absence to self-determined”. This shows that the book gives the readers more than excitement and the urge to want to keep reading, but also try to find your place in
Nathan views education as not only unnecessary, but potentially wasteful and dangerous: “Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes…It’s hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes” (56). Nathan believes that knowledge will either wreck his daughters, as they might be able to think for themselves, or will simply run out of them because they are too weak to retain their learning. He sees the women in his family as “dull-witted, bovine females” who are pliable to his needs (73). Adrienne Rich refers to this as a part of the “Great Silence” in which men “withhold from (women) large areas of the society’s knowledge and cultural attainments” (Rich 290). Rachel knows she is a victim of this circumstance, “telling him off good in the bathroom mirror,” while proclaiming “I’ll show you whose mind is a blank slate!” (426). However, because she is subservient to her father, Rachel refuses to declare this sentiment to his
The purpose and meaning of my life is…to fulfill my life as a child of God. I have always been a religious person. My decisions and actions are guided by a moral compass and by the Ten Commandments. I believe in an ultimate and absolute truth that governs all humans. This is my meaningful philosophy of life that has been encouraged by my parents. After being confirmed, I took it upon myself to try to make this philosophy more guided by my own internal beliefs, and less to do with my parent’s expectations. I traveled on some youth retreats to find the center of my beliefs, and God guided me to answers. I now hold and can defend my beliefs and morals very close to my heart.
"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive...." Joseph Campbell made this comment on the search for meaning common to every man's life. His statement implies that what we seem bent on finding is that higher spark for which we would all be willing to live or die; we look for some key equation through which we might tie all of the experiences of our life and feel the satisfaction of action toward a goal, rather than the emptiness which sometimes consumes the activities of our existence. He states, however, that we will never find some great pure meaning behind everything, because there is none. What there is to be found, however, is the life itself. We seek to find meaning so that emptiness will not pervade our every thought, our every deed, with the coldness of reality as the unemotional eye chooses to see it. Without color, without joy, without future, reality untouched by hope is an icy thing to view; we have no desire to see it that way. We forget, however, that the higher meaning might be found in existence itself. The joy of life and the experience of living are what make up true meaning, as the swirl of atoms guided by chaotic chance in which we find our existence has no meaning outside itself.
Hayes and Nate had different viewpoints on what freedom is. Although Nate’s lifestyle was different from his father’s, he still was not free. Nate worked to provide for his family, and his father did so as well. Hayes had the mindset of a slave, and held onto the past, and it showed in his behavior towards people.
As we read in the book, Nathan is easily influenced by his surroundings. I said that the novel is about being pressure because when you do not know who you are as a person you tend to try and find yourself by doing things that does not pertain to you. Teenagers in particular tend to get influenced by the lifestyle of their peers. However, some teens have the courage to resist the pressure and be themselves rather than being the one amongst a group. In the novel McCall was the teen who got influenced by Jerome Gary also known as Scobie-D. Everyone feared and esteemed Jerome, but Nathan respected the respect that Scobie-D demanded. According to Arnold King “ McCall like many other black men felt the weight of a nation on his shoulders because any sense of failure reflected not only on himself, but also on his family and his entire race”. This quote refers back to the book when black parents focus their children to behave in public and if they did not they would get in trouble because the child behavior was the reflection of how their parent raised them. Although, pressure can be harmful and detrimental it can also be beneficial as well. Nathan McCall is an example of that because he came from being a trouble juvenile to a professional
In the beginning, Nathan was a good idea to take his family to Africa to “help” the people of the Congo adopt the ways of Christianity. The girls don’t want to go, but Orleanna and Nathan make them go. The Duke did the same when he realized that no one was going to say he couldn’t go to Africa
For instance, Nathan exhibits the personality of a strict, religious man who strongly believes in traditional religion, specifically Baptism. Nathan acts out in abuse to his family when they do not follow his moral ideals, especially out of his selfishness and cowardliness. These traits illustrate Nathan to a wrathful god who is quick to discipline and punishment. Nathan only try to save unbaptized persons for his own well being, in order to secure a spot in heaven, even if it destroys the lives of others around him, including his wife and daughters.
I am often bombarded with a seven word question in life as I am sure many other people are. “What is your ultimate goal in life?” Many answers may differ, but my answer seems to always be the same; to seek happiness. If one can’t seek happiness what is the point of living? If you are miserable all the time and not living life with a positive mindset is there any so called “value” to your life? I’m not saying that you have to be happy all of the time because that is hard to achieve. Sometimes there are so called “punishments” in order to seek happiness, but once one achieves happiness it is a feeling that is indescribable.
Nathan Kilpatrick summarizes Nathan Price as a bipolar behavior man who abuses religion and also speaks for the family. According to Adah, Nathan speaks for the family but his words are empty because he stays in his stubbornness and does not learn the culture. Kilpatrick also believes Nathan downgrades Christianity in this book because he does not know the language so he misuses the meaning. Kilpatrick acknowledges that Nathan is teachable about little things like the garden but the things that actually make an impact, he is unmoveable. Adah says, "It is a special kind of person who draws together a congregation, stand before them with a proud, clear voice, and say words wrong, week after week". Even his own kids see his flaws as a person.
Throughout the world, in history and in present day, injustice has affected all of us. Whether it is racial, sexist, discriminatory, being left disadvantaged or worse, injustice surrounds us. Australia is a country that has been plagued by injustice since the day our British ancestors first set foot on Australian soil and claimed the land as theirs. We’ve killed off many of the Indigenous Aboriginal people, and also took Aboriginal children away from their families; this is known as the stolen generation. On the day Australia became a federation in 1901, the first Prime Minister of Australia, Edmund Barton, created the White Australia Policy. This only let people of white skin colour migrate to the country. Even though Australia was the first country to let women vote, women didn’t stand in Parliament until 1943 as many of us didn’t support female candidates, this was 40 years after they passed the law in Australian Parliament for women to stand in elections. After the events of World War Two, we have made an effort to make a stop to these issues here in Australia.
I’ve seen racism on a day to day basis, and I know how slavery has had long lasting effects on the advancements of the black community. It was compelling however to learn some of the logistics and facts of his argument and to understand even more how the government segregated people of color. I was pleased that he made this book promoting the truth and backing it with facts that a lot of white people like to deny. I feel it is Caucasians people duty to try and help educated other Caucasian people on the injustices in America and I applaud him for that. He was extremely well educated on the topic of his book and mentioned some upsetting and surprising facts and terms. I was able to learn about the de facto segregation I had been living in my entire life and exactly why. Racial segregation, especially in public schools, that happens “by fact” rather than by legal requirement. For example, often the concentration of African-Americans in certain neighborhoods produces neighborhood schools that are predominantly black, or segregated in fact ( de facto ), although not by
For majority of life I’ve gone through the motions and have done as I have been told to do. Naïve and ignorant to how amazing life really is and refusing to question how things work or what my true purpose is other then surviving. For centuries there have been numerous philosophers to question what our purpose is and have developed different theories to help us get as close as we possibly can to finding the meaning of life. One thing I’ve learned since opening my eyes to the reality of the world is that in our lifetime the closest thing we will have is theories and ideas but we will never know the true meaning of life.
Nevertheless ,we just appreciate life The meaning of life is finding the meaning of life and meanwhile live the life enjoying everything you do, if you don 't like something just change it. Trial and error.if i can do it all time I do little time then it will be easy to do it because when I know what meaning of life puts me in power place in life if I know meaning of life I so Know should have high position because I knew what my captives because I like the job that I worked on it and it was interesting that helps me to make design in difficult. people should make contrast between difficult things and easy things meaning of life-like travel you should know what are going to travel you have to search and find a comfortable seat in the plant meaning dream what abilities what ideas in shudder what he did accomplish the people Being stratification about yourself for what have that a diomed of life things the money is the most important things that find meaning of life and this