Webster has defined nostalgia as a “wistful or excessively sentimental, sometimes abnormal yearning for a return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” Nostalgia is a psychological time machine that transplants adults to the good old days of another era. Once there, they will find that it is a state of mind, oblivious to actual or imagined barriers. For some it is a pleasant stroll through yesterday, a simple, less turbulent past.
Benjie Johnson is thirteen, Black, and well on his way to being hooked on heroine for good. Benjie’s wry humor and courage, his hard surface and vulnerability beneath make it impossible not to care about him. This book confronts a difficult subject and offers no easy solutions. The inner city students I presently teach can relate to much of what Benjie talks about. The Black English used is a variation but a continuation of school boy vernacular which we saw in the previously mentioned novels.
“Now I am thirteen, but when I was a chile, it was hard to be a chile because my block is a tough block and my school is a tough school. I’m not trying to cop out on what I do or don’t do cause man is man and chile is chile, but I ain’t a chile no more. Don’t nobody want to be no chile cause, for some reason, it just hold you back in a lotta ways; unless you be a rich chile like in some movie picture or like on T.V.—where everybody is livin it up and their room is perfect-lookin and their swimmin pool and their block and their house and they also ridin round in one rollin Cads with a tape-deck playin cool music and with air condition goin.”21
The block where Benjie lives is no peaceful place. People are getting mugged and robbed regularly. After age three when the relatives hold your hand you are on your own in the poorly lighted hallways of the tenement. “Walkin through dark, stinky hallways can be hard on anybody, man or chile, but a chile can get snatch in the dark and get his behind parts messed up by some weirdo I’m talkie bout them sexuals. Soon’s you get up to leven, twelve and so—they might cool it cause they scared you know where to land a good up punch, dig?
Friendship is the greatest gift in the world between two people. It is a bond in which two people accept each other for whatever they are, positives and negatives. In the novel, ‘Don’t Call me Ishmael’, by Michael Bauer, the power of friendship is shown with James Scobie and Ishmael Leseur. Ishma5el is a 14-year-old new boy at Saint Daniel’s Boys College. Ishmael has low self-esteem, which leads to him calling himself “the mayor of loserville.” (2006, p.4). Ishmael’s problems include a school bully called Barry Bagsley, who delights in mashing his name and generally making his life horrible. Barry mashes Ishmael's name into weird things like, ‘Fishtail Le-sewer’ (2006, p.19) instead of his real name Ishmael Leseur However, one new arrival
The protagonist is to find disappointment and failure in all his pursuits. “Bordertown” opens with a law school commencement where Johnny is introduced as a “tough kid” who came out of the barrio and overcame many obstacles to successfully graduate from law school. Here, we are also introduced to Johnny’s over- affectionate, dim- witted mother and his local parish priest. Together, they act as his support group and often discourage his ambitions.
Baby narrates her story through her naïve, innocent child voice. She serves as a filter for all the events happening in her life, what the narrator does not know or does not comprehend cannot be explained to the readers. However, readers have reason not to trust what she is telling them because of her unreliability. Throughout the beginning of the novel we see Baby’s harsh exposure to drugs and hurt. Jules raised her in an unstable environment because of his constant drug abuse. However, the narrator uses flowery language to downplay the cruel reality of her Montreal street life. “… for a kid, I knew a lot of things about what it felt like to use heroin” (10). We immediately see as we continue reading that Baby thinks the way she has been living her life is completely normal, however, we as readers understand that her life is in fact worse then she narrates. Baby knows about the impermanent nature of her domestic security, however, she repeatedly attempts to create a sense of home each time her and Jules move to another apartm...
Viramontes sets a disconcerting tone by introducing that it is night time and Sonya, the young girl, has lost her key and cannot let her younger brother, Macky, and herself into their apartment. The first few paragraphs succeed in showing that Sonya is responsible and protective of her brother despite her age as she chases after him to keep him out of the street.
After hearing a brief description of the story you might think that there aren’t many good things about they story. However, this is false, there are many good things in this book that makes it a good read. First being that it is a very intriguing book. This is good for teenage readers because often times they don’t willingly want to read, and this story will force the teenage or any reader to continue the book and continue reading the series. Secondly, this is a “good” book because it has a good balance of violence. This is a good thing because it provides readers with an exciting read. We hear and even see violence in our everyday life and I believe that it is something teenagers should be exposed to. This book gives children an insig...
The novel, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is about a boy named Ponyboy who belongs to a group called Greasers. There are 2 types of gangs in the novel; Greasers and Socs. The Socs look down on the Greasers because they had a low social status. Being an outsider produces a feeling of inferiority, isolation and even violence. In the following paragraphs these feelings will be fully explained.
Throughout life individuals face many challenges testing their values and personality one situation at a time. In the evocative novel The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton themes of growing up and innocence are shown. Ponyboy is not your average 14 year old he is part of a gang known to many as the Greasers. He encounters many situations testing his values and beliefs. Having lost both his parents recently he and his brothers stick together like a true family but this relationship is tested when Darry hits Ponyboy. He also experiences the loss several close friends in a very short period of time. Throughout this novel, Ponyboy encounters many life changing experiences that prove he is a dynamic character.
The brutality of the World War II and the anguish of the Cold War enforced nations in Europe to establish the European Union for peace and unity in the region. With ratification of the Maastricht Treaty by members of the European Community in 1993, an economic and political union; the European Union is formed. In December 2012, the European Union awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its “historical accomplishments”. Nevertheless, the member states of the European Union are still facing the crisis that started in the Eurozone since 2009. One of the major causes of the crisis is the common currency – the euro which has weak structural formation. The creation of a currency, the euro, is one of the major parts of the European Union. The German Chancellor Gerhard SchrÖder said in a speech in 1999 that “The introduction of the euro is probably the most important integrating step since the beginning of the unification process.”(Yeager, 30) Therefore, in this essay I would like to study the history of creation of the euro, lessons that the European Union draws from the euro crisis and analyze the future predictions of specialists about the euro. I will use the publication “Economic and monetary union and the euro” by the European Commission as the main source and other credible sources about the euro in my paper.
The European Union today is a political and economic entity that controls in a single market located mostly in Europe exploiting Euro as a single currency uniting the vast majority of its members. The market that all European Union members share provides free trade of goods and services as well as a common external tariff. One might argue that the European Union would not perceptible its current influence had it not been for the introduction of the Euro. Speaking of the benefits of the Euro, one can name the elimination of exchange rate problems, creation of a single financial market, providing price stability, low interest rates as well as being a political symbol of unity and commitment to the Union. Today, Euro is the second reserve currency in the entire world - a fact that clearly speaks for itself of its value in the global market.
Five teenagers who don't' know each other spend a Saturday in detention at the suburban school library. At first they squirm, fret and pick on each other. Then after sampling some marijuana, a real encounter session gets underway. The stresses and strains of adolescence have turned their inner lives into a minefield of disappointment, anger and despair.
Many people would agree that Europe is a continent in which regions identify with each other even if they are not part of the same country. For that reason, as well as others, in 1957 the Treaty of Rome "declared a common European market as a European objective with the aim of increasing economic prosperity and contributing to 'an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe'" (www.euro.ecb.int). Later, in 1986 and then in 1992, the Single European Act and the Treaty of European Union tried to build on the previous treaty to create a system in Europe in which one currency could eventually be used all over the land under the heading of the Economic and Monetary Union. (www.euro.ecb.int) However, the question remains, why would the leaders of various European nations want to create one currency when the rights of national sovereignty have always been an issue for countries all over the world. Why, in 1998 did they create the European Central Bank, and why in "The third stage of EMU... on 1 January 1999, when the exchange rates of the participating currencies were irrevocably set" (www.euro.ecb.int) did eleven, and later twelve, countries link themselves economically in a way that has never been done before?
To most people in the United States hearing the word Euro brings about blank stares. Ask this same question in England or another European country and it means bringing Europe together under one common currency. The Euro can be defined as the common monetary system by which the participating members of the European Community will trade. Eleven countries Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Finland and Italy will comprise the European Economic Monetary Union that will set a side their national currency and adopt the Euro in 2002. A new National bank, based in Frankfurt Germany, will be constructed and the interest rates that control the economies of these nations will be in the hands of this new system. It is indeed a great experiment, being masterminded in Frankfurt, one that will be felt through out Europe as well as the rest of the world.1
The characters in this book are very round. They each have their own story and have their own problems in life. Let’s start ...
“The introduction of the euro will represent the most dramatic change in the international monetary system since President Nixon took the dollar off gold in 1971 [and when] the era of flexible exchange rates began…the euro is likely to challenge the position of the dollar [and hence] this may be the most important event in the history of the international monetary system since the dollar took over from the pound the role of dominant currency in World War I” (Mussa 2002).