Although everyone in this world has different values and beliefs, there is a story for how each individual formed these thoughts. Life’s experiences shape our values through positive or negative situations. A fable written by Judith Gorog titled “Those Three Wishes”, reveals the thoughts of Melinda Alice, in which the reader can infer many of her beliefs. Another writing, “Ohio towns holds rare history: Races mix Freely for nearly 200 years”, by Washington Post, recalls quotes from Connor Kieser about his past, and how it affected him. In “Those Three Wishes”, it writes about the high schooler, Melinda Alice, who strives to gain good grades, and be a good leader. However, from the perspective of others, Melinda is a selfish girl. In paragraph
1 of “Those Three Wishes”, it states, “ ‘Ugh. Yucky thing’ thought Melinda Alice, then stopped. Not wanting to step on the snail accidentally was one thing, but now she lifted her shoe to crush it. ‘Please don’t,’ said the snail. ‘Why not?’ retorted Melinda Alice. ‘I’ll give you three wishes,’ replied the snail evenly. ‘Agreed,”. In the quote shown, Melinda Alice wants to step on a snail, and the only way for the snail to save his life, is if he offers three wishes to the girl. From this quote, many will agree that Melinda is a mean, and cold-hearted girl. However, what the reader doesn’t know is that Melinda Alice was probably raised differently which caused her to have such a negative attitude towards everything. The article “Ohio towns holds rare history: Races mix Freely for nearly 200 years” gives the thinking of Connor Keiser, a person that lived in Longtown, Ohio. In contrast to Melinda, Keiser was someone who encouraged teamwork, and was kind-hearted person. Keiser states in paragraph 4, “ ‘We were the usual Longtown family. We all looked different, and we were taught that color didn't matter,’ Keiser said. ‘As long as I have anything to do with it, Longtown won't die." The quote from Keiser portrays teamwork in Longtown as something without care of another’s skin color. With so many people working together, how was it possible for colored and white people to work as one in such a “color-mattering” time? The answer is the mindset of the town. Each and every person within Longtown were taught that color didn’t matter. As a result, while other towns were full of chaos or conflict, Keiser’s town raised with collaboration. Two of the characters from the texts read had countless differences from one another. But, what Melinda Alice and Connor Keiser have shown in common was how their life experiences have changed their current lives. Readers of these stories should learn from this, and take it to their advantage to do good in the present, so that in the future, it will benefit them.
Some traditions are passed down through generations. In a short story, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a specific tradition is passed down to every generation. This generation was hated by most of the towns people ; those people said the tradition was an unfair and injustice act. Another act if injustice happened in Elie Wiesel’s short story “Hope, Despair, and Memory”. This quite from Elie Wiesel’s story shows how we must look at the unfairness. “Mankind must remember that peace is not God’s gift to his creatures, it is our gift to each other.” The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson supports Wiesel’s central idea in “Hope, Despair, and Memory” by conveying similar central ideas with their use of pathos, the character’s perspective,
In Thomas King's short story "Borders," a Blackfoot mother struggles with maintaining her cultural heritage under the pressure of two dominating nations. Storytelling is important, both for the mother and for the dominant White society. Stories are used to maintain and pass on cultural information and customs from one generation to another. Furthermore, stories can be used both positively and negatively. They can trap individuals into certain ways of thinking, but they can also act as catalysts that drive social change within society.
"My Children are black. They don't look like your children. They know that they are black, and we want it recognized. It's a positive difference, an interesting difference, and a comfortable natural difference. At least it could be so, if you teachers learned to value difference more. What you value, you talk about.'" p.12
Throughout your life starting from when you were a child you have experienced different point of views from watching and listening to people. Whether you realize it or not what you have experience has shaped you into the person you are today. The two short stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin and the essay “Hook Ups Starve the Soul” by Laura Vanderkam, are examples of how precedents can influence individuals decisions. These three texts reveal this concept by showing how individuals can be influenced by the actions that people are doing around them, by traditions that were set by past civilians, as well as following any previous examples set by family members. By showing the
After her diagnosis of chronic kidney failure in 2004, psychiatrist Sally Satel lingered in the uncertainty of transplant lists for an entire year, until she finally fell into luck, and received her long-awaited kidney. “Death’s Waiting List”, published on the 5th of May 2006, was the aftermath of Satel’s dreadful experience. The article presents a crucial argument against the current transplant list systems and offers alternative solutions that may or may not be of practicality and reason. Satel’s text handles such a topic at a time where organ availability has never been more demanded, due to the continuous deterioration of the public health. With novel epidemics surfacing everyday, endless carcinogens closing in on our everyday lives, leaving no organ uninflected, and to that, many are suffering, and many more are in desperate request for a new organ, for a renewed chance. Overall, “Death’s Waiting List” follows a slightly bias line of reasoning, with several underlying presumptions that are not necessarily well substantiated.
Conflicting values are a constant issue in society. In diverse civilizations minorities become out ruled by the majority. In Twentieth Century American culture there are many difficulties in existing as a minority. The books My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok, and the Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, portray the aspect of being torn between two cultures as a conflict for today's minorities. Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin, examines the hardships for a minority by progressively revealing them. The events of the three authors' lives reflect how they portray the common theme of the difficulties for a Twentieth Century minority.
“We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves (Barbara Jordan pg 1).” In this unit, acceptance plays a huge role in several different ways in the documents we read. In seminal documents like “Texas V. Johnson Majority Opinion”, the court accepts the fact that Gregory Lee Johnson should not be sentenced for desecrating the flag, even though they believe it is wrong. “The Lottery” and “What, of This Goldfish, Would You Wish?” have a different way of showing acceptance through the characters of their stories. These three passages explore the diverse differences between people and show that we sometimes just have to accept things even though we may not like them.
Throughout my life, I've heard many different stories about my family. Because of these stories, I know about my background, and they have helped form my identity. Randall Bass, professor of English at Georgetown University, agrees that stories help shape people's identities. Bass states that, "Individuals derive their sense of identity from their culture, and cultures are systems of belief that determine how people live their lives" (Bass 1). Cultural stories about family history, religion, nationality, and heritage help influence people's behavior and beliefs. Identities of different people come from their cultures. Story telling begins at home. Stories help connect people to their systems of beliefs. They sculpt people's lives by giving them a model of how to live. People receive their earliest knowledge from different stories.(Bass)
Carl Jung once said, “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” Jung and Jonze together share the same idea about how people fail to communicate with others, and then they isolate themselves from society. The result is hopelessness and unhappy life, and that idea is also demonstrated clearly in the movie, Her. In Her movie by Spike Jonze, Theodore Twombly, an introverted man, falls in love with his female OS1, Samantha. Twombly is struggling to escape the loneliness during the divorce process with his wife, Catherine. His life gradually fades out until he meets Samantha,
Jean Louise “Scout” and Jem Finch experienced life in the 1930’s living in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama. Their childhood was a nonstop adventure that brought jocund days and testing trials that teenager’s today experience even with the world around us changing every day. The moral upbringings, educational importance, and the crime rate of small towns all contributed to the childhood memories that were built every day in Maycomb County. These attributes to childhood experiences have changed a lot over the vast time period between the 1930’s and 2000’s. The moral upbringings are different in the way that children living now are experiencing a different surrounding in their everyday life and have lost morals that were taught in the 1930’s. Education is more important now than in the 1930’s because of the many laws that have been established to keep children well educated to help them succeed. Living in a small town had many advantages like the low crime rate; crime rate has risen and caused an effect on small town life. There are many similarities as well as differences between the childhood in the 1930’s and the 2000’s. The changes that have occurred affect my life as a young Alabamian every day in many ways.
As the decades have gone by, the equality among different people has become more and more prevalent. In the early 1900’s, for example, the racial discrimination between blacks and whites was at its peak, as was between different religions, ethnicities and life choices. With new enactments to provide people with better lives, the different groups combined to create the society that we currently know. The different texts discussed show that, “We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different than ourselves,” Three texts that explain the quotation are, “The Lottery,” “My So-Called Enemy,” and, “American Flag Stands for Tolerance,”, but in extremely different ways.
When it comes to moral values, America needs to accept attitudes and behaviors that promote society co-existing in an order to promote general wellbeing. It is important to remember science studies affirm that we are all apart of a single human race. Failing to recognize these finding sets back substantial milestones overcome by people who look different from the majority of the United States, even though we claim to live in a country for “liberty and justice for all.” To fix such problems efforts need to be face at educating America overall of just how real and apparent inequality is still today. Showcasing the problem behind history, causing attention, and providing solutions will help compensate for the past and ease current inequality.
One of Virginia Woolf’s best-known novels, Mrs. Dalloway features a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman of the post-World War I English society. While most of the novel is primarily centered on Clarissa Dalloway and her preparations for a party that evening as her “offering to the society”, Virginia Woolf also uses the novel to comment on the consequences of World War I on its veterans. Through Septimus Smith, a character who is an ill World War I veteran and suffers from posttraumatic stress, Woolf critically comments on the detrimental effects of World War I.
In Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder teaches philosophy and it explains basic philosophical ideas better than any other reading book or textbook that I have ever read. The many philosophical lessons of the diversified thinkers of their own time were dexterously understood. The author has a wonderful knack for finding the heart of a concept and placing it on display. For example, he metamorphoses Democritus' atoms into Lego bricks and in a stroke makes the classical conception of the atom dexterously attainable. He relates all the abstract concepts about the world and what is real with straightforward everyday things that everyone can relate to which makes this whole philosophy course manageable. ''The best way of approaching philosophy is to ask a few philosophical questions: How was the world created? Is there any will or meaning behind what happens? Is there a life after death? How can we answer these questions? And most important, how ought we to live?'' (Gaarder, Jostein 15).
As readers, Keneally enables us to see how particular paradigms within texts operate as a basis on which people use as justification to discriminate and dehumanise others upon. He comments on several of these ideologies and chooses to convey these comments from a perspective that not many authors would have the courage to write from in 1972. Through his representation of ideologies and notions of values in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, readers may further their acceptance of others and be positioned to perceive the world in a different light.