Why I would like to join a Peace Boat voyage?
I graduated from college in May last year, from then on and even long before this monumental moment of my life, I have already been troubled by a fundamental question we all have to face as a human being. How will you lead your life?
I have no idea.
To be more precise, I do have some ideas about things like how to make curry or put on proper clothes to prevent sickness. But we all know there’s more than that. Does life have a meaning? How to live with the surrounding world? It's like I am standing at a crossroad, habitually feeling lost, so I decided to do something.
I applied for the working holiday visa to Australia. As said in an ancient slang in China, you may travel for miles and read thousands of books to grow. I planned to taste a different culture while I was constantly reading. And then I encountered the opportunity of The Peace Boat, which offers chance to travel and time to read.
…show more content…
In my consideration, a both isolated and connected time in the sea has the potential to be an awesome experience. I traveled with a cruise before. In the sea, there was no internet and no phone signal. When the overwhelmingly abundance of information was ripped away, the isolation gradually ruminated into a focus of the current life. I breathed in the showering sunset on the deck. At the same time, everybody in the ship was all oddly connected. The ship created an insulated safe place for everybody to expose, being sensitive and unrealistic. It was a very special feeling in the noisy modern world. On the other hand, whenever the cruise is in the port, there’s another exotic experience
“The Boat”, narrated by a Mid-western university professor, Alistar MacLeod, is a short story concerning a family and their different perspectives on freedom vs. tradition. The mother pushes the son to embrace more of a traditional lifestyle by taking over the fathers fishing business, while on the other hand the father pushes the son to live more autonomously in an unconstrained manner. “The Boat” focuses on the father and how his personality influences the son’s choice on how to live and how to make decisions that will ultimately affect his life. In Alistair MacLeod’s, “The Boat”, MacLeod suggest that although dreams and desires give people purpose, the nobility of accepting a life of discontentment out weighs the selfishness of following ones own true desires. In the story, the father is obligated to provide for his family as well as to continue the fishing tradition that was inherited from his own father. The mother emphasizes the boat and it’s significance when she consistently asked the father “ How did things go in the boat today” since tradition was paramount to the mother. H...
War is cruel. The Vietnam War, which lasted for 21 years from 1954 to 1975, was a horrific and tragic event in human history. The Second World War was as frightening and tragic even though it lasted for only 6 years from 1939 to 1945 comparing with the longer-lasting war in Vietnam. During both wars, thousands of millions of soldiers and civilians had been killed. Especially during the Second World War, numerous innocent people were sent into concentration camps, or some places as internment camps for no specific reasons told. Some of these people came out sound after the war, but others were never heard of again. After both wars, people that were alive experienced not only the physical damages, but also the psychic trauma by seeing the deaths and injuries of family members, friends or even just strangers. In the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh about the Vietnam War, and the documentary film Barbed Wire and Mandolins directed by Nicola Zavaglia with a background of the Second World War, they both explore and convey the trauma of war. However, the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” is more effective in conveying the trauma of war than the film Barbed Wire and Mandolins because of its well-developed plot with well-illustrated details, and its ability to raise emotional responses from its readers.
‘’The only easy day was yesterday’’, is a famous saying for recruits that are doing physical training and mental challenges to become Navy Seals. Who are the Navy Seals? What do they do? Well, the name Navy Seal is named after the environment in which they operate, sea, air and land and there are the foundation of Special Warfare combat forces. They are organized, trained and equipped to conduct a variety of special operations missions. (Navy SEALs: Special Operations for the U.S. Navy. )
This passage defines the character of the narrators’ father as an intelligent man who wants a better life for his children, as well as establishes the narrators’ mothers’ stubbornness and strong opposition to change as key elements of the plot.
In 1942, World War II had been raging for three years. The United States of America have declared war upon the Axis powers following the devastating Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor. At this point in the war the Allies are in a grave situation. German forces have pushed the British off mainland Europe, and the Japanese have conquered much of the Pacific region, coming increasingly nearer to the American mainland. In order to combat this rising threat, the American military headship began to search for viable alternatives to replace widely used established tactics. The motive for this search for irregular methods the fact that the Allied forces were not strong enough to meet the Axis powers on a conventional
As I reflect on my college life, I wonder about the choices I have made that have led me to where I am today and that will guide me into shaping who I long to become. The things I have had to sacrifice, the support and experiences I have had with family, friends, strangers and work colleagues. I don’t know what I will be doing three months or thirty years from now but I do know that I want to have new experiences. When I graduated from high school, I knew I didn’t want to be that person that moved back to the same town and stayed there for the rest of my life. I even contemplate leaving the United States in my adult life. Who really knows, maybe those cards are still in the deck. For now, I know my immediate goals include focusing on completing my college education the best I can, and moving away from my comfort zone, broadening my horizons and taken risks.
American author, Stephen Crane often wrote about different predicaments that his fellow men encounters. “The Open Boat” is a fictional account of his experience as a correspondent shipwrecked while on expedition to the Cuban revolutionaries in 1897 (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/stephen-crane) where he spent over 30 hours on a life boat with three other passengers. This realistic story depicts how four men are forced onto a 10 foot dingy after their ship sinks. Crane takes a realist approach when describing the natural elements such as unsettling winds and the raging seas which represent the uncaring and unforgiving nature of life. Clearly, Crane narrates the role as the correspondent, while he provides dialog to provide an understanding on how the other passengers are feeling. “The Open Boat” demonstrates that man cannot survive the natural elements and hardships while isolated in the sea without an understanding of nature.
The Army Quartermaster Corps has been around since 16 June 1775. The Quartermaster Corps is made up of all elements that support warfighters while in garrison and in war times. Food service is a very important element in the Quartermaster Corps. The Army food service assists by building moral to help win wars and achieve satisfactory training.
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."
No Bricks and No Temples: Coping with Crisis in “The Open Boat” Stephen Crane’s story “The Open Boat” concerns four people who are trying to reach land after surviving a shipwreck off the Florida coast. During the course of the story, they face dangers that are real physical threats, but they also have to deal with trying to make sense of their situation. The characters in this story cope with their struggles in two ways: individually, they each imagine that Nature, or Fate, or God, is behind their experiences, which allows them to blame some outside force for their struggle, and together, they form a bond of friendship that helps them keep their spirits up. . In “Becoming Interpreters: The Importance of Tone in ‘The Open Boat,’” Gregory Schirmer states that “‘The Open Boat has at its center two quite different views of man: as a helpless and insignificant being adrift in a universe that is wholly indifferent to him and his ambitions, and on the other hand, as part of a brotherhood that binds man to man in the face of that indifferent universe” (222).
The end to existence, more commonly known as death, is a unique and moving form of liberation. Death has the power to grant freedom from illness, safety from a life of danger, and in the case of Edna Pontellier, refuge from a life of entrapment. In the novel, The Awakening, written by Kate Chopin, the literary work’s main character Edna Pontellier struggles to find her own identity and sense of selfhood. Edna fights to find her place amongst the expectations and traditions of society while herself longing for a life of independence and personal will. Despite numerous efforts made to find a suitable and fulfilling place in American society in the 1890s, Edna falls short, is not accepted by her peers, and is incapable of finding true happiness. Because Mrs. Pontellier finds that she shares with no other her visions of independence, individual strength, and personal happiness, the only fitting way Edna is able to fulfill these visions and fully awaken from a previous life of ignorance and unconsciousness, is through death. “Given the choices available to her, the ‘fulfillment’ of Edna’s desire can only be merger, and presumably death, in the element that first awakened it” (Freeman). Death frees Edna of unwanted responsibilities, from a judgmental society, from the bore of life, and most effectively from her old self. Because of Edna’s death by sea, she is able to fully transform and evolve into the woman she is destined to be. In the novel, The Awakening, despite her tragic death, the protagonist Edna Pontellier experiences an awakening through her fatal swim thus freeing herself from a life of entrapment.
The Open Boat is a particularly interesting story because of the great detail that author extends and because of the solitary reflections of the characters in consideration of their demise.
Talking about their heroic or gruesome adventures at war is a sensitive subject to most war veterans. Although some soldiers come home struggling to talk about their traumatic experience overseas, some are more open about the subject because they are grateful to have survived the war. I am thankful to have a war veteran in my life who does not struggle to talk about their experience and who came back to the states as a proud veteran. I had the wonderful opportunity to interview my grandfather who is a proud survivor of the Vietnam war.
Stephen Crane's Open Boat is a story about survival: a story about struggling to survive in a very hostile world. The story is a question of man's relationship to the world of nature that is completely overpowering.
Patience and dedication are two main keys to living life to its complete potential. Even though no human being will ever be educated on life’s soul purpose, learning to embrace its plan is even better.. But doing this without patience and self-dedication would be almost impossible... unless getting struck by lightening and genetically gaining superpowers which then, to find that your life purpose was become The Flash. But unfortunately, that’s probably not going to happen.