Over Spring Break, I read the graphic novel ‘Squire’ by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas, which was an engaging read. ‘Squire’ follows the adventures and challenges of a fourteen-year-old girl, Aiza, living in an alternate historical Middle Eastern setting. In the Bayt-Sajji empire, Aiza is a second-class citizen because she is part of a group called the Ornu, which are enemies of Bayt-Sajji. When a messenger visits her recently conquered province, he brings news of an extraordinary opportunity to join the esteemed knights and improve her family’s life and status. Her parents are reluctant at first but agree to let her go once they cover her arm tattoo, a sacred marker of the Ornu, to ensure Aiza's safety among the other recruits. As she travels and starts training, she befriends fellow recruits, Sahar and Husni and starts to feel as if she is fitting in, despite the secret she still holds. …show more content…
He agrees to train her whilst everyone else is sleeping, and she soon sees a dramatic progression in her technique, enough to beat Basem, a friend of Husni’s and one of the top recruits. Because of their efforts, Aiza and her friends are sent out into the wilderness, near the Ornu border, to improve their teamwork and survival skills. However, disaster strikes when the Ornu attack the group and Husni ends up severely injured. This lands Aiza with a terrible decision to make: remove her bandages and save Husni, and sacrifice her safety, or allow Husni to perish. She chooses the former, which damages her relationship with the other recruits, but also lands her the sought after position of squire for her selflessness. Her first mission as a squire is to track down their attackers, in an Ornu village, which leads to her discovery of the scheming of the General of the Knights,
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take." Proverbs 3:5-6. In the book, Born Again, Chuck Colson was as deadly to political opponents as a lion is to prey. Colson was largely targeted by the media and dragged through the mud, after a scandal that led to an investigation of Nixon's White House administration. He had become a public scapegoat for the media. Through a long and taxing process, Colson was indicted and put in jail. However, through the straining process, he had found a path to God
What would you do for love? Would you break up a marriage or assassinate an Archduke? In the short story “IND AFF” by Fay Weldon the narrator must make a choice on whether or not to continue her love affair while examining the Princip’s murder of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife. The story is set in Sarajevo in Bosnia, Yugoslavia where the assassination took place. Through irony, symbolism and setting, Weldon uses the parallel between the narrator and Pincip to show that seemingly inconsequential actions of an individual can have great consequences.
The Kingdom of Matthias is a collection of history that seeks to inform on the story of Robert Matthews, who later adopted the name Matthias the Prophet. The story also sets forth to describe the socioeconomic state of the United States during which the rise of cults was rampant. It also lays the groundwork and establishes the framework for which modern day cults are viewed.
Written by Katherine Holubitsky, Tweaked is a novel that shows the readers how dangerous drugs are to both the user and their peers. With the two year meth addiction, Chase continues to financially and emotionally drain out his family however; the problems becomes worse when Chase escapes from his dealer's house. Richard Cross, the man Chase attacked, died and as a result, Chase is charged with murder. His mother secretly proceeds to monetarily support Chase but when she was caught, the bond between the family members exacerbated. Time elapsed and Chase was finally caught when stealing a car however, he dies shortly after and overdose and becomes brain dead. Tweaked shows us the reality of how hazardous drugs can be through the physical
In “Chac Mool”, Carlos Fuentes uses magical realism to express the relationship between the past and the present. The short story begins with the narrator, a co-worker of Filbert, who learns about Filbert’s tragic death and goes to pick up the man’s possessions. However, the narrator soon discovers Filbert’s journal, which depicts his struggle with the sculpture of Chac Mool. The form in which the story is presented emphasizes a collision between the past and present. This is because the journal entries tell the tale of Filbert’s encounter with the Chac Mool before his death, thus the reader’s conscious is constantly being divided between the past and the present. As a result, the very structure of the short story serves as a way to emphasize the surreal flow of the past into the present.
Ayiti, by Roxane Gay, is a collection of fifteen short narratives about Haiti and its people, which gives the readers insights into the complex Haitian diaspora experience. The novel seeks to offer a deeper view into Haitian society and covers an array of themes such as the politics of survival, resiliency, and feminist culture in Haiti. Throughout the novel, Gay is highly critical of mainstream media because of how they depict and silo Haiti as a poor and helpless country. Haiti’s historical stance on censorship is well documented, and as a Haitian writer living in America, Gay is successful in giving agency to the voiceless by chronicling the stories of the Haitian diaspora. Ayiti explores stories that explain what it is like to be a Haitian
The story of “Unwind” revolves around three main characters that are all scheduled to be sent to a harvest camp and unwound. Connor is a sixteen year whose family believes that he has caused too much trouble in society. Risa is a ward of the state, and due to budget cuts, is too expensive to be kept in the program. Lev is tithe, and individual that has been born with the purpose of being unwound. Connor one day discovers an unwind order in the house and decides to run away. With the help of an honest truck driver, Connor manages to slip away. However, Connor keeps his cell phone and the tracker inside gets him caught. The police attempt to arrest Connor but he resists arrest, runs through the traffic on the road, and grabs a tithed to use as a human shield. This event in turn causes a bus full of state home wards to spin out of control and overturn. Risa is one of the individual on that buss. Risa, Connor, and Lev all run into the woods. The next morning, while the three are gathering supplies such as food and clothes, they come across a storked baby on the door step. Due to past experiences, Connor decides to put all three of them in risk and decides to pick up the baby while a police car slowly passes nearby. Risa, Connor, Lev and the baby all get onto the school bus in hopes of not being suspected by the police car. Once they arrive at the school, they find the nearest bathroom and hide in it with the baby. Lev sees this as an opportunity to escape. As a tithe, he believes that it is an honor to live with the purpose of being unwound, so he finds his way to the school office and turns himself and Connor and Risa in. He then asks for a call, and calls his pastor, who to Lev’s surprise informs him that his face was purposely k...
The future is yet to come, but past is what we learn from. The present is what we have become. All the formal students (alumni) have work so hard to keep the Scotlandville family alive and going over the past years. Most do not look at the bigger picture and the history of the present, therefore, presented to you are the historical facts of Scotlandville as a whole for future awareness.
The Elizabethan era was a time of literary discoveries, military victories, and religious developments. History tends to focus on the military achievements of the time, such as the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, or the religious developments of the time, such as the overthrow of the Catholic Church in England and the implementation of the Protestant Church. Literature historians focus on the emergence of Elizabethan authors like Shakespeare and Marlowe. Ian Mortimer, the author of The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England, focuses on the social history of the era. He explains the lives of the people of England in the 1600s. Mortimer describes their laws, their medicine, their eating and dressing habits, and their
For my independent choice reading, I chose the book Rebel Belle. The main character, Harper, is the school’s it girl. She has the boyfriend everybody wants and a group of friends who will do anything for her. This all changes and suddenly she’s a Paladin, protecter of the Oracle. At first she can’t figure out who this is, or even what an Oracle or Paladin is, but once she does, things start to get complicated. She is sucked into this whole other world that involves car chases, murders, and trying to save her own life.
A hero is a man of courage and ability who is admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities. A hero is a person who does not come along very often in any time period. He is a special person, who is a step above the average person in the way that he handles any situation that may arise.
The 2015 reflective documentary, “Welcome to Leith” brings attention to the gun-trotting White Supremacist, Craig Cobb, and his attempt to assert his dominance and gain total jurisdiction over the city of Leith, North Dakota. Over a period of eight months, Michael Beach Nichols and his crew filmed the final weeks that lead up to infamous fascist influencer’s incarceration. With a whopping population of 24 people, mostly consisting of farmers and their families, Mr. Cobb relocated and purchased his first property in Leith for only five-hundred dollars in May of 2012. At first, his neighbours described him as being a quiet but estranged individual who kept to himself most of the time. Little did the townspeople know, Cobb had much bigger plans.
In 1939, the Nazi invasion of Poland began causing many traumatic experiences for Jewish people across Europe. Maus by Art Spiegelman is a book that is written based on the real-life experiences of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish man who was alive during the reign of Hitler and experienced the life of Jews during this time first-hand. Vladek lived a normal life as a Jew during the Holocaust before suddenly being recruited into the Polish army where he had to go into battle against the Nazis. The Polish lost the battle and Vladek was forced to surrender which caused him to be captured as a war prisoner. This capture caused him to realize the true injustice toward the Jews first-hand and led to him to take more risks in order to fight for a better
In Murakami’s “Kino “the Image that made me piece the puzzle together was when the woman that Kino sleeps with reveals her cigarette burns, and later in the story Kino imagines the same cigarette burns on his wife’s body. Page 20 really shows the main idea of the story, which is about self-discovery, the human condition, and complacency.
I believe that habit is, indeed stronger than reason. However, to completely prove this statement we should first understand what exactly constitutes a habit. Habits can be anything from day to day routine like brushing our teeth or combing our hair to the very knowledge we are taught. It is a tendency to do something routinely or on a regular basis or an automatic reaction to certain situations (I want to rethink my definition). Habits are often hard to give up and habitual urges can often be stronger than reason. For example, our sleep patterns are part of our habits. If I were to go to sleep at 3:00am every night, but one day choose to go to bed at an earlier time (say 9:30pm), it would be difficult to simply go to bed at that time despite being aware of the amount of sleep I need to be productive. My body would be used to sleeping at a certain time and altering that habit would be difficult.