In The Young Traveler’s Gift, Michael Holder, a normal teenage boy, is faced with multiple problems and no apparent solutions. The book opens on Michael in a jail cell, waiting for his parents to pick him up. In the cell, he replays the events of the night in his mind: going to party, allowing his friends to drink, and being the designated driver. Though Michael sober, his friends were not being safe passengers, and caused him to wreck the car, sending one of his friends to the hospital. Michael is charged with reckless endangerment, and on top of that, the following morning Michael’s father reveals that he has lung cancer. Michael feels that the world, that God himself, is pitted against him. Because his father is sick, Michael has to quit …show more content…
his track team, his only chance for a college scholarship, and get a part time job. Michael could not help but to feel like he had messed everything up. He felt as though he had ruined his life and his parent’s life. While he looked for a job, he sulked in self-pity and who could blame him? He made bad decisions, was unhappy, and angry with himself. All of these negative feelings resulted in Michael driving and thinking about how worthless he is. Because of all of these negative feelings Michael drove off an embankment and though he immediately regretted it, it was too late. Michael awoke in a strange room with a strange man he vaguely recognized.
The man informs him that it is the year 1945. Due to this information and the sudden change in weather outside, Michael deduces that he is speaking with none other than President Harry Truman. Truman explains to Michael where he is and what’s going on and then poses an infinitely important question- “why not you?” Michael had spent much of his life asking, to no one in particular, “why me?” What makes Michael so special that he has above trials and hardships? And what makes him so plain and ordinary that he cannot rise to challenges and succeed? These are important questions implied in this book that caused me to stop and think, “why not …show more content…
me?” Truman also emphasizes to Michael how important his decisions are in the outcome of his future. He explains that even in uncontrollable situations, we still have control over how we react. The future is whatever we decide it will be. It is all up to each individual person. One of the key aspects of taking control of one’s future is taking responsibility for one’s past. It is incredibly crucial that we take responsibility for every situation in our life. Outside influences should not affect our actions, reactions, or decisions negatively. Saying “it’s not my fault” is an immature, weak thing to say. Blame shifting is not a characteristic of a successful person. We are responsible for our own successes and failures. The buck must stop here. After his visit with Truman, Michael is confused and eager to have answers. His next encounter is with King Solomon of Babylon. Solomon is known as one of the wisest men to ever have lived. He teaches Michael that wisdom is crucial when making decisions. A person who seeks after wisdom is a person who finds success, happiness, and forgiveness. This part was a bit difficult for me. I couldn't quite grasp the concept of simply seeking wisdom. How? I was confused, but as I read on I learned that wisdom isn't really what you're seeking after at all. Seek first Godliness and wisdom will follow, along with peace, humility, and contentment. Next, Michael visits Colonel Chamberlain. This particular visit was special in that I did not really know who Chamberlain was. I have never heard of him before. Because everyone else he visited are so famous, this was slightly intriguing. However, I did enjoy this chapter and related to it a bit more than the others, because of the fact that Chamberlain was an ordinary person. He was no one special, no one famous, but when he needed to fight, he did. He led his men even though he did not have to. He could have very well stayed home and chosen not to participate. I liked this chapter because it showed me that even ordinary people can do great things for what they believe in, if they only decide to take action. This part made me want to do the right thing and do it boldly. The bit about a decided heart presented to Michael by Christopher Columbus took me a little by surprise, but was one of the best Decisions to me.
Columbus talks about how he decides every day that he will seize every opportunity and never rested until he fulfilled his dream. I was just thinking about how mainstream that part was, how everyone says cliché things like that, when I came across something towards the end of the chapter. Columbus says something like I believed I would do it, and so I did. This bit affected me quite a lot more than the rest of the chapter, because of its simplicity. He believed so hard in himself and his dream- that he was right- that he actually pushed it into being. The excitement the author portrays through Columbus is refreshing and made me want to be a person of immediate action and seize every opportunity. Columbus explains that one cannot wait on circumstances to be perfect because circumstances never are
perfect. The chapter on Anne Frank was probably my favorite one. It really touched me to see how Anne was coping with her situation. Not only was she merely coping, she was happy. This is one of the hardest things for me. To look at a circumstance or a certain situation and choose to be happy is a very easy to say, but especially hard to do. Of course when I read this, my first thought was, “Choose to be happy? It’s not that easy.” But as I read further, I found that it is! It’s incredibly simple. It is a matter of pure choice. I can choose to have a bad attitude about school assignments, or I can choose to be happy that I am offered such a wonderful education. It is very simple and I enjoyed this part very much. After Anne Frank, Michael visited Abraham Lincoln. I am going to be honest, I saw this one coming. Michael couldn’t visit influential, historical people without making a visit to Abraham Lincoln. However, I did find that I enjoyed this chapter. This part, compared to all the other bits, was probably the most applicable to my life. It is so hard to not only forgive someone one time, but to have a spirit consumed with forgiveness. And not just forgiveness for other people and what they’ve done to us, but forgiveness for ourselves and all of the mistakes we may have made. This is an important doctrine that everyone needs to learn, and it’s hard because often I don’t feel as though I deserve forgiveness, from myself or anyone. This taught me to forgive myself and others even if they don’t deserve it, and to greet each day with a forgiving spirit. The final decision is to be persistent without exception. This chapter brings together the overlying theme of choice and sheer force of will. Persistence through exhaustion is a difficult thing to do. Average people quit when they get tired, but I don’t want to be average. To be above average one must make powerful choices and persist even though they are exhausted, even though they don’t particularly enjoy the learning process. I wish to persist and never give up so that I can achieve my goals and be successful. I was honestly really surprised at how much I actually enjoyed this book. I learned very much from this book about choices, persistence, power, and decision making. Wise choices prove to be a crucial part on the road to success. This book made me realizes that, even though I didn’t think this, I was guilty of many things, such as blame shifting and withholding forgiveness. The Young \Traveler’s Gift is a powerful book that teaches important characteristics and valuable attributes. After reading this, I wanted to go out into the world and be a powerful, successful person.
Michael is lonely and sad. his parents died and his Aunt Esther has to take him in (74). Cause of Michael’s parents being dead he is lonely. aunt Esther and Michael do not get along. That causes them to be even more lonely.
In Symcox and Sullivan’s Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies, another side of not only Columbus but also his peers is brought to light. I have never read anything written by Columbus’s contemporaries before reading this book, so it gave me some refreshing insight as opposed to the repetitive glamorized content in high school textbooks. I also appreciate how legal documents such as the Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal are included because they give a sense of what else was going on during the time that Columbus was going on these voyages.
The following book of Peter Kreeft’s work, The Journey, will include a summary along with mine and the authors’ critique. As you read the book it is a very pleasant, symbolic story of always-existing wisdom as you go along the pathway of what knowledge really is. It talks about Socrates, someone who thinks a lot about how people think, from Athens, is a huge part in this book. This book is like a roadmap for modern travelers walking the very old pathway in search of reality. It will not only show us the pathway they took, but the pathway that we should take as well.
One of the main characters in the short story “The Things They Carried”, written by Tim O’Brien, is a twenty-four year old Lieutenant named Jimmy Cross. Jimmy is the assigned leader of his infantry unit in the Vietnam War, but does not assume his role accordingly. Instead, he’s constantly daydreaming, along with obsessing, over his letters and gifts from Martha. Martha is a student at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, Jimmy’s home state. He believes that he is in love with Martha, although she shows no signs of loving him. This obsession is a fantasy that he uses to escape from reality, as well as, take his mind off of the war that surrounds him, in Vietnam. The rest of the men in his squad have items that they carry too, as a way of connecting to their homes. The story depicts the soldiers by the baggage that they carry, both mentally and physically. After the death of one of his troops, Ted Lavender, Jimmy finally realizes that his actions have been detrimental to the squad as a whole. He believes that if he would have been a better leader, that Ted Lavender would have never been shot and killed. The physical and emotional baggage that Jimmy totes around with him, in Vietnam, is holding him back from fulfilling his responsibilities as the First Lieutenant of his platoon. Jimmy has apparent character traits that hold him back from being the leader that he needs to be, such as inexperience and his lack of focus; but develops the most important character trait in the end, responsibility.
After becoming educated in the ways of a page and squire and helping his country rid itself of the Moors, Leon became restless and searched for his next adventure. His next adventure came when Christopher Columbus needed volunteers to outfit his second expedition to the New World. Leon had heard the stories Columbus brought back with him and saw the a...
Christopher “Alexander Supertramp” McCandless was a dreamer. However, unlike most of us nowadays, Christopher turned his desire for adventure into reality. Similar to Buddha, he gave up his wealth, family, home, and most possessions except the ones he carried before embarking on his journey. He traveled by various methods, mostly on foot, to eventually reach his desired goal in the Alaskan wilderness. Unfortunately, due to various mistakes, Christopher ultimately passed and his body was found in a neglected Fairbank City Transit Bus. His motivation to achieve his goal was based on the many aspects of his life. Chris’s dysfunctional family weighed heavily on him, one prime reason for driving him onto the road of freedom.
King brings up the truth about the vicious captains that are famous for exploring and finding North America. The main idea of his first chapter is simply within the title, Forgetting Columbus. King conveys the reasons why Americans need to forget the stories which they were once told, in order to expose themselves to the unfortunate truths before 1985. For instance, King critiques how whites took pride in massacring Natives in large numbers. Most people have heard about the conspiracy about Columbus mass murdering Natives to get them to comprehend and
“Paradise Found and Lost” from Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Discoverers, embodies Columbus’ emotions, ideas, and hopes. Boorstin, a former Librarian of Congress, leads the reader through one man’s struggles as he tries to find a Western Passage to the wealth of the East. After reading “Paradise Found and Lost,” I was enlightened about Columbus’ tenacious spirit as he repeatedly fails to find the passage to Asia. Boorstin title of this essay is quite apropos because Columbus discovers a paradise but is unable to see what is before him for his vision is too jaded by his ambition.
I didn?t know much about Columbus, but when it was taught to us as a class, which was rarely, the lessons were brief and covered only the ?positive? things that he did. That is, from the eyes of those who believe Columbus was a noble man. It wasn?t until 6th grade when my teacher showed my class the book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen that we opened our eyes and saw reality. We had been deceived. Deceived by videos. Deceived by books. Deceived by teachers. But at least it felt good to know the truth-finally.
...he understood, by caveats of : “ he understood that”, “ it seemed to him”, or “ he believed that” , this made what he heard as irrelevant, since this provided no effect on the ultimate message (Bodmer, 34-35). The consequences represented in Columbus’s writings is presented as objective and comprehensive rather that subjective and biased and he would use literary privileges to create America using his imaginary model as he saw fit (Bodmer, 36.37). Columbus’s use of imaginary models provided him two functions, one personal that allowed him to validate his theories and prove accuracy to his plan, and confirms in his own estimation that he as God’s chosen agent and second to justify his ventures and establish his prestige (Bodmer, 39). Columbus’s representation of American was that of imagination but would be viewed by historians and “the civilizing of America”.
Michael soon decides that if he can trust Joe enough to keep in silence, he may be able to out wit the police. When Michael makes his decision, he never considers the ramifications that will come of it. For example, Michael never even considers the long agonizing nights he will stay awake or the ling pain filled days he will go through thinking of Jenna Ward and her mother suffering day after day. On the contrary, Michael thinks he will be able to just move on and forget about it.
In his first voyage in 1492, when Christopher Columbus set out to search for Asia, he ended up landing in America on a small island in the Caribbean Sea, which he confidently thought was Asia. He then made several other voyages to the New World in search for riches, thinking that he was exploring an already explored land, but he had found the greatest riches of them all, undiscovered land, America. This shows that when one sets out on a mission, they face different challenges on the journey but in the end, achieve more than what they planned on achieving. The novel The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, and the novel Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, both describe two journeys where the characters achieve more when they learn about life, survival and patience, by understanding religion, tackling their fears, associating with nature, and encountering other characters from whom they learn something. The former is about a young shepherd named Santiago, who has a recurring dream of a treasure in Egypt, for which he makes a journey to achieve his “Personal Legend” by the help of a man who claims to be...
In “A Worn Path” colors are used to emphasize the depth and breadth of the story, and to reinforce the parallel images of the mythical phoenix and the protagonist Phoenix Jackson. Eudora Welty’s story is rich with references to colors that are both illustrative and perceptive, drawing us in to investigate an additional historical facet of the story.
Sanoff, Alvin P. “The Myths of Columbus.” U.S. News and World Report. 8 Oct. 1990. (CIRS Sanoff01.ART)
The first voyage of Christopher Columbus’ kicked off his legacy of being an explorer. The hardest part of starting Columbus’ voyage trying to find funds. “Columbus had a different idea: Why not sail west across the Atlantic instead of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was sound, but his math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of the Earth was much smaller than his contemporaries believed