Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption follows the story of Louie Zamperini, a rebellious child who grew up to become one of the fastest runners of the 1930s. He competed as an Olympic track runner in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The future was looking bright for Zamperini before World War II began, which resulted in the Olympics being cancelled and Louie being drafted into the Army Air Forces as a bombardier. Midway through 1943, his B-24 crash landed in the Pacific Ocean. For weeks, Louie and two other men drifted westward across a seemingly endless ocean, accompanied by a pack of sharks and surviving on scraps of bird and fish meat and the occasional rainfall. Eventually, he arrived in Japanese…
As I read through several reviews, I found it amusing how many people assumed the main focus of The Chaperone would be over Louise Brooks. It was pretty obvious to me, by the title and summary that it was going to be about “The Chaperone”. Due to this reason, I chose Mandy Boles’ review to be one of my three. The first things Mandy noticed, was that…
In The Running Game by Wendelin Van Draanen, Jessica, the main character, is hospitalized after an accident. A vehicle crashed into her bus after a track meet and she is now missing one of her legs below the knee. She ran a 400 meter race in 55 seconds flat during her last meet, but now it takes her five minutes to move 20 feet. She heals quickly and her doctor is pleased with her progress, but her mental state isn't doing so well. She slips into depression. She is frustrated because she knows that she is supposed to appreciate all that her family and friends are doing to help her adapt to her situation, but she feels as if she is a stranger in her own house. Learning to live without her leg isn't the only battle that Jessica faces. She also…
The novel Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, is about the challenging life of Louie Zamperini. Louie is a boy who grew up only knowing how to be in trouble, as in stealing and fighting daily. With the help of his older brother, Pete, Louie tries to clean up his act and gets involved with the school track team. Louie grows up to become an Olympic runner, but his dreams at the gold metal fall short when he is drafted to serve the country. Louie then becomes a bombardier in the Air Corps. The author, Hillenbrand, wrote the novel with great detail to educate about what was happening in the novel and to keep one attached while reading.…
In Life as We Knew it by Susan Beth Pfeffer, Miranda’s world is turned upside down with one meteor strike. The meteor strikes the moon and the results are not what people expected; the moon now has moved closer to Earth. This causes many problems with the tides, electricity, gas, and many other things. Miranda’s brother, Matt, gets to come home from college which, Miranda is very excited about. But this may cause more problems. School lets all the kids out early which, troubles Miranda’s mom. Now she has to feed her kids three times a day instead of two. Miranda’s mom begins to eat less and less; She worries more and more. Some kids from Miranda’s swim team begin to swim in the pond because the pool closed. She becomes close with a boy named…
For centuries women have been working towards broadening opportunities within the work force. Many women have struggled to gain equality, and some have been successful. On June 13, 1873 in Manhattan Kansas, Alice Stebbins Wells was born, as was the start of her success story.…
The short story “Hard Times” by Ron Rash, focuses on the effects that depression has on society. The main characters in the story are Jacob and Edna, who are farmers in a rural community in Raleigh, North Carolina. As the story begins, Edna has once again noticed that the eggs from a particular hen is missing. Though she has several other hens, who are laying, she contributes those missing eggs to adding to their poverty. Edna, who was once a very happy person has been soured by the effects of poverty and now stands tight lipped in the door of the henhouse. Jacob makes the comment, "This cove’s so damn dark a man about has to break light with a crowbar” . This comment sets the tone of the story, one of darkness which is a result of poverty.…
William Gibson once said, “Time moves in one direction, memory in another”. This is especially true in the film, Still Alice, where the audience is shown the progression of early onset Alzheimer’s in Dr. Alice Howland, a linguistics professor at Columbia University, and mother of three. Throughout the film the audience sees the slow deterioration of Alice and it not only affects her mental state but also in her physical appearance as well.…
Films that claim the statement, “based on a true story” intend to make all of the pictured events as accurate as possible. While depicting a historic moment can be incredible hard, it can be even harder when the original script is constructed upon a lie. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a movie based the life of the man responsible for creating a genre of television in which we capitalize on today, but also for creating an autobiography so far- fetched that it appears to be true. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind presents a look into the fabricated double life of Chuck Barris.…
The novel Fledgling by Octavia Butler analyses race relations and eugenics in society. Through the use of another intelligent species Butler lets the reader experience what happens when humans are not at the top of the food chain. While making the reader question the controversy over the use of eugenics and genetic engineering, Butler uses the story as a parallel of race relations in America.…
The two resources that I picked for my final journal are ‘Not In Our Town’ and the CNN article about Officer Elsokary in New York City. The reason why I picked “Not In Our Town” is because this article shows that people are sometimes really mean, rude and obnoxious, but it also shows that people are sometimes nice, caring, kind and supportive. The attacks and this story took place in Billings, Montana. The attacks were against people in the town who were Jewish. The reason why I picked the CNN article is because it shows that some people are rude to the people who are protecting the country that they are living in.…
The idea that ‘ethical standards in social research are stricter today than ever before’ is discussed in relation to Alice Goffman’s On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City published in 2014 and Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics published by Scheper-Hughes in 2001. Goffman’s research was carried out roughly between 2002 and 2008 and is used to represent research carried out ‘today’. On the other hand, Scheper-Hughes’ research on a rural Irish area known as Ballybran or in reality as An Clochán was written in 1974 and 1975, being published in 1979. The book used for the purpose of this essay is the version published in 2001, which contains an epilogue and a prologue referencing her return to An Clochán in 1999. She found her return to…
From reading the extract from The Color Purple, the reader is shocked almost straight away from how the character/narrator (who in this case is the author Alice Walker) is treated and brought up by her father.…
Chains, a work of historical fiction by Laurie Halse Anderson is about a young slave girl named Isabel living at the time of the American Revolution. She and her younger sister, Ruth are living a happy life in Rhode Island with their kind master, Miss Mary Finch, until she dies and they are turned over to her mean nephew. They are promised their freedom in Miss Mary Finch’s will, but do not receive it because nobody respects them enough to check. When they are sold to a Loyalist couple called the Locktons who live in New York City, Isabel still dreams that one day she and Ruth will become free people. Awhile later, Isabel decides to become a spy for the Patriot army, hopeful that if she helps them, they will reward her and her sister with their…
In the novel Inside Out by terry trueman,the character Zach ah schizophrenia ,and then goes into a local café to get a maple bar and waits for his mom to come pick him up.But at an instant the café is getting robbed.Zach doesn’t know what to do,so so he listens to what the robbers says and goes with the other hostages.These boys are all similar in one certain way as they are often judge and misunderstood by society ,yet different in ther own way in witch they deal with there problems and / conflicts in life.…