After you read “Follow the Water” and “What
After you read “Follow the Water” and “What
Throughout the course of the marking period, two books that I have read really stood out above all others. They are Dogsong and The River, both written by the same author, Gary Paulsen. This is the most obvious similarity between the two books but there are much more. They both have a teenage boy as their main character and are both about a boy embarking on an expedition. These are the general similarities, but there are also many differences between them. Now let’s go deep into each book and look at some of their unique aspects.…
In the story “Follow the Water” by Jennifer L. Holm a girl named Georgie is dragged out to mars with her parents who are there to search for water. To live on mars you need to know a lot of information which can be found in the article “What Would it Take to Live Here” by Mackenzie Carro.…
James McBride was born in 1957 to an African-American father and a Polish Jewish immigrant mother. McBride's biological father, Andrew Dennis McBride, died of lung cancer while his mother, Ruth McBride, was pregnant with James. Therefore James regarded his stepfather, Hunter Jordan, as "Daddy." James's mother eventually had twelve children, eight from her first marriage and four from her second. James grew up in New York City and Delaware.…
Linda Sue Park’s inspiring novella A Long Walk to Water recounts the treacherous journey of young Sudanese boy forced to flee his war-ravaged home in search of safety and refuge. Salva Dut, a positive and energetic boy, transforms from fearful and inexperienced adolescent to strong and willful adult as he overcomes countless obstacles during his grave expedition to find sanctuary during the First Sudanese Civil War. Despite his perilous predicament, Salva’s steadfast perseverance enables him to surmount innumerable hardships during his ominous plight.…
1. In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.…
In the novel "The Color of Water" by James McBride, the two characters Ruth and James grieve over the death of James's stepfather's death, Jordan Hunter, in completely different ways. Ruth's way of grieving for her husband was very different than how her son chose to grieve his departure. James said after the death of his stepfather's death he just started to misbehave and resulted in him skipping school a lot and going to the movies with his friends. "I virtually dropped out of high school... failing every class. I spent the year going to the movies ... with my friends" (pg 6). His siblings joked about the way he dealt with he grieved saying things like "James is going through his revolution"(pg 6). Skipping school was not the only thing…
In his speech This is Water David Foster Wallace during a commencement ceremony begins discussing the purpose of education, not only to become intellectually educated but to learn how to think. He introduces a metaphor of two fishes that after being asked how the water was, they wondered what water is, being water all the actual and commonly dismissed reality that surrounds us. Thus, it has led us to create a natural default setting that has caused individuals to become centralized in their individual/personal needs only, and that our needs are sometimes put over more relevant matters to fulfill our necessities first. He states that knowing how to think is to be capable to decide what things we pay attention to and what we learn from experience.…
In the passage from The Color of Water James McBride reveals how prejudice and judgment against Blacks is beginning to occur within the race, clashing with the part within him that believes that African Americans are actually the superior race, making it harder for McBride to find who he is as an interatial individual in a conflicting society. McBride is torn between his mother’s White background, which seems to be approved of by a majority of people, and the African American culture that surrounds him and embodies the thoughts of many near him. This creates an uncertainty in his mind of who he should become, and what his place in the world is, that many youth and adults would be unable to deal with. It also proves to increase the challenges…
Without rebellion where would our society be? People discover their differences through rebellion. It is a necessary part of growing up, and is essential to finding a place to fit in the puzzle of the world. In the memoir The Color of Water by James McBride, both characters, Ruth and James, grow up in communities where they feel like outcasts. James is biracial but appears black, and goes to an all white school. Ruth was raised as an orthodox Jew in a non-Jewish community. Ruth and James strive for acceptance and find it through insubordination; by rebelling against society both Ruth and James find themselves. They do so by going against their parents, finding a different community and religion.…
The ending chapters of River of Dark Dreams summarized the reopening of slavery arguments and the United States imperial expansion. The reopeners, as well as many other southerners, believed that cotton gave slaveholders power over free men. The hierarchy, power, and necessity that associated itself with slavery was important to have. To be a slaveholder was a privilege, rite of passage, and a societal license in classism. They saw liberal capitalism as a profound threat to the social hierarchy, which was rooted in self-serving claims about paternalism, the enduring value and desirability of social and economic relations, and the cherished connection between slaveholding society and the integrity of individual, patriarchal white households.…
“The Color of Water”, written by James McBride, is a memoir. The book was introduced to us in 1995. The main narrator, James, born in the year of 1957 to an African-American father and a Jewish mother. James, at that time, was not to keen about the black power in the sense he had a white mother. During the Civil Rights, his stepfather had passed away. From this point on; James realizes the true responsibility of himself towards his friends and family. He unveils his true self to the world with his memoir entitled “The Color of Water”. His mother’s name was Ruth McBride. Her story was also compelling. Ruth, born in Poland in the year of 1921. Ruth was an immigrant to the United States. Later in her life, she met her black husband Andrew Dennis…
Wallace, David Foster. "This is Water." Kenyon college commencement speech. May 21, 2005. Wallace's speech gives a look at reality. The way an American adult's life is. The way how everything is routine, how if not "well adjusted," you will be self centered and in default setting. He describes the daily routine of an American adult, and how he goes to a supermarket, packed with more people. He gets frustrated and annoyed by all of these people; how they are just wasting his time. He then starts thinking how all of these people are going through the same thing he is going through; they have rough days just as he does. If someone was to think outside the box and actually focus on the beauty of this world, they will not be bored, annoyed, frustrated,…
Have you ever been in the position where you had to choose if you wanted to do the right or wrong thing? Would you describe yourself as a virtuous person? Well, the short story called “The Man In The Water” involves a character with moral features, as the author Roger Rosenblatt uses the literary elements of character and conflict to express morality. Morality means principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good or bad behavior. This story shows that you have to act with courage no matter what. “The Man in the Water” had the compassion to place others before him. This story also reminds us that humans don’t have the real power to overthrow a force as big as a nature.…
In The Color of Water by James McBride, we are taught through the eyes of a black man and his white mother that color shouldn’t matter. Although Ruth McBride Jordan had grown up as a Jew and had a father who disliked Jews very much, she was never prejudice against them and learned that she fit into the black world better than the white world. When she married a black man, she accepted Christ into her life and told her children, “God is the color of water.” She taught her kids that color didn’t matter, because God loves all races.…
1. Anne Fadiman narrates the events of “Under Water” in first person. She prepares us by describing the setting and the conditions and intentions of the event. I think Anne wants us to realize that everyone on the trip, including the instructors, are human. Even though they knew there was no chance of saving Gary, or even possibly reaching his unresponsive body, they tried their hardest.…