In the end, Alex Bumberg asks Russ Feingold why no one is pushing for a change in the system. His response, though it could be described as disheartening, is something that I can understand. “It’s the system, and it’s the water in which we swim…[they] were elected under the system...It’s hard to get people to change something after they win that way.” It is crushing to think that Congress could be so corrupt. But any system can be difficult to challenge, especially when it benefits so many people with so much influence. Bumberg points out how many of the politicians and lobbyists they spoke to hate the mess that is political fundraising. I honestly don’t think I understand the system well enough to fully appreciate that these individuals who…
In the nostalgic memoir, “Girl Interrupted,” Kaysen’s imagery helps her share her experience with having to spend nearly two years in a mental hospital after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The patients of Mclean Hospital spent their days in empty rooms, and some were even lucky enough to have the ability to look out of “ tiny, high, chicken-wire-enforced, security-screened, barred windows.” Some people glorify mental illnesses or mental hospitals, but they do not realize the horror behind having to suffer from an illness. Living in a mental hospital is like living in prison since patients cannot escape until they are given permission by a doctor. In addition, mental hospitals contain “little bare rooms with…
December 7, 1941 the United States entered World war II due to the attack of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by the Empire of Japan. War entrance was not the only result of this vicious attack that devastated Americans. On February 19, 1942 two months after the U.S. declared war on the Axis powers, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order no. 9066. This order gave the United states the right to designate areas from which persons may be excluded. Therefore, this made it legal to detain Japanese Americans who lived in the United States and put them into internment camps. 120,000 ethnic Japanese were relocated to areas inland. The attack on Pearl Harbor left Americans with hysteria and fear, which triggered internment camps of Japanese Americans.…
Before the Great Awakening even occurred in New England, Jonathan Edwards brought about a great revival in his own town of Northampton that helped spark the awakening. In the town the young people were disrespecting authority, and because of the difficult economic situation many were living in their parent’s homes well into their twenties. When Edwards first began preaching he could sense that the town was regaining its vitality, however the revival was slow and it was not until three years later that his patient cultivation began to bloom. This revival was helped greatly, but unintentionally, by the sudden death of a young…
Grant Wiggins, the protagonist African-American main character in A Lesson Before Dying, has a tone that develops dramatically beginning with his initial malleable attitude, developing into serious intrigue in formerly-charged-to-death inmate, Jefferson. Scout Finch, protagonist Caucasian main character in To Kill a Mockingbird, seems to have generally a consistent spunky and energetic tone throughout the novel, with a coming of age spin. Both characters face their personality and race in effect with their tone.…
The following is a summary on the short essay The Dark Night of the Soul by Richard E Miller. This short essay is an essay that has been written with a main point always in mind, that reading and writing has very powerful influences people and their imagination but, the act of reading and writing is not being utilized as much in the modern world. Richard has created an essay that proves his point by taking five very different short stories and giving each a twist that helps the reader see the power of reading. As the reader is chronologically going through the essay he or she is given many possible meanings of the essay. The meaning and the relationships that the stories share are not revealed until the last page of the essay.…
“The Doomed in Their Sinking” is more than a short piece of non-fiction by William Gass. William Gass talks about his parents and struggles to recognize the reasons behind suicide. Gass opens this essay, talking about his mother suicide but he is unaware of the reason why his mother did suicide? He not only talks deeply about suicide but also talks about what keeps us going, but questions is it love, beliefs, faith, hope, etc. Gass uses examples and reasons of suicide in this essay. “Definitions of suicide, like definitions of adultery, are invariably normative, and frequently do little more than reflect the shallowest social attitudes, embody the most parochial perspectives”(37-38). Gass uses similes, pathos, ethos, anaphora, and the way his essay written to justify suicide.…
The main conflict about the The Terrible Transformation was the way they started a new social and economic system by practicing slave trade. They would determine your freedom based on your skin color. European traders would go to west africa and bring slaves over to the united states so that slave owners could purchase them to work on their crop fields. This was very unfair because they sold colored people to benefit themselves economically. That is why the free blacks rebelled against society and returned the brutality their masters had shown them.…
In The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, Ponyboy and Johnny kills a teenager by stabbing him in the back and are forced to run away from the police to an abandoned church.…
Tyranny is Tyranny starts off talking about our nation and how it is ready to remove itself from British rule and not be unfairly treated but go about it not causing rebellions and create a consensus for this new developing country. The Founding Fathers are the one who deserve this credit though by created a control over the states and showed our future leaders how to do. It all started with Bacons rebellion and many rebellions from many states came after this. English victories had not scared the Americans anymore in the French and Indian war. This made an idea that maybe after the Indians where threw in the colonies that maybe the Britain’s were next but it was never spoken upon. With the win though the British anticipated to gain some control over the states because the war was very costly and the colonies where now important to the British economy. The Americans didn’t need British control anymore though but British depended very deeply on the revenues of the colonies. This war brought unemployment to the poor and one example was New York even being…
In the novel, A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens opens with an anaphora, about how the world is throughout the novel. A reoccurring theme throughout this story is the battle between good and evil. Most of the novel is about the struggles each force has and how most of the time good triumphs over evil. In A Tale of Two Cities, the triumph of love, the death of the Marquis, and the contrast between Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay shows how good triumphed over evil.…
I read the article “Is Scientific Progress Inevitable?” which was written by Andrew Irvine on 2006. It was published in the book In the Agora: The Public Face of Canadian Philosophy. The main idea of the article is scientific progress is not inevitable.…
Everyone knows that cancer is bad, right? Cancer is nefarious. It kills and it’s hard to get rid of. In one way or another it affects everyone. I hate it.…
Despite the villagers’ exterior, they all are capable of evil. Mr. Summers is a kind man who also runs the lottery. In “The Lottery”, one sentence says, “The lottery was conducted- as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program- by Mr. Summers” (1). This particular passage proves that although Mr. Summers runs things that benefit the community, he is also capable of running something that murders one innocent person each year. The narrator also describes Mr. Summers as “a round-faced, jovial man” (1). This passage shows that even though he seems kind just by his appearance, he is still capable of murder. In both Castle and “The Lottery”, children are portrayed as blindly cruel. They seem to almost not know what they are doing, just being cruel out of their own habit and what their parents have taught them. When Merricat is returning to her home from town, the children chant, “Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?/Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me./ Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?/Down in the boneyard ten feet deep” (16).…
When Willy awakes the next morning, Biff and Happy have already left, Biff to see Bill Oliver and Happy to mull over the “Florida idea” and go to work. Willy, in high spirits with the prospect of the “Florida idea,” mentions that he would like to get some seeds and plant a small garden in the yard. Linda, pleased with her husband’s hopeful mood, points out that there is not enough sun. Willy replies that they will have to get a house in the country. Linda reminds Willy to ask his boss, Howard, for a non-traveling job as well as an advance to pay the insurance premium. They have one last payment on both the refrigerator and the house, and they have just finished paying for the car. Linda informs Willy that Biff and Happy want to take him to dinner at Frank’s Chop House at six o’clock. As Willy departs, moved and excited by his sons’ dinner invitation, he notices a stocking that Linda is mending and, guilt-ridden with the latent memory of his adultery with The Woman,…