Author: DustinP

Teenagers, elders, and siblings alike, everybody is their own person. They have their own memories and experiences, as well as relationships with others. An ongoing idea throughout “The Moustache” by Robert Cormier is establishing an identity. The main character Mike learns by the end of the story that the other in his life are their own people too, and that he should savor his time with them.

Mike is an average seventeen year old boy who, as he approaches adulthood, wants to feel like an individual and to be seem as one. For example, his older sister has a boyfriend named Harry. Mike really likes him because he treats him as a separate person instead of in the context of his sister. Also as the title suggests, he wears a mustache. Although everyone including him knows that it does not suit him, he keeps it anyway because it sets him apart from others his age and makes him feel more grown up. However, he does not necessarily think of others in the same way. But he learns so through his encounter with his grandmother. She is old, weak, and sometimes delusional. He he visits her in a nursery, she mistake him for her husband, who Mike was named after. Since he died young, she voices everything she wanted to say to him, and wishes that she were more honest. Listening to her experiences, Mike learns that his grandmother had been young once too, and also had a real life. He always thought of her as just his grandmother, but now he sees her as an individual with her own past.

In addition to seeing the identities of others, Mike also realizes how fast life comes and goes. There were many things his grandmother wanted to say to her husband, but he was taken too soon. When he gets home, he immediately shaves off his mustache. He thinks of asking his parents, “there’s nothing to forgive between you, is there?”(Cormier 7). By growing out his mustache, Mike wants to become a mature adult. But his meeting with his grandmother convinced him otherwise. He now knows to just slow down and take in life.

To conclude, Mike learns two important life lessons in the story. His grandmother teaches him both about acknowledging the other people in his life and also appreciating them. The mustache that previously demonstrated his maturity is gone, as he learns to enjoy his time with his family.

Teaching methods usually fit on a spectrum, with the ends being letting the students do whatever they want or the micromanagement of every move. These two polar opposites are presented in “Miss Awful” by Author Cavanaugh through the characters of Miss Wilson and Miss Orville. They resemble the ends of the spectrum along wither their advantages and flaws. By the ends of the story, it is clear how both can be applied.

Miss Wilson is a teacher that is very popular with the students. When a boy in her class decided to lie down and rest in the middle of class, she suggested that “‘we’d all have a rest, it was perfectly normal in the middle of the day'”. Obviously, her style of teaching makes sure that the students have fun and it relieves the stress of education. However giving students, especially little kids, this much freedom is deleterious to their education. Small children simply cannot be trusted to be self driven. Additionally, no matter how nice the teacher is to the students, they will eventually take advantage of her.

So let’s consider the other option. When Miss Wilson left for Omaha, Miss Orville became the substitute. On her first day, she yelled at the kids to march in a military like fashion. If a student had bad handwriting, she would scream at them. Even if someone is slouching they will get scolded. This teaching style on the surface has many drawbacks. First, not every single aspect should be corrected. Also, the students should be allowed room to grow and learn some responsibilities.

Which form of education is better? Well looking back, it was previously stated that Wilson and Orville’s teaching methods are ends to a spectrum. Like most things in the world, taking the middle road is usually a path that takes the good from both sides. Teachers should allow students to be independent and responsible, but help them in the right direction. However, this idea should be modified based on different age groups. For example, younger students should be managed more, as they lack self control and their education should be more focused on learning, rather than results. For older people like college students, they have been through twelve years of schooling and definitely know how to take control of their own progress. Also, what is more important at their age is to get their projects completed and in on time. In conclusion, what is most succesful is a mix of the two teaching styles, which encourage students to learn and also get things done.

“The Lady or the Tiger?” by Frank R. Stockton takes place in a semi-barbaric nation ruled by a semi-barbaric king. One of the defining features if the kingdom is its way of trying those accused of a crime. The accused is put in a Roman inspired arena. He will then choose between two doors, one which contains a hungry tiger, the other a lady whom he will be immediately married to. One day the king’s daughter is discovered to be in love with a young man who instantly gets tossed into the arena. When he is about to chose which door to open, he looks at her for a gesture, which she gives. However, the story ends there, and no conclusion is offered. So which door did the princess choose? Furthermore, what is Stockton trying to say about humans and the world?

At the end of the story, Stockton explains the princess’s struggle to decide which door to have her lover open. She could either have him live and marry another woman who she despises, or watch him get shredded by a tiger. He asks the readers the question of what door she chooses, never providing his own answer. This is intended, because the question is best left unanswered. Throughout the story there is much evidence that alludes to this. For example, the king used to be barbaric, but after Roman influence, he is now halfway between barbaric and civilized. The trials also reflect this halfway point. One outcome is tragic, and the other is pleasant. In addition, the king thinks of the trials to be “perfectly fair”, as there is an equal chance of uncertainty between the outcomes. The ideas of semi-barbarism, 50/50, and uncertainty should be a part of the ending too. Stockton also never shows any bias towards civilization or barbarism, which further supports the idea that the ending has to be left without an answer.

Like mentioned earlier, Stockton writes that the princess spent days pondering the fate of the young man. Her two options are reflective of the driving forces of love. There is the selfish side, shown through her loathing of the idea of the man spending his life with another woman. Also present is the selfless side that wants the best for her better half, because even though he is with someone else, at least the one she loves is alive. The lack of a conclusion also means the lack of an answer to which driving force of love is stronger. It is likely Stockton is saying that love is a balance of both.

After examining “The Lady or the Tiger”, the ending is clearly not just a cheap cliffhanger. The themes of the story require it to be left unconcluded, and it also shows how love is a mixture of selfish and selflessness.

In “Hearts and Hands” by O. Henry, the author demonstrates how subconscious bias can blur the view of reality. Mr. Easton, a well groomed man, is chained to a messy looking marshal who is escorting him to prison for counterfeiting. They get into a coach with Miss Fairchild, who automatically assumes that Mr. Eaton is the marshal because he looks elegant. At the end, all the other passengers who don’t hold prejudice notice what is wrong, but Miss Fairchild still is oblivious.

First, she fails to notice that Mr. Eaton has the chain around his right hand. Something as clear as this should have been noticed, but Fairchild was too focused on his handsome face and wealthy appearance. Next, all the people around her noticed that Eaton was not the marshal. They do not have a bias point of view regarding social class and appearances, so they were able to see the obvious.

All in all, making assumptions based on appearances can alter what one sees. Even when everybody else saw the clear truth, the one who was holding prejudices could only see their narrow point of view.

In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber, the main character Walter Mitty is a shy submissive man who frequently daydreams. His daydreams consist of dangerous situations of which he is the daring protagonist respected by everyone, the opposite of his real life. Then shortly after starts his fantasy, he wakes up to the real world and gets flamed by his wife. Nobody respects him, because he is just an old man yearning for a life that he never will have.

Mr. Mitty’s daydreams are adventurous. He plays a hydroplane pilot, a bomber, and a criminal about to be executed. As stated earlier, his dreams are polar opposites of his real life. Through Mr. Mitty’s ambitions, Thurber is trying to convey that humans always strive to acquire what they do not have. In his dreams he is always a capable man who is cool and is in control of every situation. In real life, he is a man who gets bossed around by his wife. In his time period, this would be considered very shameful.

In conclusion, Thurber expresses the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side by showing Walter Mitty’s dreams. He is a shy man with big fantasies which are opposites of his life. Thurber is trying to say that humans always want what they do not have.

In “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, a mother and daughter argue about whether they should use a quilt or hang it up on the wall. The quilt is made up of relics from the civil war. For example, it has a piece of a soldier’s uniform. The mother says that they should use the quilt as it was intended to be used, but the daughter thinks they should treat it as a relic of their African American past and culture. Another conflict in the story is one regarding embracing the past. The daughter is named Dee, but she later changes it to an African name. She thinks that black people in America should not use the culture of their oppressors, and stick to their African roots instead.

On the issue of the quilt, the daughter’s proposal is more reasonable. With so much history in it, it holds much more value as an heirloom. If it is simply used as bedding, it can only be seen by the person who uses it. But if it is put on display, guests can view an amazing piece of history. Besides, a quilt from over one hundred years ago would probably not function well anyway.

However, the daughter changing her name to be more African is disagreeable. It is established that their family has lived in America since at least the Civil War, possibly farther back. After years of slavery and assimilation, any African culture in their family is completely gone. It is obvious that the daughter is an American, so by changing her name she is assigning her self to a culture that she knows nothing about. Ignoring the skin color similarities, her and an African have nothing in common. In conclusion, the daughter has varying levels of disagreeably.

Dr. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” mockingly describes a plan to help Ireland’s increasing amount children born from poor parents. He claims that he will make them “beneficial to the public” and relieve their suffering. However, his proposal takes a dark turn. Dr. Swift starts to write about repurposing the newborn of beggars to become food for people who are more well off. Apparently, babies of the impoverished are not much use alive, rather they provide more value to society when eaten. This proposal is much deeper than eating babies, though.

The idea that we should prioritize the collective people’s needs over an individual’s humanity is absurd. The objective of a society is to accomplish things that no single person can, and to protect the rights of the people participating in it. Taking one’s life as a newborn, no matter how many others it supposedly benefits, should be completely out of any organization’s power.

Additionally, personal liberty also has to be valued too. Although one could argue that the baby would be more useful as supper than a hopeless beggar, it is not up to society to decide whether someone’s life is worth taking for their profit. No matter how many people are in favor, the choice belongs to the individual. Nobody can dictate if someone gets to live, even if their future seems hopeless.

In conclusion, society was not made to control people. because the collective good does not get to determine the choices of an individual.

Throughout my middle school and freshman years, I have witnessed many students express that they want to kill themselves. Most of the times, they mean it in a joking way, and the others around them chime in about how much they can relate. Combined with an unhealthy amount of self pity, this attitude can be very degrading.

A lot of times when a student says that they want to die, they are just following an ongoing trend. Just like the emo scene from the early 2000’s, being depressed is an aesthetic. Many people will try to act sad or empty just to fit a certain vibe and be popular among friends. Whether or not they are actually struggling with something, previous generations have never voiced their depression as much as Gen Z. I have heard many blame it on stress, but I do not think that is the case. In our time, one can still live in a privileged and safe area with opportunity regardless of whether they went to a good college. However in my immigrant parent’s generation, they needed to get into a top college in order to escape their developing country and find jobs in America. Like me, the vast majority of my school has parents that came from an Asian country. Our parents had much more riding on their education, therefore stress should not play a part in our obsession with depression.

I think the problem is that we are too sheltered, and have never needed to experience any hardships in our comfortable life. That is not necessarily a bad thing, since we will get used to the real world soon enough, but maturing high school and middle school students sometimes can’t handle obstacles that previous generations were accustomed to encountering. However, I do not think that our parents should blame us for being “soft”, because they were the ones who put us here.

One of the ideas presented by “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor is that different people have a different moral compass. However, it does not mean that morality itself is subjective. Unlike a personal set of values, morality is a universal concept that is based on fundamental logic. Every single human throughout history has lived with the same morals, although some may stray from them or have different interpretations.

I couldnt finish in time

After reading “How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?” by Jade Wu Savvy I thought: “I didn’t learn anything from this”. The article fails to make a reasonable point and the logic is extremely. It started off by listing the common “stereotypes” about sleep, by saying that “’Dr. Google hasn’t examined me; how would she know how much sleep I need,’”. The article talks about how most sources claim that eight hours is a good recommendation for most people, which is supposedly wrong because different people have different needs. This is a fair point, and it uses the different amounts of water that athletes compared to normal people have to drink as an example. However later in the article, they go on the say that teens are recommended 8 to 10 hours of sleep. Although this range does have some variation, it is basically the same as saying “teens need about 8 hours of sleep”, which kind of just ignores its previous point. But to try and salvage the purpose of the article, later it states that toddlers need 11 – 18 hours and the elderly need only 5 – 9. The problem with this is that it is common knowledge, and does nothing to disprove the supposed stereotype about needing an average of 8 hours of sleep. Besides, it is contradictory to the previous point that different people need different sleep. When they used the athlete example, they compare people of roughly the same age. Therefore, assigning a predetermined answer to an age group is going against what it originally intended to debunk. Overall this article is a mess and wasn’t thought through very well.