Author: Jonah

Everyone has regrets, ranging from not being fast enough to grab that last chip from the bag to doing something terrible and getting someone else blamed for it. Most of the time, you can make up with the person you wronged, and you can go on with your life. However, in the short story The Moustache, it explores the feeling of guilt when the person you wronged is long dead. A theme in this story is how unresolved guilt and regret has a habit of sticking around in your mind for a very long time.

In the story, Mike goes on a regular trip to Lawnrest, his grandmother’s nursing home. When he gets there, his grandmother appears happy to see him, and calls him by his name. Soon however, he realizes that she thought he was her husband, who Mike was named after. He realizes she recognized him as her long dead husband because of the moustache he grew. Mike’s grandmother recounts how she falsely accused him of cheating with another woman, and how that damaged their relationship in later years. She apologizes, and said she didn’t apologize before because of her pride. After this ordeal, she seemed to be tired out, and goes to sleep. After this, Mike goes home and shaves his moustache.

In this story, a reader can clearly see the theme of holding on to regret, with the grandmother still feeling guilty forty years after the offended was dead. Back when her husband was still alive, she was too proud to say sorry, and because he died before she apologized, she never got the chance. Even though her mental state has deteriorated to the point when she mistakes her grandson for her husband, her guilt still remains. Only when she apologized and got the forgiveness of who she thought was her husband could she finally be at peace, symbolized by her falling asleep.

A main point in The Moustache is how you should apologize when you still can, or the regret might stay with you for your whole life. The grandmother was lucky in that she had the opportunity to apologize to her husband, if only in her mind, allowing her to let go of her guilt. Most other people wouldn’t get that opportunity.

In Antarctica and Greenland, ice is melting alarmingly quickly. In the article,”New satellite maps show dire state of ice melt in Antarctica and Greenland,” pictures of the ice sheets show them losing ice rapidly. In fact, the change is so drastic, it can be noticed from space by satellites. In the article, the author discusses the possible consequences if this is allowed to continue.

Over the course of 16 years, a series of pictures taken by satellites show how the ice sheets are losing ice at a much higher rate than its gains. The article states, “All that melting ice was responsible for a total 0.55 inches (14 millimeters) of sea-level rise between 2003 and 2019…” As shown in the quote, the world’s ice sheets melting is causing the sea level to rise. Even though it’s only half an inch, because of how big the oceans are, to add that tiny difference in sea level means an almost incomprehensibly large amount of water was added into the ocean during that time.

This increase in sea level leads us the consequences of the melting ice sheets. If the ice sheets were to continue melting like this, the article say that, “That scenario would put hundreds of millions of people living in coastal communities at risk of losing their homes — or their lives — to flooding.” Scientists have also found that most of the melting ice came from ice shelves, which serve as structural support for the rest of the ice sheet. This means the melting ice shelves will in turn cause more melted ice from unstable ice further inland flowing out into the ocean. All the water from the melted ice would increase the water level more and more, resulting in lots of flooding and lives lost.

While climate change has been hanging over our heads for quite a while now, new findings are giving us a much needed wake up call to action. The melting ice causes sea level rise, which in turn will cause floods in the future. Hopefully this new evidence can make people more aware and start trying to reverse climate change and avoid melting the ice sheets in the future.

If you had a time machine, what would you do with it? Would you go back in time to fix your mistakes, or will you go into the future to see how you end up? Of course, there’s another option, in which you charge people to use your time machine, thus making lots of money. The last option is the one explored by Ray Bradbury in his short story, A Sound of Thunder. A theme in this story is how people just refuse to believe the wide range of consequences that their actions can have.

In the story, Mr. Eckels, a hunter, goes back in time to hunt a T-Rex. His guides warn him of the massive consequences of interacting with anything there, which he takes lightly. They go on to say how they’re allowed to kill the T-Rex because that dinosaur will die in two minutes from a falling tree. When they meet the dinosaur, Mr. Eckels fled in fear, off the “Path,” a floating path meant to make sure they don’t touch anything in the past, finding his way back to the time machine after the other hunters kill the beast. His guides are worried that he touched the grass, and become furious when they realize he killed a butterfly by stepping on it. One of the guides threaten to shoot him if anything goes wrong with the future, and when they travel back, they find their language changed and that the newly elected president from their timeline lost here. The story ends with Eckels falling to his knees in disbelief, and the guide shooting him.

In this story, Mr. Eckels and to some extent the guides both think that they can get away with their actions without facing the consequences. Mr. Eckles didn’t think that touching the grass and killing a butterfly could change the future, and the guides didn’t think killing the T-Rex two minutes before it was scheduled to die would affect the future. However, some combination of these two things caused the future to be changed in drastic ways. Either or both of these could be responsible, even though the guides firmly decided that the blame was to fall on Mr. Eckels. In the end, even Mr. Eckels knew his actions’ consequences, but the guides remained in disbelief.

The story A Sound of Thunder is a slightly exaggerated method to show the reader how actions have consequences, through the science fiction trope of time travel. Mr. Eckels and the guides didn’t realize this, and ended up rewriting history. In addition, a side theme is how people can criticize others for a mistake while being blind to their own. The guides execute Mr. Eckels for messing up the future, while completely ignoring the fact that they too changed the past.

Almost everyone has had a substitute teacher. Firstly, there’s the teacher that follows the notes the regular teacher left them, and teaches according to that. Next, there’s the teacher that just gives out an easy worksheet or sometimes a crossword puzzle and then just leaves them to it. Lastly, you get the rarest substitute of all, the extremely strict one. This is the archetype of the substitute encountered by Roger in the short story Miss Awful. A theme in this story is how different people can have different ways of expressing emotion.

In the story, Roger’s easygoing teacher who lets her class get away with everything leaves and is substituted by Miss Orville, nicknamed “Miss Awful” by the class. She is very strict to the students and criticize them harshly for mistakes, making her very unpopular. She makes Roger do his homework over and over again because of his spelling mistakes, causing him to call her a witch at home. On her last day before the regular teacher comes back, the students ripped the leaves of her precious plant, against Roger’s protests. After finding out, Miss Orville despairs over her failure in helping any of the students grow and dismisses them. After the class left the room, Roger goes up to Miss Orville and demonstrates his growth in his spelling.

Miss Orville has the students’ best interests in mind, and she acts on it by being strict so that they can be the best they can be. Most students interpret this as plain ill will, more reinforced by her comparing students with her plants, something that she treasures. Roger understands this at the end, and in his demonstration of spelling, he shows that Miss Orville helped him grow and that he understands her intentions.

A theme in the short story Miss Awful is how you could misunderstand someone because the method they show how they care can be different. In the story, Miss Orville really wanted to help the students, but they hated her because of how strict she was. The author of the story wanted the reader to stop and consider the intentions of other people before jumping to conclusions.

Imagine, if you will, two men handcuffed together, with one of them looking clean and well mannered, while the other one was ruffled and grumpy looking. If you were told one of them was a criminal, while the other was a marshal, which one will you choose? Most likely, you chose the grumpy looking one, unless you weren’t imagining hard enough. This the situation one Ms. Fairchild found herself looking at, in the short story Hearts and Hands. One theme found in this story is how looks can deceive, and to never assume on something based on them.

The story begins with Ms. Fairchild meeting her old friend Mr. Easton on a train, who is handcuffed to a rough looking stranger. The stranger tells her that Mr. Easton is a marshal, escorting him to prison for counterfeiting. Ms. Fairchild takes this in stride, and talk with Easton about old times. As she starts talking about how it would be nice to live in the west, the “prisoner” excuses him and Easton to go to the smoker car, with a fellow passenger talking to another saying, “Say–did you ever know an officer to handcuff a prisoner to his right hand?”, obviously hinting that Easton is the real prisoner.

In the story, the author cleverly fooled the reader into thinking that Mr. Easton’s captor was his prisoner, taking the reader along with Ms. Fairchild until the final reveal. This makes the reader conscious of their bias towards the marshal because of how he looks. Of course the marshal himself encouraged this bias by saying that he’s the prisoner, but nobody questioned it after he said it. Unless you were very observant and aware of how police are supposed to cuff their prisoners, you probably also took his words in stride like Ms. Fairchild did. In tricking the reader into making the same mistakes as the characters, the author drives his point of not judging a book by it’s cover.

A point the author is trying to say in Hearts and Hands is that first impressions shouldn’t be trusted. Because he was dirty and grumpy looking, the marshal had no problem making it seem like he was Mr. Easton’s prisoner. The author further demonstrates the reality of this by making the reader make the same error in judgement, only to realize they fell into the same trap as Ms. Fairchild.

Picture the following scenario in your head. A man is standing trial in an arena. There are two doors, and his sentence is determined by whichever door he opens. One door holds a tiger, ready to rip him into shreds, while the other holds a beautiful lady, who will marry him if he opens her door. Nobody knows which door holds which. This is the setting of the short story The Lady, or the Tiger, written by Frank R. Stockton. A theme in this story is that sometimes your choices don’t matter.

In the story, a king makes up a judicial system in which he has no responsibility at all. The convict chooses a door, and whatever is behind the door is his sentence. If it’s a beautiful lady, she marries him, and if it’s a tiger, he gets mauled to death. A random peasant and the princess fall in love, and he is put on trial for loving the princess. The princess finds out which door is which, and is given the choice of letting her lover die or having him marry another woman. She points her lover towards the door she chose for him, and he opens it without hesitation, abruptly ending the story.

While the ending is left unclear, we can see that the choice doesn’t affect the princess at all. If she directs her lover towards the tiger, he dies and she’ll never see him again, and if she directs him towards the lady, he gets married to someone else and will also be forever separated from the princess. Either way, she’ll lose him. Here, the king has set up a situation in which either way, the relationship of the lovers will be severed. No matter which door the princess chooses, the results will be the same for her.

In The Lady, or the Tiger, the princess is given the illusion of having a choice. In reality, from her perspective, it’s all the same. Her choice in the end, is pointless, and either way her lover is dead to her.

A theme in the short story A Rose for Emily is the dangers of biases. The town all pitied Emily and thought of her as a bit larger than life, so they ignored many of the suspicious and illegal things she was doing. They’re biases didn’t allow them to suspect Emily.

The story, chronologically, starts with Emily Grierson’s controlling father’s death, with Emily refusing to acknowledged his death for three days, keeping the body. The townspeople dismiss this as her way of grieving. After that, she meets Homer Barron and falls in love with him, but he wasn’t marrying. She then proceeds to buy arsenic without a proper reason, followed shortly by Homer’s disappearance into her house forever. The town again dismissed it, believing that Homer went away somewhere. After she died, Homer’s rotting corpse was found in Emily’s house, showing signs of her sleeping with it.

In the story, the town kept excusing all the signs of Emily’s insanity, because of their pity towards her. She and everyone else thought that she deserved to get what she wanted because of what she went through. When she went to buy arsenic to poison Homer, the druggist gave her a reason, labeling it “for rats,” and not suspecting a thing when Homer mysteriously disappeared soon after. From all the pity the town gave Emily, they raised her onto a pedestal, making her untouchable. They thought insisting that her father was alive was just how she coped, they thought she was going to kill herself with the arsenic, and they thought Homer just left when he disappeared. They firmly believed that she could do no wrong, so they either ignored or made up a reason for everything she did

In the short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, one theme is the difference between dreams and reality. Walter Mitty, the protagonist, keeps daydreaming of scenarios in which he is in control in some way. Meanwhile, in real life, he is sent on errands and generally bossed around by his wife. The story looks at the contrast between these two worlds.

The story focuses on a series of Walter Mitty’s daydreams. In the first one, he was the captain of a ship, directing his crew to escape a terrible storm. In the second, he was a skilled surgeon, operating on a millionaire banker. Then he was a killer, boldly admitting his crime at court. After that he was a pilot, laughing in the face of death as he prepares to fly a suicide mission. Finally, in the last daydream, he was on death row, about to be shot by a firing squad.

In all of Mitty’s daydreams except the last one, he had control of both his own and the lives of others. The captain was saving his crew, the surgeon was saving his patient, the killer killed someone, and the pilot was heading to his death to save his side of the war. This is a sharp contrast to his real life, in which everything is controlled by his wife. In fact, he spends the entire story obeying her. In all of his fantasies, he was thinking about making his own decisions, but never acting on them. This continues until he finally gives up, ending the story in his final daydream, in which even his imagined self didn’t have any control, just like in real life.

A theme in the story is fantasy and reality, and the differences between the two. Fantasy Mitty is strong willed and powerful, while real Mitty is a pushover. throughout the story, real Mitty keeps trying to be fantasy Mitty, but never acted on it. In the end, he gives up, and fantasy Mitty also loses the imaginary control he had, becoming like real Mitty.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, scientists have begun making robots to do our dirty work. Because of the virus, there are jobs that are too dangerous for humans to do, such as disinfecting hospitals, which is what we are looking at here.

In the Robotics and Innovation Lab at Trinity College Dublin, scientists are building a robot, nicknamed Violet, to disinfect hospital rooms with reduced chances of spreading the virus. The idea started from Stevie, one of their products, which is a robot made to help people feel less lonely. When the pandemic started, they started making changes to the existing model to help in hospitals. Violet uses ultraviolet radiation to kill viruses, which damages DNA, but only enough to kill the virus and not enough to severely damage complex organisms. In testing, Violet is shown to be around four times faster than an average person with disinfectant at cleaning a room, and because its a robot, it is also more thorough.

Violet is only one out of many robots made to combat the pandemic, and they may prove to be a safe and effective way of dealing with the virus. All this research can also hopefully help humanity the next time we find ourselves in this situation.

In the short story Everyday Use, a theme is the conflict between preserving your heritage as it was in the past and continuing on growing and changing your heritage. In the story, a mother and her daughter Maggie get visited by the other daughter Dee, who went off to get an education. Dee wants to keep some old quilts as heirlooms and hang them up to preserve them, while the mother wanted to leave them to Maggie, who would use them like regular quilts until they get worn out, and then make more.

Dee wanted to preserve the quilts, because they were a part of their heritage. She stops treating the quilts as just quilts, instead treating them as some sort of sacred artifact. She even changed her name to Wangero to get closer to her African heritage, even though her original name was a name passed through her family and can also be considered part of her heritage. In Dee’s efforts to get closer to her heritage, she abandoned her family’s unique heritage.

The mother wanted to just treat the quilts as quilts and if they get ruined, just make another. she still considered the as part of her heritage, but she thinks the best course of action would be to just use the quilts as they were supposed to be used. If they were to be ruined, then they had served their purpose, and new quilts can be made, which will also part of her family heritage.

One of the messages in the story is the differences between keeping and preserving old pieces of heritage and adding onto that heritage. The first option turns the heritage into a more abstract idea, while the latter keeps it alive and potentially alters it.