Author: Jonah

In the short story The Landlady by Roald Dahl, Billy Weaver, a young naive buisnessman gets lured into a bed and breakfast by a strange old lady, and presumably, gets murdered and stuffed. One of the themes of the story is that first impressions can be wrong.

The story starts out with Billy arriving at Bath, and looking for a place to stay. He is directed towards a pub, but on the way, he finds a bed and breakfast and decides to go there instead due to how inviting it seemed. Inside, he finds the landlady, who welcomes him, and Billy was completely convinced to stay there at the mention of the low price and hospitality of the lady. The landlady then has him sign a book, which each previous customer signed, revealing that there were only two other guests ever, who the landlady insists are still staying with her. It is then revealed that her pets are both stuffed and almost perfectly preserved, and Billy was given tea, which he notes tasted like almonds.

The story ends rather abruptly, and with the given evidence, it seems that the old lady poisoned Billy’s tea with cyanide, which is said to smell like almonds. after killing Billy, she probably stuffed him and put him away with the previous guests, who were probably also stuffed.

A theme in the story is that looks can be deceiving. Billy came to the landlady because she had pets and her bed and breakfast looked nice. He continued to stay because she was friendly and had good service for cheap. Because of these first impressions, Billy didn’t pay too much attention to suspicious details, leading to him getting killed and stuffed.

Humans are social animals, and the recent quarantine has greatly limited our social interactions. Now, with people living with little to no contact with other people, the loneliness may take a toll. The article “Forced Social Isolation Causes Neural Craving Similar to Hunger” shows how important human contact is.

One of the effects of forced isolation is, as many would guess, a craving for social interaction. This craving is similar to a hungry person’s crave for food. A quote states,”Critically, the researchers found similar midbrain activity in response to food cues after fasting and social cues after isolation.” This means that the brain responds similarly to food and social interaction.

The study on forced isolation displays how isolation can affect your brain. The findings show that after being isolated for an extended period of time, a person would start craving for social interaction the same way someone fasting would crave for food. This might indicate that people need social interaction to maintain their mental health the same way people need food to maintain their physical health.

For a long time, the set amount of sleep a person needs was thought to be 8 hours. While this isn’t completely untrue, the article How Much Sleep Do You Really Need? shines some new light on the subject.

Sleep is very important for a person’s health, both mental and physical. A quote from the article states,”Sleep restriction is associated with poorer attention and thinking … sleep deprivation disrupts mood … [and] insufficient sleep can even affect the microbiota in your gut.” Sleep is a time for the brain to rest, and lack of sleep can interfere with this rest.

The actual time someone needs to sleep however, is a much harder question to answer. The author states,”Not only do healthy sleepers differ from each other in how much sleep they need, but healthy sleepers also change their sleep needs over time.” The answer turns out to be that, instead of a neat and simple 8 hour rule, the amount of sleep a person needs varies from person to person. Children, for example, need more sleep than adults, while seniors need less sleep.

There is no definite answer to how much sleep you need, because if varies wildly, depending on who you are, you’re age, and what you did that day. All you can do is to find out how much sleep your body needs, and adapt your sleep patterns.

In the short story A Good Man is Hard to Find, a family goes on a road trip, but crash their car and ended up killed by a criminal known as the Misfit. One of the themes in the story is the conflict between societal morality and personal morality.

The story begins with a family consisting of Bailey, his wife, their children John Wesley and June Star, and their grandmother. The grandmother is against the road trip but goes with them, secretly bringing her cat for fear of it killing itself while left alone. Things start out normal, until the grandmother remembers an old plantation nearby that she visited when she was younger, so she lies and says that there was a secret panel in the building, causing the children to throw a fit to go to the old plantation. The grandmother then remembers that the plantation is actually in another state, accidentally kicking her cat and causing Bailey to crash his car. The family recovers from the crash, and they are found by the Misfit. The Misfit systematically kills the entire family, starting with Bailey and his son, finishing with the grandmother. Meanwhile, the grandmother tries to convince the Misfit not to kill her. She tries to appeal to his morals, only to find that he lives by no one but himself. Finally, she reaches out and calls him her own child, and he shoots her three times in the chest, killing her.

In the story, the grandmother has a strict adherence to societal morals. She kept a firm hold on her old morals from when she was young. this is demonstrated when she chastised her grandchildren for not showing respect to their home state and other people. This is also demonstrated when she tried to convince the Misfit to not kill her. She said, “I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady! I know you come from nice! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady.” Here, she believes that people aren’t supposed to shoot ladies, because societal morals say so.

The Misfit, on the other hand, doesn’t care what society thinks of what he does. He only lives by his own morals, and his morals are to do as he sees fit. He says, “I found out the crime don’t matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you’re going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it.” Basically, he believes that it doesn’t matter what you do, and in the end, your consequences are highly random. Sometimes, “good” people end up punished for things they’ve never done, and “bad” people get off scott free.

In conclusion, the short story involves the conflicting ideals of the grandmother and the Misfit. The grandmother believes in a grand overarching set of morals that everyone should follow, while the Misfit only obeys his own set of very different morals.

It has always been difficult to get statistics on people killed by different causes, and it’s only gotten harder during a global pandemic. Recently, the official number of people in the United States killed by Covid-19 has been called into question. There are many reasons why this is.

One reason for the uncertainty regarding the death count of the virus is that deaths can be wrongly recorded. A quote states,”the immediate cause of death might be listed as respiratory distress, with the second line reading ‘due to COVID-19.’ Contributing factors such as heart disease, diabetes or high blood pressure would then be listed further down. This has led to some confusion by people arguing that the ‘real’ cause of death was heart disease or diabetes, Aiken said, but that’s not the case.” This means that the true cause of death can be unclear when the patient already has some other condition.

Another reason the true mortality rate is a bit foggy is that Covid-19 can kill indirectly as well. A quote on the subject reads,”A study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology did find that nine major hospitals saw a 38% drop in emergency visits for a particular kind of heart attack in March. That suggests that people really are delaying or avoiding medical care, which could mean that some of them die of preventable causes.” This quote tells us that because of Covid-19, people are avoiding hospitals for fear of catching the virus, and as a result, some of them are dying, and their death is included in the unusually high death rate.

In conclusion, the actual death count of the Corona virus is difficult to find. This can be because of confusion about the cause of death, and because of people staying at home in medical emergencies because of the virus outside.

In the short story The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, it covers an annual tradition in a small isolated village. The villagers would draw a lottery, and whoever wins gets stoned to death. In the story, Tessie Hutchinson wins, and proceeds to protest before getting killed. One of the themes of this story is mob mentality. Nobody in the village disagrees with killing Tessie, even though they all knew her. Even she herself didn’t care until her family got chosen. Everyone just went along with it because that’s what everyone else did, until they’re the one getting stoned, at which point it was already too late.