Author: RaeanneL

Jonathan Swift’s short story, “A Modest Proposal”, proposes for the Irish to eat their children. I think this solution to poverty and hunger is not a reasonable plan for three reasons: The population of Ireland will decrease drastically, it’s unconventional and weird, and there will be way too many health issues.

First of all, if people in Ireland suddenly started to just eat each other, the population of the country would really go down. They’re only going to eat their children, but since the children would’ve grown up to be adults themselves, the only adults eventually left in Ireland would be the currently existing ones. Then when they slowly die off due to old age, bad things will start to happen, like if another country really wanted to conquer Ireland for some arbitrary reason. No one would be in their way, except a few leftover babies who were recently born and a whole lot of satisfied grandmas and grandpas, sitting around the fireplace, congratulating themselves on coming up with such a great plan to rid themselves of poverty. So–boom! The grandmas and grandpas are booted out of the country and congratulations to the UK because now they have a lot more land with more room to build houses to have dainty little tea parties in or something–whatever people from the UK do.

Secondly, this method of getting rid of poor people is really weird and unconventional. Nobody eats children!! I mean, nobody even eats other adults! This is straight-up cannibalism, and–spoiler alert–we don’t do that here. As far as I know, not even animals eat their own kind (Ignore the Komodo dragons for now)! Do you ever see monkeys eating other monkeys? Birds eating other birds? Even wolves eating other wolves? No! So why should we? We are an advanced species, Jonathan Swift. We could freaking invent something that gives us good food before we decide to eat our own children! Also–another scenario: The people around Ireland might feel offended or disgusted by the savage Irish people’s behavior and start feeling like they need to step in and tone down the craziness a bit. OR, as I said earlier, they could just start doing it the violent way again, kick the senior citizens out, and start planning their tea parties.

Lastly, I feel like this isn’t very healthy for the Irish people. Just think about it: If a mother had a disease and she gave birth, then the child might have the illness too. Then if they sell the child because they really need two shillings, then the wealthy person who receives the child might catch the disease. And according to Elon Musks’s Ten Rules To Success, successful people have all attracted cool people at some point in their career, so the wealthy person might happen to have a bunch of friends over when they eat the child. Then the child’s illness gets to his friends and his friends pass it on to their family or friends and this repeats until probably the whole of Ireland is infected by this disease. If the mother had had an unknown disease or something, it’s pretty much going to be a long long long pandemic like the COVID-19 because you have stuff like potatoes that are being exported to other countries and since everyone in your Ireland is infected, these potatoes will then carry this sickness and then when some person eats the potato in, let’s say, America, and then the whole of America will also have this disease. Let’s just say, it’s not really the best situation to be in.

I am strongly against Jonathan Swift’s idea and I hope this never happens anywhere. Between under-population problems, being judged by other countries, and bad health issues, surely everyone would agree with me on this.

In my opinion, middle school reading material really sucks. I don’t like it because one, they are chock-full of hard vocabulary, two, no matter where you are, in school, at home, in camp, you are expected to write an essay about it, and three, I strongly dislike most of the content in those stories.

First of all, I don’t like the fact that I have to take the time to search up so many words that I don’t understand. I think my vocabulary is pretty decent one day and then suddenly I read something on a middle school level, and boom–my self esteem drops by a ton. It takes too much time and energy to flip open a computer (hardly anybody uses dictionaries anymore now that we have Google), type in the word, and somehow try to comprehend what comes up. When I can’t understand even the meaning of the word, I look at the synonyms and then scold myself because I feel dumb. And–look at the time! It’s been three minutes. And because the stories I’m reading are so full of these kinds of words, a block of text that should’ve taken me only twelve minutes to read ends up being around thirty.

Second of all, we are expected to write something about every single story that we read. In school, we have opinion essays, graded essays, timed essays, long essays, short essays… I dislike that we have to write so much about whatever we read. I would like to just read a book in class for the fun of it instead of in preparation for some writing assignment to come later in the year. At home, (Well, I don’t know for you, but for me) I get asked to do this random thing and then the next second I get asked to do that random thing and–who knows what you’re going to be asked next! I wouldn’t be surprised if I had to do some other sort of writing assignment later. My mom signed me up for this camp so I guess this could count as assigned essays, because the whole point of this is so that my writing and reading can improve.

Third of all, I don’t like what I’ve read so far with middle school content. If it’s not kidnapping, shooting, poisoning, or other forms of killing, then it’s probably stuff like what I read today about Victor and the french scowling. And I’m not a big fan of either, if you get what I mean. During my years at the lower school, I quickly grew fond of series like Harry Potter, The Mysterious Benedict Society, or even Wings of Fire. These stories revolved around things like magic, mysteries or riddles, or adventure instead of just poisoning, and they weren’t even that realistic. It’s much creepier reading a realistic story of kidnapping and then asking for ransom from a rich guy than reading a book about mythical color-changing dragons who sleep and bask in the sun twenty-four seven, lazily eating fruit, and occasionally rolling their eyes because some queen from 100 miles away died.

But then again, that’s just my opinion on things like the vocabulary, the amount of work associated with the reading, and the content of middle school stories.

“No, my dear,” she said. “Only you.”

Billy opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated. He was getting dizzy and his vision was becoming sort of blurred.

“Are you not feeling well? Come, let’s hurry back to your room so you can rest for the night.” This time, her eyes gleamed as she gave Billy another of those gentle smiles.

Billy, grateful for her help, stumbled up the two flights of stairs and collapsed into bed with a troubled sigh. The lady said good night, left, and started knitting and humming gleefully down in the first floor.

Just as Billy was about to close his eyes, he heard something coming in the room. It lit a candle and peered at Billy curiously. To his surprise, it was Gregory. After quite a bit of whispering, Billy learned that he had been poisoned and Gregory, who had been a very famous doctor, had brought the antidote. While gulping it down, Gregory told him exactly why the lady was poisoning him and that she was going to stuff him just like her parrot and her dog, as he had figured out her plan from years of sneaking around her home and listening to her mumble to herself while Gregory stole whatever food he could to stay alive, waiting for a chance to escape.

A few minutes later, Billy heard the lady’s shuffling footsteps on the stairs, and he hurriedly shoved Gregory under the bed. He pretended to be asleep but left one eye partially open. He was horrified to see that the lady had two knives in her hands. And she was coming in his direction.

Before the lady could reach him, Billy jumped out of bed and scampered down the two flights of stairs, with Gregory close behind. The woman dropped her knives in surprise. Then understanding dawned on her and she chased the boys out into the room with the fireplace. Billy, looking back at the lady, tripped on her stuffed dog and landed face-first into the open teapot. Getting out of the pot as quick as possible and wiping his face frantically with the fur of the woman’s deceased pet, Billy turned to see that Gregory had pried a knife out of the lady’s hand while dodging the other and had flung the knife into a window. It instantly shattered and the two boys leapt through, landing on the sidewalk, one after another.

They sprinted off into the distance, leaving the old woman in her house, still screaming, “THAT WAS MY BASIL YOU DESTROYED! HOW DARE YOU TWO FOOLS THINK THAT YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH THIS. HOW DARE YOU!”

She hurled her remaining knife into the other window, seething with rage, gathered the rest of her knives, and crept outside, noiselessly following the boys with a new plan in her mind.

As I watched Biographics’s video on Marco Polo, I started to dislike the way the man in the video talked, and here’s why:

First of all, he has an accent that sometimes is hard to understand. For example, when he says “years”, it sounds like he’s actually saying “yes”. When he’s says “empire”, it sounds like “em-π”. When he says “war” it sounds like “woe”. And this was all during the first thirty-two seconds of the video! “If he continues on like this,” I thought, “then I might not learn the correct information that was meant for me to learn.” Some people might disagree with me and say that his accent is pleasurable and elegant to listen to. But in my mind, I am constantly having to put together words and piece together phrases that the man in the video might have said. This is annoying and if there was another video on Marco Polo, I would certainly watch the other one given a choice.

Second of all, the guy pauses every four or five seconds to take a short breath. I don’t know if this is supposed to be for more dramatic videos or if this is supposed to make the whole thing more interesting to listen to, but to me, it is worse than the accent. This breathing pattern is so irregular that instead of following along with what information he’s trying to get through to his viewers, I am stuck on each and every pause in his speech. And what’s more, it gets worse and worse as you go through more and more of the video. In the beginning, it was about every seven or eight seconds, but towards the end, it accelerated to about four to five seconds. And who doesn’t like attempting to stroll along down the 372-speed-bump road of Marco Polo’s life story with Vincero Watches?

Third of all, man, do those eyebrows wiggle. About every time he pauses for a quick mental tea party with himself, his eyebrows seem to come to life and start going up and down. First, they’re the shape of the Chinese word for “eight”, then when his eyebrows are done posing, they switch to Super-High-Eyebrow-Raising mode and–self explanatory. Then they go back to normal before morphing into an eight once more. Does this Eyebrow Technique get more subscribers or what? A quick example I found by watching the video for about three seconds is at 1:32. This is really, really annoying and bothersome, because when you’re trying to focus on Marco Polo, the man’s eyebrows are always there, dancing around on his head and generally having a good time.

And as if the wiggling eyebrows aren’t distracting enough, there are also the earlier two, and combined with each other, they are a power so disturbing and annoying that I have watched the video until the end and I have still not learned any facts about Marco Polo’s life (except the part where he was put into jail because that part’s just too cool)… but nobody has to agree with me because that’s just my opinion on the way Biographics talks.

First of all, invisible strength can help you. In Waverly’s case, it can help you win chess match after chess match until you become known nationwide. She uses her invisible strength to put “Sand in the Eyes of Advancing Forces” (3) because this way, her opponent would fall into a trap and she could have a better chance at winning. And she could do “Double [Killings] Without Blood” (3) and “Double [Attacks] from the East and West Shores” as well as many others too. I think this is a great way to out think your opponent, because they don’t know what trap they’ve fallen into until it’s too late. Waverly could’ve used her strength in a bad way, but she only used it in a chess game, which I think is all right. And, since she spends so much time learning and perfecting these tricks, it would’ve been sad if she didn’t get to use them in a real match.

Second of all, invisible strength can aid you in doing bad things. In the story, Waverly’s mother manipulates the shopkeepers to think that she wouldn’t do anything harmful so that she could, essentially, do something harmful. “When [Waverly’s] mother finished her shopping, she quietly plucked a small bag of plums from the rack and put it on the counter with the rest of the items” (1). I think this is very wrong. I mean, Waverly’s mother is an adult and should know that what she is doing is literally shoplifting. And… that’s not a good thing… And I think if Waverly’s mother was the protagonist of the story instead of Waverly, then her mother would’ve done a lot more bad things, like, for example, lying about not being able to afford some items and manipulating the shopkeepers into letting her get them for free by telling them a sad story or something to earn their pity.

There’s also something in between, because I can’t decide if it’s bad or good, or maybe a combination of both. Once, in real life, I was at a math camp. We had worksheets that contained ten problems each and we would do two every day (There’s a question sheet and an answer sheet). Eventually, I noticed that the girl sitting next to me always seemed to have the same answers as me and get the same problems right and the same problems wrong. I mean, it could be just a coincidence, right? I decided to find out. I acted really nice and let her sit next to me again for the second worksheet of the day. I figured out all the problems, then scribbled down a really close but completely wrong answer in big writing on the question sheet and even circled it for good measure. I pretended to be satisfied and then went on to write the actual correct answer on the answer sheet, the only sheet we have to turn in. I did this for the whole sheet… It turned out, it worked. I mean, I think it worked? That’s the good part. But this time her score was zero. The teacher actually pulled her into another room to talk about it. And that’s the part where it could be bad.

This shows that Invisible Strength can be used for both bad and good, no matter if it’s in a story or in real life. Waverly used it to cleverly win her chess games, her mother used it to steal plums from the local grocery store, while I used it to prevent someone from copying answers from me… and I hope you learned something from my writing and will use your invisible strength for good.

“The lottery’s almost starting!”

“Everybody! Let’s go!”

“Come on!”

As I peered out from behind some of Mrs. Hutchinson’s big bushes and trees, almost everyone else was already gathering in the center of the village. She was humming a cheerful song while scrubbing the dishes, but with a solemn look on her face, as if she was trying to cheer herself up. I watched for a few minutes, then decided to go and see what the other people were doing in the village center. My guess was the “lottery” they were talking about, but I would see for myself in a couple of minutes.

I quietly crept away, my back towards Mrs. Hutchinson. I was almost to the street when suddenly, Mrs. Hutchinson whirled around and spotted me.

“What are you doing? I know you don’t belong here.” She firmly put her hands on her hips. Trying to change the subject, I said,

“Aren’t you supposed to be in the lottery like everyone else?” I nodded towards the gathering of people not far off in the distance.

“Oh!” She frantically checked her watch, then the calendar on the wall of the kitchen. “My! It’s the twenty-seventh already! Oh, I simply cannot be late for the lottery. I hope Bill and the kids are all already there, and just waiting for me now!” She then swatted me away and scurried towards the silent gathering of people. I, curious, decided to follow along.

She glanced at me like I was crazy. “Where’s your father? Do you have a brother? Actually, do you even have a relative here? You can’t go without a person to draw for you!”

I shook my head no. She hesitated, then said, “Then if you want to come along, you’ll have to hide in the foliage again around the center and whatever you do, do not try to come out. They may try to stone you as well.”

We were almost halfway to the other villagers by now. Along the rest of the way, Mrs. Hutchinson explained the lottery to me.

“We worship a god named Little-Bunny-Foo-Foo. He is the one that makes sure our crops thrive and that we have enough food to last us the winter. Unfortunately, he likes human sacrifices, so we must hold a lottery each month to choose whoever is going to die an honored death for Little-Bunny-Foo-Foo.”

“But that’s terrible! Why can’t you just learn how to grow good crops my yourselves?” I asked, shocked.

Mrs. Hutchinson sighed. “You have no idea how hard it is without the help of Foo-Foo. Nearly half of our village died of starvation every year… and we figured losing twelve a year was better than losing one hundred and fifty.”

And at that point we arrived.

I quickly tiptoed around the center into a clump of tall plants and bushes. From there, I peeked through the branches of a magnolia tree and saw the lottery begin. I saw a man call out names, one after another, until about sixty people, scattered in the crowd of apprehensive villagers, were holding a scrap of paper, folded in half, in their hands.

Then, at the man’s direction, the sixty villagers slowly opened up their papers, and gradually, they all sighed a sigh of relief and smiled at the rest of their family. All except one… Bill. And I watched as a smaller lottery was held inside just Bill’s family and held my breath with them as they opened up their papers.

“It’s Mrs. Hutchinson.”

“It’s her… “

“It’s really Mrs. Hutchinson.”

And I watched as all of the rest of the villagers stooped down to grab the stones lying on the ground. And I couldn’t just let this happen. I couldn’t!

So I stepped out of hiding shouted at the villagers and I told them to put down the stones. I kicked the nearest one hard to make a point.

Silence.

“Stop! You don’t need to kill someone for a Little-Bunny-Foo-Foo! You–” I was cut off short by Mrs. Hutchinson.

“I told you not to come out! Why did you–“

“You know this intruder?” A man turned to look at her, raising his stone once more. Several others followed suit.

I started again. “Stop! I can show you how to plant successful crops! I know how to do it! Just follow me and let me teach you! Please! Don’t try to throw stones at one of your own when you are perfectly capable of getting food yourselves, without the help of this Foo-Foo Bunny!”

This time they peered at me with interest. They had gotten tired of killing off other families of the village just for some food. If there was an alternative, they were curious to see if it would work.

So they reluctantly let Mrs. Hutchinson go, as she was the one who let me follow her into the center.

And they all expectantly turned their attention to me.

This is why the kidnapped boy in O . HENRY’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” is the weirdest person ever.

First of all, when he gets kidnapped, instead of running away or frantically asking for help (Like I would’ve done), he decides to throw a brick at the kidnapper’s eye. But when you take a step back and think about it, he’s just a ten-year-old. With a brick. There are two kidnappers and they both are way older than the happy little boy playing with bricks out on the street. And they probably have a lot of experience to aid them in capturing the boy as well because they have, as the story says, “stood by [each other] without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood—in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones” (19). … So just attacking his kidnappers with a brick is a really weird decision to make.

Second of all, this boy thinks taking the scalp off of Bill is a good idea. I mean, if he was Make Believe-ing, then I suppose that would be all right, but when Sam wakes up abruptly to find Bill screaming like a girl and the boy on him, holding a knife to his head, that’s… a bit weird (and disturbing too). I even found a quote for this one: “[Sam] was awakened by a series of awful
screams from Bill … and [Red Chief] was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before” (15). Ten-year-olds may not be old enough to attack two grown men, but ten-year-olds sure are old enough to know that that first night was a much better opportunity to escape than to further convince the kidnappers that they need to keep an eye on him at all times. Like I said, weird. But, the boy doesn’t seem to want to go back to his home either, which leads to my next point.

Third of all, the boy needs to know that it’s a lot safer in his own house than outside in the wilderness with two kidnappers who are only keeping you for money. I just can’t believe that he would rather stay in the cave and try to damage the kidnappers even more than go home and play with his family and possibly even friends. He literally says, “I never had such fun in all my life” (14). Oh yes, definitely, I would love to camp out with my kidnappers and play games with them and eventually even try to take the scalp out of one of them! It’s still really weird how he’s enjoying all this.

In the end, even the kidnappers would relinquish their dream of receiving two thousand dollars just to give him back to his father, Ebenezer Dorset (And he knows that no one can stand living with the boy). Surely, this means that the kidnapped boy in this story is truly, truly, weird.