Sunny Youth Journal

I think the theme of the story is to learn and plan out things before you do it. You can see how this backfired on Sam and Bill. They did not know the personality of Johnny and how the villagers do not like him. This is bad because they did not care that he was gone and were happy. They gets beaten up and annoyed by John. So they ended up paying $250 and giving him up.

I think that the kidnappers should have planned the kidnapping more carefully, as they ended up losing 250 dollars. Their first mistake was choosing the wrong person to kidnap. If they had chosen a more well behaved person or even observing their potential victim more carefully, they could have been more prepared for the child’s behavior. Another mistake was that they did not even think about restraining the victim, which should have been one of the first things on their minds. This mistake caused them lots of pain, both physically and mentally. Their third mistake was choosing how to write the wording of their ransom letter. This kind of ties back to their first mistake, as if they had observed the child’s behavior, it might have occurred to them that the parents might not want to receive the child. Also, if they had changed the wording of the letter from not being able to see the child again, to knowing that the child is dead, then that might have triggered a more intense response from the parents to pay the ransom. These three mistakes changed them from earning 2000 dollars to losing 250 dollars.

I thought The Ransom of the Red Chief was a realistic and entertaining story. It shows how that not everything is going to go the way you thought, and you’d better prepare. The kidnappers didn’t think very far, and in their plan was way too tunnel-visioned on the money. This has happened in my own life when I wanted to take up landscape modelling without being careful enough. I made some messes and the end product was pretty poopoo. The Ransom of the Red Chief teaches this message in a funny, playful manner.

In The Ransom of Red Chief, Bill tells Sam that his favorite biblical character is King Herod. King Herod is notorious in the Christian realm for plotting to kidnap and kill the baby Jesus, being envious of the rising of a new “king.” This is similar to the story Bill and Sam are set in, as they try to kidnap the son of wealthy businessman Ebenezer Dorset, but they do it in the attempt to earn money. In both stories, the prey manage to get away.
Jesus’ parents, while on the run from Herod, live in perpetual terror of getting found out. They spend most of Jesus’ childhood in Egypt, fearing the consequences of returning to Judea and having Jesus discovered. On the other hand, Johnny Dorset, who was kidnapped by Bill and Sam, terrorizes his kidnappers. Instead of being scared, he violently attacks and wears down his kidnappers. Additionally, Jesus, after growing up, taught his followers not to fight back, but to “turn the other cheek.” Meanwhile, Johnny often fought back, and that turned out to be the driving force in his release.

The predators in these two stories are vastly different as well. King Herod lived lavishly; Bill and Sam were in need of money. But their actions when it came to their respective kidnappings (technically the planning of first degree murder on King Herod’s part) are also distinct. As stated previously, Bill and Sam were terrorized by Johnny. At one point, Bill tries to show Johnny the door, and thinks he has left. After discovering that the boy is still with him, he “loses his complexion and sits down plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks.” Eventually, the duo pay Ebenezer Dorset to take back his rambunctious child. Meanwhile, King Herod was cunning and cruel. He was known for killing off members of his own family, fearing that they would take his position. After discovering the baby Jesus had disappeared along with his parents, he prompted a mass massacre of all baby boys. Of course, Jesus survived, but the massacre lives on in history known as the “Massacre of Innocents.”

These two stories are clearly different in who played the dominating role in the kidnapper and the kidnapped. However, they are similar in several respects. Most clearly, is that those in what should have been the lower position escapes unscathed. Bill, saying that his favorite character in the Bible, probably meant that he admired King Herod for his merciless murders, and not of Herod’s failure of the killing of Jesus in his plan so similar to his own!

I think the moral of this story is that you shouldn’t do anything bad if you don’t. Like, Bill and Sam wanted money, a LOT of money, and got greedy. But their plan backfired and actually needed to pay $250. What I like about “The Ransom of the Red Chief” Is that it reflects the olden times when there we’re cowboys and Native Americans. And that there’s a twist. Instead of Bill and Sam getting their way, The boy annoys them so much that they start to regret their idea. And when Ebenezer gives the men a note, Bill and Sam are like, Oh no!! and it grabs the Readers Attention. And that is my paragraph.

Covid-19 is the pandemic that took the whole world by storm. First it was on the news for being a virus that went around being very contagious. Next, it blew up into a massive phenomenon that caused the entire world to shut down. Yet, we still are not sure about where it originated. Some say it started in China’s wet markets, others say it originated in the US, and some are just not sure at all. Nonetheless, it’s here; and it has taken a toll on the world.
Covid-19, known as the Coronavirus, has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths throughout the entire world. However, the United States is being hit especially bad. Earlier on, though, China and its neighboring countries were suffering the most. China’s death toll was almost as high as the number of people who had the virus–which was very high. Although, sooner than the rest of the world, China started to rehabilitate. This was thrilling news, except for the fact that at the same time that China was getting better, the US was getting worse and worse. Especially the states: New Jersey, New York, and California. These were the states that had it worst.
There were other states who were lucky, such as West Virginia, who was the last state to have any Covid-19 cases. Other states such as Florida, Colorado, and Wyoming are already starting to reopen everything. It was a huge responsibility because the virus was still going around, but the state officials deemed it appropriate to reopen those states.
Another aspect of Covid-19, besides getting sick, is the death rate. It is at around 2-3%. Given, that is a small percentage; however, when there are 6.26 million confirmed cases, that is about 350k deaths which is an enormous number. When thinking about how many got the virus, how many people are on this earth, and how many people died, we question whether it was appropriate to reopen the states.
With the Covid-19 death toll, comes death certificates and lots and lots of physicians. There is a shortage of doctors and first responders because the number of cases are just so high. There are many deaths and the physician responsible for the death of his or her patient has to sign off on the death certificate. Because of how busy the physicians are, it is difficult to rule out every single death. It is difficult to determine whether that person died of the virus, or simply died of a different cause yet they had the virus. Because of such unsureness, we can’t help but question if it was right for Colorado and Florida to open.
In order for a state to open, they would most likely need a low death toll, and a low virus number. It is said that Florida faked the numbers of deaths and submitted less than the actual amount. There could be terrible things in Florida; more virus-ridden people than ever expected. Which is why it was immature to reopen the entire state. Colorado on the other hand, they actually over reported the number of deaths caused by the virus. It shows a slight bit of immaturity because though they submitted a higher amount of deaths, they still reopened the country.

Being yourself is what they tell you, but many of us do not take that information in seriously. We look up to famous people, strong leaders, people with special talents, people who look amazing and are amazing, but when we look up to them, we are not necessarily looking up to them to the way we should. Sometimes, our mind even makes us believe that we want to be them and ditch the way we were made and designed to be by this universe, and really what I want to say through this passage is being yourself is the best decision you can make.
To dig deeper into what I mean by being yourself or choosing to be yourself, and listening to yourself, I mean that being yourself is much better than hiding in someone else’s skin. As Caroline mentioned, the most successful people all have something in common, which is nothing ironically. Being yourself is beautiful because everyone on this earth is different, which is the beauty of being yourself. You are one in the whole population consisting of almost eight billion people. There might be people who have similarities and common interests as you, but there will never be a person that is you. Each person pursues their own dream, some fail, and some succeed. Some people succeed without being themselves. They disguise themselves into this whole other person with these characteristics that are totally opposite of their true self, which is not only damaging themselves mentally, but guiding them to thinking how and what they exactly should be, which is wrong. There is no law or rule that says who everyone should sought out to be, sure there are the role models who you look up to, but there is nothing telling you who to be, which is sad that people actually want to ditch who they are and set out to become this whole new person that nobody recognizes.
Some fail being themselves, which at first might be sad and heartbreaking, but as time goes on, they realize that maybe they were meant for something else. Not everyone will succeed perfectly sadly but succeeding with a fake skin or costume is terrible because you are not who you are, and you know it. You always have to put up an act for the sakes of fitting in or succeeding, which ruins the purpose of yourself. Each person on this earth was given a gift, because he person has his or her on talent to give and share, but more importantly, each person was made differently which is what makes being yourself such a beauty and why it is said to us when we were younger. The words be yourself is such a warm combination of encouragement, and it is very important that we do be ourselves instead of hiding behind our fake selves.

Im sure we all know that the red chief was truly a really crazy and hyper active kid, but what if he wasn’t? There are some loose strings that need to be attached but it’s possible. When I first started reading the story, I initially thought that the red chief kid was faking being crazy. It would have been a smart move to get out of the kidnapping. The red chief mentioned to the his kidnappers about how he did not want to return home. The kid could have said this so he would let the billl and sams guard down of him escaping. There are some loose strings to this tho. For example when bill was going crazy and decided to let the red chief go home, if he truly was faking his excessive behavior, then he would’ve went straight home. On the other hand if the kid wasn’t faking it, it’s very hard to believe that a kid is so dumb to not know he’s getting kidnapped. It could have been a very interesting plot twist if the red chief was faking it.

I chose The Ransom of Red Chief. The story was about two guys want to kidnap a boy whose father was rich. And they did. But they find the boy was super annoying and he freaked them out. So they returned the bot back without asking the money and they even paid for it. For the racial undertones part, I am not much sure about that. But I can see there were somethings about Indian and American things. The story is an irony. It gave readers a very interesting thought that who was the actual kidnapper? The two guys or the bot’s father?

I think what the story wanted to teach us is do not make money through wrong way. If you do the bad thing, there must be some pulishment give to you. The story just told the truth by a funny way and make more sences to readers. So be a good guy and never do wrong things.

Native American culture, although poorly represented, works in the background of the Ransom of the Red Chief. Since there was a perception that Native Americans are savages, Johnny is referred to as the “Red Chief” because he is also wild and untamed. He tried to literally scalp Bill, burn Sam, and threw giant rocks at them. When asked if he wanted to go back to the town, he said that he wants to stay out in the forest. This is comparable to how the Indian doesn’t want to go into civilization, and he prefers to live in the wild.

However, that isn’t the only thing that occurs frequently in the short story. Irony is a major part of it, and it comes up everywhere. First, the name of the town is Summit, although it is described as the flattest place imaginable. Second, the roles of the kidnapper and the kidnapee are flipped. Normally, the one being kidnapped wants nothing to do with their abductors and hopes to return home. In Ransom of the Red Chief, it is the opposite. Bill and Sam towards the end desperately want to get rid of Johnny, while the boy enjoys the time with his captors. Last, the roles within the ransom scheme are reversed as well. Instead of Ebenezer paying Bill and Sam, he proposes that they pay him. Surprisingly, they agree, and Ebenezer reluctantly takes his son back.