Nicholas K. Peart is, unfortunately, is one of many people who have been attacked because of their race or religion. Personally, I have been attacked once, which I have mentioned earlier in the semester about the airplane. Being that it happens so often in my community, I feel lucky to say I have only been attacked once. However, when someone is personally attacked in the community, we all take the hit, and the number of times that it has happened is too many to count. In the past month, there have been an incredible amount of incidents that happened in the Jewish community, but only the “major” ones people hear about because the others seem so normal already to be happening.
Letter From Birmingham City Jail
Martin Luther King Jr. is a man that every person should aspire to be. Dr. King fought for what he believed in, in a peaceful manner, and changed the lives of millions of people today. Racial segregation was rampant in Birmingham Alabama, and Martin Luther King Jr. was determined to put an end to it. When King led his non-violent protest in Birmingham, he was arrested and thrown into jail, for “parading without a permit,” although that probably was not the real reason for being thrown in jail.
While in jail, Dr. King read a statement from the local paper written by white clergymen stating that blacks should just put up with their horrible situation. Dr. King, outraged, wrote an in-length letter in response, “Letter from Birmingham City Jail.” In the letter, Dr. King explains how blacks cannot just put up with this treatment anymore and the change needs to happen now. They have waited long enough, people always telling them to wait because it’s inconvenient. Sure, progress and growth can be uncomfortable for everyone, but that’s how it works. Just because white people want law and order and no social tension, it does not mean change for the black community should not happen. Dr. King states that if the clergymen knew how the blacks were being treated they would stop saying “wait” to protest. The blacks did not create this problem, they are just calling attention to it and should not have to wait any longer.
The Sixth Day
The themes in the film “The Sixth day” can be compared to the themes in the film “In time.” In “The Sixth day,” society is a place where cloning animals and even humans are possible. However, cloning humans is against the law. Despite the law of The Sixth Day forbidding human cloning, Michael Drucker, the one in charge of cloning humans, has cloned himself multiple times, in order to keep his status at the top of the hierarchy. This can be compared to the film “In time,” wherein society time is literally money. The head of the Weis industry has 1 million years locked in his safe, meaning he will basically live eternally. This is similar to the head of cloning because they can both never truly die. They are both determined to keep their high ranking statuses in society.
Library Session
To be honest, I found the library session to be a waste of time. Sure, it was helpful, but it certainly did not need to take 2 hours when we could have been back in our English class. She gave out a sheet at the end of how to access the resources she showed us, which would have been enough. I think it would be better if she could have come to our class in the beginning like Antonia does and just give us the sheet and explain a little bit.
Essay #2 First Thoughts
I might be interested in writing about the film In Time. In Marx’s Communist Manifesto, he describes that capitalistic societies would eventually collapse because people are only doing what they do in order for the capital. They are essentially machines, day after day repeating the same routine of work. Unlike in a communistic society where people are free without worrying about money and they find their own unique talents and use it for the better of society. Their only drive to do the action is their own self-fulfillment, not because of how much money they would make from it. The film In Time portrays a futuristic view of how a capitalistic society would operate like, where time literally turns into money. Meaning everyone’s purpose is to get more capital. The film is a modern depiction of what Marx envisioned society would eventually transform into if we proceed on the capitalistic path we are on now.
In Time
The film In Time is a depiction of a modern day social structure. The film replaces the concept of money with time, meaning the more time a person has the richer they are. According to the film, once you run out of your time, your time living is done as well. The people with thousands of years use their time carelessly because they have so much. This irritates the people with limited time who have to see their families drop dead before their own eyes. Henry, a very wealthy individual in the film, gives away all of his years to a person he barely even knows, simply because he was getting bored of it. This social structure insinuates to the proletariat and bourgeois society. Once we run out of money, it’s not possible to live. Everything we do revolves around money.
Nickeled and Dimed
To me, nickeled and dimed means being charged hidden little fees after you already paid a large fee. For example, you see a nice car in a commercial on tv, and you see that the price is relatively low and you’re wondering how it can be so low. The company tricks you into buying the car and they charge you a lot of little fees after your purchase that was not advertised.
Marx’s Teachings in 2018
Karl Marx’s teachings of how people’s paths in society are pre-determined are directly related to us in 2018. We are like sheep to the slaughterhouse; We don’t know what is being done to us but we go along with it because that’s what everyone else is doing. Humans have this socially acceptable path of life, going to school to getting a job and make money. If any other path is done, it would be considered not acceptable by society. No one’s forcing us to go on the path that the average human goes on, yet for some reason, we all end up doing it, because we don’t want to be an outcast.
Essay #1 Draft
Humans have the incredible power to make someone extremely joyful or tremendously miserable in the span of just a few seconds. It may only take a few seconds to do the action, but the person receiving it can remember it for the rest of their lives. Using this power can change the person that you become, for the better or the worse. There’s an infinite amount of ways to use this power and you probably are who you are today because of it. It’s something that takes so little effort to do yet it’s the most powerful force available to humanity. This power, is, words.
Some people use their words for inspiration and encouragement, while some use it to hurt and harm people. In the essay “Words” by Sara Yamasaki, Yamasaki expresses to the reader that she was bullied because of her Japanese culture in America. “My dad killed people like you.” This sentence, said by a boy named Bobby Jones who bullied Sara, takes about three seconds to say. Not to mention, Sara was just five years old at the time and she remembered these few words that Bobby so effortlessly said at least twenty-five years later. Not everyone realizes the power that they have.
Some words can have a lot of meaning and power to a person. For Yamasaki, one of these words was ‘ignorant.’ Yamasaki’s mother taught her this word to respond to Bobby Jones and ignorant people like him. “You are ig-nor-ant. It means you don’t understand. You haven’t learned any other way!” Yamasaki shouted this at Bobby Jones and she described these words as her liberation from being killed.
Every culture represented in America has its people that have hatred towards them, like in Yamasaki’s Japanese culture. In my culture, Judaism, people express their hatred or make assumptions about us daily. People have said cruel things to my family, friends, and myself that I still remember clearly, even though the person who said it probably has no recollection anymore.
Words have the power to ruin a great day in an instant. I had just boarded the plane back to New York with my family from our vacation in Florida. It was a relatively empty flight, probably only around half the seats were filled. Our luck, a family with small children were sitting behind us, kicking our seats and crying in our ears. We asked the flight attendant if we could move our seats, after all, there were plenty of other places to sit. The lady said yes so I picked up my stuff and found another seat. I moved to an aisle with no one in the middle seat and a middle-aged woman at the window. I sit down and I say “hi how are you?” She doesn’t respond. She starts to glare at me and the kippah on my head. She says, “Is this your assigned seat?” I respond saying “no but the flight attendant told me I could move.” The lady then responds, “Well why don’t you go ask your God where your real seat is.”
Being fourteen years old at the time, I didn’t really know how to respond to these words. All shaken up, I went to tell my parents what had happened and they told me basically what Yamasaki’s mother told her, she doesn’t know any better, she’s ignorant.
(The essay will continue)
The Beach
“The Beach” is about a man named Richard who goes on an adventure, trying to escape his average, boring life. When he is given a map to what sounds to be the perfect island getaway, he and 2 other travelers start their adventure to this mysterious island. After their long and tiring journey to find this perceived paradise island, they finally arrive and it turns out not to be what they envisioned.
This movie reminds me of the “Becoming a Writer” essay. Junot describes how he felt stuck and worked so hard to try to finish his novel. Like Richard, Junot is not satisfied with what he’s doing and even tries thinking of new jobs he can pursue. Junot had this plan in his head of what he’s going to write about in his novel, but it only ended up being 75 pages. So like Richard not finding the paradise island he envisioned, so too Junot’s ideas in his head only came out to 75 pages in a novel.
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