The Third Act

The average person in our class can understand the running motif of immense wealth being the downfall of us all, starting with The Song of Solomon and ending with The Great Gatsby we've been introduced to people who came into this world without nothing and near the end of their respective journey's they acquire "everything" but sadly are left with nothing. Sure Milkman becomes wealthy and well off during the story, but then he ends up getting murdered by a man that he referred to as a brother, Gatsby comes from dirt poor farmers and evolved into a legend only heard of through rumors and gossip but ends up shot to death after changing himself into what he though mattered for other people. Daisy didn't want to wait for Gatsby to come back from the war and start a relationship with him, so she left and ever since then he built himself into what he thought true happiness looked like. Level with me here devout reader, when you're in a car and you stare out the wi...

"Can't repeat the past?... Why of course you can!"-Jay Gatsby The immortal words of F. Scott Fitzgerald never resonated with me before until reading that line, and  with nothing else but eyes for his loved one Daisy to keep him going for those five years they spent apart, Gatsby managed to immortalize every moment they spent together on repeat while he waited for their reunion. Every wrinkle, every argument, every fight, every heartache, was painted over in a permanent gloss along with the memories they created together before the war and social class split them up, Leaving Daisy and her memory to be referred to in nothing less but pure divinity. The only problem with that was the obvious fact that Gatsby let his emotions for who Daisy was cloud over the new persona she had taken on in his absence. Fueled by the drive to recreate the relationship that was lost, the only thing that Gatsby ever truly cared about, the one thing that his award winning smile and mountains of...

The 1920’s were considered America’s teenage years with the introduction of modernism being the final catalyst that split the new generation from the old ways. At the time, with the invention of the flapper dress, the childish use of alcohol, with the idea of spending large amounts of money they didn’t own was obviously frowned upon by the earlier years but it had me thinking, are we seeing another resurgence of that now with the culture exhibited by millennials and Gen Z? If you haven’t heard by now, the vote to legalize marijuana in the US is fast approaching and the commercials for pro supporters and the opposers have clouded my social media feed enough for me to blog about it. You have the obvious parents voicing their disapproval with words like “think of the children” and “is this the kind of America you want to grow up in?”. And then you have the supporters with the popular phrase “make America green again!” call me crazy, but reading The Great Gatsby has shown me a rather u...

What is faith? Well the basic textbook definition is to have complete trust or confidence in someone or something, but can completely letting someone in close enough to have faith in them prove to be the right thing to do in the grand scheme of things? If life hasn't shown you this by now then let me do you a favor, but completely trusting anyone or yourself can be very dangerous. We're people, we make mistakes and we all like to believe that we can trust the person in our arms or laying next to us with everything and then some, but like everything on this planet, if you put enough pressure on something... it's bound to cave in on itself and let you down. Pilate, arguably one of the strongest characters in the story was thrusted into independence at a young age and in doing so she had to have faith in herself and in her peoples heritage to keep her going. And when reading the book she seems to be the most enlightened one out of the entire cast and dare I say the most stab...

Macon Dead the third, or better known as Milkman has had a life most people of color in his city would kill for. With a grandfather who people respect even in death and a father well known in the community for being a main source of wealth among them, have unintentionally separated Milkman from the rest of the African americans around him. Milkman's friend Guitar has made it his job to remind him how different the two of them are and how different he is from their people on a multitude of occasions. Guitar asks Milkman what he would do if their city randomly became another version of Montgomery Alabama, to which he responds jokingly with "buy a plane ticket" (Morison 104) this only angers Guitar and he bitterly responds with "No. A man that can't live there. If things ever got tough you'd melt." (Morrison 104). To add some background at this time Montgomery Alabama was basically the racist capital of the world, and if you were anything besides a wealthy ...

We all have a hunger to be wanted, whether its by your friends, family, or even that special someone that replays all of your snaps. Having that feeling that if you were to vanish tonight, then those people would start a riot in the streets tomorrow until you were found is something people crave more than any meal or drug. Solitude of any kind that lasts more than a few months has been known to drive some people insane, but now picture being involuntarily placed in solitude while in civilization. Now before I explain myself I would like to inform you that this isn't a happy post and has no intention of leaving you with a call to action on how to better yourself, so turn back now if you came here looking for anything else.  Now when I said being placed in solitude while in civilization I meant that when people view you as so insignificant that you blend in with the wallpaper, in conversations your voice harmonizes with the people around you and quickly have your opinion tuned, or...

After spending another week on Maus, one page in particular stood out to me. In volume 2 on page 95 Vladek realizes he has Typhus in which he grows a mild case of insomnia by his disease always keeping him up and frequently sending him to the camps communal bathroom. He remarks on all of the not so lucky dead bodies that cluttered the floor and how he had to step on them to get across. Vladek truly believed he was going to die. His hope running on fumes as he explains, "Now I will be laying like this ones and somebody will step on me!" (Spiegelman 95) but Vladek's loss of hope wasn't what stood out to me, but the bodies in the final panel of the page. We are shown a close up of Vladek stepping on each individual corpse where we see the main three types of people there. More specifically the Mice, Pigs, and Cats.  This interested me because throughout both volumes the idea of stereotypes, racism, and prejudice takes its hold on almost every character in the story ...

After reading the entire first volume of Maus this week, we spent the last minutes of class talking in small groups about how we felt after reading a quote. I was talking with my friend Liam and we both agreed that people tend to make the holocaust a lot more depressing than it needs to be. Now before you get the chance to sharpen your pitchforks let me explain; for those of you that were lucky enough to go to Washington D.C. in the 8th grade, what did you feel during or after you left each memorial? Well if you're anything like me then you felt heavy, you felt the weight of all that history ball up inside of you all at once and at first it felt overwhelming and no matter what catastrophe or war the memorial was... well memorializing you felt some form of patriotism. I left the tomb of the unknown soldier feeling big country energy for america, I thought this must be what people felt when they saw uncle sam photos for the first time. Although one day in class this week we were show...

With all this talk of grades and synthesis essays, I have realized that the question, "Can an individual change society?" has kept me at a mental standstill since Thursday. We have all sat through the history lectures where blank did not like how he or she was being treated, so they stood up against XYZ, grew a following, and together with hard work and ingenuity succeeded in changing the world and how we all view things. Which don’t get me wrong, is extremely inspirational, but it had me wondering; with controversy being the topic on every news channel and the world appearing to be getting worse, it begs the question, "Who will be this generation’s hero?" Who is going to take the metaphorical hand of America and lead us to a better future where we do not need to worry about the latest Trump tweet or Russian hacktivist? The only thing that comes to mind when the topic of change comes up would be the recent school walkouts for stricter gun control....

After spending time reading both The History Teacher by Billy Collins and The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell, I’ve noticed that both texts have successfully managed to speak their various messages hidden under sarcasm, and humor. Collin's poem although short and playful has spoke to me in a number of ways, and it has also brought up many questions. One of the most influential questions in my opinion would be what gives the teacher the right to lie to the children about history to "protect his students innocence"(Collins 1). This irritated me in more ways then one because throughout what feels to be my entire life, people have taken it upon themselves to go out of their way to lie to me for in their own words "to be nice" or "to protect me". So in a way, although the teacher meant well by lying to his students to protect them; the reader can only be led to assume that (and this is a shocker) this can only lead to the children's in...

Throughout this week of school we had been given packets to read, annotate, and analyze. Upon receiving the passage from "Postcards from the Trenches" by Allyson Booth and "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" by Frederick Douglas. Both were extremely compelling reads, but one stood out to me on a personal level and that had to be the speech from Frederick Douglas. After reading the text I couldn't help but resonate with it for the rest of the day leading up to now. I know I’ll never be able to understand what life was like for my people when Jim Crow was the new black and I’m not trying to relate to the hardships they had to face, but in a way... Douglas's speech spoke to me and made me look back to the times I’ve experienced racism from others and truly felt alien in a world I was led to believe was where I belonged. Reading the lines of the speech triggered a flashback in which I went up north with my best friend Varun, an...