The Third Act

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...

The Third Act: The Climax is the scene or sequence in which the main tensions of the story are brought to their most intense point and the dramatic question answered, leaving the protagonist and other characters with a new sense of who they really are.