Tj Kiefer

Mueller AP

Literature and Composition

2/10/09

“Woman Work”

The attitude in “Woman Work” is quite apparent. It gives off the same feelings and attitudes we all have when it comes to work or something we dislike but know we have to do. There is the immediate attitude of disgust and hatred followed by the over-embellished thoughts of the relief and rest that comes after doing hard work.

The first stanza is where the teller remarks on all of the chores she has to do throughout the day, in almost a list format. Every line has another chore and it seems like there is no rest or break in the middle, she just goes from one task to another. Each line is end stopped which shows that each task is separate and just continually goes into the next after the previous task is complete. Unlike other women during this time period, which seems like a Southern setting due to the cotton and cane referenced, she does not stay contained in the house. Her work takes her outside to do tasks which initially seem to be men’s chores, like picking cotton and cutting sugar cane. This could imply that she is a single mother, which would make her life more stressful and the completion of her jobs even more important. You can feel her growing tired and more weary after each line.

Finally she completes her tasks as the second stanza begins, and she starts to call on nature for relief, as shown in lines like “Fall softly, dewdrops And cool my brow again.” This gives a very refreshing image of a cool mist which is one of the greatest feelings after working hard in the sun. It also has traces of Romantic literature because of all the references to nature and how it helps a person who is tired from working long hours doing chores. Another change in the poem is that the lines in the second through fourth stanzas are now enjambed, instead of end stopped. This ends the “laundry list” feel of the first stanza and helps provide the imagery of the nature references. She also uses apostrophe in the final stanzas, literally calling on nature to aid her, as if the sun and the snowflakes could hear her and come to her help. This shows a sort of delusional state that she is in after all of her hard work and amplifies her need for rest.

The attitude changes from the beginning of the poem and the rest of the poem. The first stanza is much different from stanzas two through four to be exact. The first stanza gives an attitude of dread and determination, shown by the seemingly endless list of chores and how important it is that they are all completed. The second through fourth stanzas provide and attitude of longing for relief and rest, which the teller believes will come from nature, as shown by all of the references to nature and how they can aid a tired person.

Question:

Who is the speaker of this poem? Provide specific examples from the poem to support your ideas.

Answer:

The speaker of this poem seems to be a little child, probably between the ages of 5 and 8.  Those ages seem appropriate because at that point in life a child is making up their own words such as “puddle-wonderful” and “mud-luscious”. Using words like that also imply a child because they love to play in the dirt and mud whereas older children and adults tend to stay away from shenanigans like that. They also refer to the balloon man three times throughout the poem, and as a child I was always in awe of the balloon man, who had the joy of holding wonderful balloons all day. He comments on his friends, but rushes the pronunciation like a child who speaks much too fast would. There are two examples of this, “eddieandbill” and “bettyandisbel”. Finally the child comments on the games that his friends are playing, such as hop-scotch, jump-rope, marbles and piracies.

“I argue with myself a lot lately, I say argue instead of debate because it sometimes turns into silent shouting matches

that end in nothingness and are the least civil things one can experience. I argue about many things, most I cannot

remember ten minutes after I’m done with the whole thing. Recently I’ve been throwing around the topic of religion and

existence. I’ve found I have two very different thought processes, one leaning more toward hope and optimism and the

other completely nihilistic and self-destructive. It’s quite obvious which side is more prominent. This leads to some very

un times, and a bit of desperate struggling. One could say, and a few have that it’s bipolar or “schizophrenic

narcissism”

and it’s quite scary.

I’ve always known there was something wrong with me, but I never knew what. I live with an underlying feeling that

something is a little off. I keep wondering why I hate everyone, including myself. I can’t stand society and live a self

destructive lifestyle. I make choices without knowing the consequences and live with a constant feeling of hatred and anger. I

fail at things that only hurt me to get back at people, I try to run myself into the ground, overload myself with work, school,

homework and other things just to see how much I can take before breaking, it’s like a sick game to me. I’ve spent the last

few years trying to diagnose myself, to find out what’s wrong with me. You might be wondering why I just didn’t go to a

therapist to find that out. I did, and I failed at that too, for no reason I didn’t tell them anything and then just stopped going.

I’ve never had the ability to empathize and only truly care about one or two people.”

“My life is now one big pattern against user and I hate it, everyday is exactly the same, my now realized precious time is split

between school and a full time job. It’s monotony at its finest, which to some of you, after watching my personality for the

past few years seems like it fits me fine. I hate the feeling of being stuck in a loop, where it feels like the future is too far

away, the present is taking far too long, and the past is sprinting away from me. I often get wonder where the past 8 hours

of my life went, even though during that time all I wanted was it to pass. I need something to change, some kind of catalyst

to shatter the world I’m growing so uncomfortable in. I want something to shake it up a bit, and run away laughing at me. I

need my own Tyler Durden. I’m an adrenaline junkie with no fix, a matador waving a lonely red flag with no bull in sight.

Some people live to fight genocide, or find some bandwagon cause like opposing the current government and their

decisions. I currently have no desire to protect the environment, stop AIDS, prevent world hunger or any of the other

million causes people live for. I haven’t found the right one yet”

Tj Kiefer

Mueller

AP Literature and Composition

2/02/09

“Here” Essay

“Here” is a poem about traveling through different environments, it starts in an urban area, moves to a rural area and then heads back into a city. The poem has mainly a darker tone, ranging from solemn and gloomy to callous and cynical. There really isn’t a pleasant word in the entire poem. The end of the poem is much darker than the beginning, which initially gave me a reflective and whimsical tone.

The first stanza begins with the word swerving, which is repeated multiple times throughout the stanza. This gives a rushed feel, where it seems that everything is moving by much too quickly and the second the narrator recognizes the environment his direction quickly changes and he is presented with something entirely new. He “swerves” away from a city, described by its “rich industrial shadows”. The juxtaposition of the words industrial and shadows gives an illusion of towering factories or skyscrapers. After departing the urban area he moves into a field of thistles, where he constantly sees places to stop, where workers idle. These could be stops for a form of public transportation, caring workers to their jobs early in the morning. The final line in the stanza holds the only pleasant word in the poem, the “piled gold clouds” which give an illusion of stacks of comfortable golden clouds that are in the sky in the morning on a perfect day. The reader assumes that the narrator is at a riverbank at the closing of the first stanza because of the “shining gull-marked mud” and the fact that he sees a “widening river”. Seagulls typically are seen in areas like beaches or riverbanks. The words in this stanza that give a solemn or gloomy tone are “harsh” in line 4 and “solitude” in line 5. Solitude is generally a word to describe someone who is isolated or imprisoned by something.

The second stanza starts with the narrator entering a large town, where he describes what he sees. He describes the scenes as a mix between a medieval European city and an industrialized city, both of which give off a gloomy feel. The words domes, statues, spires and grain-scattered streets remind me of a medieval city, with an overcast sky and buildings made of grey, cold stone. The residents come into the town on “dead straight miles” to buy what they need. One can assume this is a town made of up middle class residents by what they desire, which are either low quality items like cheap suits and iced lollies or necessities like washers and driers.

The third stanza continues to describe the town and its residents. He calls the town simple and says the only other people who visit are salesmen and relations. The salesman further reinforces the middle class theory because they stereotypically go door to door in suburban or middle class areas and try to sell their sometimes shady goods. Further into the city are ships lining the streets and a tattoo shop, which hint at sailors, who come on shore during leave to visit bars and tattoo shops. The ideas of these add to the dark tone because for the most part people with many tattoos are looked down upon in society and thought of as “dirty” or “ruffians”. The narrator also describes the edge of town as half built which implies an industrial setting, with the area trying to grow into a larger city. He then leaves the city and travels through wheat fields to “isolate villages” which sets a similar tone as solitude.

The end of the third stanza continues into the fourth stanza and from the opening word the gloomy tone is set. “Loneliness clarifies”, in this phrase the loneliness is clarifying the lives of the people who live in the isolated villages outside of the town. This gives an illusion to a small town where everyone knows each other and practically everyday is the exact same mundane thing where the only sense of excitement and wonder come with a new visitor. “Silence stands like heat”, along with being isolated and lonely the villages and surrounding area are completely quiet, which gives a feeling of desperation. Words like loneliness, isolated, removed, and silence give a sense of death, where nothing is happening, the villagers seem almost comatose as shown by the following lines.

“Here leaves unnoticed thicken

Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken”

These lines allude to the area around the villages returning back to “nature” or a time where they were undisturbed by man. The narrator finally reaches what seems to be the ocean, by the words “bluish neutral distance” and the fact that the land ends suddenly beyond a beach. Oceans are vast and you cannot see past the horizon, which leads to the unknown in every direction except the way you came. The unknown vastness of the ocean is generally a solemn thought, which cements the tone of the entire poem.

The poem “Here” by Philip Larkin has a dark and gloomy tone from beginning to end, with only one positive phrase at the beginning which quickly turns to apathy. The tone is set by words like “isolated”, “loneliness”, “untalkative”, “dead straight miles” and “solitude”. During this poem the reader feels a sense of despair and sadness rush over them. The narrator finds something depressing in every environment he visits, from cities to rural fields to the ocean. There is also a slight disdain for the middle class in the second and third stanzas, which lead to the thought that the narrator is of a higher class. Overall, this is a very dark, depressing poem with the tone clearly set and reinforced throughout the poem.

The Beginning

℘ Marcos Cortes (Childhood Friend)

I remember a time when Taylor wasn’t as depressed as most people remember. Back when we were really young, say around 7 years old or so, we would catch frogs and play on the swing set his mother built in his backyard. I remember we did this everyday, just kid stuff like digging holes randomly. Things changed when he hit the age of 10 though, although I never could figure out what that change was…

℘ Melissa Winters (Taylor’s Mother)

Daily you say? I only let Taylor out of the house twice a week, at most. The boy was too fragile, and you know mothers with only one child. I was so protective, never let him out of my sight. He was incredibly smart; you could see it just by looking at him. Sometimes I thought he was too smart for his own good, always questioning things. Sometimes he would question things that never should be questioned.

℘ John Parks (FBI Agent)

Yeah, the Winters case. I spent over a year following that boy, always one step behind. I still don’t even know half of the stuff that he’s done in his life, even though his rap sheet is over 12 pages long. He was meticulous, created the most pristine crime scenes, most of the local cops in each town he visited thought these were all freak accidents, you know, lady falls down the stairs, man forgets to put his car in park and rolls into an on-coming train, stuff like that. There was always a pattern though, no one else could see it but it was so obvious to me.

℘ Trevor Donahue (Cellmate)

I couldn’t wait until his time was up. Until it was his turn to take that needle. That boy sent chills down my back almost everyday. I would wake up to him just sitting there in his bed, just staring at the bars, never saying a word. He’d do this all day, from the moment I woke up ‘til the moment I closed my eyes at night. Downright creepy, that’s what it was. Nothing more, nothing less, just plain old creepy.

℘ Grace Whitman (Teacher)

Taylor was the model student, always had the answer and was so helpful. Something could be said about his motivation though, or lack thereof. He just seemed so sad in class, I can honestly say I’ve never seen him smile.

℘ Ted Grey (Forensic Pathologist)

I haven’t seen a specimen like Taylor Winters in my entire life. It was a joy working on that body, truly amazing. When he came in he had 38 bullet holes in him and the adrenaline was still pumping from his lifeless body. Oh, and you can’t rule out that initial nasty knife wound to his stomach. How he made it so long without bleeding out I’ll never know.

The Turn

℘ Melissa Winters

Once he started middle school I kind of lost touch with Taylor, which killed me. My only boy would come home crying from school some days and I’d have no idea why. He wouldn’t have any marks on him at all, so I knew it wasn’t bullying. His grades were perfect, always straight A’s except for those few rare times when he would get a low C, always a low C. Those times didn’t affect him either, he just brushed it off like nothing ever happened and went on with his life.

℘ Marcos Cortes

Why was Taylor so depressed? That was obvious to anyone who tried to get to know him during high school. There was only one reason why he tried to stay home in the mornings. Why I would have to go to his house 45 minutes before school started each day to force him out of bed and throw him in the shower. It was her.

℘ Heather Wright (Neurologist)

Brain tumors have always been a reason for why serial killers snap. Take Charles Whitman for example, killed 16 people Texas. Taylor Winters had a tumor the size of a golf ball in the frontal lobe area of his brain. May I remind you, the frontal lobe is the area responsible for human behavior. I believe that as a child he must have taken a hard fall or was possibly dropped at a very young age. This would have definitely resulted in brain damage possible of manifesting later in life.

℘ John Parks

Brain damage? You’re kidding, right? That boy had nothing physically wrong with him. He was the healthiest, most active young man this side of the Pacific. No, there was something wrong with his brain, but it was because of his mother. I couldn’t imagine growing up in a house like that. No father, an over protective mother who coddled her only child. Who knows what kind of garbage she filled that boys head with. No wonder he grew up to be a killer.

℘ Melissa Winters

Everyday I would tell Taylor how special he was, how much better he was than everyone else. He was a genius, so much farther in his studies than everyone in his class, in his school actually. He would come home from school with notes from his teachers urging me to send him to a private institution, where he could get the education he needed to reach his potential in life. Only problem was the money, who knew it would cost 25,000 a year for a “proper” education. This started both of our hatred for the rich.

℘ Marcos Cortes

He was obsessed with her, always talking about how great she was, how perfect she was. I started to grow sick of hearing about Kera. The only thing he wanted in life was to be with her, he didn’t care about grades or sports or anyone else, just her. I told him that if he was that desperate he should just go talk to her or something. Well, one day he did and she shut him down, hard. I’m talking about laughing, insulting, every embarrassing thing in the book that a guy spends his whole life afraid of. She did it all. He was crushed after that. That summer we started to grow apart, I heard from him less and less until he just stopped talking to me. That little scene in his life was why he became a killer. All because of some girl in high school….

℘ John Parks

Let me tell you a story. One cold night in December, and I mean cold, I get a page from the station that there was just a domestic abuse call from this house. My partner and I were just cruising out of the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot.  Yeah stereotypical, laugh it up. Well we were just returning from our break and were nearby so we thought we’d check it out. We’re both thinking it’s a typical husband hits wife, scares her and she calls the police thing. We thought we’d get there and she say it was her fault and nothing ever happened, she “fell down the stairs” or something like that. Well we arrive on scene to a wide open screen door and complete silence. We pull our pistols and walk in, now completely thrown off. The maroon kitchen is completely empty except for a young lady on her knees crying. Well, we do the only thing we can do. We call the paramedics and bring her in to the station. She tells us that she came home to the house like that. Her story was clearly faulty and it was obvious that she murdered her husband, obvious to me I guess. She went to court, I testified against her but who’s a jury going to believe? The crying, pregnant wife of a husband who was just butchered or a rookie detective? That was the kind of house Taylor grew up in. That was the reason I wasn’t surprised when I was put on his case. Like mother, like son.

The Ascent

℘ Mark Adler (Hit man)

This job isn’t for the weak, mentally or physically. If you’re not starting out insane, you definitely are leaving with a few mental problems. Some of the hits you feel completely guilty for, its human nature I guess. It does get easier after awhile a guess, you start to lose your conscious and your morals begin to deteriorate. We all felt like we could talk to each other about it though, we all knew we were going through the same thing. Kind of like a “Killers Anonymous” meeting. Taylor was always different though; he was a loner and never came to the bar on Tuesday nights with everyone. After awhile we all just left him alone. He wasn’t doing this for the money, like most of us were, that part was obvious.

℘ Mikael Iscariot (Mob Boss)

Taylor Winters? Best hit man we’ve had in a long time. He asked no questions, it didn’t matter to him if he was going on a suicide mission or just taking out some lady with her baby. He impressed almost everyone who saw his work. It was gruesome, stomach turning, but somehow beautiful. You couldn’t take your eyes off of the scene. That was how we knew he would never be caught.

℘ Trevor Donahue

He never talked to me about his hits. Most of our cellmates bragged about their crimes, how perfectly their early crimes were carried out and what they could have done differently to have not been caught. Taylor just sat there, almost emotionless, save for a small smirk that would cross his mouth whenever someone else would tell their best story. He had a slight god complex, which is why I thought he never talked. He believed he was better than us, so he isolated himself from us. One day, someone was going to have to show him reality.

℘ Mark Adler

You could tell you were going insane once you joined in the little game we used to have between the rest of the guys. Part of the game was to see how many hits you could get, another was the style you did them in. The whole thing was quite sick, sitting around a table at the local bar, each man taking his turn telling about how gruesome they made their last hit. Taylor, like always, kept to himself. He was never one to elaborate. There were a few times, when he had too much to drink, where he would tell you stories of his greatest hits. Those were times I wished I just stayed home, or decided to sleep in, or happened to miss the bus to the bar. I just wished I could be anywhere but near that man.

℘ Melissa Winters

He was the greatest son a mother could ask for. He was never in trouble with the law after he moved out. He was working for a major corporation in Chicago and was quickly promoted. He made so much money, enough to buy his dear mother a new car and help pay off the mortgage!

℘ Marcos Cortes

Taylor occasionally came home, and when he did we could see he was spinning further and further out of control. He always had a new toy to play with, or a new present for his mother. A few of us knew how he was getting the money, but we would never say a word. The worst was watching his mom’s reactions to the gifts. She had no idea what he was doing to get them for her and was still under an illusion that everyone else saw through after a few weeks. I had done some personal investigation by myself, looked up a few names and numbers in Chicago, you know because I was worried about him. No one in the corporation he claimed he worked for had ever heard of him.

℘ John Parks

I was called to numerous crime scenes during a ten year period. All had a familiar look to me, though I could never, ever put what I was feeling into words. They were like I’ve never seen before, blood was almost always everywhere, and it looked like a massacre. Dismembered bodies, fingers and toes cooking on the stove, just stuff you couldn’t even imagine someone doing to another human. I’d arrive on the scene to see crime scene investigators, people who see this kind of stuff daily, vomiting outside and warning me not to go inside. Worst stuff I’ve ever seen, stuff that sticks in your mind for a long time.

℘ Ted Grey

It’s a rare occurrence but it still happens. A soldier in the field gets shot near the heart or lungs and should die right on the spot. For some reason they keep going, complete their object, do whatever they needed to do and then die. Governments have been trying to capitalize on this for a long time, what do you think stem cell research is for? We’re always looking for a new way to get the advantage, no matter what the other side effects to our bodies are. Always trying to be stronger, smarter, doing whatever it takes to achieve this, sometimes without even knowing why or what we are actually doing to ourselves. No one is happy with what they were born with anymore.

The Break

℘ Dr. Irene Cogan (Psychiatrist)

I’ve never met the man, but from what I’ve gather the case is simple, well not as simple as most, he had half a dozen things wrong with him. The major problem was that he was a Schizophrenic narcissist. This was amplified by the new type of drug he was taking in high school to battle his depression. His problems most probably derived from some sort of social trauma when he was younger, and this wrecked his personality. He created a “shell” to keep his inner self from being emotionally hurt. This created a split in him, an inner and outer self, a “true” and “false” self. The self that others saw was the way he was described, cold, uninviting, isolated. His inner self would have only been seen by people who knew him before whatever trauma occurred. The attention he received from his mother was just the beginning. It was too much for him, constantly being the center of attention, it swallowed him up. After this trauma he ran from love whenever it came up, he couldn’t handle the anxiety that arose from it. It’s all quite sad actually. This schizophrenia eventually led to his other problems, his Sadism and Depersonalization explain his ability to kill. All of this, probably because of some small event, an event that most of us would brush off or laugh at, but to him was life changing.

℘ Melissa Winters

I believed Taylor was perfect, that he would grow old and take good care of his weak mother. Imagine my surprise when I receive a knock on my door and a message by a FBI agent and a local police officer that my precious boy was in prison! There was no way he was a killer, I knew from the moment they told me that they were lying. I kindly told them that sick jokes were not appreciated in the Winters’ house and quickly slammed the door closed.

℘ John Parks

After all these years I half expected the mother to change, but she was still as delusional as ever. She still only believed whatever she wanted to, and didn’t let anything else change her mind. Agent Wexley and I showed her all of the evidence we had, and it was quite good evidence if I say so myself. We even brought out the pictures of the victims that we suspected Taylor killed. Nothing swayed her one bit; she just said something about a joke and angrily slammed the door in our faces. Wexley wanted to keep trying, but I told him the story about Taylor’s father and we both decided to just give up on her.

℘ Marcos Cortes

To tell the truth, I wasn’t really all that surprised. I knew something like this was bound to happen. I gave up a long time ago, after doing all I could to try and stop it. There was definitely something wrong with him, rationally reasoning with him no longer worked. The last time I saw him he just kept muttering something about having revenge. I feel like I should have done more, but there really was nothing I could do. He couldn’t be helped by anyone.

The Fall

℘ Mark Adler

We all thought he was untouchable. All of the detectives ever assigned to his case all came up with nothing. Everything was too perfect, too clean. We didn’t know how he did it, he just never slipped up. Rumor has it he was set up by Mikael because he was getting too good. Everyone feared him, and he was obviously insane, which made him even more dangerous. Story goes that Mikael asked him to take out a detective by the name of John Parks, at a certain time to, in the middle of a conference at the local police station. This was no easy hit and every one of us would have flat-out said no thanks. But not Taylor, no, nothing was too big for his ego. He jumped at the chance.

℘ Mikael Iscariot

Yeah, I’m already in enough trouble, so I guess it wouldn’t hurt to tell you how Taylor really was caught. He was an amazing hit man, but he was bonkers. He was completely gone in the head, and that scared a lot of us. It’s bad enough having sane killers around you on a daily basis, but even worse when they’re totally insane. Any day Taylor could have walked in for a hit, and if he didn’t like it or just snapped he could have just killed everyone there. He had the skill to do that sort of thing to, and the worse part is it wouldn’t have matter to him and he probably would have gotten away with it. I knew that we couldn’t just let him go, because even with the low morals I have I still would have felt guilty about freeing that monster in the world. At least here I had some control over him, and he wasn’t just killing random people. We had a meeting about what best to do with him, and we decided to give him an impossible assignment. We placed a hit on one of the leading detectives in town, and told Taylor that he had to be killed in the middle of a police conference, when we knew that every cop in town would be there. Well, that crazy bastard actually accepted. His enthusiasm left me with a sinking feeling in my stomach, and I hoped that this worked, because if it didn’t our back up plan definitely wouldn’t have.

℘ John Parks

Here’s a story for you. We’re, and be we I’m referring to every cop in town who wasn’t at the time a rookie, are all sitting in a dining hall for our annual police conference, just drinking and swapping stories awaiting the announcements for promotions and awards. Well guess who decided to show up? Yeah, Taylor Winters. And he had a gun; this was too good to be true! In my drunken state I managed to somehow work my gun out of the holster in my jacket on the back of my chair. By that time a small riot has started, imagine a bunch of drunken police officers receiving kind bullets while they tried to find their guns. It was a massacre; we lost a lot of men that year, about 15 to be exact. Well while Taylor was shooting people, looking around for something or someone I sneaked out into the hallway and around to the entrance where he came in. My plan was to use the fellow policemen as bait and try to sneak up behind him. Well fortunately this worked out much better than I could have ever imagined. I was right behind him when he turned and I slammed him in the head with my pistol, knocking him out.

℘ Trevor Donahue

This is about the time I met him. He was thrown into the cell half unconscious, after trying to escape from his trial. They found him guilty on all charges, 43 counts of murder, which added up to a lot of years I guess, because they decided it would be easier to put him on death row, with people like me. Eventually he fully woke up and I introduced myself to him, but he would have no part of that. He just sat there staring at the bars, which I found extremely odd but would get used to after while. I swear I would have had a better time by myself than with him as my cellmate. Finally the day came where he was to be executed, today he decided to talk. He told me every single one of his hits, and then a few people he killed before becoming a hit man. I was disgusted by very many of them. This brought his count up to 83, which is a lot of people to kill in 15 years. I told him I was probably going to tell this to the guards when they took him and he flipped out. I guess he didn’t realize that he was about to be killed anyway, and that they weren’t going to stop killing him if they somehow were told about 40 something more murders. Well this started a brawl and a series of very improbable events. During the fight I grabbed my knife I spent the last few weeks making and stabbed him in the stomach. He let out a shriek which alerted the guards and when they opened the bars to take him to the hospital or the chair or wherever he was going he bolted, ran straight through them and down the hall. The last thing I heard him ever say was “I can’t die yet; I haven’t finished what I’ve started.” Well, the two guards were starting to get to their feet, obviously with the wind knocked out of them. Unfortunately for them they weren’t paying attention to the inmate with a knife at the other side of the cell. As much as I hated Taylor I still was a killer. That probably was what let him go free, no guards to alert the rest of the prison that there was a convict on the loose. Too bad.

℘ John Parks

It was the most exhilarating day of my life, I finally was able to bring him down and rid myself of that horrible family. We received a call from a teller in the back of a bank saying there was a man there who had already killed 5 people, including another teller. He claimed that the man had not yet asked for any money but had a look of satisfaction on his face. He said the man was just sitting in a chair, no longer holding the gun, but everyone else was too afraid to move. When we arrived we realized it was Taylor, and that he was in fact just sitting in a chair. We called in SWAT and I guess he heard the sirens because at that point he picked up his pistol and hid behind a desk. Not trying to loose anymore men we let SWAT do all of the work, which led to a 3 hour holdout before it all ended in a cloud of teargas and gunshots. Taylor did quite decently for a bleeding man clearly outnumbered; he managed to hit three men in their Kevlar, but in turn took 38 bullets. Some people claimed police brutality over this piece of information, but they clearly have never met this man. Walking inside the bank my heart dropped when I saw that he had actually killed 5 people. The other hostages claimed that he walked in and went right up to the female teller and without saying anything shot her in the chest. Two men tried to sneak up behind him and wrestle the gun out of his hands but Taylor shot both of them in the head. The other two, they said, he shot because he said he was bored. I walked up to the body of the teller and checked for a driver’s license or something. I found it in the purse next to her booth and read the first name. Kera.

℘ Ted Grey

I was quite disappointed while viewing the Winters body. I was expecting a miracle, a specimen of the highest caliber, one to explain how he stayed alive. Instead, what I saw was a perfectly normal man, no brain tumor, nothing at all wrong with his brain actually. He had never broken any bones, torn any ligaments or tendons. He was remarkably in good shape, you know, besides all of the gunshot wounds. I was annoyed, what I had before me was so much potential for advancing medicine, and there was just nothing there. He was just another typical unexplainable case.

Tj Kiefer

Mueller

English 12 AP

12/15/08

In The Story of an Hour Mrs. Mallard has one main conflict and a few smaller conflicts that take place during the story. She finds a way of dealing with the main conflict and this resolution was helped by one of her minor conflicts.

Her main conflict is mostly psychological. After hearing about her husband’s death she locks herself in her room and looks out her window. At first she cries, but after awhile she begins to realize that she is finally free from her husband, to do as she pleases. This story obviously takes place during a time when woman didn’t have that many rights, and for the most part had to do what their husbands say. While saying this, the dull look in her eyes fades and they became bright, as if he husband was a parasite and it was once removed, and she can go on with her life as it were before him. She continues to build up and anticipate the things that she can do know being free. ” Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long.” After saying this she also says that she loved her husband sometimes, and that she often thought to herself that she didn’t want life to be that long. This shows that she was quite unhappy with her marriage but could do nothing about it. This is finally her chance to be on her own, during a time where she probably never had this freedom before. As she is going down the stairs with her sister, her husband opens the door. As Mrs. Mallard sees him she has a heart attack and dies. I believe this is because she is so surprised and unhappy with seeing him after anticipation a free life that she just couldn’t take it anymore. She resolves her conflict in the end by dying.

A minor conflict in the story is her heart problems. This was mentioned briefly in the opening sentence of the story and the reader doesn’t hear any more about it until she dies of a heart attack at the end. This is important to her story because it gives a more plausible cause for her reaction to her husband in the end. It is also ironic because the reason of the heart attack is the opposite of why the doctors said she had died. She had the heart attack because she was unhappy with seeing her husband, and the doctors claimed that she was so happy to see her husband that her heart couldn’t take it.

The Odyssey was the journey of Odysseus to return home after the war with the Trojans. Like The Odyssey, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was also a journey, except Huck’s goal was not to arrive home; it was to run away from it. Foster says “Mythological allusions help authors convey the adventure and danger of their stories.” (Foster, 68) Mark Twain uses many of these sorts of allusions in Huck Finn. There are many parallels between The Odyssey and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The biggest parallel between the stories is the actual adventure itself. Both journeys take place on the water, Odysseus’s is on an ocean on his trip home from Troy and Huck’s is on the Mississippi River. Both make frequent stops to the shore, and this is where most of the journey takes place. The water is just a sort of transportation, a shuttle to these different adventures. Both have companions who share the same adventures with the “leader”, Huck has Jim and the Duke and dauphin and Odysseus has all of his men.

Another parallel is the art of disguise, Huck and his companions dress up in disguise multiple times, and Huck dresses as a woman in the beginning when he goes from the island back to land to see what people think happened to him. This is like Odysseus disguising himself (with the help of Athena) as a beggar to see what has happened in his kingdom. Huck and his companions disguising themselves at the Wilk’s house and to reenact the play is like Odysseus’ men being disguised as pigs by Circe. The disguises were not only physical; both used verbal disguises to help their companions. Odysseus did this by lying to the Cyclops and refusing to tell him his true identity and Huck did this by lying to the slave traders and claiming that Jim was his sick father.

There are many parallels between The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Odyssey but the two main ones are the journey and how both characters used disguise to help them during their journeys. From these comparisons and the detail to which they are similar shows that Mark Twain used The Odyssey as a basis for his story.

I have chosen Computer Engineering as my first choice because since a very young age I have been drawn to it and have spent a lot of hours creating websites, toying around in photoshop, attempting to learn languages like C++ and HTML. I’ve had a computer since I was 8, and I’ve had my own for 6 years now. During this time my career choice went from a doctor to something more computer related. It started off with Graphic Design, and then Computer Programming and now I really would like to be a computer engineer. I really feel that if given the chance I can and will do my best to achieve my goal. I’ve started reading my father’s friends computer programming books from when he went to college and am doing all I can in my free time to study what I can about computers. I’m also a very quick learner which is the main reason why I’m on my second promotion at work in the four months I’ve been there.

I’ve also chosen Psychology as my second choice because I find it extremely fascinating. After reading the works of Carl Jung and the sunbconcious I can’t seem to get enough of the whole subject. It’s intriguing to try to find out why a certain person can snap and become a serial killer, or why someone is bipolar or is diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Even if I don’t choose Psychology as my first choice for a major I definently plan on studying as much or it as I can.

Children are becoming sick and injured each day, but they can not seek help because the cost to go see a doctor or spend time in the hospital is outrageous. If they had health insurance the parents would only have to pay a copay which would save the families money and the children would not have to cope with being sick.

One solution to this problem could be that the government would pay for all health care. This type of system is called a socialized health care system. This is a reasonable solution because it is working in a some other countries. A few of these countries are Canada, France, and England. All of these countries provide free health care for its citizens and the people who live there love it. The government run health care system in England is called the NHS or National Health Service, and is considered the best health care system in the world. This would not hurt the patients or the doctors at all, because the doctors in England still make a decent amount of money and the citizens taxes. which pay for the government run health service, are not at all high. Everyone, except children under sixteen, or seniors, pay a standard fee of £6.85 for all prescription drugs. Children and seniors get their prescription drugs for free. “Britain spends about 1/3 (!) the money per person and we have public health statistics roughly equivalent to America. Except for the fact that the bottom 1/4 of our population is vastly healthier” (Goodacre, Alan). This means that even though Britain’s health care system is government run it still pays a lot less than our American system, which is privately run. Also with a socialized system everyone receives free health care, not just the people who can pay for insurance. This would solve the crisis that children in New Jersey can not be treated because they do not have health insurance. It would greatly help the citizens of New Jersey, but the doctors here might not like it, because some doctors today do not become doctors to help people, they become doctors for the money. I think we pay doctors to much in this nation, and I also think that the health care system isn’t here to benefit the people when one has to pay thousands of dollars to get a finger reattached. (Moore, “Sicko”)

Two years ago, on the first day of Summer after ninth grade, I decided I needed a change in my life. I knew it couldn’t be a small change, like changing the way I dress or what kind of music I listen to. It needed to be something I thought was drastic. So I decided to move up to my mom’s house in Bergen County, in a small town called Park Ridge. When I say small, I mean microscopic, the high school (grades 7 through 12) consisted of roughly five hundred kids. By the second day of summer, there was no changing my mind, I was set on moving. I officially moved on the third day of summer. I also decided against telling any of my friends or even my brother that I was moving. I just felt I needed to get away. During the summer, it seemed like a good change, by this time I hadn’t met any of the kids, except for an old friend Rachel. The first day of school was terrible, I’m horrible in social settings and tend to stay by myself if I don’t know anyone there. I was put in mostly all honors classes so first period I walked into a room of kids who have known each other since kindergarten. I took a seat in the back corner of the class and was suddenly subjected to Jae Won In. Jae Won isn’t the type of kid you want to meet first in a new school. I wont even try describing him, because I’m trying to forget that I’ve ever meet him. Over the course of the year I got to know most of the kids in my grade, some I became friends with, but for the most part I couldn’t relate to any of them and spent most of the year isolated from everyone.

I found out many things while living up there, one thing was how different the kids are compared to what I was used to. I don’t mean different in a good or bad sense, I just couldn’t find myself living up there. I wasn’t like any of them, I didn’t live in a million dollar house and my parents didn’t buy me a Mustang or a Cadillac when I got my permit like theirs did. I wasn’t in drama or band like most of them were, I wasn’t perfect like they seemed to be. After the first marking period I longed to be back in Central, with my old friends, with the people I grew up with. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like my whole time was horrible. There were a few kids who were really cool, and I also had a lot of fun up there going clubbing with Vlad, going to shows and spending hours in Burger King with Emi and Corey, or teaching Billy how to longboard. The only time I felt like I belonged was when I was with these people. I did have a lot of friends up there I guess, but when your whole class is made up of sixty kids, your friends with pretty much everyone, because everyone knows each other. I didn’t like walking through the halls and seeing the same people at the same time each day. Everyday was exactly the same. Wake up, get to school by eight, feel like a failure the whole day, because everyone else is at least two times smarter than you, then walk home. Another thing I realized was that I made a horrible decision. I lost all contact with my old friends, and only came back to Bayville twice the whole school year. By December I had decided that I would do anything it took to move back to my old town. So, I did, and here I am.