The Endless Train of Thought

An American Dream. The cliche that is overused by many. Go to college, get a degree, get a job, marry your lover, eat some homemade dinner, finish dinner with apple pie, go outside and watch the stars, go to bed in a nice bed, and the dream continues. Is this a template for all dreams alike? In the Great Gatsby  by Scott F. Fitzgerald, the dream isn't so well-followed. The setting of the 1920s post-WW1 does its job tremendously. The American dream has been suffocated in the depths of relaxed social values and a booming economy. In the Great Gatsby, in the many goals set by the characters, the corruption is present. Gatz's idealism of a perfect relationship in Daisy is set apart by the differentiating social class and the relationship with Tom. In addition, the shady events that occur in the book are often masked by wealth and popularity. From Wolfsheim fixing the 1919 World Series or the bootlegging of Gatz, corruption is present, but wealth overtakes it. In today's soc...

Every story has two sides. With the topic in hand being the Holocaust, we see today the horrific effects the Holocaust had on the Jewish population. However, the Nazi perspective portrays Adolf Hitler to be a hero. In much of the the Nazi propaganda, Hitler is pictured as the protagonist of a utopia story. In the image pictured to the right, Hitler is holding up a small child and is smiling. All is happy, and the Swastika is prevalent. On the other hand, the Jewish people lived a much different life. Shown in Art Spiegelman's Maus , the images contrast each other in a huge way. While Hitler is gleefully expressing his happiness to a child, the Jewish people represented by mice are dying slowly and painfully from an inferno that leads to their inevitable death. Speigelman's use of horrific images not only qualifies the synthesis claim we had in class this week, but the heavy contrast between the light mood of the Nazi propaganda and the violent images in Maus  emphasize how d...

The small game of the telephone game. A game many of us have played before, the game is comprised of a group of people in a circle and a word or phrase. The phrase is passed on to each player and the nuances of each player's speech or the word itself causes the distortion of the word as it is passed on. This small game can relate to history and how it tells stories of the past. While reading Maus , the disaster that the graphic novel focuses on reminded me of a more recent tragedy, 9/11. A small fact came across me and I realized one thing: the Class of 2019 holds the majority the remaining people that lived through 9/11. Though very young, many of our date of births comes before September 11th, 2001. This realization relates to the telephone game. As the people that live through a notable event die, the descriptions of the events grow weaker. For example, events such as The American Revolution or day Columbus landed on American soil are now just known as events in history rath...

Many experiences are captured in many different ways. The lives of many high schoolers today are captured in social media. Twitter, for example is very common for those who want to say what is on their mind, or post a quick photo of their friends to celebrate a birthday, but is primarily captured in words. For more serious and rare events, many turn to Instagram, a social media program that shares pictures with comments, allowing peers to express their highlights of life. Lastly, while not as common, YouTube has become a place for a combination of audio and video to create videos for entertainment, education, or pure time-killing experiences. These three social media applications share one thing: a way to capture and share moments and experiences that simple speech cannot outdo. Drake and Josh , a television show that aired in early 2004 and ceased in 2007, provides a great example of how sharing moments can be different. I could tell you that in an iconic scene in the show, Drake ...

What is expressing emotion? The act of, "directly, [and] firmly stat[ing]" feelings can create quite the uproar in society. Many of the writers involved a claim around thinking about life in a new way or expressing things to stand up for yourself. However, where is the line that people should concede to? At what point is standing up for what you believe too far? In The Partly Cloudy Patriot , Vowell sets the standard for what the American patriot should be. In the chapter "White Tigers" of Woman Warrior ,  Kingston conveys her views on what she aspires to be: a successful and strong-willed, "swordswoman" (Kingston 53). It is important to note that both these pieces are in writing. Other works such as, "The Meaning of July 4th for the Negro" convey their message in speech. These acts of expression in public are the ones that can lead to the infamous fighting between either party. The line is for society to move around. Many of these public confr...