Justice?

When I think of justice, I think of courts and such because that's how justice is delivered now. I think justice is something that should be delivered to someone when they commit some sort of wrongdoing. This is because they deserve it, and justice is the punishment for it. I think the Ewells deserve justice. The standard of justice is an eye for an eye. It should be done back to them what they have done to others. I don't think Tom Robinson deserves any justice. However, I do believe that the group of people with Mr. Cunningham also deserve justice, for the way that they operate, the way they wish to incite fear into others without regard for their lives or anything. I think justice should be served swiftly unless the wrongdoing that the person committed was slow and painful. Eye for an eye, retribution should be brought upon them the way they have brought pain onto others. This means I believe in capital punishment. Eye for an eye is the standard in which justice should be served, and once justice has been served, they both should be in the same position, if the man had inflicted a wound so much that it would cripple the other man, then that man should be crippled very much in the same way. I think that's how justice should be served, anyway.

Film v. Print

On film, the story is depicted more visually and with more sounds. Descriptions appeal to our senses immediately, there is only surface though. A broad surface, I might add, but through books, you must dig layer into layer, like the pages within a book. You will uncover intelligent information with a narrow surface, sometimes expanded by the author, but still, no matter what, extremely narrow compared to the big screen. You must, if a film adaption was in the question, find a good balance point between the two. Because only then can you have a satisfied crowd of people watching the movie. The movie has a lot more potential for story and visuals and audio effects, because instead of having to visualize everything in our heads we already have it visualized, it just requires interpretation. Then, it saves space for our brains to think about other things, rather than in a book that we are already occupied with the details and then still have to ponder about the plot and other plot devices that require thinking. Movies have more potential, but people usually emerge through books. You can easily wreck the production of the movie, but books will tend to remain more in the positive light of critics more often than films because films are harder to pull off.

American Poetry Today

Poetry today is found at special, classy meetings at cafes with lesbian waitresses and a live jazz band playing with coffee served in a tall cup with creative sounding names such as "Java storm" or "Mocha Delight" surrounded by "modern and contemporary" art that is merely something abstract and random branded as art, with lofty chairs for its audiences and dim lighting. Also, adobe painted walls and black tiled floors are essential, the cashier's table shouldn't look like a table but rather a wavy reincarnation, and behind where they make coffee should be various earth toned colored objects filled in the area. The crowd is quiet, and the stage has a poet presenting his material. The material is golden, mostly free verse and has the crowd awe-struck, no matter the quality of the work, the crowd is amused.
Another form of poetry is also found in music today. Most of the time the music carries no content, just being an empty chain of sounds played to keep the listener's attention, but rather some other songs would carry a deeper meaning with its lyrical content. Music is poetry, as it can express happiness, grief, anger, etc, all in one song.

Letter to the World

I believe Emily Dickinson meant by "This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to Me" is implying some sort of self deserving attitude that she had been longing for. She has so much self pity that she had wish the world itself had written to her a letter explaining how sorry it was to her about her potential spouses dying. This is why she locked herself in a room and wrote poetry - because she was pitying herself so much and writing poetry to express that pity in the form of written catharsis about how much the world should've given to her that she even wished for the world itself to write her a letter expressing its condolences for her. I do not share her feelings, she should've just manned up and faced the world in whatever she had instead of locking herself inside a room and feeling sorry. She needs to stop feeling sorry for herself and just go out and do things. Even though her writings today might be worth some sort of entertainment value, she could've accomplished more in that walking corpse of hers than just writing poems and instead actually doing things.

Boot Soles

What Walt Whitman means by Boot Soles is his quixotic idea that we'll all naturally decay into the earth into calm, living soil that will nurture the world from under them. Under the boot soles, that is. That is simply what he had meant, and he had meant it literally. Another thing is that Walt Whitman also implies we're all going to die. This is what he had meant by the quote, "if you want me again look under your boot soles," he is saying this for all of humans that we'll be returned to the earth. Walt Whitman sounds like a very outdoorsy, impractically idealistic and chivalrous type of person. A typical American author of the 1800th century, Walt Whitman is that type of person. This is all he had meant by the quote and nothing more, it addresses all of humanity and our fragility and easiness to die. He is also trying to draw off superiority and such from the modern reader to imply that he is just like us, that he will die and fade into time and also be returned to mother nature. That is simply my interpretation on his quote, and that is the best that I can draw from it.

Sound Effects in “The Raven”

The rhymes in the Raven give it this dramatic and scary feeling as you read it, because naturally these rhymes flow so well that it just makes you read faster. Faster and faster, with the addition of alliterations and the internal rhymes, it speeds things up easily and then you can't even comprehend how fast you're reading because your eyes are just moving across and your mouth is having a hard time catching up. It's kind of hard to realize the power of these rhymes until you read these poems, ones that flow so well with these rhymes. The rhyming is just so strict and well-versed and so beautifully put together that it makes the reader's mouth bleed and sweat ammonia. Urine leaks out of pants and drains from the body, as the person perspirates and cries out in tears of sodium hydroxide as it slowly dissolves the entire face and nothing left but a shadowy visage of the person reciting the rhymes of this poem, that is the power of these rhymes. The sound effects are crazy and enticing, embracing yet unforgiving, once you fall into the trap, you will never come out. It is a bottomless pit, a helldom of hells and a tartaros of burning fiery wrath.

Symbol of the Raven

The raven stands for something high and royal. The colors of the raven are midnight blue and sometimes black, but yet a prismatic gleam when you look at it under a certain light. It is a symbol of esoteric power, crypticness and arcane powers that the boy would never understand. All he knows is that Lenore is somehow related to this bird, and his insanity for her has driven him to project such an elegant creature. Yet at certain times, it is mistaken for a crow - the lowly crow- and that could describe its sinisterness in this poem, how the Raven simply draws upon the boy's nightmares and wishes and then crushes them with just one word: nevermore. The raven is a classic symbol of elegance, and as mentioned by Mr. McCool in class before, the raven was the creature that flew around and around on top of Noah's ark in the Book of Genesis, so there was some sort of truth in that when it had some trace of malice in it. The raven is one to screw with people, to better put it in a layman's terms, because they like stealing things, make fun of people (symbolically) and that's pretty much it.

Ugly Reality

I believe that there really isn't a fine line for when children should know about things like this or be exposed to it. Children of today are already exposed to violent video games. The thing is, what you cannot prevent, you must educate over it. I guess these court cases would serve to educate them instead of having unmonitored amounts of violence drilled into their heads and desensitized via video games and television. These court cases are more educational than video games. The thing is that punishment is involved in these court cases, and could serve to prime up the child and shape them in ways which they will learn that violence and the such is wrong rather than learning that causing gratuitous carnage and massive amounts of bloodshed will earn you coins or tokens. Virtual coins and tokens, that is. By yesterday's standards, yes, it might be too early for kids to learn about these things - but today, it is not because children today are already exposed to things like this. Massive amounts.
This is why I believe that there should be a line, but it's inevitable that children will discover violence. So my point of view is that there should be no age limit for when children are exposed to these kinds of court cases. They're already controlling characters that steals cars and hires prostitutes, why not legal court cases?

Licked

What the book meant by "licked a hundred years ago" means that they had lost the battle in slavery a hundred years ago. Because racism had stemmed, rooted in the firm soil of America and had set its roots into the brains of the youth generation through generation. Because slavery and racism is a political matter, political socialization of political culture has a lot to do with it. In America, your parents (aka family in political socialization) has a lot to do with the way you vote or think politically. Political socialization plays a large role today in our country, too. Back then it did as well. But the fact is that these traditions and values have been passed down through generation, the thinking has been too, therefore that means the parents have been educating the children of these kinds of things, pretty much meaning that they had lost the sway of the people because the people are all already thinking in this preset idea that racism is good, black people bad, etc. Political socialization is a powerful tool, as we follow our parents, what they say. So what he meant by being licked a hundred years ago means that they had already lost the case a hundred years ago.

I Dare You

Dares are just a way for one to tempt another at doing something to prove nothing. Basically, yes, there isn't a better way to state what Mr. McCool had said in class today: it just proves you're easily manipulated. People who are easily agitated and give in to taunts and challenges are often easy to manipulate. You can basically say that you're incompetent if you can't do so and so, and they'll do it just to prove to YOU, the darer, that they can. This proves nothing, because basically it's just "okay, good job, you can do it. want a cookie?" and you had just achieved something while they had not.
Dares are good if you're the giver of dares, the darer, while they're not good if you're the one that's out there doing them. I was dared in outdoor school once in middle school to lick the wall of my cabin. I did it, because I wanted to prove to my new peers that I could do it. After I had done it, I realized: I had proved nothing. Other than my repulsive willingness to lick an old cement wall, I had accomplished nothing. After that, I analyzed anything and everything one step higher to see what can I really accomplish? Is it worth it? And then, I do not give into dares easily.
If doing a dare allowed me to embarrass someone, then yes, I would do it.
But of course, everything is situational.

Welcome Back

For break, I hadn't done much. I went to a party in Toufen the first week, and that was all that had went on. I ended up getting a bunch of stuff drawn on my face when I fell asleep, which was not a pleasant surprise when I woke up. After that, at the end of the week, I went to a birthday party in Taipei. It was pretty fun, a bunch of people and it was at this restaurant in Taipei. The restaurant name is Hooks, and serves western food. Pretty tasty, too. They had a Mexican hot dog, which was deceivingly spicy, caught me off-guard and made me sweat like crazy. My forehead was entrenched with sweat, and the brim of my beanie was getting wet. It was kind of funny, too, because I'd like to think of myself as having a high tolerance for spice - but maybe because I was sick that I had reacted so strongly. Or that it was like habanero or something. After that, I went to Derek's mini birthday party. We made a big pizza sandwich, by topping like fifty different kinds of foods and then finishing off with the top layer as pizza. It was insane, the abomination we had created. That was a fun night, too.
Then, going to the Taipei 101 to watch fireworks finished off my break pretty nicely with a decent ending. Although most of the time I was at home sitting, knowing that I had at least socialized once with my friends means I am not lifeless.

America

Everyone knows the American Dream. It is that everyone has an equal chance of taking root in the soil that is the Great Land of Freedom and flourish in the clean, crisp air that is in America by absorbing its everlasting and infinite nutrients by just working hard.

Well, the air's not so clean if you're not born white.

The fact I am basing this opinion on skin color is because in the past, white people have reaped this land of it wealth and fenced it and kept it to themselves, using others such as slaves, leaving them in the hole they are in now, Blacks, many of whom lack so many opportunities compared to the average white child.

Black people work hard, too. But the reason is that the youth are so misguided and cannot help themselves that they're left in the dust while others are far ahead of them, in a race called Life. 

Black people begin at a disadvantage, so do mexicans, etc, because white people have set themselves at such an advantage since the first colonies.

There are exceptions, however, but face the truth: it doesn't happen often. 

Even though the gap is closing (slowly), it is still apparent as the urban youth today can usually be categorized based on their skin color to correlate to success in the future.

Harsh Words

Words that offend people usually judge them greatly.
Firstly, we must look at when it is okay to use such words and when it's unjustified.
When a person cannot help it, such as being called stupid or based on the color of their skin, the discrimination here is unjustified.
When a person screws up due to his lack of attention or practice, it is justified.
The things we cannot help are thing such as appearance, etc. Also, when someone puts you in a box and judges you immediately without getting to know you, that's also something people get offended by. Me, personally dislike being put in a box. In high school, when people made racist jokes about my race, even if it was positive like saying I'm smart or whatever, I still found it offensive because it puts you in a box without getting to know you due to your race. Not seeing the individual for who they are.
When people make judgments about you, they're putting themselves in a higher place of power, over you, when they mutter those prejudice words. It is okay, because for me, I believe, they are not worthy of being in that place they have set up themselves and I generally view myself as superior to all others. So it is okay for people to insult me, because intellectually I can usually make the right choices to simply ignore it.

Mockingbird So Far

In the Mockingbird, we've learned that Atticus is a wise man. The neighbor is a strange fellow, who's actually quite nice. The two boys get along well and then the girl feels left out, so she makes friends with the neighbor lady. So far, they've been discovering things inside the tree outside of the strange man's house. They've also noticed that later, afterwards, that the hole that they were discovering things in ended up being covered up. The two boys, Dill and Jem like to mess with the strange neighbor man, Boo Radley. Scout, who is the girl, just talks about their short adventures. Also, her brother broke his arm.
From what we've been hearing, it seems like the children live in a kind and quiet place in the south, where everything is carefree and the children get a fulfilling childhood with friends and family regardless if they're in the Depression era or not. Their father is a wise man and they have a complete family with good morals at home and rowdiness when they're playing together.
Also, Dill seems to be the leader of the crowd. He doesn't talk much about his past. Also, when a kid in class was borrowed money from the teacher and couldn't return it, the teacher hit him. A kid named Boris shows up in class and he's dirt poor and the trailer trash of the most trailer trash type character in the story yet.