America

Equality is something that Americans say that hoped for since the start of their country. But is this ever possible? No it isn’t. From the very first second a baby is born, they are already unequal. Some are born disabled some are born fat and healthy. Some are born into affluent families while others are born into poor ones. This gives some babies a higher advantage than the other ones. Their starting points are different, which makes their chances different. Yes, we hear a lot about how certain famous people grew up in a poor family and because of their hard work, became successful. I am not disputing these claims, but that is only about 2% of the famous people we hear of. Also, it is less 0.5% of the poor population that becomes successful. (Do not quote me on the statistics. This is just an analogy.) Furthermore, it requires a lot of luck and, mind me, coincidences for such person to emerge out of his or her background and become successful. The media sometimes over emphasizes these examples and make people feel like this happens often, when in fact it doesn’t. I am not saying that things like that doesn’t happen, I am just saying that the chances are very slim compared to the babies born into rich, powerful and educated families.

Harsh Words

Words can be very powerful things. Words can be used to manipulate and hurt or to comfort and heal. Just as a few friendly words can make a person’s day, words can also cut like knives into a person’s heart. I think what makes words so powerful is the emotion behind it. Some words that are dearly important and emotional to a person may mean nothing to another. However, there are words out there that would make most people angry or sad when directed towards them. Nobody likes to be called stupid or ugly. These harsh words are often used in name-calling or taunting. There are also harsh words that are directed towards certain groups of people. Minorities like the black people in the United States have been called really offensive names. These names that may seem very offensive today may be common words used to refer black people in the past. In To Kill A Mocking Bird, we see examples of these types of words used to refer to black people. However, because of the history and time period, those names were common. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t wrong to use those words; it just means that because of the background, those words happen to be used.  

Mockingbird So Far

The beginning of To Kill a Mocking Bird is about a woman’s childhood reminiscence. The protagonist, nicknamed Scout, lived in Maycomb County along with her brother and her father. The story was set during the Great Depression, when Scout was about 6 years old and starting her first year of school. In the summer before school starts, Dill came to stay in Maycomb County with his aunt. Dill is an interesting character. He is one year older than Scout and became her and her brother’s good friend. Dill was curious and mischievous and got Scout and her brother, Jem, interested in finding out about Boo Radley. When school started, Scout was the only child that could read in her class. However, the teacher was mad at her for being able to read. She wanted to start a new way of teaching and believed that Scout abilities will lessen her possibilities of accepting the new material. Scout spent a boring year of school until finally summer cam again and Dill is back.

So far, the character I am most interested about is Scout’s father, Atticus. Although not much have been written about him, he seemed like an intelligent and kind man. When Scout cam back and told her father what her teacher said, Atticus did not get mad. He was really understanding and advised Scout to be in her teachers shoes so she will understand how her teacher feels.

Response to Veil

The congregation was shocked when it first saw the minister walking in with a black veil. Throughout his sermon, the congregation was uneasy with the presence of it. People murmured, feet shuffled and some of the women couldn’t bear it and had to leave early. Nobody knew why the minister did so, but all them felt some kind of evil when they see the minister with the veil. They no longer wanted to be too close to him and tried to avoid him.  The reason for their reaction might be that the black veil is usually used for mourning death. It’s a symbol for evil. It is even worse because it covers the minister’s face. Even though the minister acted and preached the same way, the congregation was great affected the by the black veil. I feel like the congregation had overreacted a little. Even though it is a weird thing to wear a veil to a sermon, I wouldn’t freak out if I saw this happen. Yet, I would not criticize the Puritans because I am not as religious as them. Some very religious people in the present day might also feel the uneasiness when they see a minister preach in a black veil. The symbolism of the black veil is not as strong to me as it is to them.

Parable

There was once a pair of sisters. The elder sister looks really beautiful. She has silky blond hair, the prettiest shade of blue eyes and straight white teeth. People would stop and stare at her on the streets. The younger sister, however, looks nothing like the younger sister. She has brown hair that always seemed to be tangled together. She has tiny eyes and a crooked smile. 
The elder sister is really proud of her looks. She stand in front of the mirror for hours, just combing her hair and looking at herself in the mirror. She wants to look her best every day. She would also look down on people that are ugly, so she was never nice to her sister. The younger sister, on the other hand, takes her time to do study and more useful things. She treated people nicely and would quietly help people when they are in need. As time went by, the villagers grew to like the younger sister more than the elder one. They see the inner beauty in her. When the younger sister finally grew up, she married a knowledgeable man that provided her with a stable and happy life. The elder sister married a very good looking man. The man, however, never worked. He was also really flower-hearted. The elder sister fought with her husband a lot and was really poor. She finally learned that looks is not everything.

The Saddest Prison

"The saddest of all prisons is a person's own heart." This is a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorn. The quote suggests that the worse kind of prison is one where a person bottle up their emotions. This seems to be a prevalent theme with many of Hawthorns works. Many of his stories have to do with guilt and hidden sins. Take on of his most famous works as an example: in the Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale, a revered minister in the Puritan community has a hidden sin. He had committed adultery but was not brave enough to stand up for his sins. The guilt in his heart weakened him day by day. In the end, he decided to kill himself (right after he announced to the public that he has sinned). There are many other stories like these, but most of them happened in the past. Would people today still pine away in their guilt? For me, the answer would be yes. I believe that some people nowadays may still hide guilty feelings and feel bad about it. I think it depends on the person’s personality whether they would hide their sins or admit it to the public. I do not think that people in the past would be more likely to hide their feelings than people in the present would.

Comparing Poems

In two of Longfellow’s poems, “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls” and “The Cross of Snow”, he discusses the concept of death. However, the tone and attitude of each poem is drastically different. This might be caused by the difference in feeling and intension when he wrote the two poems. “The Cross of Snow” is a poem that Longfellow kept private and never intended for it to be published. He wrote the poem to express his grief towards the death of his wife. This poem seemed to be more touching because more emotion is involved when Longfellow wrote it. There is a specific person mentioned in the poem: Longfellow’s dead wife, Fanny Appleton. In the poem, Longfellow expressed his unbroken love for his wife, even after eighteen year of her death. The other poem, “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls”, is a much more neutral poem. In it, Longfellow portrayed death as something natural. Just as the tide rises and the tide falls, people live and people die. Human life is just like the journey of a traveler. Once we are gone, our traces are washed off, and we never come back. No specific person is mentioned in the poem. This implies that the traveler can be anyone or even everyone. This made the poem more universal.

Image of Grief

In Longfellow's poem, "The Cross of Snow", he used the cross-shaped snow marks on the Holy Cross Mountain to convey the feeling of grief. He felt that he wore the cross for eighteen years, and the cross reminds him of the sadness of the death of his wife. He might have chosen the cross because it is related to Jesus’ crucifixion and the Christian religion. The feelings of his sorrow is stapled in for eighteen years. The formation of the cross on the mountain may also be significant. The snow stains in the mountain because the mountain has crevices in the shape of a cross. These places do not get shone by the sunlight, so the snow does not melt all year round.

For me, grief is like falling though a deep and dark hole. The hole is bottomless, and get darker and darker as gravity pull you deeper and deeper down the hole. You get the feeling of falling constantly. This makes you feel helpless and insecure, because you never get to the bottom. You just keep falling and falling and falling. You are engrossed into that darkness and it gets worse day by day. You never land to the bottom until the grief ends. However, when it does end, you will see light again.