Academic Work
Honors English 9 Reflection
Essay
Throughout Ms. Weeden’s 9th grade honors English class I have gained a better understanding of the world and people around me as I currently know it. I’ve noticed that using what I’ve learned in this class, I have been able to engage in social interactions more often and care more about my current workload. Both of these could be improved and have been improved a decent amount.
When I was asked about a striking life experience, I had a certain obvious choice in mind. Not obvious to anyone but me of course though, nobody else here knows about it. Roughly two years ago I had quite a strange life experience. You see, my uncle: who used to live with my family in my home, turned out to be a severe alcoholic. While my family and I were on vacation he was left to watch the house, my dog, and my mom’s chickens. When we came back we were met with completely unfed chickens, a dehydrated dog, and a house with a smashed window. Luckily, the chickens and my dog were fine but this was completely unacceptable behavior. The next day we kicked him out of the house. Even with this problem being resolved quickly it was still a tad mentally scarring. No matter how scary this was though, from it I was at least able to learn about how important it would be to get help in a scenario like that and not refuse it which I had forgotten to mention he had done. By that of course I mean in a much less extreme setting though. This also sort of connects back to themes from The Noticer about living your life to its fullest.
When I look back upon this first year of mine in Ms. Weeden’s English Class, I notice less-so the different assignments, writing prompts, and skills I’ve learned, and more-so as the powerful lessons I’ve learned here. Not to belittle the actual literature half of this class, but the lessons I’ve learned (mostly from The Noticer, which I will refer back to a lot) have really given me a new look at life and the world around me. Reality is similar and different to books in the sense that literature is kind of a glorified reality in itself. Many pieces of literature are exaggerated to be different from reality but they take qualities of real life. Sometimes when I think about my future I can never imagine where I’ll be, and it can become scary for me. This class, though, has given me a new way of thinking about what might happen if I keep up a good work ethic and try to fully accomplish my goals. Throughout this year I read through “A Raisin in the Sun”, “The Noticer”, and “The Odyssey”. These novels help me better understand the idea of doing something more with my life. If I always put off working on my goals or even working in general then I’ll never actually get to it. When I read “A Raisin in the Sun” I was able to see people in a far worse position than I, just barely being able to make it out and finally live happily. The joy that the family gains from finally seeing some kind of success can be exemplified with Walter’s speech to Mr. Linder. It states “And we have decided to move into our house because my father, my father, he earned it for us brick by brick. We don’t want to make no trouble for nobody or fight no causes, and we will try to be good neighbors. And that’s all we got to say about that. We don’t want your money.” (Hansberry Act 3 Page 11) This gave me a good visual understanding (oddly enough mostly through words) of the whole process and outcome of putting in good amounts of work and effort to achieve your greatest of dreams in life. In “A Raisin in the Sun” It is incredibly satisfying to finally see Walter Lee standing up for his family, putting aside his past wrongdoings, and standing up to the higher ups to make his family happy. In “The Noticer” there is a huge variety in the messages it teaches. I felt like all of the lessons from that book meant at least something to me, but I think the most inspiring of them all (and rightfully so) was Andy’s story. Near the beginning of this story, after Jones and Andy meet up once more; Andy thanks Jones for giving him his success and Jones avoids taking credit. (Andrews Chapter 2) Jones does this because he knows that Andy’s success was all a product of hard work and ambitions. Even if Jones encouraged Andy to never give up and to work for his success, Andy did the real work. This really goes to show how a good work ethic can accomplish a lot. Being able to read about someone completely rock-bottom in life make it so far within just the first chapter of the book not only gives a great first impression of the novel, but it really helps me understand that it can be hard working towards goals sometimes, but it is ever-so worth it. Finally, I read “The Odyssey”. This book felt far less inspiring to me than the others, but you can still find a decent message relating to what I’ve learned within it. In this story, Odysseus gruels his way across the sea multiple times, faces incredibly life-threatening challenges, and defeats the suitors to make it back to his wife. Over a full ten years of waiting he is finally finished with his adventure and can let go of his tolls. Seeing him overcome his life’s biggest struggles can be really amazing to watch, even with it being a work of medieval fiction. Even before Odysseus had fully completed his mission, after all of his work and effort he was finally able to see his son again. At this reunion, it had been so long that not even Telemachus believed it was him, he was incredibly skeptical at first. He says to Odysseus: “You are not my father, but some god is flattering me with vain hopes that I may grieve the more hereafter; no mortal man could of himself to contrive to do as you have been doing, and make yourself old and young at a moments notice, unless a god were with him.” (Homer Page 236) This really shows that not only Odysseus, but also Telemachus was working for ever so long to finally reach this reunion. He had worked for so long and now does not believe that he actually got to see his father. All of these novels can have beautiful messages taken from them, and you can find messages in all three relating to my big subject that I’ve been speaking about.
It’s probably become pretty obvious by now that I’m referencing everything back to having a good working ethic and being able to accomplish your dreams in life. I’ve weaved all of these topics into this because it’s something that I myself struggle with in life and that I want to get better at. I’ve always been a very ambitious dreamer but I’ve always been too lazy to put the work in to achieve my dreams in life. This class has changed my perspective on that though. I’ve seen into the lives of all of these characters and I’ve seen what they do to work towards their dreams. It’s honestly really inspiring for me because of my past struggles with this, and it really makes me look more forward for my future, and try to put more work into what I care about. When I look around the class I can see that I procrastinate on doing my work a lot more than others, as I can commonly see that I’m behind many others. When I’m able to get to work I feel that I work quickly, but when I take a moment to sit back and pause, I sometimes look up to when my work was last edited only to see something like 10 minutes ago. This is just visual proof that I’m not working to my fullest, and I want to fix that. Next year, I might be more intentional in creating learning opportunities by actually putting in the effort to try and learn something new. I can attempt to put an end to procrastinating and get straight to my work. Getting it done quicker and with more attention will only help me take in more information anyways. Currently, within my essays I use graphic organizers to plot out what I want to do with my final essay and they often act as a way of writing the essay itself without having to bridge thoughts. I use highlighting to organize the essay itself and say what’s what. I know that many people take this class for granted, but when you really take a closer look into our lessons, you can see that we are learning and working on very important things for our education, with a lot of thought put into every little detail of it. Between now and the beginning of the school year, I feel like I’ve changed my way of handling certain scenarios. I used to be incredibly shy around others and I could barely hold a conversation with someone I wasn’t good friends with. I still struggle with this occasionally but the whole problem has been reduced greatly because of how I now think. I think my mind has stopped paying so much attention to what other people think and has started to flip around and become more social. I think a big helper to this was the fact that being in High School I had less of a reputation from the beginning and I finally felt the freedom of nobody really thinking badly of me. (needlessly) This is not to say that I’m at all a social person, I’ve just turned to accept conversations with others more and to feel more confident in myself. At the beginning of the year I was beyond nervous knowing that I needed to make a good first impression if I wanted to survive four years with these new people that I didn’t really know. Now I feel a bit better about that whole thing and I feel less obligated to always stay conscious of everything around me. Not to say consciousness is bad, but sometimes being too conscious of the world around you can become troublesome. I should also mention that approaching the end of this year I have nearly double how many friends I had going into it. I used to struggle to even think of ten names that I would consider close enough to be a friend of mine, and I know that now my struggling to try and think of twentyish friends isn’t much better compared to how many people others might know, but I still couldn’t be happier to feel like life has been going uphill for me this year. I considered last year the best school year of my life and I didn’t think it would be topped for a while, but here I am, living the best year of my life that I can think of in general. It still hasn’t been perfect, but with the way things are going; I know that my experience in Old Colony is only going to get better.
Overall, I feel like Ms. Weeden’s Honors English Class has really changed my views on this world for the better. I feel a lot more confident in myself after reading the three books that we have been assigned to read here. I genuinely hope that I can continue to improve myself throughout the rest of my time in Old Colony, and even if I can’t, at least I know that this class has done an outstanding job so far.
Reform Movement Presentation
Honors English 10 Reflection
Essay
This sophomore year in Ms. Weeden’s Honors English class, I feel like my mind has expanded a decent amount. To think that the beginning of freshman year started around one and three quarters of a year ago now doesn’t feel true. It also feels even crazier now to think that my time in Ms. Weeden’s class is coming to a close for me and actually for everyone. Now that this class is almost over though, there couldn’t be a better time to reflect back on my experiences with it.
For this reflection of the year gone by, I struggled greatly to think of anything to talk about as a life event. I ended up settling on something I had been considering, but I wasn’t sure if it would exactly be something others would understand the significance of. It may not seem like a huge life event, but this was something that really affected me personally. My family used to have four chickens and within a few months of the beginning of this school year three of them suddenly passed away. Each one had either a one or two month gap between their deaths and it was genuinely shocking to see it all happen so fast. Chickens die a lot and it probably doesn’t seem like a big deal, but they were raised more to be pets than to be used for eggs.
We still have one of our original chickens left but for me it was awful to see it all happen so quickly and suddenly. We have purchased another four chickens now seeing as the last of the original four is probably reaching the end of her life soon and we want to be sure we have four of them, but the good thing is the new ones we got are set to live much longer lives than the first ones. This whole experience really did teach me that not all things are permanent. I haven’t really lost any family members or pets since I was about seven and this really brought me back into the reality of things now that I could fully understand it.
This English class itself has taught me quite a lot over this year of High School and it’s given me a decent amount of fond memories over the past two years. I’m not sure if it’s because I have friends in class with me now, or if the class has simply gotten better, but this year has been more enjoyable for me personally. I was also definitely more interested in the stories we read this year than last year. This year we ended up reading “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson, and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde. During shop cycle assignments we read the non-fiction text “Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed”. I personally find “And Then There Were None” to be my favorite of these books and to be probably the best book I’ve ever read for an English class. To fully understand this year as a whole we need to go over the themes of these books and what we learned from them.
Starting with “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie, this book had a theme of justice and guilt. Every character in the story committed a crime of murder one way or another and faced the consequence of death for it whether they felt sorry for their crimes or not. I think a great example of someone facing justice comes from one of the most unlikable characters in the story: Anthony Marston. This guy was my personal favorite character because of how genuinely comedically horrible of a person he was so I also have a bit of bias in talking about him. He wasn’t a very big character but I think that what he did speaks for itself. Anthony Marston committed the crime of running over two kids who were simply trying to walk across the street. As if it couldn’t get worse this guy does not have even the slightest care for what he did to the kids and was only upset that he got his driver’s license suspended (And Then There Were None Page 68). This makes his death being the first of the bunch not even too long after he states what he did all the more satisfying for the reader. It also doesn’t help him that throughout basically all the time he is the center of attention he’s being rude to someone else.
The next book that we read this year was “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson. This story displays its theme of duality of man through the character Dr. Jekyll. Dr. Jekyll is a scientist who experimented on himself and permanently made it so that every night he would become a completely evil man who he called Mr. Hyde.\It was an interesting concept to see a duality of man theme executed in a way that the character is sort of not in control of the different side of themself. I think a great example of how Dr. Jekyll does not like being Edward Hyde is in his final letter to Utterson where near the end of it he states that he no longer feared gallows but instead he came to fear being Mr. Hyde (Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde Page 50).
The final story we read in class was “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde. This novel had a theme that youth and beauty is not forever and that to age and grow is actually a good thing. We never actually got far enough into the book to get a big example of this but a good way to show how Dorian felt before he realized he could not age was when he got upset over the fact that the painting of him could not age and someday he himself would have to be imperfect. (The Picture of Dorian Gray Chapter 2). Dorian was a character very obsessed with his own looks. He had an obviously narcissistic personality and seemed to look at other people as a way to exploit for his own good. Even with this being the case it also seems that Dorian did not mean any real harm to those around him and just saw the world like that.
Even though “The Picture of Dorian Gray” was the final book we read as a class, throughout this year we also read segments from the non-fiction text “Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed” for shop-cycle. This collection of real stories followed the theme that everyone has a voice of their own and should accept themselves for who they are. It’s hard to exactly get a good example from this book because all the stories were their own telling of their own life events, but you can really see the message in every story told that you are in control of your own life and you have the power to do whatever you wish to as long as you work for it (even if some people may work harder than others).
Now how does all of this connect together? What do these stories have to do with my life experience? How does any of this relate to the class as a whole? Well you see, I like to think of this all as sort of a lesson that things end. Everything is on a time limit no matter how fast or slow that timer may tick down. Looking back at my life event mentioned before, I haven’t seen much death in my lifetime and that event sort of kicked me back into reality. The first one to go felt unreal, but over time the deaths began to feel more normal, as shocking and sad as it all was to happen so quickly. This whole experience absolutely sucked but it was probably the best way that I could realize that nothing is truly infinite.
It is great to find these lessons in literature as well seeing as much of it can be fiction and can show an exaggerated example of its message. Reality can be somewhat similar and somewhat different to literature in the sense that a great deal of literature is based on reality. Literature can sometimes even be possible in reality. It normally takes the foundations of the world we know and amplifies the events happening within them to tell an interesting story and/or get an important message across to the reader.
The stories we read also have themes that to me come together into this overall theme of life being limited. From them, I can understand that life is something to be shaped and made into something you wish, but at the same time sometimes responsibilities can get in the way and that feeling of youthful control over your life can seem to fade. Sometimes people can act one way and truly be another, or can evolve into a different person. When you make big mistakes in life you will also face punishment for it one way or another, and will most likely regret whatever you did wrong. Overall from all of this I can say that you have control over your life, but you need to keep stable control over it so it doesn’t go to a place you don’t want it to be before it eventually ends.
It’s sad to think about, but it makes me feel better to think that the end of this class is still only the beginning of the rest of my life. The class has taught me a lot this year in a range of things like how to properly annotate all the way to how to help in community service, and skills learned here could become insanely useful later in life. The huge focus on annotating this year is something many other classes haven’t taught me and it seems like something that should be very useful to understand to this extent in later classes that I take in my life. Participating in community service is also something great to be taught about because it provides us with just one step that could lead to us fully taking on the task of helping the community.
In thinking about the Food Pantry specifically, I currently think that community service is very important for everyone to participate in. Everyone has something that they can do to help no matter how small it may be. Everyone is capable of helping those in need and it seems like an important thing to take part in. Places all around us may not have exactly what we have and to help them is to make the world one step closer to the best it can be. I think that for a group to work as effectively as possible everyone needs to have a job and there needs to be some amount of order to how things go to keep things organized. That is why a good way to get involved is through Old Colony itself. We have a lot of students who could help and it seems like a good way to practice teamwork. Old Colony could set up fundraisers and food drives to help those who need it more than we do. I also think it would be a good idea to set up more general community services involving students either volunteering or not to go out and help the community in some way. I think that I myself could pretty easily help out on my street because most of my street consists of the elderly who may need help in some way with general tasks.
A lot of people may think that this class has taught us nothing good, they might even consider this class a waste of time. As much as I sometimes also dread the assignments being given to me, I feel like in the end I always learn something new and important. Every year is a new chapter of my life and to learn even one new thing in that year is something to be happy about. Next year I hope that I can bring my life to a place even better, because the theme that nothing is permanent is something that I forget a lot. This is the exact reason why I want to write about it. Hopefully next year I can stop wasting some of my best opportunities with this theme in mind.
Now that I’m reaching the end of this year, this essay feels a lot like a final goodbye to Ms. Weeden’s class. In the beginning I was not at all excited for this class because it seemed difficult and even a little annoying, but Ms Weeden pushed us to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be. I appreciate this class so much more than I did going in now that I’m leaving and even my reflection essay from last year feels oblivious to the greater scope of things. I’m sure that for years to come I’ll look back upon my lessons I’ve learned from this class and be happy I got to learn them. Now, as much as high school may seem like it’s still starting, it’s about to reach half way. So we need to keep in mind that everything will eventually come to a close.
Mousetrap Car Presentation
Gothic Literature Story Project
Story
As the moon rose and the dusk of midnight settled, a shadow loomed over the buildings in the town of Sedate Springs. This peaceful place was a beautiful and naturally built settlement during the day. The streets populated scarcely of people and the surrounding hills stretched on for as far as one could see. But like a pale of water to a fire, as darkness cast this town, the positive nature of it diminished.
The town lay dormant through the night. Nearly everyone was sound asleep. Look through most any bedroom window and there’d be someone resting in bed. All except for one. On building 11 of creek street Logan Ranney sat wide awake in his room competing in a Mario Kart Wii tournament. Logan Ranney was normally asleep by 10 latest, but on this particular night he decided he had better things to do than lying in bed.
He had just won his ninth race out of the thirteen in the tournament and he wasn’t ready to stop yet. Logan hadn’t been to the bathroom in a while though and his energy drinks were starting to catch up to him. During the intermission he decided to take a quick break to resolve this inconvenience.
“I’m so glad that I decided to stay up for once, I finally feel like I’m making a decision for myself”, he stated. “I’ll win this tournament for sure! I’m playing against nothing but noobs.”
Once Logan arrived at the close-proximity destination the door was unusually closed. He tried to turn the knob but it was locked. This was questionable, as his bathroom door could only be locked from the inside. Logan had no real way in.
“Well, I’ve made it all this way without any troubles”, Logan thought. “I’ll just head back and brute-force my way through the rest of the matches.”
Strangely, the door to Logan’s room was also closed now. This door on the other hand was not locked. For a moment, Logan contemplated this phenomenon, but only that. He opened the door to his room with relative lack of concern.
It was empty.
Logan Ranney was reasonably confused, but he simply assumed that a draft flew through his opened window and carried his belongings out with it. He walked toward the window and was met with darkness. This wasn’t the normal kind of darkness of the average night. This darkness stretched for miles without even a speck of dust to break the emptiness of its void.
“Oh, well I guess my stuff didn’t fall out the window…”
Logan now realized that his room looked larger than before. If not for the door remaining the same size Logan would’ve thought that he had shrunk. He saw a faint light coming from his doorway and approached it on the assumption that his Wii had moved to the hallway. Hallway gaming had never been a problem for Logan though, he lived the gamer life and could play Mario Kart just about anywhere.
As Logan drew closer to the light, it grew faint, and was soon entirely gone. Logan Ranney was starting to grow mildly aggravated over his scenario.
“Why doesn’t my house make any sense right now? This is really starting to get kind of frustrating”, Logan exclaimed. “I just want to get back to Mario Kart! I can’t miss this tournament.”
Logan thought back to what his father Alex Ranney once told him. “If at first you don’t succeed, leave me alone. I’m watching TV.” Logan realized that maybe his tournament didn’t matter and he began to grow calm. In this moment, Logan was happy that his father had cared so much about him, and had given him so much advice. He then remembered something else though: what James Ripley told him. “Don’t listen to what your father tells you Logan.” As per usual James Ripley was probably right.
Following this mentor’s advice, Logan started to get really worked up and angry over the scenario. It was wrong to remain calm and Logan Ranney wasn’t about to take Alex Ranney’s advice.
“Let me leave this place! I, Logan Ranney, am not one to mess with!”
Logan began to run through the rooms of his house. Every room looked vaguely familiar to him, but none had any furnishing or lights. Yet a cold and dull glow persisted through every room he ventured through. He also realized that the rooms were seemingly repeating and his house was near infinite in scale. No signs of his Wii in sight. Logan realized that instead of blindly running in anger he needed to go about this methodically.
Maybe Logan’s house wanted something from him. If he decided on a peaceful agreement with it then he might be granted his Wii once more. Logan Ranney tried to think about any way that he may have wronged his home. His parents took care of the tidying, the fire stayed on for most of the day so the cold was never an issue, Logan was usually happy and had never given the house any reason to feel negatively about the people living there.
Then Logan realized. He had wanted to use the bathroom! Of course a house wouldn’t want you to use the bathroom inside of it. Logan couldn’t even imagine how disgusting that must be.
“I won’t use the bathroom if you let me play on my Wii! I promise!”
He was a liar and he knew it.
Nothing happened. Logan didn’t know what else the house could’ve wanted from him. And now his mind had shifted back to the bathroom. This did not help Logan’s dilemma.
Logan saw something though. There was a small crack in his wall. He cautiously crept toward it and took a peek through the gap. There was another room back there. Also, behind his wall, was a shadowy figure standing tall at the center of the chamber. Maybe Logan’s home wanted him to deal with the entity in the wall. The wall took a swing or two of Logan’s fist before it crumbled.
The figure still stood. It seemed to be waiting for him. Before Logan could finish his first step though, he realized that this was a trap. The creature dispersed itself around the room onto all of the walls and blocked off the way Logan came from. These particles of the entity formed themselves into spiders. As the room flooded with arachnids, a passage slowly opened in front of Logan and in terror, he bolted toward it.
The walls warped around our protagonist. The colors shifted through a rainbow of hues and the lights flickered. The corridor spiraled, twisted, and turned. A dreamlike occurrence saw itself in front of Logan’s eyes. This was more than just a hallway… this was a dimension of its own. The hall grew wider and taller until the walls were no longer visible around Logan. It was merely a multi-colored void that he floated through. This was more than acid could have ever done to Logan Ranney.
The spiders floated around him as well. They began to do something peculiar though; something that even after everything he had seen, had Logan in awe. The spiders all began creating a massive web. The web had high peaks and deep depths. It had cliffs, spirals, trenches. It had roots sprouting from it, rocks piles along the sides, dirt paved across flat surfaces. The spiders had strung a mountain range.
Logan Ranney landed on the nearest mountain’s pathway. He was unscathed. Fog began to settle around him and the once colorful sky turned a dull indigo. Logan felt the wind blow against his back. This breeze gave a deathly chill. The mountain was freezing-cold. Logan scurried his way along the path so he wouldn’t catch frostbite.
What seemed like hours passed. There was no real way to tell. The Mario Kart Tournament had probably ended by now. Logan Herbert Ranney was lost forever. He had no clue if time even affected him in this state. He felt nothing but misery for a good while.
“I-is anyone… out there?”
Logan’s cries for help were of no use though. Even if another person was out here; the likeliness of which was absurdly low, they would never be able to hear him. He began to grow deeply depressed. All he knew anymore was a sharp and stinging pain. One that persisted.
After some time, he reached a mysterious altar atop a peak of the mountain. Logan couldn’t tell how high up he was. The fog was too thick. As much as Logan wanted to try and find some meaning to it, he could barely even force himself to walk anymore.
“Come on… Keep… going!”
All energy and motivation had been lost. The cold was too strong. Logan allowed himself to sit down. He practically collapsed. Logan was done trying.
Until… warmth. The fog cleared. The sky turned a light purple. The sun was visible, but shattered in appearance. He felt the blood rushing through his veins once more. His skin turned from a grayish tone to one more saturated. The cold was over.
“What.. just happened?”
Logan got up and struggled to stand upright for a moment, the constant battering of the wind being gone was hard to get used to. Logan began to inspect the altar. It had three gray pillars caving inward toward the center. Moss and vines grew along the foundation of them. There was a four-pointed star pattern in the center on the floor. The star was composed of a metallic yellow to purple gradient. There was a glowing aura surrounding the middle of the pattern.
Logan went to step in the center when the floor shook and the pattern cracked. He looked up and before him stood the dark figure from before.
“What do you want from me”, Logan questioned, ” I have nothing to give you!”
The figure contorted and crawled across the floor. It jolted upwards and stood inches away from Logan. He felt the cold again from before. This figure meant nothing good. Logan didn’t want to make any sudden moves, but it was clear that this thing could see him. Logan Ranney turned and ran.
As he ran down the mountain, Logan tried his best to take caution. The path was rocky, and there were many spots to trip. He didn’t want to look behind him. Whether the figure was there or not he didn’t want to look back at that place he found it. Eventually he reached the end of the path. A ninety-degree turn of the path straight downward. This seemingly endless drop blocked Logan from running any farther. There was nothing on the other side either. No other risky jump could be made but downward.
Logan, with nothing left to do, reluctantly turned around. The figure, as if appearing out of thin air, still stood inches away from him. This close encounter was enough to make Logan jump. He fell backwards into the void.
Logan was ready for a long fall, but he did not get that. He only dropped a few feet. It was enough to injure his leg, but not enough to kill him. He walked around in a very dark place, with a fog above him the same color as the sky.
“Hello? Is anyone out there?!”
It was blocking this place from his view before. What seemed like a sky that stretched for miles was actually a decoy.
Logan Ranney recollected himself, and began to explore this new place. He was at the very least glad he was no longer stuck in the cold. This was an interesting new problem though.
The surroundings were darker than the night. It was cold and yet Logan felt warm. As terrifying as everything had been… this was comfortable. Logan enjoyed this brief break from the chaos. A time to fully take everything in. A time to be at peace after a long struggle.
Suddenly, he saw a light. Was this his way home? Was finding peace his goal this whole time? Was his eternal nightmare over? At this rate Logan Ranney could’ve been here for months as time didn’t seem to work right. Yet, he didn’t want to go. Where would this light take him? What if the next place he sees is worse than all the last? What if he never makes it home and he should just take advantage of what he has now?
Logan sat there and contemplated. Minutes passed and then hours. Eventually he reached full days and weeks. Finally though, he had decided. Logan wanted to leave. He couldn’t spend his whole life in this void. He needed to move on regardless of what came next. Logan took a step, and…
Rooms. Hallways. Doors. He was back here. Right back where he started.
“None of this… makes any… sense.”
Logan cracked a smile. Not a joyful smile but instead a more menacing one. He began to chuckle to himself and that soon became full of laughter.
“Oh yeah of course! I’ve reached this god forsaken place again!”
Tears fell from his eyes and down his cheeks. His eye twitched rapidly. He clenched his fists to the point of hurting himself.
And yet… Logan continued laughing. He never really stopped. He didn’t even know how. Still, to this day, when you visit 11 creek street if you listen closely enough you can hear a faint laughter coming from the building’s longest hallways. Logan is still there. He always will be.
Ethiopian Genocide Awareness Poster
Othello Essay
Essay
Shakespeare’s play Othello displays that the way someone presents themself on the outside doesn’t always reflect their true feelings and intentions using a character named Iago, the mastermind villain of the story.
In the early acts of Othello, while his plan to become lieutenant is still taking shape, he exploits the general loneliness and low-intelligence of a man named Roderigo to use as a pawn in his schemes. In Act I he keeps Roderigo busy by acting as a wing-man between him and Othello’s wife Desdemona, claiming that the money Roderigo gives him will go to Desdemona to heighten his chances; in actuality though, Iago is manipulating Roderigo, and when Roderigo sells all of his land to have more money for Desdemona, none of it goes to her. Iago is blatantly ruining another man’s life just to have a simple throwaway lackey in his greater vision, enhancing the idea that people may present themself in an honest way, but their intentions could be rotten. Later on, in Act II, Iago encourages Cassio- Othello’s current lieutenant and best friend, to drink while on duty when Cassio clearly says that he doesn’t handle alcohol well. Cassio eventually gives in, gets drunk, and is fired for his misdemeanors on the job, leaving Iago promoted to lieutenant. This part of Iago’s plan shows that he acts as though he simply wants Cassio to enjoy the party with him while behind the scenes he only wanted to get Cassio fired, enhancing the idea even further that presentation doesn’t always reflect true intention.
After Iago fills in the role of lieutenant, it seems that his plans are over, but now is when he begins plotting to take over Othello’s position as general. It becomes clear by this point that Iago has lost all sensibility to his plans and just wants as much power as he can get. In Acts III and IV, as Othello’s right-hand-man he plants seeds of doubt that Desdemona might be cheating on him with Cassio. When Othello finds out that Cassio has somehow obtained Othello’s handkerchief (his first gift to Desdemona and by extension the love he shared with her), Othello begins to believe Iago’s words. What makes this an act of evil though is that Iago was the one who orchestrated Cassio finding the handkerchief, and he’s actually just trying to tap into Othello’s weakness of insecurity behind a mask of good intentions to drive Othello over the edge. To add to this, in Act V, Iago’s puppeteering of Othello eventually results in the death of Desdemona via strangling after Iago plants the idea into Othello’s mind of killing her. Iago’s villainy in driving Othello to near insanity actually enhances the theme in that the way people present themselves can mask their true character in two ways; one, being the same idea that Iago acted as though he cared about Othello’s problems as a means of climbing the ranks for the sake of power; the second being that Othello presented himself as a confident man on the outside, but beyond that fragile shell he was riddled with insecurity and self doubt over who he really was.
Luckily, in the end Iago is found out and taken to prison for his crimes, but Othello is left an entirely changed husk of who he once was. Othello kills himself to save the state the troubles of dealing with him, and to eliminate the monster that he grew to view himself as. “Honest Iago” left everything he touched broken and all for nothing, showing that even people with the highest reputations can still have a cold, bitter heart; enough to send those who trust them down a miserable path.
Media Bias Project
