Mission Impossible: Socialism

  In my English class, we have read the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell. One important theme depicted in this novel is the concept that maintaining socialism in any community is an impossible task. The idea behind socialism is that everyone gets a fair and equal amount of materials, money, and work. Socialism is also defined as no one having a higher social rank than anyone else, and this is where everything becomes complicated. For a community to function properly, there has to be organization. For there to be organization, someone has to establish this organization. Whoever this is will inevitably have a higher social rank than the others, and thus have more power.  We see many examples of this whole phenomenon in the novel Animal Farm  as the animals of the story try to establish socialism but end up failing as the pigs, with their greater intellect and cunning minds, take over and form a communist community.

I Am Thankful for My Family and Friends

This Thursday is Thanksgiving, and it has inspired me to think about what I am thankful for this year. I am actually thankful for many things, such as our successful move from Alabama to Tennessee. However, I think I am most thankful for my friends and family whom have supported me throughout my life and made me a better person. They have always been their for me during the most difficult of times; I'm truly grateful that I have them.

My Analysis of Career Day 2011

     Today, my school hosted something called Career Day, where we liistened to several different topics relating to a specific career lectured by people who specialize in that particular career. The four career lectures i chose to attend were: business, law, engineering, and nursing. Of the four, my favorite was probably business. I liked it because business and finance has been a career I have been interested in; I have always favored the practical and direct style of thinking that is usually required in math and have always preferred to keep everything, from my time to my possessions, neatly organized. Something interesting that I learned, which I had never put much thought into, was the concept of how the different levels of authority were "layered"--such as, how there are managers of small groups in most businesses and how those groups were put in larger groups governed by managers of higher power, and so on.

Depiction of Marcus Brutus from "Julius Caesar"

   My English class was assigned a project relating to a play that we had recently read--Julius Caesar. For my project, I drew Marcus Brutus, the protagonist of the play, on a large sheet of poster paper. I referenced some pictures of men's faces on the internet to determine the proportions of my drawing's face. I used a 2H pencil to sketch the outline and proportions, a 2B pencil to darken and shade, a mechanical pencil to draw the hair, an eraser to add highlights, and a tortillon to blend the shaded areas. I think this project really helped me with my reading of the play because I got to bring one of the characters to life which changed my view of the character.

Don't Be a Hypocrite

At my school, we had a special guest speaker come and talk to us about things that people, especially Christians, struggle with. One point that we talked about felt really special to me because I felt like I could relate to what he was saying. He discussed with us was about the actions of people influenced by the cultural  world view and how people felt like hypocrites when they went to church because they have done things  based on the cultural world view. He told us how it was actually the other way around: People are hypocrites when they act from the cultural world view and not the biblical world view. The explanation of this is that the definition of a hypocrite is someone who pretends to be something they're not. We are not people of the cultural world view; we are people of God.

True Friendship

What exactly does it mean to be a true friend? In general, I think it means to have a strong relationship involving self sacrifice, empathy, and trust.with someone else. In other words, for a true friend, you would be willing to give up  things for each other, understand each other's feelings, be honest, and loyal. From my personal experience, I also believe that you should be able to show the "real you" around your friends and trust that they will accept you for what you are. I think the most important of these qualities is loyalty. Friends should never betray each other and should stick together through "thick and thin".In Julius Caesar, we see the importance of loyalty in a friendship as Brutus betrays Caesar for the good of Rome.

Two Social Classes: The Hunters and the Huntees

"The world is made up of two classes- the hunters and the huntees." 

The quotation above is from "The Most Dangerous Game", a short story by Richard Connel. This story is about a man named Rainsford, a hunter who said, "The world is made up of two classes- the hunters and the huntees." My interpretation of this quote is that there are people who seek and people who are sought. To clarify my understanding of the term "hunter", I believe that we, as humans, are always searching for something or someone. An example of something frequently sought is power. Whether it is more wealth, more influence, or even more materialistic objects--humans have some level of desire for power. As for the "huntees", they refer to what is being hunted; if you think about it, in the actual sport of hunting, the "hunter" is hunting the "huntee" for personal gain which could be money or pride. I think you can apply the "huntees" of the sport of hunting to the "huntees" of social classes because we are, in a way, hunting each other for a personal gain--again, frequently power. I believe that we, as people, are "hunting" each other to reach a higher social level of power.

To-Do For 2011-2012

 I have several goals for this school year: I want to make grades no less than a B in every class, make a new friend, become more active in extracurricular activities, and strengthen my relationship with God. I want to become more involved in extracurricular activities because I have never really been involved in anything other than art and music, and I want to have a stronger relationship with God because I want to understand and get to know Him better.

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Man's Ultimate Weakness:

   This summer, my school required me to read three books for my English class. One of them was called The Pearl. This post is here to explain one of the key themes in the novel. There are quite a few important themes in The Pearl. In the novel, the main character, Kino, finds a pearl in the ocean and begins to dream of the possibilities he can accomplish with the power of it. He becomes very ambitious to fulfill these dreams, and lets evil and greed rule him--driving him to do terrible things. In the end, the evil of the pearl destroys his family, and he finally truly realizes its evil and throws it back into the sea. The theme that we learn from this is that "people are never satisfied with what they have" and that greed can result in devastating destruction. I have chosen this picture of a man dreaming of money to help depict this theme--you can see how well-off he already is based on his clothing and posture, but yet he is still dreaming of something more.. Money.