Things Fall Apart: Chapter 12

The main event that occurs in Chapter 12 is the wedding between Ibe and Obierika's daughter. This wedding creates a positive environment, and focuses on the building friendships between the two families. This is also a time when the families come together, and help each other during this ceremony (shown on pg.113, when men, women, and children have assigned jobs to help) This positive mood is not only shown within the village, but through Okonkwo. He has nothing negative to observe, and for the first time in the story his sees nothing that reflects "unmanliness" upon anyone. He also maintains a positive attitude, and does not lose his temper with anyone. The people in the village/at the wedding also recognize his strength and bravery. For example when Obierka is speaking at the wedding (as he presented the kola nuts to his in-laws) he says, "Your daughter will bear sons like you." (pg 117) or "...they paid short courtesy visits to prominent men like Okonkwo..." (pg 119) I think this recognition of Okonkwo's strength is a very important part of this chapter, because he is now not only known as a great wrestler in the village, but as someone that the people to look up to and want their children to be similar to.

Is this what Okonkwo has been waiting to hear? Has all his hard work to be different from his father paid off and noticed throughout the village?

One Day In the Life of Josie

The shining numbers on Josie’s alarm clock read, 6:03 a.m. She managed to hit the snooze button with great force, and fall back to sleep. 10 minutes later, 6:13 a.m., the tone rang again, and she reached her hand over to press the snooze button, ‘just 5 more minutes she thought to herself.’ 6:53 a.m., Josie finally rolled out of bed. As she squinted her eyes, the bright sun that was shining through her window was definitely not her friend this morning. Rummaging through her closet to find a decent outfit to wear, she decided on leggings and a sweatshirt. ‘I’m so late this morning! I guess I’ll just wear this’ she thought to herself. “Bye, Love you Mom!” As she grabbed a bagel out of her mother’s hand and raced out the door to complete another long day at school.

Of course, stuck in traffic, again. Trying to get out of Los Angeles on a Monday morning was the definition of an impossible task. Honking horns, bumper to bumper cars, and impatient businessmen who were just minutes away from missing their 8 a.m. meeting, populated the freeway in which Josie was sitting on for 45 minutes before pulling in to the school parking lot. 8:27 a.m., ‘Perfect, it will take me two minutes to walk to my locker, and one minute to get to Chemistry. Just in time for that brutal class,” she said.

Block One Chemistry felt like an eternity, as this was Josie’s least favorite class. As Mr. Jones was passing back the recently graded tests, Josie’s stomach turned. This was not the way that she wanted to start her Monday. She took a deep breath in and flipped it over to find a 73.5% written across the top in red, as if it didn’t grab her attention enough. As she let out a big sigh, she could hear her mother yelling at her in her head. ‘This was not going to be a good night’ she thought to herself. The chattering of the students behind her consisted of “What did you get?” “Oh god, my mom is going to kill me!” “Yes! A 97%!” Trying to feel better, she made herself believe that there were other kids in the same boat as her. Finally, the bell rang and Blocks Two, Three, and Four went by quickly but were made up of vocabulary quizzes, presentations, and an in-class essay. She could hear her stomach growling by the end of Block Four, just in time for lunch.

As Josie walked through the hallway with her friends, students were scrambling out of classrooms trying to get to the cafeteria as quickly as possible. It looked as if these kids hadn’t eaten in weeks! After pushing and shoving, Josie finally made it to the lunch line. Mushy meatloaf, watery mashed potatoes, and green beans made up the lunch menu for today. Josie and her friends made their way to the usual table with their yellow lunch trays full of mush resting on their palms. Lunch conversations consisted of weekend plans, homework, and of course…the new gossip about the “The 5 Chicks” (the most popular girls in school). As students filed out of the cafeteria, only three more classes remained and another school day out of 182 was complete.

3:30 p.m., Josie finally hopped in her car and made her way home. She wasn’t looking forward to coming home as she knew it would consist of: her mother and father yelling at her for her poor grade on the Chemistry test, constant bickering with her 7-year-old brother, and of course, relentless hours of homework.

After a long night of just what she had expected, Josie made her way to her bed. ‘This is by far the best part of any day’ she thought to herself. Right as her head hit the pillow, her eyes shut, but only for 6 hours, as she knew that the 6 a.m. wakeup was needed to start another day in the life of Josie. (668)

The Obsessive Compulsive fwame wesistant suit

There are always times when I feel as if there are things I want to change about myself, things that I love, and then there are the things that you like…but at the same time would do anything to get rid of. My “fwame wesistant” suit would be that I can sometimes be a bit of a neat freak, or as many people tell me that I might have a slight case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This is the one thing that I love sometimes, and then other times I want to burn this part of my suit. My desire for everything to be in the right order and in a perfect line can sometimes get in the way of what I need to accomplish. For example, my assignment book is color-coded. This might seem normal when I first tell you, but then you hear that I use the exact same pen for the entire year. A blue STAPLES pen to be exact. If I forget this “special” pen at home, it becomes a huge issue. I can’t write down my assignments during the day at school until I find that exact blue pen. Also, if someone writes on the side of my notebook, or scratches something out, I flip out and feel the need to write the entire thing over…even if it is three pages long. Now, you are probably thinking, she is absolutely crazy. Yes, I would have to admit, I do think I am a little crazy when it comes to these things. The need for my shoes to be in a straight line, or my closet to be organized according to occasion (fancy, school, weekend) is something that I love, and that I hate. I want to “buin my fwame wesistant” suit of my perfectionism when it takes extra time out of my day to fix these things. It can be so time consuming to organize things the way I want them to be, even when these little things in the big picture of life really don’t matter. It is important to recognize which part of your “fwame wesistant” suit you would like to buin because it makes you think about what if you weren’t that way? Would I still be the same Morgan? Probably not…because this is something that defines me, and something that everyone knows about me. This is the time when I contradict what I have just said before, and tell you that I love this part of my character. I don’t believe you can change someone’s character by “buining their fwame wesistant suite” because then its not truly who you are, or what defines them as a person. So, not only do I HATE my obsessive compulsivness when I get made fun of, or if someone provokes me (when someone feels the need to make me angry and take a RED pen in my assignment notebook that is all BLUE), but I also love it because it is a part of my personality.

Antigone vs. Creon

As I read the title of Antigone, I knew immediately that the most important character of the play must be Antigone. But no, I was wrong. Creon, Antigone’s uncle, shares equal importance to Antigone, if not more. It is very interesting to think about who is a more important character. Is it Antigone? The Sophoclean tragic hero who causes these events and tragedy in the play. Or, is it Creon? The traditional Greek hero who creates many problems because of Antigone’s actions.
I believe that each character, Creon and Antigone, are of great importance in this play because each character serves to show each other’s weaknesses. Just as the saying goes, “you can’t have the chicken without the egg”…you can’t have Antigone without Creon. Because of Antigone’s choices and decisions in the need to bury her brother, Polynices, Creon’s poor decisions and flaws start to shine through. Antigone is the character that actually exposes Creon’s tragic flaws. Without Antigone, these flaws would not be shown and the plot would not exist in this play.
The idea of a traditional tragic figure is defined when the character is an inherently good person who falls from greatness. In the end, this character recognizes his or her responsibility for their behavior and accepts their fate with dignity. Creon fits in this category perfectly because of what he does in this play. One could argue that he is an inherently good person, but he does fall from greatness because of the decisions he makes after Antigone buries her brother, and in the end, he recognizes his fate when both his son and wife have committed suicide, and he is left with no one in his family. Because Creon’s laws are very extreme, Antigone must rebel against them with extreme actions. The idea of burying her brother is risking everything in her life, which then provokes Creon to perform the terrible incidents that not only ruins his reputation, but also hurts the lives of many.
After reading through Antigone and thinking about who is the more important character, I honestly cannot pick between the two. They both play off of each other so much and without Antigone or Creon, the tragic character and tragic flaws would not be apparent this play, which is known as a “tragedy”. In order for a play to be a tragic, tragic characters and flaws need to be shown. (423)

7 Most Influential Books

1. Kite Runner: This was a very powerful novel for me because it really gave me a feel for what modern Afghanistan is really like.
2. My Sister’s Keeper: Even though it left me crying at the end of the story, it is still one of my favorite books. It shows the difficult choices a family must make when a child is diagnosed with a serious disease, and makes me think about the many families that have to go through this.
3. Secret Life of Bees: I fell in love with this novel this past summer because of the moving effect it had on me as a reader. The underlying themes of love, family, and friendship are shown throughout this book; which are three very important things in my life.
4. Nineteen Minutes: This is one of my favorite novels because it is a murder mystery that always had me turning the pages. A school shooting is the main focus in this novel; after reading it, it made me more aware of what might occur at other schools, that one would never imagine to occur at PCDS.
5. The Tenth Circle: Jodi Picoult does an outstanding job of getting the reader engaged in the novel. This book was written about a young girl who had been raped. After reading this, it has made me more aware of the trauma that one endures during this awful experience.
6. The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime: I read this book in one day; I could not put it down! The realistic difficulties it shows that an autistic child has to go through every day created a very powerful effect on me.
7. The Other Boleyn Girl: I love this novel because it really depicts what life was like during the Victorian time period.

Summer Reading: The Secret Life of Bees

As I closed The Secret Life of Bees, I thought to myself, wow, that was incredible. Not only did I feel like I made connections with the characters, but I felt like I was part of the story. With every turn of the page, this inspiring novel captured me in so many different ways. The underlying themes of mothers and daughters, friendships, family, and the power of love are important not only in the novel but exist in everyday life, which makes this novel a constant page-turner.
The two particular themes of friendships and love are ones that I believe are very important and ones that I cherish in my life; which Lily soon begins to find in hers as well. Lily yearns to be loved throughout the story while she is not quite sure where she belongs. She does not find love in her own house, with the constant abusive relationship she has with her father, T. Ray. So, she decides to escape from her childhood life and hometown and run to Tiburon, to see if she can find that missing piece of love in her life. In Tiburon, she meets the three sisters and Zach, the four people who change her life and show her that people really do care about her. I can relate to Lily in this way because I believe that friendships and love are two very important themes in life that need to be found by every individual; now that Lily has found this by escaping to Tiburon, she is a much happier human being who can begin to learn the values and importance of life.
The relationship that Lily creates with August is one that is special in a number of different ways. The hospitality and motherhood that August brings to her impacts her forever. As Lily has a hard time dealing with her emotions with the loss of her mother, she does not know what to do with herself. She does not want to bring herself to believe that she might have killed her mother and face the hardships in life. As a young girl, she needs all of the guidance and support she can get from someone who will be there for her. Lily decides to turn to August for this; August could not be a better person for her. The love and admiration that she gives to Lily makes her feel as if she is her own daughter, which makes Lily feel right where she belongs.
One major theme that is also presented in a large portion of the novel is the constant struggle for equal rights. Many difficulties arise that Rosaleen, the three sisters, Zach and many other blacks in the 1960’s face because of the color of their skin. During this time, blacks were still considered to be a lesser minority and faced racism every time they stepped out of their door. This is shown when Rosaleen tries to register to vote for the first time. Punished and put in jail for the color of her skin, this event makes a mark on her for the rest of her life. I think it is very interesting that Sue Monk Kidd chooses for Lily to be different and have white skin. This detail adds a lot to the story and causes many problems when people ask her why she is living with black people, and associating herself with them; but this does not affect Lily in any way.
While reading this novel, I found that the three themes mentioned above are the most important. However, I also found that as I was reading, there were many other themes that are essential as well, some more significant than the rest. Lily’s powerful story made me think about and understand the importance of love and family, and what African Americans had to go through.