1. Article Review: More Died On This WWII Ship Than On The Titanic And Lusitania Combined

https://www.npr.org/2016/02/17/466924137/more-died-on-this-wwii-ship-than-on-the-titanic-and-lusitania-combined

This article was an interview with author Ruta Sepetys on her book Salt to the Sea, which is about the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German ship that sunk. I found this article extremely interesting because I have never heard of this accident and I’m obsessed with the Titanic and to find a ship that passes the death toll of that is crazy. Wilhelm Gustloff lost about 9,000 passengers due to a soviet missiles, which is more than the Titanic and Lusitania combined. I am not the only one who was wondering why they have never heard of the Wilhelm Gustloff. When asked why the Wilhelm Gustloff is never discussed, Ruta Sepetys states “When I’ve spoken to German people, German historians, academics, readers and my publisher, they have said that they feel it’s inappropriate to ever position themselves as victims considering the atrocities that they committed during the war,” and “the Germans didn’t want people to know about it because they felt it would affect morale.” I find it so interesting someone would hide something as tragic as a boat accident.

2. Question: Describe your experience with your research paper. What did you do right and what could you improve on?

I didn’t like the research paper, in my opinion it is not my best work and that aggravates me. I didn’t utilize my time correctly and that is something I need to improve on. I feel like that I did good on my organization of paper, as well as, integrating my quotes with in-text citations.

3. Quote: “I do my own research. I have a very logical mind. I look for loopholes in arguments” – Robert Fink

I believe this quote is very simple to understand. Fink is saying that you have to look at both sides of the arguments to prove your argument. So, do your research in a logical way, as well as, looking at both sides of the argument. It will better your claim and argument to have quality research.

4. Connection to the World: You Were Never Really Here and My Papa’s Waltz

I watched a movie recently called You Were Never Really Here. I wasn’t a huge fan of it, but there was one scene in the movie that reminds me of a poem I read in class. You Were Never Really Here had a scene about childhood abuse and how that changed him into the person he is. In My Papa’s Waltz, Theodore Roethke, in my opinion, describes childhood abuse and how the narrator looks back at the abuse. The narrator describes the abuse as a dance and in it’s adulthood he chose to remember his dad like that. In the
You Were Never Really Here, Joe’s abuse was taken more negatively and painted a bad picture of his father.

1. Reflection: University Says Missouri Professor Stole — And Sold — A Grad Student’s Work

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/28/699060914/university-says-missouri-professor-stole-and-sold-a-grad-students-work

Isn’t it just sad that people are just so greedy and petty in this world? As the great musical Les Miserables once said: “It’s a world where the dog eats the dog and they kill for the bones in the street.” In this article that was published on February 28th of 2019, Bill Chappell discusses how
Ashim Mitra, a former pharmaceutical professor for the University of Missouri, Kanas City stole a product idea from a grad student, Dr. Kishore Cholkar. Dr. Cholkar’s idea was worth millions. Ashim Mitra claims that he had this idea before Cholkar turned in his work. Mitra stole Cholkar’s work and that he deserves to go to jail or pay him back the money. It makes me so mad that people can get away with things like that.

2. Question- Mirco-analysis of A Perfect Day For Bananafish ( Creating an unreliable narrator)

J.D Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish is definitely an odd short story the first time you read it. Many would say that this is due to the tone of the story or the nature of the characters or even the bonkers story that Seymour tells Sybil. But, I can respect Salinger because he toyed with the reader’s mind by creating a unreliable narrator, to the point that even fear him and then turned it around on us by one explosive ending. Salinger’s actually structure of the story is one way he creates this uneasiness. He starts the story with his wife, Muriel and the conversation she has with her mother. In this conversation Muriel’s mother states her concern with Seymour and his behavior after the war including near car crashes and just odd behavior. Salinger does this to give the reader a uneasiness to Seymour and reason to be fearful of his actions. The second half of the short story we see Seymour and his interactions with a little girl named Sybil and depending on how you read it, it’s kinda shady. Salinger placed the thought in your mind that he is a loose cannon and so we are scared for Sybil and even the lady in the elevator that he interacts with towards the end. The real twist though is that Seymour ends up killing himself because of him being a danger to others, he was a danger to himself.

3. Quote : “Every man’s memory is his private literature.” – Aldous Huxley

I believe that this quote means that everybody’s memories are their stories and the way that they tell it. I guess you can take it a step farther and say that figurative language and symbols are apart of memories.

4. Relation to the world: Comparing Black Mirror episode- Shut Up and Dance and A Perfect Day for Bananafish

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Before I start with this comparison, I’m sorry for the layout for this part of the post, it’s odd and this is a huge spoiler alert for a great episode, I highly recommend you watch it, so you can have a full understanding of the episode because I won’t go into a lot of dept.

As I was thinking on what to write of this portion of my blog, I was watching a video on Youtube about one of my favorite TV shows,Black Mirror. It hit me that in one of the episodes, Shut Up and Dance, and A Prefect Day for Bananafish do the same narrative to their main characters. The writer builds a narrative around the character to make them seem different then what they are. In a Perfect Day for Bananafish, Salinger builds a narrative for Seymour to be hazard to others when he is really a hazard to himself due to PTSD from the war. I explained how Salinger did this in part 3 of this post, so I am mainly going to talk about Shut up and Dance.

Major Spoiler Alert Ahead

Charlie Brooker did the exact opposite of what Salinger did though when it came to Kenny and made you root for the bad guy. The episode does this beautifully by making you feel bad for Kenny because of the hacker threatening to exploit his secret, even though throughout your viewing you don’t know what it is. You follow Kenny through his day and start to emphasize with him till you realize in the end that he was having inappropriate ideas about little girls. It is a blow of an ending and going back you realize all the little things about him it’s just creepy. I just thought it was an interesting how both stories use the same method to get a completely different message.

1. Reflection on FBI: Serial Killers Aren’t All White Loners

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92415012

I have always been interested in crime stories. I remember being in sixth-grade watching Investigation Discovery, religiously. So, I find any crime articles interesting. Just found this little interview on NPR about the stereotypes on serial killers. The interview basically described how the media portrayed serial killers as white loners. Which in my opinion is true. You never know what is out there and who each person is on the inside.

2. Question: Look around you for argument- advertisements, political aids, editorials, etc. Find one and discuss how it is effective or not and why.

This was the editorial that I chose. This editorial was effective because it discussed the issue of the border wall with facts such as what the President plans to do with that, as well as, the government shutdown. The editorial board claims that Trump’s “national emergency” is not an urgent matter.

3. Quote: “The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.” -George Bernard Shaw

In times like today, I believe that we as a society are one-sided. George Bernard Shaw is a hundred percent right. Especially when it comes to politics and religion, we are quick to point a finger and say that they are wrong and I’m right. I am fortunate to be raised to as always looking for both points of view of a situation and I believe it makes me a better person and our society could work as a group to look at other options instead just our own.

4. Connection to the world: The Hate U Give’s use of color

I was finally able to watch The Hate U Give this week and was happy it wasn’t awful. The Hate U Give is probably my favorite book and they didn’t mess it up when making this movie. Today I’m going to talk about an element that the movie uses to describe the two worlds in Star’s life. Star’s life in both book and movie have been described as two worlds Williamson and Garden Heights. In Garden Heights Star is free to be herself and not be judged so in the movie Garden heights is warm colored while Williamson is cool colored because she must modify herself to be accepted. So color is sets the mood and it is kinda a character itself.

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1. Reflection on Low Vaccination Rates Among Missouri Teens, According To Report

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/low-vaccination-rates-among-missouri-teens-according-report#stream/0

While I researching for the research paper we were assigned in class, I found this article about Missouri’s vaccine rates and I found it startling. I have done some schoolwork about vaccines before, but I have never looked into Missouri’s own vaccine records. According to Saint Louis Public Radio’s article, Missouri is among one of the worst states in the United States when it comes down to get major vaccines (48th to be exact) for teens. Saint Louis Public Radio’s research concludes that “45 percent of girls and 34 percent of boys in Missouri received the HPV vaccination last year, about ten percentage points lower than the national average. ” (Farzan) This is shocking and I feel like as a state we should educate teens and parents about the importance of the many vaccines that need to be taken.

2. Question: Think about the point of view, character, and/or setting of one of your favorite television shows or films. Analyze these elements that you have missed before.

Annihilation is a recent movie that I watched. It is definitely an art house movie with deep underlying messages throughout the whole movie, with the aliens and the creatures and I don’t want to spoil too much of it, but I am going to talk about how the setting of Annihilation, the shimmer, tells the message about the failing marriage of the protagonist and her husband. The simmer is just a being that aims to Annihilate like the title suggests. It just expands and changes everything in its path. You can look at it like the shimmer represents the marriage between Lena and Kane after Lena cheats on Kane. The marriage is so toxic that it just destroys not creates, just like the shimmer.

3. Quote: “The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose” – Margaret Atwood

This quote is very simple for me to understand. Atwood is just stating that your ideas and answers very person to person based on the questions you ask. One person might think the text means something different than you based on the questions they asked and that is okay.

4. Connections To The World: Foreshadowing in A Star is Born (spoiler alert…duh)

Before I start this entry, I want to give you a spoiler warning because I am going to give away the ending of A Star is Born and it is a great and important movie to watch. Read at your own risk. A Star is Born follows the two main characters, Jackson Maine and Allie as they navigate love, fame, mental illness, and addiction. Throughout the movie we see the couple go through the highs and lows of balancing a relationship and fame until the heartwrenching ending of Jackson committing suicide via hanging. Many people were shocked by the way this ended for Jack, but if you look back, throughout the movie there are hints that foreshadow his demise. There are two major hints. One hint, before we even have a grip on the story we see a billboard that has a noose on it talking about suicide prevention. The other one is that there are conversations between Jackson and his manager Bobby about Jack trying to kill himself when he was a child. These are some ways to tell that Jackson was going down this path.

1. Reflection on Fyre Festival Co-Founder Billy McFarland Sentenced To 6 Years In Prison

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/11/656480640/fyre-festival-co-founder-billy-mcfarland-sentenced-in-manhattan

After I watched FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened on Netflix, I became interested in the whole hot mess that was the FYRE festival and the fallout of co-founder Billy McFarland. According to NPR’s article Fyre Festival Co-Founder Billy McFarland Sentenced To 6 Years In Prison (October 11th, 2018), Billy McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison and three years parole. I think this was a fair punishment for McFarland. He scammed so many people with his three fraudulent companies and deserves time in prison.

2. Question: What do you like to read? If you don’t, why not?

• I have always have had a passion for reading. When I was younger, my favorite books to read were the Junie B Jones books. I have read all of the Kindergarten series with my mom and those memories are some of my fondest. Now, I read a little bit of everything. I guess my favorite genre is Historical Fiction or Fantasy. It honestly, changes quite a bit. I’m not really a big fan of non-fiction or poetry though I think they are quite boring. {Below are some of my Favorite Books}

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3. Quote: “Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”

I actually like this quote. Henry Miller is simply suggesting that sometimes you just need to lose your self in your passion. It could be music, reading, or even going for a hike. Miller is just telling people to have a passion and look into life to see the greater picture which is important.

4. Connections to the outside world

In class today, started an important discussion about the element of the time period a piece of literature was made in, and how that can affect the overall message of the work. That made me think about what my mother and every other older person when talking about the times when they were growing up. The number of times a person my age has heard the dreaded phrase, “back in the day” is staggering. I use to hate that stupid phrase. Now, I find it interesting and I want to hear what it was like in the olden days. I feel that everyday life and in literature the element of time is simply overlooked. We need to take into account Time and the effect it has on all messages, written or not.