FIRST 9 WEEKS
Picoult, Jodi. Nineteen Minutes: a Novel. New York: Atria, 2007. Print.
There are bullies everywhere. At school, on sports teams, and even at home. Some people are able to handle being bullied or change themselves to fit in with the "popular" crowd, but others, like Peter Houghton, act against the bullies and cause a tragic catastrophe. Nineteen Minutes tells an interestingly detailed story of how the town of Sterling deals with their tragedy and how bad the bulling had to be to push Peter off the edge.
Peter had been a target for bullies since beginning school. He was targeted because he was small and helpless against his classmates. The bullying started with Peter's lunch box being thrown out the windows of the bus on his way to school to being pushed down in the hallways and being publicly embarrassed all throughout high school until the end of his Junior year when he decided to take action.
March 6, 2007 started out like any other school day. The students going to class and lunch and hanging out in the halls, teachers going through their lessons with their classes, and parents going to work without any worry about their children's safety in school. No body in Sterling expected Peter Houghton to go to school that day with several guns and shoot out the school, which is exactly what he did.
Peter's outburst caused ten deaths and many more injured and he is being held on trial for many accounts of first degree murder throughout most of the book. His trial and actions brought media and attention from everywhere. Sterling went from being unknown to very well known, from a small town where nothing bad ever happens to a town of violence. Peter went from being a kid that had been bullied all of his life to being a person that people were terrified of, from being someone that was nice to everyone and tolerated the bullies to being the bully himself. The entire town of Sterling stood together against Peter and willed him a life in prison, but does that happen?
Nineteen Minutes is an amazing book that I highly recommend to all readers that are interested in a complex book that is more than just a fiction "candy" read but also gives thought to reality and the fact that there are bullied people in this world and it is just a matter of time until they snap like Peter did. (455)
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper Perennial Modern
Classics, 2006. Print.
Is there really such a thing as a Utopian society? Aldous Huxley tried to create one in his book Brave New World. This society is evolved around comfort and stability, but there are outsiders who do not think of this society as being perfect.
John the Savage is brought into this society by Bernard Marx from a reservation that he had grown up on all of his life with the other Indians and Savages. On his reservation, the society was very different from Bernard's. For example, death and pain, and family and emotions are unheard of in Brave New World's society but on the reservation, the society is much like our society with death and pain, and family and emotions. John does not know how to deal with the new accustoms that the people of the "Utopia" have lived with all of their lives and the people do not know how to deal with him and his outbursts from his old world.
By bringing John into Bernard's society, I realized that a having a Utopian society is not possible because along with John, there were others that did not belong and started having feelings like Johns. (259)
Meyer, Stephenie. The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: an Eclipse Novella.
New York: Little, Brown and, 2010. Print.
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is based on the Twilight saga. In eclipse, a vampire army is being made by the enemies of the Cullen family to try to kill them. Bree was just an ordinary teenage girl, at one time. Now she can barely remember anything from her first life, before she met Riley and he changed her. As a vampire she has superhuman reflexes, unstoppable physical strength, and powerful senses. Bree, along with the other newborns that Riley created for his army, have no idea why they were chosen to be changed or why. All they know is that they are not the only vampires in the area, they cannot go into the sunlight, they have to have blood, and Riley is their leader. When Riley tells them that their enemy (the Cullens) are going to try to take all of their blood, they train to go into battle. What they don't know is that they have been lied to their entire lives. Riley is actually under the power of Victoria who is wanting revenge on the Cullens for killing her partner in Twilight. This book was not nearly as good as the other Stephenie Meyer books but helped me to understand how the young army thought while going into battle and their reasonings for getting involved in the fight at all. (178)
PÉREZ-PEÑA, Richard, and Marc Santora. "The New York Times." The
New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 13 Feb. 2005.
Web. 09 Oct. 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/nyregion/13aids.html.
Lemonick, Michael D., David Bjerklie, Alice Park/New York, and Dick
Thompson/Washington. "Designer Babies - TIME." Breaking News,
Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video,
Tech Reviews - TIME.com. 11 Jan. 1999. Web. 09 Oct. 2010.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989987,00.html.
Sharon BegleyFebruary. "Human Clones: One Step Closer - Newsweek."
Newsweek - National News, World News, Business, Health, Technology,
Entertainment, and More - Newsweek. 3 Feb. 2009. Web. 27 Sept. 2010.
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/lab-notes/2009/02/03/humanclones-one-step-closer.html
Sherover, Max. "Learn While You Sleep - TIME." Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs,
News, Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com. 2 Feb. 1948. Web. 09 Oct. 2010.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,855919,00.html.
Southall, Ashley. "The New York Times." The New York Times - Breaking News, World New &
Multimedia. 4 May 2010. Web. 09 Oct. 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/05 marijuana.html.
Dad, Frugal. "Three Keys to Finding True Happiness." Frugal Dad A
Frugal Perspective on Money, Career and Family. 12 May 2008. Web. 14
Oct. 2010.
Syque. "Purpose of Emotions." Changing Minds and Persuasion -
- How We Change What Others Think, Believe, Feel and Do. Web. 10
Oct. 2010.
http://changingminds.org/explanations/emotions/emotion_purpose.htm.
"FDA Approves SOMA(R) (carisoprodol) 250 Mg." Medical News Today:
Health News. 18 Sept.
2007. Web. 13 Oct. 2010
Gerson, Michael. "The Eugenics Temptation." The Washington Post
[Washington D.C.] 24
Oct. 2007. Web. 9 Oct. 2010
In my English class, we were required to look up five articles and explain how they relate to the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. After I turned in that assignment I decided that I wanted to look further into how much alike our society already is to Brave New World's. In these articles, our society is changing something, like legalizing drugs, cloning, finding new technology, looking for ways to make people happier... All of these are connected to Brave New World because BNW's society and our society both were very technilogically advanced and changing people's thinking by making things the way they are (clones, drugs, happiness). While reading these articles, the thought "How much longer until our society is like Brave New World's?" kept going through my mind. I honestly do not think that our society will become that corrupt but I do think that we will get very close.
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