Essays

 Superstition Reality

Author's Note: Here is my essay response to The Black Cat. Sorry forgot to post this, but it is done, and better than the last one.

Spiraling against the blue sky, the white butterfly floats under the sun. Watching this creature is a little girl, smiling, because now she knows that for the rest of the year she will "eat white bread" or have good luck. Something as small as a butterfly can be turned into superstition by a person who is ignorant to the fact that there are no supernatural forces showing us signs through butterflies. Most view superstitions as a ridiculous belief, and something  only for those who are daft of mind. In the short story the Black Cat superstitions come to life, haunting one man whether he realizes it at first or not.

In the beginning of the story the narrator talks about how as a child he loved animals, and when he grew up him and his wife has many animals, one of which was a black cat named Pluto. This particular cat became the mans best friend, the cat tried to go with him everywhere, and the man's wife mentioned a superstition about black cats that said they where witches in disguise.  As the man grew closer to Pluto he noticed changes in his behaviors, all of them changes for the worse. "Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character -- through the instrumentality of the Fiend intemperance -- had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse." As his temper increases he starts to take his anger out on Pluto, and in one case cuts the cats eye out. Eventually the man kills the cat, and around that same time their house burns down, but both the man and his wife survive. In this story the man's wife was right when she talked about black cats being witches. That cat was in fact a witch, and it influenced the man, until the point where the man went crazy which you see later in the story when another superstition haunts him.

After the mans house burns down he gets a knew house with his wife, and at a friends house he meets another black cat, but this one has a white splotch on its chest.  He falls in love with the cat immediately, just like he did with Pluto. His friends says that he has never seen the cat before, so the man takes it home.  Upon arriving home he realizes that the cat has one eye missing like Pluto, and from there things go down hill. "What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. " once again under the influence of the black cat this mans craziness returns, he begins to avoid the cat. He eventually tries to kill the cat, but his wife tries to stop so he kills her instead. He hides the body behind a wall in the cellar, and the police come looking for her, and during all of this time he does not know where the cat is. The police inspect his house and all is well until he decides to show them how strong the wall is by knocking it, and after he does that there is a howl from within it, so the police men tear it down. Inside it is revealed that the cat was walled in with the body.  "Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!" This can be perceived as the cat's revenge for the main character killing him in a prior life, and the main character blames the cat for that. It is not the cat's fault thought it is the main character's, he did not listen to what his wife said about black cats.

Superstitions are not true in our world today, but in the world that Edgar Allen Poe creates they are, and the main character would have done better if he had listened to his wife. The main character does not seem to realize that superstitions are true until the end when he blames the cat, and turns out to be a mistake. He did go crazy, but that was because of the cat and because of him, the cat was influencing him and he did not listen to his wife, if he had he would not have gone crazy because of the cat.

Life for Death

On the porch a gunshot wound ripped apart my chest, but I'm alive and I should be dead. By the car you sit blood pouring from your side, you're dead but you should be alive. Everyone doesn't know what to think, they don't know what really happened, but I do. A miracle, it was a miracle that happened in the yard of the new house. Now I am okay I can breathe, but you will never take a breath again underneath the soil where you lay, dead. I should be the one there, but you gave your life for me so that my weakness could be vanquished. In Peace Like a River, Jeremiah died when Rueben should have, just like Jesus who died on the cross so that we could live in eternity, Jeremiah was definitely meant to represent Jesus in this book and because of this it was necessary for Jeremiah to die so that Rueben would be able to live.

In Jeremiah's life he performed many miracles, most of which Rueben witnessed. Many times in the book Jeremiah was absorbed in the power of God, lead by him and strengthened by him. "Dad smiled at the floor a moment - so thin you could see his strength was not his own…" He was like a second Jesus and many of the miracles he performed where the same as the miracles Jesus performed with some modern variations. In one miracle Jeremiah is walking on air while praying and pacing in the bed of a truck, this miracle seems to be a slight variation of Jesus walking on water. Not only do the miracles that Jeremiah prove that he is a modern version of Jesus, his name does to. Jeremiah is a name of Hebrew origin and means exalted of the Lord, and it Jeremiah is anything it is definitely exalted of the Lord. Miracles and names left out, and Jeremiah would still be just like Jesus, after Rueben has the entire story of what happened to Dolly and why Isreal Finch and Tommy Basca are after them this  is what he asks his father  " 'Well' I mused 'what should we do back'" Jeremiah tells Rueben something that he would never expect to see "But Dad chuckled and swept the blanket off my head. Nothing, of course nothing! What those fellows don’t realize is we've already won. The victory is ours." While Jesus was constantly poked ant prodded at with tests from the Pharisees, his answers always remained honest and righteous, just like Jeremiah's. The final miracle of both Jesus and Jeremiah were the same, they both died to save someone.

Rueben's life was hard, he struggled to breath everyday and never knew when his lungs would stop working.  He wasn't even really supposed to live, as a baby Rueben was still born, and without breath in his lungs. Twelve minutes after he was born Jeremiah told Rueben to breath and that was his first ever breath. In Peace Like a River Rueben's asthma is so severe that at times he stops breathing all together, eventually Rueben would have died from it, but since Jeremiah, Rueben's dad, died Rueben didn't have to.  "What eleven year old should be told that his lungs only recently lay in shred inside his central cavity? Dr.Nokes saw this fact with his two eyes. He felt it with his fingers. Yet mere hours later it was revealed at the hospital in Montrose that my lungs had not only endured an explosive chest would but, in fact seemed none the worse for wear. In fact, reported a perplexed emergency-room physician , it was as though they hadn't been touched. Of course they had been touched; that was the very point." Rueben believes that Jeremiah gave his lungs to Rueben, so if Jeremiah and Rueben switched lungs, there was no way possible that Jeremiah could live. After Jesus died on the cross he rose again three days later, in Peace Like a River you might say that Jeremiah did not rise again but in fact he did, the chapter after Rueben is shot is a chapter that takes place in Heaven and Jeremiah is there . Even though he did not rise again on Earth he rose into eternal life on Heaven, and saved Rueben's life.

Jeremiah made sacrifices everyday, after each miracle he performed he would be gripped with a horrible headache, most did not notice these small sacrifices, and it took until Jeremiah was dead to truly see all that he had done. Jeremiah's life was much like Jesus's in so many ways, they shared miracles, sacrifices and much more. Even their birth was similar, being so close to Jesus made it almost necessary that Jeremiah give his life for another.

Fear

There are things you just don't do, things that could possibly be a good thing but there is something, something that tells you no. That something is fear; it plays over what could happen if you do this or that, telling you know you can't do this and convincing you the safer way is for the government to do it for you. It keeps egging you on until you believe it, until you feel nothing and life becomes nothing, then after something throws you out of that comfort you find that supposed comfort was not a comfort at all but a cage in which feelings where trapped. Back out of that cage that fear drives you forward, against the government instead of for it, telling you that no matter what you can't sink back into that numbness, that total white out of your soul. In Fahrenheit 451 the government uses fear as their weapon, it is their main power. Fear is usually a useful tool for government's, they use it to  play to the fear of their people so that they may control them. Sometimes fear rebels, Montag rebels against his government because  he is afraid of going back to the way he was before, he was lucky to get out of that cage, but some people weren't

Clarisse is  portrayed as an innocent child, but with more knowledge than any other adult around the city that Montag lives in. Montag is in awe of her and they become instant friends, at the end of the night Clarisse question his happiness and Montag's answer is little bit of a surprise even to himself.  " ...He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness as a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask.." This quote comes the part in the book after Clarisse has questioned his happiness. Montag has just arrived home when he thinks about Clarisse again and realizes this. After that he begins to talk to Clarisse and he learns from her things that make him curious, this awakens a part of him that had been dead for a long time. This is his need for knowledge, it opens up a curiosity  a hunger for knowing, and it also awakens a fear of going back to the way he was before. Most of that City was controlled by fear, Montag was  just one lucky person out of billions.

A detached, slightly crazy, and greedy woman Mildred was. She had succumbed to the government, they had told her they would take care of all of her problems, solve all of her problems, and she believed them. The government made her afraid of making decisions, they made her only want to be happy, by taking away all decisions until the only one was not to decide.  "...If you don't want a ma unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top heavy and tax mad, better it be all those than the people worry over it..." This part from the book is where Beatty is telling Montag about why books and knowledge is so wrong. He told Montag that people shouldn't have to worry or make any decisions, not when it could make them unhappy. The reality is that mostly everyone in the city is unhappy, Mildred tried to kill herself on several different occasions, because she lost her purpose in life when the government took away their right to make decisions. She is no the only one, the children in this book are so reckless, they do crazy things, they murder each other. They do this because they are trying to feel something, anything, they try and try to gain back that sense of purpose their government has taken away from them. The people of this city were so numb with unhappiness, they just couldn’t live with it anymore, and many of them took their own lives.

Montag was  a lucky man, he found knowledge, he found his way out. Most did not, the city had an endless amount of people who hadn't, they struggled to feel the slightest emotion. When the end of the city finally came it was a good thing, it would have been way harder to change all of those people than to start fresh. Those people probably wouldn't have changed at all, they where just to filled with fear to make the slightest move.

 

The Dark Side of Love 

In Fahrenheit 451 Montag struggles to find out what is right, he is on a quest for knowledge. During this period the two opposite sides of himself clash many times, one urging him forward the other holding him back. The main instigator of his doubts is Beatty, his fire captain. Beatty is a bully towards Montag, and has the ability to throw all of the things that Montag has found out through books back in his face. Through all of the needling Beatty is doing to Montag he is asking for something, something bad, and he gets it when Montag turns the flames on Beatty murdering him.  Beatty saw his death coming, the surprise in his eyes was minimal and he did nothing to stop it, but the interesting thing is Beatty loves fire and was blinded by that love which ended up killing him.

Beatty kept egging Montag on, constantly poking and prodding him with words, but when Beatty saw his death before he showed little surprise, and did almost nothing to stop this. Seeing Montag switch the safety catch on the flame thrower, Beatty showed surprise for the fact that Montag was going to murder him with fire. He obviously saw his death coming and didn't mind it to much, because even when Montag held the flame thrower in his hands Beatty still egged him on.  "Beatty had wanted to die. He had just stood there, joking, needling" Montag realizes this when he is sobbing at what he has done, and Montag is comforted. People in  America very often do the same thing Beatty does, blinding themselves to the dangers of the things they love.

Falling in love changes people, it changes the way they think and it changes their motivations for the things they do. Looking at love most people see it as a good thing, and most of the time it is, but looking at Beatty's you can clearly tell that Beatty's  love for fire got him killed.  "Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean"  Beatty says this to Montag when he is sick in bed, this quote illustrates Beatty's love for fire and how he thinks that fire will solve all of his problems. When Beatty dies his surprise seems to come more from the fact that Montag is using a flame thrower to kill him rather than the fact that he is going to die. "He twitched the catch on the  flame thrower. Beatty glanced instantly at Montag's fingers and his eyes widened with the faintest bit of surprise." The only time he shows surprise in this book is when Montag turns the flame thrower on he wasn't surprised when Montag turned the flame thrower on him. From this you can tell that Beatty saw his death coming, he just didn’t think it would be the thing that he loves most killing him.

All over America there are examples of people blinded by love. Take people who are addicted to drugs or cigarettes for an example, at first they did it because maybe it was cool or was fun. After awhile that coolness or fun faded and left in it's place was a need,  a love for what they do to themselves.  Then finally when that fades to gray and they are lying in a hospital bed staring up at the ceiling, they realize what happened and that cigarette, that drug, that they loved had failed them.  It sucked all the health away from them and left them with a sick body to cope with.  They also had a physical need on what they where addicted, but if they weren't in love with it they could have gotten help, because of the many medicines that we have today to help people like them.

Beatty was  a strong man, but even the strongest at one point. It would be easy to say that Beatty was not very smart, it would be easy to criticize, but look around. Everywhere there are people just like Beatty, people who are blinded by love. Love is a very powerful thing it can lift people of the ground and show them a whole new world, but it can also destroy and hurt just as easily

Veteran's Essay

A long time ago men died for what they believed in. They died so their country could be free, they died for one word, patriotism. Now 230 years later the word patriotism, holds no meaning compared to what it did before. The question is this, does patriotism still matter? The answer seems to be no, people walking around not even caring, not even thinking about others dying, that is not patriotism that is pure indifference, but looks aren't everything.

Every morning a speaker comes on, and all the children face the flag, placing their hand over their heart, they begin to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance offers a chance to show your patriotism every day, but looking around a class it is plain to see many people don't care. In our culture patriotism doesn’t seem to matter, even if it should. The question shouldn't be does patriotism still matter, but how can we show our patriotism.

People all around say they have patriotism, but there is a big difference between words and action. Just saying that you are a patriot won’t do anything, but showing your patriotism through the actions that you do will tell others what you think of your country. The fourth of July celebrates the independence of our country, this day gives people a chance to show their patriotism by wearing red, white, and blue. On this fabulous day everybody shows their true colors, but this is only one day out of the year that people show support for our country. Showing patriotism in everyday life can be a difficult thing, but doing a simple thing as putting up a flag in your front lawn will do it. People rack their brains for things they can do, but the answer is simple all they need to do is be creative.

Looking around you can see that people don't care, but sometimes that is not the case. Most people care, they just don't know how to express their patriotism. They need that extra push just to get them going, and if you can do that for them then it is your duty and right to. Once they get that, they will hit the ground running.