Reading Response on Critical Thinking Question

          The question that I decided to focus on is how the book The Death Cure by James Dashner, part of a 4 part series, relates or involves the issue of justice in the world. I chose this question because I felt that it is a big issue in these books as well as in the world. The main focus in these series is that there is a disease spreading throughout the whole world called the Flare, so the remaining governments in the world that have survived have come together to create and organization called WICKED – World In Catastrophe Killzone Experiment Department. This organization has been created purposefully to find a way to beat the Flare. To do this though they have created an experiment by wiping out teenagers’ memories and using them like lab rats. All of this makes you think about the decisions governments/organizations have to make and whether or not these decisions are fair.

            I think, justice comes in account in this book because there are really two main views of which one can agree with: One is to wipe out any memories of these teenagers’ family, childhood, and everything else and make them go through torturous trails and experiments just to study their brain responses and potentially find a cure for the rest of the world, or, not do any of that and find another solution to this problem, maybe less torturous. I don’t really know which is worse and which is better but it is definitely an issue in the world that the government always has to make a very difficult decision in society, for example: sacrifice tens of thousands of people to save millions more or not sacrifice anyone but risk losing many more than the other. These are all situations and problems that I think all fall in the category of justice and fairness. In this book, The Death Cure, the teenagers and Thomas, the protagonist, piece by piece have put together ideas and solutions and so they all rebel and escape WICKED believing that there must be another way. Trust is also an issue that comes up because after all WICKED has done to them they simply cannot believe a word they say anymore.

            All in all, I believe that the main issue that this book brings up is justice in society and in the world. Justice and injustice is everywhere in the world and it will never change, but that doesn’t mean it is not important and that nobody should try and do something about it.

Monday Muses Promt: Inspiration in Art

Fine arts is my greatest passion. For all that I can remember, I have always had a pencil in my hand. When I was a toddler, I started out drawing creatures and monsters from my imagination and then, in kindergarten, I extended my interest into drawing people, portraits, and landscapes. From then on I never stopped following my love for art and I kept trying to improve. Drawing is a hobby of mine; I often do it on my free time. Whenever I get new art supplies I can’t wait to get my hands on them. In fact, just two days ago, my mom brought me back from her trip to Paris three really cool color sets: soft pastels, oil pastel, watercolors. I have already tried them all!

Drawing is very relaxing and stress relieving. I find it much easier to concentrate on what someone else is telling me while I draw. When the teacher talks to us in class, I like to doodle on post-its as I take notes because I can focus more on what the teacher says. Sometimes, I even use my doodles as visual notes.

Drawing for me is also a natural way of communicating with others. For example, I love to draw “characters” from my imagination that express my feelings. I portray my friends to emphasize their unique facial features showing how I see them. I draw comic strips of what happened on a certain day or to express my thoughts on the world. In elementary school, I made bookmarks with my funny monster drawings on them to give in class as “valentines”. I was so proud to see that my friends appreciated and actually used them!

I’m lucky that my mom is an art restorer and she comes across many famous paintings, so I have opportunities to see all these beautiful works of art. My mom also brings me to many museums and galleries of contemporary and modern art, antiquities and jewelry. I visited art museums in many different cities in America and Europe, like New York, Philadelphia, London, Rome, Florence, Arezzo, Pisa, and Venice. A really great experience was to go to the Biennale in Venice, a huge art event with artists representing countries from all over the world. I took lots of pictures and also made a few short videos.

I think that my passion for art has helped me in many other activities. In group projects, for example, my group members ask me to illustrate and organize information with diagrams and images. In social studies, I enjoy drawing political cartoons and laying out maps and timelines. In math and science, I find organizing my work/data into graphs and tables easy. It may sound weird, but even in soccer art helps my vision of the game. I see the movements of the players, the lines of passes, and the trajectories of the shots as one big moving drawing.

Art connects everything.

First Draft of Argument Essay

            Throughout America books are being banned and stripped from our school libraries preventing kids, teens, and in some cases adults from reading what they want. One of the many books that is high up on the banning book list is “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger. Although “The Catcher in the Rye” has been challenged many times, I believe that access to this book should not be limited because of the important message it delivers and because it is unfair and banning books unconstitutional.

            One reason “The Catcher in the Rye” should not be banned is because of the important lesson it teaches. The lesson and the meaning of this book is a very universal lesson that can be applied to any kid. The lesson Salinger gives is that if one does not work hard enough in school, then their future will end up being awful. The whole book is about the protagonist, Holden, living a life out on the streets with no where to go and no one to help him after getting kicked out of school because he failed in four subjects. As said in his words: “They kicked me out. I wasn’t supposed to come back after Christmas vacation, on account of I was flunking four subjects and not applying myself and all.”(Salinger 6). He was also too scared to tell his parents so he decided to try and wait until the end of the school year. Although he “couldn’t” tell his parents about what happened he did need someone to help him out morally, an example is: “I thought of maybe hanging up if my parents answered, but that wouldn’t have worked, either.”(Salinger 87). In this scene he was thinking of calling his little sister Phoebe for some comfort but he decided to not take the chance of being caught by his parents.

            Another reason this book should not be banned is because it is unfair to people who want to read it and because banning books is unconstitutional. As said from the article Eve Samples: Martin County mom trying to get 'Catcher in the Rye' banned from classes: “It would not be right, however, for the school district to ban it [The Catcher in the Rye] from English classes simply because it does not mesh with her values.”(Samples). This is an article about a mom who wants to ban “The Catcher in the Rye” mostly because it takes the lords name in vain. The point, however, is that it is unfair to restrict others from reading a book just because it does not meet someone else’s book appropriateness. In addition, banning books is unconstitutional because it breaks the rule of the first amendment in freedom of speech, meaning that taking away someone else’s words is taking away freedom of expressing themselves however they want.

            The other side of the argument claims that “The Catcher in the Rye” should be banned because it inappropriate for kids and teens because it includes prostitution and underage drinking. For example in this scene Holden asks for a prostitute in his room:     “ ‘Okay. I’ll send a girl up in about fifteen minutes.’ He opened the doors and I got out. ‘Hey, is she good looking?’ I asked him. ‘I don’t want any old bag’.”(Salinger 119). This is not a valid point, though, because these are real life problems that many adolescents come across in their life and it is right for younger people to know about and know the effects of this. Also, this book brings up another deep feeling problem; Holden had a younger brother named Allie who, as said near the start of this book, died a while back because of leukemia. I believe that this is a problem Holden faces every day and that it is the cause of some of the issues he has in his life. As said in the article The real message of 'The Catcher in the Rye': “Throughout the story, Holden tells us it's all about Allie… For me, that is the thread that links all of Holden's good and bad choices together, that is the layer we must reach to really understand this story, and that is what we adults can look to in order to really recognize the weight and beauty of Salinger's book.”(Kahane). This shows how hard life is for him and how this affects him a lot in his action.

            The writers main purpose of this book is to show how hard/depressing life is for some kids who have lost someone in their lives and how important it is to keep up hard work in school and to have your loves close to you in times of trouble. Salinger really wants to emphasize how hard life is for many adolescents by bringing the reader into the shoes of an adolescent who has big problems of his own. The best thing to do is to just keep pushing forward fight through all the hard and painful times because out there is a great future awaiting every single on of us.