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Analytical Essay:

In the Yellow Bird’s, war changes the lives of many soldiers. PTSD is an outcome of the war. While the world remains ignorant to the war’s side effects, the soldiers continue to experience a change that will change their lives forever. There should be sympathy and understanding in the heart of every American when there’s a discussion of people at war.

“I was not surprised by the cruelty of my ambivalence back then. Nothing seemed more natural than someone getting killed... I had to see the world with clear eyes, to focus on the essential. We only pay attention to the rare things, and death was not rare.” p.11 People at war are stripped of morals and codes that they were taught at a young age. When in war, what’s wrong becomes right and what’s right becomes wrong. Killing is wrong, any type of violence is. Love is taught to be given to everyone, including your enemies because it’s the right thing to do. People at war are not allowed to have a heart or to show emotions because when they do, they show weakness, they’re supposed to be ruthless and be able to kill when demanded. For some, holding a gun is scary enough, but asking them to pull the trigger is another story. When Americans look at people who have been in war, compassion should be racing through their hearts because the soldiers did it so no one else had to. If soldiers were given sympathy, that would show that there is understanding. Having someone understand what you’ve been through can go a long way.

“As human beings, we have the blessing and the curse that we’re able to adapt to almost anything. No matter how extreme the circumstances you’re in, they become normal.” Because humans adapt, they don't understand. At one point, after readapting and readapting, humans stop. Some soldiers become adapted to the war lifestyle, so when they come home they can no longer readapt. As people try to understand people in war, they often figure out that war is something that needs to be experienced to understand. Once given the opportunity to walk a mile in their shoes, then there will be an understanding.

“I realized, as I stood there in the church, that there was a sharp distinction between what was remembered, what was told , and what was true. And I didn’t think I’d ever figure out which was which.” PTSD gives soldiers a fight or flight instinct caused by fear that’s stuck in their heads from war. This feeling that they have comes, even when they may not be in danger which may make them seem crazy. It comes with experience from physical harm.

“I wonder why people are the way they are. I wonder how do we justify the things that we do, because it always seems like we are doing terrible things. But the stories that we tell ourselves are always about our goodness and our idealism and that contradiction has been interesting to me throughout my whole life.” Humans try to come up with an explanation for everything. They’re always trying to fix something. Some things in life just can't be fixed. Life does not owe anyone an explanation, somethings you can only wonder why they happen.

There should be sympathy and understanding in the heart of every American when there’s a discussion of people at war. They do they job no one else wants to do. To label them as crazy is wrong, they should only be labeled heroic.

Narrative Essay:

From a small child, I was always told to reach for the stars.  “You can do anything you want in life, you just have to want it and work for it.” I remember being asked what I wanted to be when I was 9. At nine years old, you don’t the variety of jobs that are offered in the world. “I wanna work at McDonalds, it’s my favorite fast food restaurant.”

The conversation stopped. “You wanna struggle your whole life?

“You won’t even be able to support your family?”

Questions were being thrown at me. I’m just a kid, I don’t understand what I’m saying and why I’m saying. I honestly thought people at McDonalds were very kind people. Who else wants to stand at a window and wait on people. Jobs like this should be appreciated, not shunned upon.

I remember when my brother said he wanted to be a cop. My mom wanted to know why none of us wanted to be a doctor. She said McDonalds workers aren’t paid enough and being a cop is a dangerous job. All of a sudden, that statement about being whatever we want turns out to be false.

You can be anything that isn’t a danger and pays well. Society has conjured up what is an acceptable job and what isn’t. Everyone plays a part in the way the world is now, but before you can play a part, you have to find a part. In The Yellow Birds, the main character found his part in becoming a soldier.

Bartle forgot the importance if his role. He began to build a friendship with Murphy. He promised his mother that he would bring Murphy back safe and sound. The thing about promises is that you can’t make one unless it’s something you can control, you can't control death and who it strikes. That’s what the world revolves around; control. Some are born with control, some are born without it. People can’t control what they’re born into but they can control what they do with it and whether they want to work a McDonald’s job or be a doctor, it’s their decision. They should be appreciated regardless.

Analytical Essay:

      In the words of Chinese Philosopher, Lao Tzu “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow.”  Life has a multitude of change, which most of the time is almost unavoidable. Something leads to change, then the person affected by the change  is left to process what happened. It is not the easiest thing to do, especially if the change is formidable. The fact of the matter is, Bartle is almost forced into a changing world. Things happen that aren’t always ideal, and the more one thinks about it, man is merely a small piece in an even bigger picture, and no matter how hard one tries, the reaction is never going to be a good one.

Things happen all the time. It’s a fact of life people have come to accept. It’s not always good, but it isn’t always terrible. Kevin Powers explores this in his book, The Yellow Birds, a story set through the duration of the Iraq war. “And you can’t explain it, but, it’s just, like, fuck you, but then you signed up to go so it’s all your fault, really, because you went on purpose so you are in the end, doubly fucked, so why not find a spot and curl up and die and let’s make it as painless as possible because you really are a coward.” Some of the worst things that can happen to someone is dealt by the person themselves. Often times dealing with a sudden change  is carried out with the best intentions in mind, however, as quickly as the world can change, so can everything in it, and the ultimate reaction to all this can be pretty shocking. The world isn’t a nice place, especially if one gets too caught up in all the small things.

Reacting to change can almost be fitted into stages. Someone can either react with some deal of emotion, or with none at all. In this circumstance, its more or less a personal struggle, rather than something against whatever change is occurring. “The closer I got to reconstructing him in my mind, the more the picture I was trying to recreate receded.” This quote, taken from Bartle, describes his process of attempting to recollect his memories after coming home from the war. When things slowly begin breaking down, and Bartle begins attempting to process what  happened, everything else begins distancing from whoever him . This is dangerous in an ever changing world, because when someone finds themselves so caught up in previous events and ideas, they’re almost slipping away from what's actually going on, ignoring whatever change may be happening.

Sometimes after situations such as this, one becomes desensitized with the rest of the world. Forgetting everything else in favor their own feelings. “At one time you could of asked me if I thought the snow meant something. I would’ve said yes. I might have thought there was some significance to the fact that there had been snow on the day that Murph had come into my life and snow on the day I willed myself into the one that had been taken from him.” Once things begin changing, it almost seems like nothing else begins to matter.Bartle’s world changes after the death of his best friend. Small things, things that he never really paid much attention to slowly became a trigger to him. Things he barely looked at became something of detachment.

Kevin Powers associates most of his writing toward generating a genuine recollection of what happens during wartime. That being said, the relationship between both past experiences in real life, and through the war, are almost parallel toward the idea of change. I've always had a certain level of comfort with the dark part of the human experience. It hasn't had an attraction, but it has certainly had a fascination.”

Change often brings a variety of difference into a situation, and these experiences aren’t always so bright. The dark part of human experiences that the author is talking about relates back to how one can react to the change in the rest of the world.

Works Cited for Analytical Essay:

Powers, Kevin. The Yellow Birds: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown, 2012. Print.

Lewis, Tim. "Fiction: Meet The Author." TheGuardian.com. The Guardian, 23 June 2013. Web. 11 Jan. 2015. <www.theguardian.com%2Fbooks%2F2013%2Fjun%2F23%2Fkevin-powers-interview-yellow-birds>

Narrative

In my opinion the real world is terrible, and I’d rather not deal with it at all.   Considering the fact that I’m always one incident away from full blown insanity, I try to change whenever I feel necessary, rather than changing with the rest of the world. Life is too short to try and keep up with small things. You’re either moving whenever things feel right, or you’re caught up in something you’ll end up forgetting later.

And that’s how I figured out I was manic-depressive.

For me,the  only real worldly changes that have to be looked out for are whether or not someone is still going to be there five years from now or how badly an episode is going to affect anyone else. I can’t react to a constantly changing world, because that’s another source of anxiety and bad feelings in and of itself, so I’d rather not worry about something thats going to cause me pain in the end.

Then there are small moments that aren’t the epitome of being completely miserable. Those idealistic pieces of memorabilia aren’t easily found, but once they do, everything changes, and for one day, everything feels alright, and in those moments, you can feel amazing. You can do anything, and nothing can make you feel any less real. That’s called mania.

But hey, who said it’s not okay to feel subsequently human?

I digress, really, depending on how bad the situation, sometimes things are easier to bounce back from, but as a whole, to put it lightly, life has quite literally made me it’s bitch, and there’s nothing I can do about it. The insanity was never my fault, but it didn’t bother me anyway.

Let the rest of the world change, I’m perfectly fine in my own little bubble.

But you wanted to know how it feels like, right? Waking up in the morning realizing you’re the very thing that makes you hate your own reflection, and every ounce of love someone ever had for you is now gone because you’re unstable, and cut up arms are always prettier than soft ones.

Let’s reiterate one last time. I’m finished with the rest of the world. Things can change, but I won’t.

But’s that’s just my illness talking.

And that’s also what happens during the lower parts of the depression, which is almost like the ‘world,’ changing me, if that makes any sense. I react differently to certain things than others do. I say things that other people may find unusual. This is because I had to grow up much faster then most people.

It’s no one’s real fault, because when you’re born, your parents aren’t, (hopefully,) sitting around you saying how much they’d like to see you suffer. But sometimes someone does something stupid. And that stupidity grows into something much larger, and because you’re already impressionable, you’re holding all of that in, until you reach a certain age and look back at your life. Then you realize that something went wrong, and that you’re no longer the only thing you’re supposed to keep safe. Because sometimes, those monsters that your parents told you never existed, suddenly become real. And they’re everywhere, but nobody can make them go away. And the rest of the world sits back and judges you for not being able to let go of things that aren’t real to them.

But you really aren’t crazy. It’s the world’s way of protecting yourself. It keeps you safe, even if you’re doing stupid things. You learn that you’re actually not a good person, and because of that, nobody loves you. And you know what? It’s okay to feel these things. You just can’t hurt yourself over them, or life sucks even more than it used to. You’re actually a half decent person when you’re not threatening to kill yourself every five minutes.

You just can’t let the monsters of the world tell you otherwise.

Analytical Essay:

In today's world, everything is constantly changing. Money is becoming of lesser value, gas prices are going up, new laws are being made and unemployment rates rising. As the world changes, people change too. It’s the natural order of things, humans do what they can to fend for themselves. In the book, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’brien, a message of the changing world and the self is conveyed through experiences by a group of characters in the army. In this book there are cases in which the world continues to change in different ways, and as it does it shifts and develops human thinking to survive and adapt for the self along with it.

Jimmy cross, a character in the book, The Things They Carried, is a lieutenant with a lot of responsibility on his hands. He is in charge of a group of army men in a division called Alpha Company. Cross had good intentions from the start when it came to his men but became unsure how to truly lead them after suffering through the loss of two members of his team. Ted Lavender and Kiowa. A passage from the book reads, “Jimmy cross remembered the kids face but not the name. That happened sometimes. He tried to treat his men as individuals but sometimes the names just escaped him.”(Pg. 172) Jimmy Cross, before coming to the army could have lived an average life, but has went through the torment of losing the men he was assigned to lead and protect. He thus has been altered by the changing world and now has a lot of things under his belt which in turn has changed the way he treats people. His men may have started off as Individual people to him, but through that experience it seems names have become less important to him, his thinking on his men has thus changed. He sees them now as only that, men in the army. This hardened attitude is his way of adapting to the change, his way of not having to experience the pain of losing “his men” anymore. Losing his men changed the way he thought of the remaining of his men in the army.

Bob “Rat” Kiley, the platoons medic, is much respected by Tim O’Brien for the way he handles his job as a medic. Rat is usually a level headed and kind man, but over time the war took its toll on him. One day while Rat and another medic assigned with him on an assignment, Mark Fossie, were waiting for Fossie’s girlfriend to answer the door. Rat expressed his distrust for the girl. “Rat shook his head. He said to Fossie, “Your decision. I was you, though, no way i’d mess around with any greenie types, not for nothing.”” (Pg. 108) Rat begins to let the weight and stress of the war weigh down on him. His trust in people begins to waiver and it shows in this quote. He notices that he needs to adapt to protect himself as he shifts along with the changing world and that doesn’t leave much room for anyone else. He brings out to Mark that he wouldn’t “mess around” with any greenie, knowing that Mary Anne is marks beloved girlfriend. Rat it appears, though, has let the world shape his thinking in that he has lost trust for certain people, and she is one of them. He let the changing world impact his thought process with this girl developing his human thinking.

Mary Anne Belle, Mark Fossie’s high school sweetheart, although Mary appears to arrive to vietnam in total innocence, she develops a respect for death and the darkness of the jungle. According to legend she retreats and disappears there. Unlike Martha, who is just a fantasy for Jimmy Cross, Mary is very real for Mark and her change is one that shatters his world and hers both. Mark and Rat were waiting for Mary Anne to come out when, “.. She stepped out of the shadows. At least for a moment she seemed to be the same pretty young girl who had arrived a few weeks earlier.” (Pg. 110) Mary Anne has it hinted about her in this quote that she has changed as a person since her arrival at the military base in Vietnam. She, as the quote brings out, was at a time a pretty young girl but it can be inferred that she has changed and is no longer that person she was because of the words "at least for a moment" implying change. Mary Anne's heart hardened due to the truth of war, and this result changed not only her but in effect made Mark Fossie a sader soul as well. This is another case of the world around a person changing their way of thinking and thus changing, ultimately, the person themselves.

Tim O’brien, the main character narrator and protagonist of the novel, is also the author of the book. In an interview with Sawyer Scott about his output on his book The Things They Carried he says, "Imagination is important in a couple of ways. One way is as a psychological means of escape. If you can lose yourself in a fantasy, then you're no longer trapped in the horror of, say, Vietnam. You're back home with your girlfriend, eating a nice dinner at the Ritz instead of C-rations."(Interview 2) Imagination is important, it is the brains way of escaping reality, helping humans dream the impossible. After all, imagination is thinking and that positive thinking or imagination can be changed if the world around you changes in a negative way before your very eyes and vise versa. Trapped in the horror of Vietnam, is how Tim felt until the world around him changed, and he was able to clear his mind and focus better on other things. This again shows when the world around us is changing, as humans we must change our thinking to change with the world.

Works Cited for Analytical Essay:

"Tim O'brien Interview." N.p., n.d. Web.

"The Things They Carried." By Tim O'Brien. 1998 N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2015.

"Robot Check." Robot Check. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2015.

Narrative Essay:

One hundred bucks is crazy money in my book. One hundred bucks can’t even afford some jeans out there, though, to put it in hindsight, and I use to wonder why money was such an important material to people. It’s pretty obvious now, money is power. And power changes people. I think back to an experience of a close cousin of mine. He and I were pretty close growing up, he is a few years older than me and lived in North Carolina but we made it work. Every year, three times a year,  my intermediate family and I would take the trip down to NC to see him and our other relatives.

My cousin, JeMario, was a good natured person, a very kind and thoughtful personality who happened to have a keen talent for music. He played the bass for as long as I can remember, and he was always pretty great at it but honestly I would have never thought he could get famous off of playing the bass. But he was talented, so much so, that one year while we were staying “down south”, as my mom referred to the trip to NC, his mother influenced him to join, a at the time popular musical career jump starting show, MTV’s Making A Band. He did and through the course of the show he survived every round up until it was just him and one other male in the finals. In the final round he did not get enough votes to win and lost to other guy, but it wasn’t a total loss he had been noticed by a lot of people for his talent on the bass instrument. A few weeks after he returned home he got a call from two big names in the media, Tyler Perry and Bruno Mars. Mr. Perry wanted my cousin to play bass for his plays, while Bruno wanted him to play bass for his live band. My cousin, being young and into Bruno Mars music, decided to go with the offer from Bruno. He left for California and began recording music and touring with Bruno. I was happy with his decision being a fan of Bruno Mars myself and I have been proud of my cousin ever since. But he isn’t the same person he was when he left that year, I believe being around the spotlight, something he was very uncommon to living in a small town in North Carolina, changed him thoroughly.

The summer after he left to go on tour, I remember hearing from my aunt JeMario was going to be in town when we went on our annual down south trip. I was overjoyed to hear this it had been a year. The first time I caught a sight of my star studded cousin back home I couldn’t tell if it was him or some clone that dressed better, sounded different, and acted different but looked exactly like him. I could hardly hear his southern accent anymore. I remember the first conversation we had when he came back, “Yo cuz! You're a big shot now huh?”

“Yeah little cousin out here making this money man.” He responded to me.

“Wow. All I know is.. That haircut is bad real bad Michael Jackson, should probably never get that again?” We both laughed.

“It’s whatever man. I got it cause’ it’s what everyone got.”

“Well, everyone else does not look good on you man.”

“Looking like everyone else is what makes you relatable and famous and paid. And that’s all that matters.”

“What man? Forget the money. Forget how you look, you got that suspect jacket on.. Wearing that is not worth all the money in the world” I laughed, “You're on tour with Bruno Mars... That must be like living a dream or something”

“Ain’t no dream unless I’m getting paid little cousin, you must not understand that money is all that matters in this business and whatever you gotta do to get it. I got the talent now I’m just looking to get much as I can man.”

JaMario wasn’t the same. I could feel it the moment I saw him, there was something off about him. His once pert and lively character had abandoned him. The glory lifestyle took it’s toll on him much sooner than anyone could have expected. JaMario had let the changes in the world around him affect his being, he went from being a kind content heart to a cold one endlessly searching for more.

Analytical Essay:

Everyone goes through important changes and phases in their lives, whether it be someone very close to them passing away, winning the lottery, or finding “the one”.  All of these things can cause a change in one’s character that greatly affects their view of the world.  In Kevin Powers’s novel The Yellow Birds, the main character, Bartle, goes through one of the most life-changing experiences possible: fighting in a war.  During his service in Afghanistan, he sees himself and many others change in many ways. Many people, when going through or having gone through a big change in their life, may feel like the whole world has changed because their world has changed.

At one point in Bartle’s time abroad, he goes AWOL in Germany, when the troops are waiting to fly back to America.  While he’s away from the base, he goes into a church and has some time alone with his thoughts.  When remembering this moment, he says, “I realized, as I stood there in the church, that there was a sharp distinction between what was remembered, what was told , and what was true. And I didn’t think I’d ever figure out which was which,” (Powers 60).  This is an interesting way of thinking of the human memory, because often times, those three things are seen as the same thing.  Bartle, as he remembers certain events in the war and is talking to the priest in the church, realizes that his mind wants to remember things differently than how they happened.  After he had these traumatic experiences, his view of the world was changed, although he didn’t notice at the time. His changed perspective caused him to believe that things had happened differently than they actually had.

Kevin Powers, when talking in an interview about life in combat compared with civilian life, said, "As human beings, we have the blessing and the curse that we're able to adapt to almost anything. No matter how extreme the circumstances you're in, they become normal,” (Sherr).  The Yellow Birds is written in a way such that one chapter Bartle will be fighting in Al Tafar, Afghanistan, and the next chapter he will be back home in Richmond, Virginia after the war.  The way the book jumps around like this, the reader can see a clearer comparison between his experiences in the war and how they affected him once he was back home.  This quote says that “no matter how extreme the circumstances you’re in, they become normal” (Sherr), meaning that even when Bartle was fighting in Afghanistan, at some point he became so used to it that he felt like that was normal.  The reader notices this once Bartle is back home in Richmond, because he goes out and shoots his gun at the ground to relax; the fact that this action is relaxing instead of stressful or exciting means that he is used to it, and that he believes it is normal in the world he is living in.

When Bartle is back in America and reflecting on his current life, he talks about whether he thinks he and his life are normal.  During this reflection, he says, “The details of the world in which we live are always secondary to the fact that we must live in them,” (Powers 224).  What this means is that humans can never have experiences in life or views of their world without either of those being affected by their own thoughts and feelings.  Bartle is acknowledging this, by saying that even though he feels like his life is normal, he knows that this is partially because of his past experiences and feelings.  If he was completely separated from his past, his thoughts, and his feelings, he would see that this is not normal behavior.  However, there is no way for him to perceive his world outside of his own mind.

Many people who have never fought in a war may feel like there is no way in which they can connect to a soldier.  While it is true that a soldier’s experience is incredibly different from a civilian’s, the fact that a life-changing moment or period in one’s life can change his or her perception of the world is something that applies to everyone.  Whether someone is a civilian who has just had a child, or a soldier who has just lost a close friend in combat, both situations will greatly affect a person.  This is a uniting factor between two different groups of people that should be remembered when civilians connect with soldiers.

Works Cited for Analytical Essay:

Powers, Kevin. The Yellow Birds. New York: Little, Brown, 2012. Print.

Sherr, Lynn. "A Soldier's Story: Returning Home From Iraq." Parade's Community Table.

Parade Publications Inc., 21 Oct. 2012. Web. 08 Jan. 2015.

http://communitytable.com/125987/lynnsherr/21-iraq-veteran-kevin-powers-interview-

the-yellow-birds/.

Narrative Essay:

Ugh, I hate everyone.  Why is everyone so annoying?  Wait...are they talking about me right now?

These are just average thoughts I have had sitting in class, on the bus, or pretty much anywhere when I have gone through more depressed periods in my life.  We all have these types of thoughts every now and then, but they were an almost constant occurrence in my head.  Someone walking in front of me would do something mildly annoying and I would berate them in my head, my mood having been ruined by them during the rest of my walk to school.  This negative attitude towards even strangers is just an example of how I viewed the world in this part of my life: annoying, boring, and joyless.

One way in which my perspective on the world and my life was changed is that I became much more paranoid about my friends or people at school talking about me.  It wasn’t because I thought I was so important, I just thought people were talking behind my back, when I left the room or walked down the hall past them.  A few times, I got so worried about it that I actually would ask one friend if another had said anything about me, or if they thought someone didn’t like me.  Always, the answer was something like, “No, why would you think that?” or “No, why would they be talking about you?” and whoever I was asking would look at me funny.  I’m sure that at least once, the person I was asking about found out I had been asking about them, and it probably annoyed them or made them uncomfortable.  At the time, I never thought about that, but now that I am outside of my depressive state of mind, it seems clear that that must have happened.

Another big affect of my depression was boredom and indifference towards the world around me.  Often times, I just wouldn’t bother to make any plans over the weekend, and because I had no plans, I would start on this train of thought that I didn’t have any plans because no one wanted to hang out with me, when in reality it was just because I didn’t ask anyone.  This would cause me to just sit at home all weekend, incredibly bored and often unhappy.  My parents would suggest all sorts of things to do, and to each option I’d say that I “didn’t feel like it” or I would just say no.  At the time, I really didn’t have any interest in any of the things they were suggesting; I would even think to myself, “Why don’t I want to do anything?  All of those things seem so boring.”  At that point in time, I saw the world as very boring, with nothing exciting going on in it.  Again, thinking back, most of the things my parents suggested were pretty interesting, but that just isn’t how I viewed my world.  

Possibly the worst affect my depressed state of mind had on myself and my life was the actual change in my personality.  I was much more negative and rude or mean towards both my parents, my friends, and my boyfriend.  I believed I was behaving normally, but at one point or another, all of the people in my life confronted me about my behavior, and in some cases it was too late to fix the damage I had done without even realizing it.  Even in the cases where my apologies were accepted, I still felt terribly guilty about the feelings I had hurt and the anger and frustration I had caused.  This would send me even deeper into depression.  Once again, in these situations I had believed that I was behaving like my normal self, even though it was obvious later on that I hadn’t been.

While I will likely never be able to fully relate to the life and experiences of a soldier, I feel that the factor of a distorted reality can apply to both people like me and people from the army.  Like Bartle, I believed that my abnormal behavior was nothing out of the ordinary, even though to others the change was obvious.  The effects of my depression included ruined relationships, lost time, and inaccurate world views.  The effects of Bartle’s return and assimilation back into civilian life were changed relationships, time wasted being angry and depressive, and a distorted view of the world.  This is perhaps the only connection I can make between myself and the character of Bartle.  But it is a strong connection, and a thought-provoking one; a connection that will stay with me as I continue to learn how to connect with others who are different from me.

Analytical Essay:

People experience death everyday. A family member could die of cancer, a family pet could pass away or soldiers could kill or watch their friends get killed. In the book, “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, people are affected by their changing world everyday because they are in a war. One of the biggest changes that affects them would be death. Since there are so many different people in the war, reactions to death would differ from person to person. The relationship of the changing world and the self can be different according to how they deal with strong emotions.

Azar was one of the first characters in the book that stood out as someone who wasn’t really the nicest guy in the platoon. He blew up a puppy, made jokes about people when they died and always had something snarky to say. When the main character, Tim O’Brien killed is first man, Azar was one of the first people to comment on it. “Oh man, you fuckin’ trashed the fucker” Azar said. “You scrambled his sorry-self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like Shredded Fuckin’ Wheat.” (pg. 125) Azar needed to deal with death in a way that wouldn’t affect himself directly. He did this by making jokes about the dead and he didn’t try to comfort the person who was shocked by the death. In the quote above, he talks to O’Brien in a way that shows that he is tough and that death doesn’t affect him. He doesn’t know how else to deal with the fact that someone was blown up in front of him. He doesn’t have a filter, so he says whatever comes to mind. Since he has gotten to war, his world has been changing with every death that Azar sees. He has created a person who says that he isn’t fazed by death so that he seems tough, like society’s image of a soldier should be.

When O’Brien killed the man, it was his first experience with death that he had caused. He fills up two chapters talking about how the body looked and what people were saying to him. He also made up a narrative about the man that he killed. He imagined the dead man’s education and his family and his personality. “He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics. At night, lying on his mat, he could not picture himself doing these brave things his father had done, or his uncles, or the heroes of the stories.” (pg. 125) O’Brien can’t stop replaying the scene of the death over in his head after it’s happened. All he can do is stare at the body and repeat the details over and over again. To cope with the death, he makes up a story about the body. Some people would think that this is a bad idea because then O’Brien would be seeing him as someone who is equal to him with a life and with people who cared about him, which would then make O’Brien have grief and empathy for the person he just killed. O’Brien would want to distance himself from the person, not see the person as someone just like him. In the book he never explains why he does it or if it makes him feel better. In O’Brien’s changing world, he is someone who kills people and that makes him feel guilty and sad.

Death of a real person isn’t the only death that someone in war can see. In one chapter, a man is telling a story about how one soldier was able to arrange his girlfriend to come to Vietnam. No one had ever done it before so people weren’t sure what to expect. The girlfriend’s name was Mary Anne and everybody loved her when she got to camp. The only problem was that she wanted to be in the war. She was taken by the war and she would go on midnight stake-outs with the men. “Vietnam made her glow in the dark. She wanted more, she wanted to penetrate deeper into the mystery of herself, and after a time the wanting became needing, which turned then to craving.” (pg 114) Mary Anne became so interested in the war that a part of her old self died. She didn’t think that she would ever be able to go back to America after what she’d experienced in Vietnam. This is because she came into the war innocent and since the war was such a shock and adrenaline producing, she wanted to stay forever in the war. Before the war she was someone who wore headbands and cotton shorts but after the war she was someone who wore a human tongue necklace and went around barefoot. Her way of dealing with the war and shock of death is by becoming a completely different person.

In an interview, Tim O’Brien talks about how he noticed different people coping with the changes in their world. He said that a way that was commonly used was imagination. “Imagination is important in a couple of ways. One way is as a psychological means of escape. If you can lose yourself in a fantasy, then you're no longer trapped in the horror of, say, Vietnam. You're back home with your girlfriend, eating a nice dinner at the Ritz instead of C-rations.” Throughout the whole book, people have to create a fantasy so that they can deal with death and war. He said this because he wanted to confirm that this a feeling that can happen with the war. He is saying that by pretending that you are in a fantasy world can help you deal with the war and the deaths that happen in the war. Without a way of coping, war can be stressful and quite possibly the worst event in someone’s life.

In war, people’s lives are changing and almost all of the people need a way to deal with the changes. People have to figure out what works best for them and sometimes they don’t even realize that they are finding a way of dealing with their problems. Because of these changes in someone’s world, they react in whatever way they can cope with the changes.

Works Cited for Analytical Essay:

-Sawyer, Scott. "In the Name of Love: An Interview With Tim O'Brien." Mars Hill Review. Winter/Spring 1996. Web. October 20 2009.

Analytical Essay:

Everyone is inspired by something and what they do with their inspiration makes them happy. Tim O’Brien, the author of The Things They Carried loves writing and he is passionate about his experiences in the war, so his book is about the war. He wants people to experience the same emotions he felt by reading his book and to see what it feels like to be in the war, and how scary it is. Writers express themselves by making the reader feel their emotions in the story in a way where readers know what happened in order, but also show how it changed their life and how readers are affected by it.

People look back at their experience to not make mistakes and make their future better. The past is important because people remember to go back to it and rethink what they did wrong, and want to try to do better in the present. In the book The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien says, “And sometimes remember it will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except that story” (pg. 38). Being in the war for Tim was not easy. Those kind of memories people do not forget because it’s a fear they face. This shows that events that happen to people in the past are connected to the future because there is something new in each situation where people learn something new. It gives a new perspective on things people do not think of, but also shows what life has for people, and that a lot of different stories stay in people’s mind and they remember it. They remember what happened and how it could affect them.

There are things people want to remember from their stories or from stories they’ve heard. It is hard for writers to not have an obsession about one topic because that topic is  something that inspires them, and it is something they look forward to share with the world to let  people know what is happening and how people are affected by things like wars. In the book Tim O’Brien says, “I feel guilty sometimes. Forty-three years old and I'm still writing war stories. My daughter Kathleen tells me it's an obsession...I guess, she's right: I should forget it. But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is your life, at the intersection of past and present… As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come. That's the real obsession” (pg. 34). Here this quote talks about how no matter what people say people follow their conscience. That strong inner voice shows them what they can achieve and that it is something they want to do. A person’s inner voice can help them express themselves and what’s on their mind. Tim O’Brien listened to what his daughter had to say, but he still thought of being a writer as something that not only writing inspires him, but wars as well. He thinks about writing as his future because that’s what he likes to do even though some of the things are not true, for example in his book he had a daughter, but in the real world he does not have one.

As a person Tim O’Brien wants people to know what it means to go through something that stays with him his whole life. War is something people do not forget because these are feelings and emotions that will stay with a person even though they will move on. Tim says that even if the story is made up he wants people to know what he felt and show what it was like to go through something really hard and frightening. He did not think of what others thought about him writing and said, “But listen. Even that story is made up. I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth.” (pg. 179). Sometimes there are stories where when they are said and made up a little they come out as a better story, than a real story that happened. Tim O’Brien wanted to show how factual stories are not always the best way to explain an emotion one feels in a certain moment or situation.

From the interview “In the Name of Love” with Tim O’Brien, he expresses and answers the questions that are important for readers to know about because they can see what Tim meant and thought about writing his book. He wanted to let people know how it feels to be in the war even though it was not all the factual. In the article An Interview with Tim O'Brien Tim says, "Events, especially those that carry elements of trauma, tend to get scrambled in terms of chronology. And I try to present them that way as much as I can in my writing. I don't clearly sort out for the reader what happened first, second, third, and fourth in a causal chain. I take this approach because I think it's the way our memories often work.” When writers want to tell the story they want the reader know the order of what happened, but they also want the reader to feel what they went through. It is easy to just write a story and say what happened, but writing it in a way that the reader understands the feelings that are happening in the story is very important in literature. It means the writer achieves the goal in writing something that makes people feel everything they went through or even when a story was made up. Stories that are made up can be well written just like real stories, but it is in writer’s hands to see if it connects to a person and their feelings.

When it comes to feelings and emotions it is hard for people to feel what the writer is trying to portray with their writing. In order to feel their emotions the book needs to show situations where readers can imagine the place. It is not easy to do that, but Tim O’Brien did a good job by giving a lot of details so people connect to his story. He also showed people how it feels to be in the war so others can imagine it and realize how they work hard to be there.

Works Cited for Analytical Essay:

1. O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway, 1998. Print.

2. Sawyer, Scott. "An Interview with Tim O'Brien." In the Name of Love. Mars Hill Review 4, n.d. Web. 8 Jan. 2015. <http://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr04/tim1.html>

Narrative Essay:

“Oh no. I don’t know what to write about. What should I do?”

“Write about something that you usually don’t tell people because it’s hard to talk about it, ” said my friend Hannah.

Hannah and I became best friends during freshman year. The first time we met was asking each other “What class do you have?” and looking at our schedules, and realizing we have the same classes. Going to our first class was weird and we had that silent/awkward walk to the classroom because we had no idea what to say. I remember having Bio-chem as our first class.

Freshman year we wrote more analytical essays, than personal essays. That’s when we learned to write thesis and how to put all information together to form an essay. The first English class during sophomore year was different comparing to my classes in middle school and freshman year. When we went to the classroom Ms. Pahomov explained to us that we will focus on writing workshop. I had no idea what it was, but in my head I just thought, “Oh no I hate writing.” When we started writing our first essay I started with a personal essay because I thought it will be easy, but that was not true exactly. I did not know what to write about and I did not like writing in general. I started my personal essay with writing about me coming to the U.S. and my first years here. Then I wrote about my grandpa, which was something I did not tell people because it’s a really personal topic to me.

Writing personal essays showed me a way where I can tell people my stories, but also express my feelings. I am a shy person and do not share all my stories with everyone. I take my time to start trusting people because I had situations where people would talk and tell my personal things even though they said they wouldn’t. It is hard for me to start trusting from the beginning. Hannah’s thought about my essays made her emotional after she read them.

“When reading Malwina’s writing I was supposed to just edit it, but once I read the whole story I actually got very into it. I ended up learning more about her through her personal essays. It’s been a while since I read one, but there are still two stories that she wrote last year that I can recall. Her pieces were memorable allowing me to remember the ones she wrote last school year. They were about her grandfather and one about her dad. Malwina did a great job with details in her personal essay about grandpa that I felt emotional. I could imagine what happened and the story brought tears to my eyes.” said Hannah when I talked to her recently.

Usually when I talk to my family about things that happened most of them are emotional and do not like to share these stories. It is hard for them to say things like that because it is something they would want to keep between people in our family. Writing something and sharing how my grandpa was fighting with cancer was something completely different. I did not really tell my family that I wrote that essay because of the fact them not feeling comfortable to talk to people they do not know about personal emotions. From writing these essays I feel like there is another way to express my feelings to others. It is easier to write it and let people read it because if I were to talk to them in person I do not think I would be able because I would get really emotional.

Expressing my feelings through essays feels better because I do not have to face some of the situations that I would not feel comfortable to talk about. I was really surprised that Hannah after reading my personal essays was emotional because I would not think my writing would make someone feel what I felt at the same time. Expressing feelings is something challenging  because it is something you share with readers that you are not sure you can trust, but it is a way to show and make readers feel what you felt.

Analytical Essay:

Many people believe that change is something that you can avoid. They believe that if they try hard enough they can go their whole lives and not make any significant changes to the way that they deal with life. However, there are some situations where this is not the case. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a perfect example of this. O’Brien’s book is about war and includes himself as a character going through changes in that type of an environment. It teaches a lot about what war is like and how there is no way to avoid it. People tend to avoid change when they can, however, there are some environments that people cannot escape in life, it is in these environments that these people cannot help but change. The change could be physical, but it could also be mental.

The beginning of Tim O’Brien’s story in The Things They Carried starts when he is alerted through the mail that he has to join the army and go to war. The feeling O’Brien describes is one of the least desirable most painstaking feelings one can have. The feeling of shock, surprise, and hopelessness combined. O’Brien knew that his life was about to change is a monumental way, he was scared for his life. He even thought about fleeing the country to get away from this change. At one point he even says, “I felt something break open in my chest. I don’t know what it was. I’ll never know. But it was real, I know that much, it was a physical rupture-a cracking-leaking-popping feeling…..I remember packing a suitcase and carrying it out to the kitchen, standing very still for a few minutes, looking carefully at the familiar objects all around me” (Page 46). At this point, O’Brien’s shock and fear has turned to determination, he says that if his life is going to change it is going to be on his own terms and he flees to Canada. However, the fear of disappointment and shame from his parents and all those that know him is enough to overpower this fear of change and war that he is hiding from. He is eventually willing to come back to the United States and fight in the war. O’Brien was trying to get away from a change that could ruin his life. A war is an inescapable environment in which change is not only common, but even expected.

Later in O’Brien’s story he starts to reflect on how his life had changed from the war. At this point O’Brien had been in the war for quite some time and was starting to notice some changes in himself. Upon discovering these changes O’Brien was disappointed that he let the war change him this way. He explains, “I’d come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person, a college grad….all the credentials, but after seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under the weight of the simple daily realities. I’d turned mean inside” (Page 200). At this point of the book the character Tim O’Brien was trying to get revenge against another character named Bobby Jorgenson. After a while he realizes that he acting rashly and not quite like himself. He concedes that the war is changing him, and he does not like what he is becoming. Change is scary for O’Brien along with most people, but sometimes you can’t help but change. The change that O’Brien is describing undergoing is a completely mental change. His body isn’t just changing, and neither is just is situation. The war changed the way O’Brien thought and felt and made him into a person he didn’t want to be. This is why people are scared of change, especially in such drastic situations like war, they do not want to become something that they are not. It is hard to overcome a situation like this, because first you would have to leave the environment you are in. If the environment is not escapable, like war, than you might have to embrace the changes.

Certain changes can come about when an environment takes a mental or physical toll on a person. War is a perfect example of such an environment because one is not able to escape war, and it takes a heavy mental and physical toll on those involved. Tim O’Brien the author recalls such times when war was a hard place. “’Well, yes, I dedicated the book to my characters,’ Mr. O'Brien said. ‘After all, I lived with them for five years while I was writing. In Vietnam people were being rotated constantly, so men you served with you would know six or eight months. These characters are the people I know best’”. O’Brien dedicating his book to the characters within it, or the people he knew is heart warming, but also understandable. The reason that this quote is so important is that it shows another element of change in war. The people that you are with and have your back at all times continuously are changed. This had to be tough on a soldier and even depressing at times. These soldiers do not want this change, most likely if it were up to them they would get to stay with the same soldiers throughout the war so that they know who they are working with and who they can trust. However, it is not their decision war brings on changes that are unavoidable and can be challenging to overcome.

Change can be one of the hardest most emotionally tolling things a person can go through, and while many people attempt to avoid change in their lives there are some environments that people cannot escape and some changes that they cannot avoid. There are various reasons for not being able to escape. Sometimes there is a pressure on a person that is too great that they can’t help but break. Sometimes, as in The Things They Carried there are certain expectations placed on a person that they want to live up to. Some changes affect one in a physical manner, while others can affect them in a mental way. War is one of the rare and scary example of place that can change both your mental and physical state which is why it is so undesirable.

Works Cited:

Bruckner, D.J.R. "A Storyteller For the War That Won't End." The New York Times. N.p., 3 Apr. 1990. Web. 7 Jan. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/20/specials/obrien-storyteller.html>.

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. New York: Broadway, 1998. Print.

Narrative Essay:

Change is one of the hardest things in life. That being said there are many hard things that can occur in one’s life, the thing that makes change so unique is how unavoidable it is. I personally have dealt with change many times in my life, and while there are times that enjoy the adversity and the benefits that can come with change, there are others where the change is just completely undesirable. Sometimes I find that the change can be hard, but the result can be great. Many times change is unavoidable due to the situation that you are in, but you just have roll with the punches.

There was a time in my life when I was much younger that I liked to keep to myself. Even in elementary school my focus was to get good grades. Because of this, I was left out of much of the social experiences that come with being a fun loving, outgoing child. I was always happy with my life and my small core group of friends, but never truly satisfied. I didn’t expect my personality to change as I got older, I even feared the possibility of a change because of the effect it might have on my accomplishments in the classroom. However, that didn’t stop me.

By middle school the time came where I started to notice how much of the world I was missing by keeping to myself. I tried to put myself out there, but it was hard when your knowledge of what is “cool” is limited, and I faced a large amount of rejection early. I started playing team sports which helped a lot, not so much because I wanted to, but almost because I felt as though I needed to. It wasn’t until later that I felt something break in my head. Not in a negative way, it was almost as if my confidence was trapped in a cage, only pouring out slowly and then all of sudden it rushed out. My inhibitions were gone, I became a much more outgoing person. I still felt that same type of fear that I had know all of my earlier life, but I was able to ignore it and do what I please. I was scared of change, but it happened anyway and I couldn’t be more thankful.

Another example of a change happened to my friend Rob. Rob and I were best friends and we would hang out on quite a frequent basis when we were very young. However, Rob had a very unique situation when it came to the careers of his parents. Rob’s mother worked for the mayor and she was continuously changing locations of the office she was working at. On top of this there were some other unforeseen circumstances that made Rob’s life hard. When Rob and I first met we lived ten minutes away from each other. Out of nowhere, disaster struck for Rob and his family when his house burned down for an unknown reason. Rob lost all of his possessions, clothes, and memories.

“Mom, what happened to my toys?” Rob would inquire.

“They are gone honey, a fire came and ate them up, but don’t worry we will get you new ones”, his mother would often reply.

The change was very hard for Rob, he had to leave his home and move in with his grandmother. He couldn’t help the change, it just came out of nowhere and his life took a hit.

Later his parents found a new place to live, it was an apartment in the city. Rob’s mom needed to be closer to a different office, so she moved to the city and again Rob’s life changed. City life was very different for him, we now lived at least forty five minutes away from each other and began to see each other less and less. On top of that he went to a whole new school and had a much smaller place to live than he was used to. Rob eventually got used to his new life, but it wasn’t long before change struck again.

Rob’s mother was offered a higher paying job for the mayor, the catch is that she had to move again. This time it was way out to Oxford, PA. Now Rob lived two hours away, and we were lucky if we got to hang out two or three times a year.

“Where are we going mom, we’ve been driving forever all I see is trees!” Rob exclaimed on his journey.

“We are almost there, our new house is a little bit out of the way, but trust me it’s worth the drive”. His mom would answer.

The good news for Rob is that his home was enormous. It had four floors including a basement that was all completely Rob’s room. The bad news for Rob is that he lived in the middle of nowhere, he had to commute an hour to get to school, and he didn’t get to see his friends as much. It was hard for Rob to adjust to this new lifestyle, especially after finally getting used to being in the city, but after a while he finally did, but then things changed again, and it was the biggest change yet.

Rob’s mom got a call that a high paying job was available and she was first on the list for possible candidates. She was very excited, but there was a catch, and not a small one at that. The job was all the way in Memphis, Tennessee. After ironing out a lot of details, fighting with her family and watching her son shed many tears, she convinced her family that this was for the best and that they wouldn’t have to move anymore once she took the job. So, Rob moved all the way to Memphis. This was four years ago and I have seen him twice since then. I have kept in touch and I was there for him throughout the process of his move. He had a hard time with such a drastic change in his life, and I’m sure if it were up to him he never would have left Philadelphia. That being said he couldn’t stop this change from happening, he was simply in an environment where changes like this were unavoidable.

Analytical Essay:

People fall into many situations that they never imagined they would. The world is constantly changing and each situation affects how a person thinks or acts. Sometimes there is no control over how someone behaves. The only way to cope with these situations is to react and let it go. In the book, The Things They Carried,when burdened with an emotion or experience, people stop thinking clearly and do things in the heat of the moment.

O’Brien uses the story of Curt Lemon who had a fear of the dentist, to show an example of how soldiers react to their environment. All the soldiers were getting dental checkups and when it was Curt’s turn he fainted. Soldiers are always supposed to be strong and cannot show any form of weakness. So when Curt Lemon’s fear of the dentist got to him, he felt cowardly and weak.  Not wanting to live with the embarrassment that he was scared, Curt took it upon himself to get his tooth removed. “The embarrassment must’ve turned a screw in his head...The dentist couldn’t find any problem, but Lemon kept insisting, so the man finally shrugged and...yanked out a perfectly good tooth.” ( 88) People feel the need to be able to do everything that everyone else does.  Even though he was perfectly fine, Curt made an impulse decision to prove to himself that he was not a coward. He could now live with the fact that he was able to do what every other soldier did. It was not to show off to others but for his self satisfaction and to feel equal to everyone else. He made this decision in the heat of the moment because he felt embarrassed about the way he reacted to the dentist and he wanted to resolve it.

The loss of someone beloved is also a reason people lose control over their emotions and behavior. Rat Kiley was best friends with Curt Lemon. The death of Curt was too sudden and shocking for Rat. The only way he could express what he was feeling was by shooting at a water buffalo they had found. Curt’s death was a surprise to everyone, but it affected Rat the most.

“He shot randomly,almost casually, quick little spurts in the belly and butt… Rat Kiley was crying.” (79) He needed a way to let go of the pain he felt by inflicting pain upon the water buffalo.  Often times people who feel overwhelmed with an emotion or experience do not think but just react. This helps the person to cope with the change that has happened to them and will stay with them forever. By causing pain upon something else or destroying something it makes the person feel better. All the emotions are then channeled on that one object.

Throughout the book, O’Brien shows that soldiers have to always maintain a brave front and anything less than that means they are cowardly. Rat Kiley never showed any moments of fear or lack of courage. He was always someone who did his job the way it should be. Being in war can have a emotional or physical effect on soldiers. Feeling burdened with his experiences in war and the emotions that came with it, he decided he needed a way out. ”He took off his boots and socks, laid out his medical kit,doped himself up, and put a round through his foot.” ( 223) He unable to handle the emotional stress of being in war and with the loss of Curt’s death added to it. Rat knew that the only way of getting himself away from the war was to inflict harm to himself and give himself peace. After a person has too many traumatic experiences bottled up they can’t deal with them anymore.

O’brien in an interview answers how these experiences affects humans. It is not just a story, but how the events affect how a person behaves. He says “It is not the politics of Vietnam. It too is about the human heart and the pressures put on it.” (Interview #3) In his book he describes the pressure that is put on soldiers to be fearless and strong. They fall into many predicaments that they have to face and then move on. They are not given a chance to relax or able to express how they feel. They are always pressured to keep everything inside them which can later cause them to make irrational decisions.

The world is always changing, putting people into circumstances that they are not able to tolerate. People have to find ways to vent their emotions or to get away from things. There are certain decisions that are made that can be harmful in the long run. Instead of pressuring soldiers to put on a constant emotionless and brave front, people should also see that they too are human.

Works Cited for Analytical Essay:

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway, 1998. Print.

Bourne, Daniel, and Shostak, Debra. "A Conversation with Tim O'Brien." The College of Wooster. October 2, 1991. Web. October 20, 2009.

Narrative Essay:

“Maybe if I close my eyes tight enough, it’ll all go away. Maybe if I take a few deep breaths, I can stay calm. Maybe if I just ignore everything I’ll stop thinking so much. Deep breaths. Smile. Everything will be alright.” These are the things I used to tell myself, locked up in the bathroom when I wanted to get away from everything.

Growing up, my father was not able to be a part of my life because he was unable to live in the United States for legality reasons. My mother was the one who raised me and took care of everything. My mom worked long hours on a minimum wage job to support us. As I grew older, I understood how the absence of my father really affected us. During this time period, I gradually taught myself to just hold everything in. I didn’t let anyone see how depressed I felt, I always kept up a front of being normal. When things got too much to handle, I let out all the pent up emotions, let the tears flow and felt the heavy weight of the pain go away in that moment. I never let anyone see me this way, I always thought they would think I was stupid or weak.

“It’ll be okay soon, just keep praying, just keep your patience, things will get better,” I’d tell myself every time I felt like crying or felt myself starting to crumble. I remember I’d always put on a strong face while my mom cried or just looked depressed. I couldn’t bear to see her this way constantly. I felt like I was a burden to her, and that it was all my fault she was struggling so much with working, paying bills, and etc. It all felt too suffocating so I never asked for much other than what I needed.

In school I focused on my grades more than anything. Unlike other kids, I didn’t hang out with friends, have sleepovers, or chit chat with each other. There wasn’t any way I could help my mom, so I thought by doing well in school and just trying to stay out of trouble, that would be one less thing she would have to worry about. Forgetting that anything else existed, I put all my energy into my academics. However, in the process I lost close friends and I became separated from everyone. I became a person that existed among people. I just wanted to make things better, but nothing felt right.

I struggled like this until I reached high school, where I was in a new environment. I thought to myself that I could start new. However, my mom got sick and I had to take care of her while managing school at the same time. Things would always seem to get better and then something would come along the way and it would go back to the same depressing situation. Everything inside me was just slowly building up and I kept praying that maybe one day soon my dad would be able to return to us, so that we could be together and not away from another.

During the middle of my freshman year of highschool, my mom had to get surgery done again for piles which caused her a lot of pain. She was unable to work for some time. I took care of her, from waking up to giving her medication every couple hours to making sure what she was eating. I felt broken and exhausted from everything. People may think that crying doesn’t help. For me it was the best way to just release everything I was feeling. Other times, I just hated when people talked to me, I just wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want any sympathy or pity, it made me feel weak and pathetic.

Now, I’ve learned that keeping things to myself and just letting everything pile on top of one another was not the best idea. It changed who I was, how I felt, and the world around me. This experience has made me stronger and has helped me understand the value of what relationships are. As of 2013, my dad was finally able to be here with us and things have gotten much better for us.

Yo-Hola!  SOy Sandra . Tengo Catorce años. Mi cumpleanos vienti tres y marzo. Me Identities es africano americano. . Me gusta escribir y cantar.

Ella- Es mi mejor amiga y Ella es gusta hermana. su llamas Tatiyana. Ella es muy cómica y artística.

nosotros-mi y mi mama . Mi mamá es bonita y muy rubia. pero es por eso que lo quiero mucho. YO quiero mi mama porque ella es simpatica y inteligente

Ellos- To presento a Mi primo. Calvin y Shamar.  Ellos son moleston depende del dia  sin embargo Ellos son los seres queridos en mi vida. Ellos son manoso y divertido

The internet It's something that everyone uses, from women to children to newborn babies everyone uses it. The internet could be very dangerous to us humans. This could be dangerous because we can be glued for hours at a time which is bad . That's why there is net neutrality.

Net neutrality helps everyone stay on task, limiting the amount of data we get each month. I feel like all teens should know about net neutrality. Teens should know because its very important and  every should know about it. President Obama is all for neutrality.

I think neutrality is a good way to help everyone move on with their lives and get outside or  play with their kids this is an amazing rule and I am all for it .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/on-net-neutrality-internet-providers-are-betrayed-by-one-of-their-own/

https://www.aclu.org/net-neutrality

Sandra Watson

1/9/15

Ms.Hull

Net neutrality

Net neutrality is when all data is produced equally to every person. Net neutrality has keep the internet together and has proved itself efficient in the years passed but some people think otherwise. The net neutrality  word that was created by Tim Wu has been tested by the FCC. The FCC is Federal Communication Commission . The FCC show what content is shown or being produced over tv, , and radio. They decide what is art or totally wholesome to be shown for other people. The Fcc over the years have worked their way into the internet and decided that NO Net Neutrality would be a better way to go for everyone or just them ?

In February the FCC and Tom Wheeler  will be having a meeting on what new rules they want to consider or make for NEt neutrality. This has been a topic that has been circling in media and schools for quite a while now .   NEw rules might new internet service for all of us .    The FCC decides that we should no longer have net neutrality we might all get slower content based on what we pay for and may lose important information which is highly wrong but we do not get a say so in what internet privileges we get even though we are the ones paying for it .

In conclusion we all should agree that net neutrality is good for our whole society. Net neutrality affects no one but all of us. The FCC should stop meddling into the internet and stick to covering content on  the tv, radio . NO one should be treated less than because of their financial income. We fought for equality so lets stay Equal .

https://www.aclu.org/net-neutrality

http://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality

http://www.theopeninter.net/

Why is Net Neutrality important for teens to know about? Net Neutrality is important for teens to know about because it shows teens the basics of the internet. It teaches teens to know more than what they think about the internet. Without net neutrality the internet would be a mess and unorganized. Net neutrality is our internet’s “savior”.

Net neutrality controls ISPs. ISPs are middle mans. Without net neutrality they wouldn't be fair and equitable. An ISP is a middle man because it receives the interweb, and then sells it at high prices to the consumers. It also shortens the speed and access. You have to pay more money to get faster speeds on the internet, and access to more websites.

Also, without net neutrality, ISPs would be able to create new plans to charge customers more for access and services. This affects us because it would be difficult for us to interact online with what we want to do on the internet. The internet can become similar to  cable television. Gatekeepers control what we can and get to watch. This unproductive use of the internet may destroy its access.

Net neutrality is affects us teens and kids more than anyone. We as teens, are the future of the internet. Anything that happens with net neutrality affects us more than anyone. It is very important for teens to know about net neutrality. Why? because as a generation that does everything through the internet, we should know what is going on with it.

Net neutrality controls ISPs, or AKA the middle man. Without net neutrality ISP’s wouldn't be fair. ISP’s receive the inter web, and then sells it at high prices to their customers, making it the middle man.They also give you a limited speed and access. People have to pay more money to get faster speeds, and more accessibility to more websites.