The Tortoise and the Hare Race… for a drank and gang supremacy in South La

It was a warm summer day and the tortoise and the hare, bitter rivals, decided to go out for a walk around the woods to enjoy such beautiful weather. The wind was blowing, sun shined on the tortoise’s back, grass on their feet, and each others company as they talked of the lady tortoise next door and hare’s latest and greatest of lovers, Shaniqua from downtown Compton back near the old Wal-Mart that shut down after the massive gang fight around 5 years ago and as they walked along the path, their homie Jamaal the black bear told them of a race to the local forest bar and ale house, the winner would get a specially made drink by the tavern barista himself.

Extremely intrigued in the idea of this drink, the two alcoholic best friends made for the starting line and got ready for the race. Shaniqua watched from the spectator stands as Hare, who runs a 3 minute mile, got ready to kick his good ole hefty old enemy the tortoise in a race for the ages. Tortoise as a kid was the type who never ran, only ate bon bons and drank excess amounts of beer, all day long regardless of the weather.

The race began as Jamaal the bear fired his 9 milli burrp burrp the gun went as the smoke from the shot came off the gun and the sound rang in both tortoise and hare’s ear for quite sometime. Hare got off to a fast start and got way ahead of the tortoise, as the race path took them through the main streets of south LA to a bar on the North side. Along the way, despite his fast running, the hare got himself into a number of predicaments with bloods, crips, and latino gangs alike, significantly slowing him down each time. After one of the altercations, over hare allegedly stealing Shaniqua from notorious gangbanging blood Cardinal Moses, the enormous amounts of gun fights turned into an all out riot, today known as the riots of 1987, which forced Hare to have to hide in a run down shack along the main road. He was forced to hide out for over 5 hours until the gangbanging thugs stopped fighting. However, he fell asleep in the process and didn’t wake up until the next day.

All the while, Tortoise, a notorious gang kingpin leader of the Los Angeles area since the age of 6, knew to stick to the back roads to avoid altercations and potential run ins, moving slowly he stayed out of trouble, and by the time the hare woke up, the tortoise was only a few paces from the finish line, dripping from head to shell in sweat, gasping for each breath as usually, his homies did the running for him. Hare was too late, so he stole a local child’s bike as well as the child’s 8 sack of marijuana and picked up Shaniqua as they rode back to his small home on Grove Street, thankful to be alive and still frustrated that he hadn’t won the race due to a lack of judgment and his own cockiness despite his division 1 caliber speed now so helplessly wasted due to his lack of commitment to academics while in high school.

As for the tortoise, this gangbanger enjoyed his drink, as he drank he tapped into a new hidden talent of his, rapping. He worked on his rap game, and eventually his rhymes and beats got him off the streets and “out da hood” as he became a millionaire, today known as Rick Ross, not fat tortoise, although still fat he enjoys pears and his women, often times dissing his old arch rival the hare in many of his songs, and boasting on his win in their legendary race back in the 80s, that for him was forever life changing. 

Brave New World Persona

"Friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears..." There will never again be orignality, never again will there be love, honesty, or respect. Everything is manufactured, everything unreal. There is only the two extremes, both equally as bad as the other.
Violence and terror on one side, used to fuel those to work and conform. Outcasting those who bring individuality and creativity to the table. Like my mom for example, a woman that created her own morals, her own code, only not to be accepted.
The other place, this brave new world, was one I hoped to have been different. One that accepted all, encouraged individuality and creativity. Instead, this society is dominated by an abuse of power, discouraging emotion and love. Promoting a sick, comatose state to forget ones problems and encourage immorality all at the same time.
My mother was wrong about it all, there is no other place. What makes the reservation so much different and so much better than this new world.
Lenina, Hemholtz, Bernard.. I thought they would all understand. But they don't. All of them blinded by the lifeless society they live in. Every aspect of their lives controlled with no motivation at all. They lean on social stability, have completely out casted love, marriage, parental figures. Look at the Director for gods sake, exiled for being a father. With no one to turn to, no one to love, what's the point? Don't they see that?
I still remember the day I went to the factories. Watched the Epsilons embryos gassed, the chance at creativity destroyed before they even had the opportunity to use it. Forcing a predetermined caste system upon unborn potential, upon change just waiting, wanting to happen.
As I stood there, Shakespeare's complete works in hand, and watched as newborns were taught to reject the idea of reading and the simple beauty in nature. It was plain and easy to see that a chance at change and individuality was further taken away by removing the ability to notice beauty. I noticed beauty with Lenina, but why should that matter. To her, I was viewed as a prize, a trophy. A one night stand.
Couldn't these people notice how worthless their lives and the lifestyles they lead were? Lacking drive in all aspects of life. No motivation to change the status quot, break free from the technological warps they were so tightly wrapped around. Truly these people were playing fire with fire. But to me,  ignorance is bliss, and to me what I've seen cannot be unseen. "What has been done, cannot be undone."

Rivaling Elements in Frankenstein

Enlightenment rationalism and romantic irrationality are pitted against each other early and often in Shelly’s Frankenstein. As stated, beginning with Victor’s character and his desire to break the rules of nature by finding the key to life and death (Enlightenment thought process) against the immorality that Victor’s creation brings.

Shelly’s writing and Victor’s personality as its portrayed throughout the novel suggest that perhaps Shelly questioned the ideals and irrational thinking that Romanticism brought along. With the creation of the monster comes the question of why one should respect the mystery of life and death as a romantic surely would.

While Victor’s character takes, for the most part, a rational and enlightened stand, the monster he creates is quite the opposite. The monster at the conclusion of the novel goes out of his way emotionally to state that despite Victor’s death he so desperately coveted, that he has “nothing left to live for without my creator,” (Shelly 300). In addition, romantic aspects in the monster’s character and actions include his desperate pleading for a companion as well as his murdering of Victor’s brother and wife.

Culturally, the monster and the idea of rivaling Romantic and Enlightenment principles our important in our pop culture era because an event as far fetched as the creation of the monster may not be so irrational at all. As modern day technology expands, once unchallenged societal views are poised to be changed and redefined each day.

Hemingway Reaction Post

Ernest Hemingway's writing to me can be compared to that of someone with terrible handwriting. One could be the best student, have all A's, SGA President, and a great personal life. But, something about that terrible handwriting of Johnny Appleseed's leaves people doubting, critiquing, and judging. The same can be said of Hemingway's novels, especially The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway is known for being "the voice of the lost generation" (Hemingway 181) and this book backs up this common belief. The lost generation, ranging from the early 1910s to late 1920s, was a type where this expatriate himself lived an aimless lifestyle. Often times jumping from activity to activity with no real purpose or goal in sight. In addition, his writing style itself has always been known for use of freight train sentences, very vivid descriptions of nature, as well as vigorous English and often times positive light shed on most situations. For example, the first paragraph of Chapter III in The Sun Also Rises reads as follows:

 "It was a warm spring night and I sat at a table on the terrace of the Napolitain after Robert had gone, watching it get dark and the electric signs come on, and the red and green stop-and-go traffic signal, and the crowd going by, and the horse cabs clipety-clopping along the edge of the solid taxi traffic, and the poules going by, singly and in pairs, looking for the evening meal” (Hemingway 17).

Notice in this paragraph especially the long, dragged on sentences as well as incorporation of very useless information such as the horses or electric signs. Also, language used in onomatopoeia's like "clipety clopping" make this passage and many others throughout the book very unique and different to the literary world.

Another fun and entertaining part of Hemingway's writing style is the use of often times witty and comical dialogue. Characters such as Jake and Bill in The Sun Also Rises often engage in sarcastic commentary with one another or even engage in entertaining trash talking scenarios. For example, when Jake finds himself down after hearing about Cohn's affair with Brett, Bill cheers him up in one of my favorite passages of the book saying "Listen. You’re a hell of a good guy, and I’m fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn’t tell you that in New York. It’d mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet. The Dred Scott case was framed by the Anti-Saloon League. Sex explains it all. The Colonol’s Lady and Judy O’Grady are lesbians under their skin” (Hemingway 89). Not only is this dialogue comical, but it also again portrays Hemingway's unique freight train sentence structure as well as positive light in almost any situation.

All in all, despite harsh critiques of Hemingway's newspaper-esque writing style, I find myself a fan of his works and his overall message in many of his novels as well as the entertainment these narratives bring to readers.

Example Piece: "Why do you have to be such a prude all the time?" asked Gerald, "Everyone else at this party is playing spin the bottle, why won't you ever play Roger?" Poor Roger was clearly intimidated, as Gerald's girlfriend Melissa had been his crush since the 3rd Grade. And, with Gerald being the school bully, Roger felt often threatened by his snark comments and only ever longed for the personal attention of Melissa herself.

Melissa was a 4.0 student, Harvard bound, for lacrosse, and on this night she had her hair up in a bun and looked absolutely stunning as Roger watched her from across the hall, eating his pizza in the warm party atmosphere.

What Gerald didn't know was that Melissa went to John's house three times a week, they would watch Netflix's Walking Dead and jump into each others arms at the scary parts. How did Roger know this? Well, being Melissa's neighbor his whole life and living in city style connected homes, often times one would see their neighbors using the restroom from just outside the dining room. This far fetched, nonexistent bond between Melissa and Roger would only grow more awkward with the playing of Justin Bieber and the frantic yelling of Gerald's mother as the party persisted.

Experimental Fiction and its Application in Wuthering Heights

As we learned last year in AP Lang (juniors, your time will come), the normal frame narrative structure is not always the best structure for a novel to be as effective, easy to understand, and griping to a reader as possible Neil Postman once told us. Bronte is no exception in Wuthering Heights, as the structure is very experimental yet easy to follow. Often overlooked is the work it takes to make a highly successful and comprehensible experimental fiction novel, just ask any AP Lang student who was there for Josh Kuiper's "House of Leaves" PowerPoint last year. But Bronte through the diary entry-esque layout and use of flashbacks and double narratives, similar to in Tale of Two Cities, makes it look easy and more importantly the structure is what makes this book so noteworthy. The chronological structure beginning with the primary narrator Nelly's birth in 1758 and ending in the early 1800s is extremely unique as it is not until  Nelly's stories catch up with the present that the reader realizes that they themselves are reading an experience that is still essentially playing itself out.
Although the structure is both unique and highly effective, there are some drawbacks to the point of view Bronte establishes. One main cause for ruckus is that Nelly herself is not a character heavily involved in the situation. She is simply one retelling her version and possibly what she has just heard from others. In addition, since Nelly herself wasn't present in many of these scenarios the actual feel for the setting could very well just be made up. Or, Catherine and Heathcliff's relationship being compared to Earth's natural elements may not be accurate at all. However, the language and diction used, especially in which the way Bronte personifies nature, are what to me take this novel to the next level.
Despite potential point of view drawbacks, the experimental structure and diction of Bronte's Wuthering Heights is extremely remarkable and was easily one of my favorite books from either of our two AP English classes.