citied

Lorde, Aundre. The Fourth of July. Language Awareness: Reading for College Writers, 9th Edition. Ed. Paul Eschholz; Alfred Rosa; Virgina Clark. Bedfordt St. Martins: Boston, 2005.

analytical essay please comment

In the paper The Fourth of July” Lorde writes about her a certain vacation in her childhood as a young girl. In her paper she talks about a time that her and her family went to Washington, D.C. The theme of the paper deals with racism and how color in her life made a difference no matter how much it was avoided or oblivious people tried to be about it.

At the beginning of the story you see they are leaving for a family vacation right after graduation. What the writer does not know is going on at the time but later in life finds out is that it was because her sister Phyllis was suppose to go with her class for their senior class trip but ended up getting reimbursed and was not allowed to go because she was black. So her parents decided to take themselves there as a family so she would go on the way there she mentions, “We always went at night on the milk train”, (Lorde, 567) about always having to go at night and on the cheaper one in order to ride the train because that’s how blacks were allowed to travel at this time. You can also see at the beginning of the story that color is important to her because she tells you the colors of almost all the food they brought on the train with them. By bringing this food it is the parents’ way of avoiding what is really going on. They bring the food so that they don’t have to go to the dinning cart, because blacks were not allowed to be in there. Lorde does not know that, however; so she is consistently asking to go in there while her parents avoid the true reason by say it is too expensive and that you can’t trust where the people’s hands have been that touched your food. Her parents felt that if you didn’t talk about it or call it anything about the nature of racism than it wasn’t there and they could control it but as you can see throughout this that is certainly not the case and that’s what happened on this trip. The sad thing is that her parents are racist but on a much smaller scale you see this threw them saying not to trust white people and never giving an explanation as to why. She always wondered why that was the case because the mother’s side of the family all looked white or at least lighter than the rest of them but still they never considered themselves to be white. Her sisters were even lighter than Lorde and her father they were more of somewhere in the middle. The hotel they stayed at was in the back alley that belonged to a friend, it seems to me that they had to stay there because other places even those on main streets would not accept them because the other one the school went didn’t either.

In the middle to the end of the story she talks about her time in Washington. She mentions how they go and see the Lincoln Memorial. She goes to say, “Where Marian Anderson hand sung after the D.A. R. refused to allow her to sing in their auditorium”, (Lorde, 568) racism was not just for normal people too. Marian Anderson got refused because of her skin because she was black. She talks about how she always had to squint and that her parents would not allow sunglasses so she could see. I think this was a metaphor even though the situation was a true case. I think it symbolizes the fact that her parents would always keep her from seeing what was truly going on in the world around her. I think even the fact that she mentions at monuments of freedom is ironic because do you really think the blacks at this time are free. Colored folks were being forced to leave places and be in certain areas of places and not do things that white folks could do. It was as though the freedom was not really there but her parents tried to tell her that it was by keeping her from what was really going on in the world. When she talks about the shade of pavement being lighter than in New York I think it makes it seem like the people in New York are less worried about skin color than the people in Washington who give possibly less freedom because they focus on the white and black concept. She even talks about how they are walking down the street and her mother is “bright” and her father is “brown and they are more of an “in-between” in this sense she just uses descriptive words not the typical white and black because she still sees everything clouded and nothing for what it truly is. When they go into the ice cream shop I feel it is quite interesting on how they sit the father and Aundre Lorde sit next to each other, then the mother and two sisters sit next to each other. They are more of sitting with the parent whom they favor in skin tone more because the mother and two sisters are closer in skin tone than the father and Aundre Lorde. When she talks about entering the ice cream shop she says she is able to see more clearly now and not have to squint with knowing that the squinting eyes are more of a symbol of obliviousness you might be able to make a prediction that now she can see she might be able to identify things more and see things for what they truly are. This is certainly the case because she hears the waitress say shamefully that they have to leave despite how much the waitress doesn’t truly feel the same way about the rules of the ice cream parlor. They goes to say how they walked out “quiet and outraged as if we had never been black before”, by saying this it is as if they finally realized what they were because they could finally see how they are truly treated. No one would say anything but be in silence because they felt so shameful and her parents more of sat their and said nothing not because of shamefulness but because they felt that should they have anticipated and avoided it better. Even her sisters she felt started to act as though nothing had happened and that they were treated in an “Anti-American” way so she ended up being the only one left to write to the president of the United States. As we go back to the beginning it mentions that graduating form the eighth grade was a time to stop being a child Lorde certainly did that she says “the waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice cream I never ate in Washington, D.C. that summer I left childhood was white, and the whit heat and the white pavement and the white stone monuments of my first Washington summer made me sick to my stomach for the whole rest of the trip and it wasn’t much of a graduation present after all”(Lorde, 570) by her saying this it is as though her childhood was a childhood of denial and that she lived it as an equal to a white but now as she goes on she has stopped being that child because she finally knows the truth. She has also seen that it is just black and white and no bright or dark or gray that is just the separation now between the two and this is a white world that we live in. when she says that this was not a great graduation gift it is her thoughts that this is the passing on and that she has now finally realized the stopping and growing and the gift of adult hood is knowledge but she does not like what knowledge she has been given.

So as you can see in Lorde’s “The Fourth of July” no matter how oblivious you try to stay you will eventually see the truth. The truth for her was that the world isn’t equal and we do live in a racist world no matter and that no matter what you it is will always be unfair on how things will always be and eventually we will have to come to terms with them. We can’t live in denial because eventually we will be able to see and hear the world and know what the case with everything really is. I feel that is the point that Lorde was trying to get across and that you have to now stop squinting and be that adult and see what really is there.

power and human nature

Many normal and religious people feel that society in itself is good by nature. This however is not always the case when you put power in the hands of someone. When you give people power they will work to keep and maintain the power that they have and to even get more or higher power. So it is only right that what I am about to tell you is what most would call human nature because it is the power that we have or are subjected to that we use to knock out the weaker.

In the beginning of the “Prime Directive” you get the sense of where the story might be leading you with foreshadow. He mentions how it is the night before Halloween, the light post hums and then it suddenly goes out, and that omens are in the air. All of these key things are foreshadowing on a negative situation. Some of you may be wondering why Halloween would be a negative thing but it deals with the fact that on Halloween you do major partying and did not go to church because he didn’t want the priest to ruin it. Another interesting thing is you can see at the very beginning of it division of power because he thinks that the priest looks like a poor person but on the other hand he heads towards the couple that looks like they are rich and well groomed. So he is more willing to follow after the couple with the money than the one with the good virtue.

In the story he also talks about Star Track and starts off comparing it to the United Nation. While talking about this he goes into greater depth with the characters and how they each represent a country. He is Captain Kirk which should be obvious specially since Star Track is a common show for people in that age category to watch but for some reason everyone gets it wrong which has a major factor on this which is that he thinks he is perfect and that human nature does not play a role in his life and that he is so divine but with the fact that everyone mistakes him it is sending out the message that in reality it is not that way and that human nature is in everyone and no one is as perfect as they might think. I also feel that that choosing Captain Kirk had a factor in things with the fact that he is the one with the most power which might also be in reference to Abu Ghraid and having power over others.

David Griffith on the other hand feels that he is trapped in the role of human nature and that he stands away from it as though he is too good for it. When he finally realizes I think is when he took the picture with the guy dressed in that horrifying costume of the guy that he took. When actually by human nature he is really part of it all and that human nature runs in him.

Griffith also relates the Star Track to the Abu Ghraid by saying “no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the healthy development of alien life and culture.” This is a reference to the U.S. military and the aliens as if other societies living. He also uses Star Track to mention human morals in the best indirect way with a direct twist possible. The Abu Ghraib is not just bad people doing bad things it is a form of human nature. It was once best said greatly by Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde, “In each of us two natures are at war –the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose- what we want most to be we are”. We are all like this we have the capability of choosing and we must make the choices do we want to give up our power so we might be good or do we want to rule and take over with it. Even if we do give up some of our power we still have it in us and by this we still might kill a little bug or something as simple as that.

Act of terror can and are committed on every level of society. It is almost always to the weaker. Like Adolph Hitler, Abu Gnraib, or just a school boy killing a bug it is all the depths of human nature. This is not humanist society it is the opposite we must all try to be good because we were born with both sides the sympathetic heart and mind and the drive of power.

paper assesment

For our project we each played an important role we each made copies of our work for each person in it so that we all might be able to gather the information and put it on a paper. We then all met up with each other several times before Thursday and on Thursday. We met once in the tiger den and discussed and gathered all the possible choices for a common theme. We then called and emailed each other many times when we were not meeting in order to discuss the information. Then we met together with all the information we had and opinions we had and met together to form it and build the paper. We then wrote it and proof read it as a group together. Then on Thursday we meet back with each other and typed the paper.

Theme Paper part 3

Vacation is a very important event for family and friends. Spending time with them is one of the best ways to enjoy a vacation It is unbelievable on how many different types of vacations there are such as going to amusement parks, going to the beach, leaving the country, and many others. However it doesn’t matter unless you have your family and friends their.
Ta-Nesha, loves enjoying the company of her family and friends on her family reunion vacation. Her and her family took a trip to Six Flags in St. Louis. While they were there they stayed in cramped hotel rooms, since they had so many of them. To Ta-Nesha and her family it didn’t matter because they enjoyed going swimming and enjoying the amusement park with each other. They got to ride many of the rides with each other such as Mr. Freeze, the boss, and superman. These types of trips are a family “must” routine for Ta-Nesha that is quite enjoyable.
Ducky on the other hand went to Key West with her soccer team and their parents, for a soccer competition. A trip like this for a soccer competition is very common and routine for Ducky and the rest of her family and friends. The parents are all good friends and get together quite often to go to the bars with each other. These trips consist of a lot of girls that attend so the space is pretty cramped in the rooms but they still love it because they get to spend quality time together. On this particular soccer competition it happens to fall around New Years, so for this the fathers decided to get together with each other and lit off fireworks. Which made this trip in it self very memorable with them jumping all over the place to avoid the fireworks. Going snorkeling for the first time ever also made this trip very memorable for Ducky, her family, and her friends even though it didn’t quite go as well as they planned and hopped for it with all the jelly fish and seasickness around. Of course it could have been worse if her family and friends weren’t there to make it better.
Lisa on the other hand loves traveling all around the world with her family and feels it would be nothing without them there. On this particular vacation to France they were definitely what made it great and interesting. Her family and friends do these types of vacations as an annual routine, but going to France was definitely not like the others. Going to the museums and chapels are a major thing for Lisa and her family because they enjoy art quite a bit and enjoy discussing it with each other. They also got to go to the Eiffel Tower. The trip was quite enjoyable and interesting especially when the fight almost broke out between Lisa’s mom and the car rental lady for treating her and her brother bad.
So as you can see family and friends are what makes a trip worth it. Vacation is something that is fun and enjoyable. If you have your family and friends there then that is what makes the trip all worth it. If you can’t have fun with them then who can you? So on your next vacations remember who you are taking and who you will have fun with.

group project theme 2

Many people love taking vacations. Vacations are a great way of spending time with your family and loved ones like friends. I myself have taken many vacations with my family and friends. It always starts out the same. You figure out who will be able to go, when you will be able to go and where you will be able to go. You got to make sure that at least one of these three things are decided before you go on your vacation in order to have your full potential of fun on the particular trip you are taking. When you figure out as much as you want you pack for the type of trip you are taking. Whether it is your needs or your wants you must make sure you bring all of the essential items with you. One of the bad things about this is it you don’t remember these things it may cause some people to start out on the wrong foot.
You have so many different types of vacations you can do with so many different ways of taking them. Some people go backpacking around and stay wherever they can find a place and others might do it very well planned out. In my family we don’t really do it like everyone else. When we pack we pack for any weather and since my mom is a flight attendant we get free airfare anywhere in the country and we only pay takes to leave the country. When we leave the house we leave not knowing where we will end up not having any reservations and with nothing planned but we do however know who it will be most the time my mother, my brother and me.
My family is very different in this for the fact that we go to the airport and just randomly pick a flight by either closing our eyes or taking the next flight out of town and just go from there. We find this to be the best way because my family pretty much lives by Murphy’s Laws and the one that fits us the best and always happens when we plan is “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”. This is why we stopped planning.
Which brings me to how I ended up on one particular vacation that will always be remembered by my mother, brother and me. It was our trip to France; it wasn’t really the place that made it memorable it was more of what happened on it. It started out pretty much the same with the whole picking system to the same everything well that was till we got to the French Airport.
We were at the airport looking for a hotel; nothing really seems harmless with that right? Well it took us three hours to get to the front of the line to talk to the lady in a 10 person or less line with two people working behind the counter. Well to make matters worse they tried rushing us and were very rude. We asked the lady if we could see some brochures of some hotels and we asked if she could reserve one. So she started to pull all these brochures out and we were mostly looking for the ones in our price range at the time and nothing looked good at all. The buildings looked ugly or they were in a bad area. So she finally pulled out a small little brochure that was about 3”x2” maybe even smaller than that, but it sure did have a beautiful picture on it of the inside lobby of the hotel. This looked like the one we wanted; well little did we know that the hotel card was pretty much the ration of the lobby. It was like for every inch the card was the lobby was five feet and it had a lot of furniture some much that only three people could really fit into it and still be able to move a little bit. Not only that but the elevator could only fit about one person comfortably and that was about it. It also took about five minutes for it to go up one floor and trust me I’m not exaggerating on that I wish I were.
You would think well hopefully the rooms are the same size or something but the rooms were even smaller. It had two beds in it, a side table, and a run down television set. The worst thing was to move in the room you had to climb over people and things. The room had absolutely not walking room so just to even get to the bathroom was a lot of trouble.
Some people with just this alone would have left and found another hotel or went back home. We wanted to find another hotel but we couldn’t the hotels were all booked up and the only ones left ran about 300 euros and if you know anything about euros you would know that it is about 500 dollars for a room. So we decided to stay because we were staying for a five-day week and only brought about 1,000 for us to have a good time. The room was already about $100 on its own so we had about 500 left that we could spend.
The first day we spent in Paris we just walked around the city and walked to many different places. We started our trip for the day at 7 a.m. and didn’t get back till about 3 a.m. We walked threw back alley’s and we went to different crepe places and ate it was awesome. One thing while we were walking threw the back alley’s we ran into jugglers and my brother just so happens is one so they asked him to show them what he can do because they thought they would be able to show him up but boy were they wrong. They were amazed with what my brother could do and he made them look like a newbie.
The second day of our trip is what I like to call the church day. We went to some many different churches that day. We went to the 16th chapel that Michael Angelo painted and we saw that it was amazing. I had never seen something like that in my whole life before. We also went to many other famous churches and my brother wanted some holly water to kind of be a reminder thing so my mom as she may be decided to get it for him because he was to scared to do it himself. So what we did was filled it up into a small little water bottle that we had; then we put it into my backpack purse. Later that day when my mom was getting thirsty I went into my purse to try to find the other bottle of water and told her to hold onto the holly bottle and well she didn’t here me. So she went to take a sip of the holly water and looked at what it looked like and was like “WOW!!! This isn’t right”. So she threw the bottle of water away with the cap off of it and so we joked around with her the whole trip and still even to this day that she blessed a trashcan on the street corner of Paris.
When we were there we also went and saw the Louvre, which is one of the biggest museums in the world. It has some of the most famous artwork of all times like the Mona Lisa. It has several miles of artwork and it would take you forever just to be able to look at all the artwork in the building. Well unfortunately we didn’t have that much time but we did get to see at least two miles of it and we did get to see the Mona Lisa in person. The sad thing was the two miles didn’t even cover half of the building. We also went to several other museums after that one and they were all so magnificent it will be something I will never forget.
The fourth day we decided to take a nice little boat ride on the water and see all the bridges and we ended up seeing the French Statue of Liberty which is a lot smaller than the one we have. The bridges were all so different and had different types of architecture and designs on the side of them it was gorgeous and we even started to see it when the sun was going down and some of it lit up for us. After the boat ride we headed over to the Eiffel tower. We weren’t able to go to the very top but we went up really high and got to see the beautiful city all around us it was breath taking and magnificent. You could even see the lights glistening off the water from the city. The wind was blowing a little and the air had the sweet smell of a chilly night even if it wasn’t down on the ground it felt like it up in the sky. It will always be stuck in my memory and my heart because that was breath taking.
The fifth day we decided that we would rent a car and go see other countries for a couple of days because we still had money left over somewhat. So we went downstairs to reserve a car and walk to the car place. So we set out on our walk early in the morning like we did everything else. However unlike all the other days this day started off bad. The hotel gave us really bad directions and got us lost so we asked for directions and that got us even more lost than what we already were. So we finally devised a plan that we thought would work. We decided to find the train station and ask them where the car rental place was. We waited in line two hours so that we could get the directions. When we finally got them we started to follow them and those directions were to the wrong place and got us lost again. We then finally found a nice American couple that gave us directions to the car rental place. Sad thing was the car rental place was a few blocks up the hill from the train station. We finally made it there the lady however tried closing the doors 30 minutes before they were suppose to close. Then she tried telling us that she gave our car away that we reserved to pick up. Then she tried giving us a smaller car double the price of what the first one was. We even said we would take it and when that happened she tried telling us that she gave that one away too. Then the car rental lady started yelling at my brother and me and that made my mom get really angry because not only was she yelling at us but she was also treating us bad. So my mom kicked into protection drive and started to defend us and started yelling back and wanted to kick her butt for doing what she was doing. We had to drag our mom out of there because she was so mad.
When we finally left home we had a good flight back and looked back on our vacation and said “wow that was fun” and we will never forget that trip. We got to see just about anything and everything on that drip and even got to have a taste of foreign drama as I like to call it. All I know is this trip will always be remembered and cherished by us for not only the beauty of the country but for the stories we have to tell. The only bad thing I must say that came out of that trip is I don’t really like the French as much as I use to no offense of course.

group project theme 1

PARTNERS:
Ducky
Tanesha

Vacations

Italy

France

Canada

Mexico

Costa Rica

California

Puerto Rico

Florida

New York

Philly

Jersey

Deleware

Texas

Disney World

Alaska

Hawaii

Bahamas

Cruise to Alaska

Cruise to Nassau

St. Thomas

St. Martin

Camping

17 mile drive

San Fransisco

Dan Diego

El paso

Dalas

Jacksborough

Clearwater

North Carolina

Plimoth Rock

Mall of America

North Dakota

My article

My article came from the magazine "The Atlantic" the title of the article was called "Off to the Races". It was about travel and Saratoga Springs. Saratoga Springs lies in upstate New York between the Hudson River Valley and the Adirondacks. It talks about three main things in it the races, the water, and the people/places. It dealt with a travelers experience in this area.

The Tone of this story more of deals with happiness and joy at the beginning as if he understands why the racetrack is such an important historic item in the town. When he comes to the springs and the water there with the spas he is more of displeased with what he is receiving out of it. He is feels as tho it is nothing more than just sitting in a "tub of warm club soda". He feels that it is a good place to visit and it more appeals to the urbanites. He also tries to give you the feeling of remembering things as though you might have experienced them or always wished to have experienced some of these.

The language in the story is more directed to urbanites and people that are more of travelers. It also directs it towards people that are looking for a good time and looking for a good relaxing vacation with the horse track or a relaxing vacation with a spa. He more of uses descriptive words and puts a few historic points into play so that the people might feel that this is an important place and the description so that they might be able to get the picture from what he is saying so that they might be interested.

The overall voice is a captivating relation to get the feelings and memories and enthusiasm going. The places they more of talked about was to interest people going for a good vacation and trying to get the attention of many others who would ever think about going on one. It shows great feeling of enjoyment and peace. This feeling makes people more interested in what is being offered towards one another. Even in some places where he does not feel as pleased he still gives it a place where it feels like in some other places it might be better than others and that even if it does not meet your criteria like the spa it is also helping because he puts facts about his weak points to reinforce it.

The structure of this article is more of a flowing patter to attract those from the title and give the positive reinforcement to go along. It gives a reader a beautiful painted picture in the imagination and positive reinforcement to all things even those that are not so positive. He is there to inform and add in his own details and give his own opinions and to tell it as he is seeing it. He is willing to put out interesting facts and combines all of it together at the end in a fitting final peace of the puzzle with the races, the spa, and the people/places. He is doing it this way by setting the scene at a spa where he is watching the people and the things around him waiting for the next day to put his horse picking to the test.