The Tell-Tale Heart

This story is a rough one. It tells that tale of a man proving he is not crazy by explaining how he murdered a man because of his eye. I do believe that this man was crazy for doing this, but it is hard throughout the story to believe everything he is saying. He is insane and it is not always the best idea to believe someone who does not always tell the story as it is happening. While he does say that the man is not a bad person, it is hard to believe that even someone as weird as him would kill him for no reason.

That is why I have to conclude that while what he did was wrong that there was a reason for it. He does not tell us it, but there is a lot he does not tell us. We cannot believe everything he says and the fact that the eye is so bad makes me think that maybe he had a bad experience with the man before. However, this story could just be a story of a man who cannot handle certain aspects of life. Including this old man's life.

A Night to Remember

Carl awoke once again to the cold feeling of wet sheets. He had consistently had night sweats and had no real way of getting rid of them. He lived on the lake, but even the warm breezes that he would feel were not enough. The air conditioning was not reliable because of the constant power outages on his block. Worst of all, the rest of his family liked the heat because it reminded them of their old home in the south. Carl's only solution was going to the beach.

There he could feel the coolness of the water refreshing him with every step closer. It was the only place in the city he felt he could relate himself to nature. As he walked down the beach, he could feel a combination of sand and rocks mixing with his feet. Even by this cooling spot of his, he was still very hot. He decided that the only way to solve this was by swimming. He took off his shirt and walked into the water.

Behind him he heard the steps of another person. His twin sister Violet. She was the favorite in the family and tended to get all of the attention. She always knew though when Carl was not feeling the best. Although it was dark he could tell that it was her by her bright blonde hair that was visible at the darkest of times. She walked up behind him and took a deep breath.

"Why did you come here?"

"What?"

"You know it isn't safe."

"It won't happen to us. We are safe here at night. I've only ever heard of anything bad happening in the mornings."

Violet looked at him for a moment pondering what would be the right answer.

"Let's go swimming."

The two stepped into the water and looked at each other one last time before diving in. The waves were bigger than usual, but it did not stop either of them from getting to the deep water relatively soon. They were both always more comfortable there. Then they both felt what they had feared before going into the water. The riptide.

It was common to feel riptides, but recently there had been a mad who would wait for a riptide and would grab people under the water during them. Well, this was the belief. When both Carl and Violet felt themselves being taken away, they felt that it was the end. They started to panic and swam for the shore as fast as they could. They were not really sure how far away they were from the shore only that the lights of the city were in that direction.

Carl was swimming and took a break to make sure his sister was keeping up. She was nowhere to be found. He started to scream her name, but knew that she would not be anywhere around. He saw someone waiting at the pier and swam toward it. He thought it was his only chance of maybe saving his sister from this awful death. However, she had not been on top of the water for a while and he was worried that it was already too late. That maybe there was not anything he could do and he was already too late. He still swam to the pier and when he got there the man was nowhere to be found and his sister was not either.

He climbed up the pier and saw a series of wet spots from some big object. He had to assume that it was his sister in order to still have hope. He started running in the direction and followed it till it stopped write at the boardwalk where people often exercised. What would he do? How would he explain this too his parents?

On his way home he walked slowly pondering his best move. He had no idea that this alleged "diver killer" was real. How could something like this be possible in a city with so much protection?

When he got home he knew that the best thing to do would be to tell his parents. Once he told them they slapped him and immediately called the police. When they answered, they were sorry to confess that they had already found her body. She was hanging from a tree by her neck. A suicide.

Carl knew this was not true. He insisted that the police do an autopsy to confirm that this allegation was true before they did anything else. The next few days were hard. The family sat at home and waited for the news. Not sure if they should have a funeral or not. Carl and his parents were convinced it was a murder, but how could they be so sure. Carl distinctly remembered Violet warning him about going in the water not the other way around. However, the killer had never made any of his victims look like it was a suicide. Maybe Carl was closer to finding the killer that night than anyone else had been. For some reason, Carl was sure that the man standing on the pier was the murderer. However, if he was the murder the alleged murderer was a diver and this man was standing on the pier.

When the autopsy results came back, everyone was surprised. The police found that Violet had actually been tried to be saved. They found evidence of calcium chloride in her system that was used to stop the clotting in her heart. Someone was trying to help her. However, this was not good enough for Carl. That night he decided he had to go back to the beach.

He stood on the side of the pier and waited for someone to come. Some sort of evidence that his sister was not accidentally killed. Why would someone try to save her and then hang her from a tree? The next morning when Carl was eating his breakfast a man walked up to the door and arrested his father. The cop said that his father assisted in the murders that had happened in the past. He was an assistant to this diver who had killed these people in the riptides. The diver would kill them and his father would bury them. It was a two-man murder. Carl sat there with tears streaming down his face and knew that he was the man standing on the pier. When his father confessed, it was said that he tried to save his daughter once he found out who it was, but it had already been too late. It was how his father had been doing so well lately financially. His father had tried to save Violet, but she was doomed. The family would never be the same.

Tiger Mountain Peasant Song - Fleet Foxes

Wanderers this morning came by
Where did they go
Graceful in the morning light
To banner fair
To follow you softly
In the cold mountain air

The first line of the song is very interesting. It uses the words "wanderers" meaning that the people that are walking around are kind of lost. They are not exactly sure what they are looking for. However, as the song goes on it is evident that they do not stay around long and that they mean well. They are not some sort of evil demon.

Through the forest
Down to your grave
Where the birds wait
And the tall grasses wave
They do not
know you anymore
This verse is the first where the narrator talks of their own experience. It also has to deal with the lostness that death causes. On the way to visiting a grave it has been a long time so the surroundings are not as familiar as they once were. The death is not recent.

Dear shadow alive and well
How can the body die
You tell me everything
Anything true
The narrator, like the wanderers, is a little lost right now. He/she is not sure how death works. he is willing to ask anyone that will give him a straight answer, even the "shadows". This desperateness for knowing shows how the narrator was very shaken by the death of this important person in his life.

In the town one morning I went
Staggering through premonitions of my death
I don't see anybody that dear to me
The author of this song is getting so obsessed with finding this new information that he/she is starting to think of their own death. The obsession for the knowledge of death is something that consumes people. The death that is seen is also a lonely one since he/she does not see anyone dear to them.

Dear shadow alive and well
How can the body die
You tell me everything
Anything true

This verse then repeats showing the emphasis on the obsession the narrator has acquired for knowledge of death.

Jesse
I don't know what I have done
I'm turning myself to a demon
I don't know what I have done
I'm turning myself to a demon
The last verse is one of the most important. It mentions the name "Jesse" that could be a boy or girl and seems to be the dead person that the narrator has been visiting all along. The narrator also expresses that his obsession with what has happened to Jesse and his own acception of it has turned him into something evil. A "demon" so to speak. However, he does not know how to escape and is very concerned.

On the Reservation

Reservations were created for Native Americans to relocate them so they could have land again. While it was good to give them land elsewhere, it was not the original land they had and it was somewhere strange to them. It also caused the Native Americans to be very segregated from the rest of society. The separation between the two different societies caused the rest of America to continually look down upon them.

While it may have not been the best option for them, it still gave Native Americans the opportunity to have a society of their own. However, you can tell when they leave the way some people may look at them or not respect them as much because of the color of their skin/their culture. It is true that they are apart of the reservation, but it does not mean that we can treat them as if they are aliens in their own land. It was the Europeans who took their land not the other way around. There is a tension there that will never be erased and cannot be forgotten.

America has become a great country since it has been started, but it is easy to forget that we have taken other people's land for our benefit. That is why Native Americans deserve the most respect because we took their land and gave them land somewhere else and they were able to live through that.

Propaganda 2011

Propaganda is used in our world today to persuade people to believe something. It is a classic technique used by many publications all over the world. While it may seem like an antiquated technique, it is still widely used in 2011. 

A more common example in America is of the war in Iraq and the terrorists in our time in general. We only ever hear one side of the story. The side that says they are killing innocent Americans. While this is true, we have to see both sides.  Never do we really hear other sides of the story. This is a propaganda that we have been shown. It makes a majority of us believe that there is a reason for the war that we are in and to not sympathize with the people we are fighting. 

This idea of showing people a certain view has worked in the past many times and propaganda is a good way to get people to start to support a cause. This method will continue to be used throughout the world for a long time. 

Hungry for Attention

This has to do with the book Black Boy by Richard Wright. This story is about how he grew up and when he was young it is evident that he wasn't happy. He not only was left by his father, poor, and hungry, but he craved attention that he could not get from his mother because of her constant working. He then got her attention by getting into trouble or doing good things. Something that is not normal for a child to do. It seems that most of the time people will get attention through negativity or through positivity. Not usually both.

This part of Richard's personality shows that he is trying to do as much as he can to get any sort of attention from his mother. (He no longer tries to get attention from his father because he no longer wants to deal with him.) What else is shown in the story this far is that Richard is not the only one in this situation. From his description we can infer that many other kids are doing the same. They are doing things so there parents will pay attention to them.

However, the only real way they could ever get enough attention would be if their parents had more money. The only way their parents will make more money is if they have equal rights and pay as the people around them. This is indirect way that racism played a part in his life in his young age. However, it seems that he thirsted for attention even before he was affected by the racism when he started the fire in his house to get some of the attention away from his grandmother. Cruel, but most kids at four do not quite know their morals and cannot see the consequences of their actions as well.

While Richard's quest for attention continues, we can only read to find out where it takes him.

An American Journalist

This was by far the most interesting story I read in the past weeks. It was about how hard it is to report a story on something and not make it in their nations viewpoint. This also raises another question: Should people be reporting the news from the views of the country or how it actually is? This question isn't as easy as it sounds. It is better for most journalists to work in the view of their country because they are the people they are writing for.

As the article says, when they asked nine arab countries for a survey if they thought the people who executed 9/11 were middle-eastern and most said no. This is most likely because it is not easy to blame yourself for doing anything really. Let alone your country, which makes up a lot of someone. It is the same reason you never go up to a person who you know is from that country and tell them what they are doing wrong.

It is the same with America. It is a delicate balance between how things are happening and how it looks from our view. However, this is very important and it is something that we need so I do not object. It is just important to know what is going on not only on one side, but both.

King Still King?

Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the most influential people of the 20th century. He was a major leader in black rights and was one of the big reasons that they have been as widely accepted today. He is a man who  was known for many great deeds. It has been a number of decades since he was shot and he will always be remembered, but it is important. Is he still a king now?

Well, I believe he is. He affected many people during his time and still affects people today. The fact that we have a black president now is even more amazing. From his time to now we have grown very fast. Faster then most people thought we would.

Most people from his generation never even thought they would be a live for a black president and now we have one that one his presidential election very easily. To appreciate King's legacy we have a national holiday for him. A time for people to remember what he has done for black people around our nation. To say that we do not still appreciate him wouldn't make sense. Many of the things in our lives everyday were changed because of him. He did not only change America for one group, he changed it for everyone.

This Sacred Soil-Seattle

This is one of the best Native American point-of-view I have read. The man in question, Seattle, is very logical and simplistic with his observations. He has accepted his fate, which so many people find so hard to do. He felt connected to the land, while we were inhabitants. His whole life was about this land and his people. A deep connection that no "foreigner" could replicate. The Europeans could never understand, not anymore.

However, this wasn't their fault. They had started to own land hundreds of years before. Land became a product to them. It was no longer something that held sentimental value, but something to be gained. Hence the reasons people started exploring out of Europe. (Well they wanted to find India, but I guess that's indirectly getting new land.) To the men asking the Native Americans to move to a reservation, it probably seemed like they were doing them a favor. That this was probably the best outcome, but losing that land was losing everything. There was nothing they could do to make up for it except leave them alone.

Seattle knew, however, that these men were not going to leave. The best option for them was the reservation. The saddest part of the story was that he had lost hope. In his faith and his people. He felt that his "god" so to speak was deserting him and only helping the other side. His ultimate point, which I have never heard, was that it was going to come back against the white man. That it would not always be good for them either and that it would all fall apart. While this isn't a necessarily positive way to look at things, it has to be true. Nothing is forever. Just existence.

"There is no death, only a change of worlds."