A Whole New Perspective

Yesterday, my friend let me borrow a book that I've been wanting to read for a while now and I really couldn't be more excited to have it. This book makes me actually want to read - which is saying a whole lot because I'm usually not one to voluntarily pick up a book and read it on my free time. It has really made me put into perspective everything that a take for granted, including things as simple as a loving family and being able to read and write. This book is Taking Flight by Michaela DePrince.

Michaela DePrince is a ballet dancer, who was featured in a ballet documentary about 5 years ago that just about every single ballet dancer has seen at least once. And it sure is a fantastic thing that she was featured in this, or else I may have never known about her, much less her book. Taking Flight is a memoir by DePrince that is far from any other ballet memoir written before. Being only 20 years old, I have to admit that I was skeptical of Deprince's ability to write a deep and meaningful memoir since she was so young and probably hadn't experienced enough in her life to write one. I couldn't be any more wrong. I have only read 36 pages in this book so far and I was already almost brought to tears by what I was reading about what she went through.

Here, Deprince is shown at the far left with the children of her orphanage

It begins in Sierra Leone in the 90's, which was a time when Sierra Leone was torn into pieces by a horrifying war. Deprince had loving parents who treated her well, educated her, and loved her even though she had been born with a skin condition that had given her "spots" on her arms and neck that caused her to be declared as a devil child by every other person. After her father died because of the war, she was forced to move with her mother to her uncle and his three wives' home, were she was deprived of food, water, and everything she loved, including her mother who died later from malnutrition. Her uncle later brought her to an orphanage where she is treated poorly for the sole reason of her spots. Every once and while, I have to remind myself that what I'm reading is actually true and that this really happened to DePrince. When she wrote of her time in the orphanage, she wrote, "When the aunties tugged on my cornrows, I squeezed my eyes closed. The pain took my breath away, but I wouldn't cry until I was out of sight of both aunties." (DePrince 36). This, along with her vivid descriptions of her nights sleeping on grass mats, small portions of rice as meals, and lack of love from anyone around her had really made me think about all the luxuries that I have, yet never even realize that they are luxuries. This new perspective is now tugging at the back of my mind every time I complain about my life. There are so many things that we have that are gifts and this book has already made me see that. At this point in the book, it seems she would barely even stay alive for another week, much less become a professional ballerina- but that's what keeps me hooked to this book.

The Moment

The all telling moment. The moment of no turning back. You check and double check and triple check to make sure every single requirement is stapled in there. You reread the paper for the 60th time and suddenly you see the grammatical error that must've slipped from your keen editor eye the first 59 times. Panic. Your heart starts to beat out of your chest and your hands start shaking and you frantically search for White Out in every single crevice of your back pack. Then you grab a black pen and try your best to replicate the font that you typed in. And finally the come and swipe up your paper, the thing that you sacrificed 5 precious hours of sleep for, and you know that it's all over. You can't go back and fix anything or add a better picture on the inside or make the title look prettier. Now it's all in their hands and all you can do is hope and hope and hope for a great grade- or at least a tolerable one.

Every single student who has ever put together a huge project or assignment knows that moment. And I felt that moment big time on Friday as I pushed down on the stapler and took one last look at my creative nonfiction project as I handed it over and had to just trust that I did a decent job. It feels wonderful now- having that project out of my hair- but there's still that little voice nagging me at the back of my head, telling me all of the things that I could've done better in my project. But sometimes, you just have to let whatever's bothering you go (not to sound like Elsa or anything), in order to keep sanity in your life. What I've figured out is that when you stress on and on about something that you can't do anything about, you can't really focus on the most important things at hand. If you can't do anything about it why worry about it? But anyways, you're probably asking yourself how this connects to my beginning story and here's how it does- all those moments you have when you can do something to help that stressful thing, do do things that will help because after it's all over, you'll only be stressed about it. Just use every moment you have to make things as perfect as possible and you'll be much more satisfied during that moment before you cannot do anything else.

Procrastination

Ever since we began working with columns, I've realized that I actually really enjoy writing them. Once I begin, I just keep going and going because everything seems to just flow together like water trickling down a smooth river. However, that does not mean that it's easy to motivate yourself to begin writing them. That's right, I'm talking about that procrastinator hiding inside of each one of us, some more vague than others. And since I'm writing this blog at 9:30 on a Sunday night, I've decided to write a column for this post, dedicated to procrastination.

Everybody denies it.

I'm not a procrastinator, I'm so much better than that.

But there's no denial when you wake up Monday morning with only 2 hours of sleep and a lousy paper about George Washington and his accomplishments. And then those thoughts pop into your head as you're sprinting to the bus, struggling to stuff your paper into your backpack without tripping over your untied shoes.

WHY DID I DO THIS? Next time I have a paper due I'm gonna finish the entire thing the day that it's assigned, there's no doubt about it!

But then when you come home from school with a new project lurking in your backpack (due the next day), it seems that there have never been more distractions. The TV, your friends playing outside across the street, the never-ending Instagram feed, the couch. And then you just keep feeding yourself more and more lies, just to make yourself feel OK with the fact that you're not doing your homework right away.

Oh I'm only going to watch two episodes of The Office on Netflix and then it's straight to homework! *two episodes later* You know what, I'm really feeling tired from such a strenuous day at school- I think I'll just take a quick little nap. *4 hours later* Alright! I'm doing my homework now... right after I scroll through Instagram... and Facebook and Twitter and probably Pinterest a couple times too.

And then once it's around 9 o'clock and you realize you still have that project waiting for you, it's crunch time. It always seems alright in the beginning because the amount work you must do is almost always underestimated. But the hours just keep shedding away like a cat's fur in the springtime and you're right back to where you were the night before. All you can ask yourself is one single question.

Why in the world do I do this to myself?

And from there, there's only two ways to go: Either accept the fact that you're a procrastinator and embrace it or make a true effort to change your ways. From past and present experience, I highly suggest to choose choice B, it'll help you so much in the end.

Columns!

After reading quite a few columns about everything from a history making hockey game to a 4 year old's birthday party, I've realized that columns cqn actually be pretty fun and interesting to read. What really grabs my attention witg columns is that they illustrates someone's view on a topic in what can either be a comical or impactful way - or sometimes even both! Another great thing about columns is that they are fairly short, therefore, the reader doesn't start to get bored throughout the piece or for the fact that you can simply read one without having to devote so much time towards it. This is great for me especially because I dont always like to have to devote so much times towards a piece of reading and so it's so easy to be ablento just pick up a column and read it without it extending over a long amount of time.

 But anyways, I bet the ladt thing you want to read about is my own reading habits, so I'll keep moving along and tell you some more about the columns I read today.




 Out of the many that I read, my favorite column was, by far, "What will Kate Middleton's wedding dress look like?" by Robin Givhan. This columnist used numerous amounts of rhetoric techniques,  such as figurative language, rhetorical questions, and sentence fragments. For example, in the third paragraph,  Givhan uses two techniques in this quote, "The detailed description is based on...nothing. It's pure conjecture. It's a game. Shall we play along?" This one little quote shows multiple fragments, which bring detail to this section of thw story, showing its importance.  Also, Givhan uses a rhetorical question at the end to bring the reader into the rest of the whole column, where she fantasizes about Kate Middleton's wedding dress and taking into accout every single designer that coule be used to make it.

 These columns have opened up new doors in my reading and I can't wait to read more and more!

Fahrenheit 451 Theme Project

Theme 5: People should take action rather than watch society falter and crumble

This theme is important to the understanding of the story because the book goes through Montag’s thought process of realizing how messed up his society really was; and when he does take action the reader can understand why. It is important for us to be aware of the theme because everyday we all see things that we know aren’t right, but most people aren’t able to take action towards it, so by studying this theme we learn that taking action does have a big impact.

In the beginning of the book, Montag is set to go burn down another house, but it turned out to be much different than the regular house burning.The  woman was standing in her home, surrounded by her books, and refused to move for them to burn the house. Montag watched as the woman was burned alive with her books, which first inspired his thoughts of rebellion and began to inspire him to take action. The following quote shows when Montag first started think in a different mindset; “Didn’t firemen prevent fires rather than stoke them up and get them going?” (Bradbury 31)

At the end of part one, Montag admits to Millie that he has books. This was a big step for him considering that he is a fireman and should be burning books, not secretly keeping them. By showing the books to Millie it shows that Montag was ready to start making changing and to not keep books a secret.

During part two, Montag becomes friends with a man that really helps him get to know and understand books better. They help each other in the way that they both have a love for books, so they can relate in a new way. Faber really helped Montag through his whole process. Montag said the following quote to Faber when he really wanted to get a plan into action with books, “That’s the good part of dying;when you’ve nothing to lose, you run any risk you want” (Bradbury 81). This gives a really good perspective of Montag’s new mindset.

In part two, Mildred has over two of her friends to watch their favorite program, when Montag decides to shut off the parlor walls due to his frustration and bring out one of his books. He then reads the poem, Dover Beach, to them, which causes the friends to become upset with Montag and Mildred. Although this action was not intelligently planned out, this was still an example of Montag taking action to help save a society he perceives as crumbling by reading to them.

In the beginning of part 3, most everything Montag ever knew was gone; his house, his wife, his books. Beatty was to blame for it, so when thinking he was saving his own, and Farber’s life, he burns Beatty.

The book ends with Montag running away and meeting a group known as “The book people.” They take Montag in with open arms. They give Montag a taste of what will basically be the rest of his life because he was caught breaking the law. When everything sinks in for Montag, he does a lot more thinking; mostly into his book which is Ecclesiastes in the Bible, “To everything there is a season… A time to break down, and a time to build up… A time to keep silent and a time to speak” (Bradbury 158).

Montag in Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 was definitely an interesting and eye opening book. Although the entire plot was absurd and highly unlikely to ever happen, I still felt the same frustration that Montag felt when he realized that he was surrounded by people who were completely oblivious to the fact that there were things to be learned and knowledge to be gained. While I could relate to Montag and appreciate him as a character for this reason, I still was not a fan of Montag. I thought that he became very unreasonable and didn't think through his actions towards the end, which was frustrating as a reader because you knew that he was going to feel the consequences of his actions later, yet there was obviously nothing you could do about it. Montag began to feel invincible when he realized there was a whole world of literature hiding behind his eyes, but he was far from invincible. He acted as though the laws just didn't apply to him when it came to owning books and he was in for quite the surprise when he got caught and watched his house be burnt to flames.

So, now that you know how I felt about Montag as a character, it's time to back it up. And I have just the quote to do so, from page 113, where Bradbury writes, "'Why,' said Montag slowly, "we've stopped in front of my house.'" This was the moment went Montag realized that his house was about to be burnt by his own coworkers and, more importantly, that Beatty knew exactly what Montag was up to. I guess what annoys me about this is that Montag was so obvious with his attempt at a "revolution" that Beatty was able to find out about it. This forced his attempts at revolution to be unsuccessful, because he really didn't put the time and effort into devising a plan.

Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles (Fahrenheit 451)

Mrs. Phelps' footsteps pounded against the driveway as she walked down the street and back to her home, with Mrs. Bowles at her side. "Who does he think he is? Mildred had better get a hold on that husband of hers or else I don't think I will ever go back to her house. I mean first he turns off the parlor walls and then he starts reading a book. The book was a whole bunch of nonsense, anyways. A whole bunch of nonsense," Mrs. Phelps' voice boomed with anger and frustration as she turned to Mrs. Bowles, expecting her to simply agree.

"Well, Mrs. Phelps, I do see what you're talking about. I mean, I suppose I do agree with you, yet it was quite a lovely poem he read. It was nothing like everything you hear from those parlor walls. It seemed more thought out and just simply elegant," a slight smile formed on Mrs. Bowles' lips as she drifted off into her own world of thoughts and memories.

"What are you talking about, Mrs. Bowles? All that I heard from that man's mouth was a whole load of rubbish! Anyways, what he did was completely illegal! I think we should go report it to the firemen," Mrs. Phelps glanced over at Mrs. Bowles' astonished face and sighed, "Oh, Mrs. Bowles, you're probably just stunned about all this, that's why you're thinking up all these crazy things. You'd better start thinking straight because I'm afraid if you begin to read books as well, I'd have to turn you into the firemen, just like I'm doing right now with Mr. Montag." Mrs. Bowles paused and turned her head slowly to Mrs. Phelps, who stopped as well.

"The firemen?" Mrs. Bowles mouth dropped open and her eyes widened, "But then they'll go and burn the books," she began to feel a strange sensation she had never felt before.

"Well of course! Isn't that their job?" Mrs. Phelps chuckled and began to walk forward, leaving Mrs. Bowles behind her, right where she had stopped, "Go ahead and stay there, for all I care! But I'm on my way to the firehouse. Whatever absurd story Mrs. Montag made up about that book is obviously not true. Goodbye!" She stormed down the street and into the direction of the firehouse as Mrs. Bowles' confused eyes followed her. For some reason, Mrs. Bowles didn't want her to go to the firehouse, didn't want Montag to go to prison, and most importantly, didn't want the books to be burned.

For once in her life, she had a feeling of desperation, of longing to get her hands on a book, just like Montag's. She had never felt so passionate and caring of anything in her life and she felt impelled to doing something, anything about it. Without even thinking, Mrs. Bowles feet began to rewind their steps back to Montag's house, slowly at first, but gaining speed with each step until she was running to the one thing in her life that she truly wanted. Even if it was just one more poem, eloquently spoken from Montag's mouth, her hunger for knowledge that had been sheltered for years would finally be satisfied.

 And that satisfaction was the one thing on her mind as she ran. Or at least until the firetrucks came roaring down the street, headed for the same destination as her, shattering her hopes and crushing any sense of pure happiness that she had ever felt.