XLR8LIFE

4/5/09 Prompt #5 In __Of Mice and Men__, the most important theme is relationships. Whether people want to accept it or not, other people make up their lives. While you can push your destiny in the right direction, you can't single-handedly make your life what you want it to be. There's always someone else influencing your life. And so, relationships are the most important theme of this book, and of life.

Relationships are important in this book because the whole book is about the relationship between George and Lennie. The book ends when their relationship ends, because there's nothing else to tell of George & Lennie. Relationships are important in life because like stated above, other people help to determine your destiny. A boyfriend/girlfriend can influence a person's decision to stay away from drugs, alcohol, etc. On a larger scale, a person's plan of life can be disrupted by one person. A spouse can destroy his/her spouses life by cheating on them, or doing something to lose the spouse's trust. A rich uncle can turn his/her niece/nephew's life around if he/she leaves the niece or nephew with all of their money in a will. People heavily affect other peoples' lives, and so relationships are important because they can make or break life.

4/5/09 Prompt #4 In Dickens' book __Great Expectations,__ many kinds of expectations are given. Pip's original of expectation of being common, his expectation of wealth, and his expectation of love (with Estella). All these expectations are about people. They all relate to how Pip's life will turn out, and we have these expectations of other people. For example, when we see a kid who has all F's, we expect that he will do drugs (not that we want the person to, it's just that we expect it to happen), go to a bunch of parties, and end up with no life. When we see a dog struggling to get around the house, we expect that dog to be put down in the next few months. These expectations are similar to, and based on, stereotypes. We group people together, and their group determines their expectation. The nerd will end up being rich, the rich kid will end up being spoiled and lazy, the lazy person will end up being a failure (not that these lead into one another), etc. These kinds of stereotypes determine our expectations of people.

4/5/09 Prompt #3 Many aspects of life in Harper's __To Kill A Mockingbird__ are part of life in our world today. The 'Doing What's Right' issue is very important. Atticus could have declined the offer to defend Tom Robinson. He could have simply walked away, but he did what was right, and defended Mr. Robinson. This is a very important issue in society today, especially in school, because many people don't do the right thing. Kids let others beat people up or pick on them because they're different, just because they're afraid of being picked on themselves. If everyone did what was right, we wouldn't have this issue. Everyone could be nice to each other without anyone feeling bad.

One aspect from the book I don't think is prevalent today is racism. Many people will say racism is still a big issue today, simply because they do not want to be called a racist. They want everyone to know that they don't support racism. However, I don't think racism is a big issue in our modern world. Racism does still exist, but it doesn't affect people very much. People do business with all kinds of nationalities, and if one person is picking on someone else because of their race, they just shrug it off. It's not like there's a whole crowd taunting them, and so racism isn't a big issue in our world today.

4/5/09 Prompt #2 We can learn from Golding's work, __Lord of the Flies__, that fear and the 'beast within' are both things everyone has inside them. Everyone has a dark beast within them that preys on fear, and when fear and stress are introduced to a person's life, like in LOTF, that beast comes out. While physical and mental fear bring this beast out, emotional fear actually keeps it away. Society is what causes this type of fear, because people are afraid of not being adequate to their peers. Everyone tries to act normal so as not to stick out, and so this beast is locked away inside us. However, when societies rules no longer apply and people truly do not care what others think, these beasts will emerge.

10/6/08 Prompt #1 The truth about mythology is that it is totally subjective. It is affected by what people see and hear in the world around them. for example, in the test we took today, the Choctaw people noticed unusual things in their environment. They noticed opposums are covered with fur, yet they have none on their tail. Buzzards have feathers covering their bodies as well, yet have no feathers on the top of their heads. They created myths to explain these natural occurences. Some common ground myths share is that they almost always have gods in them. In the Choctaw story, the 'Great Spirit' was their god, and he was the creator of all people.

One thing I have learned about our study in mythology is how creative and similar people are around the world. All the myths we read made sense, and if I didn't know any better, I would think they were true. People are also very similar around the world. Almost every culture produces myths, and almost every culture has a creation myth, a myth explaining how an animal came to be, etc. Myths have a lot in common, and without knowing what culture produced it ahead of time, it would be hard to tell.

Something personally revealed to me through our study of mythology is how much I love myths. I never thought so many people could be so creative and original with these stories. They were so fascinating, and when reading them I could picture myself there. Another thing personally revealed to me is that if I lived thousands of years ago when these myths were first created, I would have made a myth myself. I would have been an old storyteller who passes down stories to children, telling stories of the old gods and making some myths of my own.