Is this our senior year?

"Senior year is the best time of your life. Enjoy it while it lasts, because once the time has been lost, it can never be found again." If I had a gallon of water for every time I heard this, I could flood the Sahara desert. This sentiment seems to be very common and thus far in my senior year, I am not certain I would wish to find that lost time again. Stress and labor have seemed to be two of the most prominent things occupying my life. Between cross country, and peer counseling, and a never ending supply of homework, and college applications, and standardized tests, and work, among numerous other things, my mind is slowly being constricted by the stress. The more the pressure builds in my cranium, the more I loathe attending school and any other activity that involves getting off my rump. Why all of a sudden do I abhor school? Can I survive another four years of this torture? When expressing my sentiments to my friends, they seem to mirror my feelings. This proves the fact that I am not all by my lonesome and there is an underlying factor causing these feelings. Has senioritis set in already? Surely we cannot be plagued by this illness yet, can we? This stress is a result of the rigorous college application process, which seems to be a life and death situation. It is also a result of the academic expectations we are responsible to meet and the virtues we are held to uphold. But frankly this is tiring and futile because we should only try to please ourselves. So I will no longer remain complacent in a society where I am expected to fulfill others' expectations. Oh...wait...I am writing this blog for a grade. So much for that notion.

Saturn and the Rings of Change

It's now 1990. I'm forty-three years old, which would've seemed impossible to a fourth grader, and yet when I look at photographs of myself as I was in 1956, I realize that in the important ways I haven't changed at all. I was Timmy then; now I'm Tim. But the essence remains the same. I'm not fooled by the baggy pants or the crew cut or the happy smile—I know my own eyes—and there is no doubt that the Timmy smiling at the camera is the Tim I am now. Inside the body, or beyond the body, there is something absolute and unchanging. The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow. (236)


Tim O'Brien feels his life is one thing and his body is unchanging. You shall forever be who you once were, although you gain new knowledge or gain new experiences and these mold you around the basic principle of your original being. Your original self is like the planet Saturn and these new experiences are the constantly forming rings around the planet. Your stagnant being is who you are. Your eyes and name are distinctive unchanging qualities. The changing or moldable parts of your life can be transfigured by the experiences you encounter. Oftentimes the outer rings are what you predominantly show and are also the most important piece of your character. One experience which really molded O'Brien's life was the Vietnam War.

In his quote, O'Brien in his young years was the "Timmy smiling at the camera... with the baggy pants and crew cut and happy smile"(O'Brien). However now he is the "middle aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow"(O'Brien). Has his attitude and life not changed due to his experiences, namely in the Vietnam War? "The central incident-our long night in the shit field along the Song Tra Bong-has been restored to the piece. It was hard stuff to write. Kiowa, after all, had been a close friend, and for years I've avoided thinking about his death and my own complicity in it. Even here it's not easy. In the interests of truth, however, I want to make it clear that Norman Bowker is in no way responsible for what happened to Kiowa. Norman did not experience a failure of nerve that night. He did not freeze or lose the silver star for valor. That part of the story is my own"(O'Brien 161). In the previous chapter, O'Brien says Norman Bowker could have won the silver star and felt as if Kiowa's death was his responsibility because he lost his nerve. He states how Norman Bowker "could not talk about it and never would. He was folded in with the war;he was part of the waste"(O'Brien 153). This was not Norman Bowker's experience, but rather the author's. After manipulating the reader, O'Brien makes it clear that the story was his own. Has O'Brien not changed? He still cannot bear the thought of Kiowa's death and his responsibility and his silver star he almost won. His manipulation and duplicity is because of embarrassment and shame and speculation. O'Brien still is sorrowful and has not healed from the atrocious war in Vietnam. While his name and eyes may not have changed, his experiences have certainly transfigured his rings, the most important piece of Tim O'Brien.

Why I Write by Ishmael Beah

Why do I write? Is it for the monetary compensation? Or is it for the fame I envision? No, when you have seen your family trapped in a smoldering coffin and imagine their faces running off their bones, these matters are downright minuscule. When you have sliced a man's Adam's apple with a bayonet in a competition to see whose prisoner would die the fastest, these are meaningless. When you see your friends with numerous geysers spouting blood into a river of death, these matters are absolutely futile. And when you are awaken from the haze of drugs and butchery into the clarity of sobriety, citizenship, and scholarship, you realize these are devoid of any meaning whatsoever. No I write to make people aware. To make them aware of the children affected by war. Surreal as it may seem, I was an executioner. I am mortified to say this, but if I save one child from the torment I endured by sharing my story, then my writing was not in vain. Today we have wars similar to the conflict I lived in Sierra Leone and the world must know of the atrocities of war and genocide. Oftentimes I awake in the dark of night to see the men I murdered slowly emerging from the bushes with their gaping wounds spewing blood uncontrollably. The sinews of their body are dangling and torn and I wake up in a puddle of my sweat, trembling. I wonder how many of these rebels had families like mine who will forever mourn the uncertain, yet definitive death of their relatives. These dreams from the inferno of Hell and the migraines accompanying them I fear will never subside. It is my sincere goal and wish to educate the world about these conflicts where the sun never rises and the children cling to their guns like childhoods they never had. My writing is also to thank the UNICEF and people who saved me from my irreversible demise: my uncle, relatives, friends, Leslie, and most of all Esther, my first true love. When I contently felt and believed all was lost to my AK, you resuscitated me. You awakened my eyes to the larger world, peace, Freetown, and literature. You led me to life.

"The man who knows when not to act is wise. To my mind, bravery is forethought."

Euripides once said, "the man who knows when not to act is wise. To my mind, bravery is forethought." While this quote can be applied to many walks of life, it has a strong correlation to the memoir, A Long Way Gone. The rebels, also known as the RUF(Revolutionary United Front) began entering villages and essentially taking people hostage. They knew that the government they were battling could not risk killing all its people in the villages by sending their troops in. For this reason the rebels needed the villagers and when the villagers began running away out of sheer fear, the rebels began slaughtering the people whom they were "fighting for." To provide an example of the atrocities committed by the rebels for those unfamiliar with the memoir, I would like to bring your attention to a quote that merely scratches the surface of these atrocities. "They had carved their initials on his body with a hot bayonet and chopped off all his fingers with the exception of his thumbs."(Beah 21) This was done to a man who was still alive and he was sent to be a "messenger" to the other villages. To us this is unfathomable, but in Liberia, Ishmael saw this on a regular basis and was constantly running for his life.
On one occasion, Ishmael and his friends were caught by a few rebels and he recalls, "as we approached the village, two rebels ran ahead. Six of us and one rebel, I thought to myself. But he had a semiautomatic machine gun and a long belt of bullets wrapped around him."(Beah 32) Ishmael had contemplated attacking the rebel with his five friends, however in not doing so he probably saved their lives. The rebel was walking directly behind them with the gun pointed at their heads and certainly would have pulled the trigger if one of the boys moved erratically. Ishmael knew when not to act and saved several lives. Another excellent example of this forethought bravery and wisdom could be located when a tribe caught the boys hiding out inside of a shack. Twelve of them (tribesmen) ran after seven of us, wrestling us to the sand. They tied our hands."(Beah 65) Ishmael allowed the pursuing villagers to catch him, realizing the situation would be exacerbated by a violent struggle. Once tied, the boys and Ishmael were returned to the village to face the chief. The chief then said, " 'you children have become little devils, but you came to the wrong village... Well this is the end of the road for devils like you. Out there in the ocean even you rascals cannot survive.' "(Beah 66) It is essential to understand that young boys were recruited for the rebel cause and feared because of this. It is because of this, the villagers wanted to kill the boys; they were concerned with their village's safety. Before the boys were to be led off to their deaths in the ocean, a hip hop tape fell out of Ishmael's pockets. The chief picked up this unknown form of music and asked Ishmael what it was all about. By keeping calm and respectfully explaining and dancing the music, Ishmael persuaded the chief who reversed the death sentence, realizing these boys were not violent rebels but mere children. The lack of struggle and composed behavior presented by Ishmael once again saved the lives of several people. His foresight allowed him to make brave, wise choices even in the face of death.

Is Oskar a naive child or an enlightened genius?

When I initially began to read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I was unsure about Oskar. I could not decipher whether this child had some type of extremely overactive imagination or deficiency. Constantly through the novel I questioned this notion and sat on the fence on whether Oskar was a genius or simply a naive, uncommon child. My questioning stemmed from the first few pages of the novel. Oskar thinks, "what about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them and played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls?"( Foer 1) Yet, just a few sentences later, Oskar wonders what "if everone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about..."(Foer 1) Do you understand where my dilemma stems from now? Knowing about women's menstrual periods is uncommon knowledge for 13 year old boys, let alone a 9 year old boy. However the whole notion of swallowing microphones to listen to heartbeats seems utterly absurd. Continually through the novel I began to further believe in the fact of young Oskar's genius. This belief was solidified by many of Oskar's comments such as, " 'Richard Buckminster Fuller was a scientist, philosopher, and inventor who is most famous for designing the geodesic dome, whose most famous version is the Buckyball. He died in 1983, I think. ' " (Foer 190) I am clueless as to where he acquires such trivial knowledge (to us) at age 9 and why he is at all interested in such topics. Another particular incident which validates this fact further could be found on page 51. Oskar writes a letter to Cher Marcel, his French teacher explaining how he will no longer be needing the language lessons. It is written partly in French and displays a very cunning mind at work. This level of wiliness is uncommon, especially in a 9 year old. Oskar possesses a very developed mind, far beyond his years, which I believe to be to his detriment. In his quest to learn more about his father and the secret key, Oskar reads extensively and acquires a great deal of knowledge, particularly about human tragedy. This helps him deal with his father's death by associating with other victims' pain who experienced tragedy, like the Dresden bombings and bombing at Hiroshima. Through all his readings and the tragedy of 9/11 Oskar has lost much of his innocence and the naivety normal children have. However in this time, Oskar has grown incredibly knowledgeable and is certainly morphed into a genius for his age.