...How can a film told through a child’s eyes be appealing to a wide audience? These eyes provide a new perspective on horrific events of WWII. “The boy in the striped pyjamas”, directed by Mark Herman, effectively represents the key events, themes and messages, setting and characters as contained in the novel, of the same name, by John Boyne. Herman has used editing techniques of key events to effectively deliver the plot of the book. The opening is a collection of scenes in a busy city street. Glimpses of Bruno, the young central character, joyfully running home with his friends are placed between images of what surrounds them. These include men in uniforms, Swastika flags and people being forcefully loaded on to trucks. As Bruno pretends to fly a plane he is completely unaware of these events. This editing clearly establishes that the film will be told from his point of view - that of an innocent ignorant child in German during WWII. Furthermore, the use of camera angles develops the story and the relationship between Bruno, the son of the Commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp and Shmuel, a young Jewish prisoner. At first they are separated by individual close up shots. While later we see them together on the scene through an eye level camera angle. These shots parallel their developing friendship. At all times the fence that physically separates them is prominently placed between them in each image. Their friendship, forbidden in these circumstances and time, is central...
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...Pink for girls; Blue for boys? Nowadays if we walk into a department store we can be sure that we will find pink and some blue clothes, toys and little other objects for children such as books, bikes, lunchboxes, board games, toy cookers, cash registers, even games consoles. If we look at these objects there is no wonder everybody knows that pink is specified for girls and blue for boys. But how did this become a common thought? Since when do we use colors to make a difference between genders? And why exactly did we choose pink and blue to fulfill this role? In the 1800s most infants were dressed in white and both boys and girls wore dresses or short skirts until the age of five or six. Although, there was a few small difference between boy and girl clothing. For example girls wore dresses which were buttoned up in the back while boys’ dresses were buttoned up in the front. So gender difference wasn’t highlighted just in a little scale. Why wasn’t this important in that age of time? One theory is that distinguishing boys from girls was less important than distinguishing kids from adults. Childhood was a time of innocence while adulthood typically meant working hard. By the 1850s other colors than white had started to appear in baby clothing, but gender-based distinctions were slow to emerge. For example a Times fashion report from 1880 says that boys and girls were dressed alike in shades of blue, pink, white or violet; another report from 1892 says young girls were wearing...
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...juveniles growing up in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen in the 1960’s. Lorenzo Carcatarra claims it is a true story, but New York denies anything and everything. The four boys are good friends with their Catholic priest named Father Bobby, who is played by Robert DeNeiro. Father Bobby is a good priest who likes to have fun and play basketball, smoke, and drink, but he really cares about the boys. One time one of the boys was hit by his mother’s boyfriend and he had a talk with him and basically told him if you hit the by again ill kill you. One day the boys are hanging out on a rooftop and they decide to steel some hotdogs from a portable hotdog vendor, they’ve done it before so it was nothing new, but this time as the decoy boy orders a hotdog and don’t pay for it, and is chased by the hot dog vendor the three other kids start to push the cart, and as the other kid returns they move it over a subway stairway and as the vendor appears the boys cannot hold on any longer, so the cart goes down the steps and smashes a guy into the wall, h does not die but is hospitalized. The four juveniles go to court and three of them are sentenced to at least 1 year and not more than 18 months, and the other one is sentenced to at least 6 months and not more than one year. They are required to serve their term at the Wilkinson home for boys, it has 5 units and holds 780 juveniles. While serving there sentence a guard Shawn Nokes played by Kevin Bacon beats them and sexually abuses them with the help and...
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...Natural Effects on a Boy Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions has the entire life of its author’s experiences, virtues, and detailed imperfections. Rousseau’s Confessions is one of the first notable autobiographies and has influenced many forms of narratives. It inaugurated modern day autobiography and inspired a narrative technic used in many great novels. Rousseau wrote this autobiography in order to tell the world about himself and express the nature of man. He did not want to be known by how people thought of him, but rather be able to tell people exactly what happened in his life and let them be the judge. Rousseau begins Confessions by stating, “this is the only portrait of a man, painted exactly according to nature and in all of its truth, that exists and will probably ever exist” (57). He included embarrassing experiences and personal thoughts from throughout his life to show every possible virtue of his life. He portrays what every boy encounters from mischievous trickery to entering sexual adulthood. The events that change his life and himself become a consistent theme while he describes his childhood, sexual cravings, and natural thoughts of a boy’s life. One of the most common subjects in Rousseau autobiography is the story of his childhood and the nature of a boy. Rousseau’s mother passed away during his birth, which strained the relation between him and his father. When they tried to speak of her the conversation would end with tears because his father saw Rousseau’s...
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...Living in a world where you feel like you are not seen or heard can be mind blowing and depressing. A young high school boy named Brandon in the short film, The Most Beautiful Thing by Cameron Covell, is a social outcast and has an isolated mindset. He feels as if he is never seen nor heard. Knowing that, he realizes that prom is just around the corner and he has to build up the courage to not only find a girl but also to ask her to go to prom with him. He has his eyes on one girl in particular and attempts to speak to her every time he sees her. The first time he speaks to her in the hallway she keeps walking. He later sees this girl outside sitting beside him and he speaks again. She did not respond. He persists and yells, “You can’t hear me?” She realizes he is trying to get her attention so she looks over at him. She writes him a note informing him that she is deaf and refuses to speak and that her name is Emily. They start writing notes, and then transition into hanging out, texting and even liking each other. Then he realizes he just might have a date for prom. First he has to figure out how he will ask her. But one day just might change everything for the worst. An unexpected obstacle occurs and he has to figure out a resolution. The acting of the main characters, the setting where the short film takes place, and the music that is playing in the background all has a positive impact on my thought of this film. The acting in this film was highly significant. Due...
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...What makes this ghost story so interesting is that it is so unexpected. Sitting on a cold bench, right before practice, I figured I would ask around to see if anyone had any good ghost stories to tell. Little did I know that I would find one that would send chills down my spine. As the oldest sibling growing up in their two story house in Bergen county, Dana remembers a lot of her childhood as well as her brothers, who is only a couple of years younger. She made known that her house was in fact a vacation home that had the luxury of having the lake right in the backyard. It is a two-story house and after moving in they decided to put on addition. Prior to the addition and back when it was just a vacation home, a family who had two little boys occupied the house. The events that took place...
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...Physical Education Teacher “As the time came, I started to ponder. What could I possibly do five days a week, year-round, and not get bored with it.” As her hands were flipping she said, “My brain was rushing with thoughts and ideas.” It then hit me, choose something you love doing. Be something you’re good at and perfect it. Never slack. At this moment what I love doing most is playing sports and working out. With that being said, what better job than a physical education teacher? Five days a week, weekends off, holidays off, and two entire months off, what a better job?” Looking like a skeleton, I can see where she’s going with this. She was a sophisticated looking woman, with dark skin, but not gloomy. As she talked about her job her eyes lit up like stars in the sky. It was obvious she loved her job, and wouldn’t choose be anywhere else. The students moved on to new activities or sports every other week. The students were respectful, and disciplined very well. They were also cooperative and seemed to love the activities they had to participate in. Some activities included: basketball, soccer, hockey, badminton, table tennis (ping pong), and other teamwork involving activities. She taught all of the students how to use teamwork, and inspired many people to engage in sports. Some people who never even thought about playing sports before, played soccer because she opened up her own soccer team. She was the teacher of the year. This interested me even more. Maybe I could...
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...great deal of short stories, but he also created novels, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, and literary criticisms. Lawrence was obviously a unique individual, and this is reflected in his short story writing. Many other authors of his time wrote with a common characteristic, passion, or setting; but Lawrence uses his unique personality to write with a common theme of intimacy, emotions, and instinct. More specifically, in D. H. Lawrence’s short stories “Tickets, Please”, “You Touched Me”, and “The Blind Man”, Lawrence reflects the characters’ level of intimacy with the sense of touch. In “Tickets, Please” D. H. Lawrence tells the story of a young boy, unfit for war and “crippled”, who tries to win over as many girls as possible. John Thomas was the only decent looking boy left at the tramway system during the war, and he used that to his advantage. Every night, John Thomas would “walk” a girl home; however, he never came close to an actual relationship. Eventually, John Thomas had been with every single girl at the station, and by that time, his girls were fed up. The ladies were tired of being used and treated poorly by John Thomas, so they all got together and came up with a plot for revenge. The girls decided that they would make him choose just ONE of them to be with. When they asked him upfront, he didn’t give an answer, so they tried something else. The girls have John Thomas turn and face the wall; then, each girl was supposed to touch...
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...In The National Gallery ”In the National Gallery” is a short story written by Doris Lessing in 2007. The story is a about a person visiting in the National Gallery. The main character has decided to spend an hour looking at one special picture. At first the person is sitting quietly studying the picture, but then an elder man enter the room and sits next to the main character. After a little while another man sits down next to the older man, but the second man is younger. As they sit the elder man starts to tell the younger boy about the painting and the painter Stubbs. The main character can’t help but listen to the elder man and his knowledge about the painting and painter. As the two men has sit for a while the young man suddenly gets annoyed and snaps at the elder man and then leaves room afterwards. The elder man stays in his seat. The room gets filled with some young French schoolgirls; they are loud and noisy and get a lot of attraction from everyone in the room. But there is one girl that the main character especially observes. The main character notices that the man next to him/her is staring at the girl as well, but more as if she was really something special. The main character starts to analyse the girl and also see that there is something special about her. The girl suddenly leaves the rest of the group and sits down next to the man. At first she watch the picture but then falls asleep. The man and main character starts to talk about her. The man tells that the...
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...Romance is a term that is described as a pleasurable feeling of excitement and wonder associated with love. With the coming of age for adolescents, it is normal to experience such emotions towards another individual. However, sometimes these feelings are misinterpreted or misdirected. In John Updike’s short story “A&P” and James Joyce “Araby”, both authors tell of a tale of teenagers and their struggles with young love. Updike allows reader’s to see through the eyes of a teenager in his story “A&P”. The story begins with Sammy, a young clerk who becomes fascinated with the arrival of three girls in his store. The girl that grabs his attention the most is Queenie, by carefully observing her walk through the aisles and talk to her friends, he goes through a tremendous change in his character. At first, Updike shows us the immature side of Sammy, he quotes “The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece…where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs” (pg. 835), this shows the reader that Sammy is immature concentrating on the girls instead of doing his job. However, as we go further into the story, his somewhat obsession for Queenie leads him to question his own life. His feelings become so powerful that he forms his own conclusions about Queenie and her life and wonders if he could be part of that life too. When the girls finally approach the register, they are embarrassed by Lengel. This angers Sammy and causes him to change from...
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...Emily Clark Dr. Dicke HST 122h-999 Examination 1 Imagine being a young boy in 1899. Now imagine the fact that there is no time for play. Imagine having to sit in to coal mine day in and day out breathing in the dirty fumes from the coal itself. Young boys in the year 1899 did just that. They all imagined what it would be like to play outside in the streets instead of working underground for hours each day. What would it be like to have time as a kid? Men worked. Boys worked. Everyone worked. Labor was intense, conditions were not always the best and overcrowding in the factories was a problem seen from day one. With this, the greatest social and economic change in America occurs; Industrialization, in which a society or country transforms itself from an agricultural society (human power) into a society that is based on the manufacturing of goods and services through machine power. Individuals in this period are replaced by machines and craftsmen are replaced by large assembly lines. No longer do men, women, and children have to do everything step by step, the use of machines is now implemented, making it so the production of goods and services is more beneficial and effective to all. In the year 1899 industrialization has reached its adolescence stage, in which the U.S. becomes a developing nation. In its previous infancy stage industrialization created few factories and steam ships, neither being significant enough to see a change to the economy itself. In 1899,...
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...Title: Lord of the Flies Author: William Golding Other books written by author: The Inheritors, Darkness Visible, Free Fall, The Spire General Plot: During a horrible war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island. Two boys named Ralph and Piggy come across a conch shell and realize they could use it to summon the other boys. Once they gathered everyone, the boys started electing a leader and planning a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph chooses another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who will hunt food for the entire group. When they first start off they all still act like young boys and play around and stuff but as they live on the island longer every ones true colors come out. Some people turn against each other and some become violent. This leads to destruction on the island. Main Character: The main character is Ralph. He is appointed as leader of the group in the beginning. He is a young boy with a good heart and just wants the best for the rest of the boys and wants to get everyone off the island. Most interesting character: The most interesting character to me was Jack. Jack has attitude and fights and stands up for what he wants. He’s the antagonist in the book. He ends up turning evil and doing bad things and that intrigued me because it made me realize we all have a little bit of Jack in us. Passage 1: ‘Maybe,” he said hesitantly, “maybe there is a beast.” The assembly...
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...In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the other boys. Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and devising a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who will hunt food for the entire group. Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing ships. The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through the lenses of Piggy’s eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and one of the youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having burned to death. At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend much of their time splashing in the water and playing games. Ralph, however, complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in their attempt to catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting. When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice...
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...The Store The store that I performed my research on was Big Lots. It has a boy and girl’s aisle as well as a baby aisle that has a very small section of semi-neutral toys. In the girls aisle I found dress-up (Disney princess, monster high and some tutu’s, as well as some generic dress up items), kitchen (pots, pans, aprons and cooking items), baby dolls, and Barbie dolls. All of the packaging for the girls’ toys had very little red, with some white, and yellow, as well as different shades of blue and green but nothing within the dark scale of these colors. Some had black but very little. The majority of the colors were found to be different shades of purple, and pink. All the colors seemed to be themed towards fun and bright. The girls’ toys could all be categorized as either dress-up, playing kitchen or playing with pretend make-up. There were baby dolls that came with bottles and “fresh” diapers for changing. All the toys seemed to be stereotypical for a girl to learn what to do when she grew-up i.e. cooking, cleaning and taking care of a baby/children. Upon examining the isle containing “boys’ toys”, I encountered super heroes, building toys, play guns from pistol to long barrel riffles, different kinds of vehicles from sports cars to construction working trucks, as well as transformers and motorcycles. Career themed toys could also be found ranging from muscle men and law enforcement to firefighters. All of the packaging for the boy’s toys had some white, yellow...
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...Reginald Lowery Anthropology 1200 Mrs. Gail House 28 March 2013 Observation I was sitting at a round table in the bar area at Blue Monkey, when a male and female both probably in their late twenties entered the restaurant. When they approached the hostess, the male’s hand was on the female’s lower back while she asked for a table. When they got to the table beside me, the girl sat down and then he did. They sat beside each other rather than sitting across from one another. When the waiter took their drink orders, they both got sweet tea; however, the female ordered water with lemon. While they were looking at their menus, they leaned in close to point out different items but they never physically touched. While waiting for their food order, they ate bread. They each had their own plates for the bread. As they ate the bread, they glanced around mostly and made a few comments about the architecture of the restaurant. It looked to me as if they did not know what to talk about. The lady fiddled with her hair and looked around a lot. The guy went to the restroom; and, while he was gone the girl got her phone out of her purse. She was still texting when he got back to the table. He looked over at her phone trying to see who she was talking to but did not say anything to her. As she kept texting, he fiddled with his bread, ate some, and watched the basketball game on the television above the bar. The guy finished his sweet tea and did not make any signals for a refill. ...
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