...“If you accept the expectations of others, especially the negative ones, then you will never change the outcome”- Michael Jordan. “The Kaffir Boy” by Mark Mathabane, “Two Kinds” by Nicholas Gage, and “The Teacher Who Changed My Life” by Amy Tan all have examples for overcoming expectations. The characters in all these stories make their ways in life by changing the expectations of the world around them, but it is not always in a positive way. “The Kaffir Boy” represents overcoming many expectations, which allows Mark to get somewhere in life. “Your father didn’t go to school” (Mark Mathabane 7). By not attending school, it is hard for even the brightest people to do anything with their life. By going to school, Mark could shatter people’s expectations, proving he would not follow in his father’s path of a life on the streets. “...he doesn’t have money to waste paying for you to get what he calls a useless education” (Mark Mathabane 6). Mark is pressured by his father to not attend school, which is his expectation of his son. Mark breaks that expectation and goes to school. By going to school, the people around Mark expect new things, and they are positive things that will change his life. Nicholas Gage in “The...
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...In the book Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathebane there are many obstacles that Mark the protagonist has to overcome. The first of his problems was to get through school in his poor South African ghetto. The second was to achieve his goal and receive a tennis scholarship to an American college. Mark’s father is one of the major antagonist, he was opposed anything to do with Mark getting an education in a school. He was a very traditional man and he didn’t like anything that had to do with the “white man”. He thought it was nonsense to get a whiteman’s education and he wouldn’t provide the money that was necessary to get Mark through school. Mark was helped through this situation by his Mother who was the person who wanted Mark so desperately to attend school. She decided to go against Mark’s Father and send Mark to school. She then had to get a job which was illegal for her to do so because she didn’t have the required pass from the South African government. With the little money that his mother made and some money that his grandmother gave him he was able to pay for his schooling or at least some of it. He often was without the required materials like a school uniform and books. This then resulted in Mark being beaten at school. These beatings became so intense and often that Mark thought about dropping out of school. His Mother helped him decide that he should stay in school because she knew that an education was the only way out of their life of poverty. Through the support...
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...In chapter 20 of Kaffir Boy, Johannes is once again woken up by his mother at four in the morning. Johannes is told by his mother that the two are going to the superintendent's office for “important papers.” The two arrive at the office sometime around 5:00 am, and have to wait for another four hours until the office opens. After a perpetual wait out in the cold, Johannes and his mother make it to the front of the office, ready to see the superintendent. A officer tells them that the bass will be out shortly. After a “short” two hour wait, the officer returns and tells them that the superintendent is going home early and that Johannes’ mother can’t return for another month. His mother tries to fight the officer to see the bass but nothing works....
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... in a number of countries, between women and children, education cannot be the number one priority. This could be because of the lack of schools, the rights of women, or the government not funding enough money, women and children do not have the proper education rights that they deserve. In Africa, every two out of three children are left out of secondary school (UNESCO). Women and children must have better education rights to enhance a better future. Injustices in the education rights of women and children have occurred in parts of South Africa. In the short story “Kaffir Boy” by Mark Mathabane, a young boy had been forced to enroll into school by his mother and grandmother to help him move toward a healthier future that did not include gangs or violence. The boy did not want to go to school because he “…had grown up in an environment where the value of education was never emphasized…” (Mathabane 70). The boy in the story would have rather stayed home and joined gangs, then...
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...In particular, Malaysian food is heavily influenced by Thai, Chinese, Indonesian and Indian cuisine. These influences extend from the use of the wok to the combinations of spices used in many popular dishes. Malay food is generally spicy. Dishes are not always necessarily chilli-hot per se, but there will always, at the least, be a chilli-based sambal on hand. Traditional Southeast Asian herbs and spices meet Indian, Middle Eastern and Chinese spices in Malaysian food, leading to fragrant combinations of coriander and cumin (the basis of many Malay curries) with lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, cardamom, star anise and fenugreek. As elsewhere in Asia, rice is an essential staple. Local or Thai rice is the most common, but Indian basmati is used in biryani dishes. Nasi lemak (‘fatty rice’), a dish of rice steamed with coconut milk and served with dried anchovies (ikan bilis), peanuts, hardboiled eggs, dried shrimp, cucumber and sambal, is considered Malaysia’s national dish and may be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It is often served with a choice of curries or a popular spicy meat stew (usually, though not always, beef) known as rendang. Noodles are another popular starch staple, as are Indian breads such as roti canai, idli, puri and dhosa, which are commonly eaten with breakfast. Early Chinese settlers often wed local Malay brides and this gave rise to a generation of mixed Chinese-Malays known as Peranakan. The Malay word "nonya", a term of respect for older women...
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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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