...Entry 1: Dear Diary, I am just now leaving The United States of America and on the plane right now as I’m writing this. Mama, Walter, Ruth, and Travis all dropped me off at the airport to say goodbye. It was really hard because I know I will not see them for a while, but they know what’s best for me. I know Mama wanted me to be with George, but he truly just wasn’t for me. He wanted me to be someone who I was not. He tried to push me away from who I am. I am Beneatha and proud of myself and family and since he couldn’t respect that I had to let him go. I hope Mama will understand why I did such a thing. She will never know how much I love her. As I am looking out of this window at the little specks of houses diapering I am thinking about what my future holds. I wonder if I have made the right decision, but I can only hope so. Joseph has changed my view of life. He has changed me for the better. I have always wanted to help others after I had watched the little boy in my neighborhood cut his head open. I know I am not the greatest follower of god, but I think this might be his plan for me. To look after the sick and diseased. I am delighted I have met Asagai. It’s almost like he is my other half because when I am with him I feel so alive and free. He makes me feel wanted and loved. He may not be the rich like George, but I love him just as much, if not more. Looking out into the clouds I see a happy future. Saving lives, curing patients, and caring for all who have been hurt...
Words: 4697 - Pages: 19
...start a new life. Many were unable to obtain the quality of life they desired in the eastern portions of the country, and had heard of the riches of the west. Others wanted to set out on an adventure. Whatever their motivation, whole communities set out to start a new future in the West. Ever since Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas, settlers have been drawn to fresh sources of wealth. When the original 13 American Colonies won their independence from the United Kingdom, they were award vast stretches of land. These lands were further expanded via treaties and conquest. The U.S. government enticed people to head west and settle in these new territories. Robert Robe and Mary Bailey...
Words: 565 - Pages: 3
...Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s bildungsroman memoir ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ which details the adventures that feed Guevara’s thirst for knowledge and adventure, which subsequently shaped his perspective of the lower class proletariat. The memoir accentuates the notion that the catalyst for ideological discoveries, is the exposure to a different environment or context. Likewise, in pondering upon his childhood tendency to wander from home, the protagonist...
Words: 941 - Pages: 4
...June 12, 1929 a legend is born. Anne Frank is a sassy, boastful, smart, and above all insightful person. In the beginning of Anne’s diary, she displayed the traits that most people would not think of her. In the beginning of her diary, Anne seems to be totally full of herself not recognizing how arrogant and boastful, she was being, but all changes when Anne and her family are forced into hiding and all her luxuries are stripped from her. Throughout the course of her diary she writes about her trials and tribulations, she writes about the guilt she felt, she writes about how saddened she was, but she also writes about her goals and how she was going to rise up from being belittled by the Nazi power. By the end of her diary, Anne makes a major...
Words: 1070 - Pages: 5
...1960's Diary Entry Aaron Cobb His-135 April 21st, 2013 Joseph Woodard 1960's Diary Entry Diary Entry #1 Today we have lost a legacy. Malcolm X was one of the greatest and most influential African Americans the world has ever known. He did so much to make us feel connected with our African American heritage. He would say the things we were thinking but were too afraid to say ourselves. He taught us to stand up for ourselves and our rights as black men. Who knew that a troubled young boy would become a powerful and educated leader? As a young trouble maker doing prison time, it was during his ten years in prison that he educated himself as well as introducing himself to the Nation of Islam teachings. After serving a couple of prison stints he even became a minister of numerous temples in Boston, Philadelphia and New York. He also started a newspaper titled “Muhammad Speaks” which touched on controversial views about his idea that blacks were superior. He became second in command to Elijah Muhammad but they butted heads and ended up going their own ways. Elijah stuck to his ideas of Nation of Islam, while Malcolm X focused on what true Islam taught. He felt that the Civil Rights Movement had the blacks begging the whites for freedom, and he was not a fan of begging. He instead advocated black power and black consciousness even if it resulted in violence. He had several famous speeches, including “Black Man’s History”, “The Black Revolution”, and “God’s Judgment...
Words: 1009 - Pages: 5
...The Diary of A Young Girl is a book about Anne Frank, a thirteen year old girl who is forced to go into hiding with her family. They hide in a small secret annex above Otto Frank’s (her father) office where they had food and supplies in stock. She names her diary Kitty, and writes in it for almost two years. Some news from the radio makes it into her diary, her friendship with Peter van Daan – a teenage boy also in hiding with Anne- as well as her feelings about living In the annex with her family, another family known as the van Daan’s as well as a companion, Mr.Dussel. Anne begins her diary by saying that she wants to confide in the journal like no other. She has never been able to confide in someone like she wants to in this diary that she received for her thirteenth birthday. She starts writing on Sunday June 14th, 1942. In the first section of the diary, she writes about her childhood- her family moved to Holland because her father found a job with a Dutch company. She also has a German background, but is Jewish. She attended a Jewish Lyceum there. She introduces her friends, and all the fun activities she does with them like getting ice cream, going on ferries, and gets treats from secret admirers. She explains how she has some family still in Germany, some who fled to North America, and how her grandmother came with her family to Holland. Anne reveals that the Germans are making all the Jews wear big yellow starts on their shirts so they are easily pointed out. In...
Words: 1693 - Pages: 7
...Death In America First Paper Philippe Aries and Death in Early America In Philippe Aries’ Western Attitudes Towards Death, the author describes four separate, general attitudes towards death that occurred between 300 A.D. and the present. The two most relevant to the early American period that we have studied in class are the ones he terms “One’s Own Death,” in the period from c.1200 A.D. to 1700, and “Thy Death,” in the period between 1700 and 1920. Several different sources illustrate various aspects of these different stages, as well as the changes between them as the “language of death” varied over time. They offer evidence of the nature of the relationship between man and God, peoples’ reactions to death in their surroundings, and the changing overall American view towards death. One of the most obvious ways that Aries’ theories are reflected in early American writing is in the accounts of deathbed scenes. Because the artes moriendi shows a “struggle between the forces of good and evil who are fighting for possession of the dying man,” (Aries 36) as well as a “final test” (Aries 37) of the dying man’s virtue, the “ritual solemnity of the deathbed… by the end of the Middle Ages had assumed among the educated classes a dramatic character, an emotional burden which it had previously lacked” (Aries 38). Aries then states that this change had the effect of increasing the dying person’s role in his own death (Aries 38). We can see this deathbed drama and emotion in Cotton...
Words: 1269 - Pages: 6
...History of the A-Bomb In early August 1945 atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These two bombs quickly yielded the surrender of Japan and the end of American involvement in World War II. By 1946 the two bombs caused the death of perhaps as many as 240,000 Japanese citizens1. The popular, or traditional, view that dominated the 1950s and 60s – put forth by President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson – was that the dropping of the bomb was a diplomatic maneuver aimed at intimating and gaining the upper hand in relations with Russia. Today, fifty-four years after the two bombings, with the advantage of historical hindsight and the advantage of new evidence, a third view, free of obscuring bias and passion, can be presented. First, the dropping of the bomb was born out of complex infinite military, domestic and diplomatic pressures and concerns. Second, many potentially viable alternatives to dropping the bombs were not explored by Truman and other men in power, as they probably should have been. Lastly, because these alternatives were never explored, we can only conjecture over whether or not Truman’s decision was a morally just one, and if indeed it was necessary to use atomic energy to win the war. The war in Asia had its roots in the early 1930s. Japan had expansionist aims in Eastern Asia and the Western Pacific, especially in Indochina2. In July of 1940 the United States placed an embargo on materials exported to...
Words: 3510 - Pages: 15
...be overturned and they felt forced to follow the commands of the government they increasingly saw as autocratic. The political climate coupled with a fierce independent attitude, undoubtedly carried over the Revolutionary Era less than a hundred years before, would go a long way to dig the heels into the ground of the Carolinians who would not have a president tell them what to do at home – despite ethical problems declared by contemporaries of the time, nor modern sensibilities today. The Carolina Belle was no less intense in feelings of regional pride and political stance. The well-known Mary Boykin Chestnut documented her life in South Carolina very well during the Civil War, she says, “Those delights [previous two years’ worth of diary entries] have fled and one's breath is taken away to think what events have since crowded in. Like the woman's record in her journal, we have had "earthquakes, as usual" - daily shocks.” Southern patriots were both male and female, neither with more fire than the other. Hearth and Home Fortitude and intelligence marked the plantation mistress. As a sizable home-business, plantations were more than a place to kick up one’s feet, they were the mechanics of familial industry. Tobacco, rice, and other commodities, most importantly cotton, had long been products that plantations procured for profit. The southern gentleman often led the supervision of both field work and those who worked within his home; women, the plantation mistresses, were often...
Words: 1869 - Pages: 8
...The Exchange of Disease: Native American Culture Before Columbus European exploration, a movement introduced in the 15th century and motivated by commercial interests, religious expansion, and fame. When Europeans explored the New World, they encountered various Native American tribes which led to the exchange of ideas and commodities between the Old and New World, or the Columbian Exchange. The Columbian Exchange later resulted in a massive outbreak of disease among Native Americans which severely decreased population. I chose this topic to expose the religious traditions and cultural values that were lost when disease struck. My research began with both the objectives of spanish explorers when first colonizing America and first encounters...
Words: 564 - Pages: 3
...consequences of this belief are not only the fact that America started a war with Mexico in order to obtain more land on the North American continent, but also the colonization of the land that belonged to Mexico and its people. Manifest Destiny is the belief that Americans have the right to expand westward and beyond because it was God’s will for them to do so. As John O'Sullivan, a former ambassador, said in a speech called “The Great Nation of Futurity”, in which most people agreed, “We...
Words: 888 - Pages: 4
...even to a negotiated end of the war. When Hiroshima was bombed on August sixth, the war faction insisted that there was only one atomic bomb and blocked any move to surrender. When Nagasaki was bombed on August ninth and the Soviet Union suddenly entered the war, Emperor Hirohito stepped him and commanded his government to surrender. Most of the leaders of the war faction committed suicide rather than participate in the surrender. And a cabal of junior officers attempted a coup against the remainder of the Japanese government to capture the emperor and prevent surrender, but they were defeated. In other words, the decision to use the atomic bombs are a major factor in convincing the Japanese to surrender in World War II. However, the Soviet entry into the war was just as influential, maybe even more, in convincing the Japanese military to obey the emperor and give...
Words: 542 - Pages: 3
...Modern History Conflict in the Pacific 1937-1941 Due: Thursday 28th of August, 2008 Alyce Wearne Task: Evaluate the argument that America was justified in using atomic weapons against Japan in 1945. As one of the most significant and consequential decisions in the history of the world, President Harry Truman’s allowance of atomic weapons towards the end of World War II, of which he himself understood would cause both mass devastation and indignation, is still one of the most controversial and heavily debated topics in today’s society. This was partially due to the adverse underestimation and seemingly ignorant approach the American’s had towards their latest development of mass destruction; almost oblivious to the immense aftermath of physical injury, civilian death and emotional torment it would produce for those involved. This decision, ultimately made by one man, affected not only America and Japan, but the world. Dispute over this was, and continues to be highly generated, the event causing anger and infuriation to millions across the world. This resentment did not just accumulate from the lack of awareness and slaughter of innocent life, but from the graphic images shown in newspapers, the casualties, and the torturous amount of death underwent as a result of the bomb. As a Japanese survivor documented: “The appearance of people was . . . well, they all had skin blackened by burns. . . . They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you...
Words: 5990 - Pages: 24
...Victoria Zegler HST 326: Women in America November 14, 2011 Not To Live in Vain: Faith and Ideals of Catherine Sedgwick Love, involuntary and mysterious, holds a tight grip on the imagination. As young women, we ponder questions of marriage, careers and the ideals of love in our future. Ideals, such as these, were vital to the nineteenth century moralities. The principles of love and marriage provided models for women’s goals, as well as the opportunity to speak of their experience. Both of these ideals and the value of character represented the standards of perfection, which were essential to the sphere of life. Catharine Sedgwick, a fiction writer, subscribed to these high standards and refused to compromise. Her writings repeatedly emphasized the political and personal need for liberty and independence. The behavior of unmarried women in the nineteenth century provided an answer to their highly charged moral pursuit concerning duty, usefulness and love rather than the cultural elements concerning self-fulfillment. In order to find out who we are, we must understand where we come from. The seventeenth century Puritans first declared the importance of affection in marriage believing that to love one’s spouse was a duty. Young men and women were to choose someone they could learn to love but being in love was not necessary. It was companionship and respect, which shaped the solid foundations of a successful marriage. However, by the first decades of the nineteenth...
Words: 2153 - Pages: 9
...During the period of 1861-1865 that is commonly known as the Civil War, both the northern and the confederate states exhibited variegated forms of what it means to be civilized. At the bottom of it, the Civil War exhibited the most bloodshed on American soil at a singular point in time. For this reason it must be stated that both The Union and The Confederates both acted out bloodthirsty and carnal impulses. The difference that was displayed was that the liberalism and regard for expanded civil rights that was the basis for The Union’s war stance was countered by a stalwart reactionary ideological platform that The Confederacy clung to. Essentially, civility was at an all-time low during the bloodshed of the Civil war. Over 500,000 lives were claimed, however the etiquette and ideological platforms of both sides proved to be The old world charm of the South was encapsulated by John Mosby and his revenge against a Union trooper killing a young child in front of the child’s mother. Mosby exclaimed that revenge was not a primary, or even a secondary motivation. He honestly believed that he had to kill in order to stop the killing (Civil War Times, 31). This etiquette and honor displayed during the bloodshed was in contradistinction to the crass and needless killing committed by the Union soldier. This shows how oftentimes ideologies can mask the deeper, truer feelings and...
Words: 3276 - Pages: 14
