...“The Never Ending Nightmare, a Nightmare within Itself” I will never forget the day when one of my worst nightmares became a comical reality. It started out as any normal Friday the Thirteenth, or so I had thought. For my sense of time had completely been forgotten. Beep! Beep! Beep! This was the annoying sound of my alarm clock that I would wake up too every morning. I used to dread this sound but lately, it was like a gift from God. I had been restless the past couple of nights—tossing and turning about my bed. I would have dreams, no, horrible nightmares of performing in front of a large crowd and just freeze. I was not able to move nor was I able to speak. I would just stand there in front of what seemed like the whole world and sob. This sounds like an exaggerated case of stage fright only, it was not. I had never experienced anything of the sort. I would enter stage left, cross downstage, and then begin to recite my self-published, might I add, monologue to my peers and professors. About a good four minutes in, the lights would start to flicker. It did not bother me at first, but it continued. Eventually, the lights shut off completely. The only light remaining was the ghost light placed at center stage behind me. Suddenly, an eerie fog made its way through the cracks under the doors and in the walls. Everyone in the audience seemed to twist into a sick-like, monstrous mutation. Their faces went from laughter and serenity to anger and despair. Even their bodily appearances...
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...“clocks” and “lover” are shown to differ from one another. The lover feels that time is never ending when with spent with the person they admire. They sing about loving their “dear” “Till China and Africa meet”, which is hyperbole that describes the continuing existence of their love. Throughout the following lines, the lover continues to hyperbolize how long they will love their partner with scenarios that very unlikely to happen. This presents the lifespan of their relationship in a more abstract manner in order to further emphasize the commitment that the lover feels. The simile in the fifth stanza of the “years shall run like rabbits” illustrates how the lover expects their time to...
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...case for the “not to be” side, he reminds us of the constant troubles that life throws our way. He compares these troubles to the never-ending waves of an ocean crashing against us. Hamlet also assures us that there is no man or woman who can hit us nearly as hard as life can. Life will bring even the strongest man out there to his knees in one swift blow, but not sleep. Sleep is revered for bringing rest at the end of a tiresome day, Sleep is admired for bringing peace to even the most hate-bent people. Hamlet also admires sleep and claims that perhaps the constant struggles of life are not even worth waking up to. I don’t share all of the same opinions as the young Prince Hamlet though, some of his logic is faulty. Life is a good thing, Life isn’t supposed to be miserable. Life doesn’t have to be full of never-ending waves of struggle and sorrow, you can enjoy what you wake up to in the mornings. Life is not a predestined plan, the choices you make can influence the quality of life you have. You can choose the path that makes you the most happy. Another way you can improve your happiness is a change of attitude, one of my favorite quotes goes a little like this “Life is 10% what happens, and 90% how you react to it”. If you don’t like what happens to you, then react in such a way that you will benefit in the end. Ending your own life is never the solution to your problems, finding a way to deal with them and get something good out of it is the better solution. As touched...
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...These are the kind of silly and seemingly unexplainable instances that occur in our unconscious sleep every night when we go to bed. Contrary to what you may think, these ridiculous dreams that almost resemble cartoons more than real life, do actually have a significant impact on our emotional state, and for the most part are based on our own anxieties, desires, and memories. In this essay I’m going to attempt to analyze a current dream I’ve had and interpret the meaning and origin of this dream using the sources available to me. I’m standing on a steep grass hill, looking out over a shallow and narrow valley that appears to have been cut of the landscape like a spoon would do to a tub of ice cream. Inside this crevice is a highway I’ve never seen before, with cars zooming down the road at high speeds. Above the highway is an overpassing bridge with more fast and noisy cars. On the opposite side of this speedway that I’m standing along is my beloved dog, who I’ve raised since he was six weeks old. He’s going into traffic and I’m scrambling to get to him on the other side of this speedway, but there’s too many cars coming for me to get across. Just before it seems my dog is going to become road kill, or I’m going to be flattened trying to save him, I either woke up or the dream stopped and switched to something else. So what does this mean? Sigmund Freud, who was a pioneer for...
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...close them. I’ll just continue gazing at the upcoming war. … Lately I’ve been having nightmares. They keep me awake, or rather; they make me feel like I never slept at all in the first place. In my dreams, I am always standing in my own kitchen. The window is open, yet I can’t see what’s on the other side. My whole body is covered in bees. They’re swarming. Crawling around on my skin, I can sense their tiny, tickling feet. I think I’m naked, because they are everywhere. No matter how much I want to move, I can’t. If I do, I know they will start attacking me, replacing the unpleasant unawareness with a never-ending, stinging pain. When I wake up, drowsy and unguarded, the feeling of exhaustion lingers my mind. My body is and sore from the already fading memory of standing deadly still in an indefinite time of space. And so, the day begins with me, being more tired than I was the day before. … It’s getting colder, darker. My thoughts are clouded, and I find myself longing for the time of release, when the water will fall freely from the sky. I want to be cleansed, drowned in the icy, crystal clear fluid Mother nature grants for free. Even though I am haunted by nightmares brought to me by my countless worries, in this moment I feel blessed. Out of the corner of my eye. I catch a glimpse of a passing group of friends. They are...
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...military conflict, or a political struggle. Designed to grasp attention while also performing a great deal of damage and harm. The result can be multiple deaths but there are also survivors. As an example of this the enthralling story of Tarana Akbari who physically survives the suicide bombing in Old Kabul, only to be left emotionally and mentally scared from the images she inflicted. The famous image captured moments after her family was killed showed the anguish in which the then 11 year old was in, the bright green dress left ruined and drenched in the blood of her loved ones. Not only does Tarana still endure constant nightmares of this day, but is left with multiple scars on her legs and stomach. Acting as unceasing, never ending reminder of her struggle that destroyed her family. Thus reinforcing the statement that those survived times of distort can often never reconstruct the life lived before, nor themselves. BODY PARAGRAPH 2- You can be an observer in a military conflict and both survive and not survive. This proven in Megan Stacks meme “Every man in this village is a liar”, where she is thrown into the deep end and searches endlessly for her answers. Megan also encountered suicide bombing similar to Tarana, but after watching many unfold, she began to turn a blind eye to the danger, but was still capable of reporting on her journey with confrontational effects on herself. When Megan returned to her home, the realisation of her struggles became all too much “I was carrying...
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...Critical Analysis of Darwins Nightmare Vs Hotel Rwanda as development education tools in Irish classroom settings. The world we live in is ever changing, with technology at everyone’s finger tips how can we keep one step ahead in our classrooms to engage our pupils in development issues that were once only found in print texts. Our pupils live in a media age, where technology is built into their lives, the days of waiting for a weekly magazine for the latest news has all but died with a click of button they have access to a wealth of information from varying sources be it bias or unbiased that is for the reader to decide. As a teacher it is becoming increasingly difficult to distract pupils from the latest celebrity gossip to highlight real world issues of race, poverty, sexuality, exploitation, etc., the pupils of today are uninterested in reading about these issues in text books so a new approach needs to be taken to open their eyes. The use of media texts in delivering development education issues to our cinematographic teenagers is the direction we need to head in. The type of media text used is a choice that has to be made by the teacher when highlighting these issues, the question remains should one use documentaries or blockbuster movies; documentaries by their nature are very factual, complex, have real life images and settings and can be difficult to watch; blockbuster movies on the other hand are produced for entertainment value, they must appeal to the cinema...
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...journey, both physically and psychologically, Frank Money finds his way back to his hometown, and strangely he finds the place better than the battlefield. Toni Morrison, an African-American professor, does not hesitate to rub into the novel, albeit subliminally, the plight of the blacks back in the day. This celebrated novelist with several accolades to her name does not disappoint with her tenth novel. Clearly, this novel is about a man struggling with post-war stress, and all along the narration, the disorder shadows him and even though a happy ending would involve him overcoming it, there is little evidence in support that. The story begins with Frank’s vivid memory of a childhood adventure he had witnessed together with his younger sister Ycidra, over whom he had grown protective. In the flashback, he remembers two horses standing on their hind legs, a memory which keeps coming back every now and then, especially the mare “never beating her hooves in daylight” (Morrison, 25). Chained to a hospital bed in a psychiatric ward, he plans his escape, which proves successful as he is aided by priests and good Samaritans until he gets to Lotus to save his sister from a crooked doctor. The family is more important to him than anything else, added to the fact that he was always protective of his sister since childhood. He discovers that the small town he used to loathe as a child is not as bad as the battlefield, which for some reason has become a standard of measure of the badness...
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...Author Ray Bradbury wrote stories about people and the way science and technology can benefit us in many ways, however – he seemed really afraid of the malevolent side where tech either turns on us or is used against us. In Bradbury’s short stories The Veldt, There will come soft rains, and The Murderer, they all have a common theme where technology has a very twisted way of intersecting with humans: a nightmare come to life, life-ending technology and resisting technology. Instead of writing about fantastic, futuristic scenarios, Bradbury creates world and characters that the reader can imagine living in and relating to – which makes their stories so scary. In The Veldt, the story is about the family’s relationship with each other and the way technology interferes with these relationships. For example, George and Lydia Hadley and their two children, Wendy and Peter, are all crippled by technology; they don’t function on their own any more. George and Lydia bought an expensive house that cooks, cleans and even ties their...
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...Photographic memories stick in people’s minds. Emotions and reactions that cannot be erased and are burned into the memory in one’s mind can have detrimental effects as well as saving someone’s sanity. A simple song or sunset can trigger a person into a rage or to completely withdrawal from society. Post-traumatic stress disorder can break up families that have had the strongest bond and foundation. Post-traumatic stress disorder can affect any age of person ranging from the youngest victims of 9-11 or Hurricane Katrina to soldiers coming home from war. The case of Paul is a heart-wrenching story of a little boy whose world was turned upside-down within the matter of minutes. September 11, 2001 will forever be etched in his mind even if he never speaks on the memory again. In the 3,000 people the United States lost that tragic day, two of those people were Paul’s parents. Before September 11th, Paul’s family had just been another normal family by society’s description. His mother worked in the south tower, which fell first and his father was an assistant chief for the New York City Fire Department (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009). Paul was five and his brother, Tom, was in second grade. Three out of five days Paul would go to kindergarten at his school in lower Manhattan, just a block away from the Twin Towers (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009). The other two days Paul would go to his grandparent’s house instead. Paul had a normal upbringing. His parents were happily...
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...Your alarm clock wakes you up groggy, on Monday morning for another week in school, for most people this situation is all too familiar and all too annoying. As you beg for 5 more minutes you once may have thought “Why can’t school start later.” Well for the following reasons. Starting schools 2 hours later means ending school 2 hours later and for students who play sports they could not go home until 7:30-8:30 pm. Most kids are not tired anyway and it is very expensive. Schools should not start later. First of all, it is common sense that starting school at the recommended 10:00am (2 hours later ) would mean ending school 2 hours later. Which, would mean kids who play sports who would usually get out of practice at 5:30-6:30 pm would be...
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...Sports and Retirement A tragedy is a play dealing with tragic events resulting in an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character. In the play Romeo and Juliet, the hero suffers a tragic death. The play is a tragedy because the death could have been avoided at several points throughout the play. As a result, a tragedy can result in one’s life being altered forever. The same principle can be applied to retirement. One could argue that after retiring, one’s life is altered forever. Retirement is the starting of a new life, after working for long, agonizing years. In some cases, a retirement is luxurious however in other cases a retirement can be seen as a death wish. In the anthology “The Best American Sports Writing...
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...I have never been so hard to myself for truly reading a book; therefore, when I knew I would have a reading project in Advanced Reading course, I had to go online, searched for some book titles and hoped to find out some which could meet my need. “The Book Thief” appeared to be my best choice at that time because it was a bestseller book, it was highly recommended by a lot of people; moreover, it was set in the time of Nazi Germany, the nightmare of all people in the world and even the German themselves, the time I wanted so much to get to know more. With all those reasons, I chose The Book Thief as the book for my reading project. Like everybody said the book is good, especially for the author’s language. Markus Zusak’s writing is haunting,...
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...It is human nature to compare one to another, people are judged unfairly by the color of their skin, where they came from, what they wear, and the way they speak. In this case it was none of these things, it was the religion they practiced. People can get very out of hand when it comes to religion. There are many cases of judgement and unfair treatment involving religion known in history, for example the holocaust. For instance, the stories created by Elie and Hannah Senesh. They were both victims of the horrible event that unfolded, and chose to write and express their view of it. In Elie’s book “Night”, he tells many stories in his own version of the devastation that occurred. There is a section that tells about his experience with his...
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...a devilish grin appeared on his grubby unshaven face. His 3 quarter pants were ripped, tattered and caked with mud his black and his white striped t-shirt was not much of a sight either; holes were showing all over, and like his pants an excessive amount of mud was covering them. The girl wondered what he had been doing for his clothes to be in such a state. His black, greasy hair was long and shaggy and looked like it hadn’t been washed or cut in a very long time. The girl felt uneasy being so close to this disturbing man, who she had never seen before. Slowly the man took a few careful steps closer towards her, he was no more than three feet from her now and his menacing grin had become even wider. There was a suspicious glint in his dark eyes that made him look even creepier. As he slowly approached her she began to feel more and more afraid with every slight movement he made. She tried to scream but she was frozen, trapped in a nightmare that yelling could not save her from. She was alone, no one could hear her out in the forest, let alone see her. Her body urged her to move. The girl began to run she lost her footing on the loose forest floor, slipped and fell onto the cold ground. She looked up to see the man towering over her like a skyscraper. In one swift movement he pulled a razor-sharp knife from his back pocket and plunged it straight into her stomach. The pain was unbearable unlike anything she had ever felt before. Blood oozed from the wound and covered...
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