In the short story “Greasy Lake” by T. Coraghessan Boyle, three boys embark on a journey to the greasy lake, where kids would go to perform illegal activities. At the time it was good to be bad, it was cool to drink and smoke. The unnamed narrator, Jeff, and Digby think that going to the greasy lake will make them look cool to society. The trouble begins when the boys pull a prank on a guy who they think is their friend but turned out to be a “bad greasy character.” The narrator thought he killed the bad character, but really he was just unconscious. The boys then turn to the girlfriend and attempt sexual activities, but failed because another car rolls up with two girls whom were intoxicated. The girls offer some of their drugs to the boys,
The Boys In The Boat, written by Dan Brown and published in 2013, focuses on rowing players who got gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In particular, “chapter 2” is about Joe Rantz’s childhood and history of his family, one of gold medalists of 1936 Berlin Olympics.
David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech “This is Water” at Kenyon College is often thought of as one of the most influential speeches because it calls the graduates to observe the world around them through a different lens. However, he does not accomplish that by calling the graduates to action, but instead challenges them to use their education. He also appeals to the students’ emotions through his use of ethos, logos, and pathos. Although people mostly only remember the antidotes, it is the message associated with reoccurring emotions and literary devices throughout the speech that moves the reader into action. Wallace is able to captivate his audience and persuade them to view the world without themselves at the center through his tactful use of rhetoric. He encourages them to first find who they are and what they stand for, to then effectively determine
Children and adults rarely see eye to eye when it comes to differences in the past and present. This is because the idea of innovation is perceived differently by individual generations. In the essay “Once More to the Lake” the author E.B. White struggles with the concept of change, while his son accepts the concept of progress when returning to a family lake house. Through the use of imagery and symbolism the essay conveys how the men see the same place differently.
In this short story, “In the Gloaming” by Alice Elliott Dark, the main characters learn that you should spend as much time as possible with family, make and never forget memories together, and how to accept death. Although the characters learn these lessons the hard way, in the end they come to understand the value of them.
Life is fleeting and time moves quickly. In the blink of an eye, childhood becomes only a memory and the difficulties of the world become a factor of everyday life. E.B. White reflects on his earlier years in his personal essay “Once More to the Lake,” a detailed account of his childhood memories with his father at the lake. He carries on the father-son tradition by bringing his own son out to the lake, experiencing flashbacks to his youth. White lost his sense of self, as he began identifying himself as his son, feeling as though he was back at the lake with his father. This trip changed White’s outlook on life, for he finally realized that mortality was closer than he imagined. He was no longer young, and watching his son mature only made this notion more real. One day, he will be only a memory to his son, just like his father is to him. White uses a variety of rhetorical devices to convey the message to his audience that life moves quickly, not stopping for anything, including emotionally-charged diction, imagery, and personification.
I believe good is intrinsic, while evil is extrinsic. Intrinsic means essential. Extrinsic means not part of the essential nature of someone or something. Everyone is born with a friendly soul but they have the ability to learn to become evil. Some people in life may seem along the lines of evil since they were born. The reason to that is, something in their life could've happened to them to make them that way or certain people, in general, make them like that. There is good in everyone sometimes you just have to look deep to see it.
Class and gender/sexuality are complicated in “Drown” by Junot Díaz. Yunior and Beto are ex-best friends who are separated through the complications. Their relationship tenses up when Beto decides to better his life through education. At first glimpse, Yunior’s struggle with class and sexuality could be based within his homophobic fear. The typical understanding that Yunior’s unmotivated attitude stems from fear is flawed because it fails to recognize his stance to not change who he believes he is and where he is meant to be. When examined more closely, this assumption completely overlooks Díaz’s emphasis on different perspectives when it comes to coming of age. Although Yunior is younger than Beto, he challenges expectations, and instead of moving on with his life, he sticks to what he knows. Rather than conforming to the typical understanding, Yunior challenges this role by proving he has already grown up just in a different period than Beto.
Stories are the foundation of relationships. They represent the shared lessons, the memories, and the feelings between people. But often times, those stories are mistakenly left unspoken; often times, the weight of the impending future mutes the stories, and what remains is nothing more than self-destructive questions and emotions that “add up to silence” (Lee. 23). In “A Story” by Li-Young Lee, Lee uses economic imagery of the transient present and the inevitable and fear-igniting future, a third person omniscient point of view that shifts between the father’s and son’s perspective and between the present and future, and emotional diction to depict the undying love between a father and a son shadowed by the fear of change and to illuminate the damage caused by silence and the differences between childhood and adulthood perception.
“Greasy Lake” by T.C. Boyle follows a group of well read college students desperate to portray themselves as hardened badasses by drinking cheap alcohol and cruising around town till the break of dawn. On the third night of summer vacation, the boys fid themselves at Greasy Lake going toe to toe with a shady character they mistakenly identified as a friend. The
In the beautiful Almaden Lake, a popular San Jose city park off Almaden Expressway, has fish that have the highest concentrations of mercury contamination in California. Based of new state studies. There are four other lakes in Santa Clara County Anderson, Uvas, Calero and Chesbro reservoirs ,rank with the top 20 lakes with fish have the highest mercury concentrations. Almaden Lake is a 66-acre park off the Almaden Expressway. It originated in the 1940s as a rock quarry on Los Alamitos Creek. These creek, Guadalupe Creek, also drains into the Almaden hills, which was once home to the New Almaden mercury mines.
To him summer was a time for fun, and there wasn't a reason it shouldn’t be. But, through hard times and growth, Douglas had discovered a new meaning. Life is a cycle that never stops repeating. Douglas states: “‘Next year’s going to be even bigger, days will be brighter, nights longer and darker, more people dying, more babies born, and me in the middle of it all’”(Bradbury 235). To Douglas there is still a bright side of things, there’s fun, but with it comes loss and worry. The good things balance the bad things so everything is where it should be. That is just one lesson that he has learned. Then the author states: “June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head”(Bradbury 239). Here, Douglas learns time is something that cannot be stopped, that is why he keeps his memories. As the saying goes “the past is in the past” or something along those lines, life's a blur. Life’s an adventure that goes by in a flash and it’s over before it even begins. Many positive things came from Douglas’ summer of 1928, and it would have never happened if it wasn’t for some distress somewhere in the middle of it all. The biggest thing of all to conclude from this crazy summer, in the least, is people wouldn’t be who they are without the harsh reality of the world. Douglas was molded by his past and given himself in the present.
In paragraph 5 of E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake”, White is going fishing with his son at the lake. As they are fishing, he notices that the lake’s setting is practically identical to when White was fishing as a child. White is forgetting that he is now the adult and no longer the child.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once stated, “The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a president and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country” (Brainy Quotes). The concept of authority being ruled by its followers, giving it power is highly depicted in the film Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Stranded on an island, a party of boys go back and forth between two rulers, each wanting power over the other. Roosevelt 's statement of how giving power to authority is a necessity is demonstrated throughout the film. The concepts of government and what is needed for a legitimate government date back to the philosophers Locke, Rousseau,
The fight for women’s rights in Canada was one of the largest human rights movements to take place during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and thus is often used as a theme in literature. S. Carelton, is an example of an author who subtly incorporated women’s rights into her work. My research examines how “Lastluck Lake” by S. Carelton was influenced by the women’s rights movement. How does the author show the struggle women went through as they fought for their rights? In what ways does the author integrate the successes of women at the time the novel was written? Does the author include any foresight into women’s rights victories that would happen after the story was published?