Augustus Waters

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is a satirical short story in which Vonnegut implies, if society interprets equality literally, there would be no significance between humans. The protagonist Harrison has escaped from prison and his parents Hazel and George are watching the program he appears upon, as he insists he is an emperor and the first female to rebel will be his empress. Following this rant he discards his handicaps making him appear god like. Soon after, the Handicapper General kills the emperor and his empress with a "double-barrelled ten-gauge shotgun"(pg. 64). Harrison depicts as an exaggeration as his "appearance was Halloween and hardware"(pg. 62). The government considers him as "a genius and an athlete"(pg. 61) and "is under

#3-Examining how death and the losses were addressed within my African American family is openly discussed and always some one’s fault. The experience of my grandmothers death relates to the statistics of the life expectations of African America. According to (Walsh 2004 p. 56) African American woman life expectancy for older adults is 70.2 years and African American men life span is 66.1 according to the national Vital Statistics Report (Volume, 47 NO.28). My grandmother died young I believe she was 59 years old. She had her very first heart attack when she was in 50 years old and she stopped drinking and gave herself to the lord. She was on so many different medications as a child I was not aware of the different medications she was taken.

Lion, directed by Garth Davis, is a compelling interpretation of a remarkable true story of Saroo Brierley, lost as a child and reunited with his family 25 years later. Throughout Davis explores the unique circumstances under which Saroo is separated and reconnected with his family and his journey along the way. At some points of the film, I was confronted by how Saroo, a five-year-old boy, expertely navigates, with great instinct and genuine innocence, through an extended, yet life threatening ride. To put it in other words, Lion is a journey that grabs you entirely; whether you want it or not, and you are involved in each and every scene.

Today this community gathers in honor of a dear, young girl taken from her family far too early, under deplorable, heartbreaking circumstances. Everyone knew Connie as a strikingly beautiful, lighthearted, decisive girl. It is rare that a teen can have such capability for strong decision making so early. That is not to say that Connie always made the right decisions, as no teenager ever does, but her willingness to make decisions at all is remarkable. My own surplus of indecision led to several regrettable life moments, and so I hope that Connie had no regrets in her young life, which was cut short far too soon.

Mourning is the shared expression of a grief experience, where trying to attain a new equilibrium following any manner of loss or deficit, which include decreased function or role, loss of assumed health, and diminished dreams of the future. Grief and mourning together constitute the grief process, representing movement from life through death and back into life again. A grief process for the patient with cancer and all those related in the system of

For my poetry paper I have chosen the poem "Kill the Day" by Donald Hall. A poem that goes through the process of what it is like to grieve for that significant other that passes away. The way Hall describes grieving makes it sounds as if there are stages to it. These stages can be categorized as denial, sorrow and anger and finally, acceptance. Each stage brings its own obstacles and challenge for one to deal with. Which is what Donald Hall paints beautifully in "Kill the Day".

An actor named Michael J. Fox once said, “Family is not an important thing. Family is everything.” The novel Copper Sun, by Sharon M. Draper, provides accounts of a black slave and an indentured servant. The slave traders seized the main character, Amari, from her homeland in Africa and shipped her to the 13 colonies in present-day America to her master who is named Percival Derby. She then met Polly, an indentured servant. Not long after their arrival, Amari and Polly were extremely unsatisfied about the abuse they had to endure while living in the cruel master’s plantation. The day after the two were sold, Amari and Polly met Teenie, Mr. Derby’s cook and Tidbit, Teenie’s son. The three escaped with some help from a doctor south into present-day

Grief has a powerful effect on everyone’s lives. The heartbreaking feeling of losing someone close to you, like a family member or a significant other, alters how we view ourselves and act. Sometimes coping methods cause people to do things and make choices that they usually would not. This is illustrated in the films, The United States of Leland and The Fundamentals of Caring, where grief and loss are very prominent themes. The negatives and the positives are easily seen in grief and the full story always comes out after.

Love is an extremely crucial factor in determining how one feels about death. Depending on your relationship with an individual, it varies how you may perceive news of their death. Tillie, a main character in the novel Let the Great World Spin, did not want to be on earth without her friend, Jazzyn. “She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear” (McCann 103). This quote demonstrates Tillie grieving heavily for Jazzlyn. She cannot fathom Jazzlyn’s death and the fact Jazzlyn believes she had been an awful mother all of those years. Her final sacrifice is taking the blame for the burglary so

In the stories “Gwilan’s Harp” by Ursula K. LeGuin, “The Washwoman” by Isaac Singer, and “The Last Leaf” by O.Henry, the characters in the tale experience a feeling of great loss at some point of the story. These tragic losses are usually the passing away of a character’s loved one. In “Gwilan’s Harp” the husband of Gwilan, Torm, passes away from a fever during the winter, but at the end of the story, Gwilan musters the courage to cherish what she has left. The life of the humble washwoman in “The Washwoman” brought great joy to the people around her, and her resilience until death inspires others to stay strong and persevere regardless of circumstances. Finally, “The Last Leaf” tells of strong friendships and gives a heart stopping ending with the death of Behrman, a man seemingly worthless throughout his life, but proves his worth at the very last moments of his life. Overall, these authors elaborate on what lessons one can learn from life through loss.

William Carlos Williams has always been known as a revolutionary figure in American Poetry. Williams’s “Complete Destruction” is more than a simple poem about the loss of a family cat; it’s about the coldness of death, bluntness of dominion, and, ultimately, how our detritus and pains are how we are perceived by others.

Loss can relate to many things, a friend, a pet,or a family member, or really anything that can be take away from you. Candy a swamper at the ranch, he’s an old man with one hand. The reason he works there is because the other people at the ranch felt bad because he only has one hand, he cleans up and organizes stuff. Candy had a dog and he was his best friend, the dog was starting to get pretty old and it was hard for the dog do anything. Late at night all of the workers got together and discussed candy’s dog, Slim was saying the dog was way too old,saying it smelt bad and it was useless. Everyone thought that is what a good idea. Slim had said, “ I wisht somebody’d shoot me if I get old an’ a cripple” he was making a good point. Carlson

Have you ever read poems that had sad stories involved? Authors such as William Blake and Lydia Davis talk about grief in their poems. According to Merriam- Webster dictionary, the definition of grief is “deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement”. In William Blake’s song of experience, “The Chimney Sweeper” the poem describes a boy grieving for his parents who left him in the snow. In Lydia Davis’s “Head, Heart” explain the feeling of grief between two people and how it is not easy to move on. Both the poems discuss loss of a loved one and they want people to know that there are different types of grief between the two poems. There are several literary techniques shows how both William Blake and Lydia Davis’s poem have a common theme of grief by using techniques such as imagery, figures of speech, symbolism, thematic/narrative elements.

Nothing is considered to be better than a lovely person called mother, her love, and care. Certainly, I can say with that I never understand the suffering from the unbearable loss of a dear person. The novel entitled “For One More Day” by Mitch Albom, had shown me on how it feels to lose our mother. I started to understand Charley Benetto’s feeling to lose someone that he loved. There are perhaps no appropriate words to describe this agony, at least none used on this world. This intolerable pain which tears us apart, which is like a stone on our heart, and which make tears run down our face with each reminiscence of the dear person who passed away. Time is unlikely to alleviate this pain, no matter what others claim. Sometimes there will be

Is it important to care about the people of the earth and help them in any way possible? The generation that all live today is truly dependent on others help and care. Both The Fault in our Stars by John Green, and Selma directed by Ava DuVernay, express the importance and necessity of interdependence within a society. Interdependence can provide support to individuals giving them the strength to rely on each other and focus on their own personal growth.