"The End of Adolescence"

In the memoir “The End of Adolescence”, Chelsea, the narrator, tells the story of when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She starts with describing the day her family received the news. She describes the hospital and the walls around her, the smell of death. She describes her father’s eyes, too. They are really nice descriptions but I feel that she could have done a better job describing her feelings.

Afterwards, she described how her life changed; she had to take care of her mother and show her she wasn’t weak. Her father always worked and her two sisters lived far away, which made her responsibility over her mother much greater. Chelsea then goes on describing how this experience helped her grow up. If she had the opportunity to go back in time and erase, she said she wouldn’t because of what she gained.

Something I don’t understand is what she meant when she said “I wish I never had to smell death again, but then, there’s always going to be another trip to the hospital.” Did she mean that death teaches you valuable lessons? Yes, this might be true. I think it’s more like as death approaches, things are needed to be taken more seriously.

“The End of Adolescence” is a nice memoir, a reflection on Chelsea’s past experience that changed her life for good. I still feel that she could have written more of her thoughts and emotions towards her father and mother, as well as her own problems that she could have had during this time. Her memoir seems to be just covering the main points of her experiences, with a few feelings in, but honestly, I would assume someone might feel those things.

To sum things up, Chelsea’s memoir had a strong impact on her life, but she could have done a better job telling it.

http://teacher.scholastic.com/writeit/readpoem.asp?id=11980&genre=Memoir&Page=5&sortBy=

The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War (1959-1975) was one of America’s longest wars. It started with the opposition of having a single Vietnam.  America, in fear of having communism spread, decided to get involved. That was America’s main concern: the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. President Eisenhower stated his Domino Theory to support the Vietnam War effort. This Domino Theory stated that if one country falls to communism (South Vietnam), then the other countries around that country will fall to communism (like a when you have a line of dominos, and once falls, the other dominos keep on falling). Thus, America supported South Vietnam, since North Vietnam was communist.

The South Vietnamese government was weak. That is also another reason why America gave so much support to the war. In the beginning, America only supported South Vietnam with money and military advisers. By 1963, President Kennedy increased the number of military advisers from 100 to 1600. Then in 1964, North Vietnam attacked an American ship in international waters. Afterwards, President Johnson used this excuse to get power from the Senate to take troops to Vietnam. After the arrival of troops, bombings on North Vietnam began. Even though President Nixon increased the number of bombings on North Vietnam, in 1973 he began removing troops from South Vietnam. Then, in 1975, South Vietnam lost the war. For me, this is a clear sign that South Vietnam wasn’t fighting its own war. It was America that was fighting a war that was not theirs. It wasn’t even an official war since Congress never declared war. It was just a stupid conflict in which our country lost money and, more important, lives.

http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war

http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/gcselinks/britishworld/vietnam/getinvolved.pdf

The Vietnam War didn’t have the full support of the American people. At first, people supported the war because they claimed that they needed to stop the spread of communism. Afterwards, people began realizing that the war was a mistake. To start with, the war was spending too much money. Taxes were increased, so the people were unhappy. Others began to protest the war because of the chemical weapons used. Something that the people also did not like were the drafts, especially since the drafted, they say, were the poor. Some of the soldiers that were in the war questioned the morality of the war.

This is part of what was the Vietnam War. Something, in my opinion, a waste of everyone’s time, strength, and money.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/VNprotest.htm

"Let America Be America Again"

In Langton Hughes’ poem “Let America Be America Again”, Hughes shows two different perspectives of this land; 1) a land of hope where people dream something better for themselves, a land of the free, a land of opportunity… And 2) the land of the rich, where their money and gold shines, and as it shines, it distracts others from the other side of the land, the dark part of the poor people who work the land, hidden by the rich, which take all the glory. Those are very two different views, but when America isn’t just hope, but becomes a promise, the other perspective almost becomes invisible, until the promise is broken, that is when the other view on America returns to its natural color. It seems that the second perspective is more mundane that the first.

In this poem we are also described two other Americas. There is the America we have, which is the one as the second perspective mentioned above. This America we have is the just the land of the poor (well, it would be nice if the poor owned the land, but they don’t), in which people work and rich take all the glory, a land with many dreams, but these dreams seem out far away, out of our reach. The other America described, though, is one that Hughes is making a call for this America is a land in which men can be free, where the people actually own the land (not just a couple rich people), a strong land that we shall love, a land of opportunity, a land where dreams don’t stay that way but actually become a reality.

The tone of this poem is anger, with a bit of sarcasm mixed in it. This is no surprise, though. Who wouldn’t be mad at a land that made you dream a promise, but that promise only stayed as a dream? That is also the aspects of the American Dream that Hughes criticizes. The dream never really existed for the lower class people because they were never able to achieve it. The poem also has some hope in the end, a hope that the land that is today will one day transformed to what it should be, which is how we, the people, see it as.

This poem relates very well to Fitzgerald’s criticism on The Great Gatsby because it shows how Gatsby, who was born poor, died without making his dream a reality; having Daisy. The poem speaks the truth when it says that the lower class always has a hard time reaching the American Dream. Daisy was Gatsby’s idiosyncrasy. She was his American Dream, everything that he did revolved around her. And as we try to make that dream come true, everything that we do is for that.

I, honestly, don’t agree with this criticism in my modern world. Today, the American Dream is something different for each individual. It is mainly, though, just a dream, a hope, of obtaining something better than what they have now or had in the past. Yes, we can still obtain the America Dream! It just depends on the dream itself; I guess it has some restrictions, but people can still reach it. It’s not a smart idea to reach for the stars because no one actually gets there, so maybe starting to dream small, and by slowly achieving goals, one can reach a higher dream than expected in the beginning.  We still want this dream. Deep down we always wish or just wonder if our life can be better than what it is now and we set goals to improve that, which becomes the American dream to us, because that’s what the American dream is, just our aspirations with an actual possibility to be realized in this country.