A Day Off By Chris Martin

Michael Gow’s play Away is the story of three different Australian families who go on holiday for Christmas in the sixties. By going away each family is hoping to resolve their issues. Although Away is set some time ago the themes and issues explored in the play are still relevant to a modern day audience, even one of a non-Australian background. Shakespearean plays that were written many hundreds of years ago and are still understandable and relevant to people all over the world today.

In the essay “Working at Wendy’s,” the author, Joey Franklin, explains putting aside his pride so he can provide for his family. In the essay, Franklin supports his argument by talking about how the job may be embarrassing, but supporting his family is important. Franklin shows that he will do whatever it takes to provide for his family, he supports his wife while she is finishing her last semester in college and just so she can he applies for a night job so that he can stay home and take care of their son during the day while she is in school. Franklin is a college student and only has two semesters left before he graduates, but he puts school aside to be able to provide for his wife and son. Franklin is embarrassed to work in the fast a

Can an ego be big enough for one to “trip over?” Ego-tripping is something undertaken to boost or draw attention to a person’s own image or appraisal of himself, and or something done primarily to satisfy one’s vanity. Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on June 7. 1943. She graduated with honors from her grandfather’s alma mater Fisk University. The poem Ego-Tripping is about what she perceives as the true identity of an African American women. She explains how being powerful can open so many doors for a person if they just believe in themselves. This poem was written when Giovanni took her first trip to Africa in 1972, the same year the poem was written. The poet explains her past experience to show how lost she was during

Essayist and novelist, Brent Staples, in his essay "Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space" describes the accusatory altering effects of racial profiling and stereotyping occurring within the cities of Chicago. Staples purpose is to express to the reader the shift of the atmosphere when a black man enters a room. He creates an accusatory tone to show that he's an innocent man incriminated of committing crimes due to his ethnicity. Staples states “the ability to alter public space in ugly ways” he builds credibility by allowing readers to speculate on racial profiling through his personal experiences and appealing his readers with both logic and emotion to support his viewpoint.

Throughout the course of the book, A Long Way Home, Saroo Brierley, the author, encounters a series of traumatic experiences that lead to bittersweet moments. Unlike a normal child’s infancy, Saroo was physically and mentally consuming. Through his experience, we are able to get a glimpse of the many struggles and hardships young children live in India daily. His petrifying experiences of living on the streets, Liluah, and Nava Jeevan finally lead to his safe haven of being taken by the Brierley’s.

Today many people feel compelled to buy anything or everything with an expensive price tag. This includes Expensive designer clothes, latest gadgets, expensive vehicles and many other similar things. This form of consumerism has embedded itself in today’s society; where it's encouraged to invest in such materialistic possessions. Kanye West is an African-American rapper, producer, and entrepreneur, who articulates his struggle with consumerism and the struggle for those around him in his song “All Falls Down.” West, utilizes puns, rhyme, and juxtaposition to highlight the issues surrounding materialism that can be interpreted differently by different listeners such as African Americans and White Americans.

During the summer of 1984, Calvin Johnson trudges knee deep through a swamp in the wetlands of South Georgia. As snakes brush past his legs, he marches in line with nine other men, each dressed in an orange jumpsuit, swinging a razor sharp bush axe in collective rhythm. His crew entered the swamp at dawn and they will not leave until dusk. Guards, armed with shotguns, and equally violent tempers, ignore the fact that the temperature has risen well above 100 degrees and push the men even harder. Suddenly, an orange blur falls to the ground and a prisoner from Wayne Correctional Institution lies face down in the swampy floor. As guards bark orders at the unconscious, dying man, Johnson realizes "the truth of the situation, and the force of

Michael Gow's play, "Away" expresses the idea of going through changes and receiving help from people around you. The key characters of the play experiences change and renewal as a result of their relationships with others ad the summer vacation. Coral and Gwen is two characters that undergo the most changes throughout the trip. Coral manage to moved on from her's son death while Gwen changed from a snobby person to a person who is more understandable. Tom is one of the critical character that help Coral and Gwen realised their issues and surpasses it. The play showed lives of people and their own struggle during the 60s and how they overcome it.

“April Morning” by Howard Fast is a novel that takes place during the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775. The entire book takes place during a 24 hour time period. Adam Cooper is the antagonist in this novel. When Adam goes to bed on the eve of April 18, 1775 he is a boy. When he awakens the next morning he is forced to become a man. In the early hours of the morning he, along with the rest of the town, is awakened by a lone rider racing to Lexington to warn them that a British army, of maybe a thousand men, is marching their way. Immediately the town is in a frenzy to prepare for the British arrival. The book is about Adam’s journey during the Battle of Lexington.

Jamie Fader’s book Falling Back which was published in 2013, is based on ethnographic research over three years, from 2004 to 2007, of black and latino males on the edge of adulthood and that were incarcerated at the Mountain Ridge Academy reform school located in a rural area: “within a dense forest in western Pennsylvania, is Mountian Ridge Academy … ninety-acre campus contains eight dormitories, each of which houses thirty-two young men between ages 14 to 18” (p.1). The criminal thinking approach was intended to help young people identify the patterns that had led them to delinquency and replace it with corrective and prosocial thoughts. These young boys had been involved in drug offenses and violence within their suburban communities and were now in the process of behavioral change in order to help them reflect and be able to make better decisions which would lead them to a better life.

The play “No Child”, written by Nilaja Sun showcases a teacher, Ms. Sun as a teaching artist who is under a grant to facilitate the production of a play, teaching and encouraging live theoretical performances in a dysfunctional environment.No Child is a reflection of Nilaja Sun’s experiences as a teaching artist in the public school system in New York. In the play Ms. Sun brings a senses of hope and inspiration not only to the students but to the teachers as well in one of the toughest classrooms of Malcolm X High School, in Bronx, New York. The narrator of the play is a observant Janitor of the Malcolm X High School. Since he has been performing his job related duties as a janitor he witnessed the struggles and obstacle faced by the school and students. No Child accurately illustrates students, teachers and communities imprisoned by a corrupted public school system.

Weir Mitchell was a “doctor, writer, and a poet,” the man also thought, according to The Rest Cure: Repetition or Resolution of Victorian Women’s Conflicts? that men were the better gender and that women’s nervous systems were “more irritable”(8). Weir Mitchell was also a very rude man, he had said at some point to or about one of his patients that “She was a pallid, feeble creature… and has no more bosom than the average chicken of a boardinghouse table. Nature had wisely prohibited this being from increasing her breed” (The Rest Cure Revisited). Why would a doctor say that about one of his patients? Well, women weren’t equal to men back then, hence they were considered frail and weak. Weir Mitchell also had a skewed view on women and didn’t know a women’s body works. Weir Mitchell thought that normal things to a woman at some point in her life with go through menstruation, menopause, and lactation (8). Weir also thought that the organs of a woman were not equal, as apparently male’s organs are equal, and the only organ of value was a woman’s reproductive system specifically the ovaries because they could make babies, they were the dominate organs (8). His per say “bedside manner” wasn’t all that good either; according to the article (The Rest Cure Revisited), he threatened to climb into bed with one of his patients to get her out of bed for whatever reason. His “nice and encouraging” side of being a doctor wasn’t there either; for example, from the article (The Rest Cure

Could you live your life without making an excuse? Maybe you could go a day, a week, a month maybe, but your whole life? Well, Kyle Maynard describes in his book, No Excuses, the struggle of how he learned to lead a full life while being born with arms that end at his elbows and legs that end at his knees and never made an excuse. There were many moments in Kyle’s life through his middle school and high school career as both a football player and a wrestler where he could’ve said, “Well, I do have almost no arms and no legs, coach,” However, Kyle Maynard never once used this excuse for a reason that he didn’t make the tackle, or got beaten in wrestling, but instead used his mistakes and losses as a guideline on how to improve himself.

Love and Death in Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie and Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych

“Daystar” by Rita Dove is an expressive poem, which centers on the main character, a young mother and wife, who internally struggles with her burdensome, daily duties, which creates a lack of freedom in her world.   Dove’s choice of words lets the reader empathize with her confined life.  In this poem, irony exists for the mere fact that from birth to adulthood the female population is brought up to feel fulfilled by simply becoming a wife and mother; however, this poem describes the monotonous duties and the joyless bond that can be between husband and wife.