A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J.D. Salinger

Many centuries after the first spaceship landed on the moon, a group of brave rocket men and women did the unbelievable. The short story “All summer is a day”, by Ray Bradbury, takes place in the underground city of the planet Venus where tunnels roamed instead of streets. The land above them was submerged with endless pouring rain and deadly jungles. The sight of the sun was a rare miracle that only happened once every seven years. The children spent all their life in the enclosed underground tunnels, well all except for one. Margot was the only child who came to Venus when she was four, and the biggest difference was that she still remembered the times when the glowing sun gave warmth and hope.

In David Hwang’s play, M. Butterfly, the story covers the superior attitude that Western white men hold toward Eastern oriental women which is shown through Rene Gallimard’s experiences. Throughout the story, Gallimard constantly brings up his favorite play, M. Butterfly, where an oriental woman, Butterfly, gives up and loses everything including her life for the white man she loves, Pinkerton, and despite Butterfly’s efforts, Pinkerton ends up marrying another woman causing Butterfly to commit suicide. Many white men enjoy this play because it portrays white men to look superior and gives them the assumption that oriental women would do and give up anything for a white man. Gallimard is also one of the white men who believe they are superior to oriental women and that no matter what he does, an oriental woman would never leave his side. Gallimard 's belief of racial superiority is what led him to his control over Song as if Gallimard was Pinkerton and Song was his Butterfly, this fantasy that Gallimard created for himself was false because in reality, Gallimard was the Butterfly and Song was the Pinkerton.

After realizing that all of the food and water consumed by their family was either piped, shipped, or driven to them in the middle of the desert, novelist Barbra Kingsolver and her family decided to pick up their lives and move from Tucson, Arizona to to her childhood home of tobacco and dairy farms in southern Appalachia. Kingsolver and her family intended to spend the next year living in a more connected way to their food and where it comes from, and this book is the result of that experience. Part journal, part academic inquest, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, tells the story of their project to live sustainably in a place “where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles right up out of the ground” (p. 3). Their year would consist

Muriel’s mother is also extremely concerned for Muriel because now Seymour has some psychic problems, she sees him as some loony maniac. In spite of this, we know how Seymour behaves in the episode on the beach with Sybil, and Muriel’s beliefs about Seymour are therefore somehow not entirely correct, even though Seymour does act like one in the elevator on his way back to his hotel room.

The Boys of Summer, a non-fiction book of baseball, written by Roger Kahn. Who tells a wonderful heart aching tale of a simple stick and ball game that helped start the development to push Americans (generally the white population at the time) to change what the country claims to be, a free and fair non-prejudice country that gives “everyone” their own rights/opportunities. Jackie Robinson, America’s first African American to play on a Major Baseball league. He was the first colored-skinned to ever make history not only in the game of baseball. Robinson ignited a spark that sent Americans (mostly the white population) dumbfounded, that a “nigga” a dark colored-skinned individual was more than just a janitor. This book transcends the generation gap as Kahn recaps his boyhood in Brooklyn, his young career as a writer following the Brooklyn Dodgers, and a follow-up of the certain members of the Brooklyn Dodgers during post-playing days. As Kahn nostalgically narrates his story of the transformation of the Brooklyn Dodgers, a dead team who came back to life to make a major impact on the country, to a becoming dead of the last time. Reveals the theme that race play a huge role on American’s reaction to the Brooklyn Dodger, Jackie Robinson, and the aftermath to letting a “Negro” into a white man sport.

Americans have an increasing variety of choices to make during everyday life. Although this abundance of choice appears to be liberating, it is actually overwhelming and creates a high amount of stress and pressure on Americans. The abundance of choices combined with the unavailability of resources to sustain these choices creates a large deficit of happiness in American society. The essay “When it’s all too much” by Barry Schwartz brings fourth the idea of an overabundance of choices in America leading to widespread unhappiness. “Date Line Delhi” by Barbra Ehrenreich entails on how the outsourcing of American jobs, both intellectual and menial, is affecting American society negatively. The third essay, “Mismeasuring Poverty” goes into how the government skews the “poverty line” in order to make it appear it has been consistent over time, when in reality it has increased significantly in the past few decades. The overabundance of choices available to people in modern day America combined with a lack of resources to aid in sustaining this amount of choice, creates an escalation in the decrease of quality of life in America and the overall downfall of the “American dream”.

J.D. Salinger has written multiple novels, but his most famous is The Catcher in the Rye. Not only is this novel famous for its literary merit, it is also known as his most banned novel in certain schools. Even though this novel has been banned, J.D. Salinger’s themes and moralistic purposes serve literary worth.

A typical day in Julie Smith MC 201 class starts of with her playing music. Once her class starts it’s nothing but and excitement. She is a very loud and energetic person. She is not afraid to get all in your face as she is walking around the class teaching you for the topic of the day. She also has a lot of games she uses to keep people engaged in the topics to she is talking about. “ I love coming to Julie class because you never know what to expect from her. One day you might get class where you’re using your phone and the next day she’s handing out candy. I love coming to her class not knowing what to expect.” Said Ciara Bazile. Julie just didn’t wake up one day and say hey I’m going to be teacher like most people as she likes to put it, “ just happened by accident.” One of her old professors called her one night and asked her if she was still teaching at Webster and asked her if she wanted to teach an intro class, she immediately jumped at it. Her favorite part about teaching is “having students contact me after the semester to tell me about examples they 've seen - which shows that what we 've talked about in 201 has stayed with them. I love getting to know them and know their stories. College students are much smarter than people give them credit for.” Julie has been teaching since 1998 so she has no shame when it comes to teaching is not afraid to make a fool of her self when it comes to teaching. “I remember Julie teaching us about television and radio. She

In the short story, “All Summer in a Day,” by Ray Bradbury, our protagonist, Margot, gets harassed by her classmates for several reasons. On Venus, there is a 2 hour period every 7 years of constant rain where the sun comes out. Since Margot moved to Venus 5 years ago, she can remember the sun and has full memories of it. Margot is tormented by her classmates, the antagonists, simply because of their jealousy. This emotion empowers the behavior of Margot’s classmates, leading them to regret their actions.

Kim gives a vivid picture of the complexities in India under British rule. It shows the life of the bazaar mystics, of the natives, of the British military. There is a great deal of action and movement, for Kipling's vast canvas painted in full detail. The dialogue in the novel makes use of Indian phrases translated by the author, they give the flavor of native speech in India. They are also touches of the native behavior and shrewdness.

One of the points that is consistently brought up in Toni Morrison’s Paradise is that of the all black town “Ruby”. Paradise uses the setting of Oklahoma to discuss how many black towns are shaped by past history and religion. While the town in this novel is fictional, there have been real all black towns in the United States, and it seems that these towns influenced many aspects of the town Ruby, which is why it is so easy to imagine that the story could actually be real. Many authors have written in general about the novel, and specifically about the town within it.

Throughout many works of literature, characters are described to go through a rite of passage, developing the plot and solving conflicts. A rite of passage is when a character goes through life changes, realizing his/her flaws and maturing as a person. Walter Lee Younger is a man that goes through many different character changes, which cause conflict amongst the other characters. Once he goes through his rite of passage, he is able to fix his flaws and mature. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, characterization is used to portray that one must experience a rite of passage in order to mature.

Ernest Hemingway is an American twentieth century novelist who served in World War I. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver for the Italian army. He wrote the novel The Sun Also Rises in Paris in the 1920s. Hemingway argues that the Lost Generation suffered immensely after World War I because of severe problems with masculinity, alcohol, and love.

In the short story, ‘For Esmé – With Love and Squalor’ by J.D Salinger; we see how inhumane people can treat others in times of war, and that those who did not fight did not really understand the brutality of war. Throughout the story, J.D Salinger brings in his own ideas about the war that he fought and uses motif’s to show us how people viewed the war versus how he viewed the war. The main motif of the story is letters. At the very beginning of the story we hear about a letter that ‘X’ has received. In the letter, X’s mother-in-law says, “…to please send her some cashmere yarn first chance I got away from “camp”.” (Salinger, pg.8). In the tone of her letter, we can see that she does not really think that what X is doing is too hard. She assumes that he can pick up yarn for her at any time, and she calls the war “camp”, when it was not like summer camp at all.

In the book Life is so Good, George Dawson and Richard Glaubman give a very rare representation of life in the early 1900s. George Dawson, a poor and illiterate black man tells life as it is through his experiences. These many life experiences are portrayed in new stories told chapter by chapter intrigue the reader of the book. This paper will review Dawson’s many stories and his perspective on life at the time, as well as the way his views and mindset compares to the philosophy of African Americans at this time.