The Crunch By Charles Bukowski

Former President John F. Kennedy said, “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” Leadership is a quality found in many characters of writer. In Neal Shusterman’s Unwind, Connor is a main character that found direction and became a great leader. Unwind is a story that takes place in future America. The unwinding process takes place from the ages of thirteen to eighteen. During this time, kids are able to be unwound and harvested for their body parts. Kids will not die but they will live in a divided state. Connor is one of the main characters in Unwind. From the moment Connor was introduced, he was a ticking time bomb that could explode at anytime. As the story progressed, however, he learned to control these emotions,

The theme of suffering will be talked about throughout this essay. Even though it isn’t the most pleasant topic to talk about, it is part of our lives. The dictionary defines suffering as “The state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.” This essay will examine suffering and how it shows up in different printed sources, as well as in my personal life.

Humanity continues to puzzle those that observe it, as it continually shifts and changes. Few aspects remain constant in a race of nonstop deviation, but the fact that amiable individuals typically lead less successful lives compared to those that are self-centered stays true consistently. Kindness is a trait of unsuccessful people because the kind people get taken advantage of, having morals is a drawback, and success follows the insensitive.

“Niobe” is a fascinating tale that demoralizes arrogance, and displays the consequences of those who boast, brag, or are too proud. William Logan and Ted Hughes have written different renditions of this topic, and they each add their own unique style into into their works. For instance, Ted Hughes provides a poetic translation of the original story by Ovid. He also adds his own spice to the tale by using his tendency to create drama. For example, Hughes states, “Niobe was proud… She reared her spectacular head, / Her hair coiled and piled like a serpent / Asleep on a heap of jewels. Anger made her beauty awesome,” (Hughes 199). Although I love the imagery that this depiction creates, I believe that modern day readers, such as myself, would

Have you ever wondered when society breaks down and there is no such thing as happiness? In Fahrenheit 451 firemen don’t put out fires, they are the ones that make the fires. Books in their society are banned and when people are found with books they are burned and are thrown into the asylum. Though people think they are happy they really aren’t. They are actually just numb to pain.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is one of the most well-known mountaineering books to this day. Like numerous mountaineering books the story is about the hardship the characters face while focusing on the main goal of climbing Mt. Everest the highest mountain in the world. Krakauer a very famous author writes about the expedition he went on for outside magazine in 1996. The story reveals the biggest disaster on Everest to this day. Overall, the novel is great and I would highly recommend it to a friend. However this is a great story I am still not sure how this book could relate to the AP environmental science course curriculum. Krakauer slightly confronts the negative environmental impact climbers have done to Everest due to the fact the mountain

The famous philosopher Herbert Spencer once said, “Life is a continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relation.” Throughout their lives, everyone must strengthen their understanding and interpretation to life to better fit their ideology. In Neal Shusterman’s Unwind, the author portrays this concept through the struggle and development of the dynamic characters of Connor, Risa, and Lev trying to escape their Unwinding. Personal principles are strengthened by learning patience, finding love, and experience the real world, as shown through the characters Connor, Risa, and Lev in Neal Shusterman’s Unwind.

Speaker Thomas Friedman is speaking at MIT, which is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “He is an American journalist specializing in foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle East, globalization, and environmental issues. “ (Daniel H. Pink) He is talking about the basis on what the book is about and how he understood this new phenomenon. The book is titled “The World Is Flat”. This title is referring to “the global economic playing field being leveled.” This is a tremendous achievement that all started with Christopher Columbus discovering North America in 1492. This was the first development of the globalization of the world, which today has taken over economies all over the world. This advancement of technology has led to “accidently making Beijing, Bangalore and Bethesda next-door neighbors”. Mr. Friedman then references in chapter one of his book about all of the encounters he had in India that led him to the conclusion, “The World Is Flat”.

The particular descent ahead of those on the ''hill'' on May 10, 1996, resulted in the greatest loss of life in the history of mountaineering on Everest. As news spread of the nine deaths (including that of Hall, who spoke to his wife in New Zealand by radiophone as he lay stranded in a snowstorm on the summit ridge), a barrage of questions resounded: What went wrong? Why was the approaching storm ignored? And, most emphatically, why are ''tourists'' with more money than expertise being taken up Everest in the first place?

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a true story about Chris McCandless who is found dead in the Alaskan wild during September 1992. After discovering that his father had a secret secondary family when Chris was young, Chris pushes away his friends and family and eventually isolates himself. He obtains $25,000 from his parents by lying about attending law school and drives away from home, deserting his real name. He later leaves his car in Georgia after an engine breakdown due to rain damage. Chris goes through a series of events including hitchhiking, obtaining and leaving multiple jobs, learning to hunt, and either living on the streets or staying at an acquaintance’s abode, while keeping few possessions and minimal money. During his journey, he meets helpful people who become relatively good friends with him, as they encourage and support his beliefs and thoughts. McCandless decides that he wants to challenge himself further to be away from all civilization after a year of fitful travel. He decides to live in the cold wilderness of Alaska, to test his survival skills with almost no resources. While hitchhiking, Chris is dropped off a few miles from the base of Mt. McKinley in Alaska, where he starts to adapt to the environment. He finds an abandoned bus, which he uses as his shelter, and slims down in weight after a few months. Without knowing, he later eats moldy seeds of wild potato that contain poison. Being impaired by the poison, he realizes his death is

“I began learning long ago that those who are the happiest are those who do the most for others.” Booker T. Washington’s wise words accurately summarize what I learned throughout high school. I noticed that selfish people are the unhappiest and most discontent. In sharp contrast, I also observed that people who dedicate their lives to others are the most joyful and satisfied. People I admire tend to be selfless and servant-minded. I strive to mimic them, living with a selfless mindset. My special interests, talents, and unique experiences enabled me to make others’ lives better.

Often people expect the cosmos surrounding themselves to shape to their will. They want parents, siblings, friends, teachers, coworkers, and significant others to manufacture happiness around them. The weight and the blame always belongs to the people in their lives. All too recurrently society finds scapegoats. People declare that because they were given this extensive project that the teacher demolished their weekend, or because a coworker slacked off it ruined that shift and their performance at work. In the end, individual happiness is not on anyone else's shoulders. When humanity waits for others to clean up a mess, give attention, buy trinkets or otherwise create happiness and make life generally smoother, where ultimately they do not have to put in the drudgery to deliver joy on their own and they lose all control the happiness in question. As Voltaire wrote in Candide “We must cultivate our own gardens” (113 Voltaire). We are the ones responsible for our own destinies. We have to

Throughout his novel Everything Flows, Vasily Grossman provides numerous occasions for defining freedom. In the midst of attempting to give meaning to freedom, Grossman greatly invests in wrestling with the issue of why freedom is still absent within Russia although the country has seen success in many different ways. Through the idea and image of the Revolution stems Capitalism, Leninism, and Stalinism. Grossman contends that freedom is an inexorable occurrence and that “to live means to be free”, that it is simply the nature of human kind to be free (200-204). The lack of freedom expresses a lack of humanity in Russia, and though freedom never dies, if freedom does not exist in the first place, then it has no chance to be kept alive. Through Grossman’s employment of the Revolution and the ideas that stem from it, he illustrates why freedom is still absent from Russian society, but more importantly why the emergence of freedom is inevitable.

Ishmael meets Queequeg and they get hired together and board the whaling ship Pequod, whose captain searches for the whale that bit his leg off. Ahab offers a gold doubloon as a reward to motivate his crew to search for the whale with as much passion as he does. During the hunt, they try to kill any other whales they see, Ishmael gives a run down on whaling, the crew come across bad omens, and they meet ships devastated by Moby Dick in their search for the whale. After a three day chase of the whale, Moby Dick destroys the Pequod and kills every crew member, except for Ishmael, who survives by clinging to Queequeeq’s coffin, and is then rescued by a ship that lost some of its crew to Moby Dick.

"Crackling day' is a story about a young black boy in South Africa that challenges three white youths and, in so doing, challenges the political system of the whole country. The very famous writer Peter Abrahams wrote it.