The Reluctant Fundamentalist, By Kathy H.

“Home is where the heart is.” In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros develops this famous statement to depict what a “home” really represents. What is a home? Is it a house with four walls and a roof, the neighborhood of kids while growing up, or a unique Cleaver household where everything is perfect and no problems arise? According to Cisneros, we all have our own home with which we identify; however, we cannot always go back to the environment we once considered our dwelling place. The home, which is characterized by who we are, and determined by how we view ourselves, is what makes every individual unique. A home is a personality, a depiction of who we are inside and

Within many known religions, the devotional practices has been known to acquire great importance. The essence of practicing what you preach has scolded many religious groups, introducing true beliefs, righteousness, and a wider connection to the supreme being . In the book entitled “ Living religions” by Mary Pat Fisher, clarified and firm descriptions were introduced about religious rituals. Surprisingly; the author utilized small parts of modern concepts, limiting the reader from a full comprehension of religious practices today, therefore; I will only discuss the basic and traditional rituals. To elaborate; in this paper, I will be providing an opinionated but also, comparative description of the major practices and rituals that undergo in both the Abrahamic and indigenous religions.

Award-winning journalist, Lee Strobel wrote The Case for Christ to retrace and enlarge his journey toward becoming a Christian. Strobel once atheist, and now Christian, shares how he began to look upon the Bible and God. As an atheist, Strobel lived the life of selfishness and only worried to please himself. When his wife began to go to church he wasn’t very pleased until after he saw the positive and attractive change in her. This is the start of his curiosity and investigation about Christianity. He wanted to understand what changed her like this. He wanted to relate with his wife so he decided to study about this and attend church services with her. Strobel began his journey and interviewed thirteen leading scholars who defended their views concerning the historical reliability of the New Testament. Strobel splits the case for Christ into three basic sections: Examining the Record, Analyzing Jesus, and Researching the Resurrection.

The clones of Hailsham accept their fate and consequently do not run away from it. They are held back as they are intimidated by the outside world, have accepted their purpose, and that is all within their knowledge. Why are the lives of the clones negatively affected because they were limited to the truth about the outside world? The novel Never Let Me Go illustrated how the priorities the clones were born with is what grounds them from escaping, which limits their knowledge and results in negative consequence, which is their death in this case. The clones were told and not

Often times we are at a loss for words when it comes to talking about the person of the Holy Spirit. Beth Felker Jones in her work entitled “God the Spirit” serves as an introduction to the study of the Holy Spirit in a distinctly Wesleyan and Ecumenical Perspective. Jones is working against the notion that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is often the most neglected of all Christian teachings (1). She recognizes her experience within the Wesleyan tradition as one that shapes her pneumatology and this book. She asserts that one of Wesleyan Christianity’s special gifts is it’s “leaning against any tendency to neglect the Spirit” (4). Even with this framework she aims to place the Wesleyan perspective in a larger ecumenical milieu that shows the continuity of a Wesleyan pneumatology with the Tradition of the Church. Overall, her approach is very accessible, as she assumes very little and writes in such a way that allows her to cover large dogmatic topics clearly and concisely. By merit of simply being an introduction only style book, there is the risk of glossing over topics and not providing enough in depth discussion to fully understand and comprehend the doctrine discussed. A reader should feel confident that Jones has indeed provided us with a solid introduction to Wesleyan pneumatology that has the ability to bear fruit and initiate growth in the life of the believer.

The article, The Cult of Womanhood: 1820 - 1860 written by Barbara Welter discusses the philosophy towards women in America during the mid 19th century. A set of demands and expectations based upon four principles: piety, purity, submission and domesticity were placed on women as well as certain behavioral expectations left 19th century women feeling guilty. It also left women feeling this way during the industrialization period as well as having a huge presence of incompatibility with society. Welter shares her viewpoint that the Cult of Womanhood was an attempt to preserve pre modern values in the industrial age. Men held a dominant place in society and continued to prevent new opportunities for women to explore. Narrow minded

Let the Circle be Unbroken portrays an african american family’s hardships against powerful white landowners and family tragedies. All in the perception of the strong-willed Cassie Logan. Let the Circle be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor is an enjoyable book with engaging characters, unpredictable plots, and an amusing genre.

Bailey, Beth. Sex in the Heartland. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1999.

The Case for Christ was written by Lee Strobel and Jane Vogel. The book is almost like a really big essay with a bunch of different sections, each one proving or disproving a certain point. The book focuses on disproving the existence of Jesus Christ but in the process of disproving the existence of Jesus he proves just how real Jesus is. I personally chose this book because I am a Christian and it looked interesting to see why other people who don 't already believe start to believe. Also I feel like the more I know about Jesus the more I know about God, since they are one in the same. I found this book to be extremely interesting because of all the textual and factual based evidence proving that Jesus existed.

In Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro the major themes in this book is hope, and free will. Hope plays as a symbol and feeling of freedom for the characters. Their curiosity is what causes their confidence to one day be free, but then is let down when having to face the truth that their life is set for them and that they must accept it. Free will is shown that clones are unable to change their fates as organ donors, but their lack of free will affects many other elements of their lives as well. For example, Ruth never achieves her dream of working in an office, and Kathy gets precious little time with Tommy. Ishiguro is ambiguous about where this lack of free will comes from because Ruth never tries to work in an

Francine Prose tackles the issue of the harsh view modern society takes on an overweight body. In her essay, “The Wages of Sin”, she goes more in depth by explaining how that a person who overeats is categorized with traits such as lack of control or proper judgment solely based on their appearance. Prose elaborates on how some in society seem to view obesity on the same level as sins. To emphasize this, she uses the word, “gluttony” often in her essay. Gluttony is a religious term that symbolizes lack of control, a trait already established as being connected to the obese population.

Pays the private corporation a small amount of 5 million dollars for a new liver to escape death, since his viral hepatitis is destroying his own liver. Class warfare is another raising issue that incorporates with human cloning because only the rich and famous will be able to invest and afford a human clone that will harvest organs for the. Which is a small amount of money for the wealthy to escape death, but it inst fair that only the wealthy will be able to escape and not the middle class and less fortunate. If one society is given the right and opportunity to escape death, then the rest of the society should have at least an opportunity to invest in a human genetic clone. In conclusion, there are many rising issues surrounding the main theme of the movie, human cloning. From the identity of the clones to class warfare, and who can afford to invest in a human clone, to is it right or wrong to kill the human clone when their organs are needed, and is human cloning a good thing or a bad thing. As Dr. Merrick said, “I brought you into this work.. and I can take you out of

In the novel, Ms. Lucy, a teacher at Hailsham, the boarding school all the clones in the novel were studying at, tells the clones that “You were brought into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all of them, have been decided” (73). This shows how society has the power to create the clones and decide their fates. It is also unfair in a way that society marked their purposes before they even have the opportunity to explore life like all human beings and choose what they want to do themselves. They also did not give the clones any basic human rights. At the end, when the main characters, Kathy and Tommy, tried to go against their fates and asked for a deferral from the donation program, madame tells them that they cannot go against society and their lives must now run the course that’s been set for it” (243), which shows little power they have against society and how they cannot change their fate. The author also uses this quote to prove that society has full control of the clones’ lives and treat them unfairly. The description of society’s power throughout this novel shows how the minorities, which are the clones in this case, have no power to decide their own fate and are treated

As technology has been advancing and continues to advance over the years, our ethics are always being tested as we decide on how we deal with the ethical dilemmas it brings. Moral dilemmas involving technology such as hacking, enhanced pathogens, and use of robots are only a few examples of what seems like an infinite number of moral issues being created by technology. In Never Let me Go Kazuo Ishiguro takes on the issue of how do we deal with human clones? A technology which may become available to us in the near future and in his novel is being used and experimented with. Ishiguro in the novel describes a utopian society, in which cloned human doubles are used for organ donations, in order to replace the

It is Changez’s shifting identity that creates the main interest and tension in the novel. Do you agree?