It’s a Saturday night, and you’re going over to a small gathering at your friend’s house. You’re a senior in high school, and it seemed like you had everything; cheer captain, the quarterback for a boyfriend, perfect grades, everything. You asked Lisa what you guys would be doing at the gathering, but she just replied with, “You know, I thought we could try a new fad.” As you start to pull into the driveway of the dimly lighted house, you become timorous of what this new fad might be. As you walk into the house, you see Lisa and three other friends sitting at a kitchen table. Lisa was usually impassive and imperturbable, but tonight, something had changed about her. “Hey, there um, wait. What’s your name again?” Lisa slurred. It was very limpid that the four of them must have been drinking. “Want some?” Dave held out a beer to me. You were fantod that if you didn’t try it, you might lose your reputation of being popular. So you took the beer, and started to drink it. One little sip wouldn’t hurt, right? Two hours later you wake up on the floor with several beers in your system, and you are way past the point of being drunk. You look at the clock and see that it is 3:00 AM; since it is way past your cur few, you decide to drive home. Right as you get onto the highway, you are swerving back and forth between lanes and you’ve lost all control of the wheel. Then all of a sudden, everything went black. You wake up in an ambulance feeling as if thousands of needles were piercing into your body. You can’t see anything but you can hear the doctor say, “I don’t think she’s going to make it.” Scared as you could possibly ever be, you try to tell them that you’re fine; but you just can’t seem to get the words out. You start to feel more and more pain, it felt as like a thousand rocks were flattening your lungs, and all of a sudden you can’t breathe. The perfect life that you once had, gone… Many teens in today’s world are put under tons of peer pressure each and every day. If it be from their parents, friends, family or even teachers; it’s hard to say no. In Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, a girl named Melinda learns that sometimes doing things that your friends are doing isn’t always the best choice.
To start, Melinda is about to be a freshman at Merryweather High school and everything looks like it’s going to be a great year. Melinda has many friends, good grades, and a loving family; nothing could possibly go wrong, right? When Melinda and her friends pulled up to the end of the summer party at an abandoned barn, everything seemed a little shady. There’s underage drinking, smoking, and way too many teens out of control. And when Melinda starts to drink a little too much, everything goes into chaos. Andy Evans, a soon to be senior, asks Melinda to dance; and of course she politely accepts. After awhile they start to kiss. Melinda feels as if she’s on top of the world. Five minutes later she is crying in the middle of the woods. So how did she go from ecstatic to horrible in a matter of minutes? Melinda was one of the many people in the United States who have been raped.
To continue, teenagers constantly have issues with peer pressure. It seems like everywhere we go there is somebody that wants us to do something that we really shouldn’t be doing. But it’s very hard to say no to things that are potentially deleterious, especially when your friendships could be on the line. Melinda was pressured to drink which then caused a chain reaction of bad decisions; drinking lead to kissing, which lead to rape, which lead to losing all of her friends, which finally lead to depression. Depression can sometimes lead to suicide, which luckily Melinda did not commit. Nearly 30,000 people’s lives are taken by suicide each year. Most of these people don’t even try to get help because they think no one is there for them or no one will listen. But the truth is many people will listen to what you have to say. Because if you take away your own life, who knows what you’ve taken away from the world; the next president, open heart surgeon, or something as simple as a stay at home mom. There might be someone out there in the world that might need to talk to you about suicide one day. So if you aren’t alive for them to talk to, that’s potentially another person added to the 30,000.
Aside from suicide, rape or being sexually assaulted is one of the other things many people are affected by each year. Every two minutes someone in the United States is sexually assaulted, that’s 720 sexual assaults each day. So who can you trust in this chaotic world of ours you might ask? You can trust most, if not all the people you know out there. But you just have to be careful. Not every party is going to end in a bad situation. It’s just very unfortunate that Melinda happened to be at the wrong place, with the wrong guy, at the wrong time.
To conclude, we need to be more aware of all the things going on around us. You might have a great life now, but you really don’t want to end up being one of those 720 people. Sometimes bad situations aren’t preventable, but that doesn’t mean you have to go through with them. Nobody knows when the next dangerous trend will come knocking on our doors. But when it does, will you have the guts to take a stand? Or will you be knocking your first domino over into a new chain of bad decisions?
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Character Analysis
Ponyboy is fourteen years old and is the youngest of his friends. He has light-brown almost red hair and grayish-green eyes. His hair is way longer than a lot of boys, and he is just trying to fit in with the rest of the crowd. He lost his parents when he was young, and now lives with his two brothers; Sodapop, most would describe him as the charming ladies man that every girl loves and the person every guy wants to be, and Darry, the tough muscular Greaser that really deserves to be a Soc. I've choose Ponyboy because I like the way he stands up for his family, and how he isn't just the average Greaser. He is not querulous at all, but should Ponyboy really belong with the Greasers, or is his true calling with the Socs?
To start, in the beginning chapters of the novel Ponyboy is described as a young Greaser that is just trying to make it through each day. So that if he does happen to make it through high school, he can get out of the city and travel to find his own place in the country. You can definitely see the want that Ponyboy has to finish school so that he can reach his goal of moving on to bigger and better things. A few chapters later, you see another example of how Ponyboy is youngest in the group, and is pretty defenseless against real danger. "How'd you like that haircut to begin just below the chin?" Says a pack of Socs when they jumped Ponyboy one evening. Johnny, another one of the boys, has always been abused as a child and knows how it feels to be bullied. He would never hurt a fly, but has to cross the line once one of his friend's lives is on the line. "You know what a Soc is? White trash with Mustangs and maradas." Ponyboy said to show the frustration he has when he is picked on once again by three Socs. The Socs jump him and try to drown him until Johnny puts his own life on the line to save Ponyboy.
To continue, throughout the novel Ponyboy really grows up and realizes that maybe he won't have to live this life of being a hoodlum anymore. When Ponyboy and Johnny accidentally burn down an old church that little school children are having a picnic in, everything goes chaotic because they know they could be taking away helpless little lives. Both are audacious enough to jump in and save each individual child from the blazing heat, and in return are declared as heroes. Also, when the rumble was about to begin, Ponyboy starts to wonder why he fights if nothing good comes in return. And as the fight is about to start, Darry starts to reconsider Ponyboy fighting, but then Ponyboy says, "I'll be alright. I'll get hold of a little one, okay?" which makes Darry say yes. He then asks each member of his group why they fight, and in return they each give him a response for why. But when Ponyboy asks himself the same question, he can't seem to find the answer. This is a great change for him to be growing up because it shows he has a good outlook on how his own life is going to turn out. He doesn't want to be in pointless brawls, and he doesn't want to have to rely on his brothers to do everything for him.
Near the end of the novel, Ponyboy really finds out who he is. He really takes a better look of what's going on in the world around him, and really starts to mature by watching out for people other than himself. One good example would have to be when Ponyboy looks out for Johnny when Johnny kills Bob, the Soc, in order to save Ponyboy's life. Ponyboy is grateful and runs away with Johnny so that they both won't get caught by the police. Another example would be when he helps out his group by fighting in the rumble against the Socs. Even though he didn't want to, he still did because he knew that they needed him in order to win. This has been a great change because now more people can feel like they can depend on Ponyboy and that he's maturing into a great man that everyone knows he can be.
To conclude, I'd have to say that I feel bad for Ponyboy in some ways, but in other ways I don't feel bad for him. For Ponyboy to have to live in such a bad environment where everyone is either fighting, smoking or dropping out of school, must be hard to be around since all of those things are very deleterious. Here in the suburbs we sometimes take for granite how lucky we are to live in such a spectacular place with our families. But for other people like Ponyboy, Darry and Sodapop, they aren't so lucky. When you might think of family you probably think of your intermediate family, your mom, dad, sister or brother. But for these three, all they have is each other. Reading The Outsiders really makes you appreciate everything you have, and it makes you stop complaining about everything you don't.
To start, in the beginning chapters of the novel Ponyboy is described as a young Greaser that is just trying to make it through each day. So that if he does happen to make it through high school, he can get out of the city and travel to find his own place in the country. You can definitely see the want that Ponyboy has to finish school so that he can reach his goal of moving on to bigger and better things. A few chapters later, you see another example of how Ponyboy is youngest in the group, and is pretty defenseless against real danger. "How'd you like that haircut to begin just below the chin?" Says a pack of Socs when they jumped Ponyboy one evening. Johnny, another one of the boys, has always been abused as a child and knows how it feels to be bullied. He would never hurt a fly, but has to cross the line once one of his friend's lives is on the line. "You know what a Soc is? White trash with Mustangs and maradas." Ponyboy said to show the frustration he has when he is picked on once again by three Socs. The Socs jump him and try to drown him until Johnny puts his own life on the line to save Ponyboy.
To continue, throughout the novel Ponyboy really grows up and realizes that maybe he won't have to live this life of being a hoodlum anymore. When Ponyboy and Johnny accidentally burn down an old church that little school children are having a picnic in, everything goes chaotic because they know they could be taking away helpless little lives. Both are audacious enough to jump in and save each individual child from the blazing heat, and in return are declared as heroes. Also, when the rumble was about to begin, Ponyboy starts to wonder why he fights if nothing good comes in return. And as the fight is about to start, Darry starts to reconsider Ponyboy fighting, but then Ponyboy says, "I'll be alright. I'll get hold of a little one, okay?" which makes Darry say yes. He then asks each member of his group why they fight, and in return they each give him a response for why. But when Ponyboy asks himself the same question, he can't seem to find the answer. This is a great change for him to be growing up because it shows he has a good outlook on how his own life is going to turn out. He doesn't want to be in pointless brawls, and he doesn't want to have to rely on his brothers to do everything for him.
Near the end of the novel, Ponyboy really finds out who he is. He really takes a better look of what's going on in the world around him, and really starts to mature by watching out for people other than himself. One good example would have to be when Ponyboy looks out for Johnny when Johnny kills Bob, the Soc, in order to save Ponyboy's life. Ponyboy is grateful and runs away with Johnny so that they both won't get caught by the police. Another example would be when he helps out his group by fighting in the rumble against the Socs. Even though he didn't want to, he still did because he knew that they needed him in order to win. This has been a great change because now more people can feel like they can depend on Ponyboy and that he's maturing into a great man that everyone knows he can be.
To conclude, I'd have to say that I feel bad for Ponyboy in some ways, but in other ways I don't feel bad for him. For Ponyboy to have to live in such a bad environment where everyone is either fighting, smoking or dropping out of school, must be hard to be around since all of those things are very deleterious. Here in the suburbs we sometimes take for granite how lucky we are to live in such a spectacular place with our families. But for other people like Ponyboy, Darry and Sodapop, they aren't so lucky. When you might think of family you probably think of your intermediate family, your mom, dad, sister or brother. But for these three, all they have is each other. Reading The Outsiders really makes you appreciate everything you have, and it makes you stop complaining about everything you don't.
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