Speak

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?

Historical Essay

Fifteen years old is where you're at in your life. You live in a small town near Boston; it's 1778. As you run down the rocky gravel paths, you see the fiery red blob marching around with guns and riding on their horses. There is fear in your mind as you think of all the possible things they would do to you and your family if they found out that you were patriots. All of a sudden you see one of the Redcoats spot you, "One over there!" a soldier shouts. You sprint as fast as you can because you know that they are going to catch up with you at some point. You decide to jump into the nearest bush, and pray to god that they won't find you. Your heart starts to beat faster and faster with every foot step that crosses your path. Gun shots roar, people scream, dogs howl. Hours later you see the soldiers in canoes riding back up the river; until tomorrow that is. As you run back to your house, you hope that your family is still alright. But you’re not too sure of that, especially when there are bodies everywhere, houses burned to the ground, and everything out of place. You finally reach the spot of your home to see ashes of what used to be your house, scattered everywhere. That's not even the part you feared most, and sadly your fears are becoming reality. Your mother has an arrow through her throat, your father shot, and even your baby brother; dead. You fall to the ground in sobs, wondering why it couldn't have been you and not them. Your mother was an excellent homemaker, and your father was one of the bravest people you had ever come across. Even Joey, your little brother had a long life to still live; how could these people be this cruel? You knew you had to do something about it, you had to fight back in order to defend your family. But how could you when women weren't allowed to fight? In the novel, Hannah Pritchard Pirate of the Revolution by Bonnie Pryor, a girl named Hannah has lost all of her family to the redcoats and now knows that she now must do something to help win The American Revolution. Even if that means becoming a cabin boy on a pirate ship for a couple of months.

To begin, Hannah Pritchard is a fifteen year old girl who has just lost everything she's ever had; her friends, her house, her clothes and even her family. She is a Patriot and the king of England doesn't want anyone around that isn't on his side. Now with nothing left, she is angry with this whole war and wants to get involved. But women are too weak and are unintelligent to help out, and men are just so wonderful and can do anything they want to do. We all know that is not what most people think now but back then, most everyone had that opinion. Men were just superior to women for no reason at all. That's when Hanna Pritchard knew what she needed to do; become a boy for awhile. Now with a bandana on her head, and a gun sash around her waist, Hannah is ready to become a pirate of the revolution.
We are fortunate enough that in today's world women are allowed to fight and help out in the Army, Marines, Navy and even the Air force. But way back when, women were not allowed to fight in the war, they could only be nurses. This was in some way good because they might have been trying to protect the women, but the main reason was because they didn't think the women were intelligent enough or strong enough to handle war. That is not really a fair opinion in my thought considering that studies show more women graduating from high school and college than men. And war doesn’t only take strength, it takes intelligence too. “It will keep youngsters engaged as they learn about history and of a determined orphan who become a pirate for her country during the Revolutionary War. Young girls will find a strong female character to identify with, as they learn that women made history during the war, as well as, the men.” Was said in a review by a school teacher; she thought that this book also showed that women are very strong when given the chance. This review talked about the intelligence Hannah had to use when she changed her identity, “Hannah eventually makes her way to a privateer ship, where she disguises herself as a boy and works in the kitchen. She has many high-seas adventures while helping to steal loot in the name of the patriots' cause, all the while struggling to keep her identity a secret.”

The American Revolution was one of the most historical events in the history of The United States. It involved the British red coats and the Colonists of America. The colonists were fighting for their freedom from England, but it was going to be a long tough battle. It all started in 1775 when the king of England kept putting taxes on tea and many other items, and wanted to keep control of the colonists even when they were overseas. The colonists didn’t want to put up with that anymore and decided to fight for what they believed in; one nation united together. The colonists had no experience and barely any weapons, when on England’s side, they had a lot of experience and many weapons. You’d think that the British would win by a long shot, right?

To conclude, the colonists got their way and started one great nation that we call the United States of America. If the British would have won, who knows what the world would be like today. We might have a king instead of a president, be part of England instead of The United States, and we wouldn’t have nearly as much freedom as we do now. The Americans winning the war was one of the best things that could have possibly happened for America. And we should be grateful to all the brave men who risked their lives for the people of today.
Bibliography



Reviews, A. E. (2008, March 4). Amazon Edtorial Reviews. Retrieved January 24, 2011, from Amazon Edtorial Reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Hannah-Pritchard-Revolution-Historical-Adventures/dp/0766028518


Loesch, G. (2008, August 15). Amazon Book Reviews. Retrieved January 24, 2011, from Amazon Books: http://www.amazon.com/Hannah-Pritchard-Revolution-Historical-Adventures/product-reviews/0766028518