Research Project: Tiger Woods

I have no idea what my topic is going to be.... Maybe something about how the Tiger Woods scandal was covered by media and how that changed people's views towards him and how it affected him. Compare how people saw hime before and how people saw him during and how people see him now. Also compare maybe his game before, during, and after and how the media coverage affected that. Possibly throw in how the game of golf itself was affected by this event and the way in which the media covered it. This is just my general idea not really sure where I am going to go with it.

Looking and the Gaze

Durer's- The way the man is looking at the woman seems very objective. He is surrounded by hard objects like the table and the sword which are very sturdy objects. The woman is surrounded by pillows and in a position that is reclined. She is posing her body and the man is using his mind. This is showing the man being above the woman. The woman is also surrounded by nature showing the sensitive side while the man is thinking and drawing showing his reason.

America- The man in this erect and the woman is reclined showing how the man is the master over the woman. The man is clearly from Europe and civilized while the woman is representing America as primitive. The man has ships behind him and by the way he is dressed it is clear he comes from a distinct culture but the woman is basically naked showing the nature side and primitive side of America.

Howard Jackson

Dear Journal,

This is my first journal entry. My name is Howard Jackson and today was my first day of high school. I was kind of nervous; the school is mostly white and well I am not. Being black is tough in mostly all white community but I manage. I had lots of classes today and I enjoyed seeing a lot of my classmates again but the one class I really enjoyed was Ms. Khoury’s class. She teaches world literature. She was a very interesting teacher because she was a minority like me. I think she was from somewhere in the Middle East but I am not sure. She told us today she was going to teach about a ton of different types of literature from all over the world. I am really excited to learn about other cultures and hopefully the white kids in my class may be less awkward around me because I am black. I also liked the class because she was so energetic and upbeat. She seemed like the type of person that would help you with anything and everything which is nice for me because she can relate to me being a minority and all. I guess deep down its just a good feeling to know for once I have a superior on my side. If I need help I can go to her, and I just know she would be more than happy to help. Another thing that is going to help me get through the hard times is wrestling. I love wrestling and now that I am an high school I have the opportunity to be on the team. Nothing can bother me when I am wrestling not racism, school, or anything else. With the combination of Ms. Khoury and wrestling this should be a great four years.

Dear Journal,

Today at the internment camp was one of the hardest days. I haven’t been keeping up with my journal lately because I have been so busy so its time to catch up. While being a guard at the internment camp has been a great time recently something has happened. Recently my old teacher from high school was taken and put into my camp. This was my world literature teacher who I loved so much and helped me a lot through high school. I am torn between what is right for my country and the teacher that was so good to me. How could Ms. Khoury be a threat to my country? She was a wonderful teacher not a terrorist. Although these thoughts are tearing me apart they are not the worst part. The other day Ms. Khoury asked me to find out some information for her because she could tell some planning had been going on. People were starting to disappear and she was getting worried. I honestly don’t know what to do. On the one hand I am serving my country but on the other does Ms. Khoury really deserve this? Do any of them really deserve this? Honestly I do not think she deserves this at all she has done nothing. All she has tried to do is help kids learn and get their education to the best of her ability. I joined to better our country but I don’t feel like I am doing that right now. If anything I feel like I am making this country worse. I am black and how would I feel during the slavery period? It was the law but does that make it right? No it doesn’t but I cant do anything about I am just a guard. I have power over them but I don’t have power over anyone else. After going through all of this I decided I would help Ms. Khoury. I found the reports on everyone in her cabin. Ms. Khoury was a threat but not anything to high but her friend Rheema was another story. Rheema was a high security threat. I am going to give this information to Ms. Khoury tomorrow. I don’t think she knows what this information really means but I do. They are going to kill Rheema and play it off as an accident or some disease. I wish I could do something but if they found out I did they would kill me. The most I can do is give Ms. Khoury the information and hope that she can use it to protect Rheema even though I highly doubt it. She is going to die and all I can do is sit back and watch. I hate myself right now and have to just sit back and watch as people lives pass through my hands. I’m serving my country but I feel like shit. I don’t know what I should do. Do I quit and do something else for a career? What else can I do? This is all I know and I am good at it. I take my orders do what I am told and get praised. I wish I could just not question right and wrong but just accept. Hopefully I will look back on this someday and say that I did the right thing by not doing anything and if I would of did something I would of regretted it.

Dear Journal,

I quit writing in this journal years ago but I felt the need to express some things so I decide to do one more entry. I am old man now probably lying on my deathbed right now as I am writing this. I have lead a great life but a boring life. The reason I decided I needed to do another blog post is because I have been thinking a lot about when I was a guard in the internment camps all those years ago. Specifically I have been thinking about my old teacher Ms. Khoury and her friend Rheema. Reflecting back on the situation now I feel horrible about sitting back and watching instead of taking action and helping. I guess this really shouldn’t surprise me, since I have been a follower my whole life but for some reason this really gets to me. My whole life I have taken orders from somebody but never from myself. I know some people are born to be leaders and some are born to be followers but I also believe in certain situations you have to stand up for what is right even if you are a follower. This all leads back to that one situation that I have regretted my entire life. Being a guard in those internment camps was probably the worst thing I have ever done. Looking back on it what our country did to those people was horrible. How could we deny them their freedom that they have earned? They were Americans just like we were; they just had a few bad eggs that wrecked it for the whole bunch. It was as if our country had regressed instead of progressed. When I reflect back on it I cant help but relate it to slavery. Slavery is a big part of my history and although they weren’t slaves we did take away their freedom. I know that freedom is what slaves wanted and that’s all that Middle Eastern Americans wanted. I struggle thinking and talking about this time in my life because it haunts me so deeply. I have never told my kids about this and I am not sure if I should. I don’t think I have enough courage to talk to them about this. How would they take it? Would they think I was a murderer? At the time I thought I was doing the right thing. I was serving my country the problem was that our country was doing something wrong. I think I am going to give this journal to them when I die so they can read for themselves what happened. Hopefully they will understand that I was just following the crowd and that I know now that I was wrong for doing so. The one thing I regret most of all is not going to see Ms. Khoury after the internment camps were done. I wanted to sit down and talk with her and get some closure. If I were only braver maybe then I would have. I hope somehow she has forgiven me for the things I did and the things I didn’t do. Now that I have written this down and received a little closure I am going to close my eyes to never open them again.

Outline Short Story

Structure

My character wants to be cool

To be cool and popular you needed this certain product

Everyone cool had it

After working extremely hard my character finally gets it

Shortly after he gets it something horrible happens..

Everyone who has bought this product has died within 5 years so far

My character now realizes how stupid he was for conforming and want something just because everyone else wanted it.

Short Story Theme

Conformity

Loss of individualism

Time Span

I think my story will be over a couple of days my character needs to feel cool a little bit before he finds out the bad news.

Setting

High School I think

Characters

Just one right now not sure if I will add more main characters or just supporting characters

Short Story

I think I am going to do the short story about a future dystopia. I think I will focus on how advertising affects what we think, buy, and do. It will be similar yet different to the BNW. I will focus only on advertising and the affects. I will use the element of setting to bring together my story for the most part. I don't really know what my story is going to be like. I haven't put to much thought into it but it will somehow go to the extreme on how we as a society conform. How we think something is cool or awesome because we are told it is. I think I might do a story about how everyone starts conforming to what is supposed to be cool but then a tradgedy happens. That one thing that everyone gets because it is cool causes some sort of a disease which inevitably is going to kill everyone. Showing how if we all conform we are essentially killing our identity similar to the BNW. Its a rough thought right now but when I sit down and think about it a little more I think it should come together nicely.

Internment Camps

Healing Process For The Japanese Americans.

The way the Japanese heeled was very different from what I expected. The thing that stood out to me was how they did not talk about it. They had every right to talk about it and be mad about it but they didn't. They didn't want their kids growing up with a grudge against the U.S. I think because they did this it was easier for the whole community to get passed this horrible thing that happened. The other thing that I thought was huge in their healing process was the redress. This was a sort of closer for the Japanese. I am sure the money was nice but the thing that really mattered to them was the apology and finally feeling accepted. This made them finally feel part of America and was good closure.

Healing Process For The Arab-Americans.

I think Zafira's ways of recovery would differ greatly from the Japanese. She would tell everyone and hide nothing. Kids would learn about it as soon as possible. She would hold rallies and demand an apology instead of more or less requesting one like the Japanese did. I guess I don't know how exactly she would do it but I am sure it would be extreme. She is a woman of action and she would use her great power of empathy to make the U.S. feel ashamed and guilty. She would be loud not just in her voice but in her actions.

Zafira

I saw it the first weekend so I dont really remember a lot about it but I do remember how it portrayed the U.S. The play made the U.S. seem horrible. I went to the middle east last christmas and not all Americans treat them as badly as the play made it seem. They made the kids in her class seem like assholes when really not very many kids would act like that or ask a teacher about her religon or anything along those lines. I just think that play was way to anti-america. I have interacted with many people from that culture and I have never seen any americans treat them like people did in this play.

Identity

In the book the Brave New World by Aldous Huxley there are many different messages he is trying to get across to the readers. He shows everything from drugs and alcohol to society and class. When I read this book the thing that jumped out at me the most was the loss of individuality. In the book the Brave New World Huxley shows that there is a strong connection between conditioning and the loss of individuality. I am going to show how our society has loss individuality through our own present day conditioning.

In the first chapter of this book there is a lot to comprehend. There were many new ideas that I had never heard of because Huxley made them up. There was one idea though that I found very interesting and re-read over and over. This was Boanovsky’s Process, a way of mass-producing so called people to achieve “Community, Identity, Stability”. The Bokanovsky process is a process in which one egg splits and buds into numerous amounts of eggs. This way instead of just having one set of twins they can get a hundred sets of twins. This was a great form of progress that enabled them to have the same identical person working the same identical job whatever that job may be.

Although this may sound like a fantastic idea and form of progress I have a great problem with it. If these people are mass-produced to be the same and to do the same how are they people at all. These are not people they are machines or robots at best but not humans. The way that they mass-produce these people is how Huxley is trying to show our manipulated society. In our society today things are being advertised to us millions of times everyday. When one of these things becomes popular more and more people buy it. They do not buy these things because they truly like them they buy them because people are told to like them. There are many different ways to be told to like something anywhere from peer pressure to celebrities advertising. These fads that go around make people into something they are not just to try and fit in with the rest of society. When people fall to these pressures they lose a little bit of individuality each and every time. Huxley is clearly trying to show the extreme in the Brave New World but his point is still true. People in society our losing their individuality each and everyday when they throw on that polo t-shirt or get that new I-phone. I am not saying that everyone has loss their individuality; however, I am saying how easy it is for people to be manipulated into liking something when really they only like it because society approves it. Huxley is dead on with his extreme way of showing our loss of individuality through conformity and that is one way I see it in our present society.

In the second chapter the children are being showed how the babies are conditioned. The DHC shows how the babies are conditioned to hate books and flowers. The reason for hating books is so no one will read something and have it decondition them by there knew knowledge. The reason for hating flowers is a little more complicated than that. The DHC explains that at one point they were conditioned to like flowers and nature so they would consume transportation to go see the nature. The flaw of this was that this was all they would do. They would only consume transportation, which wasn’t enough. They decided to start conditioning so they would hate the country but love all of the country sports. This way they would have to consume transportation and everything they needed for the sports.

The word conditioning may seem like a long stretch for our society now but in reality it is closer than we think. We are conditioned to like certain things and to hate other things our entire life. Electric shock might not be the way our society does it but that is the way Huxley goes to the extreme. In our society kids are being conditioned from the day they are born. They are conditioned by their parents and by their peers. When children grow up their parents pressure them to do certain things and to not do other things. Although some parents may be better than others they all pressure their kids somehow. Parents pressure their kids by using the way they have been pressured in their lives. As kids grow up they rebel but where does that rebellion come from? That rebellion stems from other pressures they feel from society. These can be pressures from their friends from T.V or just the society as a whole. These pressures that people face in their lives are their form of conditioning. The difference between Huxley’s conditioning and our society’s conditioning is that not everyone is conditioned the exact same way. Even though most people believe in God they did not all believe in God by being pressured in the same way. In our society people have different experiences and different lives but our society is still conditioned as a whole. It may not be to the extreme that Huxley has show in the Brave New World but it is clear that these pressures that everyone faces in life serve just like conditioning in the book. For our society they may be different pressures but because of them we lose a little bit of who we are by conforming to them.

The loss of individuality is clear in the Brave New World but I think people over look it in our present day society. It doesn’t really matter if we are losing individuality from pressure or advertising or anything else that deals with conformity. All that matters is that we see that the people in our society are losing their identity. Aldus Huxley goes to the extreme in his book through conditioning and mass-producing but his point is clear. When the extreme is pointed out it is easier to see and then relate it to the real world. Huxley is making us see clearer and helping us see what is happening in our society.

On Social Class and Work

Although I may disagree with you on many things Mustapha I do believe you have this one correct. I understand that their needs to be all different types of people to get things done. For if some is really good at everything who would want to do the pesky work of what should be a lower class job for a lower class person. If there were only Alphas they would go mad. They would constantly be fighting for who got to do the good jobs instead of working in harmony and loving what they do. The lower classes are necessary to a stable community for without them it would be chaos. Alphas are great and can do amazing work but we only need so many of them and we need a certain amount of the lower class to do and love the jobs the Alphas can not stoop down too.

Ending

The story ends the way I expected it to because I had already read this book in high school. If I go back to when I first read the book I would say this is how I was expecting the book to end. This book almost has to much of a mixed ending. I was expecting Bernard and Hemholtz to be exiled to an island where they starve to death or something along those lines. I am not saying I wanted this to happen but just that this is what I was expecting to happen. Bernard and Hemholtz being exiled to a place that they will like a lot more is good but happy endings to me dont really exist. I like books that are realistic not ones that end happily to make the reader happy. I thought Bernard, Hemholtz and John were all going to be sent to a so called island but then really be killed. It wasnt all happy though since John decided to kill himself and take the easy way out. I guess that part was realistic and not a happy ending which I like more but still Bernard and Hemholtz had nothing happen to them which I find unfair for John. They got to go to the island while he became the crazy savage.

Proposal

Theme— Control society

“Bokanovsky’s Process,” repeated the Director, and the students underlined the words in their notebooks…….. “Community, Identity, Stability.” Grand words. (Ch. 1)

This page and a half relates directly to my theme. It’s all about mass production of people. Identical people all made from one egg and one embryo that buds and divides from eight to ninety six buds. Major instrument of social stability the DHC says which to me is a major way to control society through the use of this science and technology.

“Heat conditioning,” said Mr. Foster…….. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.” (Ch. 1)

This paragraph talks about conditioning. It’s about heat conditioning but I really chose this paragraph because it shows and says that people are conditioned to like what they do and who they are. Making people like their inescapable future lives in the so-called utopia.

“On their way back across the channel, Bernard insisted on stopping his propeller…… Thank Ford, she said to herself, he’s all right again.” (Ch. 6 section 1)

This works well with my theme because it shows how the conditioning has blinded them. Bernard really sees what is going on. Lenina can only see how she has been conditioned. She has no imagination. She is like a robot a robot that does not know she is one and is happy doing as she has been programmed to do. Bernard wants to be free and can kind of see the utopia for what it is, a prison.

“They’ll grow up with what psychologists used to call instinctive hatred of books and flowers……. Hence those electric shocks.” (Ch. 2)

This section shows how they condition for the benefit of the society. The example of the flowers and how it used to be conditioned to like them but people would only consume transportation and nothing else shows how they use conditioning to balance the society. Now they condition them to hate flowers but love the country so they will play these elaborate games that consume a lot. They use this conditioning to make everyone do what they want them to do and like it.

“In a crowd he grumbled…… A gramme is always better than a damn, she concluded with dignity, and drank the sundae herself.” (Ch. 6 part 1)

This section shows the role of soma in society. Soma is a drug that they are conditioned to like and take if they are in a bad mood or if they just want to be really jolly. Bernard says he would rather be himself and not take it but no one else sees that other than Bernard. Everyone else just thinks of soma as normal when in reality it’s a way that the society can be controlled by keeping everyone happy.

No idea

Theme- The government controls society through the use of science and technology.

- Conditioning
- Bokanovsky's process
- Soma
- Economics

Maybe something like Huxley shows how any government can easily use technology and science to control thoughts, feelings and actions of its people.

Brave New World Post 1

The beginning of the Brave New World is a hard concept to grasp. Many things seem weird but which ideas are really plausible and which ones are merely just outrageous. One thing that jumps at me that is clearly outrageous is the sexual relations of the kids. They talk about how this is natural and even helps them so when they are older they do not have sexual needs. To me this is just creepy and weird. I would rather not think about it all together. On the other hand when it comes to exposing the newborns to heat if they are to be workers and the other treatments they use so they can excel in whatever their destiny is seems plausible but sad. They have no choice in their life it seems like. They may not see this because of the treatments they are happy to do whatever it is they are supposed to do but for someone looking from the outside on them its sad. They know only what the so called utopia wants them to know and nothing more. The Brave New World is trying to make everyone happy and satisfied and have this great utopia but making people something they are not through treatments and therapy and everything else they do is not a utopia its a prison. A prison that nobody wants to leave because they do not know anything else.