Quite Desperation

            Constantly second guessing yourself. Afraid to say something. Afraid I will get made fun of. Thinking out everything I will say long before I say it to avoid saying the letter r at all costs.

            All throughout elementary school I had a speech impediment where I couldn’t pronounce the letter r properly. When I was little I hated meeting new people because I was embarrassed speaking to people. I would get made fun of. People couldn’t understand me. So Because of that I was very shy when I was little. I would stay around my friends and people I knew. I hated going to summer camp because people I would think it out what I was going to say and if the word had an r in it I would try and find a simile that would work instead of saying that word. For example I wouldn’t use the word great but rather use the word fantastic.

            As I got older I got more and more ashamed of my speech impediment because the most people can pronounce all the words correctly. I got mad at my self because I felt like I was the only one that couldn’t do it. I felt stupid that I couldn’t do something that seemed so simple.

            Most of the time I could get by with most people not knowing that I had a problem but I would constantly be thinking ahead of how I could get by with out knowing I had a problem. When I stopped going to speech class and moved on to middle school I finally got the pronunciation down. I was so happy then and I quickly gained self confidence. I got much more out going.

            Although I feel the pain of others and now because of my problem I try not to judge others. I have felt the wrath of others and try and be supportive of others.

Making a Decision

This was the biggest decision of my life. 18 years of my life were building up to the decision of where I will be attending college next year. It’s a big decision of choosing where I will be the next 4 years of my life as well as spent the most amount of money for something in my life as well.

            To help me make this decision I went on a trip to southern California to visit colleges down there and get a feel for the campuses and see if I liked them. I liked them all in different ways. I liked the reputation that Cal Poly San Louis Obisbo in its engineering field and had a lot of Majors to choose from. But I didn’t like the fact that you had to choose your major and could not switch your major easily. I also visited UC Irvine I was really impressed with the campus and feel of the school but I didn’t like the part of the city it was in.

            Then I checked my email and I found a school named Drexel in Philadelphia, sent me massive amounts of emails trying to get me to apply to their school. I figured what’s the harm so I applied. I thought it was a long shot because it was a private school and wouldn’t get the finical aid to go so when I got the acceptance letter I was happy but sill in a reserved mood about the school.

            I soon found out that I got into UC Irvine and now the hard part was deciding which school I should go to. It was coming down to the wire and I needed to make a choice. I liked Irvine a lot and I knew that Drexel was going to be a stretch finically to make it possible to go there so it was all up to me to decide.

            I had one last thin I wanted to do before I decided what college I was going to, I wanted to see Drexel in person. I wanted to walk the campus and see the city of Philly. So me and my dad flew out to Philly and saw the campus. And at that moment I walked around the campus for the first time I decided that that’s where I was going to be going to school next year.

Going to be Eaten

The world has changed so much in the last couple years. Everything has been turned upside down. What I thought was safe is now no longer free from danger.
          The room I am in is dark and eerie. It is silent. Not like quite but deathly silent. Then I heard foot steps... slowly...slowly coming closer and closer. The sounds of steps were pounding seeming endless. They were arithmetic beet of impending doom. It sounded like the beast angry and had revenge on its mind. The feet went thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, coming closer with each coming second. The sound of a metal object followed the footsteps; it was a metallic scraping on cement. It sounded like an ax dragging behind each thwack of the step.
          As the beast came closer I heard its raspy wheezing. Its inhale was long and slow. It wounded as if an old man on his death bed.  It came at sporadic times. In the long pauses I was hoping what ever was coming to get me would just stop breathing and end the suspense. But it didn’t. Slowly and slowly it came closer and closer. It was now right at the door and there was nothing I could do now but wait and see what was going to come through the door.
            The handle slowly turned and the beast found out the door was locked. The door began to rattle. The rattling became louder and louder it became so loud that it was thunder enveloping the whole room. It was like the door was being rattled off its hinges.
            When the lock suddenly broke off and the door came swinging open. The light from the hallway illumined a large figure. With something large being drug behind the beast. Then I turned on the light by my bed and it was my Dad dragging an old metal chair from the other room to sit by my bed and read me a bed time story.

While reading novel Ceremony and seeing the movie The Thin Red line I see many similarities. One they were similar is because both of the protagonists in both the movie and the novel were in World WarII. They both experienced traumatic events during the war and were affected by it. In Ceremony the protagonist Tayo has Post Traumatic stress disorder and this causes him to see flash backs. In the Thin Red Line the main character also has flash backs of his wife. He wanted to see his wife so badly that he imagined her. Seeing such traumatic events can break a mans soul. The authors are trying to show how war and violence can break the soul. Nature is not created to see such destruction and it corrupts the mind. See how all there is in the picture is just a broken head. Wars take People's human decency away by forcing you to kill another human being in senseless blood. soldiers call it following orders but in the real world it is just another part of our messed up life. In both of these movies they are trying to show how the war effects more then the mind but it also changes the person for better or for worse. It is mostly for the worse. In part of the movie it says something like the War tares apart the soul. And that is what the picture is showing is a broken solider. There also another theme that resinates throught out both works of art. 
One example of War breaking a part a soul in Ceremony is the character of  Harley and Leroy they both died in a drunk driving accident. This is sad but the reason they were drinking is because they were trying to feel something again. They were trying to feel hole again not broken broken. They were often drunk with many other veterans trying to self medicate with alcohol. 
In the movie The Red Line there are many scenes where the main character was not focused or thinking about the war but rather dreaming about his wife. His wife was the only thing that gave him reason to live. He was crazy about her and couldn't get enough of her but she ended up leaving him. He was now broken and it was hard for him to function. His wife broke up with him because of the war, the war breaks people both mentally and physically. The war had changed his wife and broke up her connection with his wife. 
The movie and the book also have a various poems that are thrown through out that relate to parts of the movie or play. The help show how the soul is breaking apart in a figurative way. one poem in the movie is explaining how Killing a person is like crushing and trampling the earth. The earth and nature is also breaking apart 
In short war breaks apart the human body mind and soul as shown by the novel Ceremony and the movie The Red Line.