Above The Waterfall By Ron Rash

Bethany Haehn Due Date: Friday 25th Journal 1 I am reading “The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant” by W. D. Wetherell. This story ia about a boy who has a crush on Sheila Mant, so he takes her on a date in a boat and catches the biggest bass he has ever caught. He now has to decide on Sheila or the bass. I will be questioning and connecting As I am reading this story, I am wondering if he is going to pick Sheila Mant or the bass. The narrator might pick the bass.

The book “In the lake of the woods”, written by Tim O’Brien, is about a Vietnam veteran and politicians story. The main character, John Wade, is a Vietnam veteran who was involved with a brutal massacre. John was also a politician, and in fear that the massacre he was involved with would affect his political career, John does everything he can to cover up this incident. During this time John's wife mysteriously disappears. John has an ambition throughout the story to cover up what happened to profit his own career.

Have you ever thought about how difficult it might be to go into a different country knowing absolutely nothing, not even language, and something horrific happened to you or anyone in your family?  Don’t you think you would feel so powerless, so helpless, so clueless? This happens commonly and it has never had any attention brought to it, at least not until 1998. Anne Fadiman wrote a book entitled, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. This demonstrated a collision of two complete opposite cultures, but they both have the same goal to help the child get better.

In the novel, Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli, Misha constantly stays in the “ghetto of the damned,” (Spinelli) for his family. Whether it be to feed the group of lucky orphans, to protect them from the punishment of smuggling, or to simply lift their spirits, Misha sacrifices his freedom for his family. Through Misha’s dialogue and actions, he proves that his family is his tether to the Warsaw Ghetto. Misha Pilsudski, the protagonist living through the Holocaust, and Janina Milgrom, his sister, discover a hole in the wall imprisoning the Warsaw Ghetto. This absence of brick represents freedom from the torturous ghetto, yet they only tastes this luxury.

In the novel All the Light we Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, There is a thematic question that reappears throughout the book. The question that is posed by the author is: How do German and European education systems differ from America’s, what subjects and practices are valued there, and which is most positively affecting the students? Question first appeared in the novel when one of the main characters, an orphan named Werner, takes an interest and repairing radios in his neighborhood. During one of these jobs, a wealthy man named Herr Seidler tells Werner About an opportunity to go to school. he says, “‘Smart beyond your years.

Before you suffocate your own fool self by Danielle Evans is written as a set of short stories which cover multiple social issues. These short stories often have a main character who has come upon hardship or are having a coming of age moment within their lives. During these stories the main character is having an internal struggle with rationality and logic vs. raw emotion and outside influence. The main characters are usually intelligent and self-aware yet they still knowingly make irresponsible decisions which are not in their best interest. These decisions are usually because they are at a crossroads or breaking point where they no longer can accept things for what they are.

Addiction to substances such as alcohol often leads to depressive mental states and the destruction of any sound relationships. ‘The water was dark and went forever down’ is a 1987 short story written by time Winton which explores the journey of a young Australian girl with a mentally ill mother. A 14-year-old Australian girl who is referred to as ‘the girl’ has traveled to a beachside cottage on holiday with her mentally ill mother. The girl is forced to be independent as her mother’s addiction to alcohol has disabled her from properly caring for her daughter. The girl seeks refuge in swimming which lets her avoid the mental battles posed by her home life.

The novel, So Far from the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins, communicates through the character’s actions that families are loyal to each other even when it doesn’t benefit themselves. In the book, Yoko's actions indicate that she is counting on her family to help her when she needs it. In the book, Yoko and her family arrived at a checkpoint on their way to Seoul to escape the Korean Communists who were trying to kill them. After being treated, they had to sleep at the station which was crowded with escapees to wait for the brother who was separated.

All throughout Catherine Chung’s novel Forgotten Country, people choose not to let their feelings be known. Sometimes people want to forget the past and they think that their memories are too painful for them to be worth remembering. However, if one is silent about their feelings, it only makes them harder to be understood. When people cannot understand each other, they grow further apart due to misunderstanding and emotional distance. Silence can even tear apart families.

Spiritual Eagle A struggle occurring inside your own mind with yourself, that is the type of internal conflict Abel is going through. Abel’s internal conflict is person versus self. He didn’t want or see himself being an eagle hunter, then he not only does, yet killing the eagle himself. That same decision changes his whole character; making questions about this character from many angles.

Extended out to most children is the hand of a parent offering a warm hug along with warnings of danger to their children. This is what any fit parent would do. However this is not always the case with all parents. For example in the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Rose Mary and Rex Walls are not fit to be parents because they don’t give their children what they need and have an unstable relationship. Jeannette and her siblings live off of what their parents can afford when they have sufficient money but they don’t use it to give them what they need.

Wallence, David Foster, “This Is Water”. Kenyon College Commencement Speech, 2005. In “This is Water”, the author David Foster Wallance introduces the idea of people being concern of what is revolving around them, causing the individual to avoid the fact they are responsible of their own actions and thoughts. In the process, Wallance claims that people live their life the way they think they should, because it has come to a point that everything they do becomes a routine.

Everyone has depression, but did you know on October 29, 1929 the whole US went into depression. People lost their jobs, people lost their homes and lot’s of other things. Every bits and piece was super valuable at that time. Some effects the Great Depression had on people at that time was people lost their money. In an article called Digging In by Robert Hastings a girl explains how importants every minute of light is.

David Malouf’s novella, Fly Away Peter, explores the brutality of war through contrasting settings. One of the key themes used by Malouf is the serenity of nature verses the destruction of war. This is shown through the contrast between the brutal, grotesque imagery of the Western Front and the tranquil Estuary in Queensland. To cope with the brutality of war, the characters use separate realities to escape the world around them. This is mainly evident while the main protagonist, Jim, is on the confronting battlefield of the Western Front and uses the peacefulness of nature and his imagination to escape the atrocities going on around him.

In "Salt to the Sea," author Ruta Sepetys portrays memory as both a source of suffering and of comfort for the characters. While memories provide some characters with a sense of belonging and identity, they also expose past traumas and injustices that lead to emotional pain and suffering. First off, Sepetys demonstrates how comforting memories can be for people like Joana and Emilia by reuniting them with their families and cultural roots. Moreover, several people in the book experience pain because of their memories. Ultimately, some characters are tormented by the shame and remorse brought on by their past transgressions.