Throughout The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams, Russell
Thomas has shown again and again that he is a restless, ambitious person willing to do whatever it takes to reach his goal of getting a job as a nurse. This biography was written by Darcy Frey in 1991, showcasing the lives of four students from Lincoln High School who tried to make it out of the neglected Coney Island through basketball. Frey talked about the struggles of living in a community where violence was common, and where success was elusive for many. As a result of the problems of the deficient education system, family conflicts, and the adversities of college signings, basketball seemed like the only way to get out of poverty and despair, especially for people like Thomas. When Frey spots Thomas watching his friend Tchaka play
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In addition, it also showed that Thomas trained constantly down at the “Garden,” which is a basketball court in Coney Island. Thomas literally spent hours working and practicing in the Garden all by himself, which showed how serious he took basketball. It showed that he was willing to constantly do taxing work as long as he could get better and eventually leave Coney Island so he would be able to pursue his dreams. In order to do that, Thomas also put the rest of his free time into preparing for the SATs, to further ensure his future. For instance, Frey has watched “Russell [climb] out of [his] car with his omnipresent stack of SAT review books under his arm.” (Frey, 172) Russell is often seen with a stack of review books with him because he has decided to focus his last year at Lincoln High School mainly on getting good grades on the SATs, so he could finally achieve his goals. Russell wants to go to a Division 1 college, making it a requirement for him to score at least a 700 on his SATs. Reflecting on the poverty in Coney Island, the only way Thomas could go to such a college would've been
Due to his Military school experience, overall admirable progress in life and the right connections, he was able to speak with the assistant director of admissions via his advisor at Valley Forge Junior College. Now, this instance of social capital would be lost on some but not Author Wes Moore, he states; “having an advocate on the inside -someone who had gotten to know me and understood my story on a personal
In Nathan philbrick book the last stand he cover much as Custer's and Indians and how it was a last stand for both. Philbrick did a great job of narrative two very different wordviews with the evidence he had with written and oral testimony, But with photographs and maps. Now it's a outsiders view but he has a lot of evidence to back his clames. The battle of Little Bighorn has had a lot of books written about in America frontier, but Philbrick delivers a very detailed and captivating telling of Little Bighorn.
In life, when there’s an opportunity to take a shot, take it. This is exactly what nineteen-year-old Jason McElwain did, and this shot had the power to change his life. At birth, a severe form of autism took over McElwain’s life, but he was not diagnosed with high functioning autism until the age of two. Since that moment, basketball became his escape and his biggest passion. Though too small to make the junior varsity high school team, he held his head high and excitedly became the manager for varsity.
Characterization is a literary element utilized by Chris Crutcher in Whale Talk, throughout the story, to help the readers get a better, established, understanding of the characters, to further develop his story. The characters in Whale Talk are believable and realistic which helps the reader to connect their knowledge to the story, and to enhance their comprehension of the story. The main character is a round character, and his name is The Tao Jones, but he prefers the nickname T.J. Through direct characterization, the reader knows that T.J. turns down every opportunity he receives that relate to participating in team sports, even though he a very athletic young man, which makes him complex, and somewhat difficult to understand. T.J. explains, “I’ll be breaking a career-long rule banning myself from
The story “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff is a very interesting sorry about a man named Anders. Anders is a very unusual character as he always analyzes and critic mostly everything that happens in his life and all of the people that he interacts with just like what he does in the books he normally reads. The story focuses on his final memory after the situation of him being shot in the head by some robbers at a bank. The final memory that flashed back into Anders is a memory of him as a kid playing baseball with his friends in a sunny field.
She attended two of them and has a major in biology from the Southern Maine Community College, which makes it easier for her to connect with her audience because she knows what the experience is like. She understands that some people may rule out going to college because of the price, so it’s important for her to inform them that there are cheaper alternatives with community colleges. “ ‘College is the key,’ a young African American student writes for the umpteenth torturous revision of his college essay, ‘as well as hope.’ Oh, I wanted desperately to say, please tell him about community college. Please tell him that help can begin with just one placement test,” she pleads (Addison, 213).
The movie Hoop Dreams traced a poor young talented African American, named Arthur Agee from grade eight to college. Arthur hoped to play professional basketball in the future to help his family to escape poverty. Despite the fact that his family is poor, and the neighborhood he lived in, were disadvantaged to him to pursue his goal in many ways. Firstly, Arthur showed great determination to play professional basketball, and he would like to lead his family out of poverty. Secondly, his ability to adapt to difficult circumstances, played a significant role toward his success in basketball.
Imagine blowing up a balloon, with every exhale of breath the balloon gets bigger. Similar to a balloon, with every year that passes grades inflate. In “Grade Inflation Gone Wild” by Stuart Rojstaczer, he discusses how the grading system has changed over the years. Rojstaczer’s overall purpose is to increase awareness of grade inflation and persuade his audience to take action. He argues that “changes in grading have had a profound influence on college life and learning” (2).
Bullet in the Brain The title might be misleading to anyone used to action-packed short pieces of fiction. One might imagine a gunfight occurring in a crime drama were the protagonists shoot at each other and bullet ends up in one of their brains. However, he or she would be disappointed. It is the case of Anders, a book critic who will not keep quite.
The Education of Dasmine Cathey “The Education of Dasmine Cathey,” by Brad Wolverton is an informative and compelling story about a student athlete who struggles with making educated choices that he is not familiar with in life, college, and football. There are so many reasons young college athletes succeed in sports, but fail in education. This story is a tragic tale of educational shortfalls that caused Mr. Cathey a football player to fall through the cracks of a flawed school system and became exploited by his family, friends and the college football program. These challenges during these times, created unwanted side effects in every aspect of his life. This is a great story because the author allowed the reader to feel every emotion
The Boys of Dunbar written by Alejandro Danois is a compelling narrative about an inner-city Baltimore high school basketball team who became a national powerhouse from 1981-1983. This is “A story of love, hope, and basketball”. Throughout this essay, The Boys of Dunbar will be explained, reviewed and critiqued. The two Dunbar teams from 1981-1983 are regarded as some of the best high school basketball teams that were ever assembled and many of the players on these teams are thought of as some of the most talented basketball players to ever come from Baltimore.
Literature Analysis While reading David Wallace’s short story, “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart,” it started the story convincing the readers that Wallace was just jealous of the professional tennis player, Tracy Austin. He made his argument that he was once a tennis player, growing up playing in the same league as a now successful player. However, this short story developed much more than just an overthrow of the prodigy this girl has become. This text was wrapped around Wallace’s idea of autobiographies and how they are crowd-pleasing texts. Wallace developed that athletes write their autobiographies all with the common themes of growing up poor and the obstacles they had to overcome, instead of the interesting and real facts about what actually
Killer By: Sara Shepard Pages read: 128 Spencer, Aria, Hanna, and Emily, find Ian in the woods. They all seem to think Ian is dead, because he looks blue and life less. They go back to Spencer’s house, where the benefit is being, to look for Officer Wilden. They can’t seem to find him, but finally about 30 minutes later they find him and lead him to where they found Ian’s body. When they all get to the spot where Ian was laying, they see something that is very strange.
“Should is a futile word. It’s about what didn’t happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.” Despite the past’s permanence, it still elicits the temptation to dwell upon what might have been should one have acted with the insight of the present, haunting the conscious.
If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at begin to change. Tobias Wolff uses perspective shifting in the story to deceive the reader of what they believe to be important in the story. There are numerous times throughout the story which feature the narration whisking the current moment away in favor of an important memory, or observation that needs to be said. I believe Wolff uses those specific techniques in order to hide the meaning of the story, or the subjectivity of the story that he wishes the reader to see with some thinking. By choosing to read “Bullet in the Brain” the reader is walking into Wolff’s house of mirrors, where perspective is changing with each step forward.