Divergent

English 10
Mikayla Coenen
Ms. Fordahl
April 3, 2014

The dystopic book Divergent is written by Veronic Roth, and takes place in a futuristic Chicago. The some of the characters include Tris(Shailene Woodley), Christina(Zoe Kravitz), Four(Theo James), Will(Ben Lloyd-Hughes), Caleb(Ansel Elgort), Al(Christian Madsen), Peter(Miles Teller), and Molly(Amy Newbold). The story is the people of the city in futuristic Chicago are divided into five factions: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite. Abnegation people are selfless and reject anything that could be selfish, Amity people are peaceful and will avoid war and turmoil at all costs, Candor people are truthful and have no filter, Erudite people are knowledgeable and strive to learn more, and Dauntless people are brave and control their fears. Each faction is part of some type of jobs, such as the Abnegation make up the entire city council, Amity works on the farms, Candor are the justice workers, Dauntless make up the guarding and police force, and Erudite make up the doctors and researchers. Tris is from Abnegation, but transfers to Dauntless after learning she is Divergent, meaning she is not exactly just one mindset. She trains and moves her way from the bottom to the top, eventually becoming first in her initiates class. She also has to avoid getting found out that she is divergent.
There were many parts that were similar in the book and the movie, along with the plot, and one of the parts includes the very first scene, when Tris is getting her hair cut by her mother. Another part would include when the initiates are learning they could be cut. Everything is the same in that part, even the lines, said exactly the right way in that part. The Choosing ceremony was also similar, except I always imagined it outside, I'm not sure why.
One thing that was different, however, was Al. Al, in the book, is mentioned a bit more, and is shown to have romantic feelings for Tris, which are unrequited. It's also shown a lot more that he is the weakest in the class, and people talk about it a lot. Plus, he is shown winning his first fight then throwing the rest so he doesn't have to hurt anyone. This makes his betrayal to Tris and later suicide a lot less impersonal, and more of a thing that just happened to a guy they knew, nothing more.
Another thing that's different is that Tris isn't shown actually winning any fights. The only fight she even does well in is her fight against Peter, who still wins anyways after kicking her face in, which leads to her hospitalization and almost being cut, which never happened in the book. The fact that she was almost cut completely takes from her character, making her into the girl who just barely brushed by, instead of the girl who rose above it all and succeeded, like in the book. Plus, she never really saves Four like in the book. Talk about Hollywood bringing down awesome females leads, am I right?
In conclusion, I liked both the movie and the book, though I liked the book more. The movie, no matter how great it was(especially the zip-lining scene), did take away from the characters, whether it be a slight rivalry(Christina and Tris at capture-the-flag) or making the girl lead weaker than in the book. But, I think we can all agree, the attractive cast did make it a bit better.

5. Don't critique others

Miss Fordahl
Mikayla Coenen
English 10
February 14, 2014

Don't critique others

In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, there are many life lessons  you can find, whether by looking at someone like Tom, Gatsby, Daisy, or even by Nick. These lessons are everywhere, and sometimes are pretty obvious, and sometimes hard to figure out. Despite his stance as an observer, someone who hardly joins into the action too much, Nick has his own little shares of life lessons. One of those lessons is shown right in the first paragraph. What's the life lesson, you ask? Don't critique others.

In the very first paragraph, we are greeted with these sentences from Nick, quoting his father, "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'" It's these sentences that grab you, pull you in, and stick inside your head the whole book. In fact, it makes the narrator, Nick, all the more noticeable when he reserves his judgement.

In another part of the book, it is admitted that critiquing someone who may or may not have had all the advantages he had is something he finds himself unable to do. Because of that, he is able to truly befriend Gatsby, something very few people even attempt to try, not for the difficulty, but because of how they had already started judging Gatsby, not even from knowing the man himself, but rather from rumors.

So, in conclusion, The Great Gatsby can offer a number of lessons, one of them being "Don't critique others", being shown by the narrator Nick. Nick mentions his inability to critique others throughout the book, save for the very end, when mentioning Daisy, Tom, and Jordan and their implied ridiculous and hypocritical ways. However, he still manages to remain nonjudgmental and befriends Gatsby, something nobody has truly done. So, in the end, it's best to not critique others, since you yourself do not truly know them, not until you've become their friend.

"Daily Writing Tips" Review

The blog I decided to follow is called "Daily Writing Tips"(dailywritingtips.com) and it's written by a person called Maeve Maddox, and it's fairly nice. Every day, they post a short tip on things like when to use figures, numerals, or letters when typing numbers or talks about thing like quotation marks and punctuation.

Scrolling through some of the articles, I noticed how each tip made sense. For example, in the article "10 Rules for Writing Numerals", they gave simple rules like "spell small numbers out" or "don't start a sentence with a numeral", which really helped make it easier to understand and got the point across easier. So, if you just want to have a nice blog giving helpful hints, this is a pretty good blog.

Harrison Burgeron VS. 2081

The short story "Harrison Burgeron" and the short film based off of it, "2081" were both similar to the point that I'm jealous so many other movies don't follow their example with other great short stories.
The only noticeable differences were three things. First, the stuttering anchorman/announcer, in the story, gave the report to a ballerina, presumably the same one who later becomes Harrison's empress. In the short film, it is instead handed to another man. The second thing that was changed was the alleged "bomb" of Harrison's that wasn't really a bomb at all but rather other two things. First, a distraction to buy more time, and second, a switch, if you will, that unblocked the TV signal that was originally blocked by the government. Which brings the last noticeable difference, the TV signal itself. In the short story, it wasn't blocked at all, playing through the whole time, then letting things naturally take it's course, with the handicapped getting distracted by their earpieces, and the non-handicapped either forgetting or simply not noticing in the first place.

Harrison Burgeron and Equality

English 10

Mikayla Coenen

Miss Fordahl

November 20, 2013

“Harrison Burgeron and Equality”

In the short story “Harrison Bergeron”, a very noticeable theme is equality. It makes you wonder if equality should be taken as far as the government did in the story, or if we should even take our own equality much further, in case we reach the levels shown in “Harrison Bergeron”. In this speech, I will talk about the general idea of equality vs. the government’s in “Harrison Bergeron”, equality in our modern-day real-life U.S. vs. the one in the short story, and finally the good and the bad of the equality in “Harrison Bergeron”.

Generally, equality is when everyone has the same opportunities. Meaning, if someone was poor, someone was part of the middle-class, and someone was rich, they would all have the same chance to do the same thing. Equality is also everyone getting the same rights for people, like women, racial minorities, or those in the LGBTAQ community, and giving the help or protection what they need. To the government in “Harrison Bergeron”, equality is everyone getting pulled down to in the same level. They believed that in order to be equal, everyone had to be average and nothing more.

Today, our government isn't as equal as you think. Some people are still getting charged more or less than other for the exact same crime, based off of gender or race, some people still aren’t able to get married, and other people’s rights are taken away because of their race or gender. In “Harrison Bergeron”, people still lost rights, but that was based off of abilities and only hindered those more able, rather than take even more rights from someone. So, in a way, the government in “Harrison Bergeron” was moving in the right direction, but going about it all the wrong way. Perhaps if they had, instead of lowering the citizens who were able, brought those less able up to a higher level, like giving more help when needed, it would be better. Think of it like this: Four people are standing in front of a fence, on equally tall stools. The first person, already taller than the fence, can now see even further, past the others. The second person was just barely tall enough at first, and now can see over the fence alright, but not as much as the first one. The third person couldn’t see over the fence at all, now their eyes can just barely see anything over it. The fourth person still  can’t see anything. In a way, the government in “Harrison Bergeron” took away the stools and dug holes for the taller people, when what they should have done was give taller boxes to the shorter people.

The government in “Harrison Bergeron” wasn’t good, definitely not, but wasn’t horrible. Like I said before, it moved in the right direction, but in the wrong way. Instead of making the ballerinas average, they should have helped them all become extraordinary in their own signature way. Instead of squashing the intelligence of the ones who were more intelligent, they should have utilized them to help those who weren’t as intelligent, and let them expand on their intelligence. Instead of making it harder for the strong people, they should have used them to help the ones who weren’t as strong and helped improve their strength. No, they may not have been equal that way, not exactly, but it would have been closer to the idea of equality that we hold dear than the one they showed there.

In conclusion, there isn’t exactly a better government between the one in “Harrison Burgeron” and the real life U.S. one we have right here at home, when it comes to equality. Both have some major faults, but both have their good parts too. Ideally, we would all be equal, but we aren’t. Not yet. Which is why we have to strive to work for equality, so that when we see our ballerinas, our athletes, or our educators in work, they’re not ordinary, they’re extraordinary.