I.S.U journal Kite runner Essay Example for Free

I.S.U journal Kite runner Essay Plot (important action only): The kite runner is about the life of a young boy named Amir. Amir lives in a lavish house in the richest district of Kabul, in Afghanistan. Amir has everything he could ever want except the loving attention and acceptance of his father, Baba. In their house, they have two Hazara servants. Ali and his son Hassan who are part of the minority ethnicity at the time. Hassan grew up with Amir in the same house and he was much more than just a best friend. Baba treated Hassan equally to Amir, as if they were brothers. Each year it was a tradition for the Afghan community to have a festival of kites where there would be a single victor to arise amongst hundreds. Amir was a great kite flyer and Hassan was the best kite runner there was. This year, Amir won the tournament and his dad was really proud of him. Amir was really happy to finally have some loving attention from his father. Hassan promised to run the last kite defeated for Amir. He did not return immediately so Amir went looking for him. Amir saw Hassan cornered by Assef, a bully, and two of his friends. Amir then watched Hassan take a brutal beating just to keep the blue kite for him. Amir watched him get beaten and did nothing. The relationship between Amir and Hassan has never been the same after that day. Amir felt that either he or Hassan must leave and so he puts his birthday gift under Hassan’s pillow. Later, Hassan admits that he stole them and Ali says they must leave. Baba pleads with him to stay, but Ali refuses. Years after Hassan and Ali left, the Roussi army attacked, forcing Baba and 18 year old Amir to flee the country to California. The states provided a whole new life for Baba and especially Amir. Amir attends high school and college to pursue his dream; to become a famous writer. Amir is haunted every day by the thought of Hassan getting beaten and him not reacting, pretending as if he were never there. In California, Baba finds an Afghan community in which he is quite popular already. He spends a lot of time at a flea market where there are many other Afghans too. Amir spots a young afghan lady, Soraya, at the flea market which he cannot keep his eyes off. When Amir’s father becomes ill with cancer, Amir asks Soraya to marry him. Very shortly after they get married, Baba dies. Soraya and Amir then try to have kids but fail to and it is then when Amir receives a call from a man he has not heard of in a very long time. Rahim Khan tells Amir of the death of Hassan and his wife. Amir is devastated by the news. Rahim also tells Amir that their son is now in an orphanage. Rahim tells Amir that finding Hassan’s son is his chance to redeem his sin. Amir then goes to Afghanistan to find Hassan’s son. With many obstacles, including a one on one fight to the death with Assef, the bully who bullied him and Hassan at a young age, Amir comes out of Afghanistan with Hassan’s son. He comes back to California with many injuries. Sohrab, Hassan’s son, goes to school and lives a new life in America. Hassan and his wife officially adopt him and provide him a life full of potential. The novel ends with Amir teaching Sohrab how to fly a kite, as he battles a kite and defeats it. Characters: Amir: Amir is the narrator and protagonist of the novel. He is a Pashtun boy, who evolves throughout the book to become an adult. He is also a great writer and storyteller. As readers we feel much compassion for him. His father is a wealthy man by Afghan standards, and so Amir grows up always having what he wants. He has everything he could wish for except the loving attention of his father. He does not feel a deep emotional connection with Baba and this causes Amir to feel a strong jealousy towards anyone receiving his father’s affection. Amir thinks Baba wishes he was more like him. Amir is often jealous of the way Baba treats Hassan. He notices that Hassan is much more like his father than he is. Amir is a conflicted character who struggles between the logical and emotional sides of his being. Throughout the novel, he struggles to make connections with his father. His obsession and guilty conscience, along with his adult perspective looking back at childhood events make him a good storyteller. Amir seems to be a mix of Hassan’s personality and Assef’s personality making him in the middle of good and bad. He then gets the chance to fight Assef one on one to the death which was like facing the bad side of himself. Baba: Baba is Amir’s father. Later in the novel we find out that he is also Hassan’s father. He is considered a hero and a leader in Kabul and he is always doing things for others. He always seems to expect more from Amir. Baba has excellent morals and philosophies on life that he tries to teach Amir over time. He was even willing to sacrifice himself to keep the Russian guard from raping the women travelling with them. By doing so, Amir later understands that doing what is right is better than saving yourself. Baba felt guilty through his whole life for not being able to acknowledge Hassan as his son. For this reason, he tries to redeem his guilt by providing good actions to everyone around him. He even built an orphanage. His emotions are very well hidden by his outer appearance. In the end, he is very proud of Amir. He dies happily because he was able to build the relationship he had always wanted with at least one of his sons. We also find out that Amir and Baba both shared a never-ending feeling of guilt inside of them for different reasons. Hassan: Hassan is Amir’s playmate and servant. He is a Hazara and we find out late in the novel that he is Amir’s half-brother. Hassan epitomizes the perfect servant who is not only loyal to his master, but also forgiving and good-natured. Even after he’s been betrayed, Hassan lies for Amir and he still considers him as a friend. Hassan grows up in the same place as Amir but has a different purpose. He is a servant and so he prepares Amir for school every morning by preparing his breakfast and books. He also does all the chores during the day while Amir is at school getting an education. Hassan later gets married and has a son. He dies late in the novel. Hassan represents all that is good and kind. Assef: Assef is the antagonist of the novel. Assef does not see Hazaras as equal to Pashtuns. Near the beginning of the novel, he beats Hassan violently. At the end of the novel, he fights Amir one on one to the death until Sohrab shot him in the eye. He is a villain who ends up joining the Taliban. Assef represents all that is evil and cruel. Personal reaction to the novel: The kite runner was an amazing novel. I personally loved it. I finished the book in less than a week because I simply could not stop reading it after I first opened the book. I felt a lot of strong emotions when reading this book. When Hassan was beaten violently and Amir just stood there and watched, I was really scared for Hassan. The picture was very vivid in my mind and I felt terrible for Hassan. I also felt sad for Amir because he only finds out in the end that he and his dad were much more alike than they both thought. When Baba is already dead, Amir finds out the truth about him and how they both share an endless guilt. I also really liked this novel because I got to learn a bit about Afghanistan since it was the main setting of the novel. Out of all the books that students have to read in English class throughout the years, this is one of the few that are really good. I actually really enjoyed reading this book, unlike many books read in the past years. I would strongly suggest to keep teaching this book to future students. Author’s style and voice: The kite runner written by Khaled Hosseini uses the narrative writing style. The author places himself as Amir and narrates you the story. The author also uses a lot of accurate descriptions to give the readers a vivid image of a setting, character or object. Since it is Amir narrating the story, he tells it from the viewpoint of an adult looking back across his life. It is a personal narration in an informal, conversational style, similar to dialogue rather than a self-consciously literary style of writing. Amir’s voice is pretty consistent throughout most of the novel. However, the vocabulary and diction develop as he moves from talking about his childhood years to talking about his adult years. At the beginning of the book, when he narrates his childhood life, he tends to use childlike language such as he never told on me1. When he gets older, the vocabulary and diction used to narrate are more advanced since Amir has evolved not only physically, but intellectually as well. The author’s voice or Amir’s voice also changes at times of stress or anxiety. After his fight with Assef, the sentence structure becomes very hesitant and broken to reflect the severe temporary damage of Amir’s mind. Themes: Redemption: Redemption is searched by two important characters through the novel. Baba and Amir are both seeking redemption for two different reasons. Baba had sex with his servant and this resulted in having a Hazara boy. Because Hassan was a Hazara, he could not publically announce that he was his son and so he kept it a secret during his whole life. The fact that he could not acknowledge Hassan as his son made him feel very guilty and he never stopped striving to redeem himself. Baba even built an orphanage to help redeem himself according to Rahim Khan. Amir is also searching for redemption ever since he saw Hassan take a beating without reacting at all. Redemption is what brings Amir to Afghanistan which is a big event in this story. Forgiveness: Hassan’s actions demonstrate that he did forgive Amir’s betrayal. Amir pretty much spends the entire novel to learn about the nature of forgiveness. Baba’s actions of redemption are an attempt to gain public forgiveness for what he has not even publically admitted to have done. When Amir finally discovers Baba’s big secret from Rahim’s letter, he ends up forgiving his father. Forgiveness plays an important role in the story. Immigrant experience: In this book, we get to know how hard it can be for immigrants to leave their homeland and to successfully arrive to their destination. Baba and Amir are among many Afghans who struggle to leave. There are plenty of calculated risks and uncertainties in the next passages for immigrants. Many immigrants die before they even reach their new homes. In addition to the difficulties of their lives in a new country, the immigrants also have to accept what or who they have left behind. When arriving to a new country, immigrants also try to maintain their traditions and some semblance of their own culture, which can be hard. Baba loses his status once they arrive in America and still has his old prejudices. Soraya and her mother also demonstrate the difficult role women have balancing the expectations of an old world culture with the new world in which they are living. Sohrab quickly adapts to his new country and has a life full of potential waiting for him. Symbols: The pomegranate tree: While Amir and Hassan are both young and carefree, they carve their names in the tree and it bears fruit. Therefore, the tree symbolizes their relationship. Much later when Hassan is dead and Amir is filled with guilt, the tree just like Amir’s memories still exists but no longer bears fruit. The tree not only symbolizes a unifying force between Amir and Hassan but also serves as a source of division. When Amir wanted Hassan to hit him with the pomegranate fruit in order to inflict physical pain as a punishment to lessen his guilt instead, Hassan breaks the fruit over his own head to prove his loyalty. The tree brings back vivid memories when Amir returns to Afghanistan. Kites and the blue kite: Kites and everything associated with them are undoubtedly the most important symbols in this novel. This blue kite is even more important because it symbolizes a chance for Amir to obtain Baba’s attention. Amir thought that the only way he’d earn his father’s attention would be to win the kite flying tournament. This blue kite is the last kite competing against Amir’s during the tournament. As he cuts the last kite’s string, Hassan runs off to fetch the kite for Amir. The blue kite also symbolizes Hassan’s loyalty. Amir wanted to show all the kids at school that he won the tournament and got to keep the last remaining kite that he faced one on one. He mostly wanted to show this kite to his father. As the novel continues, the kite becomes a symbol of betrayal which leads Amir to the will of finding redemption. Hassan sacrificed him just to bring kite back to Amir as he said he would. Hassan took a beating to keep the kite and Amir watched it happen without reacting. Amir feels guilt ever since this moment until the very end of the novel, where Amir is running a kite for Hassan’s son. At the end, the kites symbolizes happiness, freedom and peace at last. Scars: Hassan has a split lip since he was a child, and it is one of the features Amir refers to the most when describing him. The split in his lip symbolizes Hassan’s status in the society. It signifies poverty and minority as an ethnicity which is one major thing that differentiates him from Amir, because it indicates that his family do not have the money to fix his lip. Baba eventually pays a surgeon to repair Hassan’s lip as a birthday gift, signifying his secret fatherly love for Hassan. Later in the novel, Assef splits Amir’s lip in his one on one duel with Amir. Amir is left with a permanent scar very similar to Hassan’s. This scar on Amir symbolizes the fact that Amir has become like Hassan not only physically, but mentally too in the sense that he has learnt to stand up for what is right. Bibliographical information: Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. New York: Riverhead Books, (2003) I got a 4+ on this journal , so it should do you some good 🙂

The Left Membrane Vs. The Right Membrane :: essays papers

THE LEFT MEMBRANE VS. THE RIGHT MEMBRANE â€Å"Most people equate learning with studying, but psychologists define it more broadly, as the process by which experience or practice results in a relatively permanent change in behavior or potential behavior. This definition certainly encompasses academic learning, but it covers many other forms of learning as well: learning to turn off lights when we leave a room, learning which way to put the key into the front door lock, learning how to avoid falling down on skis, learning how to dance† (Morris & Maistro, 185). The largest part of the human brain is the cerebrum. It is divided into two haves, or hemispheres, each of which controls is opposite half of the body, The hemispheres are connected by a band of some three hundred million nerve cell fibers called the corpus callosum. Covering each hemisphere is a one-eighth-inch-thick, intricately folded layer of nerve cells called the cortex. The cortex first appeared in our ancestors about two hundred million years ago, and it is what makes us uniquely human. Because of it, we are to organize, remember, communicate, understand, appreciate, and create. The brain regulates all bodily functions. It controls our most primitive behavior; eating, sleeping, keeping warm, it is responsible for our most sophisticated activities; the creation of civilization, of music, art, science, and language. Our hopes, thoughts, emotions, and personality are all lodged-somewhere-inside there. â€Å"After thousands of scientist have studied it for centuries, the only word to describe it remains Amazing† (Ornstein & Thompson, 15). In normal people, the switch with manic depression, allows either the left or right hemisphere to be dominant during different mental tasks, with the two sides constantly taking turns. In people with manic depression, one hemisphere becomes locked into a dominant position in periods of depression while the other hemisphere is locked at times of mania. â€Å"The notion that the human brain has two halves and that the left side is associated with logical, analytical thinking while the right side is more intuitive, emotional and creative was popularized about 20 years ago, and soon became received wisdom about how the brain works† (Castro). â€Å"The new theories are also appealing to many experts because they take on a question that has divided researchers for decades. Do people have one overarching mind that spans the two hemispheres? Or are they born with two separate minds -- one on the left and one on the right -- which operate so seamlessly that the person simply does not notice that there are two?

Mary Shellys Frankenstein Essay

Mary Shelly’s novel is structured in a way, which attempts to give authority to her views. Opening with an authors introduction, and supported with a preface with her famous husband. Mary Shelly’s novel starts with a series of letters claiming to know the ‘truth’ of Victor Frankenstein’s story. This family involvement, followed by professional distancing, reveals the strength of the author’s feelings on the responsibilities of family and scientists. For a century and a half, many readers of the Mary Shelly’s novel ‘Frankenstein’ have debated over which character could be associated with the expression ‘ Monster’. Mary Shelly said in the preface the reason why she produced this nineteenth century novel was a ‘ghost story’ â€Å"oh! If I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night†. She wanted her readers to feel the terror that she had dreamed one night. The readers of Mary Shelly’s novel ‘ Frankenstein’ might believe that the creature is the monster, however there are two potential monsters in the novel. These two characters from the novel are the ‘Creature’ itself and the creator of the creature, Dr Victor Frankenstein. One candidate who might be believed to be the monster is Dr Victor Frankenstein. At the age of seventeen Victor’s parents’ suggested that he should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt. Unfortunately Victor’s mother passed away while giving birth to his brother. The death of his mother shocked him and caused him to search for ways to extend life. After the death of his mother, Victor took his parents’ advice and went to university. â€Å"My departure for Ingolstadt which had been deferred by these events†¦ it appeared to me sacrilege so soon to leave the repose, akin to death, of the house of mourning and to rush into the thick if life†. This suggests he wasn’t sure if it was the respectable move to make, to leave his mourning family behind and go off to university. While at university Victor became fascinated in biology: â€Å"One of the phenomena, which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and indeed any animal endued with life†. Victor was focused to stop death. He was grieving so much because he had lost someone so important and close to him: † I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter †¦ renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption†. His fascination with extending life overtook his studying; he became so committed to finding a way, he had set himself a challenge and he was so sure to achieve that challenge. A time in the novel where we are shown that Victor is related as a monster is the time when he begins to dig up the dead and raid graveyards. â€Å"Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured†¦ I collected bones from charnel-houses†¦ secrets of the human frame†. This is a sign of immoral, abnormal attitude and is offensive towards the bodies. The definition of a monster is a misshapen animal or plant; person of wickedness; huge animal or thing. The part of the definition where it says a person of wickedness is what should be used to describe Victor Frankenstein. No normal person would dig up the dead and use body parts to make a creation. Another way, in which Victor could be considered as the monster is the way he treated the creature once he had brought it to life. Victor disowned the creature; he refused to acknowledge it and to accept that the creature was his own: † For this I had deprived myself of rest ad health. I had desired it with an ardour†¦ at length lassitude succeeded to the tumult†¦ endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness but it was in vain†. Victor had no intention of caring for the creature, it was as if he was afraid of his own creation. He discards the Creature immediately after its creation, calling it a ‘wretch’ and leaving it to fend for itself. This shows how irresponsible he is. It is also another example of him neglecting his family, since the Creature sees him as its father. The creature approaches Victor like a baby would to its father: † He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me†¦ while a grin wrinkled his cheeks†. How could Victor abandon the creature, he had no sympathy towards it. The way in which the creature is described when it approaches Victor is just like the way a baby would approach its parents, maybe at this part of the novel, we readers are to feel sympathy for the creature and to consider Victor as the monster for the way he treated the creature, it was his own creation he should of cared for it and been its companion. Victor should of treated the creature like his own child, possibly if he did show care for the creature and not show fear, maybe the creature wouldn’t have been so vile because he knew no different. The creature didn’t know how to treat or care for other people. So really it wasn’t the creatures fault for the deaths caused and for the way in which he treated people because overall he didn’t know any different and wasn’t taught by Victor how to treat others.

How to Find Quadratic Line of Symmetry