The Patriot

Summary:  The main character Benjamin Martin has 7 children. He does not want to go to war so he votes against going to war with Great Britain. Even though he votes against it it is passes and they will go to war. They lose to the British a few years later and Gabriel, one of Benjamin’s children returns home but he is hurt. The family takes care of him along with some British. The british leader comes and arrests Gabriel and Thomas another of the martins goes and tries to free his brother, but in his attempt he is killed by the British. A British leader Tavington gives the order to soilders to burn their house down and to kill some of the wounded Americans. Benjamin and a couple of his sons then go to get back Gabriel they successfully get him after killing many British. After freeing him Benjamin and Gabriel then decide to join the war and attack the British. He leaves his children with Charlotte and then him and Gabriel head to find the army’s camp that was fighting with the British. He ends up running into his old commanding officer Colonel Burwell. He makes Binjamin a colonel because he has such great combat experience. He is givin an assignment and that is to keep regiments pinned south with guerrella warfare. His militia take a lot of the British supplies and burn a lot of bridges leading to Charleston. Lord Cornwallis is annoyed with Tavington for starting it but let’s him do whatever his necessary to stop him. Tavington attacks many of the Militia’s families and burn homes. Benjamin’s family leaves and moves to Gullah. Gabriel ends up marrying Anne. Tavington gets all of the people in the town into one general area, the church and then said they would be freed if they gave the hiding spots of the Militia. He gets their location and then locks them all in the church and burns it to the ground. Gabriel is attached by Tavington and Binjamin gets there just in time for his son to die in his arms. He does not want to fight with the British anymore but then thinks about how committed his son was to fighting them and decides to join back. He leads his army to where Cornwallis is and they is a major battle. The British have the upper hand but then he gets his army back together. Later in the battle Benjamin and Tavington find each other and the two fight. Tavington wins most of the battle, but in the end Binjamin stabs him in the neck and he dies. The continental army wins the battle and Cornwallis leaves. He eventually surrenders to the army. Benjamin then goes back to his family and finds out his house is being rebuilt.

Response: I thought this was a fantastic movie, I really enjoyed watching it. The movie was a little sad to me, there was a lot of death and loss. This movie was a little long I lost concentration on the movie once or twice because of hoe long it was but that was almost the only complaint about the movie that I had. I feel that this movie showed a lot of just one perspective, the battle between Benjamin and Tavington. To me that was the main storyline. I liked how there was some plot twists like the son dying, didn’t think that was going to happen at all. The movie focused on a lot of the fighting aspect of war. I thought it was weird that only the British side attacked the citizens and the confederates never attacked the British citizens. Tavington was portrayed as a very bad guy he never really even fought anyone until the very end of the movie when he was killed. Overall it was a great movie and I enjoyed it, I would definitely watch it again.

Importance: This movie shows the British as very evil people, attacking the citizens and the helpless, this did not really happen in the war. This movie was not very correct in the way it portrays the war. It shows all Americans as heroes and that was not true. The movie leaves out slavery all together and it was still a big deal at the time. A lot of the movie was based on making the Americans look good and the British look like the bad guys when really they were both fighting for what they thought was right. This movie was intertwining to watch but I do question the accuracy of this movie.

Links:

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-patriot-2000

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0187393/
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res…

Citations:

Mitchel, Elvis. “The Patriot.” The New York Times. N.p., 28 June 2000. Web. 21 Sept. 2014.

“The Patriot Movie Review & Film Summary (2000) | Roger Ebert.” All Content. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2014.

“The Patriot.” IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2014.

The Wizard of Oz

Summary: The Wizard of Oz is about this girl named Dorothy. She lives in Kansas and is taken away by a cyclone with her dog Toto and gets dropped in the land of Oz. Once in Oz Dorothy is welcomed by munchkins and the Good Witch of the North. She gets a pair of red ruby slippers to wear and the witch tells her to follow the yellow brick road to find the Wizard of Oz to help her. Along the way she meets a scarecrow, oils a Tin man to help him move , and a Cowardly Lion. She tells them that she is going to see the Wizard and they want to come along. They all want something, the scarecrow wants a brain, the tin man wants a heart and the lion wants courage. The yellow brick road has many challenges for them but they overcome them all and get to the Emerald City. They meet the wizard and the wizard agrees to help them all if they kill the Wicked Witch of the West. The four of them head off to kill the witch, but the witch sees them coming. The witch sends many things at them to try and kill them and finally she send her winged monkeys to capture them and it works, the four of them are taken to her. The witch makes Dorothy do chores around her house and locks the lion up. The witch finally gets one of her shoes back but then Dorothy dumps water on her and she disappears. Dorothy gets the winged monkeys to take her to the scarecrow and tin man, she fixes both of them. They go back to the wizard and tell him that she is dead Toto breaks the screen and the wizard is then revealed as an old man. He tells them that he came toOz a long time ago on a hot air ballon. The wizard gives the scarecrow, tin man, and lion something. They realize that along the way they gained what they thought they never had. He and Dorothy made a new hot air ballon to go back but as they were about to leave Toto chases a cat and Dorothy chases after him. The air ballon brakes lose and the wizard flies off without Dorothy. The monkeys could not take Dorothy home and she was advised to go see Glinda. After a lot of trouble the four of them make it to Glinda’s palace. Glinda tells Dorothy that she could have gone home at any time the shoes that she was wearing allowed her to go anywhere she wished to go. She tells all of her new friends a very sad goodbye and says goodbye a second time. Dorothy tapped her heels three times and thought about home. She opened her eyes and she was home. She was thankful and talked to her family.

Opinion: I thought that the Wizard of Oz was a good movie, wasn’t one of my favorite movies ever but it was good. Some of the characters in the movie were weird to me like the winged monkeys. The movie also had some odd moments in it. I thought it was interesting that all the characters that had power were either a wizard or witch in the movie. I liked how the movie had a good ending to it, I don’t normally like movies that have a bad ending unless the is going to be another one. I don’t think there were any dull spots in the movie most of it there was something going on or you had to pay attention to what they were saying to get it. There were some spots of the movie I didn’t get at first but they made sense later on. To me this was a complete movie it had everything that I would want in this type of movie, it’s just a little old so the graphics are not as good as they could be. Overall this was a great movie and if I had time I would probably watch this again.

Why it is important: I think this movie has a good influence on people because it shows you that no matter where you come from or what you think your lacking you can accomplish anything you put your mind to. The movie also shows how good things will happen to you if you do good things for others that need it. I can see why this movie is on the good list, because it is a good movie and it has good morals.

links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/plotsummary
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/852/The-Wizard-of-Oz/full-synopsis.html
http://www.enotes.com/topics/wonderful-wizard

citations
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Summary – ENotes.com.” Enotes.com. Enotes.com, n.d. Web. 24 Aug. 2014.

Roloff, Dale, Murray Chapman, John Vogel, and John Reeves. “Plot Summary.” IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 24 Aug. 2014.

“The Wizard of Oz (1939) – Full Synopsis – TCM.com.” Turner Classic Movies. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Aug. 2014.

Basketball Leagues

There are many different levels in basketball, there are younger leagues that have 5 and 6 year old’s in them and it goes all the way up to the NBA where you can be any age after one year of college. There are also summer leagues for the off-season in basketball, the biggest one is AAU basketball, it is for the more serious players in basketball. The older you get the more and more competitive the game gets, when you get to high school basketball it is almost a year round sport if you want to be better than most people. If you want to play for fun and you aren’t good enough to play in college you can play in intramural leagues at whatever college you go to. No matter how old you are there is always some type of basketball league you can play in.

In my opinion college is the most competitive basketball league there is, all very good players playing against each other and for many of them it is their last chance to play really competitive basketball on a big stage. Now don’t get me wrong NBA and high school are competitive its just I feel that the college game is played harder and the crowd is also more into it in college. The college game is also when everyone is at their prime to play basketball so that is when it is the most exciting to watch. I love basketball and how no matter what age you will be able to play it.

 

 

Reflection on Class and Life

My life has not changed much over the past couple years. I’m going to the same school, have the same friends with the exception of a few, and do the same things when I have free time. Some people say that my life is boring and I should try doing new things but to me it’s not and my schedule always keeps me busy. My life right now is pretty insane with two basketball teams and all the finals and projects I have to do. When I think about it I’ve actually been to more places than most people out of the United States and a lot of places in the United States.

School for me this year was harder than most. There were many assignments and more tests than I was used to. This year I took all required class so I did not really have any classes that we fun for me. I was a lot more busy this year than any other year outside of school as well and I think that effected how hard this year was. All of these finals over the next few days is stressing me out. School next year will probably be even harder but hopefully my life outside of school is less hectic so I can focus a little more on school and make it a little easier.

Two years from now my life will for sure change because I will be going to college and then I will have to meet new people and do new things that I haven’t done before. Even though I’m hoping that my life gets easier next year I know it won’t every year from now on will probably just get harder and harder just because I have more things I have to take care of and pay attention to. The older I get the more complicated things keep getting but that is okay because that is what makes life interesting. School and life aren’t easy and that is what makes it a journey.

 

 

How to Change the World

School is very stressful, it takes up a lot of time and even when your out of school you get homework to take up more of your time. It takes up most of your time and I do not think it should, I think you should spend most of your time having fun and living your life. How great would it be if you could learn all you needed to in life in about ten minutes. What if I told you that you could put on a helmet that did exactly that.

Think of how much time you would have to do whatever you wanted if you could learn 18 years worth of information in ten minutes. This could completely change the world and the way everyone was living at the time, everyone’s life would slow down and be less hectic all the time. You could drive slower, eat slower and walk slower. Almost everyone in the world would be able to use this product. You could also use the helmet to learn other things than just for school, if you wanted to teach someone how to use a smart phone or computer just put the helmet on and it could show you that. This could easily change the world.

If someone had a traumatic injury and they forgot how to do something they could just put the helmet on  and they could be reminded of how to do it. The helmet could be used to learn any and all things you would need in life. It could even teach you how to play games like poker or rummy, Vegas would get a lot more attention if everyone knew how to play and remember “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” This helmet would solve so many problems.

This is how I would change the world. Like anything it has it’s ups and downs, but i think it would be great. It would probably be the most convenient invention ever because of how versatile it is. That is what i think would change the world.

 

 

Letter to Future Self

Dear 26 year old self,

Right now I am writing this letter to you because it is required for English class. At 26 i hope i have had a successful life so far. Going to a good college, as of now I am thinking of being a physical therapist, I don’t know if that will work out in the future but i hope it will. I still don’t know what college I want to go to. I’m really into shoes right now, that probably hasn’t changed any at all in ten years. I hope I have a successful job at 26 and making good money or still in college for a better degree to get a better job than most. At this point in my letter we as a class got two pieces of paper that have a color and an action verb and we have to use it in our letter, I can’t figure out how to use poop brown in a sentence, but the action verb will come later.

I still haven’t decided if I want to play basketball in college yet or not, right now I am leaning towards playing basketball but not completely sure. I think if I go to college and play basketball it might change my mind on what I want to do after. If I do play basketball in college, as of right now I need to get faster, because everyone is a little faster than me, and I also need to shoot better. I am a LeBron fan, he is fun to watch because he runs quickly on fast breaks. I doubt he will be playing in ten years but you never know. Even though it’s not going to happen at this point i still hope that end up being 6 foot 6 to 6 foot 8. I play AAU for the 606 tropics this year and it’s pretty fun. It’s a completely new team to me, I have never played with any of the people on the team but I’m glad they asked me to play with them and I’m happy I got to meet all of them. I hope I will still be able to jump as high as I can now or even higher by 26.

At this point in the letter if you are still like the way I am today then you are almost done with reading this and want to stop, but this letter has to be 500 words so I have to keep going. I don’t have very many interests or hobbies, it’s really just music and basketball. I’m into mostly rap music and a little bit of everything else, but not much. Of course everyone says what you listen to as a teen is what you will listen to for the rest of your life so your probably still into rap music. I,m not a big television person, I feel like there is nothing ever good on T.V. and don’t really have much time for it right now. I hope you read all the way through this letter and learned a little of what you were thinking about when you were 16.

Sincerely,

Yourself

Julius Caesar play against monarchy

I believe that this play was against absolute monarchy. Throughout the play there were many quotes that attacked absolute monarchy and there were very little quotes that supported democracy. Almost all of the main characters  attack monarchy while very few quotes will support democracy from the characters. In act 1 scene 1 the characters talk about how easily swayed all of the citizens of Rome are, that’s just showing monarchy because anyone with power can get them to do anything they want. There are many examples throughout the play that attack absolute monarchy.

In act 1 scene 2 Caesar talks about corruption in Rome, most of the characters at one time or another talked about corruption in some way whether it was about power or just corruption of Rome in general. You can already tell from the beginning of the play that Rome is in a little of a power struggle because the people of Rome would listen to anyone with authority. Making Julius Caesar king actually caused more chaos than making anything better. In act 2 scene 1 Brutus talks about how if Caesar becomes king the power will corrupt him and make him evil.

It seems like Rome is already in a monarchy because everyone wanted Caesar to be king and not anyone else until Caesar died, only the other main characters did not want Caesar to be king. None of the other main characters want to have a monarchy other than Marc Antony because he liked Caesar and followed him when no one else did and when Caesar did Antony wanted revenge. In act 3 scene 1 Caesar talks about himself and how he is as constant as the northern star, this shows that his power is already starting to corrupt him. So as you can see the Julius Caesar play is against monarchy.

Julius Caesar. Dir Joseph. Mankiewicz.Perf Marlon Brando,James Mason. mgm,1953.Film
“Julius caesar (play).”Wikipedia.wikimedia,23march.2014.web.1 Apr.2014
Shakespeare.William.Julius Caesar.Elements of literature: Fourth course, 3rd ed..New York:Holt, 1997.Print
Crowter,John,ED.”NoFear Julius Caesar.” Sparknotes.com.sparknotes LLC. 2005. web.1 Apr.2014

Poems

The Green Trees

The trees are sprouting turning green as it warms up for spring. It starts to get sunny as we get more and more into spring and all of the trees start to get more and more green. As winter ends more color is added to nature.

Traffic

Early in the morning woken up by cars honking their horns. All the different colors of cars and different looks of them. Stopped at the red light all the cars get backed up. Traffic.

The Quiet Hallway

As all the elementary kids are in their classrooms the hallways are quiet. They come out of their rooms and talk just a little. The hallway lights are dim and have a yellow tint to them. As the bigger classes walk by it gets louder and you can hear all of them talking. As they leave the hallway gets quiet and peaceful again.

The Night

The night is dark and you can see the mood glow in the sky. All the objects you can see are all black because there is no light to see them. The night makes me tired and want to go to sleep, so with that good night.

Art

Everywhere I look all I see is art. On the floor, ceiling, walls, everywhere. Different types of art that make me feel different ways happy, sad, angry. There are many colors, ranging from bright to dull. There i art everywhere.

Library

That smell when you walk into our library, it smells like old books. You are surrounded by books of all different kinds fiction, non-fiction, even children books. Some are old and some are new. You can learn a lot in a library it just depends on how long you have to read. Being taken over by the internet not many people show up to a library anymore.

My Room

I look around my room and I see any of many things, I see technology, furniture, clothing, and food. It is blue and white filled with Kentucky stuff. It is the place i hang out most, it is my room.

Technology

Technology has come a very long way, it started out with phones the size of bricks and televisions that showed black and white all the time. The way everything works has completely changed over time.

The lost person

A person by their self, they have blue head wear, walking through what looks like an abandon town. The person seems to be lost because there is no one with or around her. Maybe she is searching for something.

My School

This school is very old. This school is sometimes very cold. This school has much mold. Few people like it now though. That’s okay though, its my home.

2 best poems- The Green Trees and My School

Shape poem

Protagonist in Julius Caesar play

Julius Caesar was the most important character in the play. First off the play was named after him, how can you not be important to the play if it is named after you. If you don’t have Julius Caesar then there is no play because then there is no war. The whole play was centered around him, the first half of the play is on how the conspirators are planning to kill Caesar and the second half is Marc Antony trying to avenge his death. Most of the people of Rome loved him and wanted him to be their king.

Even when Caesar is dead he still appears in the play, he comes to Brutus as a ghost and tells him that he will see him in the future. He foreshadows that Brutus will die soon, so even when he is dead he is still moving the play along. Marc Antony was loyal to Caesar and one of his followers, he loved Caesar like most of Rome does and Antony can be considered to be one of the main characters so that shows how much power Caesar has. There is no denying that Caesar is the most influential character in this story, he sparks everything people do.

All of the other characters that are considered protagonists talked about Caesar and how great he was so even the other characters think Caesar was important. In this play Caesar has a family extension which most characters do not which helps the play move along a little bit better. All of the characters liked Caesar its just that they saw what could happen to him if he became king so they had to kill him, if he would have never been considered to be king everyone would still like Caesar and he would still have lived.

As you can see there are many reasons why Julius Caesar is the protagonist in this play. All the characters talk about him in a good way eventually. The play is named after him. There would have been no plot line or story without Julius Caesar in it. Caesar never does anything wrong in the play so he has to be considered a protagonist, most of the other characters did something wrong so that can make them the antagonist to some people. Caesar has a quote in act 1 scene 2 that talks about equality and power so he wants everyone to have equal power and living. In some way Julius Caesar was always moving the play along either being talked about by other characters or actually being in the play as a leader. To me he also seemed like the most stable person in the story, everyone else seemed to have issues with their personality. There is no denying that Julius Caesar was the major protagonist in this play because of how significant he was. This is why Julius Caesar should be and to me is the main protagonist in this story.

Julius Caesar. Dir Joseph. Mankiewicz.Perf Marlon Brando,James Mason. mgm,1953.Film
“Julius caesar (play).”Wikipedia.wikimedia,23march.2014.web.1 Apr.2014
Shakespeare.William.Julius Caesar.Elements of literature: Fourth course, 3rd ed..New York:Holt, 1997.Print
Crowter,John,ED.”NoFear Julius Caesar.” Sparknotes.com.sparknotes LLC. 2005. web.1 Apr.2014

Important people project

I thought the projects overall were very good. It seemed like most people researched their person very well and gave a good argument to save them from being eliminated from history. I also felt that most people put in a lot of effort into creating a poster board that looked neat and colorful, the poster board for most people helped reinforce what they were saying through their presentation and made it more clear for the audience. I learned a lot from listening to these presentations, about people that have lived in the past along with much about different time periods. Listening to these presentations made me really think, if this person did not exist what would the world be like today?

I feel that 90 percent of people took this project very seriously and presented very well. To a certain extent I thought some people took to long to present their person, they gave a lot of facts that were not needed and I feel like they lost some peoples attention by taking to long. To me the perfect time was around 4 or 5 minutes because it’s not to long and it gives you enough time to say everything that is needed. There were some people that I wanted to know more about but some of the presenters did not go into enough detail about their person. This project helped me learn some new ways to research and gain information which will be helpful in the future. I really liked the fact that we had partners with this project.