My character is named Theodore, he is a young adult who lived through the American Revolution, he contributed to the victory of the Revolution and has experienced a few of the events first hand.
Many things have changed since the revolution, the hierarchy changed, people had more rights and had a voice, more people participated in political issues as people got more rights to vote.
In this video created by me and Angel, we explain the American Revolution in plain English. The American Revolution started because the colonists weren’t happy with the y the British were taxing them and felt that they had no freedom, this is a common pattern spotted in other revolutions that have occurred in history
The book “Chew on This”, which is written by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson, is a book about all about fast food, mainly McDonald’s. It talks about how the business started and how it became the world’s biggest franchise. This book focuses on the many terrible things McDonald’s is doing. For example, it zooms in on workers working at slaughterhouses in hazardous conditions, animals are being treated unethically, and how preparing raw meat in unsanitary environments can cause life-threatening diseases to spread. It also discusses all the negative effects on your body when eating too much, such as obesity, heart attacks, and many other fatal diseases.
One reason why you should read this book is that you can learn about all the chemicals that are being put into fast foods and how they are made in labs. Another reason why you should read this book is to find out all the details about the animals killed and the horrid conditions that they live in.
Something that I learned in this unit is that closely paying attention to specific words and vocabulary can help you determine the tone of the author and if there was any bias in their writing. Another thing I learned is to reread which can help you notice many things that you didn’t notice the first time reading it.
z
Humanities CER writing: Do the Boxers deserve a bad rap?
I believe that the Boxers, a group of young, unemployed people, deserve a good reputation, but this is a lot more complicated and both answers are right depending on what perspective you view this as. The Boxer rebellion was caused by the opium wars, which happened right before the boxer rebellion. They were called the boxers because most of them used their fists, they were a group of young unemployed group of people who knew martial arts, the movement originated in Shandong when the people blamed the foreigners and the churches they built for the floods and droughts that occurred. Due to imperialism in the opium wars where the foreigners took land and money from the Chinese, the people in Shandong began to form groups and rebel against the foreigners. Their motto was “Support the Qing, destroy the foreigners!”. The Boxers hated the foreigners a lot, especially missionaries, was because they were spreading their lifestyles and their religion to the Chinese, which is Christianity. The Chinese viewed these actions as threats. They thought that their goal was to undermine the Chinese village, the Chinese traditions, and Chinese control over their own territory (Walter Lefeber, interview transcript). According to a Newsela article, the Chinese had to sign an unequal treaty, they had land taken away from them, they were forced to open up the opium trade, ports were also forced open by the foreigners to allow easier trade. These are all reasons for Boxers to hate the foreigners, they simply wanted them to leave and not do any more harm to their country. All of this is fine but the way they did it was very incorrect of them to do so, they killed thousands of Chinese Christians, they also ruined many innocent lives. The boxers also tried to trap all of the foreigners in Peking by sabotaging the railway and telegraph lines, the trapped many foreigners in the British legation and many Chinese Christians in churches, people were helpless and stuck until the 8 nation army (Britain, America, Austria-Hungary, Germany, French, Japan, Italy, and Russia) came and rescued everyone by defeating the Chinese army and the boxers. I believe that many first-hand sources such as journals and diaries that can still be read today are strongly biased in the favor of the foreigners, and there were almost no letters, journals, or diaries from the side of the boxers, this is because many of them were illiterate and they didn’t know how to read or write, so not that much is known about their personal thoughts and feelings. After the 2-year rebellion ended, the Boxers killed around 100,000 people mostly consisting of Chinese Christians and a few foreign missionaries. Even though the Boxers did do many bad things, and tried to achieve their political goal through violence, I believe that their actions are justified by their cause. In the end, all they wanted to do was for the foreigners to leave them alone so as a result, the Boxers deserve a good reputation.
Our current topic in humanities is the renaissance, we were required to make an infographic about humanism and see if we were a humanist or not.
https://isbtube.isb.bj.edu.cn/video/Drama/5e6cfb37199020f14f277f288573e73f
This is the link to my drama project
The story “The Aged Mother” is written by a Japanese writer named Matsuo Basho, it is about an old Japanese story about this tyrant who demanded all of the elderly to die, he wanted this so that his country could have young and strong people. The story is told in third person and the situation of a mother and her son. The story shows the love that the two of them show for each other. This ties into the main theme for this story: Family love.
In the story “The Aged Mother”, by Matsuo Basho, the message the author is trying to send is family love, when your loved ones will do anything for each other and stay loyal to them no matter what, and that you should be grateful for them. “The poor farmer loved his aged mother with tender reverence, and the order filled his heart with sorrow. But no one ever thought twice about obeying the mandate of the governor, so with many deep and hopeless sighs, the youth prepared for what at that time was considered the kindest mode of death.” (Basho, paragraph 2). This part is when the mandate of the government passed the order of putting all of the elderly to sleep, this part shows his feeling for his mother but stills decides to betray her and giving her the kindest mode of death, which is taking her up to the top of the mountain Obatsuyama, also known as the mountain of “abandoning of the aged” and leaving her there. “Her son did not know the mountains many paths and his return might be one of danger, so she stretched forth her hand and snapping twigs from bushes as they pass, she quietly dropped a handful every few steps of the way so that they climbed, the narrow path behind them was dotted at frequent intervals with tiny piles of twigs.” (Basho, Paragraph 4). This part shows how even when the mother is being sent to her death by her own son, she still cares about him and tries to help him, this part ties in with my claim. Further along the story, the son tries to hide his mother from the government: “Beneath the kitchen floor was a walled closet for food, which was covered and hidden from view. There the son hid his mother, supplying her with everything she needed, continually watching and fearing she would be discovered.” (Basho, Paragraph 4). The son clearly knows that doing this is punishable by death, yet he still risks his life by trying to keep her safe.
The story “Fish Cheeks” is written by a Chinese American girl named Amy Tan, it is about a Christmas eve dinner she had with another family when she was young. The story is written in 1st person. The conflicts shown in this story is internal, there was inner conflict across the entire story, she always worries about what her crushes family will think about her family and their traditions, for example in the story, it states: “What would he think about our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper American manners?” Or, “What would Robert think of our shabby Christmas?”. Basically, the conflict is whether she wants to embrace the fact that she’s Chinese and different compared to her other friends, or act like an American girl with American traditions and manners. I wanted to make my found poem format simple, so I decided to use a goldfish and have the words bordered in orange, the same color as the fish.
© 2021 Aaron
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments