Exam
12/17/2018
Narrative Paragraph
The best time of the year
Christmas isn’t a season. It’s a feeling―Edna Ferber
Joy, at one point in the year, there is a time which feels like it has is far more joy than any other. It is a whole month that I love, but the actual day(s) are the best time of the year for me. This time is Christmas and Christmas Eve. These are close to my two favorite days of the entire year, mostly because of the festivities and traditions of Christmas. For me, the Christmas season starts at the end of Thanksgiving, but Christmas Eve is when it is at the height of it’s game. On Christmas Eve, it starts to feel like Christmas during church. It might just be because I’m always eager to get home to watch “the Grinch” and get a gift from Secret Santa, but I just start to get that warm feeling inside during church and it really begins to feel like Christmas. After church, I unwind a little and start to speculate what I could get from Secret Santa and get ready to watch “the Grinch.” Once those festivities are done, I get ready to go to bed, but it never really goes to smoothly. I can never go to sleep right away, and even though it doesn’t sound like the biggest deal in the world, once you start trying to go to sleep the dead opposite usually occurs. At some point, I do manage to fall asleep, and then I get to wake up to a world of joy. Which then becomes some brief annoyance because I have to go wake everyone else up by running into everyone else’s room and jumping on their beds, yelling at them, and poking them to get out of bed so we can open up gifts. When it comes to Christmas, there isn’t any other time of the year that brings more joy to me. All of the Christmas carols on the radio, all of the lights on people’s houses, and—of course—having a tree in the middle of your home; all of this tradition leads to me feeling like everyone is having a great time, and that becomes contagious. Christmas is overall my favorite holiday because it brings my family together and I just feel happier during this time of the year. Joy, in total, is something that cannot be forced onto someone, but can be influenced.
Credit to Image: Christmas Image
Literary Analysis
How to Build a Fire
Nothing in all of the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity-Martain Luther King Jr.
Being arrogant could lead to bad consequences. In the short story, “How to Build a Fire,” by Jack London, the protagonist goes out into the freezing wilderness of Alaska with his dog, even though many told him not to. The protagonist decided to go through the woods in -70 degree weather to look for wood for the spring, and then would take the long way back to camp. The battle between the weather, and the idiotic, dull, arrogant man and his loyal dog. After the main character avoids the drop-downs in the ice, he decides that he must make a fire to warm up his frigid body. He decides to put the fire underneath a tree, which ultimately backfires on him. In the beginning the fire works out, and starts to warm him, however the fire would grow to big and would cause the snow on the beaches of the trees to fall and put out the fire.
He should have built it in the open. But it had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on the fire. Now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight of snow on its boughs. No wind had blown for weeks, and each bough was fully freighted. Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree--an imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in the tree one bough capsized its load of snow. This fell on the boughs beneath, capsizing them. This process continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree. It grew like an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man and the fire, and the fire was blotted out! Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered snow.
Soon, the protagonist would die. If wasn’t so arrogant he could’ve lived. He would’ve done so by just not going into woods, in -70 degree weather, without another person. This entire short story was a struggle with the character’s ego and his smarts (which there wasn’t that much of). Whenever something bad may have happened to him he would work patiently, and hard to make sure he would find a solution, however when he found a solution he would once again become cocky, which would later lead to his death. Being arrogant can never lead to a great ending in something.
Credit to Image: Fire Image