Their Eyes Were Watching God Quote

“It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her
deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are
cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise, they would not be
worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most
divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half
gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”

In this passage from Chapter 16, Hurston shapes out an exception to the gender dichotomy that she presents in the opening sentences of the novel. Mrs. Tuner is introduced. She has deep-seated beliefs about the superiority of the Caucasian race. She and Janie had seen one another throughout the season, but they have not come to know one another until the season ended. For the first time Janie faces prejudice and racism. Mrs. Turner only pursues a friendship with Janie because she has lighter skin than the rest of the migrant workers. She shares her strong beliefs with Janie as she tells her “Ah can’t stand black niggers . . . . Ah hates tuh see folks lak me and you mixed up wid ’em.” Ironically, Mrs. Turner’s life depends on black migrant workers support.
Mrs. Turner's worship of qualities that she will never possess groups her with the men whose ships “sail forever on the horizon.” What is most strange about the passage, though, is the understood comparison between Mrs. Turner and Janie. The “indiscriminate suffering” and “real blood” that may lead to wisdom could equally well belong to Janie. Janie's trip to the horizon requires her to suffer at the hands of two husbands, shoot her third, and brave a ferocious hurricane. Yet for Janie, suffering is not an end in itself. She endures it so that she may experience the fullness of life and the good that comes with the bad. Mrs. Turner, however, worships her false gods because they give her a sense of superiority over her peers and because, something of a masochist, she enjoys the pain that these gods dole out. When others mock her for her views, she feels like a victim and a martyr, a feeling she finds pleasurable. The narrator's stylized description, in the paragraph just below the above quote, of her wish for “an army, terrible with banners and swords,” illustrates the fantastic vengefulness and inflated sense of self-importance that Mrs. Turner's ostracism gives her. It is this pleasure in pain that motivates her to worship “gods who dispense suffering without reason.” Through “worship,” she hopes to “attain her paradise, a heaven of straight-haired, thin-lipped, high nose boned white seraphs.” Hurston uses Mrs. Turner as an example of intolerance in the novel.

Money and Class in America (AP Writing Prompt)

This country we call America has relied on the value of the dollar bill. Rather its inflated or full value, you are not getting the value of that buck. People's attitudes towards money vary enormously and are largely influenced by the values they were brought up with and, to a certain extent, how much money they have now. People in this country are put into social classes based on salary and occupation. Many Americans believe in a simple three-class model that includes the "rich,” the "middle class", and the "poor." More complex models that have been proposed describe as many as a dozen class levels; while still others deny the very existence, in the strict sense, of "social class" in American society. Most definitions of class structure group people according to wealth, income, education, type of occupation, and membership in a specific subculture or social network. Lapham is observing people’s attitudes toward wealth in the United States. He is speaking the truth in this excerpt. The desire for people to have money in this country is a shame. The drive is not positive. People are not taking the time to get deserving jobs instead; they are selling jobs and selling their bodies just to make a quick dollar.
Money in America has many meanings. “The American faith in money easily surpasses the degree of intensity achieved by other societies in other times and places.” (Lapham) America measures everything according to the dollar bill. America is very materialistic. People buy things they cannot possibly afford, but they do it anyway just to make their lives worth wild. There are so many high-end stores being sold out because people live their lives materialistically. Stores such as Wal-Mart®, Kmart®, and Target® are lowering their prices so they can get consumers in so they can stop buying high priced items. On the street, there are so many brand new cars on the street because people are just buying cars every two years without thinking that car payments are skyrocketing.
Our country as we speak is in a recession, according to ask.com, a recession is a period of reduced economic activity,” a business cycle contraction. What causes a recession is currency crisis, energy crisis, war, under consumption, overproduction, and finance crisis. The effects of a recession are bankruptcies, credit crunches, and deflation of the dollar, foreclosures, and unemployment. In 2009 the reasons of the recession is due to high oil prices, high food prices and a substantial credit crisis leading to the bankruptcy of large and well established investment banks as well as commercial banks in many nations around the world. It was argued that huge increases in commodity prices came because of extended period of easily available credit and the primary cause of the downturn was exceptionally financial. People are worrying about how the wealthy are going to live it is really how the poor are going to live. People never take spending seriously until things happen and they are living paycheck to paycheck. “The visible signs of wealth testify to an inward state of grace, and without at least some of these talismans posted in one’s house or on one’s person an American loses all hope of demonstrating to himself the theorem of his happiness” (Lapham) People’s happiness are defined by the materialistic things they own.
Americans do not know the real value of the dollar bill. Lapham says Americans are not greedy, but I think they are. Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one.- Ben Franklin

Argument and Persuasion Questions "Death and Justice"

Meaning
1. Koch is in favor of capital punishment it. Life is indeed precious, and I believe the death penalty helps to affirm this fact" (Koch 320). He believes that having the death penalty will help keep the idea of life being precious. He thought that the murderer might not have committed the crime in fear of losing his or her own life in the end. He also believed that one day the percentage of killers would decrease and would then diminish entirely. He asked that society please stop not taking responsibility for the murdering of lives. He believed that, without the death penalty, murderers would feel that they could kill without fear of a dyer consequence. He also stated that God gave people the right to punish those that had murdered someone.
2. The argument dealing with the issue in the debate over capital punishment of the death penalty as a deterrent to murder is that the death penalty will scare murderers so bad that they will not murder. Koch provides many statistics and examples of the positive and negative effects the death penalty would have on the society. He brings up situations that have happened with murderers that are sentenced to life in prison yet they still kill. The argument dealing with the issue in the debate over the death penalty being a form of justice for the murder done is that it provides somewhat of an even exchange. Since the person decided to take a life, then they should also be willing to lose theirs. It is a life for a life.

Purpose and Audience
1. Koch did not use his essay as a way to gain votes from the people. It seems to be this way because although this is a persuasive argument, many people are turned away from Socratic subjects like these. If the purpose was for votes he may have done himself an injustice because there will be people, potential voters, that will not vote for him because of his beliefs. Instead, he is strongly supporting and attacking their reasons for why they are not supporting the death penalty.
2. He believes that his audience does not agree with the death penalty at all. He shows this belief by directly addressing his audience, giving and naming their reasons for not supporting the death penalty, and finally describing that his society members are terrified to declare the death penalty as constitutional. In this essay, there was not a single part of his essay where he showed his belief of people who already supported his argument. His wrote a persuasive essay. This essay was created to try to persuade people that the death penalty was a necessity and correct form of justice. In order to try to persuade his readers of this, he placed emotional appeal in his essay. His examples of how murders were murdering people numerously were placed in the essay to try to show readers that the death penalty was the best option for society.
3. Koch places the right on the reader that they should follow the law for such harsh crimes and punishments. The state is allowed to do certain things but the citizens of that state do not have that same right, which is what we call justice. People in our society always complain and are disappointed with the things that happen, but they cannot seem to get up and do something about it.

Method and Structure
1. Ethical: “During my 22 years in public service, I have heard the pros and cons of capital punishment expressed with special intensity” (Koch 320). Emotional: “Consider the tragic death of Rosa Velez, who happened to be home when a man named Luis Vera burglarized her apartment in Brooklyn. “ Yeah, I shot her, she knew me, and I knew I wouldn’t go to the chair.” (Koch 320) Rational: "But to give up and do nothing would be far more barbaric and would certainly delay the discovery of an eventual cure." (Koch 321). People have different emotions, so emotional appeal would be least effective. Rational appeal uses facts, but there only is as good as, it is going to get. The best appeal to Koch’s argument is ethical appeal because that he had prior experience, it gives off the fact that he experienced it and it is reliable information.
2. The major premise is that before death murderers admit they were wrong. The minor premise is murderers eventually realize that they were wrong. The conclusion is that all murderers admit they were wrong and realize what they did right before they die. Koch denies the validity of this in paragraph 13 because this is not necessarily true for all murderers.
3. Koch’s strategy in explaining that the death penalty is barbaric was not too effective. He describes things that would prove the point of the idea of the death penalty being barbaric. He creates images of “lethal injection, ropes, voltage, bullets, and gas. This does make the death penalty seem very barbaric. Koch claims that doing nothing will be more barbaric than the act of the death penalty itself. Lethal injection is now mostly used. This form of execution is not supposed to hurt. It is said to be quick, painless, and easy.
4. Koch uses murderers and what they have done as examples. "Lemuel Smith... lured a woman corrections officer into the chaplain's office and strangled her. He then mutilated and dismembered her body." (Koch 322) Rosa Velez example represented just how some of the murderers think, the murderer admits to shooting the victim and claims that she even knew him, yet he still took her life. The cure for cancer example shows that you do not have to support certain ideas to believe that they might actually help better the world. The neighbors who did not help the screaming victim represent how scary and careless people can be unless it happens to them or to someone that was close to them.

Language
1. Koch seems determined and very passionate about this topic. He really seems to want to get people to feel the same way that he does about the death penalty. He is determined to show people that the death penalty is the only way to rightfully make justice from murders. "Dozens of neighbors heard her cries for help but did nothing to assist her." (Koch 324) This example of the women screaming for help and no one came to her assistance concludes that there is a lack of need to help others and prevent more crime and murders.
2. Koch seems to sound as if he believes that his opponents do not think logically. He sounds as if they are wrong. He says that he has listened to his opponent's views but that they are wrong.

Writing Topics
1. Now the question is whether murderers should be face death penalty or not? My response to this matter is that they should be executed if the murder is for no reason, insanity, and petty reason. If someone murdered someone using self-defense then there should be some jail time, but the evidence should prove that it was. If you have taken someone’s right from live his or her life, why shouldn’t the state or federal government take yours? There is always a consequence and repercussions for such a felony. A person’s life is just as valuable as yours, so why would you take it upon yourself and murder someone.

There are some excuses for the death penalty also. Such as police and armor truck workers who can shoot and kill people for self-defense. That is not fair, because there are times when you hear of police brutality. Police, majority of the time, have killed someone without justifying the reason why they did what they did. It could have been intentional, accidental, or self-defense. Whatever the case maybe, they are still citizens and they should be tried just like a real criminal. One question, where does the death penalty fits in for these specific people? No one can really answer that, so really there should not be a death penalty.

Narration Topic "A Friend's Generosity or Sacrifice"

Having friends are not all what it portray to be. Some friendships are the best where you never seem to argue, you seemed to be attached at the hip majority of the time, you share anything, and everything and you go everywhere together. Now other friendships are you argue about everything, you have petty ordeals that could threaten your relationship, the parent on one end of the friendship dislikes the other, and most of all you are still friends. Friendship is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more people. The connotation of friendship is a relationship, which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection and respect along with a degree of rendering service to friends in times of need or crisis. Friendships seem to be more materialistic than morals and values that each person shares. According to George Elliot "Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words." A friend needs to be very understanding and give each other the benefit of the doubt. The purpose and meaning of friendship is to make life's burdens lighter for our friends and not make them heavier. The Roman thinker Cicero said, "Friendship makes prosperity brighter, while it lightens adversity by sharing its grief and anxieties."
More or less, friendships should always enable the people to have values for themselves rather than for people on the outside looking in. If morals and values are consistent, then the friendship is bound to be there for as long as times continue to go. Values could be such as the tendency to desire what is best for the other, sympathy, empathy, honesty, possibly in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth, especially in terms of pointing out the alleged faults of one's corresponding fault with mutual understanding. A friendship takes two. If one is putting their all in the relationship and the other is just sitting their absorbing their presence without effort then there is no friendship. Morals that a friendship should necessitate knows each others boundaries and how far someone is willing to go for you without taking the other’s generosity for granted.
In this case, it seems my generosity is always being taken for granted. Majority of the time I let it fly because I do not dwell on others non-sense. When I did, it was not a pretty sight. I was the friend who sacrificed a lot and was taken for granted. There was a time I helped a friend and it was not purpose to help her out because what my mom told me. Every time something was planned, there was that one factor that held us back. I was always told to never volunteer my mom for anything without her permission. Well one night, it was planned my friends and I were going to the movies. One thing that was holding us back was that we were not old enough to drive so we had to find reliable transportation. Being that it was planned together, I put my mother up for the offer to take us. When I told her I did, she threw a huge fit. She was going on and on about me making plans for her to drive me and others around as if she is a chauffeur, which made her furious when, I always did, but I never told people my mom would have a problem with doing such. Therefore, when it was that last time they asked again, I told them my mom is not going to do it anymore and if they find a way let me know. Well being that we are friends, I would think after all the times I made my mom budge for them, they would at least come through for me. I guess not everything in life is as sweet as it is supposed to be. They went to the movies again but when they got there, that is when they called me and asked me am I still coming. First, they have the audacity to call me and ask if I was still going when they knew I needed a way to get there. The plan was if they find a way do not forget about me. The way they went about it was so shiesty and bogus, made me so mad. Now when you think about it my mom came through for all they bogus attitudes and whoever took them they did not even make sure they come through for me. I could have caught them in the act and said some bogus things but I am not like that. My generosity was taken for granted and that is just one time. There has been many similar occasion when there was but I let it either blow over or spoke up on the issue. I sacrificed my mom every time I want to go somewhere and others to go with me, but the one time I could not sacrifice anybody, I had to find others means of transportation. I found out how true of a friend that person was and it lead me to believe that if they do it to me one time, believe they will do it again. From then on, I heard through the others that I could never do things for other people unless they do stuff for me without hesitation. That is not true and will never be true because I come through for people, even though we may not be friends. Most people look at my situation on the outside without thinking maybe it is not I that is not allowing me to come through for other people.
I can say that many friendships I have encountered, have not been healthy ones because of my generosity has been taken for granted. As stated in the beginning, a friendship takes two just like marriages and a partnership. Therefore, you may ask, "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies". - Aristotle

Bernice Bobs Her Hair Response

Bernice Bobs Her Hair is an interesting short story on how one friend tries to help another until jealously overturns that assistance given and becomes a way to fail her in society. Bernice was anti-social. She did not talk to anyone or what we will call “the life of the party.” Marjorie teaches Bernice how to hold interesting conversations, how to flirt with even unattractive or uninteresting boys to make she seem more desirable, and how to dance. Bernice's best line is teasing the boys with the idea that she will soon bob her hair and they will get to watch. The new Bernice is a big hit with the boys in town with her new attitude, especially with Warren, a boy Marjorie keeps around as her own but neglects. When it becomes clear that Warren has shifted his interest from Marjorie to Bernice, Marjorie sets about humiliating Bernice, tricking her into going through with bobbing her hair. Marjorie’s mom was not pleased with Bernice’s new haircut. She thought her haircut would cause a problem because it was very liberated at the time. When Bernice comes out of the barbershop with the new hairdo, her hair is flat and strange and the boys suddenly lose interest in her, and Bernice realizes she has been tricked. After the family has gone to bed, Bernice packs her trunk and intends to leave on a train at 1 a.m. Before she goes, she sneaks into Marjorie's room and cuts off her cousin's two pigtails, taking them with her on her run to the station and throwing them on Warren's front porch.

The identical style of long and wavy was commended because it showed a woman’s true beauty. Many elder women took the short hair, the bob, as offensive and disreputable because it took away from the woman’s true beauty, which was the long and wavy hair. Many women were very apparent and shallow, Barbie’s, making men draw more towards this very sexy cut. Women are supposedly to be graceful and full of self-assurance. Being that Bernice was tricked into such style, she did not know that boys would actually like her for that until Marjorie told her. Women still were until the title of cults of true womanhood, with no EXTRA strings attached! Marjorie taught Bernice how to hold conversations with the boys to help them like her more. Marjorie would be what we call, the popular girl, the girl who knew everyone, who was socially proficient with others, especially boys. On the other hand, Bernice was brought up “on novels in which the female was beloved because of certain mysterious woman qualities, always mentioned but never displayed.” (pg 4) She was brought up as a superlative woman, but that image was no longer to be true after the “bogus transformation.” Bernice did not know that she was far from being a modern female in her society anymore, due to Marjorie’s deceitful changes. The old Bernice made the men known for not liking her and when conversations were held they would just be bored and uninterested in her existence.

In this story, Fitzgerald added a small amount of figurative language to help his story understood by people who would pick it up and read it. Irony was used in this story in small ways. Irony is a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated. The irony displayed was situational irony or cosmic irony because Marjorie’s purpose was to help Bernice out but instead she got jealous and began to deceive her into the voluptuous woman she became. It is very ironic because you thought that family would not treat others but I guess that sometimes blood is not always thicker than water.

The true image of a woman begins to change and evolve over time. Even though, there is always that one woman who wants to fit in society. Society has to be the crowd that accepts that woman.

Martin Luther King's Speech Questions

II. Rhetorical Structure: Figures of Speech
1. Alliteration – the commencement of two or more stressed syllables of a word group either with the same consonant sound or sound group
Allusion – An indirect reference to some piece of knowledge not actually mentioned.
Metaphor – a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity
Simile - a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is like a rose.”
2. In the opening of king’s speech, an allusion represented the Gettysburg address given by Abraham Lincoln. It reminds the people about how it started with one man fighting for freedom of slaves.
3. An allusion to the declaration of independence was “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” An allusion to the Bible was, “…Every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
4. An example of an alliteration used was “I Have a Dream" and “Let Freedom Ring”.
5. An example of a metaphor used was “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
6. An example of a simile used was “…and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
7. Metaphor is the figure of speech used.
This statement was used to justify the fact that even though slavery has been abolished, people still, to this day, are prejudice and racist to the people of color.

8. Two examples of an Anaphora used in King’s Speech was "Now is the time..." and "We can never be satisfied,”
9. This phrase states the idea that racial equality in this country is nothing more than a sanguine dream.

III. Understanding the Dream
1. The speech “I Have a Dream” was the most massive protest demonstration ever occurred in the U.S. It took place on August 28, 1963 when King was leading the “March on Washington” before the Lincoln Memorial. Some 250.000 Americans of all faiths, races, and creeds joined him and other civil rights leaders in this demonstration of solidarity. It was staged in an effort to impress upon the nation’s conscience the urgency of granting first-class status to blacks. By making this speech, King tried to persuade the blacks to carry on their struggle by non-violent means for the justice and freedom promised them by the Emancipation Proclamation. King’s dream of achieving equality and tolerance was a dream of the time when the evils of prejudice and segregation will vanish. King’s speech has been called “the emotional crescendo of an emotional day.”
2. Some specific acts of injustice were “the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.”, “This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.”, and “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.”
3. The “American Dream” for an “average American” is the freedom that allows all citizens and most residents of the United States to pursue their goals in life through hard work and free choice. The “American Dream” for an ‘average African American” is the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort is the very soul of the American nation.
4. He named these states because they all have something in common; they all have high areas of land such as mountains and hilltops.
5. I would have been moved by King’s speech because he was the only one to actually make it to Capitol Hill to let everyone know that people are country are white, but all shades of color. Even though slavery was abolished, racial discrimination was not.

IV. Relating to the Dream
1. Racism has existed throughout human history. It may be defined as the hatred of one person by another or the belief that another person is less than human because of skin color, language, customs, place of birth or any factor that apparently reveals the basic nature of that person.
2. They did not want the people of color to have a place in this country. It was still considered a “white” man’s world so people still did not understand that this country was a mixed population and that if blacks would have a place in this world they would become superior to whites. I think blacks were spiritual and they knew better to treat others wrong and kill them for what they did. If blacks responded with their own violent retaliations then nothing would be solved.
3. Skinheads are dangerous because they have been provoking violence since World War II and they continue to be racist towards many people.
4. I think that this country is only getting closer to making King’s dream a reality to this nation. We have already accomplished the citizenship to the African American, along his right to vote. The part of the dream that yet remains to be accomplished is the complete permeate of this country from the dangers of discrimination. Our country has made a huge change by electing Obama as our president. People understood this country was not all white people but a mixed population.

Langston Hughes Narration Answers "Salvation"