Coming of Age Novel Conclusion Summary

I was in 5th grade when I first read American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, and I thought it was a silly graphic novel with no true purpose. The three main characters, Jin Wang, The Monkey King, and Danny all had ridiculous problems and did not deal with them well. When I decided to read it again as my Coming of Age novel, I realized I was wrong about American Born Chinese. The three characters all have one goal throughout the book: to fit in.
The Monkey King is a deity that has mastered Kung Fu. He rules all the monkeys on Flower Fruit Mountain.   However one evening he goes to attend a dinner party in heaven, and is outraged when the guard says he cannot be let in because he is a monkey. The Monkey King becomes obsessed with fitting in with heaven and even changing his form to look humanoid. Instead of ignoring the insults and leaving with pride, the Monkey King feels like he needs to please the people. It changes his views on his life: "When he entered his royal chamber. the thick smell of monkey fur greeted him. He had never noticed it before. He stayed awake the rest of the night thinking of ways to get rid of it" (American Born Chinese pg 20). In my opinion, the Monkey King should go on with his life and forget what Heaven said.
Jin Wang faces as much if not more racism and discrimination than the Monkey King. He moved all the way to a new state from San Fransisco, a place where he really felt comfortable. At first, he has no friends because all of his classmates have the idea that Chinese people eat dogs. Then a boy from Taiwan comes and befriends him. Then, Jin falls in love with a girl.
Danny has an annoying Chinese cousin that screws up his social life so bad, he has to change schools.
Danny and Jin definitely have stories about coming of age. Jin faces a lot of discrimination and teenage emotions. Danny just wants to have normal friends, maybe even a girlfriend, but every time he starts to settle in, his cousin comes and ruins everything. Danny could choose to tell his cousin to leave him alone, but he knows that his cousin doesn't mean to mess everything up. The Monkey King is laughed at because no one takes him seriously because he is a monkey. This is why I chose American Born Chinese for my coming of age novel. I think every teenager has gone through what Jin, Danny or the Monkey King  have gone through. It is a great and inspiring book that I recommend to anyone. 

Coming of Age Novel Update- American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang is a graphic novel about three different characters that just want to fit in. The three characters are: The Monkey King, Jin Yang, and Danny. 
       I think Danny faces the hardest problem. He is only a junior in high school and he's already been to three different schools. Every time he settles into a school, his Chinese cousin Chin-Kee comes for a visit and screws everything up for him. Danny is already going through enough trouble; he realizes that he wants to date his best friend Melanie, he needs to prove himself on the basketball court, and he needs to start making friends. Danny is basically facing all of the problems teenagers face, and then he has to deal with his psychotic cousin who won't let him live his life in peace. "By the time he leaves, no one thinks of me as Danny anymore. I'm Chin-Kee's cousin" (pg. 127). I can connect Danny's situation to the real world: If someone was trying to improve their social life, but they had a really annoying friend that screwed everything up for them, no one would want to associate with that person anymore.
       The Monkey King faces a different problem: discrimination because of his appearance. The Monkey King is a deity in a magical world, and one night the Monkey King was not allowed into a dinner party at Heaven because he was a monkey. He was so angered by this, but instead of leaving with pride, he suddenly did not want to be a monkey anymore. "When he entered his royal chamber, the thick smell of monkey fur greeted him. He'd never noticed it before. He stayed awake for the rest of the night thinking of ways to get rid of it" (pg. 20). This quotation shows that the Monkey King was suddenly ashamed of being a monkey and now did not want to be associated with them. At one point, The Monkey King changes his appearance so that he still has the face of a monkey but the body of a man. He gets trapped under tons of rocks for disobeying his master, and finds that he could have saved himself 500 years of imprisonment had he realized how good it was to be a monkey. The message here is that you shouldn't have to change who you are to impress other people, if they can't accept you for who you are then it is their fault.
        Jin Yang is a Chinese boy that has accepted that he will never be popular because of his race. One day, he sees a girl in his English class and basically falls in love with her. He is facing a normal teenage problem, but he thinks that he doesn't have a good chance of getting her because he is Chinese. Jin is so angry about this that he takes it out on his best friend Wei-Chen and is left with nothing. In a way, the story really revolves around Jin, because some magical woman transforms him into a white boy so that he can know what it feels like to not face discrimination. This new face turns out to be Danny, and Chin-Kee, his "cousin", turns out to be the Monkey King in disguise. In the end Jin accepts who he is and once again becomes friends with Wei-Chen.
 

Extended Response to "Zimmerman's Murder Charge: Prosection Must Prove 'Depraved Mind'

In late February, a boy named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by a man named George Zimmerman. There has been some debate about whether Zimmerman really only killed Martin out of self defense or it was simply murder. Zimmerman was recently taken into custody without any chance of bail. I personally think that   Zimmerman is guilty and had no right to pursue and kill Martin, but do you think about all of this? Was Zimmerman acting in self-defense, or was it a deliberate kill. Let's see both sides of the story:
Prosecution: George Zimmerman was patrolling the "gated" community in Sanford at night when he saw Trayvon Martin walking alone with a hood over his head. Zimmerman thought that he looked suspicious, and began to follow him. As he was following him, Zimmerman called the police. The police ordered Zimmerman to stop following Martin, but he ignored them. This is the part that I don't understand: if the police told Zimmerman to stop following Martin, why did he continue to pursue him? Later, when Zimmerman caught up with Martin, there was most likely interaction and perhaps a struggle: "The 17 year-old was unarmed. Zimmerman told police he acted in self-defense" (Zimmerman's Murder Charge: Prosecution Must Prove 'Depraved Mind'). If Trayvon Martin was unarmed, and Zimmerman had a gun, how could it be self-defense?
Defense: The other opinion is that Trayvon Martin put up a fight and maybe even tried to injure Zimmerman when Zimmerman didn't even do anything yet. It is possible that Martin thought he was being mugged, and wanted to defend himself. If that is true, then it would all be a misunderstanding that went wrong. Despite this point, Zimmerman was charged with second degree murder.
Whatever really happened, George Zimmerman screwed everything up by ignoring the police's order and continuing to follow Trayvon Martin when it was unnecessary. Some people think that Zimmerman only thought Martin was suspicious because he was African American. From hearing both sides of the story, I am confident that most people would say George Zimmerman is guilty of murder.

  

Response to Plagiarizing

The student most likely was lazy and did not feel like writing an entire response, so they simply copied an actual response either forgot or didn't want to cite the source. What the student should have done was put quotation marks around the writing, cited it, then elaborated on the quotation. Then they couldn't be accused of plagiarizing.  

 Many people try to find the deeper meaning in the Starry Night Painting: "There is a peaceful essence flowing from the structures. Perhaps the cool dark colors and the fiery windows spark memories of our own warm childhood years filled with imagination of what exists in the night and dark starry skies. The center point of the town is the tall steeple of the church, reigning largely over the smaller buildings. This steeple casts down a sense of stability onto the town, and also creates a sense of size and seclusion" (A Brief Understanding of the Starry Night Paintings). 

To avoid plagiarizing, you can do at least 3 things: you can cite the source of the writing, paraphrase the writing and cite the original source, or simply summarize it in your own words. It's as simple as that.

2 Really Good Blog Posts of Thursday, April 12th

The first blog post I read was Joyce's, and I really liked it. I like how she made a separate paragraph when she was talking about Peeta, then another when she was talking about Gale. I can really appreciate this post now that I am familiar with the Hunger Games, and I agree with she was pointing out: Gale and Peeta do have different personalities. Joyce's post was very organized, she had an introduction with a thesis and a main idea, and made me feel very engaged in the post. I like how she asked the audience their opinion on the "Team Peeta" and "Team Gale" thing, and also mentioned her opinion. Joyce's blog post is a good model for an extended response essay.
The second blog post  I read was Aidan's, and once again, I was very impressed. Aidan's post was definitely a model essay, because it had an introduction with a thesis, three informative body paragraphs, and a conclusion to sum things up. I really liked how he included a brief background about his book Unwind, so I could relate to his main idea better. I also liked how he included character personalities and how they are similar or different from each other. 
I need to be more clear in my blog posts, because most of the time I stray off topic from my main idea. I will make them more like essays, just like Joyce and Aidan did. I think I will do more character comparisons, because I will have more to write about.  Both Joyce and Aidan's were really good. 

Much Ado About Nothing Review

Much Ado About Nothing was a clever and well thought out performance. I enjoyed the different characters, the subtle humor and the plot. I thought the actors and the director did a very good job.

 I was surprised that the play was not set way back to medieval times, but instead right after World War I. I always thought that a Shakespeare play had to be set way in the past or in present time (modern). But somehow, it made the performance easier to watch, because the time period was not completely alien to me, and it was more realistic. The clothing was not made out of silks, and the characters did not put on dramatic accents to try and make the show better.

I have seen five Shakespeare plays, not including Much Ado About Nothing: an adapted version of Macbeth only a year ago named The Throne of Blood; Romeo and Juliet; Twelfth Night; Cymbeline; and The Taming of the Shrew. I compared all of the shows and noticed that they had at least one thing in common: The way the actors/characters said their lines was not realistic. Instead of trying to speak normally, like they would with non-Shakespeare language, they yelled all of their words and paused for effect after every sentence. This made the plays interesting, but I couldn’t really connect to the characters or what they were saying. The reason I mentioned this is because in Much Ado About Nothing, I understood and connected to the situations because the actors delivered their lines realistically.

            My favorite character was Dogberry (a constable), because even though he wasn’t one of the main characters, he had stage presence and was a natural comedian. He had great comedic delivery, and made me laugh really hard. It is very important that the actor becomes their character, or else the audience will be taken out of the world of the play. The actor that played Dogberry became his character.

            Much Ado About Nothing was very fun to watch, and maybe one of the first Shakespeare plays that I really understood. The actors did a great job of becoming their characters, and the performance really makes me want to get more interested in the world of Shakespeare. The experience was thrilling. 

Reckless by Cornelia Funke

Reckless by Cornelia Funke, is a suspenseful story that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. It starts off with a twelve year old boy whose father disappeared. His name is Jacob Reckless, and he has a younger brother named Will. Jacob discovers that the mirror in his father's study is a portal to a parallel world. This world is filled with magical creatures, and is very different from it's neighbor. 
Twelve years later, Jacob, who is now a grown man, has made a name for himself in the Mirrorworld as a treasure hunter. His brother followed him through this time and has been bitten by a Goyl. Goyl are people made of stone that wish to conquer the Mirrorworld. 
Jacob knows that he has limited time before Will grows stone skin of his own and becomes one of the fierce creatures. He goes on an adventure that will test his mentally and physically.
The Characters:
Jacob is very brave and clever, and probably the best treasure hunter in the world. He is restless, and needs to be on an adventure. Otherwise he will be miserable. Many girls are attracted to Jacob, yet he has never really stayed with one long.
Will's last name does not suit him at all. Where Jacob is rough, Will is gentle. Where Jacob is fidgety, Will is still. In love with a girl named Clara. Because of his sweet personality, the transformation is shocking when Will starts to behave like a Goyl: angry and fierce. He believes in Jacob.
Fox is a vixen that has the ability to change back into human form. She has been with Jacob since he saved her from a fox trap. No one can lie to Fox, and she knows Jacob better than he knows himself. She is secretly in love with Jacob, but the reader only finds this out later on, when there is an obvious connection between Jacob and Clara.
Clara is in love with Will, but later on, her emotions are clouded. Jacob and her both went for a drink at the river, but it turned out to be magical water. The water makes the drinker kiss and fall in love with the closest living thing, no matter how ugly. However, while Jacob continues to love Clara, she stays by Will's side always.
The relationships between these characters makes the book even more interesting.