The American Dream

The American dream now is different than how it was before in the time of Gatsby yet it still has some similarities, before the American dream was to have a good economic sense, to have a family, and to succeed in life. In the article I found it says that “there are two American dreams, but one of those is far nobler than the other”. He said that one American dream was just “graduate high school and college, get a high-paying job and a house in the best neighborhood, marry, have children and have all my friends looking at me wishing they were me”. She said that the other dream was not self centered like this one, the other one focused on “individual achievement, it looked to future generations and had the aim of furthering them.” So one dream is to make you succeed, but the other one is making yourself succeed and also thinking of the generations after you. The speaker in the article also says that what’s wrong with the first one is that it’s to self centered and that’s it was kind of different before because before the parents were looking to toward further generations because they wanted an American dream so they could help their families later on.

Link to the website: http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/2012/01/17/american-dream-may-be-missing-point-teen-speaker-says/

Holden's Red Hunting Hat

I think Holden’s red hat means more than just a red hunting hat. For him I don’t think it’s just worth a “buck”. I also don’t think it is used for hunting, so that the dear can’t spot you I think it means something else. I think the red hunting hat symbolizes Holden himself or what he wants to do, his motive. What the red hunting hat symbolizes is Holden hunting for phonies like Ackley and Stradlatter. He is trying to find people that look like something great but are not what they look like. For example one of Holden’s phonies is Stradlatter. He says that Stradlatter looks great on the outside, but he is really a “secret slob” who has these bad manners. Like Holden says that he always uses the same razor and never cleans it. I think this is kind of ironic because I think Holden is a phony himself. So I think the red hunting hat does mean that he is searching for the phonies in the world, and the color blinds them and the phonies do not know that Holden is the hunter, but i do not know what he wants to do to phonies if he ever "captures" them.

Letter to Charles Bukowski

Dear Charles Bukowski,

 I read your poem "Dinosauria,We" and it really caught my attention since the start. In the start it says “As Mrs. Death laughs, As the elevators break, As political landscapes dissolve, As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree”. Why did you put these examples together, why did you choose these examples? Were you trying to show how the world is cruel or was to show how the beginning of the end. Also I wanted to ask you why did you choose to say born like this instead of anything else, for example you could have said that we caused that instead of us being born into it. What do you mean when you said “The heart is blackened, the fingers reach for the throat”. What type of heart were you talking about, were you talking about the heart as in the organ or as the heart as in passion to accomplishing something. I like how you explain the present and then the future. In the future you predict a horrific end of the world which you don’t explain what happened. You do mention nuclear bombing and also diseases which could happen to be a zombie apocalypse. I like the comparison you made with Dante’s Inferno; this made me imagine how bad it would be living when this apocalypse is happening. I wanted to ask you what gave you the idea to write this poem the way it is. What gave you the idea of writing how the world is going to end? I ask this because I want to say that this poem was well written and the words had a great imagery it really made me imagine what you wrote. Thank you for writing this poem it was very interesting and I liked how you wrote it and your description t o the end of the world.

Sincerely,

Javier