Night :: essays research papers

A Night to Remember The most traumatic experience I've ever gone through was getting held up by three Mexicans. In some ways I regret my actions. If I had it my way, I would go back and handle myself a lot differently. Luckily, this situation now makes me think more when I'm in other tense situations. It all started Halloween night 2001 in Dallas, Texas. My girlfriend, Tamara and I were driving from her house to mine for the night. It was about a thirty-minute drive and somewhere along the way we got separated. Tamara called me about five minutes from my house and told me there were some guys following her. I said "okay, well meet me in front of my house and I'll see who it is. I thought it would be a bunch of high school punks. Tamara pulled up to my house and so did a red Ford Taurus. While pulling in the Taurus pinned Tamara's car in so it couldn't move. That's when these guys really started pissing me off. The guys in the Taurus didn't realize I was there because I had my lights off so I turned my brights on and speed in front of there car and got out and yelled "What the fuck are you doing following my girlfriend." After saying this I looked into the car and realized that these guys weren't in high school. They were three adult Mexican males who didn't loo k too happy with the words I had spoken. After a brief pause the man from the passenger seat got out of the car and shouted "what the fuck did you just say to me?" I froze in total shock as he pulled a gun on me and told me he was going to shoot me. I was totally numb at this point, as anyone would be. He then started yelling that I wasn't such a big man now and that I was just a punk ass white boy. The man started asking me what I thought about dieing and asking me if I wanted to die. I responded surprisingly calm and said "no sir, I don't want to die, and I’d like to live". The man must have asked me if I wanted to die a dozen or so times. The man continued to walk around ranting and raving and shouting at me. While walking around shouting he was waving his gun in my face which was making me very nervous.

War Is Terrible

Saying that ‘war is terrible’ is such a simple statement but makes us think of the emotional stress and physical pain. There is a wide variety of texts that explore the ideas about war. Various composers agree that war is a terrible thing and isn’t necessary. There are some composers however who believe that war is necessary and that people should do their duty and fight for their country. These can be shown by a range of techniques. The war poetry of Wilfred Owen, â€Å"Dulce et Decorum Est† and â€Å"Anthem for Doomed Youth†, conveys the horrors of war and of Wilfred Owens experience of war rather than the account of the experience itself.This is conveyed through the language and poetic techniques of imagery, repetition, metaphors, similes and even irony. â€Å"Tomorrow When the War Began† examines the war on a more obvious scale. â€Å"Trumpet Calls† looks at war as a noble thing and demonstrates the idea that people must support war and do their duty for their country. This is shown through colour, size, layout and framing. In the poem â€Å"Anthem for Doomed Youth†, Owen explains about death violence and sacrifice of the youth. Firstly the title itself has a significant use of assonance.Doomed youth is right; there were young men, some really young. By using the rhetorical question and simile of â€Å"What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? † strongly affects us with the image of the slaughterhouse and the idea of men being treated less human and no more important than cattle which are lead to the slaughter without feeling. It shows us the mistreatment of men being constantly killed and has no chance, just like cattle being slaughtered for meat. It solemnly shows how those who die in war do not receive the normal ceremonies that we are used to, to honour the dead.Throughout the poem Wilfred Owen uses a lot of comparisons; one of these is the simile between a typical funeral in a church a nd what would happen to a soldier killed in battle. For example he compares the church bells with the noise of the gunfire; the prayers with the rapid rifle fire; the choirs with the wailing of shells; the candles held by altar boys with the lights of the sky reflected in the dead eyes of the soldiers. After reading â€Å"Anthem for Doomed Youth† the entire perspective on how terrible the war is can be changed.The poem â€Å"Dulce Et Decorum Est†, Owen conveys that government may encourage and force you to fight for your country, but, in reality, fighting for your country is simply sentencing yourself to unnecessary death. In line 1 â€Å"bent double, like old beggars under sacks† is a simile, which compares the men to marching to beggars. Beginning with the image of men â€Å"bent double† creates the possibility that the soldiers really have become two people: the men they were before the war and the creatures they’re now. The imagery created by d escribing â€Å"the white eyes withering in his face†, is horrendous.It’s almost like their eyes live a life on their own: they have detached from the working of the body as a whole. In that same quote there is also alliteration which seeks to re-create the distortion taking place on the young man’s face. The unusual simile â€Å"devils sick of sin† shows the extreme of human cruelty and depravity. We can cause anguish and atrocities that would even sicken Satan. In Owens opinion, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Emphasizing the gruesome details of his real experience during the war demonstrates to the readers the emptiness of war. The Trumpet Calls† is a World War 1 poster which was used to convince civilians to join the war. The caption is â€Å"The Trumpet Calls† which is drawn in a bold red font designed to capture the viewers’ attention. Red symbolise the blood lost in the battle and acts as a plea for more people t o join up and replace the lives of those that were lost doing their â€Å"duty. † This is highlighted by the word â€Å"Calls†. In the frame, the main image is a soldier seen in brown colour standing above other soldiers that are fighting; some of them injured which makes this soldier stand out as he is above the other soldiers.The vector directs us as the viewers to the civilians in the background who are shown a shadowy grey colour which is used to illustrate their lack of involvement in the war. The hand of the soldier points downwards in a gesture-like way as if inviting civilians to help out the soldiers below him to fight in the war. This poster unlike the other texts is a positive view on war used to try and persuade people to participate in war, but the reality is that such posters led young men to their deaths.In the documentary, â€Å"Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam†, the director Bill Couturie illustrates to us what the Vietnam War was like. H e shows us the conditions of war and also the effect this had on the soldiers and their families. The letters that are read out basically act as a chronicle diary of physical, emotional and psychological challenges and the experiences of the soldiers. One soldier â€Å"This is all wrong† and others write things like â€Å"We are all scared†, â€Å"This was my first experience of war and it was ugly†, â€Å"It’s just a constant siege here†. These letters saying these things ighlight to us that the conditions of war are brutal, horrible and scarring and that it was an unknown entity to the soldiers as it was â€Å"Jungle Warfare† which was alien to most as no other wars were fought this way. There is also real footage of the war, news reals and facts and figures about the war and the amount of casualties, none is made up. This helps us to understand the amount of death and destruction of war and allows us to visually see how brutal the fightin g in war is. It makes the viewer feel sympathetic to those who fought and died in war and their families. It also highlights the pitiful waste of life that is lost to war.The soundtrack is made up of songs from the same era. At the start the songs seem more upbeat and happy and as the film progresses they begin to sound more sad and depressing. This is used to represent the soldier’s feelings about going to war at the start being happy and excited for a new adventure and those feelings changing as they witness the horrors of war and begin to start questioning this war. The documentary shows us the death and destruction that occurs from war. Men put their life on the line and were often killed; death was a daily occurrence as this is how war is. In the Trenches it wasn’t just people getting killed by gunfire.Disease and infection was very common in the trenches as there was little to no hygiene there. Rats and lice spread diseases. In the winter it would have been, cold , wet, muddy, snowy and generally unpleasant. Also people were emotionally scarred as their friend on the battlefield could easily be killed. Life in the conditions of war is very difficult and unpleasant. â€Å"Dulce et Decorum Est†, â€Å"Anthem for Doomed Youth†, â€Å"Tomorrow when the war began† and â€Å"Trumpet Calls†, are very good and clear examples of how terrible the war is and what the soldiers went through, conveyed by film, poetic and literally techniques.

Parental Consent Or Notification For Minors - 2346 Words

Minors and Contraception â€Å"Are you over the age of 18? Do you have a parent with you? I am sorry, but we cannot allow you to buy this without consent from your parents†. That conversation was a glimpse into the future, unless educated personnel puts a stop to it. Worldwide, minors are being threatened of having their privacy rights stripped away from them just like that. An issue has occurred where bits and pieces of the population have started to question a minor s legal capability to buy contraceptives without parental consent or notification. To create a barrier by requiring consent or notification for minors to buy contraception not only harms them and puts them at risk, but also has the possibility of having a lasting effect on their†¦show more content†¦Other contraceptive methods are available to students including a pepo provera shot, which protects against pregnancy for up to 14 weeks, and the plan-B, or morning- after pill† (Rosenberg 1). This show s that in some situations, teenagers do have access to contraception, however it comes with the price of having to acquire parental approval. That fact only speaks for one school, in one town, in one country. Minors access to contraception varies in every state and every country. Some minors draw the lucky number when they land in a state where consent is not required and others are not able to truthfully say the same. In the article, â€Å"State Policies in Brief†, readers are informed that twenty-five states allow to minors to consent in one or more circumstances, four states have no policy at all, and twenty-one states and the District of Columbia allow all minors to consent for contraceptives. The circumstances needed to obtain contraception in the twenty-five states includes being married, being a parent, being pregnant or had ever been pregnant, being a high school graduate, or being in the position of facing a health hazard if she is not provided with contraceptive se rvices. Does this effect the pregnancy rate? Without the ability to obtain contraceptives, do minors simply just not use them? In the article, â€Å"Fertility and Parental Consent for Minors to receive Contraception†, the author states, â€Å"The relative proportions of