Adventures at Post Oak High

Since in Persepolis Marjane is in Austria, she has to adapt to a new and unfamiliar culture. This includes her peers engaging in casual sex, smoking marijuana and cigarettes and shooting heroin, and generally disrespecting rules of religion and tradition that are so fundamental in Iran. She initially has a hard time adapting, because she learns that being able to simply speak the language is not enough to fully immerse herself. But even beyond this, she also is struggling with issues that teenagers have to deal with on a regular basis in almost all parts of the world, such as not feeling loved, connecting with her teachers, and listening to parents and figures of authority. All of these things make it the largest struggle in her life thus far, even more than having to deal with routine airstrikes and war erupting al around her. However, the experience will likely turn out to improve her life. The experience of clashing with another culture and immersing yourself within it, while scar...

In Persepolis , I believe that the author is actually discussing her own personal relationships with God in a very meaningful in honest way; she doesn't show that she has the perfect relationship with Him. In reality, she is frustrated by His inability to simply explain things; I think as a child, we all want the answers. Her not getting the answers, whether it's about new developing feelings for boys, for example, or the nature of religion and His role in society in an Islamic takeover is a really frustrating for her. So frustrating, that she yells and screams at him. To her, he is not an all-powerful, all-knowing benevolent being; he is simply another person that she doesn't get. And I really like this aspect to Marjane's character, because as a child, I think God is one of the most frightening things to us. And her describing their relationship this personally really gives more insight into her character.

For starters, this book is certainly for a particular kind of people. Those kind of people who enjoy science in all of its many different forms, and who are eager to learn new equations and various things about particles and such. It is meant to be as accessable as possible for someone who knows next to nothing about quantum theory, and even physics in general. And in that respect, Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw do as good of a job as they possibly could in terms of explanation. However, because quantum theory deals with the concepts of everything possible happening and things being in multiple places at once and how there are particles that have no size and all of that stuff. Ultimately, everything that they are saying has not been conclusively "verified" yet. The point is, if you're someone who takes a perverse thrill in understanding extremely complex equations and concepts, read this. Everyone else, stay away.

Well, here we are. Out of all the reads of the year, my favorite by far is the Great Gatsby. Simply put, it is the greatest work of fiction that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The tragic tale of a man simply wanting to impress a girl is absolutely timeless, and hits home for a lot of people, making it extremely meaningful. However, on the flip-side, I could never really get into The Merchant of Venice. It may be a meaningful commentary on the time it was published, but it was simply just too boring for my tastes. There are certainly better Shakespeare reads out there. Anyway, I think this was a year filled with great reads. Here's to sophomore year!

A common appraisal of The Great Gatsby is that it is "the greatest American novel ever written". Does this book really deserve that distinction? The short answer, as I always say, is yes. This book is the Great American Novel not necessarily because of how well it is written, or the characters (after all, every character is pretty unlikeable). It is the Great American Novel due to the fact that the book itself represents America, and the flaws that plague its delusional image of grandeur. The very story of Gatsby is something that so many Americans are familiar with, and so I feel that in many ways it is an utterly timeless story that is poignant and relatable. It's great because of its message, not the technical details of the novel.

Since The Great Gatsby is such a complicated novel, even though it is quite short, it is a little challenging to pinpoint one exact theme for the book. But out of all that we chose, "Death of the American Dream" is the most prominent. Firstly, and most prominently, are the last two paragraphs of the entire book. They read: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.  Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- to−morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . and one fine morning... So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Since these are the closing paragraphs of the e...

After finishing The Great Gatsby, I can safely say it is one of the greatest novels I have ever read, likely the greatest. Part of what makes it great is it's complicated conflict. You really can't pinpoint exactly one central conflict for the novel. Here we have a man struggling with himself, constantly asking the question "is this really who I am?" Sure, he has riches and parties, but inside he is a lonely person, searching for freedom in Daisy. However, a byproduct of living in West Egg is complicated interpersonal relationships, as seen when Gatsby is blamed for the hit-and-run killing of a young woman named Wilson (the "death car", as the newspapers called it, didn't stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then disappeared around the next bend.") and subsequently killed for it (even though it was actually Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby's unattainable goal, who was driving the vehicle. So here, we have man...