A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

“Where are you going, Where have you been?” is about a pretty, 15 year old girl named Connie, who was completely superficial and thought that looks were all that was important.  She is overly obsessed with her appearance.  When it comes to boys, she goes against her conscience and makes an irrational decision.  She left her friends behind and took a chance in going for a ride with the boy she found attractive. However, she ends up in a terrifying situation after finding out the boy she liked was actually a thirty-year-old man. The story is Joyce Carol Oates’ way of teaching a lesson to her young readers.  I thought the moral of the story is to show people that they need to be safe, aware of their surroundings, and use good judgment.  She is hoping that her readers will learn from the story and make a better decision than Connie made by reading about her traumatic life event.

“The Lesson”

My Unforgettable Experience

say-yes.doc

My Mother’s Advice

Today the lottery is a positive event, which people strive to win. But on the sunny morning of June 27^th, a different kind of lottery took place. This exotic lottery is a ritual, which still occurs in this town consisting of three hundred people. The way this lottery works is that each family in the town puts a slip of paper with their last name, in the box, and then one of the slips is selected. Then each member of the selected family draws a slip of paper, which are all blank except for one, which has a charcoal spot on it. The person unlucky enough to draw the paper with the charcoal marking, is killed in a horrible fashion; they are stoned to death. So in this particular lottery, the Hutchinson family (2 parents; 3 kids) was picked and immediately Mrs. Hutchinson claimed “You didn’t give him time enough to choose. Everybody saw that,” (370 Jackson). This comment is the first large sign letting the reader know something is up because she knows it is coming, as she states it is not fair. In this situation it the reasoning for the killing could be to thin the population or it could possibly just be an existing ritual which has become a reoccurring tradition. Ironically, Tessie Hutchinson ended up being killed by her best friend on this beautiful yet torturous day.

Othello Passage (Reputation!)

What destroys and makes relationships???

Non-Physical Characteristics