Uncontrollable Personalities

Julie Zook

Mrs. Burnett

12 AP English

30 March 2012

Uncontrollable Personalities

            Everyone has many personalities that change from stress or excitement.  Nobody is completely good or totally bad.  Everyone is just a mix of personalities that occur from past or present events.  However, some people have no choice over how they are feeling.  They have gone through a large amount of trauma and they changed mentally.  In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll has difficulty in his choice between Jekyll and Hyde.  Jekyll originally created an experiment in order to purify his good side from the bad side.  By doing this, he essentially frees his dark side up to the point where he has no control of himself.  Jekyll can be transformed into Hyde at any time and without any notice.  When Jekyll is himself, he seems moral to society.  Jekyll is a good person but by turning into Hyde, he is able to do what he wants without the consequences.  Jekyll suffers by being known as a good person so people expect him to do the right thing by participating in charity work.  Hyde has to put up with having no control over his own actions.  Everyone has more than one human nature but most people are able to control them.  I think that this dilemma is common but not towards every man.  The people that were able to fight for our country did not all come back the same way they left.  All of the past memories from war comes back with post traumatic stress.  The soldiers are not used to coming back to their normal life where they don’t have to worry about getting hurt.  They still are afraid when there are loud noises or when it’s too dark to see anything. Also, there are many people that suffer from a mental illness.  If someone gets into an accident and has a brain injury or just has a stroke, their whole life can change in an instant.  They do not have the same personality as they did before anything bad happened to them.  Even the medications they have to take can make them act differently.  If something goes wrong in the past it can affect the future.  Children that are abused are affected later in life.  Their personality changed because of the situations that they had to live in.  So, even though everyone has different personalities, sometimes there are reasons why we do not have any control over them.  

What Freedom Means

Julie Zook

Mrs. Burnett

12 AP English

26 February 2012

What Freedom Means

            The dictionary defines freedom as “The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.”  However, this definition doesn’t define everyone’s use of the word.  Freedom has various definitions depending on where a person is from.  The people that already have their freedom take it for granted or demand more while others are still fighting in order to receive it.  Virginia Woolf describes freedom in A Room of One’s Own simply as having the “freedom to think of things in themselves.”  It is acquired by voicing your own opinions about certain ideas.  In the past, women that shared their ideas through writing did not have their own freedoms.  Women were abused since they were writing instead of doing what they were supposed to be doing.  Now, people are still limited in their amounts of freedom.  The United States fought many wars in order to become a free country.  The success of winning those wars let Americans have the freedoms that other countries are lacking.  Americans can do what they want with their lives and marry who they want.  We don’t have to do something just because someone tells us to do it.  Other countries have to wear a certain type of clothes and have arranged marriages.  They have to go into the military without any choice in the matter.  The characters in A Thousand Splendid Suns were limited in their own choices.  Miriam had to marry Rasheed even though she never wanted to.  The Taliban created strict rules that limited the freedoms that women have.  Their life became so much harder since men controlled them and they were unable to escape without a man.  The characters were not allowed to participate in many activities for entertainment.  In the real world, Hitler took away freedoms from the Jews and made them go through concentration camps where they worked themselves to death.  We should be very thankful to live in America with all of our freedoms.    

           

The Reality of Relationships

Julie Zook

Mrs. Burnett

12 AP English

26 January 2012

The Reality of Relationships

            One of the Socratic Seminar questions for A Thousand Splendid Suns is about the relationships between the characters.  Question ten shows the differences between being protective and being possessive.  Being protective helps make a good relationship because it means that the couple cares about each other and would do anything in order to help out and defend that person.  However, if a person is too protective then they eventually become possessive.  The relationship goes wrong if a partner is putting many limitations on the other person just because they are afraid they might meet someone else.  In the novel, Rasheed is very protective over women.  Before his marriage begins, he courts girls and acts nice but it is just for show.  When they are wed, he sets new rules on the girls that take away their freedoms.  The women have to do chores around the house and have to wear a burqa whether they like it or not.  Rasheed makes the women hide in that clothing so other men are not able to see them.  He does not allow his wives to go out unless he is with them.  On the other hand, Tariq protects Laila as much as he can.  He fought a bully for her so she would never be bothered by him again.  When the war became extremely bad, Tarqi wanted to buy a gun in order to protect her from harm.  In the real world, relationships can be just like the ones the characters are going through.  Some guys protect by serving in the military and fighting for a bully.  Also, they hold a girl’s hand if there is ice on the ground so she won’t fall.  Other guys make up their own rules in order to limit the number of people a girl sees.  They are so anxious about someone cheating on them that they will try to stop that problem by being possessive about it.  The girl would not be allowed to talk to other guys and the guy would go through text messages to make sure that nothing is happening between anyone else.  I think that people would be able to have strong relationships if they are somewhere in between being protective and possessed.  The partner needs to know that there is someone that is going to protect her and help her out if there is any trouble.  However, some people do cheat on others in many different ways but the partner usually finds out about it.  If they can’t trust each other then the relationship is over.