Gummi Bears

Author's Note: This is random poem for my Language Arts class. Hope you think it's delicious! 
Gummi Bears
Gummi Bears
squishy
chewy
green
red
yellow
blue
so fruity
and gooey
a kid's
favorite
candy
oh so
dandy
are
Gummi Bears
Gummi Bears 
 

Mother to Son

Author's Note: This piece describes the meaning to the poem "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes. It is for Word Choice and Context on the Reading Rubric and so if you have any corrections please leave a comment.

            

          Reaching your goals in life takes tenacity and perseverance. The hardest thing to do in life is to tell your child that life is not as easy as it seems. “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, wrote this story to show that we have to work hard to get through life.  One metaphor that stands out in the poem is “Life for me ain’t no crystal stair” expresses that you won’t be rich enough to have a mansion with a crystal staircase if you don’t work hard in life. Another common saying that is expressed the same way is “Life won’t be handed to you on a silver platter.”  

          Another metaphor that makes this poem more understandable is “It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor --Bare.”  This Mother is trying to say that life can be harder than you make it out to be, and can put you down at any point in your life. You can be torn up like boards and get splinters which means life will always be rough no matter the situation. There are going to be days where you have made mistakes, but you have to move past it because life is only so long.

          Langston Hughes grew up with an absent father so his mother was to take care of him and teach him the important rules of life. The mother says this poem to her son with a demanding but intuitive tone to make him listen and think about decisions he could make in his future and that it is not that easy. Many of the stanzas in this poem translate to how life is really going to be like. It transmits to “Life ain’t no crystal stair” because you’re going to have to walk non-carpeted floors some point in life before you can ever walk on a crystal stair.

Recognizing Susie

          Author's Note: This piece is a character description of Susie from the book Lovely Bones . It is using different types of figurative  language. Can you spot them out?        

          Characters come in all different shapes and sizes. Susie, which is the main character of Lovely Bones is not one of those characters that pops out to you until the first fifty pages or so. She is just a regular, everyday teenager that doesn't use her head in the right situations. For Susie it's that she doesn't recognize that when a creepy neighbor brings you into a small underground room, nothing good is going to come out of it.

           Through her different situations in heaven, Susie becomes aware that her killer may never be found, like when a dog buried his bone and is never going to find it again.  Ruth who had Susie slowly passing through her body to heaven. Ruth who saw her ghost. And Ruth who will unbury who the murderer is sooner or later.  Susie knows that Ruth is so much closer than the police to finding who the killer is, it will just take more time than she wants for her family.

 

Symbolism that can Speak

Author's Note: This piece is an essay based on the symbolism on the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. The symbolism shows the different sides of Melinda and what the symbolism helps to form Melinda and the whole book. 
             To be able to face your biggest fears takes courage and being able to talk to someone you trust about it. When you cover up you fears with silence and ignorance nothing good can ever come out of it. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson uses symbolism to show the two extremely different sides of Melinda. 

“Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” this saying from the 1937 movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the one saying in the movie that tests the stature of a person. Melinda always tries to push herself to go forward, but after what happened at the party during the summer, everything and everyone gets in the way. On page 17 in Speak Melinda came home from school looked in the mirror and asked herself the same question, but she denied and put her mirror in the closet so she would never have to see herself again. Nothing anyone could say to Melinda would change her mind on the way she viewed herself and therefore the mirror couldn’t either.

Although mirrors were the last thing Melinda wanted to see, closets helped her keep the outside world out, including mirrors. Closets are the only place she feels safe from what happened and so it would not happen again. Some place where no one could point at her, laugh at her, or have her parents tell her “You can do better than this,” or “Stop ignoring us Melinda, it’s not cute.” Melinda wants her freedom and that’s the only place she can get.

It’s where she found freedom and alone time that would really surprise you. During the first couple of weeks of school, she found an old abandoned janitor’s closet that smelled like feet and puke that took place on page 25 of Speak. Fixing it up took time and effort, but was worth it; the closet became her closet away from her home closet. The closet was somewhere where no one could touch or talk to Melinda and she could have time to think to herself or just sleep. It’s not like she got much sleep at home with her parents arguing all the time. When Melinda needed somewhere to cry, that was her home closet; another place no one could see her and wonder or be concerned about her. She only wanted to be alone in silence.

    There is one piece in Speak that is covered up more than the closets or mirrors: the living room couch cushions. In Melinda’s house sits what looks to be a perfectly neat white couch, just like Melinda looks like just a nervous looking teenager.  There are two sides to the couch and two sides of Melinda. This takes place on page 15. When Melinda is at home alone eating on the couch, the cushions are flipped to the dirty side where she eats and where she is herself. Once her parents arrive home she flips the cushions over, and wa-la no more stains and a fake, shy, and nervous Melinda comes out.

Both at school and at home Melinda hides from what used to be her normal self before the horrific life of high school. On her first day of high school Melinda was introduced the very emotional artistic art teacher, Mr. Freeman. That day he gave out Melinda’s entire assignment for the year: trees. The trees represented the all the struggles and fears of her life until she reached the point where she could be free again. Something she has been wanting for a long time after the appalling thing that happened at the summer party.

The two tremendously different sides of Melinda hide in closets and don’t look in mirrors, but growing through her tragic incident was like a growing tree. When you are going through something difficult it isn’t the time to hide, but to talk to someone you trust, even if it is a teacher. “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” - John F. Kennedy.