Maslow's Hierarchy for "The Night Trilogy"

    In "The Night Trilogy" Maslow’s hierarchy is shown throughout the book. For example when the Jews where verbally assaulted they lost their self-esteem. They were brought out into the streets and humiliated in front of their friends and family. There was nothing they could do about it either. When they lost that, they couldn’t go on to self-actualization without regaining their self-esteem.  Then when the Jews were taken from their homes and put into ghettos they also had their safety taken from them. They had to fight to get food and keep their families safe from people who started to rob other families, families that they knew for years. Since that was taken away from them, they focused more on getting themselves to safety rather than working and trying to build up their self-esteem and self-actualization, along with belonging. No one was there to give them love and affection. They were left on their own. After some time, the Nazi soldiers took away the Jews’ physiological part in the pyramid. With this gone the Jews lacked good health, filing food, and proper sleep. Now that these things were gone they had nothing to work on, everything was taken from them. Before they could even feel better about themselves, they needed to regain their physiology and safety, which would take a lot of effort to rebuild after it was all taken away.  

    A real world example would be when you have children who get severely abused. They often lack the trait in Maslow’s hierarchy. When there are verbally hurt they lost their Esteem and self-actualization. Since their parents were abusing them I doubt they felt like they belonged in the house they were in. Then with all the physical abuse the child didn’t feel safe either. Lastly, the parent(s) could’ve starved their child, so then the physiological aspect was taken away also.  

Big Question for All The Pretty Horses

    My big question for, "All The Pretty Horses" is, should you be blamed for a friends mistake? In the book, two men Rawlins and Grady, are accompanied by a stranger they meet on their way to Mexico, Blevins. On the way to find work Blevins looses his horse and later finds it in a small town. The three men plan to take the horse back at night fall. They successfully get the horse but Blevins is separated from the other two men. Months go by and Rawlins and Grady are taken in the middle of the night and put in jail. Later they meet up with Blevins in a cell. As it turns out Blevins killed a guy and the police also thought he stole the horse. Blevins ends up getting shot and the other two are thrown in jail. While they're there the two men are forced to fight and try to survive. Grady is forced to kill a man who was sent to kill him.
    All these things boil back down to Blevins killing that man. That was his mistake, not John Grady's and Rawlins. They weren't part of the crime that Blevins committed. John Grady will never forget all the things that happened to him in those months and will be reminded of it everyday when he looks in the mirror. 

Allegory Sneetches

    The Sneetches it starts with the stared bellied sneetches think they are better than everyone else just because they have the stars on their bellies. The sneetches without stars on their bellies feel left out and sad because the other sneetches won't include them in their activities. One day a man comes to the beach and tells the sneetches he can put a star on their belly but it will cost them money. So they all got the stars but when they did that, the other sneetches wanted theirs removed and it cost them more money then it did when they got them added. They went back and forth getting them added and removed until the man left and took their money. Then they realized that it didn't matter it they had stars or not. This relates to actual life because it tells how people will do anything to fit in, no matter the cost. The moral lesson is that it doesn't matter what you look like or how you dress, all that matters is that you like a person for who they are, not what they have. 

Big Question- "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

    My big question for "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is how can one decision affect the outcome of your life? In started out with an artists and a well known man, the artist, Basil, wanted to paint the young man, Dorian. Basil painted many art works of Dorian. Henry, a friend of Basil, wanted to meet Dorian. At first the artist didn’t want them to meet. He wanted Dorian to himself. Finally he gave in and let them meet. On their first meeting Dorian was wary of Henry because he made him think about life in a way he never thought, like how he wanted to be young forever and look the same.  From then on Dorian was around Henry more and Basil less. Henry convinced Dorian to go to see a play where he met an actress. He fell in love with her because of her acting. However when he brought his friends, she acted horribly. Afterwards Dorian said she never wanted to see her again. Because of this she killed herself. Dorian felt somewhat responsible at first until he talked about it with Henry.

    Later, he went to see his painting and had realized that it changed. Its expression changed. It seemed older. He came to conclude that the picture would change over time and not him, ever since he prayed to be young forever. From then on Dorian was liked less and less. People were cautious around him because of him unchanged appearance over time and behaviors. The painting grew older and older, locked away in a private room to which he was the only one with a key. Only one other person saw it, Basil. Unfortunately, Dorian killed him. For some reason he grew angry with Basil and attacked him.

    Basil would’ve still lived if Dorian had made different choices and felt more compassionate about people. He shouldn’t have listened to Henry or possible even met him. Things would have been completely different for him and everyone else. 

The "I's" of Romantic Literature in "The Rime of the Mariner"

    Some of the characteristics of romanticism evident in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" are Intuition. This was shown when the Mariner shot the albatross. The bird was coming around every day. It wasn't harming anyone, just coming around for food. One day he was bored and he shot the bird, he didn't think about it. Imagination, the poem describes parts with vivid details. Like when the sun came up and went down. Also when they were stuck in the cold and snow. Next, idealism, is displayed by the mariner decisions. Everything he did on the boat effected the lives of everyone around him, including himself. An example is when the bird was shot. Everyone hated him, then they didn't, then they did again. Another example of when there like was affected by the Mariner's decisions was when Death and Life and Death gambled for their lives. The Mariner's choice effected what was going on around him. From now on, to him, the world will be different.
   

The Language of Flowers

    The theme for my book, The Language of Flowers, would be that no matter how hard life gets; it can get better. Some of the hard things that happened to Victoria was that when she was 18 she was kicked out of her Gathering House and become homeless. She ended up sleeping in a park for a few weeks. She would walk around for hours all around San Francisco. When she's walking around one day she ends up finding a job; which gave her money to buy food. This is when everything started getting better for her. She was so good at her job, being a florist, that the business exceeded normal customers. Victoria was then hired full time and had enough money to get off the streets and pay for half the rent in an apartment with a roommate. At Victoria's job she had to go to the flower market. Each day she went she saw Grant, a guy who also knew the language of flowers. After a while of being together Victoria had a baby and left Grant. She thought she couldn't be a good mother to her child because of everything that happened to her when she was younger. So when the baby came she went to grants house and dropped the baby off when he wasn't there. She thought they would both be better off without her. But in the end, she ended up going back to Grant and her daughter, hazel.

    After Victoria went through all the curve balls life through at her and even though she thought she could never be happy after the things that happened to her and everything she did; Victoria finally found a family that she loved and wanted to be with forever.  

The Language of Flowers

     In this book, The Language of Flowers, Victoria was given up to foster care just weeks after she was born. She's been to over thirty-two homes and she doesn't seem to take interest in anything. Victoria has one more change before she gets put into a group home and adoption is out of the question. She's 9 when she comes to live with Elizabeth. Elizabeth live on a grape vineyard in the country. Victoria doesn't like her new home so she does things to make her new possible mother give her back. She acts out at school, hits the bus driver and gets suspended, puts a cactus in Elizabeth's shoe, and ruins bushels of her wine grapes but nothing is working. Elizabeth is determined to keep her. It takes five months for Victoria to finally like Elizabeth. Victoria is then taken out of school and is now home schooled. Her and Elizabeth come up with a daily schedule. Victoria and Elizabeth start to learn everything here is about flowers and their meanings, the language of the flowers. So one day Elizabeth takes Victoria to San Francisco to buy a dress for her tenth birthday and for her court date which is in a couple days. The court requires Elizabeth to keep Victoria a year before the adoption is final. A week or so later Victoria gets up puts her dress on and waits in the kitchen for Elizabeth. When she doesn't come out Victoria goes to her room to get her But Elizabeth doesn't want to get. She says she couldn't be her mother and that it wouldn't be a good family. A few hours later Meredith, Victoria's social worker comes to the house. She's about to take Victoria but Elizabeth decides to keep her. She gets another court date in six months, one that she can't miss.
     Next in the book, it jumps to when she's eighteen. Victoria can't find a place to stay or work and she becomes homeless.

                  This as far as I got in the book.

SSR Book

My book is A Great & Terrible Beauty. The book takes place in 1895 in India. Gemma is out in the market with her mother and servant. Gemma is trying to convince her mother to let her go to London with her grandma. But her mom won't let her go. A man comes up to her mother and whispers something in her ear. After hearing what he has to say she tells Gemma to go home and not come with her to Mrs. Talbot's for tea. Gemma gets mad because she feels like her and her mother are getting further and further apart. So Gemma gets mad at her mom and said she doesn't want her to come back come and she doesn't care if she ever comes back; then Gemma runs away. She gets lost in the streets and asks for directions but after the man sees who she is and the necklace she's wearing, he slams the door in her face. A boy she saw at the market sees her and comes toward her and all of the sudden she gets scared. She starts to have a tingling sensation in her arms and works its way through her body and she falls on the ground. She's pulled into what she thinks is a dream, which is actually a vision. In this vision she sees a man following her mother. The man brings out a knife but something in the dark shadows devours him. Gemma's mother then picks up the knife and stabs herself. Gemma is then brought back to consciousness. The boy that was with her asked if she seen his brother. She doesn't know what he's talking about and runs to get away from him. While she's running she runs by the shop that was in her vision. People are all gather around and when Gemma makes her way through she sees it's her mother laying there, dead.

    A couple questions I have about this book so far is: Who was that old man that came up to Gemma's mother? Was he a friend? Also, why did the old man turn Gemma away when he saw her? Did it have to do with her family? Why did the boy ask Gemma if she saw his brother? Was the man following Gemma's mother trying to get to her or the thing in the shadows? Lastly, why did Gemma's mother kill herself and her last word was her daughters' name?