My Theme

           I can't really think of many ways in which To Kill a Mockingbird relates to me other than the loss of innocence. I've always had a sort of sheltered life, and it wasn't until around 7th grade that that changed. When Scout was losing her innocence and learning about the world, she was very young. I think that this is because she was surrounded by older, and more knowledgeable people; most of which were keen on telling her the truth about her curiosities. There was also a big part in her life that happened when she was very young; the Tom Robinson case. 

         Up until middle school, when I was about 11, I was around kids younger than me and therefore didn't experience the "real world". When I went into 6th grade,  I was very surprised at the level of maturity of all of the people around me, and the amount of swearing that I heard each day. Though my experience was very different than Scout's, it was at this point that I started to lose my innocents. When I was reading To Kill a Mockingbird, I kinda thought of my middle school experience as like the Tom Robinson case, and the time leading up to it for Scout. When I was in middle school, I lost my innocence, but even as I did, I pretended not to, I pretended that I still didn't know what was going on, because I knew that the artificial world that I had been living in, was better than the real world and all the gross and immature things being said around and to me. When Scout lost her innocence, she took it head on and was anxious to learn more about what was going on around her. I think that the difference between Scout's and my experiences comes from difference of age.

        I also had an experience kind of like Jem's experience when he found out that not all people are nice. It was after an informative day at school in which I had heard about some 7th graders who had been smoking, and it made me think about how many people are out there that I don't even know about, people that are doing awful things, and no one is even trying to stop, or help. It Just made me think about how everything we do is a decision we make that involves other people and that the things that we say and do affect a lot of them.

         From reading about Scout and Jem, and this whole book in general, I've learned to take what I've come to know from my experience, trust it and use it to help me make good choices in the future.

My Boo Raldley

         When I was two years old, my brother Jack was born, and from that time forward, until the year I turned ten, I shared a room with my sister Caroline. My sister is three and a half years older than me, and when I was young I was very attached to her, in fact, I practically worshiped her. It might have been that I spent so much time with Caroline, or that my parents spent so much time with Jack, but in that period, I developed a strange fear of being left alone.
       When I finally started kindergarten, I surrounded myself with many friends so that even if one them was gone, I would still have others to play with, and talk to. I have always been a social person, and I was afraid of being solitary. Another thing I was scared of was the dark, and I never quite knew why, because it wasn't that I thought monsters would come out, but now that I look back, I know it was because the dark is so silent, it gives you time to think without distraction, lets your mind wander, and you are alone when you're in the dark- all that's there is you. When my sister was in that room with me each night, I had someone to talk to, someone to be a distraction from the ominous silence that lurked all around me.
       As I grew older, so did my sister, and she increasingly wanted to have sleep-overs with friends at their houses or somewhere else in our house. When this happened, I would have my brother Jack sleep in her bed, but not before a deafening fit on my part, which in turn lead to most of Caroline's friends generally disliking me. Above all else, I was absolutely terrified of being home alone, especially at night, and I still am a little. If ever there was a time that my parents would have to go out and my siblings had to be elsewhere, I would arrange for myself to be somewhere else too.
       As I grew older still, and I would get angry for whatever reason, I found that the best way to cool off was to be alone and have some quiet time to myself to think about how to best fix the situation. Around when I turned ten, my sister decided that it was time, now that we were older, that we had separate rooms, so she moved down into the basement, and still sleeps there to this day.
      Now that I'm older, and through the process of getting more mature, I have learned that being alone and being quiet is a very helpful thing. Sometimes all we need is just to be with ourselves for a while to figure things out. 
      And with all of this, and me saying that being alone is my "Boo Radley" Scout's experience is still quite different from mine in a way, and the same in some ways too. I learned something about the world by being alone and Scout learned something about the world through many people, most of all, Boo Radley. There are many ways to learn things, and sometimes it's not what you learn but how you learn it that matters.

Introduction

                 As an English student, I love to read. I don't like writing as much as I like to read, but I hope to like writing more at the end of this year. I don't really know what kind of English student I am, just that I like to be challenged, and to get things in on time.
                If you are going to follow my blog, you might find that my posts are kinda random but still on topic, that i enjoy saying what i think, and expressing my opinion. I plan to enlighten the on-line world with my very opinionated views on the literature that we are studying by hopefully having new and original ideas to post on this blog.
               I think that the meaning of English class is to go deeper into the world of literature. Also I think it is about learning how to communicate with yourself and others. About learning how to say something through literature.
              English is four-year requirement for collage. I think this is because English class not only teaches you how to read and write better, but also how to communicate with other people, other students, and teachers.
              The reason I took honors English is because I think it will help me in other classes as well as challenging me and pushing me to work harder in my freshman year. There are a lot of advantages of taking an advanced English class. I believe you have to take chances in life, and this is one chance I'm very happy I took.