Another Honors history BLOG

December 8, 1941

To my dearest mother Ethel,

I know you have heard about the bombing of pearl harbor which took place yesterday, I want to let you know I'm okay. Things have changed and some people have opened up and started to talk to me. It's hard being black in this war, all I can do is wash dishes, cook and clean. This isn't what I wanted to do with my life I wanted to make you happy mom and become the man I should be. I hear rumors when the soldiers are in the dining hall eating, I heard this thing about teaching the soldiers a new code something called the navajo code; so that other countries wouldn't understand what is going on and it would help save a lot of soldiers and will make it easier to invade. Even though it will take time I am pretty sure it will work. So how is everything with the kids and the house? I know I don't get paid very much but I will be able to help you later mama. Since the western and eastern front are developing and starting to come into place, some black men are being able to go out and help. I wish I could help and prove to them whit folk that I ain't a dumb man.

This navajo code will go through and hopefully help America because Lord knows we need it more than ever now, everything is so crazy because everybody is spending most of their times training on this code and getting ready to go out and fight that people are barely eating. I remember hearing this white boy named Tommy that if we don't take Hitler down then America is gonna be looking at a big change. Hitler is powerful, strong and smart; not to mention the most racist guy against everybody that don't look like him. It's crazy momma, just imagine if Hitler comes to America and tries to take over. I hear this navajo code translates its words into English and there are certain words that they telephone to one another . Like if I tried to say airplane it would be translated to Wo-tah-de-ne-ih. Or if I wanted to say submarine it would be Beeh-lo.

Well gotta cut this letter short, so by mom I love you and stay safe.

Love your son, Michael

Honors Blog #2

In a well developed, thoughtful piece of writing that uses direct quotes, explain the use of symbols to develop a theme in your novel


In the book I'm reading Native Son written by Richard Wright, I was given this book by my advisor who believed this would be a great book for me to read. It is about a young black boy named Bigger who in growing up in poverty having to see his mother struggle and siblings walk around with their heads hung low, but like every other teenage boy Bigger wants to do what he wants to do and not want to hear what he mother has to say about every little thing he does. Bigger has a few friends who see his town in a different way, Bigger sees white. White walls, white cars but most of all white faces. He looks at them all the same, they are no different from each other they are selfish and racist.

Bigger's mother mentions a job that he should take, he would be a chauffeur for the Dalton family; a white family. And to Bigger that is what he doesn't want. But he goes to check out the job anyway, Mr. Dalton interviews Bigger and sees he is the one to hire. He meets Mrs. Dalton and sees that she in blind, he can tell the way she touches the white walls to find her way and stumble a few times. He starts his first day off by having to take Mary Dalton (the daughter) to a university for a program but instead Mary mentions she won't be going to the university and will be going to see a friend of hers. Bigger catches on pretty fast and understands what Mary meant, after bringing Mary home from a night out he helps her up the stairs to her room because she cannot make it herself because of the rum they drank earlier that night.

After a few kisses between Bigger and Mary, Mrs. Dalton enters the room although she is blind Bigger is afraid of Mary saying something about him. So he covers her face with a pillow after a while he realizes that he was suffocating Mary and she had died. He picked up her body to discard it in the furness, her her can't fit in the furness so he cuts it off and burns everything he can but takes her purse. That was just the end of his first day.

The symbol I chose to talk about is Mrs. Dalton's blindness. Bigger notices Mrs. Dalton's blindness because how she touches the white walls trying to find her way around the house, after murdering Mary Dalton, Bigger starts to realize other blind people in his life who do things to get reality out there head for a while. Bigger notices his mother and family being blind to the world of white people are superior and that's just the way it is, he wants to do something and not graze by it. In book two part one he starts to think about Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy and how they came and helped their people and how he wished someone could come and "end fear and shame." He says it as if Hitler and Mussolini were people who helped when all they did was destroy. He also mentions his girlfriend Bessie and how she is blind and she drinks alcohol to cover up her worries.

But I start to think of how Bigger is blind as well. Because when he talks about Hitler and Mussolini he seems as if he doesn't know what he really is talking about. Hitler and Mussolini were people who came along and made a problem everyone else's problem and that's why he is I guess seen as a hero in Bigger's eyes. This symbol is very important because when looking around there are people who are blind in our lives, we are even blind at some point. For example it seems like the government can be blind when it comes to people's need and how they make it seem as nothing is wrong and there is no problem but there is. Like how today is the 150th anniversary of the civil war and how in every document we looked at in class, they failed to use the word slave or money. When most likely those probably were significant reasons which caused the civil war.

How many people do you see that are "blind" which don't realize what is actually going on?

Are you blind?