Love?

Christopher’s definition of love is helping someone when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth. I think my definition of is caring someone without any greediness or special purposes. People experience love by feeling being protected and cared by other people. I believe that Christopher can only understand his parents love as a fact. When his parents said they love him, it was probably hard for Christopher to really experience it. I think the only part in the novel was sharing his secrets with Mrs. Alexander. It felt like they were attached to each other because they were willing to trust each other with their private things. I experienced love when I feel being protected by my parents or when I felt unique being my parents’ child. I can also feel love from my friends, especially when my friends were willing to help me and sacrifice their time or property. When I talk about love, I mean that I’m not only being cared by others, but I’m also treated different or with respect, making me special or significant. I feel a lot of love coming from my parents since they have been trying to make me special and significant to them.

A World With No People

Christopher often fantasizes about being the only person left in the world because he wanted to be that special person. He wanted to be the one who can do whatever he wants everywhere at any time. I have often dreamed about myself who is somewhat similar to what Christopher was thinking when I was young. I always wanted to be that only person driving down the street with my Mustang and loud pop music alone, going into a store and buy whatever I want without paying any money at all. If I were alone in the world, I would go around to some places and do things that I pleased. I can also imagine myself getting bored really fast after just a few hours of “loneliness” in the world. I wouldn’t really know what to do if I were the only person in the world. I wouldn’t really know what to do if I were the only person in the world. I preferred to have maybe just one or two friends that would be with me in the world alone. Christopher probably doesn’t even want friends to be with him. Instead, he just wanted to be alone and do things in his own way.

Each Other's Business

Eboo Patel made a point on about the Norman Rockwell painting that freedom of worship should exist. He used a Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem to support his idea that everyone has different religious background and no one should ever interfere other’s religious practice or culture. When his Jewish friend was in trouble, he found out that he couldn’t interfere with the problems and sufferings his friend was suffering. He knew that all he could do is to prevent the same problem from happening others. After I took a little research on the Norman Rockwell’s painting, it’s kind of hard for me to imagine these pictures in my mind because I don’t really believe in any certain religion. But after I put together the description Eboo Patel made and the picture, I could easily felt and understand how people who believed in religion felt about that painting. I find the quote that Gwendolyn Brooks had is sometimes true, but not all the time. We help our friends, families, and others, but when it really comes down to individual performance, it’s when others can not help you. You have to work hard on your own and no one would really care if you didn’t do a good job on it.

Self Definition

I don’t really think I can define myself in one word. I find it hard to express myself since the people surrounding me are similar to me. They have the same race, and background than I have. I think it’s easier for people to define themselves when they find themselves different from others. I think it is good to define yourself narrowly because it helps you identify your own “self” and uniqueness. I would define myself as a hard working, but not a smart person. Inside the story, the narrator described herself as “Muslim”. It showed her difference in cultural backgrounds form others. If the narrator was living in Islam, she would probably not use “Muslim” to describe herself because she’s not special from others. Defining one person with one word is simply just saying out the person’s own identity that others don’t have. I am living in Taiwan where most of the people are Chinese, so I wouldn’t really use the word “Chinese” to be my identity. On the other hand, if I’m living in another place other than Taiwan or China and I am the only Chinese person, maybe the word “Chinese” would be the word that defines me, just like the narrator in the story.

Author's Attitude

In the article “Islam in America”, the author assumed the readers not to know a lot of about the religious practices of Muslims. The author tries to emphasis the point how religious background can segregate people from others. she gives some descriptions on the appearance and religious background to the readers in order to let the readers have a mental image of how different these people are. The author mostly focused on readers who wanted to understand more about Muslim people living in America. She is making an assumption that people who reader her stories do know that Muslims have different cultural backgrounds than the White people. She is trying to make a comparison between people with absolutely different cultures and make a cultural fusion by telling the readers how the characters can adapt the new environment. The author gave out statistics and told the readers the misconceptions that all people had on Islamic people. She was explaining how people feel towards Muslims. The author assumed all the readers to think negatively about Muslims and she was trying to erase all the bad impressions that were made on the Muslim people and refresh it by saying how similar they were with the White people.

Living Together

I think that cultural differences can enrich a community. Cultural differences can include different religious backgrounds. They tried to come together peacefully even though sometimes conflicts may occur. There are several diverse backgrounds that build up our school. We never have any segregation between people from different backgrounds even though the teacher may sometimes joke around people from different parts of the world. When we work together, we are very careful of being offensive to people’s religious views, which may lead to discriminations. When people from different backgrounds live or social together, it would be easy for them to understand and experience another person’s religious practice. Some teachers and students would take other people’s ethnicity or race as a joke, but they wouldn’t really personally be offensive or harm that person. We would be curious whenever there’s a new student who has a different background from us, even when the student is from the United States. Even though it is an American school, there are still a lot of students in the school who don’t know how it feels likes to live in the United States. We don’t segregate people in our community, but we ask questions and understand more about it instead.

Another Point of View

If the story is from the son’s point of view, the story may be even more unclear than the original story. He wouldn’t know where the White Dog was. He would think the White Dog is just gone and would be back later. While he was packing up the night before leaving, he put everything that he likes into the bag. He didn’t exactly know where he was going to the camp. If he knew that he was going to the camp, he probably wouldn’t bring things like his baseball gloves. Readers will have a hard time trying to understand the background of the story if it wasn’t told from Mrs. Hayashi’s point of view. The son doesn’t really know what happened to his father, Junior. He only knows that he was gone, but didn’t know why. If the story was told from the son’s perspective, readers would only know that his father no longer lives with them, but they won’t know that it’s because Junior was a Japanese American and was sent to camps because of wars. We also wouldn’t know what Mrs. Hayashi’s thinking inside her mind if the son was the narrator. There are a lot of important details that gave us an idea on how the Japanese Americans were treated from Mrs. Hayashi and readers wouldn’t be able to know about it if she wasn’t the narrator.

Write a Letter

Dear Mrs. Hayashi

How’s the camp? We missed you so much. The cat is still in our house living happily. It was not used to our house for the first three days, but later it started to feel like home. Aside from your family, there were also three families that were forced to camps. I heard that they are all Japanese-Americans. I once walked across your front yard and the house seemed awfully old. By the way, I was just wondering where your white dog is. I heard that you didn’t give it away, so I figured out that you probably brought him along with you, but are you allowed to bring pets to the camp? I also went around the house and took a look at your backyard. I was surprised the bird was not in its bird cages. Did you forget to lock the aviary or did you also bring the bird with you? I didn’t hear that you were going to bring that bird with you. When did you know that you were leaving the town? I didn’t even know that you were going to move when you gave me the cat. I thought you just didn’t want the cat. Anyways, wish you good luck!

Sincerely,

Sean Yu