2+--+A.J.

I believe the statement “The only way to prepare for peace is to be prepared for war” is true. The statement is comparable to many other real life situations that include a sweet and sour balance. How can a person truly ever know what peace is without going through war? Or how can a person even know what unhappiness is until they have felt sincere happiness? An unspoken balance has been created in life; a person must know negativity and happiness in life in order to experience negativity and happiness to the fullest amount, which in a way can be beautiful. Peace is unknown without war. This concept is very comparable to Gary Ross’s “Pleasantville” an American film released in 1998. Pleasantville is a town where everything is pleasant one hundred percent of the time. Two outsiders however use their real world knowledge to change this. Eventually the whole town turns colorful and is capable of feeling every possible feeling aside from only feeling happy and pleasant. Finally feeling pleasant is better than just pleasant, it becomes an extraordinarily wonderful happy feeling because they have felt excruciating sadness before. It is the same effect with war and peace. If all a person was ever able to experience was peace, then peace would be insignificant. It would mean absolutely nothing to them. To be capable of fully understanding and experiencing peace an individual must experience the sadness of war. While an individual needs war to understand peace, they also need peace to understand war. It is inconceivable for the understanding of war and its terrors to be fully comprehended without ever knowing the side of life where the grass is greener. If a child is beaten their whole life, and never properly taken care of, how are they to know what is right and what is good? Some say there is human intuition, but yet family cycles of abuse continue throughout today’s society. A child will not know any better, or know how awful abuse actually is unless they know what a life without abuse is. Although they may not experience this first hand, they can still witness it in their surroundings. It is nearly impossible for individuals suffering through wars of their own to know that they are suffering if it is all they have ever known. They must have examples of peace so that they are capable of perceiving what they are suffering through is bad and unmoral. The intensity of the war and peace cycle can seem cruel and bitter, but in all actuality it is very beautiful. How can one even fathom a life where you would not know love, happiness, sadness, anger or jealousy? Yes, there are a million other emotions as well, but without war and peace people would never genuinely know any real feelings at all. War and peace is the good and the bad to life. No person can only have good or only have bad, they need both to have a complete since of whom they are and what their life is. Emotions are needed for life to be lived to the fullest. War is the anger, the sadness and the dreadfulness of life, while peace is the contentment, the happiness and pleasantness of life. Good and bad cannot be known without each other, and it is beautiful how they are able to work together to make people capable of living. War cannot exist without peace, and peace cannot exist without war. It is a vicious never-ending cycle in life. It has always been that way, and it will continue to be that way until the world itself is at a complete end. Yet, a life without war, and life without peace is not a fully lived life at all.

I Want a Wife Précis In the article “I want a wife” published in Ms. In 1971, Judy Brady explains the significance of desiring a wife because of all the wonderful things they do for their husbands, although it causes them a life without satisfaction. Brady discus’s the many tasks wife’s do such as take care of the house, take care of the children, do all the extra work so that their significant other can do as they please and all in all do whatever their husband desires from their necessities to flat out wants regardless if it means the wife must suffer in any form. Brady’s purpose is to exploit all the many inconceivable things a wife must do to satisfy her husband’s desires in order to show how selfish men have become and have formed this specified definition of a wife that forces women who are wives to live an unhappy life so that their husband’s can acquire all their ridiculous wants. Intended for the society of the 1970’s where women’s roles as ‘wives’ were defined, Brady was trying to reach out to men about their egocentric neediness, and to women who were enduring the dreadful wife role so that they could know they were not the only ones who felt that way and it was not wrong for them to want a ‘wife’ like men did.

Prompt 3

On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU (Pages 1 and 2). How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive (page 27). You wanted a good time; ‘they’, meaning the Party, wanted to stop you having it (page151).

I think the intended audience for 1984 is the readers who are human beings living in a world, where every place is different. Orwell writes in first and second person referring to him, referring to the readers as you, and at some points even including himself and saying we. He writes as if we all share the same general thoughts and idea, like our emotions are the same. He uses his logical since to connect to his audience and make it personal. In my second quite the very first three words, “how could you” is him connecting to his audience just by asking them a thoughtful question. In my third quite when he says “you wanted,” he is reaching out to all readers emotionally, intending for them to understand and to relate, while ‘they’ can mean anyone who is of higher power. Parents, government or teachers. The first quote express how “big brother is watching you,” and I think that is the first sign in the novel of Orwell’s intended audience. It is ‘you’ in the since as anyone who feels overwhelmingly controlled.

prompt 4 I think Orwell’s message in 1984 is to convey how the human mind will control a person’s desires, and even if it goes against the rules, emotions will always win. “Under the table Winston’s feet made compulsive movements. He has not stirred from his seat, but in his mind he was running, swiftly running…” (page 341). This quote represents how thoughts force a person’s aspiration. Winston was sitting down, and had not actually changed location, but he kept thinking about running and moving and it made his feet act in that movement. Ultimately the human mind is going to in some way force a person to do what they feel like doing most. In the midst of Winston’s torture he admits that “Yes, he saw now, he had always known it” when he thinks about admitting to O’Brien what he had been doing (page 274). Winston realizes that his desires to know the truth lead him to putting himself in his awful position. HE had known all along the O’Brien was going to turn him in and was a bad guy. This is the perfect example of how the human mind controls a person’s actions. Winston had to know, and because he had to know he gave up everything. -- Prompt 5 Going through most of the novel I believe that Orwell wants you to stand up in what you believe in. I feel like there is a message displaying that we as human being should never underestimate our minds. Winston goes against everything his government stands for, but he does not do it to be a rebel. He honestly feels that way, and he took initiative to do what he could to fully understand his beliefs. There is nothing wrong with not thinking the same way everyone else does. What makes thoughts so fascinating is that they are completely your own. In the end of this novel I honestly feel as though Winston gave up. It actually sadden me and I found it a disappointment that he asked them to give his torture away. I agreed with this novel so much for the first two thirds of it. I found it a complete let down that Winston gave in. I think that everyone should fight their hardest, and should go to every measure possible in order to stick to their beliefs and their feelings. Honestly with how everything turned out, I was confused, I don t know what Orwell intended for me to do after I read this novel. I hope that its meaning is to never give up, and never let yourself lose. Every person will always have their own personal thoughts, beliefs and morals. You should stick to them regardless, even if it has to cause suffering. Even if you to give in in order to survive.