I once knew someone I really detested

I will remember him forever more

When he spoke he tested my patience

He was once my friend, I liked him before

Now I remember what happened today

Maybe I hate him still, I can’t know now

Yet he scared me to death so I stay away

But when I look back, I do not know how

I will always hate him, right now and right here

He always found more ways to torment me

Whenever he’d speak, I’d lend out an ear

Because I still loath him, cool as he may be

No matter what kids still think he is cool

Because he’s popular, king of the school

Every poem made by Martin Espada makes you think about what is going on with all of the discrimination towards Latinos. He uses a mix of irony and special word choices to show that discrimination can be done in different levels, and that it can be a tiny thing, like banning the use of spanish in the bathroom, or a huge thing, like lynching two mexicans in Santa Cruz.

The poem New Bathroom Policy at English High School is about a principal who hears some kids speaking spanish inside of a bathroom, when the principal was listening fro inside of his stall. The only word he recognized was his own name. Then Espada Says “This constipates him, so he decides to ban speaking spanish in his school. Now he can relax.” The way that he says that he calls the high school an “English High school” in particular, helps enunciate that he is distant and vague about the school. He adds irony to the fact that the school is english, when it has people speaking spanish in the bathrooms. The level of discrimination that the principal shows is caused by his ignorance at the fact that his school is not really such an “English High School.”, but at the same time, the principal decides that the school has to be only english, when there are kids who speak spanish in it.  He is also extremely self conscious, and thinks that whatever they are saying, needs to be said in English, so that he can understand the kids are saying while he is inside of the bathroom.

In his poem Revolutionary Spanish Lesson whenever somebody mispronounces his name, he wants to dress up like a terrorist, and with a “Toy Pistol”, hijack a busload of republican tourists and make them chant anti-american slogans, and then wait for the bilingual swat team to come, telling him to be reasonable.  In this poem, the people are making fun of his name, or not caring about it, and he gets incredibly frustrated with the people, and he only gets respect when he decides to do an act of terrorism, and only then does he get people to talk to him in his native language, and only then is he actually respected by all of the americans. The part where he says “A busload of republican tourists from wisconsin” makes it strike home more, because republicans are generally against illegal immigration, and  the fact that they are tourists make them seem more innocent, and less like they deserve to have this happen to them. The fact that they seem more familiar makes it strike home a lot more.

The poem Two Mexicanos lynched in Santa Cruz, May 3rd, 1877, is about a day when two mexicans were lynched in Santa Cruz after the revolutionary war. He calls the white men who did it “Gringos” which is the traditional label for Americans that was given to them by all of the Latinos. Espada seems to be saying this so that he can seem as far detached from the people who did it as possible, and to make them seem less human, and more like cold killers. The word gringo makes it seem like everyone of them is the same, even though they are all different people,they all seem like the same person when they hang the mexicans. In the end he adds that they were “all crowding into the photo”. This means that they were proud of what they had did, and Espada is saying that those people are who gringos are very similar in the ways that they are acting.

Each of Martin Espadas poems have a different level of racism in it. There are so many different levels of racism, and the Two Mexicanos lynched in Santa Cruz, May 3rd, 1877 was the most extreme one of them, while the new bathroom policy was minor but just as scary. Will Rogers said “We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.” This means that we will only truly rooted in society when we see all of the other people in the world as equals.

In the book Lies, by Michael Grant, in a small California town, all of the adults have disappeared, and the city is in anarchy. The main character, Sam is a boy who managed to survive for a while and is the leader of Perdido beach, a part of the small town, and he has to worry about starvation and a series of mutations going through many people, and that all of the normal people are getting scared of what the mutations are doing.

Sam is a surfer, and the author seems to be poking fun at the stereotype of the carefree surfer. Sam is the opposite of the stereotype, after all of the horrors that everybody else is doing. All the food is running out, and it is very hard for them to keep their food in place, because there is constant thievery, and a group of people who are discriminating against the people who got powers from being mutant. All of the stereotypes are shown, but they are poked fun at. Sam is the most brave and antsy person, and Astrid the geek is one of the most powerful and respected people

This makes me think that the author wants you to think about what a stereotype really means to all of the people affected. It seems that every stereotype is shone as a little bit of an interpretation of the way that a horrible event affects and changes a person. John D. Rockefeller said," I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity". No matter who you are, the disaster will change you if it happens.

Ptolemy's gate

In the book, Ptolemy's gate by Jonathan Stroud, there are 3 main characters, not one like a normal book. The three characters are Nathaniel, Bartimaeus and Kathleen Jones, a.k.a Kitty. Nathaniel is a powerful young magician in the top ranks of an extremely corrupt government. Bartimaeus is a entity summoned by Nathaniel, who must follow his orders, but tries to rebel. Kitty is a person who was supposedly dead, and wanted by the government for treason. The author uses multiple personalities to make the book a more confusing and conflicting read.

In this book, the 2 young adults, Nathaniel and Kitty are treated like two completely different people, and, Nathaniel is treated like somebody incredibly out of his depth, and even his mentor, Jessica Whitwell claims that he is out of his depth. She said "I believe that my apprentice needs a little more help with managing situations and that this one may be out of his depth." The author is trying to show that no matter how powerful the kid is, he may still not be able to tackle the problems ahead.

Kitty is treated like a more better adult and she has less power over other people. She cares more about other peoples and is not given government positions. She herself set up a resistance that fought against all of the dictatorship that is called a equal government. However, she is treated with less dignity than all of the other people, and does not think that the magicians deserve all of this because of the fact that they are "defending" Britain.

Lord Anton said "Absolute power corrupts absolutely", and I think this story is a good example of it. Nathaniel is given high ranking positions and is callous and blind to his surroundings because of it. Kitty knows what is going on and aware of her surroundings, and she is treated as a lonely commoner because of the fact that she was not born in the government. She is trying to redo the french revolution, and Nathaniel is sitting back in his chair doing paperwork.

Deadlock

In the book Deadlock by Mark Walden, the main character, Otto, is trying to stop a plot to turn a bunch of young children into assassins, and to kill off all of the ones who are not strong and fast enough. 4 of Otto's friends were captured and sent to the facility to be trained, and Otto wants to free them. In this book, young adults are treated like they have dangerous potential, and money is not an issue. In this book, somehow, the characters seem to have enough money to do whatever they want.

In the book, it appears that all of the villains have the resources it takes to build massive bases, and yet it seems that money has no impact on the power of the people in all of the book. The cost in money of what they are doing does not seem to matter to any of the characters. A person in the book named Diabolus Darkdoom can afford to make incredibly advanced technology for a submarine, and the antagonists can afford to not only hack into it, but to waste their resources in destroying it. This makes me think that even though, money is such an issue in our life, it is still not as important as other things. I think that the author is trying to send us a message about how we should not let our lives be ruled by a hunger for more money, and that you can have enough of it.

In Deadlock, I feel that all of the characters do not have the ability to truly appreciate what they have and how they are using it. In the story, money is treated like it is completely unneeded and yet it is a huge part of all of our lives. I believe that Mark Walden is trying to show how much the amount of money we have should be appreciate

In the book "The Death Cure" by James Dashner, money is a huge issue in all of what is going on. Very few people who have a small amount of money got through the disease that was known as the Flare. The Flare is a disease that eats away at the victims brains and is a leading cause of insanity. The main characters name is Thomas. However, a few people are actually immune to this disease,including him, and people are discriminating against him because of the fact that he is immune and does not have to worry about the Flare. Because he has what most other people do not have, then he is different, and that will lead to discrimination.

In all cases of discrimination, there is a major difference between the two types of people. Because the people are different, other people feel uncomfortable around them and therefore start to bully them. There are many types of discrimination out in the world, and it is a really dreadful thing. The people who discriminate against other people are sometimes oblivious of what is happening to the people who they are discriminating. The book explains how even if the person is almost exactly the same, one small difference can make both people feel very uncomfortable.

When somebody is feeling inferior to the other people because he is different, it is generally because of the fact that the other people feel too uncomfortable about him. However, because of the fact that every single one of the most influential human beings has been different when he was growing up, it really should not matter to us that the other people are different. People care about other people, but it can be hard when they are all doing things you believe are weird.

The article "The Bravest Girl in the world" in the upfront magazine is about a young girl who spoke out for girls having the right to go to school and learn. The girl's name was Malala Yousafzai and she was openly speaking about girls in Pakistan gaining the right to go to school. The Taliban did not agree with her views and on her way to school, the Taliban shot her. They shot her because of her gender and her views on the subject. They purposefully discriminated her gender so they could stay superior, showing how people do not care that other types of people are equal to them and that they deserved to be treated equally.

Inequality is a terrible thing that people who are different should not have to suffer through. This story is one of the many that show how unfair it is, and the issues that every type of different or discriminated against person is having around the world. In my life, everyone goes to school, but that is not true about all of the people around the world and it should be like that. This story shows the horror of discrimination through Malala's eyes and from a fair lens of the way the shooting worked. You learn about how unfair things are in Pakistan, and how people are denied some of the most basic rights.

Discrimination starts when a group of people want to feel and be more powerful than a different type of person, and they start to try to achieve that goal. However, the group of people really aren't better than all of the other people who are out there, they are just trying to convince themselves of it. Frances Wright said "Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it." If we claim to give everybody liberty, then we should all be considered equal.