The Thing They Carried #2

In the beginning of the book O'brian talks about the literal things the soldiers carried, but along with those things there are many emotional things they carried such as love and fear. While some soldiers have great love for people at home or someone they have met over seas. Others carry their fear with them because even if they may not show it on the outside or not, war is a scary thing. Another thing that these soldiers may be holding with them is the care for their children at home. All they want to do is protect their loved ones and they can't overseas.
One person that we have talked about is Jimmy Cross and he is the commander of there troop. He is in love with Martha who is a girl he knows back home that he has loved ever since he met her. She does not love him though and he can't come to grips with that. He has pictures of her and all the letters they have sent between each other. His love for her got Ted killed and after that Jimmy decided to control his love for her by burning her pictures and letters. He becomes stronger as the book goes on but it is clear that he still loves her.
Overall these are connected because it shows all the different views throughout the war. Also compares the social climate in the war in Vietnam and the climate back in the states. They are all good examples and bring good perspectives to us who have not experienced it on our own.

Olympia High School

             There are many things that I would do to change Olympia High School if i had the chance. The main thing that I would change is to not mix upperclassmen with lower class men in classes. This is because I feel that the level of maturity between the sophomore class and the junior class is extreme. While, yes, you can get more done when you each all the students at once and when you can just bunch up all grades of students in one class. I believe that students will learn best with there own age group around because an upperclassmen cant work while a lower class men is doing something annoying and the same goes for lower class men. This is because lower class men cant learn best when they are intimidated or nervous around the upperclassmen. Olympia High School isn't the best place to be but as for getting their job done, well they do it fairly efficiently. Overall I just don't want to have to deal with lower class men.

Gatsby

   The Great Gatsby is a book that many can relate to in some way because we all have a friend or friends like him. Throughout the story he puts on a front about a lot of things including his emotions. You would have to be a very special person to get the truth from Gatsby. Even though there are so many things and ideas that i can relate to, there is one specific thing that i experienced one time in my life. The fact that he likes to belittle people and truly make them feel like less of a person then him.

   This book has many things that meant something to me and that I could relate to. One in particular is the famous saying of Gatsby, "old sport." I can relate to this because in the story i believe that everyone See's Gatsby as a person better then themselves because know one really knows Gatsby and all they have to judge him from is his stories. I think that he uses this statement to show everyone that he thinks he is better then them or looking down on them. If he wanted to seem alike everyone else he wouldn't need to belittle them with this old sport comment. Another idea i have is that Gatsby is attempting to show people that he really doesn't care who or what people are about. this is because he uses old sport with everyone instead of calling them by their real names. If someone were to do that to me I would take it as this person doesn't want to take the time to learn my name and that also means that they may think they are better then me.

    Now I can really relate to this because I had an acquaintance or friend that did the same thing. He had a manner about him that said, "I am better then you and I know it." Every time you attempted to talk to this person he would respond and refer to you as bud or kiddo. Those little names wouldn't be bad to use except for the fact that we were the same age. These things coming from an adult wouldn't be weird or different at all because they do have years on me but coming from a friend, I just thought that he didn't care to much about anyone else and all he was doing was attempting to benefit himself. While Gatsby wasn't always trying to benefit himself, most times he was, he occasionally thought about what other people had to say and mainly what Daisy was thinking. Which is very similar to Jon, my acquaintance.
  
   Out of the many things that I could find myself relating to, the fact that Gatsby looks down on his friends and all the people he meets really hit me at heart. All because of my BUDDY Jon, he helped me find out how much i really dislike and despise of people that try to make others feel small about themselves. Overall Gatsby wasn't quite as out about it as Jon was but he did it secretly and very effectively because no one had thought they were better then him and that's what he truly wanted. Other then Daisy.