Adventures Of Tom Sawyer Essay Example for Free

Adventures Of Tom Sawyer Essay I will never forget the time I spent with Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Joe Harper on Jackson’s Island. We have always wanted to become pirates. Now that we have found the exact opportunity – Tom being scolded by Aunt Polly and Joe Harper having been whipped by his mother for tasting sour cream – we decided that it is now time to pursue our dream to become real pirates. In that way, we will be able to live a life of freedom and fame, and the whole town will hear about our names. The people who mistreated us will also feel sorry for what they had done. Our rendezvous is Jackson’s Island, which is three miles below the town of St. Petersburg. We met there at midnight. That became the start of our lives as pirates of the sea. Personally, I loved the idea of running away from home. I never had to go to school anymore. I didn’t need to follow rules anymore. And as Tom promised often, all we will need to do is to steal, kill and get rich. So when midnight came, the four of us met at Jackson’s Island. Each of us came with something stolen. Tom brought stolen ham, Joe had a one sided bacon and Huck had a skillet and some tobacco leaves. I brought stolen matches from my mom’s drawer. I figured that if we would stay long in the Island, we would need fire for our daily needs. Tom applauded me for bringing some matches. In those days, matches are not commonly used in St. Petersburg. Very few people had them. We found a raft about a hundred yards away. So we decided to have some fun with it and as usual, Tom was the captain. He commanded our pirate ship as we all pretended to be real pirates, using terms we have heard from sailors as well as lines from books we have read. We decided to settle in a virgin forest about two hundred yards above the head of the island. There, we spread our belongings and also built a huge bonfire. We cooked our ham, bacon and corn pone by roasting them in the fire. We ate and ate until we were so full. There was nothing like it. If the other boys in the village saw us that way, they would greatly envy us without a doubt. There was nothing like a pirate’s life. After eating, we lay down on the grass and talked for a while. Tom started to tell us stories about pirates – how extravagant they are, and how rich and famous. We started to ask him many questions about becoming a pirate. He simply told us that all we had to do was steal belongings and kill other people. In the midst of the conversation, Huck Finn began to smoke tobacco! I instantly followed him with that activity and smoked tobacco as well. Tom and Joe simply looked silently at us in amazement. For a long time now, they had wanted to learn how to smoke, but never had the opportunity. Only Huck and I could smoke. After much talking, we all fell asleep one by one. That was our first night as â€Å"pirates†. Tom was the first to wake up in the morning. The first thing we did was to strip ourselves off our clothes and bathe in the sea. After that, we got ready for breakfast. Joe began to slice bacon and would have cooked it, but Tom and Huck asked him to wait. I was the one who caught a couple of sun perch and catfish! We instantly cooked those fishes along with the bacon and they tasted so good. Then after eating, we lay down on the sand for a long time. Sadness started to creep in, but nobody dared to speak about it. Nobody wants to be accused of being a chicken heart. I think Tom was starting to feel homesick too, but he didn’t want to show his feelings. Our growing homesickness was interrupted when we saw a ferry boat afar off, shooting cannon over the water. This is a sign that somebody in the village got drowned. Shooting cannons over the water made drowned people come up to the top. For a while we wondered who got drowned, and then Tom suddenly had a brilliant thought. We are the ones who got drowned! The entire village was searching for us. Our parents missed us, and the other boys surely heard about us. The girls we admired are now talking about us too! We spent the rest of the entire day swimming, talking, eating and exploring the island. When night came, everyone went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, Joe and Huck were still sleeping. Tom, however, was nowhere to be found. I looked at the spot where he slept and found a note. I opened the note and it read like this: â€Å"If I don’t come back by breakfast time, all my things are yours.. † Upon reading this, I woke Joe and Huck and showed them the note. We waited for Tom for about an hour but he never came. Huck supposed that Tom felt homesick and went back to Aunt Polly’s house. However, Joe defended Tom and said that he knew his friend would never do such a disgrace. Tom, according to Joe, knew the code of pirates and he is too proud to quit and go home just like that. I told Joe to start cooking breakfast and if Tom never returned by the time we ate breakfast, all his things will be ours. But just before we started to eat, Tom appeared dramatically and entered the camp. He had some news for us. He had â€Å"spied† on St. Petersburg and discovered that the whole town was talking about us – the lost pirates. If our bodies were not found until Saturday, our funeral will be pronounced that very Sunday. We instantly felt like heroes. Then suddenly I had a brilliant idea. What if we could make a comeback on the day of our funeral? Tom and the other pirates liked it very much. Tom slept until noon and when afternoon came, we started to plan our appearance at our funeral on Sunday. That Sunday, while the entire town mourned for us and as the minister preached his eulogy for the â€Å"dead boys†, we were hiding in an unused gallery behind the church as we listened to everything that was happening. Suddenly, we made our appearance to the crowd. Needless to say, everybody welcomed us dramatically. Our loved ones cried with joy. We were the talk of the town for several months and I will never ever forget it. It was the best day of our lives. Part 2: The Commentary The pirate boys led by Tom Sawyer built a community that they have entirely created amongst themselves. It is a community apart from the regular life they have known at St. Petersburg. We can safely say that Tom, Joe and Huck built their pirate community based on their childhood imagination. As young people in a simple town, where modern industrialized America has not yet fully penetrated, these three boys have an inclination towards idealism. Their idea of a perfect life is total freedom. Thus, they chose to pretend as pirates and imitate the pirate’s code of conduct in order to experience the life that they have always dreamed about. To them, escaping to Jackson’s Island is more of an escape from reality. Although they have romantic idealisms as pirates in a free world, the reality remains that in the town of St. Petersburg, they are children and they are not as powerful as they suppose themselves to be. Tom Sawyer is just a kid who can get whipped by Aunt Polly any time of day. He is a student who needs to go to school and study his lessons. He is part of society. So as we have stated, going to Jackson’s Island is an escape from reality. The boys thought that they can build a community on their own – apart from society, authority and responsibility. This thought is evident in Tom’s opening thoughts in Chapter 13: â€Å"Tom’s mind was made up now. He was gloomy and desperate. He was a forsaken, friendless boy, he said; nobody loved him; when they found out what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry†¦Yes, they had forced him to it at last: he would lead a life of crime. There was no choice. † (Twain, 1876). In the community that the boys built, each one played an important role. Tom was the leader because he was the one who provided the vision and insight about the life of a pirate. So in essence, he was providing direction for all of them. Almost everything they did during their getaway in the island was a product of Tom Sawyer’s imagination – based on what he read from books and his own thoughts and romantic dreams. Joe Harper, meanwhile was more of a follower. He also executes Tom’s orders. It is evident that Joe admired Tom for everything that he was. Joe once said: No, Toms true-blue, Huck, and hell come back. He wont desert. He knows that would be a disgrace to a pirate, and Toms too proud for that sort of thing. Hes up to something or other. Now I wonder what? (Twain, 1876) Huck, meanwhile, is a symbol of the free life that Tom and Joe have always longed for. Huck didn’t need to go to school. He is a waif, a vagabond and he is not part of society. The other boys envied Huck because he can smoke tobacco while most boys in St. Petersburg – even Tom and Joe – cannot do that act. Although Tom was the leader, we can say that Huck is the role model for the entire community they have built for themselves. If, for Tom and Joe, the island getaway was an escape from reality, it was a normal day for Huck. He was probably used to going to different places all by himself. The simple community of Huck Finn, Joe Harper and Tom Sawyer was similar to adult communities in that they have a single driving force – the desire to live a life of freedom. If we look at history, almost all communities started with that single driving force. In any given community, there should be a leader, a follower and a symbol of inspiration. As these traits are respectively found in each of our characters, we may say that Tom, Huck and Joe are a perfect embodiment of American idealism. Although their deeds were shown in boyish manner, they represent a greater dimension which reflects the reality of adult life. As the saying goes, â€Å"Men are simply boys who grew up†. Works Cited: Twain, Mark (1993). The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer [electronic version]. New York: Project Gutenberg Ebooks. (Original work published 1876)

Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Essay -- American History

Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki In August of 1945, both of the only two nuclear bombs ever used in warfare were dropped on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. These two bombs shaped much of the world today. In 1941, The United States began an atomic bomb program called the â€Å"Manhattan Project.† The main objective of the â€Å"Manhattan Project† was to research and build an atomic bomb before Germany could create and use one against the allied forces during World War II. German scientists had started a similar research program four years before the United States began so the scientists of the â€Å"Manhattan Project† felt a sense of urgency throughout their work (Wood â€Å"Men †¦ Project†). Serious security measures were set in place to protect the information discovered throughout the life of the â€Å"Manhattan Project.† The Jemez Mountains were chosen for the site of the â€Å"Manhattan Project† due to its remote location. All citizens of the Los Alamos Ranch School area, where the â€Å"Manhattan Project† was developed, received the same address so that military personnel could monitor all mail being sent in and out of the city. Numbers replaced names on all official documents. As a final precaution, workers knew nothing of the final product they were creating. Only what was needed to complete their jobs was told to the individuals (Wood â€Å"Men †¦ Project†). Despite all of the security used by the officials in charge of the â€Å"Manhattan Project,† soviet spies managed to leak information to the Soviet Union that allowed them to create a nuclear bomb of their own. Klaus Fuchs, an important scientist to the â€Å"Manhattan Project,† managed to move throughout the project and provide crucial information to the Soviets. David Greenglass also provi... ...ear bombs, one survey showed that 53% of Americans surveyed felt that the bombs should have been used exactly the way they were and only 4.5% felt that no bombs should have been used (Batchelder 111). BIBLEOGRAPHY Batchelder, Robert C. The Irreversible Decision, 1939-1950. New York: Macmillan, 1965. Bondi, Victor ed. â€Å"Hiroshima and Nagasaki,† American Decades, 1940-1949. Detroit: Manly, Inc., 1995 Glines, C.V. â€Å"The Bomb That Ended World War II.† Aviation History Sept. 1995: 42-49. SIRS Research. SIRS Knowledge Source. Manheim Township H.S. Library, Lancaster, PA. 13 Feb. 2003. Wood, Linda K. â€Å"Men and Mission of the Manhattan Project.† World War II July 1995: 38-45. SIRS Research. SIRS Knowledge Source. Manheim Township H.S. Library, Lancaster, PA. 13 Feb. 2003. Wyden, Peter. Day One: Before Hiroshima and After. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.

Analysis and Historical Context from Second Treatise of Civil Government by John Locke Essay

The previous fragment we’ve read belongs to the work of John Locke, ‘Second Treatise of Civil Government’, who published it anonymously in 1689. It is a work of political philosophy, in which Locke talks about civil society, natural rights and separation of powers. Locke was one of the first empirical philosophers and he believed that the human being was born with no knowledge, and that experience and observation were the base of all human wisdom. In the text, Locke talks about how powers should be separated and not concentrated in the same person (the King) because he would be tempted, and in fact it was happening, to use them just to satisfy his desires. Locke also says that individuals are under no obligation to obey one another, and that we are all born free. He continues talking about how a man has the power to do whatever it takes to preserve himself and others, but always obeying the law of nature. People have the power to overthrow the king if he is not being just with his subjects; people have absolute right to choose a governor, and it should not be all about the ‘great chain of being’, a term Locke finds ridiculous because the governor should be elected by people and not by blood. An absolute monarch is illegitimate because we are all born equals. Locke says that there are three fundamental rights for a human being: life, liberty and property. These ideas were extremely dangerous because they despised the royal way of governing, and that’s the reason why Locke had to publish his work anonymously. They meant a revolution in the mentalities of his time. Locke’s work had a tremendous influence upon the Founding Fathers. Locke’s idea of men being endowed with natural rights had an enormous influence upon the American Declaration of Independence; the rights there enumerated, â€Å"Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness†, were for Locke â€Å"Life, Liberty and Property†. For Locke, the Founding Fathers and for us, property is synonymous with the pursuit of happiness and liberty, and they wouldn’t be possible without property. This means that natural rights are intertwined and mutually dependent. The loss of any one means the effective loss of the other two. A government that seeks to extort money from its citizens by overtaxing them is imposing upon the liberty of the people. This was the primary reason the Founding Fathers of this nation embarked upon the Revolutionary War. They understood that taxes imposed without the consent of the governed were indeed a grave imposition upon their liberty. Before Locke wrote his work, there had been many absolute monarchs in the throne of England like John in 1199 or James I in 1603, and later James II in 1685. Then, a civil war came during Charles I’s reign from 1642 till 1651. The Civil War led to the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649, the exile of his son, Charles II, and replacement of English monarchy with a Republic ruled by Oliver Cromwell. The period called ‘the Protectorate’ may be said when Cromwell was installed as Lord Protector in 1653. From then until his death in 1658, he ruled in a state of conflict with parliaments. On May 1660, the parliament resolved that the government of England ‘ought to be by King, Lords and Commons’. A week later, Charles II was proclaimed king and before the month was out entered London in triumph. Although Charles II’s reign produced the two rival factions, Whig and Tory, from which political parties were later to develop, they were almost identical twins. Each believed as firmly as the other in the maintenance of monarchy; each at different times adopted policies previously pursued by the other. The Restoration of 1660, by restoring crown, church and lords, put Englishmen back once more under a system of government proven unworkable. With a king on the throne who still wanted to govern, and a group of dissatisfied men in parliament who wanted his government to be controlled by them, conflict was hard to avoid. But the civilian revolution did not happen until after Charles II’s death in 1685. King Charles was succeeded by his brother James, who became James II of England and VII of Scotland. James is best known for his belief in absolute monarchy and his attempts to create religious liberty for his subjects against the wishes of the English Parliament. Increasingly members of Britain’s political and religious elite opposed him as too pro-French, too pro-Catholic, and too much of an absolute monarch. When he produced a Catholic heir, the tension exploded and leading nobles called on William III of Orange (his son-in-law and nephew) to land an invasion army from the Netherlands. James fled England (and thus abdicated) in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was replaced by William of Orange who became king as William III, ruling jointly with his wife (James’s daughter) Mary II. Thus William and Mary, both Protestants, became joint rulers in 1689. Parliament issued the Bill of Rights, which stipulated the rights and obligations of the monarch. William and Mary reigned jointly till 1694 when Mary died. Then, William continued to reign alone. He died in 1702 and Queen Anne, the daughter of James II and the last Stuart monarch, succeeded William III. She, like Mary, was a Protestant. On May 1707, under the Acts of Union, England and Scotland were united as a single sovereign state, the Kingdom of Great Britain, though Scotland kept its legal system and also the Presbyterian Church. Anne became Great Britain’s first sovereign. All Anne’s children died so that her cousin, Sophia of Hanover was declared her heir. However, Sophia died the same year as Queen Anne and so her son George of Hanover was the one in succeeding Queen Anne becoming George I of England. Basically, this text is a more specific critique of government, stressing the rule of the majority as the most practical choice for government. He identifies three elements necessary for a civil society: a common established law, a known and impartial body to give judgment, and the power to support such judgments. He calls for a government with different branches, including a strong legislature, and an active executive who does not outstrip the lawmakers in power. Toward the end of the Treatise, Locke finally arrives at the question of forming a new government. When the state ceases to function for the people, it dissolve or is overthrown and may be replaced. When the government is dissolved, the people are free to reform the legislative to create a new civil state that works in their best interest. Locke insists that this system protects against random unrest and rebellion because it allows the people to change their legislative and laws without resorting to force.

The Natural Rate of Unemployment