To Build a Fire

When he had recovered his breath and control, he sat up and entertained in his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity. However, the conception did not come to him in such terms. His idea of it was that he had been making a fool of himself, running around like a chicken with its head cut off - such was the simile that occurred to him. Well, he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently. With this new-found peace of mind came the first glimmerings of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking an anesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots of worse ways to die. (This passage was taken from page 18 of Jack London's To Build a Fire.)


This book was about a big arrogant jerk who gets what he deserves in the end. He is prideful and disregards the advice of the older men who have lived in the freezing climate much longer than him, and he calls them women. He does not think through his actions and does not care about his dog. Pride comes before a fall, and boy did he fall. He froze to death, but not before he learned his lesson. Hopefully, the rest of us will learn from this story and listen to the advice of the people who have lived longer than us and not have to go through what 'the man' did.

Newspaper

Creating a mega-musical is no easy feat, [duh] even in the hands of U2 megastars Bono and The Edge. "Easier than we could have imagined. Harder than we ever thought," says Bono, [that's saying a lot] resting on a Times Square hotel bed near where "Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark" [what an awful name; how can they do that?] is readying for its first preview. "I mean, easier in the sense that the music came to us effortlessly. [I don't believe it] Dreaming up the show, the scale of it, the flying sequences, the pop art opera [oh, great] that it is - that was all pure joy," he adds. "What we didn't realize was how difficult it is to stage this stuff, both technically and financially." [maybe should have looked into that in the beginning.] (Taken from the November 30-December6 edition of Emerald Valley Shopper.)


I looked at this article and thought it sounded odd. I interjected a few comments throughout the article in green. The topic threw me off, since I had never heard of anything like it before and thought it was a crazy idea. It says later that the mega-musical cost an outrageous amount of money to put together. How much did they have to pay just to use the name and how can they create a good play anyway? There have been enough movies, shows, and comic books that a play seems ridiculous to me. Also, a musical hero show? Come on. Imagine: Spider-man swinging from his webs singing a heavy rock version of, "The itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout..." Ha, ha, ha. Seriously.

Comparison and Contrast

The painting American Gothic (AG) by the Iowan Grant Wood depicting farmers in 1930 vs. the photograph Rural Rehabilitation Client (RRC) by the Lithuanian-born New Jerseyan Ben Shahn depicting recipients of a federal aid program in Arkansas in 1935.


Differences: AG looks almost animated while RRC is obviously real. AG pictures a well-dressed older couple who look like they are some-what well off. On the other hand, the younger pair in RRC look exhausted, poor, and almost desperate. The AG clothes are like Sunday Best clothes, while the RRC clothes are everyday work clothes. The AG couple look orderly and under control of their atmosphere, unlike the RRC couple who look untidy, dirty, and who live a chaotic life. In the AG background, a nice white house stands in the middle of the countryside, while the background of the RRC photo is a rudimentary looking cabin.

Similarities: Both couples look sad, even though the RRC ones look even worse. They both live in the country. They both probably work hard, though the RRC pair harder. The women are shorter than the men. Both pictures are black and white, and have the look of disappointment and depression.