Jacob Musil
Ms. Johann
Hour 4
The Lie
Whitehill is a private school that all the Remenzel's went to. He is number 31 and his parents put him under all this pressure to get into this school. In the short story "The Lie" there is an understandable lesson not to lie because when you do it makes everything worse.
Initially Eli lies about getting into the school which makes everything worse for him and his parents. You shouldn't lie, but mostly everyone has, some people have learned their lesson and some haven't because they haven't gotten caught yet. When Eli lied it made it so that his dad got embarrassed. A person can understand what Eli is feeling because everyone has lied before and their parents found out that they were lying and most likely got busted.
Whether you’re under pressure or not, you should still tell the truth. When you’re under pressure you don’t know what to say sometimes, so you lie, but that isn’t the right thing to do. If the parents actually want the truth they shouldn't put their children under pressure because they should think about how it was when they were a kid.
Since the author Kurt Vonnegut wrote this in third person omniscient it made it so that you can understand better how each person acts. It’s better that he did it this way because it’s more understandable and tells a better story. I think that it is ironic that he made it so that Mr. Remenzel thought that his family was so important to the school that his son could get into the school, even though he didn’t meet the standards.
Lying is something that no one should do no matter who you are. And if you’re a parent don't put your child under pressure because then you’re not going to be happy with the outcome. In the short story "The Lie" there is a strong message not to lie.
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“FALL ASSESMENT, 2010”
In this story there is a boy named Yoshi and his Grandfather. They both work on a boat as fishermen trying to make a living. The short story “Magic and the Night River” is an interesting Romance with an ending of a new beginning. I didn’t enjoy this story as much because some of the things in it were very unrealistic, such as how birds can get fish for a person then bring it back to him for no reason. But there also were some realistic things that most of us can relate to like how people are so greedy.
The lesson of this story to me is that just because someone isn’t the greatest at something doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t do it anymore. I can relate to this because if you are skateboarding and someone else isn’t good some people may say “oh, you shouldn’t skateboard because you’re not good.”This type of stuff happens all the time in the world because some people aren’t as good as some others.
With a romance there is always a life affirming symbolism. In this story the life affirming symbolism is the grandfather got a new beginning. His birds didn’t need the rope because they just came back with the fish instead of him reeling them in. That made everything better for him because now he gets his own boat and doesn’t have to give half of his catch to Kano.
Although in the beginning not much was good for grandfather, but then towards the end everything turned around for him and got better enough to where he can survive without Kano. The short story “Magic and the Night River” ends with a new beginning, which makes it an interesting.
