Josh Darling

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

My name is Josh Darling. I am a junior attending Carbondale Community High School. I am participating in Letters About Literature, and am writing this, based off of your novel; The Boy Who Dared. I read this book as a part of Read For a Lifetime, over the course of the first quarter this year. I was inspired by this piece of literature. It gave me an understanding of the human nature.

Although Helmuth knew it was against the law, and he could be killed for the act, he made the decision to seek out the truth. He couldn’t bear not knowing what was really happening as the war progressed. He wanted to learn not only of the victories, but the losses that Germany faced. He not only found out, for himself, the way that his country was lying to its citizens, but he didn’t keep it a secret. He shared it with all of those who would listen. He took it so far as to offer the opportunity to know the truth, to those that he knew where loyal to the Fuhrer. He risked everything to let people know that they were being lied to.

This impacted my understanding of the human mind, and the natural morals that we set up for ourselves even when we are not taught to. Many of us are not lectured on the ability to seek out the truth, and especially not to risk our lives to share it. But it is a natural longing inside of us to know what is legitimate and what has been falsified by those speaking it. I have found that I share many of the characteristics that Helmuth portrayed. Although, I am not sure if I would risk my life to tell someone that they were being lied to, unless that lie could ultimately end their life. I do share some, in a sense that unless the news is personal and could harm someone individually, I am always eager to pass it on to others. I believe that this is probably a common trait between most people, and I would make the accusation that this is due to the unspoken morals that I mentioned a moment ago. The fact that we don’t want people to be uninformed of the truth, in a way, proves this to be true.

I have also found, that reading this has made me reflect on my own decisions in life, and ask myself why I chose to respond to situations the way I did. Helmuth had such a strong will for truth and justice that it clouded his mind and stopped him from having the ability to be afraid of what his actions could unveil, in his own life, and in the life of his friends and family. His reasoning was solely based off of what he knew was right. So often, I am confronted with situations in school where I see people who aren’t as smart, or aren’t as popular, get treated with disrespect, and shame, and it is so easy to look at these things and think “I don’t want to get involved in this” or “It’s not my fight”, but these responses are the polar opposites of the right attitude toward situations such as these. The right thing to do, would be stand up what I know is right, and do my best to put a stop to it, just as Helmuth did.

The Visible Story

Nailer's Story In Pictures

Living on a run down beach, In a one room shack that could fall over at any time.

Always wondering if he would be able to sleep that night. Every night, wondering if he would be beaten. Every night, wondering if he would have to face a drunk, angry father.

He dreamed of sailing out of his miserable life on a pearly white clipper-ship.

He kept pictures of them, so that he could go there in his mind.

He hoped one day he would see the white sails from below as he skimmed along the water.

He woke up every morning, before sunrise, to work the ship yards, on a light crew.

He spent hours and hours a day in the dark maze of rusty ventilation of massive oil tankers from the past.

He spent his day hauling up scraps that could be salvaged and sold.

All of his time and energy was put into hauling coil up from these dark corridors.

In constant hope to hit a lucky strike such as a pocket of oil that had been undiscovered that could get him out of the ship yards, and on to a life of luxury.

A city destroying storm blew in and demolished everything that he had, and almost killed his father, and some of his closest friends. But out of the turmoil and fear, he and his crew mate discovered something that could change their life forever.

A wrecked ship lay on the torn up beach. This ship was no ordinary tanker. It was a white clipper ship, nicer than those in Nailer's pictures.

Inside they found luxury's greater than they could have even imagined. They found great amounts of food. They found silver. they found... a survivor.

A survivor could ruin everything. They had to kill her.

But they held back when she offered them riches...

and a life greater than anything they had ever heard of, in exchange for them to return her to her RICH father.

Over the next couple weeks, they went from eating scraps, and plain foods to...

Feasting every night. But could they trust the girl? How could they know whether or not she could deliver the promise she made to them?

Nailer made the decision to trust her, and soon they were on the run, trying to make it to her father before they were caught by her father's rivals, who wanted to use her as leverage against her father.

They hopped a train and made their way to freedom, only to find that more danger and trouble awaited them.

Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Ship Breaker Animoto

Friday, November 25, 2011

Being The Critic

Josh Darling said... To Cody

I really like your ideas and points in your first paragraph. I think that even though this whole blogging thing is new, It is a great way of sharing information with each other on the books that we are reading. Its also a good way of finding people who are reading the same books as you! For example: Now i know that you are reading Ship Breaker, and it turns out that i am reading the same book! Your description of Ship Breaker is really interesting and to the point. It really gives a good idea to those who aren't reading the book, what it is about. Over all, this was a good post! Well done. I look foreword to reading your following posts! See Ya!

Josh DarlingNov 25, 2011 11:08 AM To Pierre

Your introduction is good! It is casual, and, in my opinion, exactly what anyones first paragraph should look like. I completely agree with the whole procrastination thing. That is something that i have to work on as well. I need to just start getting my work done, and not waiting until the last minute. It is definitely not a good issue to have going into the later years of high school and early years of college! I think that you could use a little bit more actual description of the book in your second or third paragraphs. It just seems like you have a lot about the book but no actual description! So that is what i would suggest. I really enjoy reading your Posts so keep'um coming! They get to the point but also have a sense of comic relief to them. So Good Job! Later!

Josh Darling said...To Komal

Well one thing I can say before reading anything, is wow! You aren't afraid to write a LOT! But thats a good thing. It will make it much easier to meet the criteria in this class and in future english classes that you take. Your introduction is Fantastic. Your description of your attitude toward blogging seems like a pretty genuine statement. And I think that you did well in your description of your book as well! Probably not one that I ever plan on reading, but interesting none the less! I agree with you on the Animoto! It is always a fun blog to do. It allows you to kind of give your viewers your own take on the book that you are making it on. It allows you to make the book look as appealing as you want in any way that you want! In all, You did a very nice job on this post. I look forward to reading your future blog entries! Adios!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

A New Start!

And so the second quarter begins, and i start Blog numero dos. I will start off this quarter, with a reflection of the last. To begin, I will say that I am happy with the grade that I recieved. There are many things that I think that I could have done better behind the scenes of my Blog, but I'll save that for later, and I will first talk about the strong points of my finished project. First of all, I believe that it was very well organized, and was easy to understand, and recognize the main ideas that I was trying to point out. I think that I was very clear in my paragraphs. I said what needed to be said, just enough to make it easy to understand and relate to, and not much beyond that. I tried to make each post as interesting, and enjoyable to read and observe as possible. In my opinion, I set up my blog very nicely, with a variation in font size, and design. Also, the background of my Blog made it a bit bore exciting at first lance, giving the follower something to get excited about before even reading the first headline.

There are many things that I think I could have done better as well. Most of which are behind the scenes, in the library or at home at my computer. I feel like I could have been much more diligent in class and gotten more work done in class, Instead of taking the work time to talk with friends and check grades. I wasted a lot of time this way, and because of this, I had a ton of last minute work to finish the blog and turn it in on time. This quarter I'm going to try to focus and get as much work done as I can, in the time that is given to me. I will try to be more accurate in the different blog entries, and through them, I will try to paint in my readers head, the best picture of my book, that I can. In the beginning of this year, I wasn't sure whether or not I like the idea of blogging, and although it still seems like a lot of work, I guess I can admit that I would much rather be doing this than writing papers over our books. And the amount of work makes sense, for English III.

This quarter, I am reading a book called "Ship Breaker" It is about a guy named Nailer, who works a light crew, exploring old oil tanker wrecks along the beach, on the gulf coast of America. His job is to search the old ducts that lead down deep into the tankers, and salvage any wiring or other forms of metal that could be worth something. One day he and his coworker stumble on a clipper ship, full of luxurious valuables, that could easily make them more money than they could ever imagine. This is where the conflict arises. How are they going to cash the goods in, without their boss finding out and demanding all of it for himself? This quarter, you as the reader, can expect to see a lot more about this book. I will try to add visuals that will give you an idea of what is going on in the book, and i will try to make it as interesting as possible. Hope you enjoy it!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

The Boy Who Dared to post an ANIMOTO!