Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A."

The recurring use of the words “Born in the U.S.A” by Bruce Springsteen ironically highlights how lousy it can be for one person to live in the U.S.A. There are a few good examples Bruce talks about, one being, “got in a little hometown jam; so they put a rifle in my hand.” This explains how he had the choice to go to jail or the army. Another display of the harsh country is when he mentioned “sent me off to a foreign land, to go and kill the yellow man.” So even though he chose this option; it wasn’t the path he was thinking about going down. The final example is when the writer says “I’m ten years burning down the road, nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go.” In this he talks about how he got mistreated in his days there. Bruce Springsteen shows good ways and examples of how the U.S.A. was at one time not as great a country, that’s why he made this song.

Life in Sierra Leone

In the autobiography A Long Way Gone: The Memoirs of a Boy Soldier Ishmael Beah shows and explains the troubles that the poor village people have to go through. Sierra Leone is a scary place for them. They are in the middle of a war and have trouble finding food and all the things they need to live. “10,000 Sierra Leonean children have become separated from their families during the displacement process. They are especially vulnerable, and may end up in informal foster care, in institutions, or on the street.” (http://www.cryfreetown.org/SCF.htm)This war gives them a harder time then they are already having by “increasingly making children serve as combatants or as cooks, informants, porters, bodyguards, sentries, and spies. Many child soldiers belong to organized military units, wear uniforms, and receive explicit training, their lethality enhanced by the widespread availability of lightweight assault weapons. Other children participate in relatively unstructured but politically motivated acts of violence, such as throwing stones or planting bombs. (http://pangaea.org/street_children/africa/armies.htm) According to InfoPlease, the conflict was officially declared over in Jan. 2002. An estimated 50,000 people were killed in the decade-long civil war. The UN installed its largest peacekeeping force in the country (17,000 troops). (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107959.html) The war from Beah’s point of view was horrifying; he had to jump a 2 year old kid with corn to survive: “I felt guilty about it for a few minutes, but in our position, there wasn’t much time for remorse.” The first day of his capture was so scary everyone was speechless. Beah showed this fear when the soldiers came out: “We were in the middle of the grassland walking in single file, our shirts on our shoulders or heads, when suddenly three rebels rose from behind the dried grasses and pointed their guns at Gibrilla.” That was just the first move they made towards Beah and the group, until they took everyone. One soldier decided to be the leader and tell the group whose boss. The leader took out his fury on them: “He was behind us, aiming his gun at our heads, and at some point he said, if any of you makes a move, I will kill everyone.” Beah’s book A Long Way Gone: The Memoirs of a Boy Soldier states the things that the poor people had to go through in the war and living the normal, stressful life in Sierra Leone.

Queen Elizabeth's Speech to Her Navy

Queen Elizabeth’s "Speech to Her Navy" was meant to be a warning, more or less a threat to the Spanish armada. She is telling her “loving people” that she would even fight if anyone crossed the border or barriers of the area. She says “I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman,” but she’s just saying it as a figure of speech that she is willing to take action if anything tragic happens. So that basically sums up the speech that Queen Elizabeth said that day and all of the pride she takes in her position and also for the caring of her citizens.

Characterization quotes from "SLOB"

Rosaleen: “Rosaleen planted herself in front of him” (11)
“I was so proud of that flower and didn’t have a soul to show it to except Rosaleen. (13)
“When it was cold God-help-me-Jesus, she made me go to school wearing long britches under my Pentecostal dresses.” (9)


T-Ray: “He started to swoop at the biddy with his tractor grease hands.” (11)
“T-Ray refused to speak it.” (12)
“T-Ray had found me in the peach stand sticking a nail into one of his peaches.” (16)


Lilly: “My hair was black like my mother’s, but basically a nest of cowlicks.” (9)
“I was the only student who didn’t groan and carry on when Mrs. Henry assigned us another Shakespeare’s play.” (15)
“I worried so much about how I looked sometimes that I felt I was impersonating a girl instead of being one.” (9)

Discussion Question of the Secret Life of Bees

What is the relationship between Rosaline and Lily, and Rosaline and T-Ray?

Imagery on The Secret Life of Bees



Sue Kidd’s Secret Life of Bees consists of a young girl thriving for stability in a tough culture. In the beginning of the novel Kidd helps the reader understand the text better by using imagery. To back this statement up, the reader can tell how she was sleeping and she got swarmed by bees. She helps you picture it by using imagery: “I heard them tunneling through the walls of my bedroom, sounding like a radio turned to static in the next room.” Another example of how she uses imagery is stating “I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest.” She describes what the bees are doing and what they even look like at the moment it happened. The last example of imagery used by Kidd is her telling about her mom: “Mother forgive. Please forgive, and she would kiss my skin till it grew chapped and tell me I was not to blame.” That’s what she was thinking of that night as she lay in bed. So that was what the first few pages were about and how the author uses imagery in many ways.

McCarthy’s Diction by: Greg Gannon



All authors display their own style of diction. In the excerpt from Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God, the author develops diction which is both clever and slang-like. An example of his diction could be used in a sentence saying “I looked down at this little gal I was with and give her a big wink and about that time they brought the old ape out”. This can show how he’s clever using different scenes to help the reader picture it. The term “ye” he uses does catch the reader’s eye even if it’s not in the most understanding way. The author starts off a sentence “ They was” which is more on the slang side which is fine unless the reader has a hard time understanding it. So basically Cormac is a unique type of author in both good ways and a little more complicated ways.