The Importance of the Work

I feel the author of this had many strong points and I agreed with a lot of them. Some things were a little off to me. I definitely like when he talked of how novels were to be discussed in many places but not a court room. A book being banned for its bad language just seems ridiculous, to me atleast. And to say that he was portraying a bad role model for readers is just outrageous. At no point in the book did he portray is bad decisions as good decisions. It was simply a story of a kid going through life and messing up. He certainly showed us many things you should not do and ways you should not act. And also I feel that Holden's cursing and bad habits very much defined him as a character. In my personal opinion, if you read The Catcher in the Rye, and one of the things you got out of it was that smoking is good, and you model your life after Holden's.... You are an idiot.

Red

It's vibrant, loud, expressive and powerful. The color has very strong meaning; everything from passion and love to blood and evil. It holds true to a very broad range of meanings; a very deep color. I don't think anyone is always happy or always sweet. I am most certainly all over the place emotionally. I sometimes find myself red with love and I sometimes find myself red in the face with rage and steaming from the ears with anger. I would like to think of my moods and feelings as different shads of me. Some days I wake up and I am just not in a good mood. That is my blood red shade. My patience for people is minimal, I have a tendency to lash out and I am not a pleasant person to be around. Some days I am in a great mood and nothing can bring me from that. That is much more of a bright, but warm shade. I am very welcoming, open, friendly, and appealing to people. Warmth is so important when it comes to comforting and giving that feeling of security and stability. One of my favorite shades is the soft, gentle, dim shade of passion and love; the shade that is only put on when you are with that one person. It is the shade your heart turns as it begins to race and rush warm blood all over your body just from the sight of that person. It is the color her face turns when I surprise her at work with flowers or tell her she is the most beautiful thing on this earth. You have different shades, different moods, different feelings; different people, different days.

Object Description

It is white, black, and, grey and reads "Breakdown" all the way around. I have had this belt since eighth grade. I stole it our of my brother's closet after he had left for the first time. It is far beyond beat up and disheveled. The glue that holds the front and back together has worn out and it is now peeling in two. It has quite the history. The paint and designs are peeling off leaving a rough brown exterior. The hole that I have always used is stretched and ripping from the silver buckle. Yet I can not leave the house without it. It has that worn in feel that you get from an old pair of shoes or jeans. I have grown so used to having it on that sometimes even if I do not need a belt, I will where it anyway. I feel naked without it. I definitely think it has a lot to do with the fact that it was my brother's. It makes me feel like he's always around I guess. Everyone thinks I'm nuts. My mom tells me all the time I should go buy a new belt because not even a homeless person would wear this one. But until it stops holding my pants up, I will have no reason to stop wearing it around my waist.

"In My Hands" review

Let me paint you a little picture. You are sixteen years old and you are leaving your family and friends to go away to school to become a nurse. Every thing is going wonderfully; until one day you wake up to hear that the country you live in and were raised in, not longer exists. It is plain and simply, not a country anymore. And you are now controlled by a leader who hates you and his ultimate plan is to rid the earth of anyone who is not "perfect." Do you return to your family? Or do you stay and help the war effort?

Well in Irene Gut Opdyke's memoir In My Hands, she tells of her decision of staying and helping. It is quite an incredible story too. She finds herself in the middle of a war zone, in the middle of hell. She is just a girl and instead of just trying to survive, she does what she can to help. At first she is aiding soldiers who are injured. But she is eventually captured and brought into German run facilities where she is more of a slave than anything.

She is transported and moved and transferred all over the place and sees many horrors that many could not even imagine. And as if surviving was not hard enough, she decides to attempt to help the Jews and other prisoners any way she can. It begins with simply placing food under a Ghetto fence and escalates to smuggling escaped Jews to somewhat of a safe town where they can be more like "free men."

Irene uses great detail and great insight to really make it easy to imagine the scenes in your head. Although some parts can drag on and be somewhat boring, overall it is definitely an interest catcher. Although there is something about her style of writing that makes it seem almost like she is sometimes trying to hard to write a great line or be clever and brilliant. But once you start reading a chapter like "Stealing From Rokita" you have to finish it to see what happens. It has that element of suspense and action that just holds your attention very well.

In My Hands

"Moral courage is a more rare commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence."

~Robert Francis Kennedy


Early on in the book, the main character, Irena, has the opportunity to return home before the war breaks out. She sends her family home a letter from school stating that she will not be returning home, and she is going to stay and help her country however she can in the war effort. Now the odds are she was going to be split from her family short after anyhow. But she did not know that. She had no idea of what was to become of her life and the war. Yet she still chose to stay away from her family because she felt it was the right thing to do. And she continues to risk her life to help others. They're at the point in the war where it is made known that anyone who is caught aiding the Jews is put up for the death penalty. Yet every night at work, she slips out and slides a tin of food under a fence into a ghetto. If she is caught doing this, she is dead. End of story. Yet she knows what she is doing is a good thing and she takes the risk. She is truly risking her life for her good morals; she is not in any type of real battle. She works in a kitchen. All she really has to do is her job, then go home and take car of herself and her sister. Yet she takes the time to make some kind of effort, with what she refers to as "a drop in the ocean." Although it's not going to make a huge difference and help every Jew in every ghetto; if it is helping just one person, that's all that matters to her.