For this assignment, we all were given information on different African people in history. We had to learn about that person, and then we wrote a creative piece. We had to put facts from their actual lives and bring in creativity. I had Dorothy Creole, who was a half-freed slave in New York. By reading about her life, I learned a lot about the lives of slaves in this time and how they were a tight knit community. Dorothy Creole adopted her friend’s child after his parents died. I am very proud of this piece, because I think I was able to put the fact and fiction together well. As I humanities student, I learned that I am very good at retaining information from non-fiction, and then bringing in things that weren’t originally part of the story. I really enjoy doing this because it allows the writer to have some freedom. Overall, I was very proud of this piece.

In this project, I wrote from the perspective of John Smith to the London Company about everything that was happening in the New World. I am proud about this because I used all of the information that I had gotten from the book that we were reading in class and I incorporated that into the letter. I think that I used some of the language that John Smith might have used.

September 16, 1607

Dear London Company,

I hope this letter finds you in good health. This is an update on our progress here in the New World. I am writing to tell you that we are here. Though the land is swampy and the water is brackish, we are here. I must say, kind Sirs, though it was you who have sent us on this expedition, you have also made our work harder than it needs to be. You see, we have all been paid in advance, so the workers aren’t working as hard as they should be, myself not included. Of course, I am working at everything, and cleaning up the messes made by the others. This journey is much like many of my others, long, hard and laborious, but hopefully with a fruitful end.

As I mentioned before, the land is swampy and I fear we have picked the wrong place to settle. There is deep water leading right up to our shores. It is convenient for us, for we can sail right up. But, the Spanish could attack at any moment. We also have woods right outside of our fort. We can collect any and all of the wood needed to survive, but as you might be able to tell, the trees are an extreme fire hazard. I have tried to tell this to my fellow settlers, but no one seems to listen.

I have met an Indian. Her name is Pocahontas and she is the daughter of the leader of the Powhatan’s, great Powhatan himself. They have adopted me into their tribe and made me an honorary chief. I have even learned to speak their language. Not always have they been kind to me, though. They have tried to kill me on many occasions.  Once, as I bravely stood before the executioner, Pocahontas threw herself on me and saved my life.

Sirs, you have helped us in many ways, and I thank you for choosing me to stay here and settle. You have also presented us with many problems and I ask you to fix them.

Sincerely,

John Smith

This is the note card that I wrote for my colonial project. My subject is family life. In this note card, I wrote about marriage and courtship. I really liked writing about it because it’s a subject that really interests me. My source for this note card was a Wiki, so I got my information from the people who were doing this topic last year. It was really interesting to read some of the interviews from last year. I am proud of it because I worked really hard and I think I made good connections. We had to do 10 note cards in all and this was my last one. When I first started writing the note cards, I wasn’t doing as much analysis as I could have, so I started trying to stretch the analysis. Once I got to the 10th note card, I was able to do a lot more analysis that I did before. I also spent a lot more time on this one than I did on any of the others.

Source:

Williamsburg, VA, Historic Interpreter. Interview. By Olivia Cueto. 2015.

Quote:

“Colonial marriage perspectives were pretty much all the same. The women would get married at the age of 12 or 13 and the men would be a few years older. Women changed a lot when they got married. Before native women got married they were bald, naked and usually covered in grease. But when a native women got married they finally grew out their hair, got clothing, and could start caring more about their bodies. Weddings were held in cold months Blacksmiths could marry a couple. If a divorce happened, the mother would usually take the children unless she was the one that cheated.”

Paraphrase:

• Women would get married at puberty and men would be a few years older. 
• Once women got married, their lives changed completely.
• When Native American women got married, they were bald, naked and covered in grease.
• When the woman got married, they grew out their hair, got clothing and started caring about their bodies.
• Weddings happened in cold months.
• Blacksmiths could marry people.
• If a divorce happened the mother would take the children.
• If the wife was the one who cheated on her husband, the husband might take the children.

My Ideas:

In this quote, she says that women got married at puberty. In another note card that I had it said that women got married in their 20s. The men would be a few years older because that might show superiority. Once women got married, their outlooks in life changed. The way that they were viewed in society changed and the way that they viewed the world changed. Society started seeing them as women, instead of girls. Once women got married, they were finally recognized in the society as adults. They viewed the world differently because they started seeing things the way that adults see it. For example, instead of seeing war like something far off, they started seeing war like a really problem for their society. They would also start to care more about their appearance. Before the women were married in Native American societies, they were usually bald, naked and covered in grease. Once they got married they were allowed to grow out their hair and clean themselves and care about their clothes.  This shows that marriage affected women more than men. Once women got married, the women would start to have children. Once they had children, their whole lives would be different.  Men wouldn’t see their families very often because they were so busy hunting, so when they got married, their lives wouldn’t be as impacted. Weddings were held in cold weather. I don’t really know why. I think it could have been because the men wouldn’t be as busy in the winter, so they had more time to plan a big celebration like a wedding. If a divorce happened in Native American cultures, the mother would take the children because the wife would normally be the one to initiate the divorce. The women were the ones who could initiate the marriage by throwing the men’s clothes out of the house. This shows that Native American women had more power in a marriage then a European women might. A European women would never even think about divorcing her husband, let alone actually doing it. It would be extremely rare for a European woman

History:

Created: 11/02/2016 10:59 AM

This is my Giver essay that we wrote in Humanities class. After we read The Giver, by Lois Lowry, we all wrote essays and chose themes. I chose the theme of emotions and how Jonas, the main character, and his community don’t really have the same emotions that we have.  I’m really proud of it because I went deep and I made strong connections. I learned all about TEEAC paragraphs and that really helped me in my writing process. I really enjoyed writing it and I think my work reflected that.

Emotions, the Doorway to Individuality

Can you imagine living in a world where all of your emotions are being censored to keep a utopia? In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, the people in power have to suppress the emotions of the citizens to stay in power. Jonas is a 12-year-old boy who lives in a community where all of the normal emotions are subdued. Jonas is different from all of the other people in his Community. He notices things that most other people don’t. When he is chosen to be the Receiver of Memory, he starts to learn about the world before the Community. He learns about color and choices, but he also learns about pain and death. Most importantly, he learns about love. Jonas and The Giver, his trainer, have to decide what to do. Risk their lives for the Community, or let it be. The Elders in Jonas’s Community have to make sure that they stay in power. As long as they are in power, they can keep the people in the Community from having the feelings that we have on a daily basis. When the Community doesn’t have those feelings, the Elders are able to keep the utopia.

In Jonas’s Community, the Elders make sure that all of the people’s feelings are suppressed. By giving the people in the Community the pills for Stirrings and having family units share their feelings, the Elders are using their power to take away the emotions of the people. When the families share their feelings, the parents are able to make the children’s emotions more subdued and not as angry or sad. When The Giver is giving Jonas new memories, Jonas gets a memory with a family in it. He experiences love for the first time.“ ‘Love.’ It was a word and concept new to him,” (Lowry, p. 105). This quote shows that Jonas has no comprehension of what love is. The Elders took all of the love out of the Community when they started giving pills for Stirrings and when they have parents make their children’s emotions more subdued. His parent’s marriage wasn’t based on love at all. It was based on a compatibility test on a computer, which doesn’t mean that they will fall in love. They might fall in love later in their marriage, but that seems unlikely because of how they were married, being pushed together with no previous knowledge of each other. Even if they do fall in love later, it would definitely be expressed in a different way, and might not even be recognized as love. When Jonas asks his mom and dad later in the book if they love him, they are shocked and don’t know how to answer at all. They say that they are proud of his accomplishments and they like to be around him, but they avoid the word love completely. He likes Fiona, but I don’t think that he loves her yet, especially when he is still taking the pills. There is not one place in his Community where he could have witnessed love, except in the memories given to him by the Giver. This relates to the theme utopia. In our society, we experience love in all of our daily lives. For example, I love my family. But in the world that Lois Lowry has created, the Elders took away all of the love, and therefore, all of the individuality and replaced it with monotony and “Sameness.” When you take away all of the individuality, you would be able to create a utopia because there would be no conflicts. Not only do the Elders enforce monotonous feelings throughout the people’s lives, they also raise the children to not have normal emotions to start with.

The Elders in Jonas’s Community are able to have the parents raise the children to not have emotions. Instead of knowledge and feelings, the children are ignorant to the bad things in their Community, like the complete power of the Elders. They still have some feelings, but they are sort of muted, not really what we know emotions to be like in our world. When Jonas is talking to The Giver, they start to talk about Fiona and how she was raised. “Feelings are not part of the life she’s learned,” (Lowry, p. 126). This quote is showing that children in the Community are raised to not have normal emotions. In this society, the children are raised to be normal. There is nothing different about anyone. One of the things that make us each individual in our world is our emotions, because no one has the exact same emotions as anyone else. In the society that Lowry created, most people’s emotions are the same and that is the norm. When Jonas stops taking his pills and starts to feel some of the emotions that we feel, he starts to become more of an individual. The longer the book goes on, the more feeling he starts to experience. Therefore, the more emotions that people have and the more they express them, the more of an individual the person is.

Jonas’s Community functions on the idea that all of the emotions of the people have been taken away by the Elders. As long as the Elders are able to do this, they are able to keep the utopia that they want. In Jonas’s Community, the people don’t have the same emotions that we have regularly. The Elders have taken the emotions out by giving pills and having the parents calm the children down when they have any feelings that are out of the ordinary. When there aren’t any emotions in the world, everyone becomes the same and no one has anything special about them. Emotions are what make us different as people. No two people have the exact same emotions at the exact same time. The reason that we have conflicts in our world is because of difference. The reason we have war and racism and sexism is because we are not all the same. When the difference is taken out of the world, there is no conflict, but there is also no love. When a world has no love, people close off because they don’t care specifically about anyone or anything. Can you imagine living in a world where you don’t have a special connection with anyone? Without love, the world becomes bland and becomes a dystopia. Lowry is saying that we need our emotions to function as a society.