Lucky Strike

Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks, takes place in a small village called Eyam during the time in which the plague strikes Europe. The village’s young priest, Michael Mompellion, convinces the people to quarantine themselves within the village to stop the spread of the plague. The novel follows the protagonist, Anna Frith, as she witnesses the deaths of her family and friends. Throughout this year full of many deaths, few births, and countless struggles, the women of Eyam fight through it…

offensive attack. This gave Virginia’s militia the upper hand, therefore crushing the rebellion with ease. During the battle Nat Turner was extremely lucky yet again in surviving the massacre, a few lived but then were immediately taken into custody. He once said in the Confessions of Nat Turner “That I chose Independence Day as the moment to strike was of course a piece of deliberate irony.” Again strengthens in my mind that this guy was genius and…

“Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller details the last two days of William ‘Willy” Loman, a sixty-three year old salesman’s life. The plays shows Willy’s private conversations about his past and present, which all lead up to him eventually committing suicide. Willy Loman’s life philosophy would be best summed in a quote by Calvin Coolidge, a former president of the United States, “The chief business of the American people is business.” Willy took pride in being a salesman and earning a name…

The American Dream is a concept that was always deeply embedded in the American psyche from the very beginnings of its earliest settlements. The concept emerged through the cognition of America as the “promised land”, the mythical symbol of a “new Eden”, a “Kingdom of Heaven on Earth”, where man was in complete control of his political, social, mercantile and religious destiny. Despite the internal tensions the Civil War brought forth, the rapid growth of industrialisation of the nineteenth…

cent (Leroy, 2004). The infectious disease is transmitted to people as a result of direct contact with bodily fluids containing the virus. The Ebola virus is killing thousands of innocent people around the world, quickly becoming an epidemic which strikes fear in the hearts of people due to the way it spreads and the quick, yet painful death that follows…

I was lucky enough to be part of an educational program named Upward Bound that was filled and lead by public intellectuals who performed exactly as Linda Martin describes. The program leaders nurtured and guided us to the best of their abilities to help us reach…

In awe, Cortés saw the Mayan pyramids for the first time. Cortés went to talk to the people of the island and he became lucky once he heard of a man on the next-door island who was shipwrecked near Jamaica in 1511. Geronimo de Aguilar would become Cortés’ personal translator who could communicate with the Mayan people. However, as he continued his journey down the tip of…

Doctors and dentists being the biggest cash crops, along with lawyers, builders and shop owners. They could charge lots of money for appointments and make thousands of dollars working in California trying to “strike it rich” in a different way. One of the biggest clothing companies that is known worldwide today started in California during the Gold Rush. Levi Strauss was a merchant who arrived in California in 1853. Strauss began his career by beginning to make…

Wages, at a point, sunk so low that workers had finally had enough exploitation. In the 1833 strike of seamstresses, women “sought economic justice as exploited laborers in a competitive market (p. 132).” Their plight proved there was a relationship between wage labor and economic dependence. The strike did succeed in helping resist the lowering of wages but, did not help in raising them. While exploitation hurt the common laborer, it’s one of the…

Brinnnng! Brinnnng!. For many public school students, the sounding of the lunch bell signifies a delightful break from perceived mundaneness. A time to relax, kick back, crack some jokes, and if one’s lucky, steal a kiss before replacing the energy expend on the mornings arithmetics with a healthy lunch packed by a parent, or sold at the school’s cafeteria. For other students, hidden amongst this calamity, the ringing of the lunch bell resonates bittersweet, sounding their provided daily…