Book Review

The book I am reading this quarter is called Pendragon: The Merchant of Death by D.J. MacHale.

 I chose to read this book because it was passed down to me from my brother and he said it was a good book. It is an action/horror book so anyone who would like a thrilling story with a lot of twists this would be a good book for them. On a scale from one to ten I think I would give it a nine.

Edgar Allan Poe Essay

Konnor Drewen

Mrs. Zurkowski

Greens

11/1/010

Why Green is Adolescence

            The color green in the story is the third room from the east-wing. The symbolic meaning is of the adolescence years of life. It is like forests because people that age like to explore. It is also the color of money and that about the time where someone starts to build up a fund of money. That is because around that time people start to worry about money and the future. Green is adolescence because it is an early stage of life but it is showing that much time has passed.

            It symbolizes the progression of life because each color shows a different time in life. Each room in the story is a different color starting in the east and ending in the west. Like how the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Or how the clock goes in a clockwise motion starting at one and ending at twelve making a full rotation.  The color blue helps to think of birth and young children. The color purple helps to think of children around the age of eight, how they are happy and worry-free. The color green helps to think of young adults and adolescence. Always exploring and searching around in the woods and other places. Also starting to consider money and how important it is for life. Orange is more of a time of adulthood. Going to parties and seeing some friends. White helps think of the wise and the older. Not always considered the most interesting but defiantly someone that people should talk to more often than not. Violet is the sorrowful years. Where people think that the old are just in pain and sometimes the old are even hoping to pass soon. Black is the end of it all. From about seventy to when they pass to the other side.

            My color relates to my life because I am in those years now. This is an important stage because people my age are starting to worry about college and money and the rest of their lives. People my age still like to explore in this time of our lives but in different way. We explore different career fields to find something we may go to college for. There is also another kind of symbolism in this story. I think actually in the story that the people went through these stages while in the castle. The blue stage was when they first got into the castle. The purple stage was after they had settled in. I think the green stage in the castle was some of the time when they were having the parties. The orange stage was the rest of the time they spent at parties. The white stage was the masquerade. The violet was when they saw the red death and Prince Prospero was chasing him through the rooms. The black was when the Prince died followed by the rest of the partyers.  They were having fun are going through a new life in the castle until the red death showed its face. That just proves that no matter what you do you can’t escape Death itself.

O.Henry

O. Henry

·         O. Henry was born William Sydney Porter in Greenboro, North Carolina.

·         When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his parental grandmother and paternal aunt.

·         In 1887 he married Athol Estes Roach; they had one daughter and one son.

·         In 1894 Porter started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone.

·         When the weekly failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist.

·         In 1894 cash was found to have gone missing from the First National Bank in Austin, where Porter had worked as a bank teller.

·         When he was called back to Austin to stand trial, Porter fled to Honduras to avoid trial.

·         Porter entered in 1898 a penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.

·         While in prison, Porter started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter Margaret. His first work, 'Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking' (1899), appeared in McClure's Magazine.

·         After doing three years of the five years sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry.

http://kirjasto.sci.fi/ohenry.htm

Edgar Allan Poe

famouspoetsandpoems.com

Something I already knew about Edgar Allan Poe is that he wrote"The Tell Tale Heart" and "The Raven." There is also a engraving of a raven on his tombstone.

Answers to Questions

1.      Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. He died on October 7, 1849.

2.      The tragic event that influenced his writing was when his mother, brother and foster mother all died in 1842 after contracting tuberculosis.  

3.      Some theories of why he died are beating, epilepsy, dipsomania, heart, and toxic disorders.

4.      I think that he called Virginia home.

5.     He married a girl named Virginia and she was fourteen.

6.      Signed the guestbook.

7.      The Raven was published January of 1845.

8.       No one really knows who the Poe Toaster is. Many people have come forward but it has not been proven any of them did anything.

9.       The Tell-Tale Heart and the Black Cat were written in 1842.

10.       West Point military academy expelled Poe in 1831.

Thoughts on short stories

I look foward to reading short from Edgar Allan Poe because I always liked his way of thinking and his work. I also look forward to reading some William Shakespeare. I have enjoyed reading his work before and will enjoy reading it now. 

Police Corruption Research Paper

D 1

Konnor D

Mrs. Zurkowski

Greens

 October 1, 2010

                Can you trust your local police officers? I think you can, but in some places you can’t. The problem is police corruption. In places like Los Angeles and Chicago, the corruption of the police department is a large problem. There are multiple cases where police officers are accused of taking and planting evidence. States should crackdown on corruption in the police department because if it continues to increase, the people will not know who they can trust.

            The problem with police corruption is unacceptable because these “Crooked Cops” are putting innocent people in prison.  One instance in particular was a center of a major account involving an Officer Rafael Perez. He was reported of stealing $1 million worth of cocaine from the evidence room. The court lightened his sentence when he told them about another incident when he and another officer “handcuffed an unarmed teenager, shot him in the head, planted a rifle near his body, and then claimed it as self-defense.” The victim, Javier Ovando, then served

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23 years in prison after being paralyzed from the assault (“Police Brutality”). An instance like this is why police corruption and or police brutality needs to be stopped.

            This corruption is mainly affecting certain groups of people. The main groups affected by this are the Mexicans and the African Americans. Some of the problem is coming from Community Policing. That is when citizens take the job of patrolling the streets into their own hands.  “And because the police usually deal with problem citizens they have developed an us versus them mentality.”(“Policing Minority Neighborhoods (sidebar)”) The stressors like these may be what drive some officers to brutality.

            There are some ways people are already starting to help this problem. The officers being accused are treated as citizens instead of getting special treatment.  “Rampart police are accused of stealing drugs, falsifying reports, framing people, and abusing unarmed suspects.”(Weitzer) This was a line from an article shows that they were treated like citizens instead of being quiet about the incident it was made known. They found this is how the people are helping to stop the problem. There are some arguments against these accusations though.

            One of the arguments is about profiling subjects that could be criminals. By profiling possible subjects the police could be putting criminals in prison. The problem with this is that they could also be putting innocent people in prison. Profiling is O.K. in some cases but only when it is “Criminal Profiling” and that is used to determine how an “Un-Sub”(or unknown subject) acts and reacts to situations.

             A second argument is how some officers have planted drugs or evidence on known criminals to get them arrested. This is a way that police could put drug dealers away for good.

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But is that really the way that we want justice to be done, by lying to the people to get the job done. Do we really want our police to stop law breakers by breaking the law themselves?

            In conclusion, the amount of corruption in the police department is a large problem because it is taking innocent lives. The people it’s affecting are mainly minorities and that is causing the people to stop trusting officers. There are many ways that the people are helping to stop the problem of corruption. By profiling they could be stopping many crimes but it could be putting innocent people in prison. By planting evidence on known drug dealers they are actually helping us but is that the way we want to bring them to justice. That is why police corruption should be stopped because if we can’t trust the officers who can we trust.

Works Cited

"Police Brutality." Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 24 June 2010. Web. 3

            Oct. 2010. <http://www.2facts.com/article/i0102500>.

"Policing Minority Neighborhoods (sidebar)." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues &

            Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 7 May 1999. Web. 3 Oct. 2010.

            <http://www.2facts.com/article/ib401180>.

Weitzer, Ronald. “Can the Police Be Reformed?.” Contexts vol. 4, No. 3. Summer 2005: 21-26.

            SIRS Researcher. Web. 15 Sep 2010