This week for outside reading i continued with The Kite Runner. Khaled starts his trip to find Sohrab. An old friend of Rahim Khan, Farid, will drive him. They stop overnight and stay at Farid's brothers house. They have little money but still give him a nice meal. Khaled notices the children staring at him and he thinks they want his watch, but later he realizes it is his food they wanted because they did not get any. Khaled tells them why he is going and the Farid starts being nice to him because he understands now. They arrive and he sees the city has changed a lot since he had last been there. Khaled makes the mistake of staring at the Taliban and an old beggar runs up and tells him not to do that. He gives the beggar some money and keeps talking to him. He finds out the man had been a professor at the same college as him mom and they knew eachother. Khaled likes talking to him because his father doesn't like to talk about it. They soon go to the orphanage to find Sohrab but he is gone. Some officers take a few children every month and the man who runs the orphanage can't do anything about it. They leave and decide they will keep looking until they find him. Later that day they go to a soccer game where Khaled always went when he was younger. The officers bring in two people and stone them to death. Khaled makes a call to meet with a main officer to find out about Sohrab and to try and get him back.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
the kite runner #2
This week for outside reading I continued to read The Kite Runner. Rahim Khan starts telling Khaled all about what happened with Hassan. Rahim Khan had gone to find Hassan because he was lonely and for many other reasons. Hassan is very sad when he learns Baba has died. At first Hassan didn't want to leave his new home but eventually he agreed that he would. He and his pregnant wife went back to the house with Rahim Khan. They would not move in, they insisted on living in the shack in the backyard and they would do all the work for Rahim Khan. Hassans wife gave birth to a stillborn baby girl and they burried her in the backyard. They were devestated. Then his wife, Farzana becomes pregnant again. One day an old lady shows up starving and dirty. They soon learn it is Hassans mother. They nurse her back to health and she moves in to an empty bedroom. Farzana has a son and him and his mother become very close. She lived until he was four and then she didn't wake up one morning. Hassan taught his son how to fight kites just as he had when he was a kid, but kite tournaments are soon banned too. A few years later Hazaras are massacred in Mazar-i-Sharif. It hits Khaled all he has done. All the times he didn't stand up for Ali and Hassan. Khaled asks if Hassan is still in the house and Rahim Khan gives him a letter from him. There's also a picture. He finishes reading and then asks how Hassan is. Rahim Khan goes on to tell him about some officers that went to the house and thought it was too big for Hazaras even though Hassan said he was just looking after it. They say they will move in and Hassan protests, so they take him to the street, order him to kneel, and shoot him in the head. Farzana runs out screaming and they shoot her too. Rahim Khan wants Khaled to go find Hassan's son, Sohrab, and bring him back to him. Khaled says he can't, it's Rahim Khan's dying wish. Khaled still won't. Then Rahim Khan tells him Ali isn't Hassan's father. He realizes Baba was and they were half brothers. Khaled gets very mad that no one told him the truth. He storms out of the apartment. He realizes all the signs he should have a long time ago. He also realizes he needs to go find Sohrab to make things better after all the bad he has done.
the kite runner
This week for outside reading I skipped the Twilight series and continued with The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, that I started a while ago and then quit in the middle. Things in Afghanistan are continuing to get worse. Hassan faces a lot of trouble because he is a Hazara. One day after Khaled wins a kite tournament and Hassan runs and gets the winning kite, Khaled sees some other boys torturing Hassan in an alley. He just stands there and watches because he knows if he tries to help he will get hurt too so he runs home. Although he never tells Hassan, he always seems to know. This causes a lot of tension between them. It eventually gets bad enough that Hassan and Ali move out. This is very hard on Baba, but Khaled is secretly relieved. Baba and Khaled go to America to start a new life. Rahim Khan stays to look over the house. In America Khaled gets married and becomes a writer. Baba is very sick and ends up dying. Rahim Khan is very sick. He calls Khaled to Pakistan and says "there is a way to be good again." Khaled thinks about all the people close to him and all that he has done wrong and decides to go. He gets there and finds Rahim Khan is dying. He tells him that he not only wanted to see him before he dies, but also he has to tell him something important. He says that all the years he had lived in their house he wasn't alone, Hassan was with him. He had thought about writing and telling Khaled that, but he wasn't sure if he would want to know. He asks if he was wrong and the truth would be no, a lie would be yes, so Khaled just says "I don't know." Then Rahim Khan says he is going to ask Khaled to do something for him, but first he will tell him something about Hassan.
2 annotated citations
Research Question:
Should prisoners be isolated in solitary confinement units?
Laughlin, Meg. "Does Separation Equal Suffering?"
Meg Laughlin is a writer for the St. Petersburg Times. She writes mainly about criminal cases and the treatment of prisoners. Most of her articles are about the problems prisoners face in being locked up. A lot of her articles also involve racial issues. This article is written for the public to inform of the effects of solitary confinement. This article is similar to another that I have cited. Both articles are stories about people who have had the experience high security solitary confinement with minimal privileges. Both of the men would cut themselves with whatever they could find just to have something to do. Both also attempted suicide multiple times and one of the men succeeded. Both articles state that solitary confinement causes severe mental problems, however only one of the articles states what the prisoner did to land in solitary confinement. This work challenges the fact that prisoners are kept in solitary confinement because it states what the prisoner did, and the results of their actions.
Belluck, Pam. “Mentally Ill Inmates at Risk in Isolation, Lawsuit Says.” New York Times 9 Mar 2007. SIRS Researcher. SIRS Knowledge Source. Edina High School 8 Dec 2008 http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMN0307H-0-9017&artno=0000283445&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&title=Mentally%20Ill%20Inmates%20at%20Risk%20in%20Isolation%2C%20Lawsuit%20Says&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=N&ic=N.
Pam Belluck is a writer for the New York Times. She doesn’t seem to focus on one main topic, she writes about a variety of them. This article is also intended to raise awareness about the mental issues solitary confinement causes, written for the entire public to read. This article relates to “Does Separation Equal Suffering?” In this article the man succeeds in killing himself after many attempts. The boy in the first tried to kill himself many times but never did. This article focuses more on the mental issues that come up for a person living in solitary confinement. This article shows many of the negative affects of solitary confinement. One man says ''How many more men will have to die?'' and ''how many more men will be driven to harm themselves before this problem is fixed?'' This author is biased against solitary confinement and is trying to convince the public to agree with her.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
eclipse
This week for outside reading I read Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer. I finished the second book of the series and started this one right away. In this book Bella learns all about the history of the La Push tribes when she goes to the bonfire with Jacob. There's been a lor of killings in Seattle and and Charlie becomes very overprotective. Jasper says it is because there are new vampires. He tells Bella all about how he became a vampire with the armies in Texas and this is what's going on now in Seattle. The Cullens are going to join together with the werewolves to fight them. Bella notices stuff from her room is missing and realizes someone is trying to track her scent. Jasper teaches everyone how to fight the newborns. The wolves can't talk so Edward has to read their minds to translate what they are saying. While he is doing that he finds out about all the other problems and things they are thinking about. He relates their minds to a soap opera. He then tells Bella everything and she learns Leah is a werewolf, and the only girl one. That is why she looked so sad during the stories at the bonfire when they told about all the sacrifices many males made in becoming werewolves. The day of the fight comes and Bella's taken far out in the forest to hide her scent. Edward agrees to stay with her the whole time because she is afraid he won't come back if he joins in the fight. Seth also stays so Edward can read his mind and find out what's going on in the fight. Victoria and a newborn find them and Edward and Seth find and then kill them. Seth sees that Jacob has been hurt because he had to save Leah. Then they all meet up and the Volturi come. They kill the one newborn who is left. Jane says Arturo might come visit because Bella hasn't been turned into a vampire yet. This book was really good and I'm planning to start Breaking Dawn soon.
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