The Reservation

My neighborhood is much different from the reservation that Junior lives on, but still there are some similarities.  On the reservation, everyone knows each other and knows where they live and knows what they do.  But most people in my neighborhood are strangers to me.  Of course, I have people that I know really well and I have acquaintances, but most people that I see on the street or in nearby stores, are strangers.  Another thing that is different, is that on the reservation that Junior lived on, he mentioned many times that everyone there was poor.  I would not say the same for my neighborhood.  But something that is similar between the reservation and my neighborhood is that they both hold community gatherings.  On the reservation, they all go to pow-wow's to meet up and dance and eat.  And in my neighborhood, they hold festivals with food and music.

Native Son

While Bigger is on trial, his lawyer, Max, tries to persuade the court to give him life in jail rather than the death penalty.  I think that Max takes Bigger's case not only because he himself has been treated horribly because he is a communist, but also because Max thinks that society shaped the way Bigger acted.  He said that Bigger being looked down upon and treated unfairly by whites was the reason that Bigger had felt the need to act the way he had that night.  Because there was no other option for Bigger in that moment of fear.  Max defends Bigger by saying that all blacks are treated this way by whites and that they even cornered black people to certain places that they wanted them to live in, rather than letting people live wherever they wanted.  Realtors would not sell black people houses/apartments except in the neighborhoods where other black people lived.  Despite the effort that Max made for Bigger to be put in jail for life, he was still found guilty and given the death penalty. 

Green Lights, Yellow Cars, and Church Steeples

These three terms all represent a major representation of something important in the story of The Great Gatsby.  Gatsby used to go out on his dock and watch the green light coming from the other side of the bay, from the end of Daisy's dock.  I think this represents the love that Gatsby has for Daisy and a sort of greed that Daisy has inside of her.  The yellow car is also another symbolic representation of money.  Money was something very necessary for this specific story and the people that lived there.  There was old money, which Daisy, Tom, and Nick all were born into.  And there was new money, which Gatsby had obtained by being a bootlegger.  The yellow car is a representation of new money because it is flashy, while the car that Tom owns is classy.  The church steeple is mentioned in the story while Nick was contemplating a decision that would later effect the outcome of peoples lives.  This is because a German philosopher named Immanuel Kant created some theories on morality while he was looking at a church steeple.