How to Write about High School Students

Before you begin talking about how 75% of this generation is going no where and how high school students need to learn a lesson, make sure to address the cause of the problem. More specifically, make sure to discuss their poor work ethic and their habit of procrastinating and not caring about school. Rule of thumb: students are the villains, schools and teachers are the heroes.

Tip before you start: make sure to always generalize one bad student to the rest of the student population,  and suggest hard and unnecessary punishments, to reprimand them for their habits (by the way, these habits may not actually exist, but pretend they do for the sake of being a good writer).

Of course, how can you write about high school students without mentioning drugs and alcohol? While writing, the characters must have done, currently do, or will do, drugs. They probably should do bad things because they want to experiment. Remember to mention that experimenting is a teenagers habit and that it is okay. NEVER mention that students can learn from their mistakes.

With the rising statistics about phone usage and bad grades, teenagers must be the cause of this. Instead of mentioning hours of homework, make sure to emphasize the hours they spend on their phone, or out with their friends. The students are too busy hopping school fences and skipping school to do their work, so some higher power should step in and show them who the real boss is. The characters would not be well represented if they study all the time. Superficial qualities should be added for some extra spice.

When writing this, consider some things that should never be mentioned. Firstly, students who excel in school are boring and do not make a good read, so just do not mention them. Students trying their hardest should also be avoided. It is highly unlikely that a high school student will care, so just drop it. Students suffering from stress, anxiety, and exhaustion don't need to be mentioned because then you would need to go into all the boring details about what kinds of consequences things like these hold (things that you probably care so much about).

The most important thing to repeatedly mention is that high school students are small children and quite possibly, robots (robots should only be included if you want to change up the article). No higher power should treat the high school students like they are adults or like they deserve adult privileges. Students should be intimidated, punished, and lectured at (These three things are crucial). Although you may not be a high school student yourself, you have the power to write about them and understand them accurately. Don't worry about disregarding the positive traits of the students, there are none anyways.

Paper 2 - Things Fall Apart

How does Things Fall Apart conform to, or deviate from, the conventions of a particular genre, and for what purpose?   

            Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a novel written in 1958 and follows the life of Okwonkwo, a strong willed man who is a part of the Ibo tribe in Nigeria. By following several characters throughout the novel, the reader is able to step into the shoes of a complex tribe who has their identity stripped away by British colonizers and Christian missionaries. As the tribe begins falling apart, there are many aspects of realism shown in the novel because the plotline can be applied to similar situations in history. African literature was not highlighted until the 1950’s, one of the primary reasons why their struggle and their side of the story is not commonly known today. Things Fall Apart is considered to be a realistic fiction because it reflects the Ibo culture and their history accurately and authentically while also showing the friction between the two different cultures and allows the reader to draw their own conclusions from the captivating plotline that Achebe brings about.   

            Achebe has been highly praised for his ability to show the Ibo culture and the situations they have had to endure without bias, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions. A good characteristic of a realistic novel is that it challenges the reader to think of ethical and moral implications and allows them to draw their own conclusions, while relating the plot and the characters to their own personal experiences. The egwugwu, the evil forest, the secret societies, and other complex traditions were just given to the audience with no personal opinions connected. When Achebe introduced the tradition that twins are thrown in the evil forest to die, he did not include any personal opinions and introduced it quite blandly and simply stated it as a fact. This allows the reader to recall their personal beliefs and opinions and draw their own conclusions on something like that. Unlike a lot of old literature about the African culture, this is one of the few books that gives the raw details of the culture. It is an accurate representation of human life, and it is realistic. The audience can relate to the love between Enzima and Ekwefi or the motivation that Okwonkwo has. With an accurate representation of human life and authentically representing the culture, many aspects of realism shine through. Although Achebe does not directly show how each individual person was affected with the colonization, he shows it subtly through the structure, thus changing the mood and tone throughout the novel, and allowing the readers to really understand what the Ibo went through. Throughout parts 1, 2, and 3, the clan begins falling apart. In part 1, the culture is shown and there are flashbacks, such as recalling Unoka’s laziness, and special events; there is a harmony in the culture. The sentences are short and the ideas bounce off of each other and everything seems to go well. In the second part, the harmony is still there but there are instances where the white people are mentioned. These instances seem to disrupt the harmony, but then it goes on. In the third part, the Ibo have been colonized, the sentences get longer, it is more linear and sequential, and the structure is very clear and organized. This shows how the Ibo went from harmonious and happy to structured and constrained.  Their identity and their love for their culture was taken away from them, and the audience can feel this just by reading the novel. So while the effect of the changing plot is not directly stated, being able to step into their shoes allows the reader to draw their own conclusions. The changing structure is realistic and shows exactly how a group of people can begin falling apart.

            The sociopolitical part of the novel is also a reason why this story is realistic. Colonization happened, Christian missionaries did influence a big portion of Africa, and land was taken. Although this novel is not a historic novel because it is not based on exact people and exact events, it is something that happened and it is realistic and believable. There is clear tension between the two different cultures, something that is realistic. There is a difference in perspectives between people in the own culture, something is also realistic. The setting and plot is reflective of the cultural and social status of the clan and the individual characters. Similar to how Mr. Brown used kindness and care as a way of influence, Christian missionaries came in peace and that is how they were able to influence. Unlike Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, where the Africans are portrayed as savages and as incompetent, Things Fall Apart shows both sides of the story, without directly antagonizing one side. Again, this allows the reader to be able to relate the plot to their own lives and understand how it is realistic. Students in Korea are able to relate this novel to their experience with the Japanese colonization. When an author accomplishes to take one plotline and be able to apply it to many different situations effectively, the have succeeded at writing a realistic fiction.

            In conclusion, we can see that giving the audience information as it is and allowing them to form their own opinions is at the heart of a successful realistic novel. Achebe was able to revolutionize African literature because he took real events and made it a fiction. Following Okwonkwo and other characters, the audience can’t help but sympathize with the characters and the internal and external conflicts they face. 

Why we Have Fallen Apart - A Memoir

"Our own men and our sons have joined the ranks of the stranger. They have joined his religion and they help to uphold his government.” What is the worst part about our clan falling apart is the fact that we can contribute the fault to the flaws of our culture. What we believed is a culture that held us together and made us stronger did exactly the opposite. Because we have all grown up believing that there can be no other explanation in the world besides what the oracle and the egwugwu say, our perception of the world was skewed. Why should my wife throw away the twins in the evil forest minutes after they are born? Why should Okwonkwo have to face a 7 year exile for a mere mistake? Why should Ikemefuna have been killed? The clan has never sat down and thought what harm keeping twins or keeping Okwonwko or Ikemefuna would do. Not having titles makes men worthless. Not being strong or wealthy automatically meant you were a disgrace to the culture. We drove too many people out of our culture and then we called ourselves a strong clan. We forgot the people who belonged to our clan, and they have turned against us. It would be pointless to fight the white men with our people because all of our own people are not fighting for the opposite side. Nothing has made us fall apart except having our own men turn against us. Our own men have turned against us because we made decisions to shut out every way of living that does not follow the “Ibo way”. We thought that strength prestige comes from power and titles. What the white men have showed us is that strength comes from education and peace. It has pained me to see our clan fall apart. “The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart."

Paper 2 Response

To what extent has an awareness of context enriched or enhanced your understanding of Things Fall Apart?

The Igbo people are a complex group of people with a rich history and traditions that are unlike many of the Western readers. Because Things Fall Apart is enriched with culture and tradition, reading it with an awareness of context completely changes the way the audience may perceive it. Without having an awareness while reading the novel, personal opinions can distort how the story and the characters are viewed. For example, feminists would find the treatment of women horrible. Not having an awareness of the context would prompt a reader to put their own personal life experiences and apply it to the Igbo society because in their eyes, the Igbo culture is not as complex. Wife beating and the notion of patriarchy would have been taken out of context and the reader would not have been able to focus on the actual purpose of the novel, which is the notion of tradition and the effect of colonization. Firstly, not knowing about the context would have led me to several conclusions. Firstly, the Igbo people are violent and beat their wives because women are considered worthless. After knowing about the context, I know that women were respected in the tribe and just like the disadvantages they had, they also had a fair share of advantages.  When it comes to throwing out the twins into the evil forest, it is known that that is one of the instances of the flaws of the Igbo culture. With that being said, I have learned that these things are a result of their religion and them believing that it is bad luck or “chi” to keep twins and it goes against the rules of their culture. The Igbo people spend their entire lives trying to reach and equilibrium. That equilibrium can be between the real and the spiritual world or it can be between having common sense while also respecting their cultures. Things like throwing twins out into the evil forest are one of the ways the Igbo try to reach that equilibrium. Without an understanding of that before reading the book, certain acts like that would have been considered barbaric. This is the first piece of African literature that I have read and been able to reach a complete understanding of. While I knew that the Europeans perspective on the Africans during colonization was highly skewed, I did not expect the Igbo people or any other group of people to have such a complex culture with so many different aspects. Reading the novel with an understanding of the context and the traditions and the culture allowed to open up my mind to more than one perspective while reading the book. I was able to understand the European perspective because to them, throwing twins out in the forest is barbaric. At the same time, I was able to understand the African perspective because it is their culture and it is what they genuinely believe is the correct way to live. Having such a deep understanding of the context and the different perspectives lets me read the novel in a different light and understand it on a much deeper level.