A Separate Peace

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It struck me then that I was hurting him again. It occurred to me that this could be an even deeper injury than what I had done before. I would have to back our of it, I would have to disown it. Could it be that he might even be right? Had I really and definitely and knowingly done it to him after all? I couldn't remember, I couldn't think. However it was, it was worse for him to know it. I had to take it back. But not here.

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I chose this paragraph because it demonstrates a kind of confrontation that we all have to deal with sometime in our lives. It is like if you have done something that is on the borderline of being bad, and you finally convince yourself you're not guilty, and someone rats you out. You probably could have lived with the deed driving you crazy all your life, but now that the victim is standing before you, you question yourself to the bone and end up confessing sometime. Not today, but sometime.

A Separate Peace - John Knowles

Original Paragraph:

Sixteen is the key and crucial natural age for a human being to be, and people of all other ages are ranged in an orderly manner ahead of and behind you as a harmonious setting for the sixteen-year-olds of this world. When you are sixteen, adults are slightly impressed and almost intimidated by you. This is a puzzle, finally solved by the realization that they foresee your military future, fighting for them. You do not foresee it.

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After reading this, I began to realize how much different their world was from ours today. Back then, WWII was going on, so 16 year-olds were foreseen as participants for the military. Their lives were basically planned out for them. Now, adults are more interested in the 18 year-olds, for they are going to be able to graduate and go to college at the end of their school year. Now, the first thing that adults ask a junior in High School, is "what are you going to do after you graduate?" A majority of them expect answers with the words "university" and "college" in them. Instead of war, education is now the main consideration of adults towards teens.

A Separate Peace

Original Paragraph:

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever. For me, this moment--four years is a moment in history--was the war. The was was and is reality for me. I still instinctively live and think in its atmosphere.

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I thought that this paragraph was particularly interesting. The author's philosophy is different than anything I have heard before, and it makes sense. As of now, I think my "moment" would be the four years that I have been going to school at ACE. This experience has influenced my whole life and I have a feeling I will never forget it. I have experienced every emotion possible while attending; happiness, excitement, disappointment, madness, motivation, etc. I know this four year moment in my life is about to come to an end, but i know it will always be a part of me and I am thankful for it. I am sure by the time I am older, my "moment for reality" will change, but for now, ACE is it.

The Great Gatsby -F.Scott Fitzgerald

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He smiled understandingly-- more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced-- or seemed to face-- the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished--and I was looking at an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd.

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I really loved this part of the book, because I have been working on a definition paper about the word "smile." I thought the author did a really great job of analyzing this type of smile and describing it with colorful vocabulary. Fitzgerald does a good job of taking something simple and everyday, like a smile, and digging deeper into the meaning of it. Like in this section, he doesn't simply describe the man's facial expression, he goes deeper into what it means and what the viewer is thinking. I really enjoy this book.

Marlboro Man:The Cowboy Who Stole My Heart

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Fifteen minutes later, I was in the company of both my friends and a glass of wine, feeling the kind of mellow buzz that comes not only from your first sip of the night but from the contentment of being with people who've known you forever.

That's when I saw him across the room. He was tall, strong, and quiet, sipping bottled beer and wearing jeans and, most notably, cowboy boots. And his hair. It was not only very short, but very, very gray-- much too gray for the youthfulness of his face but just gray enough to send me through the roof. Gracious, he was a vision, this Marlboro Man-esque person across the room. I inhaled deeply. I needed to see his hands.

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There is a lot more to this article, but I liked this part the best. Ree Drummond is the author of the Pioneer Woman Cooks Cookbook. She has written several articles about her life in the book, and she has a great sense of humor. This article is about how she first met her husband. Him and her are polar opposites; she was from a very urban city, and he was a fourth generation rancher. This combination seems to only happen in movies, but this is a true blue "city meets country" story. The way Ree describes her husband makes me laugh every time, and especially the last line in this section, because it relates to me so much. One of the first things I notice on a guy are his hands. If they are soft and perfectly clean, I generally steer clear of him. As a result, my boyfriend's hands are almost permanently stained with grease, and calloused from working. I thought it was amusing that her and I have the same taste.

Red Badge of Courage

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He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a columnlike tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that once had been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the gray skin of the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of a bundle along the upper lip. The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing.

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When I read this part of the story, I almost gagged. It is so graphic it almost made me sick. I was really glad that it was a book and not a movie. It made me try to picture what I would have done if I had encountered that corpse myself. I would have probably had a heart attack upon seeing it. I would have been curious enough to look at it, but as soon as I did, I would have regretted it. I would have screamed and ran once the meaning of that sight hit home base.

Gone With The Wind

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Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin--that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.

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Destiny was the most pure type of beautiful; she could captivate any man, but he always had to have a second look first. Her face was very lightly tinted, with a crop of copper colored freckles dusting her cheeks. She had long lashes, and they were a light golden color. Her eyebrows were the same shade of gold, and naturally beautiful; for they had never met a pair of tweezers. Her long, curly hair was the color of the sunset in her old Kentucky home, a deep reddish brown. Her skin was as white and pure as a pearl, not in the least tan-able. Her beauty was pure and without a molecule of makeup. It just took the men a few minutes to realize it.