Written Task V.2

RATIONALE

For this written task I wrote an opinion article, about how Arthur Radley lived during his lock down inside his house, and about a fictional case I created based on “To kill a Mockingbird”, a novel by Harper Lee, where Arthur Radley supposedly killed his family and himself.

I wrote my opinion article with a serious tone because I am talking about a serious event, murder. So I think it is the best way to approach to the topic.

The purposes of my text are to show Arthur’s living conditions, not according to what the book says, but according to what I think they might be like. Also to show my opinion about Arthur and the fictional event I created, and at the same time reveal facts about how I think his personality is, trying to relate everything with events that happened the book.

My objective for this written task was to be as clear as possible, so my ideas could be easily understood. Also that my point of view could be easily recognized in the text, to be able to persuade my audience that Arthur was innocent and that his father, and after his death his brother, were both terrible tyrants to him.

TEXT

“Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them”. This was found written on one of the Radley house walls.

Everyone in Maycomb County knows that the Radley family was found dead in the Radley house a week ago, and that it has been a controversial topic since then. I am not saying it should not be this way, it certainly is a shocking event that deserves people’s attention, but the problem is that the judgmental inhabitants from this town blame Arthur Radley for this murder, and I think he is innocent. That is why I will show everyone how he lived, how was his relation to Maycomb county, and why I think he is innocent.

            About three days ago, I was able to visit the crime scene, and I found something very interesting. More than ten diaries written by Arthur Radley himself. He started writing them when his father locked him in the house, and he never stopped writing until his death.

            While I was reading, I started to question myself, why would he kill his own family? In his diaries he admitted that he used to be a “misguided” teenager when he started meeting up with the Ewells, he admits it was a bad idea, and that he should have been punished, but that he would rather be punished by the state than by his father because the state would not have sentenced a teenager to a life in prison. So he definitely had reasons to murder his family because he must have been angry, they deprived him from his freedom. It is an aberration, anyone who does that to his son clearly does not love him like a parent should. He was a tyrant who treated him as a criminal in a prison.

            First, let me tell you how he lived. His father was a tyrant that locked him up inside the house, everyone knows that, but no one had ever entered the house until now. What I saw was a normal house; they had a living room, bathrooms, a kitchen, normal things anyone with a stable economic situation in the 1930’s would have. But in their basement, there was another room, where I found the diaries that Arthur had written. In it, there were a few blankets and chains; they looked like they were used to keep someone from leaving the room. It was gloomy inside, the smell was putrid, and the image of someone sleeping tied up in there was creepy. The atmosphere of the room made me realize how cruel they were to him because it was already cruel enough that he was locked inside his house for all this time, but it is even worse that it was under these living conditions.

            Now that I have described how he lived, I will tell you a few things about the diaries. He described that every time his father or Nathan would leave the house they locked him in the basement and chained him to the floor. He would stay there with no possibility of leaving or going outside, they told him they were ashamed of him and that they did not want anyone looking at him because they would be even more embarrassed.  Eventually he learnt how to untie himself, and when they left, he would be able to walk freely inside the house. He never dared to leave, he just did it a few times, and they were special occasions, in his diaries he said he only went out to help three kids from the town, and to leave them some gifts inside a tree, which was sealed when his brother realized what he was doing, he took away his only way of having a life outside of the house. He would take every precaution possible to avoid being seen because if anyone saw him outside his father would know, probably Miss Stephanie Crawford would have told him, because she was such a gossipy person.

            Arthur Radley wrote in his diaries about three kids that had a special interest in him. He would spend hours in the window watching them as they ran in his house’s front yard, or played a game that apparently was inspired in him. He wrote about how the kids were too scared to go anywhere close to the house, and that it took one of the kids, the oldest of the them, a lot of time to run and touch the house, and after that go back to his friends before anything happened to him. “It is what rumors do” explained Arthur in his diary entry. In their game, they would role play about Arthur’s life, specifically the different events that Miss Stephanie Crawford told everyone about; for example that he stabbed his father in the leg or that he escaped during the nights to scare people from their windows. He thought it was quite interesting, he enjoyed watching them, and he would often laugh, he could be happy at least for a while. For example, he wrote about one time that the little girl was inside a tire, and she rolled inside the house’s yard, when she realized where she was, she was so scared that she even left the tire behind and desperately ran to back to his friends. She even made one of the go back for the tire. He laughed so hard, that he thought the girl might have listened to him. I think these things made him feel important, and that he was as curious about these kids as they were curious about him.

Now, let’s talk about his reputation in Maycomb county. Everyone knew who he was, some people spread rumors about them, some of them I have already talked about, like stabbing his father, etc. Miss Stephanie Crawford was the main “spreader” of these rumors, it sounds absurd, but Miss Stephanie really spread all this nonsense, and apparently everyone believed it. Arthur said it was all part of his father’s plan to keep him isolated, he would tell Miss Stephanie some lies and after that she would just do what she did best, tell it to everyone, then no one would want to see him because they would be afraid of him. Again, his father has taken something away from his son, the opportunity to socialize if he ever got out because everyone would be too scared to try and talk to him after hearing what he supposedly did.

And finally, what seemed odd to me. In the crime scene Nathan Radley, Arthur Radley and their mother, were in the same room, Arthur and his mother were stabbed several times, but Nathan was stabbed only once. Also the only one with blood in his hands was Nathan. How could Arthur have stabbed both of them and be completely clean? Why was Nathan only stabbed once? Clearly because he did it. I think I have proven how cruel this family can be, and that people like Nathan and his father can be capable of anything. Even of locking Arthur in a room with terrible conditions, and why not? of killing everyone in the family.

To Kill a Mockingbird Historical Context (Task4)

Author	Subject	Mood	Title
Bessie Smith	Great Depression	Melancolic	Nobody Knows When You're Down And Out
Big Bill Broonzy	Racism	Feels discriminated	Black, Brown and White
Lead Belly	Jim Crow	Protest	Jim Crow Blues
Bessie Smith	Loneliness	Sadness	I ant got nobody
Big Bill Broonzy	Overworking(slavery?)	Hopelessness	Sixteen Tons

Harper Lee questions

• When was she born?: April 28, 1926
• Where did she live? Monroeville, Alabama.
• What did her father do? Her father was a lawyer and a newspaper editor.

•  What is the cultural and educational background of the author? Since the beginning of her life she has been surrounded by a racist environment, racism was much "stronger" during those years, compared with the society now. But still there is racism in the world, it hasn't disappeared.

She studied in alabama, she started studying laws like her father but she didn't finish because she wanted to be a writer. She also studied at the oxford university.

• What are the values and aesthetic concerns of the culture of the author (literature movement, cultural movement, society of that time, etc)?  Society in that time had a strong racial "hate", in other words most of them were racists or at least they apparently were, her father defended two racially discriminated persons, because of their skin color, they were both killed. I think things like this could've made her realize that it wasn't right to discriminate people for their race, or any other aspect of their lives, so she might have gained social consciousness by being surrounded with all these things.
• What important social, political or economic issues took place in the author’s times? Racial discrimination, especially in the south of the united states.

• Do you think that her childhood is reflected on the book? It might be, haven't read it yet.

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was a famous English writer in the twentieth century. She wrote books like Orlando(1928) and Mrs. Dalloway(1925). She also was a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals.

Throughout her life she had different events that caused mental breakdowns, not just one, many produced by different life changing events, like deaths of her mom, dad and siblings. She even included some terms the doctors that were treating her used to describe her mental illness in her book Mrs. Dalloway (1925).

Virginia Woolf was a feminist, she even wrote about how women were excluded from some rights that men had, for example education at a university. In To the Light House (1927) she recreated her parents marriage and its inequality (men is superior in the relationship). As we can see, Woolf wrote a lot about things related with her life, as I just mentioned she was a feminist, so she wrote about her parents marriage inequality, she had a mental illness and she wrote a book using the same terms they used to describe her.

She was a Modernist writer at some point, modernism was a predominant genre during the 20th century, specifically until 1960s. Modernism was a self conscious break with the past, a search for new forms of expression. People no longer believed institutions were reliable, so they just trusted themselves, there was a break with traditions, all things are relative, concern with the subconsciuos etc. WW1 became one of the catalysts of this movement due to the damage it did, and how humans killed humans (stopped believing in institutions because they taught them what they know, and suddenly humans were killing each other because of them). Virginia Woolf wrote about modernism in To the light house (1927), it strays from conventional forms focusing on stream of consciousness.

Finally, she suicided walking into river Ouse with stones in her pockets, due to a new mental breakdown which she didn't believe she could handle. Virginia Woolf was a writer with her own ideals, and experiences which apparently made her writing really interesting.

Martin Luther King an example for our society

"I have a dream", is a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. It was delivered on August 28 in 1963 at the Lincoln memorial.

This speech is considered one of the best speeches from the 20th century, it demands racial justice and it gives different images of a "perfect world" where everyone can live together in peace. It also helps us to understand how their society feels, and their resentment after hundreds of years being discriminated.

This speech is effective because he believes in equality, one of the main topics in the speech, and he sounds confident of the values he talks about in his speech.

In the speech he also uses different rhetorical devices and persuasive techniques that help to construct a credible speech, for example "But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity." In this quote he uses repetition, he repeats "One hundred years" twice in the same paragraph, the effect this causes is to emphasize that it has been a long time, and the negro is still discriminated. He also uses a metaphor, "the life of the negro is still crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination." to compare their lives to a horrible condemn, where they are constantly discriminated and segregated from the society.

Things like this examples can be seen through all the speech, and they have a powerful effect on the people that hear them.

It is a shame that things like discriminating people for their skin color has happened and it is even worse that it still happens, when humans are supposed to "evolve" and make progress as a society. But it is better that there are humans like Martin Luther King that are trying to do something about this things, I think people with his point of view are necessary for our society. That is why I also think this is one of the best speeches of the 20th century, besides, it is also well structured and achieves its goal.

New Zealand

A cultural element that called my attention from New Zealand is how they respect each other and the maoris, it is impressive how two cultures live together and accept each other, because Chile, unlike New Zealand doesn’t respect the other cultures that live in our national territory. They even recognize Maori as an official language from New Zealand. Also through their history they have even had agreements.

That is one of the main differences, the acceptance and convivence of both cultures in their territory, small details like things written in both Maori and English make a difference.

Another difference between Chile and New Zealand is how clean their cities are, and how they take care of their environment, if you walk in Wellington you won’t see anything written on the walls, no rubbish on the streets, everything is clean. Also their green areas are clean and they take care of them.

A similarity between both Chilean and NZ’s culture is that both descend from aboriginal cultures, like the Maori, Mapuche, etc. The difference in that is how they respect them and we don’t.

What is it to be a New Zealander?

Being a New Zealander has both similarities and differences with being a Chilean. Being a New Zealander implies being kind and generous, even in small details of daily life like cars stopping to let people go across the street, or saying hello when you walk next to them even if they don’t know you.

New Zealand’s society has more than one culture (multiculturall), there are maoris, Asians, pacific islanders, people from european descendence, etc. And they all live together without any kind of discrimination for their skin colour, appearance, etc.

One aspect of New Zealand’s daily life is their way of eating, at breakfast they usually have cereal, toasts, similar to Chile, at lunch they eat a sandwich or something like that, not too much. Dinner time is special to them, they eat a lot, like a Chilean lunch, this is special because it is a moment when they can share a moment with their families and talk about their day, etc.

New Zealand is also a safe place, people who live in here don’t usually steal or do anything that is against the law, it is weird to see that, it is a peaceful place of the world, you could even leave your phone charging in the subway, then go somewhere else and when you come back your phone will still be there (we know that wouldn’t happen in Chile).

In New Zealand they also take care of their cities and green areas, if you walk in Wellington it is really weird to see trash or anything written in the walls, it is a really clean place.

To sum up, people in New Zealand are really kind and nice, they take care of the place and respect each other.