Mockingjay Blogpost By Gus Miller, Class 802

The novel Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins vividly depicts a dystopian society split into districts and ruled by a corrupt, sadistic capital. The hero, Katniss Everdeen, constantly struggles with internal conflicts and psychological trauma. Throughout the story, many events and symbols are used to represent real-life problems and compare the possibilities of this future with our reality.

The beginning of the book centers around Katniss’s introduction to District 13 and her internal conflicts caused by the trauma from the Hunger Games. It progresses towards her leading the rebellion and explores the way governments manipulate people, showing multiple sides of the conflict with Snow’s violent atrocities and Coin’s subversive manipulation. The stress that comes from Peeta’s capture and use as propaganda continually wears Katniss down and makes for an interesting factor that contributes to the plot.

The middle focuses more on fighting and the actual battle part of the rebellion. Many ethical issues are brought up here, with Peeta being tortured and the Nut mountain being raided and its inhabitants killed. Again, Katniss’s stress over Peeta contributes to the tension and degrades her psychological health, adding in important and interesting conflicts. This section touches down more on the horrors of battle and the oppressiveness of the Capitol. It places Katniss’s mental conflicts and the battles of the rebellion in the spotlight. When Finnick says that “it takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart,” it shows the problems Katniss is facing and how it affect her. We can see how much she’s being hindered constantly by the psychological issues.

The end of the story focuses on concluding Katniss’s conflicts and showing how her life will turn out and be affected. Although the final battle of the rebellion is included, it itself holds less importance than the affects it has on Katniss. This part mostly finishes up the conflicts that played an important part in the previous parts of the story and shows how Katniss has been changed and affected. When Katniss says that she “no longer feels any allegiance to these monsters called human beings,” it shows how impactful her experiences were and we can make connections to the effects of corrupt power use and how society will turn out when influenced by it.

In conclusion, Mockingjay brings some strong imagery and themes to show the possibilities of our future. The way in which it displays the consequences of abuse of power and how people can be influenced by it is very meaningful, and it delivers a very important message to our society. The disastrous world that Collins paints is an important reminder.

Is The Chinese Gaokao Exam Fair? By Gus Miller, Class 802

The Chinese gaokao is a massive examination that singlehandedly determines the taker’s fate for the rest of their lives by determining which colleges they go to, if any.

This test is the sole factor for college admission in China. The gaokao places vast amounts of stress on students and teachers alike. When this fact is combined with the grossly high stakes, we can clearly see that the entire system is wholly unjust.

The ways in which just one test could affect someone’s life are just part of the reason the gaokao is unfair. Whether or not someone goes to college will decide if they will be able to get a good, interesting, high-paying job, or be forced to live out their lives as farmers or construction workers, barely scraping out a living. It’s utterly unreasonable to decide so much based on just one test. We can also see how it adversely affects people. Teenagers in gaokao cram schools have been known to use intravenous drips to give themselves the stamina to study for over 15 hours a day. This clearly shows that too much is being put into a single test.

Another unjust part about the gaokao is the stress it places on people. In gaokao cram schools, almost everything about a teacher’s job- their wage, job security, and more- rests on the performance of their students. This drives them to extreme measures in order to get their students high scores. They frequently dole out punishments, and security guards patrol the perimeters. There are also security cameras that constantly track students. As for the students themselves, suicide rates skyrocket in teens preparing for the gaokao. Many families put everything on the line for this exam. Poorer parents divert almost all of their income to prep school wages in hopes that their kids can get good jobs. Many more well-off people will opt to place their children in private schools or in schools in other countries to avoid the hardships of the gaokao.

Finally, the gaokao is simply an inept judgement of student’s skills. There’s no way any reason or sense can be found in the idea of one test dictating the future of millions of students. It can’t be assumed that one exam is an accurate indicator of a student’s knowledge, and yet this exam could mean so much for entire families. It’s utterly unjust for this ineffective system to send some students to high up, prestigious colleges, which is basically a golden ticket to a good future, and condemn others to manual labor and most likely poverty, without any definite knowledge of the student’s academic level.

In conclusion, the gaokao exam is an unfair system that needlessly jeopardizes the futures of millions of families. It places enormous and needless amounts of pressure on students and teachers alike. The level of stress is harmful and unhealthy, and in the end, the whole exam is just hugely inefficient and unjust. Although many people are calling for reforms, the Chinese government has been slow to change this problem.

Martin Espada Poetry Essay- Abuse of Power By Gus Miller, Class 802

Martin Espada, a renowned Latino poet, artfully speaks of abuse of power in three of his poems, “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School,” “Revolutionary Spanish Lesson,” and “Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May 3, 1877.” These pieces of work explore the emotions and thought surrounding injustices in the world and connect them with the idea of power imbalance. He tries to show us the problems many people face and open our eyes to the hardships others are forced to endure.

In Espada’s poem “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School,” he describes a school in which the speaking of spanish is prohibited. This poem as based off of a real school he visited. In particular, the quote “The only word he recognizes is his own name/ and this constipates him/ so he decides/ to ban spanish/ from the bathrooms/ now he can relax” shows blatant abuse of power. The principal, in a position of power, chooses to use this power in a negative way. He discriminates against others because their actions make him feel uncomfortable. His “constipation” is his ego being threatened by something he can’t understand, Spanish. He uses his power, injustly, to stop this.

In the poem “Revolutionary Spanish Lesson,” Espada writes from a speaker’s point of view who describes hijacking a bus of white Republican tourists and force them to chant anti-American slogans in Spanish. This person says “Whenever my name is mispronounced/ I want to/...force them to chant/ anti-American slogans/ in Spanish.”

The speaker does not likely literally mean this, rather, he wants to turn the tables briefly on the Americans who have oppressed and held back his people with their abuse of power for so long. When he says he wants to “..wait/ for the bilingual SWAT team/ to helicopter overhead/ begging me/ to be reasonable,” he expresses his anger and frustration at how the Americans would treat him as a terrorist, continuing to hold him back with their power.

Espada’s poem “Two Mexicanos Lynched in Santa Cruz, California, May 3, 1877” is centered around a speaker who reflects over the killing of two Mexicans by a mob of power-abusing white people. This piece of work also focuses in on how the event impacted others, and in what way. The speaker delves into what the lynching means for other Mexicans. The quote “...Snapped two Mexicanos/ into the grimacing sleep of broken necks/...the Virgin de Guadalupe/ who blesses the brownskinned/ and the crucified…” shows how the culture of these people is being attacked and beaten down and how these deaths and this abuse of power affected others. When the speaker repeats “..more than,” followed by various other things, then “... remain the faces of the lynching party...smirking...crowding into the photograph,” he laments how the abusers of power, the murderers, were celebrated and remembered in a cheerful picture.

In conclusion, Espada’s poems show abuse of power in many circumstances. He is able to artfully and thoughtfully tie in the ways others are affected by injustices. He brings in many different scenarios and gives an important perspective in our world of social injustice.