Presentation "The Twelve"

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Cry, The Beloved Country book 1 theme

  Paton describes Kumalo as a man of religion and courage. For him to go and look to save his son in a terrible city gives Kumalo that courage and love for his son. Kumalo's hometown, Ndotsheni, is out in the country with peace, but then in Johannesburg is a big city with many people and has crimes. That makes it difficult to go to Johannesburg and find Absalom and try to save him. In the book it says that once someone goes to Johannesburg, they never come back. That is why Kumalo's son and daughter are in Johannesburg and they both do not write and visit Kumalo. Stephen Kumalo is the preacher of the church in Ndotsheni, which is a part of him being a man of religion. Throught the book, there are scenes where Kumalo has to go to God for help with his son and also is told to stay with God on the trial for Absalom.


 The experience of the journey to Johannesburg for Kumalo has changed his view of life in the country, that the crime is worse than he could imagine and the struggle for the blacks to live. To find out that his son killed a white man was extremely difficult to still love his son and stick with him through the trial to free Absalom. Passion is brought to Kumalo from this tragic event because he finds a way to overlook what his son has done and still have the same love for him.


  Paton's theme in book 1 of Cry, The Beloved Country is to have hope at all times no matter how bad things get. Kumalo has to keep praying and believing in God to help him save Absalom. Father Vincent told Kumalo to stay with God always. Kumalo has to believe that God will get them through the trial, and he does so they will eventually free Absalom. Then he will be able to go back home.


  With the use of describing the land of South Africa, Paton is symbolizing the greatness that the country could be once apartheid is over. He goes into deep detail about the land because it demonstrates how it has change and that the lives for the blacks are difficult. This is also why he says that the blacks need to rebuild their country, which is talking about taking control of South Africa and becoming a united country. It also comes into the story by relating to Absalom's arrest and that the land foreshadows freedom for him from jail.

Football Fanatic

Football has been a huge impact on my life. Playing football at my house is a time of having fun, and also a time of bonding with family. The reason that playing football is a bonding time is because we get together and work as a team. It doesn’t matter who wins; we just like to have fun. I love playing football outside with friends and family. It’s one of the things that we all like to do. When playing football with everyone, we get closer by the team work. If someone makes a fantastic play, there is excitement for this person.

 

            On Thanksgiving Day, the weather was almost perfect. It was just warm enough to be wearing shorts and a shirt. Family and cousins were over my house. That day was a day to play football. All the boys gathered up and talked. My brother announced, “We should play football right now.”, so we headed outside to the front yard. Then, we decided that Tyler, my brother, and Josh, my oldest cousin, would be the team captains. I got on Tyler’s team; the one that would most likely win.

            Then, it was time to start the game. The kick was off and on the way. “Let me get this one.” I yelled. I caught the ball and took off; I nearly got into the end zone. After the play was over, my teammates cheered loudly for me. Two plays after that Tyler had a diving catch into the end zone. The catch was unbelievable. We all circled around Tyler and celebrated the touchdown catch.  

Next it was our turn to kick off, Uncle Teddy said, “It’s my turn now.”  My whole team laughed in amusement. When we kicked off, Uncle Teddy got maybe five yards and that’s it. We held them there until fourth down. They went for it on fourth down. As soon as the play began, the quarterback threw a screen pass, and he ran it all the way for a touchdown. They were jumping in excitement. When they kicked it off, Tyler took it to the middle of the field. On third down the quarterback threw the ball to me, and I caught it one handed. I was surprised that I caught the ball.

“Food is ready everyone!” Mom yelled out the door. We all came running inside to eat dinner. We all ate a bunch of food and were stuffed afterwards. That Thanksgiving was one of my favorite Thanksgivings I’ve had.

 

Tyler and I were watching the Arkansas Razorbacks football on TV in the living room. There was excitement going on from the football game. Both of us could not keep our eyes off the screen as the game went on. We both decided that we wanted to play football right then. “Hey I have an idea; we should put pillows down and play.” Tyler explained. So, we put pillows on the floor in between the couch and other chairs in the living room. To me this was a wonderful idea, because we wouldn’t hurt ourselves hitting the floor. I ran to get the football so we could start playing. We didn’t want to play football while the game was on, so we only played during commercials.

At the beginning of the game, I got the ball first. Since we were inside, Tyler threw the football instead of kicking it. When I got the ball, I ran. Tyler came straight towards me, and he tackled me into the ground. But the fall didn’t hurt because of the pillows. Even though I only gained a little yardage, I was happy, because I couldn’t get hurt from it. On the first play of the drive, I ran with the ball and almost got into the end zone.  I got so far because I tried to run left of the couch. But I cut back the other way, and Tyler could only get my one leg. So I fell and reached out, but I was still short of the goal line. Just shortly after that, the game came back on, and Tyler said quickly, “The game is back on, let’s take a break and watch it.” Arkansas had the ball on their own twenty yard line. On the second play of the drive, the quarterback threw it all the way down the field.  The receiver caught it and ran it in for a touchdown. Tyler and I were cheering loudly with joy.

 

One day I wanted to play football, so I gathered a bunch of friends to come over my house and play football. Usually when we play at my house, we play in the front yard, but that time I decided to play in the back yard. It was a perfect day for football, in my opinion.

Jackson and I were captains. I picked all the best players to be on my team, so I figured that would smoke them. But in the first ten minutes of the game, nobody was catching a pass on either side. Then, the other team scored a long touchdown pass on us.  I stated that it was time we scored. The next drive only took us two plays to score. Which on the touchdown catch, I was the one who caught the pass in the corner of the end zone.  At the end of the game, we won ten touchdowns to six touchdowns.  That day of playing football was the most exciting time; because the game was intense at first then we whooped them in the end.

Bordem to Interested

   Reading to me is mostly boring and I don't usually like to read books. There are, however, some books that I read when I was younger that was interesting. The Accelerated Reading in school is what got me to read books, even though I didn't like it so much. I read many books during school for the Accelerated Reading, but never read any at home for fun. For me to read a book and get deeply in to it, it had to be interesting and a type of story that I liked. Most books that I am interested in are adventure and mystery, because I would get into the story and want to find out the solution to everything. I just had to find a book that caught my mind and got me to actually want to read it.

   About the time I was started 3rd grade was when I began reading chapter books. My reading level was probably average for the age. I had books at home that I bought and was interested in to read in school. I had a little amount of books because I never read for fun, just for school.

   Then around 4th grade I still read some short chapter books but I began to read large books like the Harry Potter series and lots of other books. My most favorite books that I read were series that are adventure and mystery books. I read the first three Harry Potter books and they were the most fantastic and interest books that I read back then. Since those books were so long, I had to read most of them at home.

   In 5th grade, I read the 3rd through 5th Harry Potter books. I wasn't one of those ultra fast readers that would read a large book in a couple of days. I took my time and made sure I understood the whole book, mostly for the test we had to take in school. When I was reading books that were boring to me I would read a chapter, maybe, and then get tired of it and take a long time to read the book. Thats why I had to find books that would catch my mind and make me read them.

   When the last book of the Harry Potter series (the 7th book) came out I was in 6th grade and so I read it then. That book was and still is my favorite book of all that I have ever read. The Harry Potter series was not the only big series that I read. I read the Dairy of a Wimpy Kid series and a bunch of series that were popular.

   Reading all these great books got me to like reading books even though I never read any books for fun. I've only read a couple of books outside of school since the AR ended after 7th grade. Now I could read books if I wanted to but I never do becuase I don't ever want to read for fun. I can read things for school without trouble because I learned to like reading somethings.
  

Wishes That are Not Accepted

    The story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings  was confusing but has a good story to it. the story show people wish for miracles to happen but when its comes true it's not good enough for them or they can't accept them. Normally you wouldn't find a man with wings and not think he isn't an angel. What else would be a man with wings.

     In the story, the priest that came and tlaked to the angel said that he wasn't an angel because he didn't know the language of God.That could be true but the priest wouldn't know for sure that angels had to know Latin. The people locked him up with the hens and the children abused him. Everbody treated him as if he was a human. That is like not having respect for the angel and abusing him. They only wanted the angel to do something for themselves and not do anything for him. Thats how people now treat each other which is unfair.

     When the angel helped the sick he didn't cure them but he did do strange things to them. Thats when the people gave up on the angel. This is also what people do today, they expect for something good to happen to them and when it doesn't happen to them they give up. How at the end of the story the angel was sitting in a corner and was motionless reminds me of people that have depression because of the way people treat them. People can even treat the nicest people bad by making fun of them.

       The story does have very good and important lessons about today's society. When people are having a hard time in their life don't accept it. This is what the story is all about.