Book 2

In book Two Joe wants to make contact with the outside world more than anything else. Using his head to transfer Morse code he is finally able to make contact with the world outside his dark prison. He tells the man that finally comes to listen to his messages that he wants to be taken out of the hospital and toured around the countryside. He wants to show those with romantic words and images in their heads the terrible truth of war. There is not fun there. All you find is a maimed husk of a man who will never be able to experience the world around him ever again. However, the army won’t let him of the hospital because of the very thing he wants to show. They have no desire for the world at large to get such a close glimpse of the true horror of war. If boys looking on see how terrible the grand adventure of war really is, the leaders of the army will never be able to recruit anyone again.

How injured is Joe? How much does it matter?

Joe is extremely injured. He has lost both his arms, both his legs, and a large chunk of his face. He can no longer see, hear, smell, or taste. He’s basically a torso and a brain. Joe is fed and breathes through a series of tubes. The extent of his injuries is critical to the book’s plot. Because Joe has absolutely no access to the world around him beyond the vibrations he feels as people walk by his bed. This puts him in a position that no one else can experience, and the realizations that he makes are unique to his unique situation. If he had even one more of the senses that people these days take for granted, His experience wouldn’t have been the same. From the struggle to find out the time of day, to the deep reflections about himself, all would have be different on the most basic level if he had been able to see or hear.

Wolfson number 5

5) Wolfson uses this passage about the right of prisoners to marry because he believes that homosexuals looking to marry are going through the same issues currently that the criminals already worked through. He doesn’t mention the fact that they are prisoners because by hiding the truth of his story until the very end, its ads a sense of SURPRISE and GOTCHA to his telling. He tries to make it seem that he is telling a story about homosexuals. That way he is hoping to get his readers to think, wow if prisoners have the right to marry, and homosexuals are going through such a similar set of circumstances, why shouldn’t we give them the right to vote?
I personally think that to gay rights supporters it would be quite effective, as it would most likely evoke outrage that a class of citizens that can’t vote have the right over non-incarcerated homosexuals to marry. However, for those who don’t already support his way of thinking, it isn’t quite as effective. Personally, I don’t think that the two are related. It’s almost the apple versus oranges debate. For the prisoners, their lawsuit has to deal with the right to marry behind bars, but still between a man and a woman. Gay marriage on the other hand, flies against traditional marriage in our country. In the US especially, marriage is a religious institution that has long been between a man and a woman. To allow same sex marriages would be to change a staple of life in the US while simultaneously ignoring how other groups, especially religions, feel about the topic. It might look the same on the surface, but convicts marrying and homosexuals marrying are definitely not the same thing.

Santorum

I like his metaphor because it accurately describes what he is trying to say. Throughout his essay, Santorum gives statistics and other fact based information to make his point, and this metaphor sums it all up quite nicely. Going by straight statistics, a nuclear, traditional family creates a well-adjusted child more often than any other combination. The metaphor of the planes perfectly shows this as the planes have statistics as well. One plane makes it there almost every time, like a traditional family, and one makes it there only some of the time, like the single parent family. Its truly elegant in its simplicity.

Engaging the Text #2 on p. 453. Refer to Eustace in your answer.

2) I don’t think they are incompatible necessarily, but the way that modern culture asks for and defines those qualities makes them much more difficult to piece together. In the past manliness meant being able to care for ones family and defend what you believe in. These days its seems more and more that society sees manliness as an excuse for guys to beat each other senseless and to treat other people in general terribly. Also manliness is often confused these days with being “hard.” Quite a few guys think that they have to act like real hard cases to seem like men.
On the flip side, sensitivity is often requested by females, but isn’t often a quality that men look to show very often anymore. Nowadays, Sensitivity is seen a weakness or is classified as a “gay” attribute. If a guy shows a sensitive side, other males, and to some extent the world in general begins to question whether he is hetero or homosexual.
Eustace Conway is a traditional example of how the two used to be able to coexist. He is the definition of an old school manly-man, and at the same time treats the women in the life with utmost respect so long as they operate by his rules. He is also extremely prone to show a sensitive, mushy side when he falls in love with a woman. This is the kind of person many women are entranced by because he has almost all the characteristics that they think they are looking for. They ignore his downsides because he is such a prefect male on paper.
A connection of Manliness and Sensitivity like Eustace’s is long longer easily possible because of the way we define the two in modern culture, and if girls want that “Prefect” mix of the two, they better go find a teepee.

Why is Eustace the last American Man?

I think that Gilbert considers Eustace the last American man because he represents classical American values that have changed or simply been forgotten as we have entered the modern era.
Eustace lives in a much simpler world that most of us live in. His biggest challenger in the world isn’t a person vying for the same job or anything like that. It’s putting his skills as a human against those of Mother Nature. There is a mystique around the stereotypical cowboy. On the range with just a horse and a six-shooter as company, there are very few images that produce that “Badass” male idea. Everyone Eustace meets gets swept up in this idea and Gilbert is no different.
At times she almost seems obsessed with Eustace to a point of glossing over his faults. While she does mention how he has become like his father, she moves on rather quickly to further highlight another of Eustace’s accomplishments. This image of the frontiersman is almost addictive to some people, and once you’re under Eustace’s spell, as it appears Gilbert is, he can do no wrong. And when you only see one person like Eustace, it’s no surprise that it’s easy to label him the last American man.

fairy tail

A story that I remember loving as a child was the story of John Henry. Henry was a rail worker who was so fast he bet that he could dig a tunnel faster than a machine. They had a race to the center of a mountain and in the end John Henry won, but his heart wore out in the process. However, he died a happy content man because he had worked his hardest and provided for his family.
I think that this could be considered a lesson for just boys, but a girl could get something out of this tale as well. The lesson of this story is that by working hard and believing in yourself, you can achieve anything. Plus, Henry was more than willing to give his life for his family which is another commendable trait.