“Right there he had an epiphany that echoed through his fat self. He realized his fucked-up comic-book-reading, role-playing-game-loving, no-sports-playing friends ere embarrassed by him.” (29)

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz we are introduced to our “hero” of the story Oscar Wao. Oscar is a typical over weight nerd who has a really rough time in high school, specifically with getting a girl friend. After his two closest friends Al and Miggs score some new girl friends our boy Oscar comes to a grand epiphany or realization. This realization is that his friends are embarrassed of him. Now under normal circumstances it would make sense for his friends to be embarrassed of a person like Oscar, but since Al and Miggs enjoy the same nerdy material and things as Oscar this comes a a huge shock to him. You can tell in this quote how upset this realization probably made him, saying his “fucked-up comic-book-reading, role-playing-game-loving, no sports-playing friends” were embarrassed of Oscar after doing the same stuff as him.

This is a big moment for Oscar because i feel its pretty telling for the rest of his life unless he makes drastic change. His own nerdy friends are better off then him and embarrassed of him. I think this is going to mean something for Oscars future self, inspire him to be better, or a personal idea is that Oscar could end up later being the one who is better off then his friends in some way. I guess we will just have to see in the rest of the novel if Oscar will be able to over come his nerdy habits and disappointments.

“”She said i was a what?” I asked. “Just a strange nigger. She and Daddy both knew they hadn’t seen you before.” “That as a hell of a thing for her to say right after she saw me save her son’s life.” Rufus frowned. “Why?”… His air of innocent questioning confused me. Either he really didn’t know what he was saying, or he had a career waiting in Hollywood. Whichever it was, he wasn’t going to go on saying it to me.” (page 25)

This is a quote from the novel Kindred by Octavia E. Butler. The quote discusses a major difference between present day in the novel and the past that Dana travels to, which the year 1815. The main problem discussed by Dana and Rufus is this idea that Rufus and/or his mother should not be calling Dana a “nigger”. You can see that Dana has a modern view of the word, which is that the word is never used by anyone because the word is seen as hateful and derogatory. Rufus asks why it is a hell of a thing for his mother to have said about her after saving him. He cant understand the concept of Dana getting mad over being called a “nigger” because during this time it is seen as normal. The word is used to describe black people while also putting them down, showing that they are inferior to whites. This is important because it shows us that there is to be drastic differences in the views of Dana and the views of the people of 1815 in the rest of the novel. It also is important because it shows to us the hard ships Dana will be facing due to her having to acclimate her self to this new racist environment.

Alexander Hamilton (1755- 1804) is one of the most interesting men from the American Revolutionary era. The man was born on the Caribbean islands of Nevis in 1755, he later moved to the island of St. Croix with his family. After this move Hamilton’s father left his family and his mother fell sick to a tropical illness that later took her. During Hamilton’s teenage years he clerked at the St. Croix office of a New York trading company, here he learned the intricacies of international commerce. During this time he was also writing for a local newspaper. Hamilton later published an account of devastating hurricane; this made him gain great popularity among his readers. He gained so much popularity that in 1772 a collection was held to send Hamilton to America to further his studies. In 1774 Hamilton enrolls at King’s College which would eventually be called Colombia, he also started participating in the colonial resistance against the British Parliament.

The American Revolution starts to come into fruition and Hamilton becomes a huge part of it. In 1776 Hamilton is commissioned as an artillery captain, only a year after that Hamilton becomes General George Washington’s chief military trade. In 1781 Hamilton leads a successful charge in the Battle of Yorktown. Later in Hamilton’s life he is called to attend a convention in order to fix the Articles of Confederation and the overall government in America. In the following years Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison publish the Federalist Papers in an attempt to ratify the constitution made at this convention. In 1789 Hamilton becomes the first United States Secretary of the Treasury. Throughout Hamilton’s years as the United States Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton gets many plans passes and bills established. Then sadly In 1804 after Hamilton and Aaron Burr get into a dispute they challenge each other to a duel, a day after that very duel Hamilton dies. Ironically 3 years prior Hamilton’s oldest son Philp dies in a duel.

Alexander Hamilton’s life is full of many great accomplishments going from an island in the Caribbean to becoming the first United States Secretary of the Treasury. His accomplishments and drive to become something more greatly resembles Robinson Crusoe in Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. In this novel Robinson doesn’t want to become another boring middle class citizen and wishes to do better and have a more exciting life on the sea sailing and discovering the world. He takes a huge risk leaving his family to have what he would deem a better life doing something that was extremely dangerous but possibly extremely rewarding. This can be related to Hamilton because you see that throughout his life Hamilton is always striving to do better and taking massive risks in order to achieve a great award. An example of such risks would be Hamilton moving to America in order to better his education and career. Another way Hamilton and Crusoe can be related to each other is where they came from and the success they achieved. For example both of them lost their parents, one chose to lose them but lost none the less, and both of them rose up from a lower class to a level of riches and success only rivaled by others who would take such risks as they or people born into the riches of their families. In closing Alexander Hamilton was a very interesting and successful man who played a huge role in the formation of America’s modern government. An entrepreneurial man who took many risks in his life in order to have a better life and create a better life for the people of his country.

“On landing, we found the town a heap of ruins. A more terrible picture of desolation cannot be imagined. Passing through streets choaked with rubbish, we reached with difficulty a house which had escaped the general fate. The people live in tents, or make a kind of shelter, by laying a few boards across the half-consumed beams; for the buildings being here of hewn stone , with walls three feet thick, only the roofs and floors have been destroyed.”(Letter 1, pg 61)

This is an excerpt from the book Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo edited by Michael J. Drexler. The context behind this quote is, that the narrator is going to the French  colony of St. Domingo to follow her sisters “fortunes”. The quote discuses the narrators arrival onto the colony of St. Domingo after the revolution. They describe what they first see as “A more terrible picture of desolation…”, a town in ruin in which they go on to describe in more detail, stating that the streets were “choaked with rubbish”, this means that the streets of the town they arrived at was flooded with garbage. However, apparently the house that the narrator arrives out has managed to “escape the general fate.” which to me means its managed to somehow remain mostly intact. The narrator goes on to tell the reader how these people are living, in tents or make shift shelters made of a few boards and such, overall speaking of the destruction this town has seen and how its left its populous in shambles.This quote is important because it illustrates to the reader howthe the narrator see’s this new land and the destruction the revolution had on the colony of St. Domingo. It shows us how the the narrator see’s this new land and

“Which first was mine own king. And here you sty me in this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me the rest o’ th’ island.”- Caliban (Act 1, Scene 2 lines 343-345)

What Caliban means in this quote is that he was once his own king, able to do as he pleased on his island and now he is confined to a small rocky portion of the island, not allowed to live and appreciate the rest of it. He says “Which first was mine own king.” referring to himself as a king meaning he thought of himself as owner and ruler of the island. Another interesting aspect of this quote is that Caliban isn’t allowed to use the whole of the island but instead is essentially imprisoned to what seems like the worse side of the island, describing it as “hard rock” which must mean its uncomfortable.

These two aspects of this quote are very important because they illustrate interesting topics about the people of the new world. The first part of the quote when Caliban states himself as his own king is  an interesting idea because normally natives are typically portrayed as not owning the land they live on, not even understanding the idea of being a land owner. It is also of interest because of the terminology Caliban uses, he referrers to himself as king which is a European idea that he must have picked up from the teaching of Prospero. The second interesting idea is that Caliban is forced to live on the “worse side” of the island. This is of importance because is can symbolize the native people being forced from there prosperous homes to more unwanted lands.

“They live one hundred and fifty years, and rarely fall ill, and if they do fall victims to any disease, they cure themselves with certain roots and herbs.” page 35

In the Amerigo Vespucci reading i found the ways in which the natives were explained and described to be extremely interesting and informative. An example would the quote stated above about how he believed that the natives lived one hundred and fifty years and rarely fell ill to diseases. He also described the physical appearance of the natives as having square-built bodies, being well formed and proportional in the quote “They have indeed large square-built bodies, well formed and proportioned, and in color verging upon reddish.”(page 34). These ways he described the natives are of interest because he describes them as being like other Europeans,  going as far as to say the native women’s bodies are tolerably beautiful and cleanly in the quote “The women as I have said go about naked and are very libidinous; yet they have bodies which are tolerably beautiful and cleanly.”(page 35). Amerigo also tells about a custom that involves the biting of a males genitals from a poisonous animal to achieve larger genitals for the pleasure of the females. He clearly disproves of this declaring it to be shameful, beyond human belief, and stating that after this custom the genitalia was deformed and disgusting, this is from the quote “They have another custom, very shameful and beyond all human belief. For their women, being very lustful, cause the private parts of their husbands to swell up to such a huge size that they appear deformed and disgusting; and this is accomplished by a certain device of theirs, the biting of certain poisonous animals.”(page 35).I found the ways in which he described the Native Americans to be fairly respectable, not making them out to be animals or monsters but stating there bodies were attractive, only finding problems with some of the natives customs.