Nathan Hutchinson

English 102

Citing Sources

Laura Darrow

Madonne, Miner. ""Trust Me"Reading the romance plot of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaids Tale." JSTOR 37.2 1991. 148-168. JSTOR. Web. 25 Jul 2010.

I decided to use JSTOR as a reference site. I was looking for a deeper source of material. I found the Handmaids Tale to be a complex story and needed some quality in site. The first title I came to was “Trust Me” and it had to do with uncovering a romance plot between Offred and the Commander. I have to admit I found it to be very interesting the way they broke down the scrabble game. I don’t naturally think like this and come never have come to these conclusions on my own. I will use this resource to better understand some of the symbolism in the story. I guess I can take nothing for granted in a story like this. This series of events will help me explain the simple freedoms that have used as a manipulation tool. These freedoms identify us a humans.

Moreno, Claudia, Henrica Jansen, Mary Ellsberg, Lori Heise, and Charlotte Watts. United Nations. Multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence against women. Geneva: WHO press, 2005. Print.

This next web site I will be using shows how common sexual abuse is in the world today. These are not only situations we find in books or part of history, but a widespread problem right now. I honestly don’t things have changes as much as we think. The have just become an excepted part of life. The Handmaids Tale gives us an option to explore these ideas outside the story. To Quote Sam Hamill, “ we can’t handle much reality”. It think this pretty much sums it up. Unless you are involved you just don’t know. To some extent the societies we live in are not as different as we think.

Nathan Hutchinson

English 102

Laura Darrow

Biography

I am excited to write about a newly discovered author . Well he is hardly newly discovered but definitely new to me. His name is Sam Hamill and from the first moment I read the Necessity to Speak I new that he was a great author and he was producing material that I could get excited about.

Sam Hamill was born in 1942 somewhere in northern California. When Sam was age 3 he was given up for adoption by his birth father. Sam Hamill was later adopted by Sam and Frieda Hamill and raised near Holiday, Utah.(Johnston) Sam spent his youth in and out of jails and spent a lot of time on the streets. In his later teen years Sam decided to join the United States Marine Corps mostly to eliminate his juvenile arrest record. During his time in the Marines he had the privilege of visiting Japan where he was stationed in Okinawa. During his time in Japan he began the study of the Zen Buddhist religion.(Hamill 546)

During the Vietnam war Sam Hamill stood out and took an activist position against the war which would later prove to be the stance he would stand behind for the next 40 years and be the source of up and coming literature.(Hamill) Sam had the opportunity to start Copper Canyon Press with 500$ that he won as an editors award at the literary magazine Spectrum and remain the chief editor there for 32 years. He has also spent 14 years teaching in U.S prisons and worked extensively with battered women. The little money he made working for the prisons and with battered women helped support him with his other endeavors. At this time Sam had teamed up with two other colleagues Bill Ransom and Joe Wheeler. Their newest organization was to be called Centrum. Eventually after the company became a corporation and the whole purpose of the business had gotten lost between the necessity to make more money amongst other corporate values and Sam decided to part ways in 2004.(Powers)

Sam Hamill has been the recipient of numerous awards including a fellowship for the National Endowment of the Arts as well as a Guggenheim Memorial fellowship. After September 11th Sam helped start the Poets Against War which is a society that uses poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression. Poets Against War is still very active and has currently published 6,000 poems.

Sam Hamill has been able to take his real life experiences, through his trails and tribulations and apply them to paper. One would ask, well, what is different about what he does that normally any other author is doing. I feel that what makes this author's style significant, is the ability to take serious problems like domestic situations and bring them to your lap with realistic views that touche base with the average reader. These are not simple problems, anyone can reflect on simple problems. These problems are the break down of society as a whole. These are the things that attracted me as a reader to his writing. When Sam Hamill writes, he writes from experiences, this has the ability to reflect much differently on paper. If a normal person with no related experience was to write a paper on battered women it would lack the life that one with personal stories would share. When the cuts and bruises stare back everything changes. This is the passion a person feels when reading Sam Hamill.

Through the years Sam has been able to maintain a safe distance from the mainstream which has kept his poetry pure. When the focus is lost on financial gain one tends to be distracted by production. During this transformation the art is lost in daily business. Sam Hamill has spent most of his years trying to find a way to keep good poetry alive and away from the muddiness of major publishing houses. This lack of conformity has kept him a sought after poet.

Sam Hamill has become a role model in the poetry community as well as leaving some pretty big shoes to fill for up and coming poets. His moderate lifestyle and his devotion to his principles have left readers in awe for generations to come. To this day Sam Hamill is working with poets all over the world starting new Poets Against the War websites.

Nathan Hutchinson

English 102

Historical Research

Laura Darrow

The war in Iraq started in March 20, 2003 with the allegations that the country of Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction also known as WMD’s. The year before the UN weapon inspector declared Iraq had not been in violation and could not find any evidence to support these allegations of weapons. Later the US accused Iraq of harboring Al-Qaeda which once again had turned up no evidence. Desperate to find resolve for the actions of 9-11 the United States made to decision to send troops to Iraq under the assumption that Sadam Hussein was harboring Al-Qaeda. The war in Iraq still continues on with no end in site and many would argue if any progress has been made. The sad fact of the matter is the amount of innocent people that have had to lose their lives because of the decisions of others. Some estimate the civilian casualties to be around 120,000.(White)

Since the invasion of Iraq people who were told to trust in a cause have been left to out to dry with no hope of what to expect in the days to come. According to the Brookings Institute, Iraq index, Iraqis that strongly oppose the presence of collation forces is at 82%. Also Americans that feel we should have never gone go to war with Iraq started at 50% and had continued to grow ever since.(Brookings Institute) So the biggest question is why are we at war if they don’t want us and more than half of the county opposes. Is the only reason we persist for success of the occupation itself.

Probably one of the scariest things about this war is the amount of debt the country of Iraq has incurred. Within the first eight months alone they were loaned 127.7 billion from 28 different countries.(Brookings Institute) Now the country has absolutely no infrastructure to repay this money. Conveniently they have oil which everyone would like a piece of. Not to mention the debt we have created for our own country. Currently we sit at about 1.4 trillion with that doubling by 2017. These numbers only run second to WWII. The cost of a soldier to spend one year in Iraq is 360,000 dollars.(Englehardt)

The years of 2006 and 2007 were the bloodiest on record for the U.S loosing roughly 6000 soldiers due to injury or death per year.(White) The primary reason for this was that the U.S and coalition forces had no idea who they were fighting against. Between this uncertainty and the spur of a Sunni-Shiite civil war, the streets were an all out battlefield killing any and everyone.

When the Iraq war started the U.S sent 150,000 troops to battle. Currently we have 92,000. 31,822 soldiers have been injured leading to discharge and 4500 have died. In the seven years we have been at war we have only pulled 20,000 troops out of Iraq.(Brookings Institute)None of these numbers reflect the amount that have been discharged due to psychological illness.

So why did we go to war. Why hasn’t anything changed since the beginning. And who is in control of this great nation, the people. I guess to a certain degree we are in control but to what extent and where does our power cease.

After reviewing the research I have done for this project I can only reflect back to what I have read earlier in the course starting with Sam Hamill and The Necessity to Speak. The way he uses his experience to influence and make a change in this world. Words are some of the most powerful tools we have, and yes they means things. Its time to stare deeply into the eyes of the truth. The people of this nation can’t continue to act as if the problems of the world will fix themselves, because they are not, not without the direction of the people. We read stories about the chaotic lives of our soldiers such as in the book by Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried. A compilation of stories about the madness one deals with on a daily basis in the battlefield. The lost souls, the sadness and fear. The phycological warfare one faces each waking morning and the memories he sleeps with at night.

The sadness of war has never been rivaled. Nothing could compares to the innocent lost, the people who were just born and lived, thats all. The people who were just trying to make it on a day to day. The dreams that have been taken for false pride. The hearts that have been broken, and the kids that returned never to be the same.

http://hem.passagen.se/replikant/dystopia_definition.htm

Nathan Hutchinson

English 102

Laura Darrow

7-16-2010

I have decided to do my research on how as Americans we continue to lose rights little by little. Since this country was founded on the bases of freedom, ultimately freedom is a big issue. In the story the Handmaid’s Tale they tell a story about how this dystopian society has been plagued by low birth rates from pollution. Apparently since these changes were taking place society need to change as well. In the current U.S we have a lot of the same situations happening with the way we eat and the way we live which ultimately can lead us to a similar situation with health issues.

When first reading the beginning chapters of the Handmaids Tale I found it very confusing almost as if it started in the middle of the book. How does society ever become like this. In the years of Adolph Hitler it virtually happened over night. This way of life takes decisions from powerful people and when the majority of society is poor changes can happen fast. If society is just trying to survive they are not focusing on the bigger problems in the world.

The book the Handmaid’s Tale deals with a lot of complicated problems. In today’s society we ourselves deal with some very complicated problems and we choose people to make these decisions for us without ever really know who they are or if they have our best interest in mind. In the book they are not really given a decision of whom to elect, the changes just take place. I can relate all of these questions to the Handmaid’s Tale and especially to a dystopian society. At one time things seemed so beautiful but over time they have turned so ugly. Understanding the subtle changes that take place in a society over time helps me understand that people will do anything in times of desperation.

Nathan Hutchinson

English 102

Laura Darrow

7-11-2010

1. In the first example about Darwin, all the writer tells us is that he is going to write a paper and nothing else. Their is no trace of a thesis here.

2. The second statement about college is only stating the obvious. I would have to say that the majority of people already know this.

3. The third thesis is just about like the second one. We already know jean companies target kids almost all business does.

4. Othello is a play about love and jealousy, very good you should know this entering the book. 2,3,4 are all stating the obvious.

5. With this statement about Minor Threat there is way to much personal opinion involved in it.

In the story The Handmaid’s Tale a religious group takes the rights away from middle and lower class people by prostituting fertile women into birthing privileges for the elite.

1. I think this thesis statement is arguable, one could say it was for the greater good of mankind.

2. I think it is very specific to the story. The story is based around this statement.

3. There is a lot of evidence to support this statement especially in the first chapters.

Nathan Hutchinson

English 102

Laura Darrow

7-09-10

Hi my name is Nathan Hutchinson and I am currently a student in english 102 at Yavapai college. I have to admit I have found this course to be rather challenging. I have never been a very efficient reader and I am more than aware of this fact. When it comes to interpretation weather it be poetry or short stories, I feel like this is a talent that I have absolutely no business doing. I feel lost, like maybe I am totally missing the point. Perhaps I am trying to read to deep into stories or maybe not deep enough. This has been the biggest challenge for me during this course. In the past I guess I just read the words, never gave much thought to it. I believe this class has made me a more conscious reader.

I have had the opportunity to explore reading material that I would not have normally read. The poetry section I found to be very interesting. I have always had a love hate relationship with poetry. This course has been a real eye opener and given me some new in site to different styles I would have other wise never been introduced to.

I don’t really have any goals for the rest of the semester other than to keep learning. This course is so much different that 101, I am really shocked. The course caught me off guard, it really has shown me a totally different side of writing. I have found new understanding which in the past never knew existed. I know that this sounds naive, but like I said earlier, I haven’t spent much time with reading or writing.

thanks for you time.