Section A: What are some reasons for preserving one’s family heritage? Use examples from A Celebration of Grandfathers, Everyday Use, and your own experience with heritage.
Nowadays, it has become a kind of a ‘trend’ to bequeath and preserve heritage. Moreover, the heritage is not only limited in the range of family inheritance, but expanded to other elements that have decent value to be treated as ‘heritage’. Although there exist many other subordinate reasons why the inheritance holds substantial importance, I believe that the major reason is because old perceptions, artifacts, and etc. are intensively supportive to not only our modern society but also to our daily lives.
Recently, radical developments caused people to be awkwardly flown to new modified lives which led to the loss of rudimentary values and the following critical defects to the society. Such disaster was due to the extent of development speed exceeded the capacity of human’s ability to appropriately assimilate new modifications resulted from the developments. In such circumstance, preserving one’s family heritage could help find the lost values and perceptions. In the Everyday Use, the author tries to bestow readers the fact that Maggie, one who is substantial in rudimentary values was able to find the sincere meaning of heritage and was able to overcome Dee’s indirect influences. This shows that the pursuit of genuine values due to the effect of ‘heritage’ help find the real worth of not only just inheritance, but also many other factors which are influential to our lives.
To forestall the defects of imprudent developments, I think stabilizing fundamental objects and values of ‘everything’ are necessary. In Celebration of Grandfathers, the grandfathers saying such as “Have patience” (pg. 458) or the author’s notations like “Simple lessons from a simple man” (pg. 459) also infer that simplicity and fundamental values are needed to our lives. Such perceptions could be utilized by actually bequeathing those psychological heritages.
My parents always tell me ‘Never live a moment of regret.” It sure is a common aphorism, but it sure holds fundamental value that we could readily forget. Because inheritance in various means could tug out the potential to treat rudimentary values and perceptions importantly, we should bestow substantial consequentiality to preserve and bequeath heritage.
Section B: What can and should an ordinary person do about the cruel treatment of others? Give two examples of cruelty and what you consider to be appropriate responses. You can also gain other ideas from other literary works and from reading From Night, Cranes, The artilleryman’s Vision, and The Remembered War: A Korean War Vet Offers a History Lesson.
From the prehistoric times, humankind has evolved through many kinds of disasters. It is a common sense that the history of mankind was greatly influenced by natural disasters. However, we must also perceive the fact that diverse chaos derived from cruelty has bestowed substantial impact, negatively. Such cruelty resulted conflicts among people in various causes, which became a colossal hindrance in the overall development of humankind.
Although there exists diverse forms of cruelty in this world, one of the most critical form is the stimulation of vice inside one’s heart. It may not seem like a ‘cruel’ action, but the stimulation of vice could actually become something worse than what we normally consider as ‘crime’ or ‘cruelty’. Human has an unpredictable amount of potentials in the means of evilness, and therefore catalyst that could expand such vice could be incredibly dangerous.
In contrast to an indirect form of cruelty such as stimulating the vice inside one’s heart, the practical act out of crime upon others is thought to be a general ‘crime’, but also the most critical and influential crime of all. Such acting out of crime upon others could also be considered as an advanced form of the ‘stimulating’ form of crime for the stimulations of vice virtually results the actual action of crime. The severe extent of such cruelty could be readily seen from From Night, for depicts the sufferings of innocent people on account of superpower countries’ inhumane, merciless act out of crime – torture, endless labor, and death.
Many people have endeavored to prevent and eliminate the disaster which cruelty bestows to humanity, but making the virtual contrivance was impossible. However, I think having pity and showing generosity to such cruelty is the appropriate response and ultimate resolution in solving such disaster. On the premise that crime must never be justified by crime, virtue against vice will be the conclusive method to cure the ill-minded people, society, and the entire humanity.
Section C: Compare and contrast the mothers in Getting a Job and Everyday Use. Connect it to your own family experience.
From birth, we face the ultimate, unconditional, and infinite love from our parents. Moreover, except some of the unordinary circumstances, most of us feel a slight more affection by our mothers for frequent interactions. They devote ‘everything’ – wealth, sweat, blood, and even their sole lives to support and nurture us. On account of their overwhelming dedication, we are substantially influenced by them in diverse means. But there always exists an exclusive fact – they love us.
Without much surprise, both the mothers of the two stories Getting a Job and Everyday Use tends to devote and contribute their everything to support and nurture them in the name of love. There still exists subtle difference in many factors of these two mothers, but they still have the same concept to care and love their children with all their heart.
As mentioned above, there still exists the slightest difference between the two mothers. It is true that the extent of education and other subordinate features remain in their difference such as wealth, or their history. However, I would like to focus on their degree of attitude towards their daughters. The mother of Getting a Job seems to be still loving, but a bit passive towards helping her daughter in diverse ways. On the other hand, the mother of Everyday Use has a more distinct, definite opinions and subjectivity. Moreover, she naturally endeavors to influence her daughter in such ways.
As a son of my parents, I still feel their unconditional love from them – their effort, passion, and blood merges to satisfy me. I sometimes feel egoistic on account of the fact that they haven’t received anything actually from me. However, I find that this is one of the progress, one of the natural principles in the circumstance of unconditional love between my parents and me. Conclusively, fulfilling their satisfaction by assimilating their ideals and opinions in the means of anything aptly would be my initial and final objective of my life.
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