What TKAM Means to Me

                      
                            

               "To Kill a Mockingbird"'s most primary themes are those of growing up. Already a guantlet of self flagellation and insecurity, Scout's transition to maturity is ridden with prejudice and examples of human atrocity and injustice. I think most of us can relate on some level to this kind of difficulty. We have all, in some way, experienced the moment when all innocence is gone. For me, this occurred relatively early.
             From a young age I have had an intense affair with the environment. Rain or shine, the world has always been a beautiful place to me. My collective experiences with my planet are small and insignificant compared to those who have had a real impact on its preservation. However, when I was first introduced to the negative influence of human establishment, it became apparent to me the inherent dangers of our society's niavety and love affair with industrialized technology. When you are very small, the world seems much bigger, so as a child I was never truly aware of the damage our impact has had. At nine, the world came crashing down upon me when this transition occured. Whether it was in mind, body, or spirt, I will never know, but this new awareness threw me into depressions. My inability to save the world was devastating. There were just too many people who didn't care, and each of them was launching a personal attack on a branch of myself. Their inability to connect themselves to the world around them baffled me. I had to realize that an individual is powerless against the storm, and only a worldfull will ever make a difference. I learned that contributing to the solution begins in your own life, and that the most we can do as people is educate and reinvent ourselves. Still, this transition has scarred me. I don't have as much faith in people as I used to, and I am deeply cynical about the identity of environmentalism being changed in the future.
               Another major transitional phase in my life was when my much loved Aunt Kathleen was killed in a freak accident. While her beliefs were not my own, I was bound to respect her dedication to them. A truck driver for over twenty years, her life had never seemed more bright. The road is a dangerous place for a woman to be, but she had her husband, Peter, with her. In a truck filled with apples, they drove away. Preliminary discussions identified this trip to be one of their last. They were excited to be over with this chapter of their lives, and ready to give it one more college try in the life of a sedentary couple. At the beginning of their trip, their truck ran into mechanical problems, and so they were forced to pull over and seek assistance. With their truck fixed, they continued on the road that lead to nowhere. Then, like some strange brush with chance, their brakes failed on a bridge. With no brake tracks to spell of their car swerved through several lanes, finally careening off the side into the cold water below. We were told she felt no pain, but Peter and his seat were not found for about a week. This tragedy crushed our family. We will remember her as a beautiful, vulnerable and insatiable person with a tremendous appetite for life. We will remember her as a melodious song of all things fragile in this world. We will remember how she taught our family to appreciate the moment, because the moment is bound to end in one way or another.
            These are only some of my transitional moments, but they taught me tremendous life lessons. Childhood is about innocence, and maturing is about evading bitterness. Some of us make it, and some of us don't. But it is the rare moments of intense beauty that see us through. The world and my Aunt are things of intense beauty, and they guided me though the arduous process of germination into adulthood. These themes will continue throughout my life, just as themes of continual personal growth will follow Jem and Scout.

My Boo Radley

                 

       Ever since I was seven, I have been volunteering at the Kennedy Creek Salmon Trail, docenting and teaching visitors about the chum that run there every autumn. While my experience there is not a direct parellel of Scout's experience with Boo Radley, it has been instrumental in showing me the succession from stage to stage in the human life.

      Upon first seeing the chum salmon, gasping out their last breaths in the struggle to reproduce, I was filled with a sense of awe and curiosity. It was strange to me that such a beautiful creature could be found so close to my home. As I learned about them, their meaning to me changed. From a stinky smelling meal at home, they became an entity all their own. Day after day I returned to teach people about these fish, but ended up learning more myself.

     Each female salmon, upon finding a place in the gravel bed with significant oxygen, begins to excavate a nest. These nests are called "reds", and are made as the female flaps her coddle fin onto the stream bed, creating a small vacuum. These reds take days to make, and so, already moldy with the white film of exhaustion, the female must then fight to retain her spot on the gravel. The salmon slowly became individuals to me. That female had been working for days, her striped companion floating encouragingly beside her. This female, old and close to her end, grasped a protruding root with her powerful jaws, in a vain effort to stay with her bright orange eggs. That male, a once-was dominant, struggled to fight off his younger, stronger adversary. The more time I spent watching them, the more I came to respect them as individuals.

    Even though I might not have been going through puberty at the time, a similar disturbance was taking place within my life. Recently, my parents had divorced, and so I was in the process of discovering my identity without my family as a whole. Like the dying fish who struggled to hold her own in the current, I was striving to maintain my sense of self as everything I felt sure about was washed away from beneath my feet. The salmon always fought. I respected their courage in the face of ominous doom, and tried to reciprocate it within my own life.

    Eventually, the rain begins to fall. The current in the river quickens, dragging the weak from their reds and washing them onto the shore. So I had to let go of my past and embrace the new and strange. However, it was not the end for the salmon, and so I realized it didn't have to be the end for me. Even after death, the salmon enriches the environment. Its death is the equivalent for the life of so many others. This metaphor gave me the strength to realize that even after the loss of my previous life, my future could be just as bright. This, in so many ways, is true. In an odd way my family is closer than ever before. Our loss provided the nutrients for our future to grow and mature.

     In this way, docenting at the Kennedy Creek Salmon Trial parellels what Boo Radley was to Scout: a symbol to guide the process of transition, be it within yourself, or within your surroundings.
                          

Introduction

              This is an introduction to my Honors English blog. I'm honestly not sure what kind of English student I am, but I suppose that is one of things I hope to find out through my writing.  If you are one of the unlucky souls who intends to follow my blog, prepare to be indoctrinated by my incredibly poignant and poetic words of wisdom. The language I intend to use on this blog will be akin to a babbling brook, hopefully with a few really cool words like "pusillanimous" and maybe a couple I can make up, following suit with Roald Dahl and others of his kind. I can go overboard with vocabulary, so you and other readers will be forced to bare with me as I edit my way to legible. I really enjoy talking about literature, so I am extremely excited to discuss these topics on my blog. Hopefully my point of view will not be the same stale perspectives that have been batted around highschool classrooms for years, but will be fresh, different, and intelligent. English is important because it allows students the tools to express themselves and others in the future. It is important for me to excell at this subject, because it provides the basis for all proffessional careers. Employment in Business, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Sciences and even Mathematics require an advanced understanding of language. To excell in English means to have a headstart in any of these career genres, so that when my time comes at the crossroad called College, I will not be hindered by inability or ignorance.

                        But until my "eureka!" moment, I am just "Illiterate". Enjoy.