Seventh grade visual for Ms Kinney’s class in 2013.
Seventh grade visual for Ms Kinney’s class in 2013.
Editors’ Note: This is an essay written by a student in Mr. Key’s Humanities class.
“Their foot shall slide in due time.” Deuteronomy 32:35. Every man is within reach of God’s wrath mercy; furthermore, deserving sinners can be cast down to hell at any time, and they only remain because God has decided that it is not their time.
Since The Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was preached in the beginning of the Great Awakening it became a starting point for a time of religious change. In the 1730s, the Great Awakening embraced the evolving world and Church when it was straying from the basic values of Puritism. God is not forgiving in unyielding Original Puritism. Puritism from the Great Awakening created a wide spread revelation that God can be more merciful and forgiving. Even though God has all the power and ability to cast sinful men to hell he does not until it is their time, displaying clemency and a step towards a true merciful God. The Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God evolved like the perception God in the Great Awakening.
A central message in the sermon pertains to God, yet it can also be applied to unbelievers, for the message was humans design their own fate. The choices make are their future; furthermore, humans are their choices. As societal creatures, humans live in communities, so they are affected by lives around them. Though outside forces influence choices they never make the choices, for that is what creates the individual that they can not be helped from themselves, but still lives in a world full of people. People are in control of themselves, both a freedom and burden.
Vivid imagery of hell and God’s wrath establishes fear that captivates his audience. Edwards uses vivid metaphors of God’s hands holding sinners above the fiery pits of hell as a rhetoric technique to continually reinforce the danger of being a natural man. Metaphors are a very powerful tool when compared to an act of atrocity or horrible action that has already been experienced or seen. The people of this time era were usually uneducated and Edwards bridged God’s message from the written bible to actions that could be comprehend by the congregation.
Edwards’ dramatic, strong language reflects his intense opinions and exceedingly strong will. A lasting feeling of power impresses upon the reader through the intensity of the words. Edwards’ subtler writing appeals to pathos. Logos and Ethos are hard to bring into a sermon, for it’s hard to find ethics and logic when talking about God. Pathos is passion and emotions; therefore, his every word oozed pathos.
Fear is arguably the most powerful emotion because it can be used by leaders to keep their followers under their thumb, and Edwards’ writing seeps fear and power, most specifically that of God. Some sermons, like Edwards’, manipulate the crowd through the fear and strong opinions. Manipulating the crowd is very easy through sermons because at that time people were very religious, building their life around God’s words. Sermons include scripture, passages from the Bible, and people believe in God; therefore, they believe in the sermons. Edwards’ words that create the sermon are power, as a result he is powerful over the people because the people believe.
Religion is everlasting because people with always believe. Throughout the ages musicians, writers artists, etc. endlessly delve into the subject of religion, seriously or comically, and the faith of its believers. Randy Newman wrote a song in 1972, God’s Song, that is a satire about people’s unconditional love of God, and an example of how loving unconditionally hurts the person loving the most. It is dangerously careless to have such faith or love in one being because even God will take advantage of it. Edwards, whether it was intention or not, manipulates the crowd, for they had unconditional love and faith in God. Love and faith makes religion dangerous, especially in a time where no science was present to contradict it.
Sermons are important in understanding the people of the Colonial Period because Pilgrims came to America for religious freedom. By building their government and life around religion it made their deep faith their vulnerability. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a literature piece that embraces powerful religious change; in fact, constant reiteration implies the messages are unchangeable fact. The sermon was written at the beginning of the Great Awakening as a persuasion piece for its ideals and embraces the Great Awakening.
Editor’s note: one of many submitted book reports for Mr. Key’s humanities class.
Student: Aidan Woodall
Film: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Director: Ben Stiller
Genre: Drama, Dramedy
“Stiller has aimed high, and even if he hasn’t made it to the top, the view is still pretty good
from where he ended up.”
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is the gripping story of a LIFE Magazine worker looking for a
missing last image, all while making his way into the heart of a coworker. Walter Mitty, the main
character and namesake of the film, daydreamed often, which was a large part of the film.
What this film was really about was how people should be adventurous in life. This film’s
definition of ‘adventurous’ is to travel and spend lots of money doing so. It also seemed
that “adventurous” meant to leave a comfort zone, which isn’t exactly necessary, as many have
been adventurous in the comfort of their own home. Adding on to this, in the first part of the
film, the theme was how office workers are boring and are often made fun of, which isn’t true
(look at The Office, or Office Space). Mitty was a bit of an oddball in the beginning, causing
other workers to pick on him sometimes.
Another theme of the film is, indirectly, to do various activities for love, or to impress someone.
Mitty was on a dating site, and often spoke to a worker of it on the phone, who was constantly
impressed by the feats that Mitty had done.
It wasn’t expected of this film to be that clichéd, and, in a way, it was. The cool part is that it
didn’t follow that many mainstream clichés, as it was trying to be different, but it created its
own clichés that will probably be used one thousand times in the future. It may have had some
love story tropes, like seeing the love interest’s face in the formation of birds, but it wasn’t
that clichéd. A cliché that was commonly found in this flick is how the oddball gets the girl
in the end, which can be found in many children’s/young adult books. This may be a way for
the filmmakers to say “Hey, there’s someone out there for everyone,” but that someone may,
coincidentally, be the person that everyone at the workplace likes deep down.
This film received a 50% on the film reviewing site Rotten Tomatoes, making it a “Rotten”
film. That wasn’t exactly an earned score, but there may be a specified reason for why it got so
low. The acting/directing by Stiller was a good choice, as well as having Adam Scott play the
“bad guy”. It was very visually pleasing and beautiful looking, as it was filmed in Iceland, Los
Angeles, and New York, but what was wrong with the film: too many plotlines. Recently,
someone in filmmaking found out that having a lot of detail is good, while having little to no
detail is bad. This story + lots of detail = 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. The storyline for Gravity +
little detail = 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. The point of this is that not everything needs this many
plotlines and parts to remember and go back to.
This film was also based on a short story by James Thurber. The idea is the same, but
there are drastic changes to the plot in the film adaption, mainly to make the film longer. The
short story was about an average man who has to shop for dog food, but is constantly stopping to
daydream about random circumstances.
This film earned $62,744,672 at the box office, out of a $90,000,000 budget. This
makes it a bit of a box office bomb, even though it was well advertised. The weird part about the
advertising is that the first trailer for the film gave no hint to what the movie was about. It just
looked like a guy who works for LIFE Magazine who jumps on a helicopter. And that was it for
the trailer. Many people may have stuck to their thoughts about the first trailer, making them not
want to see it, which may have been a factor to why to the box office gross was so low compared
to the budget. The advertising and trailers progressively added more to the trailers, which drew
people in more. Back to the budget/box office/Gravity comparisons, Gravity had a budget of
$100,000,000, and it gained $662,944,426 at the box office, surpassing the worldwide gross of
The Avengers from one year before. And here’s the funny part: Gravity had a smaller advertising
budget, so fewer people knew about it before its release, yet it still had a larger worldwide
gross than The Avengers, which was the highest grossing film of 2012.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was a fairly good movie. The acting and sets were very
well done, but the story was a little worn and dry. Overall, it was an interesting film.
Quote by Matt Neal of The Standard.
The City of Bones is written specifically for young adult’s and is a fantasy. Cassandra Clare the author is a very open minded writer who uses various styles and techniques to express each and every single one of her characters throughout The Mortal Instruments trilogy. The City of Bones book 1 revolves around a girl who witnesses events out of this world and adjusts to who she really is. Cassandra Clare decides to rather instead of using the sappy everyday love story, bring together chains of events that relate to real world problems, that invoke the readers to assume the feelings of the characters rather then her just say them.
The City of Bones relates to various hardships that everyday people/readers may have gone through. Throughout this book, it becomes evident that sometimes people don’t exactly get what they want. Life may seem normal and perfect but at times horrific and tragic events can come out of the blue, and it is our job to overcome and solve these various problems.
Cassandra Clare can relate to this series in many ways. Clare grew up traveling with her parents all over the world and never truly adjusted to one particular place, which relates to the main character of the series Claire. Clare demonstrates throughout her writing the various hardships of family and how sometimes one must read in between the lines in order to find out the truth. Things never appear to be what they seem, which in other words means one can not trust anyone.
The statement made in the book “one can not trust anyone” relates to real world issues today. Clare acts out the misery and ridiculousness of this time and shows how people we love and trust are really just horrid backstabbers. Clare is filled up with so much dread and confusion that she honestly using her puppets throughout the book series, demonstrates issues in a way that readers may not always catch.