The Last Hole for Life

Dear The Ripper,

  I'm terribly sorry, but we've reached the eighteenth hole.  We always had a special connection together and you never led me to far left or right.  It's hard to think that just one hard, crisp shot of mine ended up breaking something more important into two pieces, you.  You were the one and only club that I could hit on the sweet spot about ninety eight percent of the time.  The other two percent only happened when unfortunately, you broke along the shaft.  I really cared about you, but maybe it was just time for me to find a new club to hit with and maybe, just maybe, I can hit it as well as I had hit you. 

 It was always nice knowing that I had you, my 3-Hybrid, there to back me up off the tee, or even straight off the deck of the fairway.  When I needed you, you never failed at placing that white, small, dimpled ball right up on the green next to the flag itself.  It seemed as if you were a robot that had one specific task programmed for it to do.  I still remember that one time, that one time where you put my new golf ball, the yellow one, straight into the cup to help me win my tournament.  Life on the course was nice knowing I had you, but I will have to move on to some other club.  I'm sorry it had to end like this, but it could be for the better, but also for the worse.

I'm still in the prime of my career and I have many more rounds in me, that is why I need to move away from you. We may never be friends again, but like I said, it may be for the better.  The hardest part is the fact of your beauty by your grooves that caught the ball like a saw blade catches into the wood.  You will soon be forgotten and I will move on, but for now, lets reminisce of that last eighteenth hole together. You will be missed, The Ripper.

Sincerely,

Jon Needham

Revenge - Taken

Revenge is one aspect of society that always comes into play after a problem, confrontation, or something  that has happened between two main people or groups.  When a person is harmed, that person being harmed will want to get that person back and get revenge.  Revenge is a popular act chosen by authors of plays, novels, and movies to help develop the plot line of the story they are writing about.  One popular movie is the sequel of Taken.  Taken and Taken 2 are two very popular movies that show the act of revenge which develops the plot of the both of the movies.

In Taken, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) who is the father, has to save his daughter from the Albanian men who have taken his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace).  While in Paris, France, he has to defend himself and fight off many Albanian men involved in the scandal of prostitution of women, which is the reason why Kim had been taken.  He ended up saving her in the end and bringing her back home to the United States.  In the second movie, the Albanian relatives of the men who Bryan killed, want to seek revenge and put his life to an end like he did to their sons and brothers.  Throughout the movie, certain actions are taken by Bryan and the Albanians to try to find their sense of revenge on the other one.  In this post by CNN, they explain how the second movie is almost the same as the first, besides the main factor that in the second, the men are looking for revenge on Bryan for killing their brothers and sons.  This act of revenge by these Albanian men show that revenge is a popular use and is used to develop the plot in a story of a movie, book, or play.

This revenge can also be compared to the act of revenge that is used in Hamlet written by William Shakespeare.  In Hamlet, revenge is taken when the Ghost appears in front of Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnado.  As they encounter the Ghost, they tell the news to Hamlet who also meets the ghost in private to speak.  During their conversation, the Ghost tells Hamlet that he is his father and that his brother, Claudius had killed him by the use of poison.  When Hamlet finds out about this, he begins to act differently towards others and he begins to find out ways to seek revenge on his uncle, Claudius.  This was apparent when the Ghost said "Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder" (1.5.25).  Hamlet will soon take action in Act 5 of the play and we will have to see how he chooses to act upon his revenge.

The acts of revenge chosen in Hamlet and the Taken movies are both similar in that they try to get back at the people or person who initially started the problem.  Also, all of the characters, Hamlet and the Albanian men, seem to seek the same revenge by attempting to kill the person who provoked the whole situation and caused it to be at the level it is.

Revenge is an important aspect and act that many writers use to help develop a plot of a movie, novel, or even play by having certain people react to something that another person has done.  Not only is it popular in books and movies, but many people use revenge today in the real world after they have been angered by the actions of another person. It can be either in an angry or funny, nice manner, but all in all, revenge is a confession of pain!

Satire in Shopping

Black Friday, that one shopping day of the year, right after Thanksgiving where people can find the best deals for Christmas gifts, birthdays, or even gifts for themselves for no real purpose.  Black Friday shopping is also one day of the year where people aren't necessarily humane as many people will say, they act more like animals that cannot control themselves. Smart and intellectual people, fighting over simple toys, games, shoes, electronics, everything they can find with a sale sign above just to get that best deal.

Satire is the use of irony and sarcasm to make fun of or directing humor at something such as a person or something that a person does.  Due to many uses of Satire, Black Friday Shopping is a exaggeration of it on how these people act tyrannical and insane compared to the way a normal human would act.  I mean you go to a store such as Target to get a new television for your family room on a regular day and there will be no problems with any of the people around you or workers at the store.  Now, on Black Friday, you go to get the same television for more than one hundred dollars off and you end up coming home with a black eye and a broken nose due to a fist of the person that was competing with you for that same television, just to save that one hundred dollar bill. I don't think that it is worth going out at midnight for something that is on sale while taking three punches to the face over a new phone or game.  In this article posted on The Onion , Black Friday is a big topic that is critiqued about the human society and how crazy people can actually get from this day.  If people acted the way they do on Black Friday everyday,  I'm sure more than forty two million people would not be living today after the amount of deaths faced on the day of Black Friday in 2012.  Out of all the people that go Black Friday shopping for family and friends, the people that actually understand the exaggeration of satire in these articles that come out and are read, are the people in the world that actually stay home on that night and are not part animal.  It is one topic, a day in the world where the animals of the world come to.

This is another source that uses some satire explaining how people were going crazy over things that are not a necessity to the survival of the human being and really do not affect us as much as people think.

The form of satire, exaggeration, is also tied into the exaggeration that is used in the book that I am currently reading, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written by Mark Twain.  Twain ties in exaggeration into the novel with Huck and  Jim's superstitions.  When Huck places the snake skin next to Jim as he was sleeping, Jim wakes up with a panic attack because of the fact that he believes he will now have bad luck.   Also, both Huck and Jim make superstitions that help them understand the world as a whole and affect the way that they travel on their journey. Twain uses satire not just in the form of exaggeration, but in ways that many people don't really see or understand as much as he may critique human actions and society as a whole.

Satire, used or not used, may and may not affect the way that a novel is understood by the reader and I feel that it is something that a comprehensible person would have to read and not take literally.  Black Friday and Huck Finn both, as a whole, explain and bring in the exaggeration of the certain idea and can sometimes bring a laugh to everyone reading or seeing it!