Scout/Sal Essay

I'm normally not so punctual with my blogs, and this is kind of cheating because it's an assignment, but I'm gonna be in Sand Diego until Monday so....

In my opinion, Scout and Salamanca are similar in many ways, one being the fact that they are both very empathic characters. They care a lot about how others are feeling throughout their stories, and to me, are much more empathic than most people generally are. In To Kill a Mockingbird Scout, along with Miss Maudie, helps comfort her Aunt Alexandra when they learn of Tom Robinson’s deadly escape attempt. Scout knows how discussed Alexandra is with the ladies at the party for being so carefree in light of the rape case, and Tom’s ensuing demise, and comforts her with the help of Maudie. “She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.” She understands Aunt Alexandra’s plight, and wants to help, much like Sal does with Phoebe.

            Salamanca seems to be perfectly suited to be Phoebe’s natural empath. She went through a similar situation as Phoebe in losing her mother, although Phoebe’s isn’t quite as bad. Sal understands the whirlwind of emotions Phoebe goes through after she loses her mother, and can comfort and support her as she gets a grip on her life. “On that night after Phoebe had given her Pandora report, I thought about the Hope in Pandora's box. Maybe when everything seemed sad and miserable, Phoebe and I could both hope that something might start to go right.”  The girls can be very different, however.

            One major difference between Scout and Sal, at least over the course of the books, is their level of happiness regarding their mothers. Even though they both lost their mother’s, they each are in very different mother-less situations. Scout can’t even remember her mother, and so doesn’t dwell her passing. She does have things to be sad about, but the lack of a mom isn’t one of them. “Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence.” Sal’s mom died when she was very aware of what was happening, and was a different thing entirely.

            Salamanca Tree Hiddle was a young adult when her mom died, and being such, was very aware of what had happened. She even felt some guilt, mainly about the fact that she wasn’t good enough by herself for her family, which gave her mother the desire to have more children. It just so happened that the baby died in labor and Sal’s mom had to have a hysterectomy (she couldn’t have anymore kids). This causes her to fall into a depression, and leave on that faithful bus ride. Sal has to come to grips with the fact that it may not have been her fault that her mom left; it may have been her mom’s. “While I prayed for Gram outside the hospital, I wondered if my mother’s trip to Idaho was like Moody Blue’s behavior. Maybe part of it was for my mother and part of it was for me.” One of the reasons that it takes Sal so long to come to terms with her mom’s situation is because she’s so secretive, which is the opposite of Scout.

            Sal takes basically the whole book to tell the whole truth about what happened to her mother. You never really know what happened to her mom until the end, and it’s even hinted at that she still may be alive, but staying in Idaho for her personal reasons. Sal is very reluctant to let the truth out, and doesn’t even tell Phoebe that she had a similar experience, even though it may help Phoebe identify with her. Because Phoebe doesn’t know why Sal is qualified to help her, she won’t let her help her deal with her mother’s disappearance. “I felt bad for Phoebe. I knew I should get up and try to be nice, but I remembered when I had felt like that, and I knew that sometimes you just wanted to be alone with the birds of sadness. Sometimes you had to cry by yourself.”

            Scout is incredibly out in the open with her emotions. She lets everyone know how she feels and doesn’t care what they think. You find out very quickly what Scout’s view of the world is, and it doesn’t take the whole book to find out about any of Scout’s secrets. “’Entailments are bad,’ I was advising him, when I slowly awoke to the fact that I was advising the whole aggregation. The men where all looking at me, some had their mouths half-open.”

            

I Won't Take it the Wrong Way When You Say This's Turrible, Becuase it is

Dear Mr. King,

I would like to tell you about how your book Misery was pretty significant in the life a little child (who just happened to be me). I have read this book several times--the most recent being last summer--and have enjoyed each and every subsequent read-through of its 320 pages (at least in my edition). I loved everything, the pacing, the tone, generally just the writing. Now, I know that this is getting a bit to complimentary for the official LAL guidelines, but trust me, there’s a point to this blatant disregard of all rhyme and reason. Even though I loved the book, even though many others loved the book, I’ve just got to say: it scared the (to take one of Annie’s phrases from the book) ‘eff out of me. I guess it was sort of a bad idea to read it in the fourth grade, but hey, what’s done is done. No book (not even any of yours) has scared me like this one did. There was just something that I, as a nine-year-old child (yep, it’s crazy that I read this at that age, isn’t it) found utterly terrifying. Maybe it was the cop and the lawnmower scene (a face like hash browns *ewe*) or the foot cutting, but it just got to me. It was a good fear, though, an infectious fear, and it made me want to keep reading. I wanted more. More books, more stories, more, more, more. This is one of the ways my life has been affected by this book. Before the fourth grade (and before this book) I wasn’t all that into reading. I mean, I’d read a Potter book here and there, Eragon, what have you, but nothing ever made me want to, need to read more. After this book, I did. So thank you Stephen (can I call you Stephen?....probably not) for inspiring me to want to read. I practically ate up literature. Mind you, none of it was as utterly terrifying to me as this, but it gave me a jump start, a hunger. So, thanks, thanks for opening my mind to the wonderful world of literature.

I’m not going to proclaim anything as outlandish like “I’ve been abducted by a crazy serial killer nurse” or anything; however, there are certain parallels that I can make in connection to my own life. Paul is, in essence, trying to separate himself from his past (i.e. the Misery series of books), which is similar to the way that I’m trying to separate myself from my past (or the expectations of others). For most of my life I’ve been expected to play sports (it must be because of my tremendous physical build J). But that’s not who I am. This may seem kind of lame, but one of the biggest problems of the last six years of my life was playing sports each and every year, every day, every week. I don’t want to do that anymore, just as Paul doesn’t wish to write Misery. He wants to break free, and so do I.

So, Stephen, ahem, Mr. King, thanks for taking the time to read this, if it ever gets to you (which it probably won’t) for taking the time to write, and use your gift to inspire fourth graders (who probably shouldn’t be inspired by your particular books) around the world. 

This is just some report I found in my Elementary School Stuff. . .Enjoy

NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION

Non verbal communication is something that we all do, even if we don’t know it. We all communicate with each other in other ways than using language. Most people think of non verbal communication as the process of sending wordless messages to others. Usually, the types of non verbal messages are visual, but you can gestures and touch, which is called Haptic Communication. Also you can use body language, posture, facial expression and eye contact. The voice quality, rate, pitch, volume, speaking style, intonation and rhythm and intonation are also factors. Dance is also a form of non verbal communication.

Written texts also have non verbal elements of communication, like handwriting style, the spatial arrangement of words, or even the physical layout of the page. Even though non verbal communication also exists in writing, most of the people who study non verbal communication focus on the face to face interaction and communication of people. Face to face interaction can be classified three ways: the environmental conditions of the area where the communication takes place, the physical characteristics of the communicators, and the communicator’s behavior during the conversation. This is one of the problems of texting and email, many of the subtle ways that people communicate is lost when it is just words on a screen.

Charles Darwin was the first person to study non verbal communication. He studied it in the year 1872. It was in his book The Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals. He thought that all mammals conversed reliably through their faces, and show emotion reliably. Throughout most of the 20^th century many more people studied the effects of non verbal communication. Many prominent scientists study the effects of non verbal communication of mammals. Many studies that range across a number of fields are being studied now, and many people still question how we communicate through non verbal communication.

Non verbal communications usually communicate emotions and attitudes, not specific thoughts or feelings. They also either substitute for, contradict, emphasize or regulate the verbal meaning of the phrase, and are very often ambiguous, and are very often continuous, always going on and on. Non verbal cues are far more reliable than what we say, and are always culturally bound. Different people in different states in different parts of the world all use non verbal communication, but differently, it always depends on what country you are from. What ever country that you grow up in dictates what kind non verbal communication that you use.

Non verbal communication is something that all mammals do. They all reliably communicate what emotions they are feeling through facial expression and attitudes, and they do it much more accurately than us humans do through speaking. As people, we need to learn how to pick up the small and subtle cues that all animals pick up from their own species. If we know how to read between the lines of people emotions, and how to read their face, then we can all communicate better with ourselves and others.