Two Roads Diverged In a Yellow Wood

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one less traveled, and that has made all the difference. This line in the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. It is pretty obvious what it stands for, the two paths representing a choice. One is worn down by the feet of many, the other has tall grass growing because less people have taken it. The man chooses to take the road less traveled, and realizes when he comes out on the other end that it was worth the risk. The path he had chosen, by making his own path, made him stronger and wiser.

Freedom

Freedom, one of the greatest things in the world. It is amazing, but doesn’t come free. Usually there’s a price to pay for freedom, most likely of those is death. But everyone wants freedom. That is how Otto feels in the book H.I.V.E., where he must escape a school that is more like a prison. Him and his friends must escape, and they know that a likely outcome from attempting such a thing is death. One of the most important parts of Otto’s plan is to not get caught, but he needs people to help him escape. Meaning he would have to risk being caught in order to make it easier to escape. He quickly gets three people to join him and they start scheming their breakout. It is a highly complicated plan that would most likely fail, but to them it is worth the try. All in all, the attempt failed sadly. They didn’t escape, but they learned a lot on how to escape. Not obtaining their goal of freedom only made them want it more, and to try even harder next time. To obtain what everyone wishes to have, freedom.

Conspiracy

Lies are everywhere. Some people’s lives are lies, who the pretend to be are lies. They could be your best friend one second, then stab you in the back when you’re not looking. With all the lies in the world, it is hard to tell what the truth is. That’s why some people believe in conspiracies. For people who don’t know, conspiracies are lies by the government. One of the biggest ones for example, is 9-11. Some people believe that the government planned it to have a reason to start a war. It may seem ridiculous but it isn’t. One of the most important things in war is to have the people of your nation behind you and believing we should be at war. To believe in their leader, to trust in their leader .But such a trust is hard to obtain, unless they use evil ways to get it. The evil and extremely horrible way to get such a trust is to plan an attack upon their own country and blame it on another one. When innocent people die, the nation changes. The people cry for those lost, but that’s not all. Once the grief has passed, it is replaced by a bloodlust for revenge. It burns like a fire, that grows bigger and bigger, stronger and stronger, and it can only be settled of the blood of their enemy being spilt. And that fire builds up and turns into a wildfire, spreading across the nation, all who get caught in it scream out in anguish for revenge. By using such a horrible method, the leaders quickly earn the trust of the people, and are backed by their screams of pain. For the said reasons, it can make some people wonder if the government did plan 9-11 all on their own. To turn our nation into savage barbarians wanting only to absolutely annihilate their enemy, and destroying anything that get’s in their way. Then if the government would create an army out of the bloodthirsty population, they could invade any country they choose for multiple reasons. To have control over it, for money, military purposes, or as one that seems to stick out from the rest, oil. With our nation’s horrible gas prices, the government could have sacrificed a couple hundred lives to take oil from other countries, such as Saudi Arabia. The only people who can know for sure are the highest people in the government, if they truly planned it or not. But for the rest of us, we are stuck in the dark with a knife in our back and not knowing who it belongs to.

Things Aren't Always as They Appear

Things aren’t always what they appear to be. For example, people could secretly be traitors and horrible friends but act friendly, and they are deceptive. That’s what the story, The Lottery, is like. In the beginning everyone is happy, the children are having fun collecting smooth stones, and the adults are talking and cracking jokes left and right. But it doesn’t turn out the way you think. In the story, everyone gathers in the middle of town all happy and excited for the lottery. The children are giggling and the adults are laughing, and then the man who runs the lottery shows up with his black box. So normally you would think, “Oh, so they are all just excited to see who wins the lottery and gets a lot of money.” But they’re not getting money, instead they get a horrible prize. When the winner has been selected, they stand out in the opening in the middle of the town, where everyone forms a circle around the winner. Then they proceed to pick a handful of smooth, hard stones from the pile, and all hold them at the ready. Then once everyone has their stones, they unleash them at the person standing in the middle and stone them to death. So in this clearly deranged story, it starts off as happy story with the children and adults all smiling and laughing, then jumps from Happyville, to gooney town in under three hours. They kill a random person for absolutely no reason, and they even have the family of the person who was chosen throw stones at them until their mother, father, sister or brother is laying on the ground dead. There is clearly no point to is and it is just senseless murder.

The Rule of Galbatorix

Everyone has dreamed of the same fantasy, of a time where there where nights in shining armor, a princess locked in the highest room of the tallest tower, and a land where dragons where either feared monsters or beloved companions. In the four book series by Christopher Paolini known mostly as the Eragon series. To quickly summarize such an enormous series, there is an evil ruler known as Galbatorix who was suppose to be the last dragon rider, is the ruler of all the land. But a secret dragon egg hatched to a young man named Eragon who raised it to become a fully grown dragon. Now Eragon must help the rebels, known as the Varden, overthrow the evil king's rule and start a new world where people don't have to live in fear. But the question is, will Eragon be able to defeat Galbatorix? Who will survive their battle? The reasons why it is so hard to tell if Eragon could defeat Galbatorix are like balanced on a scale, they pretty much even it out perfectly. You want to think that Eragon could win, that good will always triumph over evil, and spread light throughout the world were darkness thrived. But when you see how strong Galbatorix is, given that all the dragons he killed to become the king, and stealing their heart of hearts, which makes the person who has it even stronger. Galbatorix killed somewhere around one hundred dragons and taking their heart of hearts which made him even more stronger. The man has been living for over two hundred years! And he's still going strong! He uses magic to keep him young and strong, and also the fact that his dragon is the size of my school, when Eragon's dragon is somewhere between one half or even a fourth that size. It really does seem that evil would win this fight... From looking at all the facts, I honestly believe that Eragon will not win. That he will be killed, but in the last seconds before his death either he or a third person will hit Galbatorix with a blow so strong that it slowly kills him. I think either that or that Galbatorix would kill Eragon's dragon, and right after Eragon would kill him. I'm not quite sure because I'm not too far into the book and there are numerous ways this book could end, but if I had to pick, it would be one of those two. Whatever the outcome will be, I'm excited to read all the way to the end and find out.

Mysterious Head Master

In all our lives there are mysterious people, people who keep secrets from others. Don't get me wrong, we all have secrets, but some people's entire lives are a giant secret to others. One of these people is Dr. Nero, the Head Master of H.I.V.E. in the book H.I.V.E. by Mark Walden. Dr. Nero's whole life is in secrecy, and two of the biggest secrets is how he got the other half to one of his students necklace of the Yin and Yang, and his whole life at H.I.V.E. Wing, the student with the necklace, just has the yin of the two, but when Dr. Nero jumps in front of Wing to save his life from a monster, it rips open the doctor's shirt to reveal that he has the perfect match to the Yin. This event takes place in the end of the book and doesn't explain why until the next book sadly, so not even I know the reason. Another secret that Nero has is practically his whole life of educating kids to overthrow governments and upset the peace of the world. Nero's plans for the students of his so called "school" are incredibly ridiculous, but the fact that he's been doing it for many years is an incredible fact that it works. What he wants his students to achieve is to accomplish impossible tasks, but to do them in style. Instead of shooting missiles at an aircraft carrier, he teaches them to think outside the box. One of the greatest examples he gave was how one of his graduated students sunk an aircraft carrier, but used a giant robotic squid. Instead of blowing up a building, another graduated student created a giant robot and let it rampage throughout the city. Dr. Nero's vision is obviously insane, but it is admittedly tempting. Most kids dream of being the goody goody superhero who saves the day, but they are secretly attracted to the evil side. They get the better weapons, costumes, and most are billionaires. They are also free to do what they want, not being held back by the restrictions of the law. To be able to do all of this, he must be very secretive and not show his weaknesses, or to say it simply, be secretive.

People Change

People change in this world, doesn't matter if they want to or not. They might not change for the better, but they will change. Friends turn into enemies, enemies turn to friends, it happens every day. Usually changes happen from traumatic experiences, like losing a loved one. But one of the worst of them all is war, and that is what the characters from Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers had to go through. They killed in cold blood, they watched their friends die in front of them, and they themselves were as close to death as possible. Through all this, they would never be the same people.

Richard Perry, or Perry as everyone called him, was one of the main characters of this book. His experiences in war alone would be enough to give anyone nightmares. Perry watched his friends get torn to pieces by explosions and bullets. When he was wounded, Perry was carried away from the battlefield in a medevac chopper, which stands for medical evacuation. He and his friend Brew both got flown out, and as the medics worked on them in the helicopter, they held hands. The book described his hand feeling cold, limp, and lifeless. Then he watched his friend get put into a body bag as the medics zipped it up.

Another traumatic experiences for Perry was when he was searching in a village for remaining Viet Congs who were terrorizing the villagers. As he walked into a hut, from his backside one aimed a gun at his head from point blank and pulled the trigger. The only response he got was a few clicks from his gun, the Viet Cong's gun jammed. So then the both had a quick fight using fists and the butts of their guns, and Perry eventually knocked the Cong down to the ground. He took out his M16 and unloaded a full clip into the Cong's face, tearing away flesh, bone, and muscle. Still scared, he slammed in another clip and started firing more rounds into the dead man's face. Once he was done there was a lump of flesh, a little bone, and a tooth. That was all that remained of the Cong's face.

Being in a war can really mess with your head from all the horrible things you see. Some people have nightmares, others need to be put into a mental institute. The book never did say what happened to the characters in the book except for the people who didn't survive the whole book. They grieved for the dead, yet were happy at the same time that they weren't the one in the body bag. Whatever happened to them, they would never be the same group of little boys who went into the war.