"The People Could Fly" essay

Free Falling

____Have you ever dreamt of flying? In the short African fable “The People Could Fly” by Virginia Hamilton, the people with the purest souls really could fly. The slaves thought that flying was a sacred gift, and the idea soon worked its way into their religion. Even though Virginia Hamilton’s story “The People Could Fly” is a tale of African folklore, it has a lot of spiritual meaning not only to blacks, but to all races as well.
____In this romantic short story, a wise old man from Africa along with many other of his African comrades are taken from their homeland to be slaves in America. The wise and pure knew magic, and had wings like a blackbird's which would enable them to fly. These wings represent freedom. However, when they are taken in to slavery, they are stripped of their freedom, and therefore, their wings. They are forced to live a cruel life where all hope for their race is dead. Sarah, a mother who once possessed the gift of flight, was living her worst nightmare when the Overseer whipped her infant because it was crying. Toby helped her to escape from this evil man’s clutches by instructing her to fly again. “Go, as you know how to go!” he exclaimed, and after Toby chanted some magic words, she flew away from the white Overseer with her beloved baby in her arms. Later, he helped many others fly away from the torture. As the Overseer was about to kill Toby, he used his magic to fly away along with every slave in the plantation. Soaring away to happiness was the life symbolism which appears in the end of literature in the romantic mode.
____Even though “The People Could Fly” is based on African beliefs and myths, it is very similar to the popular religion Christianity. Flying away from the plantation is like going to Heaven. In Christianity, the people who resisted sin and ordained the word of God were accepted into the gates of Heaven, the perfect paradise. Along with that, Toby can be compared to Jesus, the son of God. Like Toby from “The People Could Fly,” Jesus saved innocents from terrible fates with miracles. Even though they are from two very different origins, these two religions are rather similar.
____Another part of African religion that connects to this story is the art of music. According to www.negrospirituals.com, negroes often expressed their faith through hymns, or spiritual songs. Even in modern times, African-Americans sing in Christian Gospels. This is a tradition which started way back in the day. Toby’s magic words “Kum…yali, kum buba tambe” are really from a negro folk song called “Song of Solomon.” This was sung in the slavery period and accurately depicts what Sarah is going through in the story. “Black lady fell down on the ground, kum buba yali, kum buba tambe. Threw her body all around, kum konka yali, kum konka tambe.” There is a good chance that Virginia Hamilton took Sarah’s character and Toby’s chant from this song.
____Black history and the slavery period are very important pieces of the black culture. Even if you are from a different faith or race, you may learn something about life if you analyze the morals carefully. A good place to start is Virginia Hamilton’s “The People Could Fly.”

Transformation ("The Ugly Duckling" essay)

Transformation

____Everybody possesses a quality about themselves that just isn’t right. Your hair might be the wrong color, your feet could be too big, or maybe you stutter whenever you try to speak. As they say, nobody’s perfect. So why do people beat themselves up about these qualities? The answer is simple; so, they can fit in with society. Having trouble fitting in is exactly the situation that the cygnet is stuck in in the story “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen.
____In this story, the cygnet is born a misfit in a nest of ducks. All the ducklings are prettier than him, and he is treated as an outcast by everyone just because of his physical appearance. Here is where the theme, Man versus Society, comes into play. It is here where society begins to nip at his self esteem.
____Even though it has an ironic theme to it, “The Ugly Duckling” is in the mode of romance. The swan is a romantic symbol which symbolizes transformation, and that is what takes place in this fairy tale. The protagonist, the cygnet, was tortured in his childhood, but he wouldn’t let that get the best of him. He turned out to evolve into a beautiful, respected swan, and swam off with his family in peace. That shows that just because something is wrong with you in your youth, it can change in the future.
____Other stories share this moral as well. In the story Cinderella, a girl is treated like a slave. Everyone hated her, and she never felt beautiful, just like the cygnet. Then she transformed into the most beautiful thing of all! This story compares to The Ugly Duckling a lot because similar things happen to the main character and they’re both romantic fairy tales. However, not only stories can be compared to this story.
____Real-life examples often portray the idea of transformation from the child’s tale. In Prentice Hall’s “Literature,” it is stated that Hans Christian Andersen wrote autobiographies periodically throughout his life. Andersen believed these autobiographies were necessary to display how far he had come. They talked about growing up as a peasant and expressed the struggle achieving success in his later life. This man likes his characters to be individuals, like him. In fact, “The Ugly Duckling” was very symbolic to his life! When he was young, there was so little respect in the world for him because he was considered unattractive. On top of that, he struggled with dyslexia, a reading handicap, while trying to become a writer, but he broke through the strife. He became one of the most famous authors in history. Even though his death occurred thirteen and a half decades ago, his fame and his literature still live in all of us.
____You can easily connect Andersen’s life to his fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling.” For example, the cygnet is unnamed in the fable. This may be because the ugly duckling is really Hans Christian Anderson. That is one of the most important pieces of symbolism in the story. Andersen’s symbolism is the glue that holds the pages together. Who knows? Maybe “The Ugly Duckling” is really another autobiography behind the mask of a fairy tale.
____Almost everybody has heard the age-old saying which says that everybody should be themselves if they want to acceptance in this world. It was that little moral which earned Hans Christian Andersen his long, successful life. All he wanted was to fit in, but when he chose to express himself instead of hiding behind a fake personality, he got more than he bargained for and rose above the rest. Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling” shows that beauty comes naturally if you accept the person you really are even if nobody else will.

Mythbusters - George Bishops: LEAVE KAITLYN ALONE!

From my YouTube video "Mythbusters - George Bishops". Unfortunately, it cut off during the Leave Kaitlyn Alone part, but I am going to redo it without the explanation of the "contreversy" which pressured me to make the video. This remake will be titled "LEAVE KAITLYN ALONE!" and will be more centered on the video which it is parodied on ("LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!" by Chris Crocker). For example, I will be in a white T-shirt and lying on a tan sheet. Anyway, here is the script.

How dare anyone out there make fun of Kaitlyn after all she’s been through. She went through Grimace, appeared on the internet in a bear mask, and now some guy named George Bishops is claiming to be her boyfriend and she doesn’t even know him. All you people care about is gossip and calling her weird. She’s attention deficit! And what you don’t realize is that Kaitlyn out there making all these lip sync videos for you and all you do is write a bunch of crap about her. She doesn’t even have a Facebook OR a boyfriend. She gives and gives and gives but all you people want is more, more, more, more, more… Leave her alone! You’re lucky she even performed for you! Leave Kaitlyn alone, please. Perez Hilton talked about professionalism and said if Kaitlyn was a professional, she would have pulled it off no matter what. Speaking of “professionalism,” what kind of a professional publicly busts her when she’s going through a hard time? Leave Kaitlyn alone, please. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah Leave Kaitlyn alone RIGHT NOW. I mean it. Anyone who believes George Bishops, you deal with Angry Mitchell, because Kaitlyn is single right now. Leave her alone!

Here is a link to the original video, "Mythbusters - George Bishops": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMylqEM4GJQ