Tuesday, February 12, 2013

The Importance of Integrity


Integrity.  The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.  Having integrity means that you have good morals and a good character.  Why does the theme of integrity matter in novels?  How does it affect the characters?  I’ve found that having or not having integrity drastically changes the outcome of both the plot and the characters. 

In the book, To Kill a Mocking bird, Atticus often shows the theme of integrity.  He first noticeably shows integrity with the story of Mrs. Dubose.  Even though she is rude to him and calls him offensive names, he is still polite.  He realizes that the old woman is sicker than she looks and probably doesn’t mean everything that she says.  He also knows that it is only her opinion and not necessarily the correct judgment of what he is doing.  Atticus also shows the theme of integrity when the mob comes to his house.  They question him and mock him, but he knows that what he is doing is right and that is enough for him.  Atticus also shows integrity just by taking Tom Robinson’s case.  He tells the kids that he took the case because he could “never ask you to mind me again.” He is basically saying that he took the case because it was the right thing to do.  Atticus had nothing if not high morals and shows this an innumerable amount of times throughout the book. 

In Four Truths and a lie, a lot of the main characters don’t have integrity.  When Scarlett’s language arts class is assigned a “stranger writing” activity she is paired with “#17” from another school.  When he sends back a letter challenging her to play four truths and a lie or have her secret be revealed to everyone, she accepts.  Her first task is to find out if her teacher, Miss Cardanelli is dating the other school’s language arts teacher, Mr. Lang.  She already displays the theme of lack of integrity when she invades her teacher’s privacy and stalks her at the mall.  Then, the second task is to find out if “number 14” is named Louis Masterpole.  Again, she shows lack of integrity by sneaking in to a classroom during lunch to look in her teacher’s desk and her grade book to find the list of pen pals.  This demonstrated low moral because she is going through someone else’s private desk just to see find out something for her own personal benefit.  She also shows the theme of lack of integrity when she gets the third and fourth statements; Karli Montesorri meets her boyfriend on Monday nights in the library after curfew and Hannah Wilcox got busted for shoplifting over the summer and the school almost didn’t let her come back.  She invaded people’s privacy and broke not only in to the library, but also broke in to the principal’s office and looked in someone else’s record.  She had the least amount of integrity with the last statement; Amber’s dad isn’t actually in the military.  She completely displays the theme of lack of integrity when she opens her best friend’s private journal.  Despite that Scarlet has no integrity with the game, she also lets down her basketball team by meeting her pen pal in the woods when she is already on probation.  She couldn’t play and caused the team to forfeit because they only had four people that could play.  She showed a lack of integrity when she broke the rules for her own benefit even though she knew that she might disappoint her team and ruin the game for the rest of them.  Scarlett had almost no integrity for the entire book because she was so scared that her secret would be revealed, that she didn’t mind exposing others’ and hurting other people to protect herself. 

Even though Scarlett had almost no integrity, her pen pal, James and her roommate, Chrissa, had even less.  James overall had a weak personality at points in the plot.  He let Chrissa convince him to blackmail a perfect stranger because she said that it would be “fun.”  What kind of person finds blackmail fun?  That alone displays lack of integrity.  He is also letting Chrissa tell him what to do even though he knows that it is wrong.  This is lack of integrity and shows lack of morals.  Despite that James is sending the statements, Chrissa is really the antagonist in the story.  She tries to trick James in to ruining Scarlett’s social reputation just because she is jealous that Scarlett seems to take everything too lightly and not get stressed out about everything.  Chrissa wanting to hurt someone else because of envy shows the theme of lack of integrity.  People with integrity don’t purposely to harm other people just because they don’t like them, or don’t want them to succeed.  Almost none of the main characters in this story have integrity. 

The only main student with integrity in this book is Amber.  Amber is Scarlett’s best friend at her new school.  Amber doesn’t care that Chrissa (who happens to be the most popular person in their grade) starts rumors about Scarlett.  She also doesn’t care too much about what other people think about her and she doesn’t change her personal beliefs and opinions to match other people’s.  Amber also shows the theme of integrity when she forgives Scarlett for looking in her journal.  She realizes that Scarlett’s personality is more important than what she did when she was being blackmailed.  Another example of when Amber shows integrity is when she doesn’t tell anyone Scarlett’s secret.  Even though she knows that it would help her social status to tell other people Scarlett’s secret, she knew that a real friendship was more important than her social status.  By looking at the bigger picture and looking over her immediate reactions to the events in the book, Amber showed the theme of integrity by acting in the best way possible in all situations. 

Having or not having integrity can be a saving quality or a fatal flaw for the characters in these novels.  All the characters with integrity had better outcomes, because inside they knew that they did the right things.  It is important to have integrity because then you can be happy with the decisions that you make and the kind of person that you are.  People like Atticus and Amber have happier endings because they can be more at peace with themselves, because they did the right thing when others were too afraid to.  Stories like these can be an example to us and can show that integrity shouldn’t just be a literary theme; it should also be a quality that we recognize and have in our own lives.  

Monday, February 11, 2013

Glass


Author's Note: This is a poem that I wrote because this week we had to write a creative piece.  In this piece, the narrator is insane and therefore not trustworthy.  The narrator is talking in circles and never really gets to a specific point other than sanity is like glass which would also be able to be found if you only read the first two lines of the poem.  


Sanity

A fragile glass

Waiting to be broken

And when it has broken

 The shattered pieces tear us apart

Our hopes and dreams

are crushed by sanity

But insanity is nothing but broken glass

A clawed hand reaching up and stealing your memories

Your thoughts crumble into nothingness

Clouded with delusion

Until nothing makes sense

Because sanity can be broken,

but insanity can’t be cured