The Street Lawyer

The book "The Street Lawyer" by John Grisham is about a lawyer named Michael Brock who worked for a large firm in D.C. One day, Michael and several other lawyers were taken hostage by a homeless man with a gun. The man did not kill anyone, but he did something worse. Before he was killed by the S.W.A.T. team, he reminded them how selfish they had been. Together, they made over three million dollars, and yet none of it had been given to help poor people, such as the attacker himself. The homeless man didn't kill anyone, but he scarred them.

John Grisham wrote his story in a unique way. First, he started writing as if the attack was just starting. But then, he writes as if it had already happened. Then he goes back again. He just keeps switching back and forth. I think John Grisham did this for a reason. I think he did it to emphasize his message. It really makes his story more interesting.

Grisham has a good message in his story. He shows how some people even make millions of dollars each year yet they don't give to those who make a lot less than that. He reveals a big social injustice in the world around us: greediness. If no person in the world was greedy and everybody shared what they had, the world would be a lot better place.

I think that Grisham did an amazing job with his story. He really made it interesting while he introduced a big issue in the world. He empowers people to give and not to be greedy. He showed people how they should help and what to do. He really changed my way of thinking.

An Eye For an Eye

The article "Is 'an Eye for an Eye' Ethical?" by Ariel Kaminer, published in the New York Times Upfront on November 5th, 2012, Kaminer explains a story about a man in New York named Anthony B. who chained his bike to a pole. Then, a delivery food person chains his bike to Anthony's bike. When Anthony comes back, he can't take his bike so he chains both of them to the pole. Later, after Anthony ate lunch, the delivery food person is angry.

What Anthony did to the delivery food person was like a small punishment for doing wrong things to the people around him. In the article, Kaminer wrote "The guy was asking for it. He knowingly inconvenienced a stranger, so he couldn't have been all that shocked when someone returned the favor." Ariel Kaminer wants you to think about the question in the title: Is an eye for an eye ethical? Although it might seem like the right thing to do, is it?

I completely agree with Kaminer. In his article, he wrote "Your solution seems so elegant: Use the very tools of this man's discourtesy to teach him a lesson about respect. But as satisfying as eye-for-an-eye justice can be, it's unlikely to cause him to reflect on how he wronged you. It will probably just make him hate you and therefore care that much less about inconveniencing you or anyone else he might proceed to lock up." Now that he has pointed out to me that not everyone agrees with the saying "an eye for an eye", I might have second thoughts about what I do.

The Pelican Brief

In this story, Grisham talks about a 19 year old girl who is on the run from a group of people who want to kill her. They want to kill her becaause she wrote a brief about who killed two Supreme Court justices and she guessed correctly. It was the same people that later on, killed anyone who tried to contact her. She was forced to escape her city, New Orleans, and flee around the country.

In other stories, Grisham usually talks about lawyers and about their lives. He has great examples, too. In his other books that I have read, he talks about a kid in law school, a very important case, and much more. He tells you real life things that would be very important in the world today. I think he does a great job in this.

Besides informing you about lawyers, he also teaches you other things. For example, in this book he teaches you about life on the run and the life of a reporter for a newspaper. In other stories, he also shows you the life down South and a lot more.

The Pelican Brief

In this book, John Grisham writes a story about how two Supreme Court justices have been assassinated. The assassin is extremely professional and did not leave behind any evidence for the FBI to track. There were no witnesses, either. Now, everyone is trying to find the assassin but there is no one to blame. But one law student from New Orleans has a far-fetched idea that somehow has gotten all the way to then president. It's a long-shot, but it is the best that they have to offer.

The way that the author writes the story, there is no single main character. He has the view of all of the important people. It skips form one person to another throughout the entire book. Also, he tells the reader who the assassin is through his own perspective but all of the other people have no idea who the assassin was. What this story is really showing you is the way that the government handles the situation.

I find it very interesting the way he wrote the book. It is a very advanced piece of writing. It is also a little confusing to read. But while making it confusing, he shoes a lot of other things that you normally wouldn't know about the story. I feel that Grisham is a great writer and he uses many ways to write his stories.

The Lorax

"The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss is a children's book that teaches children to respect the environment in a kid-friendly manner. He does this by making the story rhyme. Also, it is based on a made-up world with made-up animals. He give these animals wacky names and gives them fake characteristics. For example, the fish get out of their pond and walk away.

In the story, a man finds a world that has a lot of fluffy trees called truffula trees. Lots of animals live there. The Lorax is an imaginary animal that represents all of them. The man cuts down the trees to make clothing out of their fluffy tops. The Lorax asks him multiple times to stop but he doesn't. Eventually, all of the animals start to leave because the business has destroyed their habitat. When the last truffula tree is cut down, the Lorax leaves, too. In the end of the story, the man is old and he gives the last trruffula seed to a child. This shows that the book is calling the children to action stop hurting the environment.

This connects to the real world because in the past, there used to be a lot of nice places such as forests, jungles, and lakes. Now, just like the man did in the book, people are destroying these fantastic environments to build factories and to mass produce items. When this happens, trees are cut down, animals are turning extinct, and water, pollution is happening. In the story, the air is smogged, the water is dirty, the trees are gone, and the animals left. Thhis shows how the world is in a perspective of an imaginary wolrd.

A Painted House

In the book "A Painted House" by John Grisham, people of different races are treated differently. This might have to do with the fact that it is the 1950's. As everyone knows, people were treated differently in the past based on their race. But in this story, black people are being beaten up. Also, the mexicans and the black people are being treated as dirt. They have to work for a living by picking cotton. They earn one dollar and sixty cents for each one hundred pounds of cotton they pick. The mexicans arrived to the farm in one small truck. There were 60 of them crammed in a little truck.

In the story, the women seemed disgraced at the way these poeple were being treated. For example, when the mexicans arrived in the crammed little truck, Luke's mother was furious with the people that sent them. Last year, they did the same thing and she asked them to send the mexicans in a big roomy bus. But they ignored her. Also, she brings the minorities a lot of vegetables from her garden. She is really nice too the less fortunate people and feel bad for them.

I think back into the story and I now realize how much the world has changed. Now, minorities are being treated a lot more human-like as opposed to being treated like dirt as they have been in the past. Although they are being treated dealt with more fairly in life they are still being mistreated.

A Painted House

The book "A Painted House," by John Grisham takes place around the 1950's in Arkansas. This was around the time that blacks and Mexicans were being paid little to gather their crops. The Chandler family own the cotton farm. They are not wealthy people, but they are poor, either. They are in the middle class. They don't get hot water. They still have lots of debts to pay but they're farm is paying for it. They barely cut even each year. They're dream is to have a painted house.
I think that they're "painted house" symbolizes wealth. They want to pay off all of their debts and start making money. So far, they haven't done that well. Slowly, year by year, they are sinking further into debt. So far in the story, it has explained they're daily lives'. It is showing how much the everybody has changed since the time-period of this family.
In the book, the Chandlers don't have hot water. Today, every single person that owns a house has hot water. Also, the Mexicans and black people do not do the same thing that they did a long time ago. They are treated the same as any other person. Lastly, Our "painted house" would be more than just a fresh coat of paint. It would be a lot more. This shows how people have changed.