11-18

http://ideas.time.com/2012/11/14/extreme-candy-the-18-chocolate-bar/ This is not necessarily a controversial article, but was fun to read non the less. The use of rhetoric questions made this article interesting, as well as giving the impression that the author actually was thinking about what the reader was thinking. And the words he uses make you laugh. "A small number of chocolate geeks, maybe; a smattering of gastrocrats." No one ever uses words like that in everyday language, and it makes the article seem much more amusing and interesting. With each aspect of the chocolate bar being examined, from the name to the texture to the stories behind it, this article leaves little wanting from the reader.

Prompt 11-11

2002. Morally ambiguous characters -- characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good -- are at the heart of many works of literature. Choose a novel or play in which a morally ambiguous character plays a pivotal role. Then write an essay in which you explain how the character can be viewed as morally ambiguous and why his or her moral ambiguity is significant to the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary. In the book Beauty Queens by Libba Bray, one of the main characters is Taylor Hawkins. The representative from Texas, she is the very model of a conservitive modern southern bell. She prays to Jesus, never swears, owns guns, is blonde, and is, in other words, perfect. This causes us to naturally want to dislike her, and her attitude does nothing to make her endearing. She is controlling, and very against any swearing or "using the lord's name in vain". It's only when you reach the end and realize that the reasons that she acted like this is because her mother left, it's then you feel sympathy. When you look back at the book and how she was acting, it was all a way to try to hold her world together, clutching the fragments that had shattered when her mother left her when she was 6. Taylor is not a loveable character though. Even if you want to hug her and comfort her, you still do not want to be her friend.