Last Game (Narrative) Essays - Baseball Rules, Origins Of Baseball

Last Game (Narrative) To be given the chance to play little league was one of the greatest times of my life. I played little league for four years, and every year I made the all-star team. My best friend and I played on every regular season team and every all-star team together. The final game of our career was unforgettable. It had been 4 years of great enjoyment with my best friend, Cody Smith. We always clowned around in practice, but when the game would start we had a high intensity. Cody would pitch, and I would play second base. When he wasn't pitching, I would, and he would play third base. We were the top players in little league, or so we thought. Our all-star team had made it to the championship of our state tournament. Before our team took the field our coach John Zamouski gave us a talk. He said, ?Well men, we've came a long way. Today's the day we've all practiced so hard for, but I want to have fun with it. Lets treat this like every other game we have won. You're all winners, win or lose. I want you all to know that I feel privileged to have coached such a fine bunch of men. So lets go out and play this game as hard as you can. What do you say, lets go have FUN.? We all got up and yelled, ?YEA.? ?Let's play hard.? ?Yea? As we all got more pumped up. ?Who are we ?N.I.? As we got more loud and more intense. Coach said, ?Bring it in. Win on 3. One, two, three? as we all yelled together ?WIN.? As I ran on to that field I recalled all the practicing I had done, and I knew I owed most of it to my father. He started me throwing and hitting when I was about four-years-old. As my passion grew more and more I wanted to go practice all the time. So I would ask my father to practice with me. Even though my father was tired or in the middle of a good TV show he would practice with me. I remembered my father sitting on an old milk crate while I pitched to him. This made me chuckle a little because I would throw a low wild pitch on accident that would hit him in the legs, but he kept positive. Cody was pitching a 3 hitter and I was playing well too. The score kept going back and forth. There were a lot of errors because the field was all dirt and felt like concrete, the ball was taking bounces I had never seen before. The final inning came around and we were down by 1 run with 2 outs when I came to bat. There was no one on base and the pitcher had 2 strikes on me. The next pitch seemed like it took forever. The pitcher pitched the ball right down the middle of the plate. I waited on the ball and hit a screaming line drive into left-center for a stand up double. Then Cody came up and hit the first pitch for a 2-run homerun for us to take the lead by 1. The next batter grounded out to end the inning, but the damage had already been done. We took the field and Cody was still pitching. The first batter hit a double and then stole to advance to third base. Cody then struck out the next two batters. Their were two outs and a runner on third base. Before Cody pitched that next b all I knew every player on our team told themselves that they would do whatever it took to get that next out. So when the ball was pitched and hit to me I was determined to get the out. The ground ball took a bad bounce and hit me square in the ribs. I picked up the ball, which was to the left of me. I spun around and threw that ball with all my power to first base. The ball reached the first basemen's mitt a half step before the runner made it to the base for the third out

Prose Criticism of Chuck Palahniuk Invisible Monsters Essay Example

Prose Criticism of Chuck Palahniuk Invisible Monsters Essay Example Prose Criticism of Chuck Palahniuk Invisible Monsters Essay Prose Criticism of Chuck Palahniuk Invisible Monsters Essay Essay Topic: Fight Club Novel Invisible Man Invisible Monsters The purpose of the first few paragraphs of any novel is to set the basic scene, to introduce main characters, and most importantly to make the reader carry on reading! If one starts reading a book and is not gripped by some aspect of the story or characters within the first few pages, many will abandon it in favour of something more engaging. The opening of Invisible Monsters does all of these things and more. It is narrated by one of the main characters, and another two are introduced within the first few paragraphs. Here the narrator tells you quite openly, this is called scene setting: where everybody is, whos alive, whos dead. This sentence in itself prompts one to read on, if only to find out who is dead. In fact, the first paragraph asks a whole hoard of questions in the readers head: who is alive and dead? Who is Evie Cottrell? Who is the narrator? What happened to the rest of Evies wedding dress, and why is she holding a rifle? The style of Invisible Monsters is not that of your every day novel. The story does not run in one straight chronological line, from beginning to end. In fact it is very jumbles and frequently jumps back and forth between past and present. So with the opening of the novel one is left wondering not only what happens next but also what happened before this, how did we get here? This technique is part of what keeps the reader turning the pages not only for the next part of the story but also the last part. Palahniuks style is unique in that, with only a small amount of words he can evoke a whole scene. In the first paragraph there are few adjectives. The wedding reception is big and in a big manor house. The staircase is also big. However, by the use of the language here the reader is able to grasp not only what the scene looks like but also some detail about the narrator and her somewhat limited vocabulary. The whole book is written in the style of a person telling the story verbally rather than writing it down, and the syntax and detail (including that which is omitted) are indicative of this. The piece is a collection of deconstructionist, self-referential stream-of-consciousness asides which affirm the idea of a person telling a story, adding detail as it occurs to them. This bits and pieces exposition builds tension and confusion throughout the book, but especially at the beginning, where information is slowly leaked to the reader. There us a symbiotic relationship between the frenetic style and the wildly unbalanced characters, which fit together perfectly. This allows Palahniuk to breathe more life into his characters than if he had rendered them in a more conventional way. The first character to be mentioned is Evie Cottrell; the scene is set at her wedding reception, and we meet her standing on a staircase, naked inside whats left of her wedding dress, still holding her rifle. The narrator does not seem at all sympathetic to Evie in her description, and in fact there is a certain amount of distaste in the way, further down the page, we are told, You can trace everything about Evie Cottrells look back to some television commercial for an organic shampoo suggesting that Evie is defined more by looks and her outer image than intelligence. The structure of this novel is very fragmented. Paragraphs are short and choppy in some cases only a few words and the non-linear narrative again enforces the superficiality of the characters. The writing is quite plain in its wording and there is little imagistic language (though Brandy is said to be gushing her insides out). The vocabulary is colloquial and varies sometimes using a few simple (some big West Hills wedding reception) and sometimes opting for more descriptive, intelligent words (give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism). The repetition of the word big in the first paragraph is quite telling of the character of the narrator: there are many words that could be used to describe a wedding reception in the West Hills (beautiful, extravagant, luxurious) but all she seems or chooses to note is that it is, simply, big. The lack of descriptive detail here, when later on almost an entire paragraph is devoted to the cut and style of Brandy Alexanders suit is a lso very telling of the characters. The fact Brandy is bleeding g from a bullet wound is mentioned almost as an aside the hole in the suit has caused the single-breasted cut to become asymmetrical. This is where Palahniuk is very clever. He does not come out and say that his characters are vacuous and superficial as such, but the narrators choice of words and actions show us. For example, as Brandy Alexander is laying bleeding to death at our feet, our narrator remarks, my first instinct is maybe its not too late to dab club soda on the blood stain. Earlier in the piece, the narrator has also remarked that Shotgunning anybody in this room would be the moral equivalent of killing a car. Were all such products. A very existential comment in which she places herself in the same category as her two worst enemies and is aware that in a sense she is no better than them. Palahniuk has an interesting and quite original way of conveying his characters feelings. He never seems to write, I feel or she felt and so instead expresses the feelings of his characters in quite abstract ways. So where in Fight Club the narrator exclaimed, I am Joes Enraged, Inflamed sense of Rejection, in Invisible Monsters feelings are conveyed in keeping with the brainless images of the characters as calls from a photographer to his model: Give me malice. This is effective not only in that it allows the reader to see how the narrator feels without resorting to I feel (Which would be rather out of character for these people, but it also likens the whole scene to a photo shoot, making it seem that everyone is acting a part which, of course, they are. It begins the idea that all of these characters are fake and perhaps not what they seem, but rather hiding behind the models faà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ade of Give me In conclusion, this novel opening is very effective. It introduces the characters and scene is such a way that leaves the reader with numerous questions regarding not only the outcome of the present situation, but also how the situation came about. Who are these people? Why is the house on fire? Why is Evie half burned out of her dress and half way down the stairs with a rifle in her hand? Why did she shoot Brandy? And why is the narrator calmly thinking of dabbing club soda on the bloodstains? It certainly makes the reader want to turn the page to find out just what is going on in this rather twisted world we are being drawn into.

Globalization and Postmodernity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Globalization and Postmodernity - Essay Example The terminologies will be discussed at length to challenge past proposals while ensuring the final resolution is substantive. Globalization is a term that almost everyone knows because it is a buzzword. Academics, journalists, business executives, politicians, economists, and other people frequently use the term (Ritzer, 2003, p. 193). In all instances, the common meaning of the term denotes that something great is happening, including a new world economy, a new political and cultural dispensation, and a changing world overall (Robertson, 2001, p. 458). The use of the term in numerous contexts makes it lose meaning because it is difficult to know what exactly the term means, what function it serves, and how it affects contemporary politics and theory. Social theorists have lodged arguments to the effect that the contemporary world is shaped by globalization (Anangst, 2006, p. 510). Essentially, globalization is strengthening the capitalist economic system, and this supplants the sove reignty of nation states. Corporations and organizations are slowly taking over state power. Local cultures and traditions are also eroding slowly as the global culture sweeps across nations (Robertson, 2001, p. 458). Weberians, Marxists, functionalists, and other theorists have admitted that globalization is an unmatched trend in today’s world. Advocates of postmodernism have also not been left behind as they argue that changes in transnational capitalism have led to a new historical configuration of the world – postmodernism (Brandzel, 2010, p. 1). Social theories of today, therefore, consider globalization as an indispensable feature of the modern world. Nevertheless, globalization has been conceptualized differently. The term is applied in various contexts differently.