The Boxers do not deserve a bad reputation because they were uneducated on natural disasters. Missionaries in China were “trying to… Westernize their particular society… undermining the Chinese village, the Chinese traditions, and Chinese control over their own territory” (Lefeber). Chinese farmers “believed that the Christians had so displeased the gods that [they were] being punished with drought” (Szczepanski). After the Opium Wars, where the British won 2 wars over Opium regulations, missionaries came to China wanting to Christianize the Chinese people to “make the Chinese a better people by converting them” (Lefeber). As a result, the Chinese responded because of the attempts to Christianize by German missionaries with violence in Shandong during November 1897. Because of the Missionaries that took away Chinese traditions and Chinese control of territory, they started the Boxer rebellion, which mostly used their fists to fight. However, the Chinese were unaware that droughts and famine were natural and not caused by the Christians, believing that they were being punished by god because of the Christians. Therefore, the Boxers do not deserve a bad reputation because they were not educated.
hummanities
Theme in “A Sound of Thunder”
High self-esteem causes people to believe in themselves and feel secure but too much self-esteem can cause people to not realize the difficulties of challenges. In the story “A Sound of Thunder”, the main character Eckels goes back to the past to kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He goes to the past with Travis, who is the safari guide and several other hunters. The big idea of this story is about time travel and how it may cause mass-destruction in the future.
In the story A Sound of Thunder, by Ray Bradbury, the author believes that self-esteem sometimes causes people to underestimate challenges. Travis, the hunting guide, lectured Eckels on the consequences of changing the future but “Eckels, [on the metal path], aimed his rifle playfully” (Bradbury, 8). Despite Travis’s lengthy explanation on how traveling to the past might affect the future, Eckels still decides to aim his gun playfully because of the excitement and ego-boost of killing a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Eckels also had lots of self-esteem in defeating a Tyrannosaurus Rex and believing that he can kill one. Later on in the story, Eckels boasts about the fact that he will kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex with the rest of his team: “’I’ve hunted tiger, wild boar… but now, this is it’” (Bradbury, 8) but after sighting the T-Rex Eckels said that “It can’t be killed. We were fools to come. This is impossible” (Bradbury, 9). Eckels has a lot of self-esteem in killing a dinosaur, therefore deciding to attempt to go to the past but when the challenge comes Eckels finally realizes that the challenge is too big and decides to give up. This shows that because of Eckel’s self-esteem he decided to attempt a challenge which ended up being too hard.
Dispute: Dad or son?
This found poem is created with the words of Ralph Fletcher of the story ‘The Last Kiss’. A conflict in this story is growing up, causing the main character to not be able to get his good night kisses which is an external conflict, specifically a man vs. nature conflict. This conflict is an external conflict because the protagonist is being affected by age, which is a natural occurrence, which is identified where at the end of the found poem the main character realizes he is too old to be kissed, quote: “Truth finally sunk in, I am too old”. To make the picture, I have used Canva and Preview. I am unable to find the original source of the picture.