Response to This Sacred Soil AND Children of the Sea

It’s the first week back from winter break and I can’t say I am excited because I’m not. However I can say I excited about our new unit we are going into, the Short story unit. I like reading short stories better then novels like House of the Seven Gables because if it’s awful then you just push through and it’s over. It’s easier for me to retain all the information from a short story and remember all the small details them remember them from a long boring novel we read but that’s just me. But without further adieu my response to the short stories the first being The Sacred Soil by Chief Seattle.  This was a speech from the author Chief Seattle to Governor Stevens in the 1800s. In the speech the Chief Seattle explains to the Governor that as white population grows his people start to disappear forever, the natives are becoming extinct.  He explains to the governor that even as American continues to rise in population they will always have their land. Their land is connected and sacred to them to them in different ways having ancestors of generations buried in the land making wherever they walk sacred to them. They understand that the white men will never understand that because they are so far away from home and their ancestors but to them the land is completely different their ancestors are in the soil. This speech comes out of courage and leadership the Chief standing up for his people. To sum it up he is telling the white people even if you take over our land because we got wiped out because of your growing population this land will always be ours it is connected to us and sacred to us we are a part of this land. The next short story was Children of the Sea which was the story that kicked off our lovely unit. I thought this short story was very good it kept my attention always making me want to keep reading. I thought the journals from the boy and girl in Haiti were both sad but also interesting. I liked how the characters were able to express their selves through these journals to each other since their lives were not in the best condition.  Through their journal entries they expressed their emotions for each  other but also their pain and fear of their horrible life situations, this is one of the things that kept me going the emotions and feeling is the texts. I thought this was the best of the short stories of the week since but there are still more to come. When reading it I couldn’t put it down and then when finally it was over I felt disappointed because the ending was not my ideal ending. Even with that I thought it was one of the best things we have read so far in American lit and if that started the unit I can’t wait for what comes next.