In the Time of the Butterflies - Section I - Loss of Innocence/Faith

We have completed reading the first section of Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies. There are four chapters in the first section, each about a Mirabal sister, Dede, Minerva, Maria Teresa, and Patria. We were assigned to write about each of the sisters' loss of innocence/faith from this section.

In her novel In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez reveals loss of innocence/faith as a way of growing up. The four Mirabal sisters grow up in the Dominican Republic where there are issues with the government. As they grow older, they see that their leader isn't the person they thought he was. They also find troubles of growing up in their own home. As for Dede, the second oldest of the four sisters, she finds out that she won't be loved like she used to be when she was younger anymore. When her father asks the girls which one of them wanted to stay home instead of going off to an away from home school, Dede offered to stay. "Dede always was the smiling little miss. ‘I’ll stay and help, Papa.’ Papa looked surprised because really Dede was a year older than me. She and Patria should have been the two to go away. But then, Papa thought it over and said Dede could go along, too.” (12-13) Papa decided he didn’t want Dede to stay home with him all year. Dede finds that she is not as loved by Papa as Minerva is, or as the other two sisters. She also learns that she will not always be loved all of her life, as Papa has already shown her. Now that Dede is growing up, Papa feels that he won’t hide his feelings from her and that Dede has to accept that she won’t always be loved, even if it’s her own father. For Minerva, her loss of innocence isn’t shown through her own life. At school, she becomes friends with a girl, Sinita, whose father, three uncles, and brother that was killed by Trujillo, the Dominican president. As Sinita is telling her horrific story to her, Minerva can’t stand to listen to this truth. “Sinita told me as much as she knew. I was shaking by the time she was through. According to Sinita, Trujillo became president in a sneaky way. First, he was in the army, and all the people who were above him kept disappearing until he was the one right below the head of the whole armed forces.” (17) Minerva never realized that Trujillo was such a bad man. Before, she thought he was a hero based on no knowledge of his life. She figured that since he was the leader of their country, he was a brilliant man. This makes her angry and she learns that she wants to get back at him. Now that she is older, she understands what Trujillo has done wrong and how dangerous living in their country is. This information she learns from Sinita really affects her when a young child wouldn’t understand the issue. She also shows that she’s grown up by wanting to take action. A young child wouldn’t even think about standing up to anyone, especially the president. Loss of innocence for Maria Teresa, the youngest sister, is a matter of helping out others, like Minerva’s was. Minerva has made friends with a rude girl, Hilda at school. Minerva, Hilda, and some other girls go to one of their grandfather’s house to have meetings about politics. They have secret papers that hold their beliefs on it that gets one of them in trouble. Police find some of those papers in Hilda’s car. She first runs away and hides, but is eventually caught. Maria Teresa possesses a diary in which she writes about her daily life. She mentions Hilda and her story in it, which is considered something that might prove Hilda guilty. She learns that she has to bury her diary until the situation is over. “Hilda has been caught! She was grabbed by the police while trying to leave the convent. Everyone in Don Horacio’s meeting group has been told to destroy anything that would make them guilty.” (43) She handles the situation very well, agreeing to give up a loved possession. Unlike a young child, she didn’t throw a fit about giving something of hers up. Instead, she understands that it is important that she gives it up so that Hilda won’t be found guilty and so the other members of their group won’t be caught. Patria is the oldest sister, and is quite different from the others. All of her life she has been very religious. She always had a set dream of becoming a nun. That changed when she married and had kids. Her third child was born dead and she questions if that is revenge for not becoming a nun. She looks at a picture of Trujillo next to a picture of God. She knew Trujillo was a bad man, but then she equates Trujillo with God. “I had heard, but I had not believed. Snug in my heart, fondling my pearl, I had ignored their cries of desolation. How could our loving, all-powerful Father allow us to suffer so? I looked up, challenging Him. And the two faces had merged!” (53) She can’t understand how God and Trujillo allow their people to suffer. She has suffered because the loss of her baby, and she questions God’s trust. For Trujillo, she sees the Dominican people suffer from poor leadership. Since she sees God’s and Trujillo’s two acts as the same, she wonders if God is like Trujillo. She has significantly loss faith of God. Each sister has experiences in their life that forces them to grow up.

Current Reactions

This site www.savedarfur.org, is a very good site to go to for learning about the genocide and to know how to help. I like how organized it is with an article of background information about everything so people can fully understand how much help is needed and so they know what they're donating to. There are also pictures and many other sites about the genocide. I went to this one site that kids in Danbury made. I watched the video they made. I was surprised when I saw it because at first I thought it was going to be all about Darfur, but several times it referred back to the Holocaust. It explained how everyone said after the Holocaust that a genocide like that would never happen again, but as everyone can see those people were wrong. This site is not only an educational one, but lets people decide what they want to do about it also. They have many places where you can donate your money and you can choose how much you want to send. This site really spreads the word around about the genocide because it has all of the information you need on it from what the conflict is all about to what actions have been taken. If awareness spreads, then many people will be interested in saving Darfur.

Darfur- A Deadly Conflict

This is our last assignment for the Human Rights Unit. It is all about the Darfur conflict.

For about four years now, since 2003, Darfur and Sudan have been at war. In Sudan, the conflict has arisen to more than 400,000 murders, the rape and assaults of thousands of women and girls, and more than 2 million people being forced to leave their homes. These innocent civilians have to live in displaced-persons camps in Sudan or in refugee camps in Chad. International aid is the only help men, women, and children in this genocide can rely on for aid. Ethnicity is the problem that has resulted in the killing of thousands of innocent people. The Sudanese armed forces and Sudanese government-backed militia or “Janjaweed” have attacked civilian populations and ethnic groups from the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. These groups have been targeted because they support the rebels. The rebels want the Sudanese government to address ‘underdevelopment and the political marginalization’ of the Darfur region. The Janjaweed have claimed that this confilct is not genocide, when in fact millions of people are suffering and hundreds of thousands are being killed by other people. Although the Sudanese government says this is not genocide, the Bush Administration states that it is.

“The largest and most complex humanitarian problem on the globe” is the reaction from António Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. At first, people went with what the Janjaweed said that all of this was ‘ethnic cleansing’. Now everyone realizes this situation is not ethnic cleansing, but genocide. The Sudanese government and the Janjaweed have been blamed for all of the destruction they have caused including the burning and destruction of hundreds of rural villages, the killing of tens of thousands of people, and rape and assault of thousands of women and girls. The Darfur Peace Agreement from May 2006 may help the government of Sudan and one faction of Darfur rebels stop the conflict. The UN Security Council also required that the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed be disarmed. With these actions, the Janjaweed are still free to commit these genocidal crimes with the Sudanese government, just as they had been doing.

There are some who don’t know anything about Darfur, which would be a reason for not helping. The ones who have heard about the disastrous events happening in Darfur usually don’t do anything about it. They may think that one person can’t save the world, but what they don’t know is that they can make a difference. If it’s not that they don’t think they can help, then it’s mostly out of selfishness. Most people wouldn’t want to spend the time or money to help because they have better things to do with their time and money, or they think that since this problem is happening overseas and it doesn’t involve them. People like António Guterresis who states that this is “the largest and most complex humanitarian problem on the globe” is one of the many people who just speak about what they think, but that don’t take any action. Jan Egeland also falls in the category, who states this is "going from real bad to catastrophic,” but hasn’t done anything about his words. The UN is no help when they see what is happening but say that there were no intentions of genocide.

There are many governments and people with the power to halt the genocide, and could have even prevented it. Since, they feel it has nothing to do with them since this is happening all the way over in Africa, they don’t bother. They’d rather not waste their time or money to try and help people who actually need it because they have better things to do, like some average people in the country. We have people left and right describing the horrors in Darfur like Antonio and Jan, but that isn’t making what they’re saying any better by just stating it. Despite these people, there are many who have made an effort. Kids have done their share by holding fundraisers. At our school, T-shirts are being sold to raise money for Darfur. I see many who wear these T-shirts, which is a sign that many are trying to help.

Indifference/Hotel Rwanda Response

For this assignment, we had to write 2 paragraphs, one on how people were indifferent during the Holocaust and the other on the movie, Hotel Rwanda.

With all of the torture and deaths that was happening in the world during World War II, especially the Holocaust, many ignored these tragedies. Some may have been indifferent to the Holocaust because they didn’t care about the Jews. They must have heard what was happening to millions of Jews, but didn’t do anything about it because they just didn’t care about what happened to people they don’t like. Especially in Germany, anti-Semitism was all over the public to praise the hatred of Jews. Signs would be in windows of stores saying that Jewish people couldn’t shop there. Many made cruel jokes about them that weren’t even close to being true. In Life Is Beautiful, directed by Roberto Benigni, Guido had to have “Jewish Shop” written in front of his store. All of these factors were to show everyone’s hatred towards Jews to make them feel poorly for being Jewish and to bring others toward anti-Semitism. Since many were involved with anti-Semitism, they wouldn’t even try to care about what went on in the concentration camps, let alone to save them from their horrors. Indifference of the Holocaust also was in the hands of the Jews. Many Jews heard about the concentration camps from others would were there and knew what was going to happen. No one believed them and was considered to be insane. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, a man was taken away with others not far from town, where they were all shot. This man, Moshe the Beadle, survived this torment and announced to the town what had happened to him. He wanted to warn them that future was going to be horrific. Everybody ignored him and thought he was crazy. Little did they know when they arrived at the concentration camps that everything he said was coming true. At that time they were told what was coming for them, they couldn’t believe that people could be so inhuman. Others in the rest of the world might have also believed the same thing the Jews did, and therefore did nothing about it.

In the film, Hotel Rwanda directed by Terry George, reveals the genocide between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda, Africa as a story that the audience would think is made up. In reality this movie is a documentary because everything that was put in this movie was very accurate as to what actually happened in 1994. Although the trauma in the movie was what many actually felt during this genocide in Rwanda, the audience watching this movie would be made to believe that it couldn’t happen. The main character, Paul who is a Hutu, tries to save many innocent Tutsis, one including his wife. He uses his hotel as a shelter for them so they won’t be killed by the Hutus. In the middle of the film, Paul once sees a large field of dead bodies covering the ground everywhere he looked. He couldn’t believe what he saw because he never expected so many Tutsis to be killed. The effect this had on Paul is almost the same effect it would have on the audience. Viewers of this film could feel bad for these people who were killed in the movie, but don’t realize that this is a piece of history and what Paul saw was probably very true in many areas of Rwanda at that time. They just think of it as exaggeration because they’ve never seen with their own eyes millions of dead people. This film overall was to show that events like this genocide can happen in the world as it was shown in the movie no matter how traumatizing it may be.

Holocaust Character Scrapbook

For this project, we had to create our own character that lived during World War 2. I decided to create a person who was a concentration camp victim.

Introduction:
I am a survivor of the Holocaust. I have been through many years of turmoil and it has affected my life forever. I am now a different person because of the Holocaust and it is important for me to remember the past years, even though it may not be my number one memory to remember. I can remember what I and millions of other people experienced and how I was able to survive it. This is for everyone who survived the Holocaust to remember how strong they are for living through many hard years, and for the people who weren’t alive when this happened to learn about it. If this was forgotten, no one would remember the millions of people who died and who survived. I do not want to forget how I was able to stay alive for so many terrible years in concentration camps, and living after all of that was over. Creating this scrapbook has helped me heal. Remembering what I went through helps me realize how lucky I am to be alive today.

Profile:
My name is Orsolya Benedek and I am 45 years old. I have dark brown shoulder length hair and green eyes. I am 110 pounds and 5’6” tall. I was born on January 18, 1937. It has been 30 years since I was liberated from Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. I now live in New York City and have lived here for 28 years. 2 years after I moved to New York I found out my father, Alfred, and my brother, Fabo, died in Auschwitz. My mother, named Judit, had died in Auschwitz, and I was right by her side when she passed on. I got married 5 years after I moved to New York, and now we have a daughter, Katherine. I still miss my family today, but my husband, Adam, and my daughter are the only family I have left and they mean the world to me. My husband and I are both Jewish and we still practice our religion. I am a big fan of writing and I enjoy taking walks around the city. I wrote my memoir of my life during the Holocaust, but I have chosen not to share my story with the world. I also enjoy food very much. Italian food is my favorite and I will eat it as often as I can. I have come to appreciate what I am able to eat nowadays knowing years back I was deprived of food. Every year my family and I visit my hometown Budapest, Hungary for a week. I catch up with my old friends, Anna and Ilona, and see how much the city has changed each year. We always write letters to each other and call each other up every once in a while. Although visiting Budapest brings up the bad memories I had in my last years I lived there, I can still relive my childhood and remember how much I loved living there.

Journal Entry #1:
It has been two weeks since we arrived at the Miskolc Ghetto. It must be May 22, 1940 since I remember we were taken from our home on May 8. This ghetto lies on János Arany Street. My family and I used to walk along this street often when I was young. I used to love walking down that street. Now I don’t think the same thing of it now that we are imprisoned on it. I miss my home very much. Even though I have become accustomed to sleeping on uncomfortable hay in close proximity with people I don’t know, I still feel very out of place. It is so dark and depressing seeing everyone’s face with fright in them and not knowing what is going to happen to us. Today two men were fighting over a piece of bread that one of them had. It was the only food that was left that they could find. Both of them were starving so they started acting like wild beasts battling for their food. Seeing them fight over a piece of bread like this made me scared. Everyone only had the food they brought with them, but most people ran out. I wondered about something I had never thought about before. Are the ugly men in uniforms going to starve us and see how long we can live here without food? Today I was told by my brother that we’re going to be sent away to these camps run by the soldiers. I asked him why they would send us there. He said we would get burned in an oven. I told him they couldn’t burn thousands of people alive…Or could they? He said we might have a chance to live, but young children and old people will most likely be put to death right away. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. Would eleven years old be considered as a young child? Or does he mean really young kids? If what he’s saying is true then my grandparents will be killed by the human oven. I can just picture my grandmother being thrown into the pit of death. I try to get rid of that image immediately, but I can’t. I don’t want to believe my brother, but I just can’t help but to think that what he’s saying is true.

Journal Entry #2:
It is now January 1941 and I’m still at Auschwitz. Everyone was moved out of the Miskolc Ghetto in July to Auschwitz. If it’s still January (I’m not really sure what month it is, but I’m pretty sure it’s January because we have had the coldest weather all year), then my birthday is coming up, or it has already passed. I can just say that I’m twelve years old now. Well, it has now been about six months since we’ve arrived at Auschwitz. I’ve probably lost 25 pounds from lack of food and hours of working. My mother is much worse, though. She is just skin and bones and is dying. The doctor thinks she has some blood disease, but he’s not sure. Since she isn’t getting the proper nutrition she needs, her sickness keeps getting worse and she is sure to die anytime soon. I try to spend as much time as I can with her and take care of her, but I’m usually not allowed to. Just the other day I was beaten because I was late to roll call. I heard the announcement, but my mother was having a panic attack and I wanted to be with her incase she was going to die. When a soldier saw me in there he took me outside. He said, “A-1375 was not in line for roll call.” And because of that, I was beaten. The cuts on my back still haven’t healed and I’m still in pain everyday. I haven’t seen my own face for about a year or so now. I have completely forgotten what I look like, but I’m sure I look much different from the last time I looked in a mirror. I look around at every prisoner’s face and I see the same thing in each one of them; ghostlike faces with big gray eyes and no expression. Everyone looks alike with shaven heads and misery on their faces. I’m sure I look no different from them. It doesn’t even seem like we’re human beings anymore because of the alikeness of everyone and they way we have to act. We’re like robots who fulfill the master’s commands with silence. We’ve become nothing more than objects that mean nothing and that do what they are told. It amazes me how so many people can be forced to change into someone they don’t want to be.

Creative Entry:
This poem is about what I saw at Auschwitz. All I could see in everybody was...
FRIGHT
Fellow inmates are walking corpses
Rights that Jews once had have vanished
I only live one day at a time
Ghetto life showed me there was worse to come
The Human oven is my greatest fear every day
Time is running out

This poem is about what I saw many people experience in Auschwitz on my first night.

As smoke and human debris rise in the air
I can’t help but to think
That this is my greatest fear

Watching animals throw bodies into the flames
Makes me want to think
These animals are my greatest fear

As I stand before flames, looking at my death chamber
I can’t help but to think
That I have no more fear

Holocaust Character Scrapbook: Google Earth Annotated Journey

This is my hometown where I lived for 13 years until my family and I were transported to the ghetto. I enjoyed my life while I lived here and I visit it often.

This is where the Miskolc Ghetto was. It was located in Miskolc Germany in a synagogue. We were taken there in 1941 and we only stayed there for a few months. Those few months we lived there I felt very out of place because it was hard for me to get used to not being at home.

In 1944 my family and I were transported to Auschwitz. There, we were separated. I stayed with my mother for a a while, but she eventually died. The time I was here was the most terrifying experience of my life.

In 1946, I moved to New York where I still live today with my husband and daughter. I couldn't be a happier person because of knowing how lucky I am to be alive today.

Of Mice and Men Persuasive Essay

For this assignment, we had to write a persuasive essay on either the death penalty or mercy killing. Which ever one we chose, we had to pick to write about whether it is a positive or negative thing. I chose mercy killing and decided to write about how it is a positive.

What if a friend just lays in bed everyday, aching with pain and one watches his condition worsen every day? To what extent would it take someone to realize that they suffer greatly from that pain and that they don’t want to live through it? Mercy killing should be used more often these days. The negative effects of an illness or from dying people should make a number of people accept mercy killing. In the novel, Of Mice and Men, killing another is shown as a compassionate way to relieve them of their miseries. The two main characters, Lennie and George, are migrant workers who have recently been given jobs on a ranch in southern California. When they arrive at the ranch and meet the other men, they realize that living there won’t be easy for them. They find some of them men are hard to get along with, and some of them just don’t like Lennie and George at first sight. The positive aspects of mercy killing and how it can help a friendship in need are seen in both John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men and in modern society.

Killing someone with compassion is shown throughout this novel. George is a small, clever man who is the leader of the duo. Lennie is big and a little mentally compromised who doesn’t realize his own strength. Lennie always gets into trouble and often depends on George to save him. When George isn’t there to help him, things can go terribly wrong. One night when all of the men went out, Lennie was left at the ranch. When the boss’s daughter-in-law came to visit Lennie, he got himself into trouble. He accidentally killed the woman. After he realizes she is dead, he instantly knows he did something wrong and that George will be angry with him. Lennie becomes confused and doesn’t know where to go or what to do. When the men comes back to find Curley’s dead wife in the barn, the men immediately get angry and wants to find Lennie and kill him right on the spot. When George finds Lennie, he tries to make him feel happy and relaxed. George ends up making a hard decision that reflects his love for his friend. To prevent the other men from shooting Lennie, George wants to do it himself. “‘I thought you was mad at me, George.’ ‘No,’ said George. ‘No, Lennie. I ain’t mad. I never been mad, an’ I ain’t now. That’s the thing I want ya to know.’ The voices came close now. George raised the gun and listened to the voices…And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger…” (Steinbeck, 106) George has no reasonable choice, but to kill Lennie himself. George knows nothing beneficial will happen to Lennie. He would most likely have to die a painful death from the angry group of men shooting him. If Lennie ended up not being killed, he would have to go to jail for committing a crime. George doesn’t want Lennie to go to jail because he knows Lennie would be confused for the rest of his life, wondering why he deserved to be locked up. George abolishes the hardships Lennie would go through whether it was dying a painful, confusing death caused by strange men, or spending the rest of his life bewildered in jail. Since Lennie is George’s loving companion, he wants what’s best for Lennie; to leave behind the troubles the future will cause Lennie. Not only is mercy killing used for Lennie, but Candy, who is the ‘swamper’ of the ranch, has a dog that is suffering also and is in need of help. When the men were gathered in Candy’s room, Carlson comments on the negatives of Candy’s dog. He describes the dog as ‘ancient’ and complains about how much he smells. He also mentions to Candy that the dog is old and has a lot of trouble getting through each day. Since the dog is deteriorating, Carlson tries to persuade Candy to kill the dog. “‘God awmighty, that dog stinks. Get him outa here, Candy!’…‘Got no teeth,’ he said. “He’s all stiff with rheumatism. He ain’t no good to you, Candy. An’ he ain’t no good to himself. Why’n’t you shoot him, Candy?’” Another man, Slim, also agrees with Carlson’s beliefs. “‘Carl’s right, Candy. That dog ain’t no good to himself. I wisht somebody’d shoot me if I got old an’ a cripple.’” (Steinbeck, 44-45) The men all agree that the dog is old and has suffered enough, living through the last days of his life. They all want to end the dog’s misery by killing him. When the dog is gone, the men don’t have to deal with the burdens he gives them, as well as his horrifying smell. Above all, they will take the dog out of his pain. Mercy killing helps anyone, whether it’s a human or an animal, as George and Lennie and Candy’s dog shows.

Mercy killing is a favor to many people in misery, but not everyone knows that. Many people in today’s society agree that a patient should have the right to choose their own death. Illnesses and other life threatening situations are very personal, so it should be the person’s decision of what they want to do with their life. If someone has a long lasting illness, such as ALS, they have to spend the rest of their life through the negative effects of that disease. It should be the person’s decision whether or not they want to live through the disease until they die naturally, or if they want to try to die sooner. This is the most reasonable solution since the person actually going through the illness knows how much pain they’re in and whether or not they can deal with it for the rest of their life. People should have the right to make personal decisions for themselves; not having a stranger choose for them whether they should live or die. No one should speak for someone else, saying if the patient can die or not because that person isn’t living through what the patient has to. The idea of mercy killing applies to many real life situations between the actual burden to the person and the decisions that goes along with it. When my grandfather aged and was put in a convalescent home, it was obvious that he wasn’t happy there. He couldn’t walk, barely ate, and needed assistance to do many tasks that healthy people have no problem doing. For him, and for many people who go though the same thing as my grandfather did, not being able to do anything for themselves is unbearable. Since he didn’t eat, weakness took over him and he couldn’t do much, but just sit there. My family wanted him to die to get him out of his misery; not through hatred. When one is at the point of their life when they are about to die from old age, it is quite common many people suffer from bodily deterioration. When their body fails, life becomes quite difficult, and dying is the only option to escape from the pain and misery. Mercy killing is a favor to many people who suffer because it can bring them into peace.

The positive aspects of mercy killing are seen in both John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men and should be seen more in modern society. In the novel, mercy killing is used as something that helps one to prevent a bad future for them. When misery or a painful death is near in the future, the only way to stop that from happening is to be dead beforehand. Dying a happy, peaceful death is much better than to live life in depression. People all over the world should be able to make the choice of whether they want to live through a burden the rest of their life for themselves. No one actually knows what pain that person is going through, except for the person themself. Mercy killing is a favor to many people. It is only a way to help a person get through their sufferings and it should not be illegal. Life should be lived happily, not through suffering.

Sources:
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, published 1937, New York, New York, U.S.A.

Richman, Sheldon (2004, June 23). Commentaries. Retrieved December 15, 2006, from The Fraud of Physician Suicide Web site: http://www.fff.org/comment/com0406i.asp

Braddock III, Clarence H. "Ethics in Medicine." Physician-Assisted Suicide: Ethical Topic in Medicine. 2001, October. University of Washington School of Medicine. 15 Dec 2006. Web site: http://depts.washington.edu/bioethx/topics/pas.html

Panzer, Ron. "Questionable Death, Assisted Suicide, Mercy Killing (& Involuntary Euthanasia)." Assisted Suicide, Mercy Killing & Euthanasia. 2000, January. Hospice Patients Alliance. 15 Dec 2006. Web site: http://www.hospicepatients.org/questionable-death.html.

Literature Circle: Independent Response

In her novel Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson illustrates culture and values through art. Melinda, a freshman in high school isolates herself from others and remains as mute as she can possibly be. Ever since the night of an end of the summer party when she called the cops, Melinda is hated by everyone in the school because some kids got caught for having possession of alcohol at the party. No one knows that Melinda was raped and called the police because she was scared. Since most of the kids in her school don't want to be her friend and want to stay away from her, she doesn't make a complete effort to make friends. She often expresses her feelings through her artwork instead of speaking to people, which she doesn’t gain the courage to do. Melinda shows that she is very passionate about art because that is the only class she has an A in when she is close to failing every other subject. On Thanksgiving, Melinda's father attempted to prepare a turkey dinner, but the turkey wouldn't thaw out. Melinda's father decides to chop up the turkey, but that doesn't work out too well when the turkey gets dirt on it. When Melinda's father wants to throw away the turkey bones, she takes them and decides she could use them for her art project. She is assigned to make anything using the topic of a tree. Instead of thinking of the turkey as useless bones, she thinks they can be used to make a great project. "I want to make a memorial for our turkey. Never has a bird been so tortured to provide such a lousy dinner. I dig the bones out of the trash and bring them to art class. Mr. Freeman is thrilled. He tells me to work on the bird but keep thinking tree." (61) Melinda uses her creativeness through her artwork. This is her only way of showing what she is capable of doing because she doesn’t try at anything else, as her grades show. For everything thing else that comes up in her life, she gives up automatically and doesn’t bother trying because she thinks nothing will turn out right. Conversely, in art, Melinda tries to succeed at her tree project even though she fails at creating one to the best of her ability many times. Melinda also created a place in the school for herself to be alone. She cleaned out and decorated an abandoned janitor’s closet she found where she could think through the problems in her life. “…I sweep and mop the floor, while I scrub the shelves, while I chase spiders out of the corners. I do a little bit of work every day. It’s like building a fort…My closet is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these thoughts inside my head where no one can hear them.” (50-51) Melinda wants her little closet to be special because she knows she will want to spend a lot of time in there to get away from the kids who hate her. She wants this place to make her feel comfortable and to get rid of her horrifying memories of the night she was raped, so she cleans it and fills it with what she loves; art. Not many people value art as Melinda does and that is what makes her unique. She uses it as a comfort in her life and expresses her emotions through it. Although many artists express their emotions through their artwork, Melinda shows her feelings in a different way.