Chaya's AP Lang Blog

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This famous quote by philosopher George Santayana stresses an important aspect of history that is sometimes overlooked. History is a record of the cycle of human behavior, which will inevitably repeat itself if we do not learn from the past, in both its successes and failures. When studying history, it is important to not only view it as a timeline of events that marked the rise and fall of empires, civilizations, and religions, or the advancement in science, philosophy, technology, art, and education, but also as the development of society, in terms of human behavior, and the steps that led to the world we live in today. Many times, in an effort to only focus on the grandness of our past and to celebrate how far we have come as a society, the darker parts of history are overlooked or pushed to the side. Despite the incredible advancements that our history marks, it is also riddled with discrimination, persec...

From the opening ceremony to the winning of medals, the Olympics is an event the entire world loves to watch. While entertaining for an audience, the Olympics represents something deeper to the athletes attending: a real dream come true. A dream that often takes over their lives, and could, at times, cause real harm. With the opening of the 2018 Winter Olympics this month, controversy has arisen regarding many Olympic athletes, specifically figure skaters, who are not able to participate in this year’s games because of severe eating disorders they developed because of their sport. No matter how competitive these athletes need to be in order to achieve their place as best in the world, there is no excuse for them to be driven to cause real physical, mental, and emotional damage to themselves by their coaches, managers, or judges. The health and wellbeing of these athletes are much more important than any gold medal they can potentially bring home for their country.   Eating disor...

The editorial board of USA Today, in " Will Trump's lows ever hit rock bottom?" (2017), passionately proclaim their opinio n that  Donald Trump is completely unfit to be leading our nation, partly due to his wildly inappropriate and offensive comments and remarks, and his overall lack of morality, ethics and simple humanity which is consistently displayed in his speech and behavior over and over again. They highlight several specific examples of Trump's abominable behavior in recent history, even giving a lengthy catalog of just a number of his offenses, and use fiery rhetoric to display both Trump's disgraceful nature as well as their hate-fueled feelings towards him, delivering their message with a scathing, disgusted and critical tone to accurately convey their thoughts on the subject. Their purpose is to take a strong stand against Trump and use their position as a representation of an established news platform to hopefully educate and influence...

President Abraham Lincoln, in his "Second Inaugural Speech" (1865), asserts that slavery was the cause of the Civil War, and the war would only end when God felt that America had paid the consequences for their sins. Lincoln describes how the issue of slavery is what spurred the war into action, brings in biblical verses and allusions to show that the war is divine retribution from God, and ends off with a hope that the nation will be able to heal itself and rebuild in unity after the war will end. Lincoln's purpose was to give answers to the American people regarding the cause and length of the war, in addition to giving his own religious and political opinion on the issue, emphasizing the evil of slavery, pointing to it as the root of the death and destruction caused by this war. He speaks with a passionate, yet critical tone towards the American people, both Northerners and Southerners, and acts as a sort of religious leader preaching about the divine providence of God...

Op-ed contributor Wajahat Ali , in his opinion article "I Want 'Allahu Akbar' Back" (2017), mourns the fact that the claimed benign, religious phrase "Allahu Akbar" has been unfairly twisted into a terrorism-related reference and asserts that these two words are actually innocent. Ali supports this claim by delivering a catalog using parallel structure in which he gives real-life examples of when he uses this phrase throughout his daily life in order to show the innocence and casual usage of the phrase, gives examples of the phrase being tagged onto three recent terror attacks around the world, showing how a few radicals are giving these words a bad reputation, and compares "Allahu Akbar" to shouts of "white pride" by supremacists, showing another example of how language can be perverted and weaponized by extremists and how therefore this is not exclusively a Muslim problem. Ali's purpose was to shed light on the true meaning behind t...

Columnist Nicholas Kristof, in his op-ed article "What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Fairness" (2017), asserts that inequality in this country is the root of many dysfunctions in America. He brings in a case study that explores the strong sense of fairness among monkeys, builds a logos argument by listing the statistics of economic inequality in America found by professor of psychology Keith Payne, suggests possible reasons why inequality negatively affects humans so much, and concludes with a comparison of views among the political spectrum regarding this issue as well as a personal reflection on America's struggle in this area. Kristof intends to probe into the inequality in America, discuss why it affects us as humans so deeply, and how it is the cause of many issues in our country. He serves as an analyst who is giving over information to his readers, creating an informative relationship with his audience, the people of America. One of the examples that Kristoff bro...