The Revenge of Seven Blog Post

The story “The Revenge of Seven” by Pittacus Lore is about children that were sent to earth after the villains, the mogadorians, destroyed their old planet Lorien. Now that they are on earth, the mogadorians are still trying to kill the Loric children off. The reason that the nine children were sent down is to restart the legacy of Lorien. The mogadorians don’t want this and they want what they call “mogadorian progress” where they control every planet in the galaxy by turning every living thing into a mogadorians. In this book they show the side of the Loric children that were sent down to earth, opposed to the antagonists who are the mogadorians. The reason that Lore doesn’t show the opinion of the mogadorians is because he wants us to know that the Loric are the hero's while the mogadorians are are the villains, Lore only want us to see “the black and the white” of the winners and losers.

One of the characters names is Ella, she is the tenth of the Loric children, her father was selfish and rich and wanted her to get to earth and continue the legacy. All her life she thought that she was the same as the others. She ends up finding out that her grandfather is the evil mastermind behind the mogadorians, Setrákus Ra, he ends up kidnaping Ella and raises her as a the mogadorians royalty. The whole time Ella tells herself that Setrákus Ra isn’t her grandfather and that he is the most evil person, but after a while she sees that there is a possibility that they’re related, but regardless she refuses to believe that what Setrákus Ra plan is for the earth is appropriate. “Glorious, isn’t it?’/ His booming voice is like a bucket of cold water dumped on me. I spin around and press my back against the glass, feeling like the void behind me might be preferable to facing him./ Setrákus Ra stands behind one of the control panels, watching me, a hint of a smile on his face.”. This is an example of how they show what Ella is feeling and thinking, but doesn’t show what Setrákus Ra is feeling or thinking when he sees Ella looking completely defenseless, he may be thinking a thousand things that are positive and all the plans that he has for Ella, but because in the past books we see him as the bad guy we think when we read this that he is up to no good and extremely mischievous. Because Lore fails to show the side of Setrákus Ra it doesn’t let us have our own personal opinions on Setrákus Ra.

Another example of how the mogadorians opinions aren’t shown is when one of the mogadorians actually starts to fight with the Loric. This characters name is Adam, he was a the mogadorian who was sentenced to death by his father because he didn’t conform to the mogadorian way. But instead he ran away and wanted to help the Loric. Because the Loric have Adam it makes their work easier to hack into the mogadorian information and also translate the mogadorians private documents. Throughout the story Lore puts examples of where Adam is being insulted or annoyed, but doesn’t say anything. “Marina’s still figuring out just how angry she wants to be, and I’m  not going to get in her way. Besides, I don’t think putting a little fear in our mogadorian companion is such a bad thing./ I assume he’s just going to let the conversation die, but after a few minutes Adam speaks up.”This being told from the perspective of one of the Loric, Six, and they say things like “I think” instead of Lore telling us what Adam is thinking. Also during the few minutes that Adam was thinking he probably had a ton of things that he could say to make the girls upset, but Lore didn’t show us the thought process that he was having. Lore doesn’t show us the side of this mogadorian, because it could show us that a mogadorian could be growing weak and that they easily let go of things, but because of this missing opinion we can’t know.

Pittacus Lore doesn’t want us to see the side of the the mogadorians thoughts or feelings because we are supposed to see them as the bad guys that make the Loric childrens lives miserable and horrible. By representing the mogadorians characters as evil he wanted to show to show that all of the the mogadorians are the enemy regardless of who they are fighting for and that the reader should be “rooting” for the Loric to win. But if we were able to read the opinion of the mogadorians, then the way that we look at the character in the book could change because the mogadorians have a strong belief in the taking over the galaxy and they have legitimate reasons, so if we could read the mogadorians opinions as we do for the Loric children then we may change our side depending on how we feel about their plan.

Second Critical Analysis on "How Does it Feel To Be A Problem"

The story “How Does it Feel To Be A Problem” by Moustafa Bayoumi has many stories in it of young Arab, muslim, Iraqi, and Palestinian men and women that struggle to live in New York City after the terrorist attack on the world Trade Center, they struggle to live because of different societal issues. One of the stories that Bayoumi takes us through is a man named Omar. Omar is a man who is looking for work in the media, but having no luck getting a job. He believes that this is because the different companies don’t want to hire someone who’s Arab or muslim. This is an example of racism, which is a major social issue, Bayoumi shows this concept of racism in many ways. One way that she show this is when Omar is telling us about how he is having a problem getting a job, he also has acquaintances that are having trouble finding jobs. “But Omar’s worries over employment discrimination in the new age of terror are hardly unique. I hear the anxiety echoing everywhere around the young people I encounter, and some of their stories are cautionary tales.” Showing us that this is an issue that Bayoumi has often seen in our society and that telling the stories are ways for people to know the issues that people are going through. Another example is Bayoumi telling us different examples of people who are losing their jobs because they are Arab and muslim, “An earlier case involved twelve Muslim, Arab, and South Asian workers who filed a claim with the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) against the ‘severe and pervasive harassment’ that they underwent at the Plaza Hotel months after the terrorist attack.  According to the suit, managers wrote ‘Osama,’ ‘Bin Laden,’ ‘Al Qaeda,’ and ‘Taliban’ instead of the employees’ actual names when handing out key holders with room keys.  the employees were repeatedly called ‘terrorist’, ‘Osama’, and ‘Al Qaeda’, “Taliban’ and ‘Dumb Muslim’.  They were accused of destroying the World Trade Center and cursed at for ruining the country.” This upsetting thing to think about that just because someone of their race did something badly, everyone starts to think that everyone that looks like that person is a terrorist. When those people were hired they probably weren’t even accused of being terrorists, but when the 9/11 plane crash came around everyone turned their back regardless of what they had to say just because someone of the same race did something horrible. This a major example of racism that occurred just a few years ago in our society and we are still recovering from the loss of jobs. This is how Moustafa Bayoumi shows the societal issue of racism in Omar’s story.

Moustafa Bayoumi want you to feel like you are in the same situation as Omar. She tells us, the reader, little anecdotes to help us make an image of what other people are going through. Because we live in New York City we can read this and think about how we may not be confronted with this issue of racism everyday in our life, but Omar has friends that are being sent falsely being accused of being a terrorist daily. One example is when Omar gets a part-time job at the Non-profit Housing- Development Organization, Omar recently worked at  Al Jazeera it was an Arab media show, but he just had an internship so it ended after five months. Al Jazeera isn’t a good thing that he had on his resume because many people assume that the Arab people are saying bad things, but really no one knows what they are saying because mostly none of them speak Arabic. “‘I used to work for Al Jazeera,’ Omar said ‘And it’s actually one of the best new organizations in the world today.’/ Brian was unconvinced ‘How could you support something that promotes beheading? That promotes terrorism?’ he said blandly./.../ ‘Then how do you know what they are saying?’/ ‘Because Fox tells me’ Brian said./ ‘But it’f Fox’s interest, as their competitor, to show them in a negative light.’ Omar tried to explain” this is how rumors turn into lies and then people start believing them, because Brian thought he knew everything he thought that he was right, but he was actually making a false accusation.

In reading his story Moustafa Bayoumi does a good job to show us that there's a lot of racism in New York City and some people don’t even notice it on a daily. Because Bayoumi Omar’s story and everyone else’s story we can gain a better sense of what racism is in our city.