Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

        "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer is a book about a young boy named Oskar who is trying to find closure after his father dies in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. After 2 years, Oskar goes through a closet full of his father's old this things. In that closet, he finds a vase with an envelope containing a key. He sets out to find what the key opens, and ends up finding out that it has nothing to do with his father, but instead it opens a safe deposit box for a man who sold his father the vase and forgot that the key was in it. Oskar is devastated by this discovery, but it able to find some closure a different way by digging up his father's empty grave and filling with letters that his grandfather wrote to him.
          I find the ending of the book a bit unexpected, at least from a writer's perspective. Because Oskar, the protagonist, is only nine years old, and he is put through so much to try to find an answer to this question, the ending comes off as a bit cruel. The only thing that this little boy wants is an answer that will bring him comfort over his father's death, and he is deprived of that. Oskar spent 8 months of his life looking for an answer that ends up not being worth looking for. There's really no way to sugarcoat that, because it's sad in every sense of the word.
          As depressing as that may be, I believe that there is a message that Oskar learns which makes his journey worth it. He learns that sometimes you just have to learn to live with problems on your own. There isn't always going to be something to ease something to soothe your pain, and, as hard as it may be, you have to try to adjust to new living conditions. In the beginning of the book, Oskar refuses to allow himself to continue living without his dad. He is even angry at his mother for trying to move on. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Oskar should just completely forget about his father. He is human, and sadness should be his reaction to as much of a loss as he went through. But he learns that you cannot spend your entire life looking to the past and sulking. Eventually, you have to embrace the present, and look forward to the future.

Into The Wild

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a retelling of the journey of a man, Chris McCandless, who went against social expectations by traveling into the wild (See what i did there?). McCandless was born into a wealthy family and was expected to go to college and have a successful career. Instead, he traveled around America alone. He traveled to Alaska to embrace nature, and it cost him his life. But Jon Krakauer shows that we can learn from the unique human being that was Christopher Johnson McCandless.
     McCandless was driven by the very basic need for adventure that has becomes less prominent as humans become comfortable with their surroundings and lose the need to see different parts of the world. McCandless was different, since he never could stay in one place too long. It is quite possible that McCandless felt that the many practices of society were pointless, and he wanted to get away from the looming pressure of social expectations. No matter how he specifically viewed society, his distaste for it cost him  his life.
     While McCandless' story is an example of how adventuring can prove to be fatal, but perhaps that is not how it is meant to be interpreted. Maybe his story really shows how humans should strive for more than just an average life. Christopher McCandless was completely happy with his life before it ended. Maybe people are meant to see more of the world than we really do. The world is full of beauty an amazement, and we just have to struggle a bit before we find it, and if you do find it, it is well worth the struggle.

The Government is Spying on You

          In June of 2013, former NSA worker Edward Snowden released extremely secretive files about government surveillance programs to the public. The files contained information many ways that the government spies on its people following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The government has used social networks and phone calls to track its citizens. Government officials have defended the surveillance programs by saying that it has been used to prevent over 20 terrorist attacks in the years that it has been used.

          The people of America have had mixed feelings about Snowden's actions.Some have called him a hero, because the public feels that it is necessary to know how our government watches over us. Other people have called him a traitor, since him revealing the files also revealed the sites that the government tracks, which will cause terrorist groups to steer clear of those sites. He has also been called a coward after fleeing to Russia rather than facing the long prison sentence that waits for him in the States. Some people have also suggested that he collaborated with Russia when he leaked the files.

          In my opinion, what Snowden did was completely wrong. Sure, it is ridiculous that the government has to spy on its own people to ensure their safety, but, unfortunately, it is a necessary precaution. The benefits of the surveillance programs outweigh the harm that it does. It basically does no harm, other than the government being able to see your most recent facebook statuses and how expensive your phone bill is. Many Americans simply have to realize that there is no such thing as a perfect world, and you cannot have total privacy as well as total security.