Ethan Chen

Ms. Pahomov

English 2

21 March 2019

What happens when you put two leaders with different ideologies in the same environment?

Imagine you are on an island trapped with a group of people and you have to rebuild a society on but you have two potential leaders fighting over different concepts of how to run this island. Well, in William Golding’s, Lord of the Flies, a group of boys survive a plane crash and they have to rebuild and recreate a society on a deserted island with no adult authority. As the book goes on, their society progressively turns from civilized to chaotic which ends in an all-out war for power between Jack and Ralph. The reader can see real-world examples from history where two leaders with totally different opinions rise up to power causing tension and resulting in an outbreak of violence.    

North Korea and South Korea is a famous example of this. Both are well known for one of their most militarized and protected borders in the world. What once was a unified Korea living as one, whole country, fell into the split of North and South Korea. The Japanese had all control over Korea when they invaded in 1910, oppressing them and destroying their culture until the Japanese finally surrender during WW2. The Soviets started to take over Korea as well as the US had to make sure they did not take all of Korea. This was the chance for Korea to rebuild under a new government in which two people came into power, Kim II Sung and Syngman Rhee. The problem was, they had different ideas of how to run the country. In the article “Why North Korea and South Korea Are Separated” by Prableen Bajpai, she wrote about how the rise in power for the two leaders caused conflict as their political ideology differed about how to run the new era of Korea. Sung wanted a communist government while Rhee wanted a capitalist one. They both wanted to reunite Korea as a whole but the fight over which political idea is still being battelled out. This means that although the two emerging leaders wanted to agree on the objective to unite Korea as one nation again and rebuild their society after the Japanese conflict, they both had completely different views about how the government should be administered. This opposition created a lack of trust in each and the tensions between the two groups. Primarily, without an agreement from both parties of what to do, pressures from both sides can rise quickly which will ultimately lead to a call of action. Similar to the boys in Lord of the Flies, Ralph’s plans are challenged by Jack’s plans about what priorities should be set for their time on the island.   

In the early days of the island, there were already disagreements of what their intentions on the island should be. Jack and Ralph had already started to have a controversy about their differences in ideas of how the island should be governed and what is essential to their survival. In this scene, Jack came back after he failed to catch a pig as Ralph and Simon were trying to assemble living quarters for the boys to live in. Ralph got frustrated in their progress on the shelters. “’I was talking about smoke! Don’t you want to be rescued? All you can talk about is pig, pig, pig!’ ‘But we want meat!’ ‘And I work all day with nothing but Simon and you come back and don’t even notice the huts’” (54). In this tense interaction, Ralph is arguing with Jack about how building shelters and creating a fire is essential to their goal of surviving. On the other hand, Jack thinks that hunting is more important as they need food to avoid starvation. This shows how two people who are rising to power can cause conflict as they believe in completely different methods of how the island should be run and what they should prioritize for their survival. Even though they are in the same environment going through the same situation, there would always be a disagreement of what to achieve and to accomplish. It caused tension between Ralph and Jack’s relationship with each other which in turn caused the lack of effectivity on the island and issues later down the line, which will resulted in a split between the group.  

With the disagreement of who should run Korea (more like communism vs. capitalism,) the USSR and the USA relationship barely holding on, the communist North decided to attack the whole Korean peninsula. In “Korea: A History Of The North-South Split” by Tim Marshall, the Foreign Affairs Editor wrote that “In 1950 the North launched a surprise attack across the 38th parallel and quickly took most of the South. The United Nations then backed what it called a "police action" to repulse the advance and the Korean War, which would last for three years, had begun.” This shows how the situation could escalate when two completely different ideologies are put down on the table. This real-life connection happens to take a violent path with an unexpected attack to dominate the other side. With the method of violence, it supports the one leader display dominance to the people and dominates the other party. This also gives the party leverage of power over the everyday people they are leading. Similar to Lord of the Flies, Jack’s tribe decided to attack Ralph’s tribe so they could obtain the power of the fire which in this case, the fire is the essential thing that keeps both parties at power.

After Jack left Ralph’s tribe, he established a new group which was made up of mostly the biguns who left Ralph as they believed in Jack’s ideas. They both ran alongside one another separately for a while until Jack planned an ambush against Ralph. His tribe needed a way to roast the pig so they decided it was best to steal Piggy’s glasses from Ralph’s tribe. Knowing that the glasses means fire and fire is the symbol of power, they wanted to fight to get it. As night fell, things started to unravel. Jack tribe ambushed Ralph’s group and invaded their sheatler. “He was torn and jolted, found fingers in his mouth and bit them. A fist withdrew and came back like a piston so that the whole shelter exploded…’ That was Jack and his hunters’ said Ralph bitterly.’Why can’t they leave us alone?’” (167). This section from the text shows how an outbreak of violence finally occurs between the two rivals with completely different ideas of how to run the island. With two separate groups on the island who highly oppose each other, there will always be conflict between the two groups in order to dominate the other side and belittle them. With two leaders who have very distinct ideas from one other, there was bound to be an outbreak or clash between the two parties.

By connecting Lord of the Flies to the real-life event of the split of North and South Korea, it is seen how two individuals with highly opposing ideas interact and lead a group of people in the same circumstances. With two rising leaders with two different beliefs and no solid agreement from both sides, there would definitely be a split between the group of people supporting the leaders that their ideas line up with, causing very high tension between the two parties which could ultimately lead into conflict like violence. When you place two leaders with different beliefs and standards, there would be immediate dispute between the two groups that could lead to serious difficulty later on.  

Work Cited

Bajpai, Prableen. “Why North Korea and South Korea Are Separated.” Investopedia  

Investopedia, 12 Mar. 2019, www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/040515/why-north-korea-south-korea-are-separated.asp.

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. Penguin Books, 2006

Marshal, Tim. “Korea: A History Of The North-South Split.” Sky News,

https://news.sky.com/story/korea-a-history-of-the-north-south-split-10449691

Szczepanski, Kallie. “How Korea Split Into North Korea and South Korea.” ThoughtCo,

No one was home. I think my parents are out. The house is dark and empty. I want to go to my room onto my bed. Did someone say something? Oh no, you are back. Why? I should be happy and full of joy coming back home after hanging with friends. But all I felt was the sorrow and doubts. I should be coming home full of memorable events, but I am coming home full of grieve.

I just feel like my friends are not really friends. Yes I hang out with them, yes I laugh along with them, yes I have memories of them. But do they really feel the same for me? Do they really give me as much love as I give to them? Every day I come to school, I said hi but no hi in return. Only stone cold stares or a glance from their eyes. They just walk away from me or continue on with their conversation. Forgetting I was even there. Every time we hang out I am just in the back, listing to my friends just talking with each other behind my back. When I talk, my words get lost in theirs. My friends just slowly forget I was even there. You said that maybe they are all fake and they never really love me.

The girl? Well this girl. She in our friend group. Well I. I like her. I told her. I remember vividly that day when I told, she said let's just keep it as friends. But for these last few days, I’ve seen her sitting with one of my "friends". I was full of jealousy with my sorrow. Perhaps I was mistaken? Perhaps it was true that she like him more. Dam you are making me have the feeling of doubt again.

What is the meaning of life anymore? I feel lost in this world of hopelessness and loneliness. All I want is someone to sit down and talk to me, know that I am there and acknowledging me. At the very minimum, willing to listen to me. I do not have anyone to turn to and talk to. Everyone I once love is fading away. Sometimes I want to scream out loud. I just want someone to listen to me, talk to me, cry with me. Only you can hear me.

Every day I go to bed, I been having sleepless nights. Having deep thoughts like what the purpose of life? Where do I go? What the next step of life? I just feel directionless and lost in life. Each coming day I just feel scared and alone. I starting to lose patience feeling the frustration and angery with everyone. Because you taking control over me.

I have just been ignoring you all these years. No one will believe me, listen to me, that you are following me. Taunting me. Everywhere I go, you are always there. I want to end you, breaking free from you with a stab to the heart. But I have always been afraid to face you. You have been haunting me for so many years. Twice I face you with a knife, but I back down like a coward.

You know what? Today is the day. Come on where is it. There it is. The knife. I'm not afraid! IM NOT AFRAID

AAAAAAHHHHHH

I did it. I kill you. There the blood on the floor. My eyes are feeling heavy. This hurts a lot. Everything so blurry. But at least I kill you. You were my own thoughts, yes you made me suffer all these years, you were in my head. Talking over me. Bring me down. At least now, the world is a better place without me and you. At least now I am in a better place. I ended my suffering from the pain of you gave me. Because you were my thoughts inside my head.

The Frisbee Game

“Remember you are first cut, he second cut, I will call stack, and he will be swing.”

Hearing an actually formulated plan from my teammate woke me up as my mind was quickly losing focus. Right now we are tied with a score of 2-2. He was telling me the position I should be playing in the field. I will be the first man that the handler will attempt to pass the frisbee to. It was the last point before the end of the game and both teams were giving their all. We been chasing the frisbee disc up and down the field but no progress has been made. It was 5 minutes in the point, the longest point we had. My body already felt restless, legs heavy as bricks, my stomach growling, and my mouth dry begging for a drip water. My team always had a problem when it came to communicating with each other. We have always been unorganized, all over the place, no rules or positions had been in place.Our clueless faces on the field show that we did not even know what to do. We would always lose the games and it would be pure luck if we score a point. My coach would be on the side lines shaking his head in disappointment and I could see it was his turning point to make a change.

At our last practice, our coach wanted to talk about a essentiel concept called communication.

“It is one of the most key things when working as a team, not only for ultimate frisbee, but also with school work and other sports,” as he said putting emphasis to each word.

We spent that whole practice learning how to communicate with each other. We learn the commands and what each command means. We also learn how important eye contact and hand signals where useful in communicating with each other too. At the end of the practice, we were playing like a real team, a real ultimate frisbee game for once. We shouted commands at each other, made solid eye contact, and most importantly, work as a team. Just in time for the next game.

“Alright,” I said to my teammate.

We raise our fist and our opponent throw the frisbee out to the end of the field. We all ran down the field to get to our position’s.

“STACK ON ME,” as one of my teammates shouted out loud as I breathlessly ran down second to last in the stack.

The handler had picked up the disc. The defenders were all lined up to each one of us.  

“DISC IN,” shouted the handler. The first cutter sprinted off to the open side. He was able to outrun his defender. The handler fake his defender (trick his defender by going in one direction then rapidly change to the other direction) and pass the frisbee to the first cutter.

“NEXT CUTTER WHO SECOND,” scream the first cutter.

I already ran down field so I sharply turn back towards where the first cutter was. Clap-clap-clap as I repeatedly clapped my hands to signal him that I was open. He threw the disc to me. I clap the disc with both hands and caught it. I look for an open person but my mind was under pressure and there was only confusion. The defender started to stall count me beginning from 10 as my sweat drip down my face.

Then from the corner of my eye, the handler waved his hand at me outrunning his defender. I turn around, eyes locked on him, and throw the frisbee at him. He caught the frisbee and signal the next cutter to go deep into the end zone. The deep cutter ran down and the handler huck the disc (Threw the disc far down the field). It travel far and fast down field. The deep cutter sprinted quickly down the field as his defender and others around him try to desperately catch up to him. The disc dip lower and lower and everyone ran faster and faster to the disc. The body of everyone from my team and the opponents team obscure my vision of the disc. There was a moment of tension to see if he caught it. A scream of joyness came out from my team. The deep cutter caught the disc! We won! We line up and shook hands with our opponents said, “good game good game.”

As I travel home, I realize how important communication is when it comes to teamwork. You can have a group of people no matter how many people are in, ranging from intelligence, backgrounds, if they like dogs or cats, etc. What most crucial out from teamwork is communication. When you communicate to your peers, you and your peers will understand what is the next step and who is playing what role. With that, you have organize the certain task to certain people to complete one objective. I had never taken that into consideration before and thought to myself, “I should try to apply that with other things in life,” as I approach to my front step, ready to begin a new day.  

Cadmium was first discovered by a German chemist name Friedrich Strohmeyer in 1817. He was studying calamine and when he heated it some of calamine glowed with a yellow color. He did more research and experiments when he determined that he found a new element. Cadmium can be found in Earth's Crust along with zinc so it mined out by humans. The problem with Cadmium is that it is very toxic to humans. Although Cadmium is toxic, it is still used in rechargeable batteries. Cadmium is used in alloys for bearings. Cadmium can be used for control rods for nuclear reactors. Cadmium can also be found in solder with silver.

When I started to do the print, I research about the what Cadmium is use for and the history behind it. When I find out what it does, it made three separate designs in my sketch book. One was batteries inside of a charging station because cadmium it is on of the uses in cadmium. Another design I had was a nuclear plant and then there is an inside view of the control role that have cadmium in it. My final design was drawing a alloy bearing and solder. I decided to do the the recharging station one because I felt like that was my best work out of the three. Then , I trace the drawing over the foam plate with pen. Finally, we got paint and I decided to try out all of the colors. The class we had, I pick out one of the three best prints out of the 8 prints I made. I measure what the matted out and glue the two prints onto my matt.   

What I would want to change if I do this the second time was to try to press hader so there is no white spots on the parts where it should be fill with color. I also felt like I could improve the drawing like drawing the insides of a battery to show it charging. I enjoy printing it because it fun painting over your plate and seeing it being printed on paper.  

For my first two posts, I discussed my past experience of being a victim of the bystander effect, and wanting to explore more about it. I learnt a lot of surprising information about why a person would not help defuse the situation and what makes a person a bystander. I learned that there are three main factors for a bystander effect to happen. The first is the amount of people around the situation. The more people around the situation, the least likely they would intervene. Second, is the idea of diffusion of responsibility. This relates to the second one where people will less likely take responsibility for helping out when there are others present. They think other people are responsible take action. Finally, the dominant person in the group can also play a huge role in the bystander effect. The so called “leader” of the group can choose to respond or not which can cause a chain reaction to his/her followers to also follow the leaders decision. I also learned about past experiments that is similar to the topic about the bystander effect like the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment.  The Milgram Experiment focus on the obedience of a authority figure and personal conscience of the non-authority figure. This is similar to one of the factors of the bystander effect which is the dominant person. The Stanford Prison Experiment wanted to see the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The results of the experiment were surprising because the situation caused the volunteers  to behave a certain way.

What I decided to do to spread awareness about the bystander effect to other people was to educate my English class about the bystander effect by making my very own presentation about bystanders. In my presentation, I started out with a question to the whole group asking if they knew what the bystander effect was. Only half of the class raise their hand to share their answer.  Then I started to tell them what the factors and causes are of the bystander effect. Then, I started to educate them about what they could do to overcome the bystander effect.

I recently started to research how everyday people can help overcome and how to avoid the bystander effect from happening. According to VeryWellMind, there are 7 ways that could help you overcome the Bystander Effect. They said that just looking at other people helping another person out can help inspire you to do the same. Being aware of what’s going on is important too because you have to know when someone is actually in need of help or if they are just playing around. Having a personal connection with someone from the crowd can help too. Just by looking them in the eye or talking to them can increase the chance of them helping you. You also need to see everyone as person who will need of help then excluding a certain type of people out. Finally, the way that is the most important one to overcome the Bystander Effect is to just jump and help. You might have everything planned out and know what is going on, but still be just standing there, just watching the events happen. The most important part is actually helping and taking action so just jump in and help.

After doing this project for two quarters, I learned a lot about the bystander effect. I went from having slight knowledge about it to having a deeper understanding. I feel like I helped contribute to something good and that I have done something for the community. What I feel like I could have done better is to not have been so nervous when presenting in front of people and also I wish I had practiced presenting. What is still left for me to do to make a change is spread the word out to even more people than just my class   

Annotated Bibliography

My first blog post was about the introduction to the bystander effect. My first experience of the bystander effect was when I got jumped in the streets and no one helped. I decided to go deeper about the issue with the bystander effect. I found out that bystander effect is cause by the amount of people present in the situation. The more people at the site of bullying, the more likely they won’t help. With less people in the situation, the most likely they would help. This is because they think another person will step in and help. Also, they don’t feel like it their responsibility to jump in and help. Finally, fear plays on the people because they don’t want to risk their life or be the next victim.  

Some new information I have found since the last post is an experiment that have been done with 5 year old kids about the bystander effect. They are asked to color in a picture while there was an adult in the room painting a cardboard wall. The experiments were set up as the kid was alone with the painting adult, and another one where a couple of other kids painting with them who were confederates of the experimenter but were told not to say anything. In the finally one, they have the confederates kid be block by the cardboard but the non confederate kid can still see them which they call it the bystander unavailable situation. The adult would spill color water and the child would help them bring over paper towels. They found out that kids that were mostly alone help the adult while with other kids, only 50% of them helped. They discover the kids in the bystander unavailable situation still help although there were other kids there. This shows that the role of diffusion of responsibility is the problem and not social referencing

It was 2017 in the late afternoon. I was in 8th grade, it was the 3rd day of spring break. I was hanging out with some friends near my old school’s playground. We were all just chilling doing what kids normally do. Then all of the sudden, I see a gang of 16 kids attacking a kid. I didn't want stand there and watch a helpless kid get beaten up, so I intervened by telling them to stop. What happened next was a blur. I felt a sharp pain on the left side of my face. The world was spinning, everything was spinning, I felt more pain on my face and a group of people surrounding me. They were taking turn, swinging punches at me. When it felt like forever, they stopped and fled the scene. I was then escorted to my friend’s house, my face and shirt cover with stains of blood. After I was cleaned up, I realized that none of the other people around us helped, they just watched. I thought to myself: “Why were we the only ones helping the poor child? Why didn't they help out when we started to become the victim?” That when I became interested in the bystander effect. My goal is to learn why bystanders just watch something bad goes down when they can easily intervene to prevent something bad from happening. So I decided to investigate more about the bystanders effect in my “You & the World Project”.

Many people have become victims to the bystanders effect each and everyday. Bullying happens in front of a crowd 88% of the time. Student do not like to see a bullying happen 90% of the time, but only 20% percent of the time people from that crowd actually take action to help stop it. Why is there only a low percentage of people help prevent bullying from happening, if almost everybody does not support what they see? Well for one thing, people fear of becoming the next victim. They don’t want the attacker targeting them and get harmed. Some bystanders actually join the bullying and making it worse. Some people would keep on encouraging it and with the digital age, we put it down on tape and posted it on social media.  People also think that it none of their business to engage and it not affecting them. People believe that they are powerless and have no idea what to do when trying to help someone out.

Bystanders can also be influenced by the number of people around the situation. People are more likely to intervene when there a few people to no one. But the more people their are, the less they are to intervene. When people don't react, other people think it is okay to do the same.

This line graph shows how the fewer the people around the person who needs aid, the more likely they will jump in and help them.

What I hope to learn as I dive deeper into this project is to understand what going on in the minds of bystanders. I want to interview people who have witness someone who needed aid but never did anything.  I want to know what they are thinking as they see this. I want to know why did they choose to either act or not act at all. Finally, I wanted to conduct a survey seeing how many people had recently been a bystander.  

So for my me magazine I talk a lot about my passion with cars especially drifting and rally driving. So what I decided to have in my slide design is to have a visual of a car drifting because The Presentation Zen stated that we humans notice compelling images and also we can easily remember visuals. What Presentation Zen also taught me is to have only one point because if you put too much information, the reader gets bored of reading it and just pass. Also the audience wouldn’t be able to remember it all in less than 5 seconds because there’s too many words and we humans can remember things visually better than reading. So I decided to keep it short, a way for the audience to remember, understand that I am a very passion about cars, and make is humorous. I decided to use the word skrt skrt because it a common slang term for cars that is drifting on the road which is a perfect thing on my slide. I also play with the moment of my two words. I decided to have the word follow that car path so I organize the font in a way to make the words lead up to the car. What I also play around with the words is the font size and the color. For size, I wanted to have like a sort of noise effect like the closer the word is to the car, the more loud it is which I demonstrated by increasing the size of the word near the car. Then vice versa for the word father away from the car because the sound is now softer. I wanted the word to stand out from the light brown dirt from my background image of the car so the reader can easily see the word and also have this contrast of warm and cool colors. While doing further research, I found about the wheel of color which was a helpful tool to help find the right colors. To make my text stand out from the light brown, I use complementary colors which are colors that are directly opposite from each other and are useful when you want to make colors stand out. So I use the wheel of colors to find out the complementary color of light brown which is light blue. Finally, the light brown is a warm color and the light blue is a cool color to make a good contrast.