Author Archives: ahenry

Building and Managing a Business

In my online class, Principles of Information Technology B, we were assigned to create a real life business. I worked with Makenna Gibbs and we were both the managers and the second generation founders. We made two advertisements, a database of our inventory, the design of the restaurant,  a spreadsheet of our employee’s payroll, a business letter asking for a loan to start our business, and we were asked to explain our experience while we worked on this project. 

Book Essay: Divergent

Austin Henry
April 8, 2014

Divergent
Book By: Veronica Roth

Roth, Veronica. Divergent. HarperCollins Publishers, 2011

Divergent starts us off with meeting Beatrise Prior. She, her parents, and her brother all live in the faction of Abnegation. They have no TVs, no iPhones, and one mirror that is usually hidden somewhere in their house. She is sixteen now and all teenagers her age have to take an aptitude test to determine which faction they belong in. But the problem is, Tris is Divergent, meaning she hides the fact that she doesn’t belong in any faction. Not Dauntless, not Abnegation, yet not factionless.

A theme that Veronica Roth is trying to tell is is controlling government. Each faction has it’s own faction leader. Depending on each faction, there’s the straightforward power of Dauntless, who beat people up and destroy things. Then there’s the more complicated, more manipulative power of Erudite, who want to control things, either through newspapers changing people’s opinions or just controlling people’s minds directly.

My favorite character is Four. He is brave, smart, and the only other person like Tris, Divergent. Tris and Four have a strong relationship with each other. I think they are the best fictional couple in all of the world of books I have ever read. I actually like this book, that’s kind of hard thinking about because I strongly dislike reading. This book seriously grabbed my attention. It was like I couldn’t put down the book, one minute I was on page 262, and the next thing I know, I’m on page 307. It was almost magical.

My guiding questions are ‘Is controlling government scary? How does controlling government work? What is exactly is controlling government? ’’ Well, yeah, controlling government is scary, this crazy man or woman controls you. You listen and live, or resist and die. Controlling government can be scary only if you make it scary. Controlling government is, well, controlling.

Poem of the Day

To an Athlete Dying Young
BY A. E. HOUSMAN
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

Response:
A theme for “To an Athlete Dying Young” is just because you have glory here, does not mean you will have anywhere else. People know you at school and stuff, but when you go to college, you and your friends have spread out and gone different directions. The rhyme scheme for this poem is (i.e.) aabb ccdd.
I thought this poem is sad. This boy has a the glory in the town. Everybody loved him, but one day he just died. The poem doesn’t tells us how. Maybe somebody disliked him and used something to kill him that wouldn’t leave a mark.