HannahR

|| I hopped into the car and fastened my seat belt as the engine started. It was 3:00 in the morning. My mom was going to bring me on to the Inuit Indians shores to look at the belugas. I had a few Inuit friends that I was going to visit while we were there. I hadn’t seen them in quite a while but had frequently talked to them on the phone. Their names were Alua and Dexter. I had met them on another visit to the Inuit land with my mom. All of us had just turned 18 and we would soon be heading off to college. “Did you bring everything you need Sarah?” asked my mom, Mrs. Parr. I checked my backpack that I was bringing to see if I had packed everything. My notebook, my iPod, an extra jacket and my video camera were all tucked away safely in my backpack. “Yep.” I said giving her a reassuring nod. “Alua won’t be able to see you today. She’s loaded with errands she has to do for her parents and you know how strict they are.” “Oh.” I sighed. I would miss Alua but I was still excited that I could see Dexter again. We had so many things to plan. We screeched up next to the Inuit reservation. It had started to snow while we had been driving. I took a last breath of the warm air coming from the heated car and walked into the winter wonderland. An older man stood in the snow waiting for us. “Ferdinand!” My mom ran up and hugged him. Ferdinand, Dexter’s father was one of my mom’s closest friends. She hadn’t seen him in six months though because of work. Ferdinand smiled at my mom and then looked at me. “Dexter’s in the hut. Last time I checked on him he was awake but he might have fallen back asleep. Bring him to the boat as soon as you can. We want to leave quickly.” “Yes sir.” I said and then ran off to the hut. I opened the door to the hut and saw Dexter lying on the couch fast asleep. He looked just as he did a year ago except his jet black hair had grown down to his shoulders. I could tell that he had tried to stay awake because his feet were in a bucket of ice. “Dexter,” I spoke into his ear “you have to wake up.” I paused to see if he would wake up. “Dexter.” I said again, this time a bit louder, “Dexter!” I had to bring Dexter to the boat soon and so I did what would have woken me up the fastest. I took off my jacket and used it to pick up the bucket of water that his feet had been in and dumped it on to his head. Like many people would have done if a bucket of ice cold water had been dumped on them he did not say the kindest things. Most of the things he said were about how his younger brothers, Ricky and Nanuk and how they should stop playing pranks on him and how he had called the couch first. Then he looked up to see who he was yelling at, stopped yelling and got up from the couch. He was at least a foot taller than me now and after not seeing him for so long his bright blue eyes took me by surprise. “Sarah!” he said smiling with open arms and gave me a cold wet hug. “That’s what you get for dumping water on me.” We smiled and caught up with each other as I occasionally told him to get a sweatshirt or thicker socks on. “Is the plan ready?” I asked. “Yep.” he said. His eyes wandered and then tried to change the subject quickly. “Well, we better get going.” he said. We came up to the Hakuna Matata, Ferdinand’s boat, were we saw Ferdinand and Mom waiting for us. “There you kids are! C’mon let’s get aboard.” The ship was cold and dark. Dexter and I were below deck as Mrs. Parr and Ferdinand searched for belugas to video tape. “So how’s school going?” Dexter asked. “Well I’m in a class where we find cool news and give it to the press to see if they’ll put it in the paper. We haven’t made the front page yet but we’ve gotten several articles published.” “That’s sweet!” said Dexter with a grin on his face, “So that’s how you published the rights of religion paper?” “Yep.” I said. Dexter looked at his watch. “Oh snap! I just remembered that…I didn’t mean for the plan to...” Dexter stopped talking. The boat had stopped. We heard yelling from above deck. “Stop it! It’s a baby! You’re not allowed to capture it! Stop!” I ran up to the deck and pulled out my video camera. On the edge of the boat were my mom and Ferdinand, both of them yelling at whatever was in the sea. As I walked up to them I saw what they were yelling at. Out only about 15 meters away from us was what seemed to be a floating cage. The cage was made of metal bars and was mostly submerged in the water. At the bottom of the cage was a submarine. Next to the submarine were a baby beluga and her mother. The baby beluga was swimming into the cage because food waited for her there. The mother was trying to coax her baby away from the cage. As the baby beluga realized that she was about to be captured a body cloaked in the mist and the foam of the ocean pushed the baby into the cage and slammed the cage door shut. The submarine trailed away with the baby beluga squeaking and wriggling. We all stared out at the sea. Ferdinand and Mom, trying to grasp what had happened. “What was that?” Mrs. Parr croaked out. “I don’t know,” replied Ferdinand, “but whatever it was doing I don’t think it was legal. Belugas are endangered and because of that aren’t allowed to be stolen from the wild or killed without a permit. And I have a feeling they didn’t have a permit. Did you get that on tape Sarah?” Ferdinand asked looking at the camera in my hand. “Uhh... I think its right here.” I looked at my camera and then saw it was on still shot. “Oh no! It was on still shot!” I said. Ferdinand groaned. “Well, we better get home and alert people about this.” He said. “Maybe you can make a story on this for the paper.” my mom said in that you- better- or- your- grounded” voice. I rang Alua’s doorbell. It had been one week since the crime. The door opened. “Alua!” I hugged my friend who I hadn’t seen in a year. Last week, after the crime, I had published a news paper that had made the front cover of Alaskan Times. After seeing the newspaper Alua called me up and proposed that we should look for clues to see who captured the baby beluga. “So,” she began “I heard that you guys had been searching for belugas using the Hakuna Matata. “Correct?” asked Alua, while blowing bubbles in her bubble pipe. She was always prepared with a handy kit of props that she kept underneath her bed. “Yes.” “So let’s go investigate.” She said while pushing her hair out of her eyes. And with that she walked out the door and headed for the docks. I followed her and we walked along the shore until we came to the Hakuna Matata. “I don’t understand what clues we can find here. I mean it’s just a boat.”Alua didn’t even glance up at my remark as we ducked into the downstairs deck. In the middle of the deck was a square panel that I had never noticed. Alua was frantically unscrewing the panel from the floor. “What are you doing?” I asked. Alua continued to work in silence. Then she lifted the panel to reveal a video camera underneath it. “This is more like it.” she said. “How did you know that was there?” I asked in awe. “Well, seeing as this is a research boat built specifically to research marine mammals there had to be a camera or video camera around here that would have seen the person who captured the baby beluga.” spoke Alua while stroking her chin. Her brilliance amazed me but even more so her ability to say long sentences. “Well what’s on the tape?” I said. And with that Alua and I headed off to Alua’s house to play the tape on her laptop. We plugged in the camera and began to watch the video. At first all we could see was a foamy sea but then the boat stopped moving so the video got clearer. We saw the submarine that had attacked the belugas and in front of it were Dexter’s brothers, Ricky and Nanuk. “What are they doing in there?” I yelled. I was going to have to talk to Dexter the plan had not… “I don’t know.” said Alua interrupting me from my thought. Then a tall figure walked through the door. It was Alua’s father, Mr. Smitten, a tall lawyer who had a love for money. His nose looked like someone had hammered it down and he had bright pink skin making him look like a really tall pig. “It seems to me you girls have found a crime.” He said with a sneer spreading across his face “With all crimes comes a reward.” “But...” I said trying to not bring this case to court “this is different this has to do with our friend Dexter’s brothers. Let’s just talk to them about it.” Then Mr. Smitten snatched the video camera from us with a smug look on his face and started calling lawyers on his cell phone. Two large wooden doors with silver brass handles opened up to the court room. I had been summoned as a witness to Ricky and Nanuk’s trial. I took a seat in a back row next to Alua. Dexter was sitting far away from us and kept giving me cold, hard, glares. I hadn’t seen him in a while but he wasn’t doing well. He looked tired, starved, and very worried. “Let the accused rise and their lawyer present evidence against their accusation.” Spoke the judge. Ricky and Nanuk both stood and waited for their lawyer to speak. Their lawyer was a small round Inuit woman who was dressed in a suit. The lawyer stood up and nodded towards a man in the back. He brought forth a gun. The lawyer took it from him, and thanked him. “Exhibit A,” The lawyer began. “Here is a gun that I found. It has Dexter’s fingerprints all over it.” The man who had given her the gun then gave her a silver bullet. “Exhibit B. This bullet is from a crime scene about a month ago. This is the bullet from when Ricky and Nanuk were fired at. I have bullet traced it back to this gun.” She said while holding up Dexter’s gun, “I would like to bring Dexter to the stand.” I was flabbergasted this lawyer was good. But what did it have to do with the case at hand? “Dexter, where were you on the 15th of August?” asked the lawyer. Dexter looked straight at me and it felt as if he was looking straight into my heart. Time seemed to pause. I saw him grow stronger. “I was at my house.” he said like he was proving something to me. “What where you doing at your house?” continued the lawyer. “I was threatening Ricky and Nanuk with that gun.” He spoke calmly. The crowed broke out in a series of whispers. “Why did you do it?” asked the lawyer. “I was forcing them to steal a beluga for me because they would be protected from the large punishment I would get since they were under the age of 18.” Frozen in astonishment and fear I saw Dexter grow up into a kind, loving, man. “The beluga has been slaughtered as a religious sacrifice to the god Aro.” he continued. “Said to be, greatest god of the world which is part of my past religion, Maldiven.” He said the word past very loudly. The crowd was stunned by the information, seeming oblivious to his enunciation of the word past. “As you can tell Ricky and Nanuk were not the true culprits for this crime. Dexter was. Now the only reason any of us to be here is to find more crimes Dexter has done.” finished the lawyer. In the chaos of the crowd arguing and grumbling over each other Dexter calmly walked towards Alua and me. “Wha...how...why?” was all Alua was able to stutter out. “I’m so sorry Alua,” he spoke sincerely, “I wish with all my heart I could take it back.”Then Dexter’s eyes met mine. “You are a monster.” he said and walked away. “What did he mean by that?” asked Alua. Dexter was sentenced to 10 years of jail for the slaughter of a beluga without a permit and for threatening his little brothers with a gun. His words never have left my mind to this day. The day he got out of jail I greeted him and he seemed to be back to his old self, the smiley, happy one. He doesn’t hang out with me anymore though. Talk about holding grudges. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had admitted to the public that I had forced him into doing everything that he was accused of. If only he knew of Americans rights. I had made him think that he had to be part of my religion or else he would be killed. If only he had known about the first amendment, freedom of religion. But that’s a different story. ||


 * [[file:Expository-pros-cons.doc]] ||

My Perspective Imagine that your in a crime driven neighborhood. You know were you can buy an illegal gun but still your not sure you should. You wonder why they make people have licenses for guns when the criminals can buy a gun illegally faster. Knowing that the second amendment says that anyone is allowed to own a gun you wonder why they make it harder for just, right, citizens to get a gun. Many people wonder the same things. Though it is harder for legal citizens to get a gun ,if they gave out guns and did not ask for a license then even more criminals would be able to get the gun even faster. Also if you are a law-abiding citizen it will be easy to get past the tests for a gun license. Finally when people question how much guns go out and are used they should be questioning who uses the gun which is why they made licensees for a gun. You can now tell that we should keep the gun licenses because if we don't we may use many lives.

Historical Component of Revolutionary War The historical component of Or Give Me Death are the fact that the father, [|Patrick Henry], writes speeches about the war and that the son, John Henry, went to war. These parts though may seem small contribute very much so to the book. Above I linked Patrick Henry's name to his most famous speech called, Liberty or Death.The name of the book being called Or Give Me Death relates to this speech.

Mood/Tone The mood of the book is a serious tone. You can tell it is a serious tone because, first of all, it takes place in the revolutionary war and one of the main charachters is in the war. As many of the charachters thought and said "I worry for him." Pg 201 Another serious thing is that John,who was going to war, also had a secret girlfriend. His secret girlfriend was named Dorothea and while John was away in the war Dorothea and John's dad,Pa got married.When Pa found out he said “I would not have John’s sensibilities hurt.” Pg 208 The pain and awkwardness adds seriousness in the story also. The last thing is Annes thoughts of herself. In the story Anne lies and it ends up hurting John. She says “I did it to protect John. Now I wonder if telling made things worse for him. When do you keep a secret and when do you tell a lie? When do you go too far to protect the those you love? When is lying to keep them safe wrong? I know now. Leastwise I think I do.”Pg 215 You can tell from these deep questions that it makes the book very serious.

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