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Melted Lollipops and Fuddled Goldfish
AP English Language and Composition
25 November 2002

As she stumbled into her apartment, her eyes went straight to the cumbersome chain of keys that had clumsily been strewn about on the floor. There they were. Just missing them with her shoe heel, Eleanor plopped herself down upon the antique chair at the table. Imagine! She had searched the entire morning, causing her tardiness to the bakery, and they were there all along. In utter exhaustion from her day's troubles, she slapped a clump of unruly hair out of her face; it was a futile attempt. The large mass of frizz upon her head seemed as though it had absorbed some of the glow from the hair dryer's coils.

Just then, Eleanor realized her elbow had been conveniently positioned in a glob of sweet, sticky melted lollipop, a left over party favor from the weekend before. How frustrating! She could have sworn she had already done away with that gooey mess infiltrating the loveliness of her kitchen table. Eleanor went back over to her keys that still lay sprawled on the floor, and chose one as her tool to remove the melted candy. Tearing rapidly at it, though missing the goopy target altogether, she instead generated little piles of dusty wooden shaving, which were then swallowed deep into the sticky mass. Without disrupting her hurried scratching, her head wandered up as her eyes jumped about the room.

Eleanor realized that she had not tended to her fish lately. Clomping over to the tank, just barely avoiding every obstacle across her floor, Eleanor peered carefully at each fish swimming about. She had always loved the vibrant colors of tropical fish. Though, she also remained loyal to her childhood pet, the goldfish, which in this case disrupted the tank's community of graceful fish as it stammered along in the water. Oh!, The candy! Rushing back to attend to the sticky impediment on her table, she glared down with a look of confused dissatisfaction. She picked up the miniature pumpkin recently purchased at the market for her centerpiece, turned it over, and started jabbing at the candy with its stem. With the frailness of the pumpkin's tiny stem, however, it only snapped and stuck in the glutinous bulge, leaving splintered remnants among the mess. She lurched her head to see out the window behind her. Eleanor peering curiously at the luminescent autumn leaves that dotted the streets below, as a car passed by with a gust disrupting the pattern. In a startled array, she drew her head back from the window.

She looked over at her barren fireplace. It seemed like a good season to light a fire. Her mother had always kept a fire going in the fall, Eleanor recalled.

Maybe the candy would come off once reheated. She lit a match and held the flame just above the lollipop. It began to sizzle and boil with tiny bubbles of citrus aroma. When she noticed that her table had begun to char, she dropped the match at once. The embers expired upon encountering the now slightly warmed goo.

Instantly, Eleanor became uncomfortable with the silence of her apartment. She jammed a cassette tape of Edith Pilaf's The Voice of the Sparrow into her tape player. After wrestling with it for a minute, she declared that it was useless to attempt to repair that old player, and resolved to tug at the cord until the plug popped out of the wall.

Her attention turned again to the problem on her table. She took her index finger pointed stiffly, and tried to force the gummy substance to lift. Yet, the glob only swelled on the left side, with the exception of the portion that was now squashed beneath her fingernail. Making use of her tooth, Eleanor tried to pry it out, but failed as she jolted back at the repulsive taste. As she extracted her finger from her mouth, she mashed the candy substance between her thumb and index finger until some escaped out the edges from the hard pressure she applied. She released her fingers with glossy streams of candy still connecting them.

Smashing her cheek against the palm of her hand, Eleanor suddenly felt in the mood to eat a lollipop. She stood up promptly and decided to depart to the corner store. Stepping over her keys to reach the door, Eleanor pledged not to forget to purchase another small pumpkin for a table decoration; she thought she remembered that something had happened to her last one.

A Note To The Reader
The assignment for the above essay was to relate through description a color without naming it. Click Here to find out what color this essay is meant to evoke.

Childhood Fossils
AP English Language and Composition
7 April 2003

Different from most peoples' childhoods, the aspect of science was ubiquitous in mine. With my father being a chemist, our dinner conversations would consist mainly of science or chemistry on some level, usually with a concentration on asphaltines and petroliomics. For instance, it was only because of my father's occupation that there exist two published books dedicated to my siblings, my mother, and me: Asphaltines: Fundamentals and Applications, and The Structure and Dynamics of Asphaltines, both by Oliver C. Mullins and Eric Sheu. Certainly conversations between my father, his own father, and my father's brothers were nearly comical in their absolute denseness and level of complexity. During these exchanges, I watched as my aunts would try hopelessly to follow, though only intermittently, as my cousins would escape the tedium by tiptoeing to the back rooms to play. Though I certainly never took part in these discussions, as a mere year of high school chemistry left me ignorant of the subjects, I never departed, but rather found some sort of comfort in the familiar scenery.Accordingly, highlights of my childhood were often focused around post-Christmas vacations with my father's side of the family. Each year, we would spend an entire day packing and preparing for the trip, wake up at ungodly hours of the morning, board an almost minuscule airplane, and finally take a two hour van ride into the back country of West Virginia. As we traveled each year, I could always been seen eagerly peeking out the window, taking note of each familiar feature that signified we were closer to arriving. The Greenbrier vacation with the family was my childhood paradise.

With all the ongoing merriment that the retreat served me, the most cherished was the annual fossil search. Orchestrated by my father and uncles, my cousins and I would be gathered together in our uncomfortable layers of winter clothing. All together, we would emerge into the winter's air, and approach our mountain of choice. Usually by the time we reached the base, after my request for a piggyback ride, I would replace my father's backpack of chisels and tools. After what seemed to be hours of hiking up the mountain, my uncles would decide we had reached a apt place for fossil-hunting. As cousins and I swapped tools, we began to dig into the rocks located on the steep edge of the trail. Eventually, one of us would find a rock with an imprint of a brachiopod or a crinoid. We would then crowd into that area and search for our own pieces of treasure. With each new animal found, my father's enthusiasm would grow. He would exclaim about the animals of the Paleozoic Era, though specifically, we were finding invertebrates from the Devonian Period. My father would speak with zeal at the thought that the fossils were from 400 million years ago. Inadvertently, my excitement always seemed to escalate to the extent of to my father's. During the remainder of the trip, I was always a bit disappointed that the fossil hunt was complete.

As I grew older, my appreciation for my father's concentration on science grew. Academically, it was no less than convenient. Any question for science classe would be answered. Though, my father was not always capable of aptly explaining science to a child so lacking in knowledge and elementary in understanding. At very least, I certainly enjoyed telling people that my father was a chemist. Typically, the response would be, "Uh...Oh...Well, interesting." Evidently, no one had any idea what a modern chemist actually did.

Even now I realize that his science affected me more than I would have guessed. Although I was never considered one of the "family chemists" as my interest was in the arts, my father's science certainly shaped my childhood, and consequently my character and thought. Religion in our household, at least in terms of my father's teaching, was science. He reasoned that the church had not only been backward in thought since the creation of organized religion, but also wholly archaic in its belief. I can recall countless Sunday mornings before service when the house was filled with my Catholic mother's relentless nagging for him to attend mass; this, of course, was continually met with my father's abrupt refusal to be anywhere in the vicinity of a church. Naturally, I tended to agree with my father as opposed to my mother, since all logic seemed to point in his favor. I felt relief in the fact that my father would always be there when I was utterly frustrated with my extremely religious, and, consequently, completely illogical friends. One night in my late teens, when I was aggravated over a religious debate with a youth minister, my father leaned over to me discretely, and quietly told me, "You know what Steve Weinberg said? He's the man who won the Nobel Prize along with Abdul Salaam independently, for their work in elementary particle physics and unifying electromagnetic and weak interactions." I chortled to myself and shook my head. "Well, not to be presumptuous, but it was something along the lines of, 'If science has done nothing else, it has caused intelligent people to abandon religion.' " He sat back and shrugged his shoulders. Though a bit pompous at times, he had
such a way of calming my nerves. When I came to him with panic and angst, he was able to put everything into perspective. It was this sanity and reason about him that offered me comfort and left me in admiration. He was always something of which I could be sure.

The memory of my father seems an everlasting imprint in my mind. And even years past of the Greenbrier excursions, traces of the fossil outing can be found hiding throughout our house, placed in drawers and storage. Though, with suitcases to return home from West Virginia packed to the brims with other items, several of the fossils had to be left behind. Even the majority of rocks we were able to bring with us, over years past of spring-cleaning, have undoubtedly been tossed away by my mother. Consequently, the amount of fossils left now in our house has diminished incredibly. I remember as a child I kept a small box of my favorite, most precious fossils. Though, I suppose as with most possessions, even that has been lost over time.

The Scarring of a Star: A Mock Art Critique
AP English Language and Composition
13 January 2003

It would be difficult to imagine the path of the Post-Impressionist movement, had it not been for the renowned leader of the Symbolists, S. K. Mullins. Though much of her formal training and early career was spent in Paris's stimulating urban atmosphere, Mullins is highly acknowledged for her later work during her time in the French countryside with her colleagues Van Gogh and Gauguin. With her leadership of the French Symbolists, the movement was based on the rejection of the modern world, and favored a return to a highly simplistic way of life and spirituality, free from corruption. Mullins' A Scarred Star is often critiqued as a transitional piece from her early works into her late career, often portraying this belief system.

A Scarred Star, as oil on panel completed in 1879, is currently showcased in the Impressions of Light exhibit in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and remains the most prominent piece of Mullins' midlife career. Her style and mood are similar to that of Boudin's Fashionable Figures on the Beach of 1865, though they explore a creativity and abstraction not yet touched upon until twentieth century artists. Common to the movement, the painting displays the artist's dissatisfaction with the modern world. Mullins' message is revealed through the picturesque objects in the piece, ironically shedding blood from a stab wound given by "Meena V." Clearly, Mullins tries to convey the true evils of the ostensibly beautiful and composed world. Essentially, the action in the scene is the literal and metaphorical tearing apart of the world's splendor by humanistic criminal qualities and corruption. These evils are represented by the girl labeled with the perplexing title of "Meena V.", who seems to be running off the page with her arms held in a triumphant pose.

Not only raising controversy for the work's progressive implication, A Scarred Star also brought attention due to the artistic elements exhibited in the composition, unsurpassed by any of the artist's contemporaries. Mullins' focus on color, yet disregard for the formation of objects by light is not only largely characteristic of the Post-Impressionists and specifically Symbolist era, but is also beautifully employed on the canvas. Mullins uses color to depict the intensity of the subject matter. The complementary colors in the composition's three main focal points of the bow, star, and flower petals are displayed not only to compliment one another, but also to move the viewer's eye around the page. The vibrant red of the blood and animate green of the flower's stem are also complimentary, however are employed to emphasize the two object's dissimilarities.

To please the eye, Mullins has also applied a color palette of pastels for the brilliant items. However, to further treat the juxtaposition of the violent compositional qualities with the harmony of the pleasant ones, Mullins utilizes a vividly concentrated red, which is traced on almost all aspects of the piece. For instance, the marks appearing on the bow draw the allusion of violent scratches. The flower has been dotted in red at the crevices of the petals and the tips of the swirled stems as though the red protrudes from beneath the flower's alluring exterior. Finally, the artist shows bluntly the actual blood of the wounded star and the obvious scarring on its front. The dripping red then leads the eye below to the woman holding a large, emphasized blade. She appears to have been painted in quick and careless brushstrokes, with even the text above applied sloppily. The woman remains faceless, and several of her joints are detached. Furthermore, with no sense of shadow or realistic form, it is impossible to designate the woman to being positioned in either the foreground or the background. However, this undoubtedly is no mistake. Mullins utilizes the childlike drawing and detached limbs to not only uncover the feat that the woman has gone through to reveal the truths behind these objects, but also to show the irony of the unsophisticated innocent drawing, with subject matter of a bloody dagger. The last use of symbolism in the piece is perhaps the most noteworthy, though the least obvious. To the left of the woman, a star-like shimmer is shown in a faded pastel pink, with a smaller, more concentrated, and sharp figure shown over it. This red star at the center spoils any sense of elegance or beauty. This simple structure on the page acts almost as a summation of the piece's substance. The refined and delicate pink shimmer, representing the world's honesty, truth, and innocence, is fading into the background, almost being forced by the foremost red star with the implication of violence and corruption. From this complete message through color and figure, the composition's full voice is communicated.

The composition of A Scarred Star shows a well-formatted balance between the work's three foremost objects. Much of the negative space is filled through use of the star-like shapes, specifically in the bottom left-hand corner. The eye is then pulled in a curved diagonal from the upper left-hand corner, following the objects down to the bottom right-hand corner. With this movement in the piece, the flow is centered around the most glorified of the figures, the flower. Although Mullins did create a strong balance, there is a large amount of negative space, which would seem to detract artistically from the composition's artistic value. This can then be explained only through a symbolic sense. Perhaps the artist intended to concentrate all focus on the few objects on the page, and felt that this would distract the viewer's eye. It could be argued where the lack of background or shadow leaves the subject matter floating on the page, the artist has, however, created somewhat of an invisible grid. With the straight arms of the shimmering stars acting as the horizontal and vertical lines necessary, in effect, this arrangement holds the objects onto a two dimensional plane.

With her unparalleled talent and supreme masterpieces, it is no wonder S. K. Mullins' works have remained popular in the contemporary art world, and stand out triumphantly among her Impressionist and Symbolist equals. The style and technique of her artwork has an outstanding longevity and timeless air. Mullins' dynamic portrayals of modern nineteenth century artwork are as progressive in meaning and theory as they are in aesthetic value, as portrayed in her 1879 work, A Scarred Star.

Journeys into the Depths of Darkness
AP English Language and Composition
7 October 2002

Much of a person's character can be traced back to certain experiences. Often, when one has endured dramatic points in life, the effects are carried with that person and forever shape who he is. In the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and the film Apocalypse Now, the main characters embark on life-altering passages into and overcoming a dark state of mind. First drawn into the journey by their unfulfilled current life situations, the main characters must face the harsh realities that exist in the jungle. As they follow the river deeper and deeper through the dark scenes, each is severely affected by the intensities of the horrific side of humanity. Upon commencement of their voyage through the darkness, the main characters each face the core essence of the jungle's severe reality. Despite the fact that the main characters are greatly demoralized by atrocities presented to them, the characters are able to reject the powerful temptations into obscurity, with the recognition of the setting's hypnotics. Each of the characters walks away from the experience with a changed and enlightened perspective on the world. The author effectively uses the journey theme to trace the changes that occur in the main characters throughout their experiences, and depict the immense impact of one's life traumas.

In each story, the expedition of the main characters is instigated by the discontent with their lives, and the temptation to answer the calling of the unfamiliar worlds. In Heart of Darkness, the main character, Marlow, relates his longing since childhood to unmask the mysteries of the foreign continent of Africa: True, by this time it was not a blank space anymore. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delighted mystery-a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. But there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a shop window, it fascinated me as a snake would a bird-a silly little bird...The snake had charmed me. (Conrad 10-11) Marlow is strongly drawn to this exotic land because of the yearning for something more out of life, perhaps even the simple notion of fulfilling his youthful aspirations to encounter all corners of the world. Whether or not Marlow fully knows what he desires from his journey into the Congo, there is undeniably gapping aspects of his life wanting to be filled. Willard, the narrator of Apocalypse Now, is situated in a similar place in his life. Presented to the audience as a man seemingly detached from the outside world and spending his days in an isolated hotel room, Willard appears to feels the same void, and has an equal thirst to Marlow's for the mysterious ambiguities of the jungle in Vietnam: Saigon. Shit! I'm still only in Saigon. Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said 'yes' to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now. I'm waiting for a mission-getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker... Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter. (Apocalypse Now) His words clearly relate his pain and the unsettling urges he feels to advance past the existing state of his life. Therefore, when the military arranges a mission to find the legendary Walter E. Kurtz, Willard welcomes the delegation. The portrayal of each of these characters, displaying the lack of accomplishment in each of their lives, provides the inspiration to embark on a journey, thus beginning the process of a spiritual metamorphosis.

As both characters journey farther into the depths of the jungle, they are forced to face the atrocities exhibited by the extreme maltreatment of the native people. Along with the discovery of the raw brutality of human nature, Marlow and Willard gain an increasing understanding of the madness displayed by the infamous Kurtz. Almost simultaneous to their arrival in the jungle, the main characters become witnesses to incessant and ostensibly unjustified violence. Specifically, Apocalypse Now features relentless air raids, attacks on villages, and assault of the Americans by the Vietnamese. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow takes immediate note of the blind cruelty of the Europeans to the Africans, as he first observes six prisoners linked along a metal chain by the iron collars worn around their necks. Marlow notes the obvious malnutrition, as he can see each of their distinct ribs, and describes the joints of their skeletal limbs to be like "knots in a rope" (Conrad 25). Marlow continues to explain about the group of slowly dying African laborers that he next observes: Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the dim earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair...They were dying slowly-it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthy now, -nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. (Conrad 27-28) With Marlow's account of the unbearable and inhumane conduct towards the Africans due to blind prejudice, the author effectively creates an atmosphere of outlandish cruelty, unique to the jungle. In each work, the atrocities that the characters are forced to absorb become increasingly devastating and painful as their journey into the dark land of Africa proceeds. Marlow and Willard become increasingly disillusioned, and their perception seems to be slightly altered. Marlow describes his first realizations of how the jungle's seclusion can affect a person: "The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea, the uniform somberness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion" (Conrad 21). The character depicts his venture, as he becomes closer to Kurtz and the heart of the African Congo, both literally and metaphorically: Going up the river was like traveling back to the beginnings of the world...There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances...The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once-somewhere-far away-in another existence, perhaps. (Conrad 60) As exhibited by one specific scene of heightened drama, this effect starts to be seen in Willard and his crew in a parallel manner. As the crew pulls aside a civilian boat for a routine check, the group nervously begins to search the boat. Armed with weapons, two of the men on Willard's boat open fire on the innocent civilians simply trying to protect their puppy, resulting in the callous slaughtering of each Vietnamese on board. When one of the girls is found alive, one of the crewmembers suggests that she be taken to help, however the response from another is a ruthless barrage of bullets fired to end her life. This scene clearly shows the tremendous impression that life in the jungle has left on all the characters, and the full potential of the madness that can be activated in a human being. Due to their experience with the jungle's hypnotic atmosphere, both Marlow and Willard are able to better grasp the true explanation of Kurtz's character and empathize with the ruthless past he has suffered through: "The more I read and began to understand, the more I admired him. His family and friends couldn't understand it, and they couldn't talk him out of it... I felt like I knew one or two things about Kurtz that weren't in the dossier" (Apocalypse Now). Because both Marlow and Willard experience the same harsh realities and exposed human nature as Kurtz had, each can truly relate to him, nourishing his intense loyalty and attachment to Kurtz. Through the idolization of Kurtz, the motivation to meet and learn more about the mysterious man grows strong, which drives the main characters deeper into their own journey through the psychosis of the jungle's dark heart.

The arrival at the destination, the river's end, acts as a culmination of all prior events, as the main characters enter into the heart of the jungle's darkness. With the anxious disembarking at the gates of Kurtz's domain, Marlow and Willard realize the full extent of Kurtz's truly dark and violent nature. His entire grounds are saturated with a certain sense of sadism, as Kurtz has raised a cult like following of obedient natives who praise him as they would a god. Willard describes the scene as smelling of "slow death...malaria, and nightmares," and affirms "[it] was the end of the river, all right" (Apocalypse Now). Through the obvious madness of his soul, the main characters realize that Kurtz is the heart of darkness, and he represents the dark, evil and violent side of mankind. Marlow describes the man as an "impenetrable darkness" (Conrad 129). The situation Marlow and Willard observe relates back to General Corman's initial depiction of Kurtz as Willard's first introduction to him: Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes the Dark Side overcomes what Lincoln called 'the better angels of our nature.' Therein, man has got a breaking point. You and I have. Walter Kurtz has reached his. And very obviously, he has gone insane. (Apocalypse Now) As Marlow discusses, the jungle holds no civilized society for people to rely on for their own ability to rationalize: "These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone, you must fall back on your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness...Of course you may be too much of a fool...to even know you are being assaulted by the powers of the darkness" (Conrad 90). Marlow becomes conscious of the fact that in the face of the jungle's power Kurtz's own strength was not ample, showing reason behind his complete submersion into his own darkness. With this realization and the previous loyalty to Kurtz exhibited by both characters, there is a large temptation in both Marlow and Willard to join Kurtz in the midst of his shadows. Although the line between death and a nightmarish existence has become blurry for both of the characters, they are still able to prevail over the power of the jungle, thus ending the journey into the darkness: This is why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up-he had judged. 'The horror!'...It was his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made the last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps this is the whole difference: perhaps all the wisdom, and all the truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. (Conrad 132-133) Marlow accounts and fully displays his gained perspective and knowledge of his discoveries attained in the jungle regarding human nature and society. The characters act on the triumph over this temptation by either killing Kurtz himself, as Willard does in Apocalypse Now, or being able to function in a regular and sane manner in organized society, as Marlow does in Heart of Darkness. Thus, their journeys are concluded at this point, as Marlow and Willard are placed back into their lives outside the jungle, permanently changed and enlightened by the events of their entire expeditions. In each of these stories, the journey theme is applied to describe the full cycles of the characters into the depths of darkness, and then back out again into the 'light' of a civilized world. Each character has the initial motivation and need to commence the trip, which is further provoked by the obsession with the enigmatic and mystifying character, Kurtz. With the harsh realities forced upon them in the violent darkness of the jungle, both Marlow in Heart of Darkness, and Willard in Apocalypse Now, begin to gain an understanding and empathy for this man's situation. Kurtz pulls the main characters deeper into the heart of the jungle, and the epitome of their journeys. Once the main characters start into and recognize the blatant and unreserved qualities and effects of reality, they are able to triumphantly conquer the transfixing powers of the darkness in the jungle. This marked the completion of Marlow and Willard's own journeys and newfound insights into their personal lives, and those of all in society. Through the encountered themes and discussions, both works show an acute perspective of human nature as opposed to the altered perception of such in a structured society.