The Shining

The Shining is one of the best books that I have read in a long time, especially the characters. I have never read a book that gave such depth to each character, where you have a full understanding of how the character thinks and feels. I really like King’s style of writing in this book because he makes the Torrance family feel like a real regular family, even as they are going through supernatural events. As their stay in Overlook Hotel turned sour, I felt the family’s pain and frustration with the hotel, their family situation, and life in general.
Jack Torrance was a special character for me. For some reason, I really related to Jack and the struggles he had throughout his life. King did a good job of wrapping me into Jack’s slow descent into madness, incorporating good flashbacks that gave important insight into what made Jack Jack. I thought King mixed in these flashbacks well with the present time. Jack’s character really drew me in because of his realness. As with all of King’s other characters, Jack felt as if he could be a real life person. His frustration with his lack of support for the family and the position he had put them in, as well as his desire to do the right thing for them, created a sense of emotions that not many other characters ever have. King’s insight into Jack’s mind as events were happening and his painful memories created an understanding of and involvement with the character.

School is worthless

Although it somewhat depends on the career you choose, the majority of what you learn in school is totally irrelevant to most people’s lives. Eventually, each person has to choose a career path to follow, and it would be almost impossible for this career to involve everything that you learn in school. Take my schedule for example. I find it very hard to imagine a work scenario where I would need Chemistry, Music Theory, and Ancient Greece knowledge in one job. It is very possible that I would need the skills I have learned in just one of these classes, or maybe none of them at all. However, I don’t believe that there is much room for improvement of our education. The only alternative I can see to introducing all of these classes at one time to students is having the students pick everything. However, I know that at several points in my educational career, I wouldn’t have really known what I wanted to do, and having a decision that would affect the rest of my life would not have been the best thing for me at the time. Looking back, if I had been made to eliminate several possible careers by not picking them as classes, I would have freaked and probably made bad decisions about my future. I’m not sure if there is any other format of education that would better introduce the students to possible interests and careers that would better relate directly to what each student will do later on in life. Children advance at different levels, so it is tough to determine the difficulty of the curriculum and the amount of work required for each student.