Lifeboat Ethics by Garrett Hardin

                The author’s argument that it should be every nation for itself when they are in need of aid, whether financial or food, is brilliant and correct. If every nation were to always help out the others then the one that didn’t need help would end up depleting its own supplies and would in turn make that nation need help from other nations. These nations that were in need of aid would never learn how to manage their own country and they would keep relying on the aid of other nations to bail them out when they are in a crisis.(100)  

            For example, the United States is now sending financial aid to several different countries to help them out with their economy. However, now that we are sending all our money to different countries the nation is going bankrupt and the economy is on a downward plunge into oblivion.  There are a lot of government pay cuts and thousands of job cuts. This is leading to an increase in unemployment in our nation and our economy is worsening. Since we have started to help other countries it has only benefited other countries and hurt ours. This is definitely a really bad idea.(101)  

            The statement that “under a system of private property, the men who own property recognize their responsibility to care for it, for if they don't they will eventually suffer” is true because if we didn’t care for ourselves and we let other people take over for you then they would use the land to excess and ruin it for anyone around. Imagine letting several different people borrowing a pair of your pants in one week. Wouldn’t they look absolutely and hideously, awful when you got them back? You probably wouldn’t even want to use them again after that. In contrast, if you just kept your own pair of pants and only used them once a week then they would most likely look almost like new. (125)

            The author says that in rich nations the population increases at a low percentage, as opposed to poor nations’ population increasing steadily at a high percentage. These poor nations have to move into untouched land and end up destroying the environment in their quest to provide land to grow crops to support themselves. The author says that for example, the use of technology has done irrevocably  severe damage to the fish supplies, the forests and the pollution of waters, such as; ocean, lakes, ponds, creeks, and rivers.(87)

            If we continue to let immigrants come into the United States then our food supplies will dwindle and our fertility of land will decrease. We won’t have enough room for all these people coming into America and so we will not have enough food to feed everyone and so then we will have to turn to growing more agriculture. This will lead to the depleting of the rich, fertile soil used to plant crops and the environment will not be able to sustain our hastily growing population. (87)

The Great Gatsby: Chapters 8-9

1) "It amazed him — he had never been in such a beautiful house before. but what gave it an air of breathless intensity, was that Daisy lived there — it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him."  

-What the author, F. Scotts Fitzgerald, is trying to persuade the reader in this quote is that the characters Daisy and Jay Gatsby were from separate worlds. He says that Daisy is comfortable in her big house and that the character, Gatsby, was comfortable in his tent. He uses this simile as a comparison of the difference between their status in society and how big of a breech it is. The author says that she is the one who breathes air into the house and makes it a home because she is so in tune with her world that is different from Gatsby’s.  

2)"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——"

3)"He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night."

             - What the author, F. Scotts Fitzgerald, is trying to persuade the reader in this quote through the narrator, Nick, is that the character, Gatsby, is always described as always looking back instead of into the future, but he has actually not been looking back. He says that the character, Gatsby, had already put the past that he was accused of with Daisy was already behind him, but he never knew he had put it past him. The author uses imagery to open the readers mind and describe that Gatsby had left his past way behind him before he even came for Daisy.

4)"It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete."

            - What the author, F. Scotts Fitzgerald, is trying to persuade the reader in this quote is that the circle of killings was a massacre. The author tells through the narrator, Nick’s, eyes is that the deaths were like the holocaust killings because the deaths were senseless with Wilson’s suicide in the end. It started with Myrtle’s unintentional death, and then it continued with Mr. Gatsby’s murder and ended with Myrtle’s husband, Wilson, committing suicide to complete the circle of senseless killings that shouldn’t have occurred.

5)"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . ."

- What the author, F. Scotts Fitzgerald, is trying to persuade the reader in this quote is that the characters Daisy and Tom are snobby people who don’t care who they harm. He says that they are shallow people who do what they want without thought to how their actions are going to hurt the people they involve in their shenanigans. They wreak havoc on people and things, they hide behind their money and position in society, and then they expect other people to clean up their messes for them. He believes these characters to be shallow human beings that are flighty and only care for their selves.

            - What the author, F. Scotts Fitzgerald, is trying to persuade the reader in this quote is that we are always running to escape the past and that if we don’t face it then we can never reach our future. He says that Gatsby was one of the people looking in the past and never able to look to the future because he was stuck behind. The author says that one day we will end up catching up to the future that we will grasp, but we have to work for it and not give up.

-What the author, F. Scotts Fitzgerald, is trying to persuade the reader in this quote is that the characters Daisy and Jay Gatsby were from separate worlds. He says that Daisy is comfortable in her big house and that the character, Gatsby, was comfortable in his tent. He uses this simile as a comparison of the difference between their status in society and how big of a breech it is. The author says that she is the one who breathes air into the house and makes it a home because she is so in tune with her world that is different from Gatsby’s.