NEWS FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES

30 year old man killed in Marianella

I have read a translated newspaper from Italy. The newspaper was about a 30 year old man named Pasquale Romano, who was killed in an ambush in Napoli. Pasquale Romano was found in the square Marianella, which is located in the Central part of Napoli. According to initial reports, Romano was driving his car when he was approached by the killer who shot him against several shots of gunfire. There had been fourteen shots fired against Roman, who was driving a “Renault Clio” (a car). The police have found a suspect, who maybe could have killed the man. But the police can’t give us more information before they know what really happened.

This is written by my classmate Erling in a group project.

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Teen faces up to 32 years in prison for crime spree

I have written about an article from Peoria. (Peoria is a city in Illinois.)

The newspaper say “A Peoria teenager faces up to 32 years in prison after pleading guilty Monday to two armed robberies and 10 residential burglaries last year. “

I think that the teenager is stupid. He has broken his future for himself and his newborn boy. He says he has to steal to make money for his newborn son to the paper. Why didn’t he go to school or start to work so he could make money by himself? The paper also says that he could get 45 years in prison for the two armed robberies, but he get less penalty. It is possible that he can get less than 32 years in prison, but at the moment he has to be at least six years in the prison.
This is written by Marie.

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Trapped in a horror blaze

Just before 1.45am in London, yesterday, one terrible incident found place.  One mother and her five children were trapped in a horror blaze. The father managed to escape from the window in his dressing gown as he screamed. "Save my children and wife" and "help us". He tried desperately to save his family, but they were trapped in the house. The father sat down to pray, but his wife and four of his children were killed, but his youngest child, Maheen is in a critical condition.

The police believe that this was not an accident. They think that the fire was meant to start.

This is a picture of the family that were killed and the picture below is a picture of their house.
This is written by me.

COMPARING TWO SHORT STORIES

We chose to compare the two short stories "Sun-Powered Car" by Robert Burton Robinson and "Homework" by Jim Schicatano. We are going to compare the plot, characters, setting, dialog, the conflict, point of view, resolution, theme, and length. 

Plot
Are the plots much of the same? What happens to the main characters in both of the short stories?

In "Sun-Powered Car" the plot is about Malcolm who is working at a TV- station as a news reporter and is a little bit depressed about his job because he has worked there for twenty-five years and never got a promotion. He walks into a diner, and sees Ned and his two sons driving an old car with a solar panel on the top of it. He talks to the waitress Helen, and she tells about Ned inventing the car with a solar panel. Malcolm thinks that this is very interesting, and wants to make a news story about it, and decides to talk to Ned. He talks to Ned, but it becomes a disappointment when he finds out that the car is not solar panel driven, but son pedal driven. Anyway he decides that he want to make a news story about it. 

In "Homework" the plot is about this school boy, Jason, who is arguing with mostly his father but also a little with his mother about whether he should do his homework or not. They argue about this because Jason doesn't see the point of doing his homework which is so boring, and his parents think it’s important that he does his homework so he could get a good future life. They are also discussing who of Jason and his father who had the toughest childhood. In the end when they start becoming finished with the arguing, we are told that Jason’s mother and father both order food and snacks from their robot-servant, and they set on a hologram play with actors. In the very end when Jason has decided to obey his parents, after getting grounded and yelled at, and do his homework, he walks into his room, and then we are told that all he has to do is to plug a cable into his back head, and wait for two minutes while his homework are being downloaded to his brain. He finds this terribly boring and an awful waste of time, while his parents are so tired of working four hours a day, and getting served by robot servants etc. What a hard life?

The Characters
The main character in "Sun-Powered Car" is Malcolm, and the two secondary characters are Ned and Helen. Malcolm works at a TV-station as a news reporter and seems a little depressed and he says himself that he has given up his dream of sitting in the anchor chair. Ned is a man at the diner which is a farmer, and has invented a special car. The other secondary character Helen, is a waitress at the diner, and she knows Ned and his sons quite well. 

The main characters in "Homework" are the boy Jason, and his father. The secondary character is Jason's mom. Jason is a boy who doesn't want to do his homework, and would rather play with his dog. Jason's father gets mad at Jason for not doing his homework as he should, but seems lazy himself. Jason's mother is just complaining about Jason not doing his homework. 

What do these characters have in common?
They don't have much in common we think. Malcolm in "Sun powered car" seems like a person who likes to work, but Jason and his father in "Homework" doesn't seem like they like to work at all, they actually seem quite lazy. The secondary characters in both short stories doesn't really have much in common either, but they have some similarities because both Ned and Jason's mother are a bit passive, but Ned speaks more at the end of the short story, and Jason's mother speaks and the beginning. 

Setting

In the short story “Sun Powered Car” the action takes place at a diner in a small town. The man Malcolm is stopping by to eat lunch, and meets the farmer Ned and the waitress Helen. The action in “Homework” happens in their own house, and Jason’s mother and father gets mad at him for not doing his homework.

What do these settings have in common?

In our point of view they don’t have so much in common. In “Sun Powered Car” the setting takes place at a diner as we said and in “Homework” it happens in their house. The first story is probably in our time zone, but the second one we think may be in the future because of the downloading of the homework to Jason’s brain.

The Dialogue

Are the dialogues much the same in the two short stories or are they very different? Do they have many dialogues in the texts?

The dialogues in the short stories are quite the same, and they talk directly to each other, but in the text "Sun powered car" it is not much dialogue actually. The only time there is a dialogue is when Malcolm orders, when the waitress talks, and when Malcolm talks to Ned. "Sun powered car" mostly consists of Malcolm telling, but the author has put in some dialogue to make sure the story doesn't get boring it seems. In "Homework" the text mostly consists of dialogue actually! Jason and his father are mostly having a discussing about the homework, and are comparing how it is to be a child in their time, and how it was to be a child when Jason's parents were children. 

Conflict

There’s not a conflict in “Sun Powered Car”, but in “Homework” the conflict is about Jason who doesn’t want to do his homework as his parents ask him to.

Because of the non-conflict short story “Sun Powered Car” there is not so easy to compare the two stories. To drag in something from the first one, a conflict could be that Malcolm is struggling with his work and has given up a bit, but that’s not something which happens in the story. He just tells it in the beginning.

Point of view

The story “Sun powered Car” is written in 3^rd person and so is the story “Homework”. Both of the stories remain in one point of view and they’re therefore easy to compare. In the first one the author is telling from Malcolm’s point of view and in the second one it’s told from Jason’s point of view.

Resolution
What becomes the resolution in the short stories? Does both end good or bad?
In "Sun powered car" the resolution becomes that Malcolm's day gets much better than he first thought because he finds a news-story which he can use. At the same time he finds out that the solar powered car isn't solar powered, but that Ned has just made the car so his sons can make it go by tramping on pedals. But it has a good ending because in the end Ned doesn't seem as much depressed as he did in the beginning. 

In "Homework" the resolution becomes that Jason has to do his homework and his mother and father can continue with their stuff. The little twist is that the homework Jason has to do is just to plug in a cable in his head for two minutes to download his homework to his brain! In addition Jason and his father were discussing which of them who had the toughest childhood! It ends well in a way, but not for Jason who has to do his terrible homework according to himself!

Theme

The two short stories has two different themes, in “Sun Powered Car” the theme is the sun-powered car which is quite special. In the second one “Homework”, the theme is the boy’s homework and how things are in the time zone they are living in.

Length

Both of the two short stories are pretty short, “Sun-Powered Car” has 1364 words and “Homework consists of 977 words.

In the end, here are some facts about the two authors who wrote “Sun-Powered Car” and “Homework".

Robert Burton Robinson

Robert Burton Robinson is from the United States. Robinson and his wife lives near Houston in Texas and they have three children and six grandchildren. He has worked over a lot of different fields over the years. He had for example a career in the music business but he has also been a milkman. Robinson loves spending time with his family, playing his guitar, watching movies and training yoga. He has written twenty-two short stories and one of them is “Sun-powered car”.

Jim Schicatano

Jim Schicatano graduated from Penn State University in 1984 with a bachelor degree in Science. He retired from his last job at Pennsylvania Senate Republican Cancus in 2010. He loves to write and has written countless short stories since high school. He has always taken writing really seriously and has also written some novels and a non-fiction book. Katinka, Ingeborg and I read “homework”.

The Landlady

I read a short story called "the landlady"written by Roald Dahl in class today. It was very well written and had an incredible unexpected ending. I think the short story was interesting and I would recomend for other to read it as well.

The Landlady is about 17 year old Bill Weaver who has travelled to Bath. He needs a place to stay for the night and walks by a window with a sign in it. The sign says: Bed and Breakfast and that is perfect for Bill so he walk inside.His landlady is a very nice and welcoming woman and she makes sure everything is perfect for him. But she wants him to write in her guest book and he does. But he notice that it only is two signatures there before his signature. And that the last one is two years old. He think this is very strange and the other wierd thing is that the two names, Gegory Tempel and Christoper Mulholland seems so very familiar. He is positive that he has seen those two names in the newspaper. Bill and the woman sit down for a cup of tea and they start talking. While they talk Bill looks on her dog, it has not moved once since he came and the parrot has neighter moved. Bill touch the dog. The dog is ice cold, dead. The woman keep complaining on him to finish his tea and says she will take him to meet the two other boys on the third floor. She says to Bill they never left and then Bill remember where he saw the two names and why they where so familiar. The two boys were missing, in the newspaper!

An ending like this one, unexpected, is very typical Roald Dahl. I like endings like this one because you never know what the ending will be like before you are finish with story. Sometimes when you read a story or a book you can guess what will happen in the ending. But in Roald Dahl stories is it very hard to guess right.


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