The Breakup Letter

Dear friend,

            Hey pal, how have you been? I’m alright. I've been thinking a lot lately and I'm getting stressed. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about us and the last 3 years we have spent together. Our four year relationship is running out and I am feeling quite nostalgic and despondent. Let’s start from the beginning.

          Do you remember our first day together? I do. I was strutting down your tiled floor, a mosaic of brown and white which is very outdated however also incredibly comforting. My hands were shaking and eyes were wide with admiration for those older than me. The seniors were terrifying and I just wanted to nestle back under the comfort of my old home from the year before. The middle school. Back then you seemed so big and intimidating but as we grew closer and saw more of each other, your walls didn’t seem so claustrophobic and your classrooms weren’t so barren. I have grown to see little things that make you feel like home. Like how my locker never opens unless you give it a little shove at first, or the small, barely visible, engravings in the desks which used to be jokes or lovers initials from years before, your metal chairs which always hug my bare legs in the hot summer, the way the whole student body comes together for homecoming week and your hallways are filled with blue and gold, and of course, the distinct smell of chlorine when you cross by the pool during swim season.
           With every great memory however comes bad memories. Since freshman year I have spent a total of 28 months waking up at 6:15 in the morning for you, most nights after staying up untill ungodly hours finishing work. And that brings me to the subject of homework. Oh how i sometimes comtemplate whether or not you truly want me to hate class or not. I recive piles upon piles of papers everynight and mixed with sports events and club meetings and instrumental concerts, by the end of June my brain is literally fried. Like an egg. I have handled this all very well untill now and I know that when graduation comes I legally cannot attend class anymore, but if I could get it done sooner I would. Schools in the future will offer me classes to specialize in my future that you do not and I need to grow up and live on my own. We both contribute to this relationship and in the future you will limit me on my options while I want to be free from this drama-filled repetative high school life.
          The next year is going to be very challenging my friend and I regret to say that I am looking at other schools. I need to move on and become reliable and dependent on myself to create a life for me in the future. Don’t worry, you will have plenty others coming in to replace me, young girls creeping around your hallways trying to find their way to the next class without getting glanced at by an upperclassmen and boys getting a large dose reality when they walk through your doors thinking they could run the show like years past but now getting shut down. Ill inform you the second I make my decision on where I would like to attend and maybe someday in the near future I will come back and visit! You will always be a major part in my life, so I thank you for that. Goodbye.

                                                                                    Sincerely,

                                                                                Cassie Webber

Revenge!

Elements of revenge can be found in many works of art like plays and novels and our favorite movies. Revenge is the act of inflicting harm on someone in response to them hurting you or someone around you. I mean, I can speak for many of us when I say that revenge can sometimes be a natural instinct. The moment someone wrongs you. or your best friend or family member, you want to hurt that person just like how they hurt you. In most situations, this is not the best option however it is probably the most favored and chosen one.

In the movie Hanna, with actors Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana, the topic of revenge came up quite alot. The movie is about a girl named Hanna who grew up living in the snowy woods of Finland with her father, Erik. He trained her for her whole life to be the perfect assasin with amazing strength, speed and smarts. What Hanna doesnt know is that her father Erik used to work for the CIA in a project where they tweaked fertilized human embryos to create the perfect solider. Erik found the mothers at abortion clinics and happened to fall in love with one. The baby that she allowed Erik to perfect was Hanna. After two years into the project a women named Marissa Veigler scrapped the project and eliminated all the mothers and babies. Erik, however, was too attached to Hanna and he fled to the wilderness with her, knowing that Marissa would always be looking for them because he held many dark CIA secrets. One of them being Hanna. As she grew older, Erik trained Hanna and told her that Marissa was out to get her, but did not tell her why. When Hanna was ready and strong enough however, she was going to find Marissa and kill her. As she goes on her journey throughout Europe to find Marissa, Hanna finds out the truth about her childhood and questions humanity.

One display of Revenge in this movie is how Marissa wants to find and kill Erik and Hanna because he holds many secrets from working in the CIA, secrets that Marissa wants eliminated. One of those secrets is Hanna because she is evidence of the secret program Erik worked on to create the perfect soldier. Another display of revenge is when Hanna and her father were running from Marissa and her team and when they split up, Hanna heard a gunshot and knew that Marissa killed Erik. After this moment, Hanna gained much more motivation to kill Marissa now that she killed her father.  This scene here takes place right before Erik was killed. Hannah was frustrated because she just found out about her past and she thinks that she might be in over her head. This was the last time Hanna saw her father. From this point on Hanna worked hard to get revenge on Marissa, eventually killing her at the very end.

The movie Hanna ties into Hamlet in the very obvious way of how when Hamlet found out about the murder of his father by his dear uncle, Claudius, Hamlet felt very revengeful and throughout the whole play sought to develop and execute the perfect plan to kill Claudius. This relates to Hanna because of her revengeful acts caused by her fathers murder by a woman named Marissa Veigler. Although we have not finished reading Hamlet, i predict that in the end, Hamlet will somehow manage to kill Claudius whether that includes himself dying also or not, because of how strong Hamlets feelings of hatred are towards Claudius. This is similar to the movie because Hanna does suceed in revenging her fathers death by killing Marissa Veigler. These two works parallel each other quite nicely in the end.