CHERUB: The Recruit

Have you ever wondered about how life would be if you were a secret agent? Imagine being James Bond or even Sean Connery playing James Bond, going on missions, scaling buildings, stealing classified information and even rescuing the beautiful girl from the evil geniuses volcano lair. This would be a fun and interesting life for anyone who enjoys thrill seeking and danger. But how much more fun would it be to live the life of an MI6 or MI5 operative as a twelve year old kid?

The Mission is an action filled book more on the young kid teenage reading level. I enjoyed reading it because reading it was like watching a movie in my head. The details and writing style placed vivid images in my mind to make it seem like I was actually on the mission.

CHERUB is a training facility that houses and trains young kids to 18 year olds on espionage tactics, weapons training, self defense, language and survival training while also giving them basic education. It was created by the British government for the simple fact that no criminal mastermind would suspect a 13 year old of spying on them. This is extremely clever and brings in results. Most CHERUB operatives are orphans with no living relatives. They are drafted and must undergo an 100 day training period and after that they begin going on missions all over the world trying to take down criminal masterminds and organizations.

James Choke is the main character of the story. His mother died and he was sent to an orphanage where he was recruited by Kyle an undercover CHERUB. I like the recruitment process that CHERUBS must go through. It's a test of morality, basic education, fighting skills and judgement. James for his first test had to spar with his future friend Bruce. James under estimated Bruce because of his size. Little did he know Bruce was a black belt in martial arts as are most CHERUBs. He dislocated James' thumb and threatened to break his arm. Afterward he took a test of basic literacy and mathematics skills then waqs asked to kill a chicken. I found the chicken test interesting because the head of the camp Mac said that James failed because he was hesitant to kill it. If he either refused to do it or did it when asked he would have passed because it showed that he had a mind of his own. James was indecisive, but eventually killed the chicken after much hesitancy. For his final test he was asked to jump into a pool. This was a test of judement since James couldn't swim. He passed since he refused to do it. If he would have jumped in and had to be rescued he would have failed for using poor judgement.

James' first official mission was to infiltrate a community of enviromentalists called Fort Harmony. The governmnet believed that a few residents living their were terrorists and wanted James and another agent to get close to kids their and gather information. In the end James and the other agent got enough information to uncover a plot to kill oil comany representatives from different nations using anthrax in the air conditioning system.

I would enjoy being a CHERUB to live an exciting and action filled life. It's way better than being in a regular school that i dislike being in. All schools should be kind of like this pertaining to the type of career kids want to persue in life. Here kids learn all they need to become efficient spies and also recieve enough education to be able to go to college and excell if they so choose.

Native Son

A text by Richard Wright telling the story of Bigger Thomas, a African American male living in poverty in the South Side of Chicago , who gets mixed up in a grisly murder involving a white family of millionares who he works for.

Native Son is a great book that keeps me interested in what will happen next. It's always interesting to see what people had to go through growing up and how it shaped their lives. I like to see when people had rough lives growing up but came over all their obstacles and became successful in life. Reading things that I can relate to makes reading them more enjoyable. Like Bigger Thomas no one has a perfect life, but reading this book lets me see the extreme horror in what can happen if people procrastinate in trying to solve their peoblems in life and let their problems run their lives and take over their entire being.

Native Son is a text that gave new understanding to me. It showed me the psycological toll that being held down for so long had on African Americans. I never thought about how much people suffered from not being able to do something that should come so easily like persuing one's dreams just because of the color of their skin. It also showed me even deeper than I understood how racism played a role in peoples lives like determining where people had to live. I always new that segregation laws separated blacks and whites in public places, but this book showed me that African Americans were restricted from living in areas of Chicago where whites lived predominantly. They were forced to live in tenements in places like the South Side due to realtors who were white and assumed things like, " Negroes are happier when they live together." Even funeral parlors were segregated which is extreme. White funeral home owner seldom dealt with colored bodies so funeral homes were mainly the businesses owned by blacks in Chicago's South Side in those days.

This text shows how the years of oppression that African Americans faced can build up in a person and cause them to explode. This explosion was shown in Bigger's life when he murdered Mary, daughter of the millionares he worked for. It was accidental, but it gave him a sense of power so strong that he had no qualms about owning up to it. It was said in the begining of the text that whites limited the rights of blacks to do anything. Bigger wanted to fly a plane, but this would never come true because whites would never let him into an aviation school. Situations like this all throughout his life caused Bigger to develop an extreme sense of pride to any accomplishment he found great. Killing the daughter of a millionare in their own home and being able to cover his tracks was a great accomplishment in his eyes so he was happy about it.

The part of the book that I find most interesting is after Bigger is incarcerated. To get him into custody a fleet of 5,000 police officers along with hundreds of vigilantes raided the "Black Belt" ( the area where most African Americans lived in Chicago). They found him on the roof of a building where he took cover and shot at them off a water tank. They blasted him off of it with a firehouse and dragged him to the police car. While in custody he had several visitors the two most unexpected where two communists Jan and a lawyer named Max. Jan was the boyfriend of Mary Dalton whom Bigger murdered. He came to help Bigger for a reason that was almost divine. He blamed himself for Biggers actions stating that he practically forced Bigger to do it by placing him in a uncomfotable state. Bigger wasn't used to bieng shown respect and friendship by white people at all. They always treated him with inferiority all his life so when Jan and Mary offered Bigger things like handshakes and a seat at the table at which they were eating, Bigger was stunned and it angered him that they were seemingly forcing this new idea upon him.

At the end of the novel Bigger was put to death by 12 white men on the jury and the judge. He went smiling and satisfied with the fact that he killed since it was the only thing that he ever really accomplished in his life which is sad.