Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. --Bill Watterson

As a Christian woman, I should not be posting this blog. But I feel no remorse. (As of yet.) Anyone this idiotic of a writer who managed to get themselves into a private university deserves to be mocked.
Vaughn is a TA for a literature class, and as part of that job, he occasionally gets stacks of papers to read and grade on a Pass/Fail scale. The papers are to be 2 pages in length, making some sort of specific connection to or analysis of any of the readings in the class. Lately, we've been reading these papers together, partly so that we can spend more time together, and partly because some of the papers are so astoundingly bad that we can't help laughing at them.
I sincerely hope that the authors of the following two papers never find out about my posting these, and that if they do, they know that I do not judge them based on their lack of intelligent writing alone. I have no idea how these people could have gotten as far as a 250 level English class with these writing skills (or lack thereof). Both of these papers blatantly failed. Enjoy the following literary jewels, even if you are a little saddened by the enormous lack of writing ability at this college.

"Gratitude" by Anonymous Female
The poem called "The Red Wheelbarrow" is written by William Williams. He works as a pediatrician. Williams draws his experience with working with people as a doctor to influence his writing for poems and plays. Williams has the skill of making his poetry short but with deep meaning. Why in is the poem structured in such a simplistic way? How does this poem affect our generation? What is the value and the purpose of the poem?
Why did Williams style his poetry in such a unique fashion for his generation? In his experience with people he creates a simplistic style to represent everyday speech of the average American. He writes for the majority of America and adapts their language, culture, and beliefs. As Williams writes using the different adaptations he units America because he utilizes their culture. He shows the different culture that makes up America by having the poem's sentence structure split up, but he brings the cultures together by unifying them into a poem.
The purpose of the poem is to show the wheel barrow as a symbol to gain gratitude and to unite America culturally. Every American has a wheel barrow that affects their lifestyle in some way. Farmers use it for transporting hay or droppings from animals. The suburban family would use it for transporting tree or grass clippings. For the city dwellers the wheel barrow may be seen on the street at a construction site, which is used to build skyscrapers for the businessmen of America. The wheel barrow is a symbol of things that are unappreciated because it is left in the rain and seen as a mundane object when it obviously has many purposes in everyday life as stated before. The wheel barrow symbolizes the things which we are ungrateful for, such as freedom, technology and the daily blessings we receive. In fact, we could take out wheel barrow and place any thing that seems to be underappreciated.
In our generation many do not comprehend the full impact that the "wheel barrow," as a symbol, has in our lives. For us the unifying wheel barrow is the radio, television, and the internet. Each of these electronic devices keeps us in contact, not only in America but with the rest of the world. We can find out about cultures and lifestyles of a tribe in South America using the mechanical devices. We can keep other cultures alive by watching the Discovery Channel or doing research on the internet. Do we appreciate these modern advances? At points,some people do show their gratitude, like Williams in writing this poem. He not only shows his own gratitude but influences others to see the "wheel barrow" in their lives.
Does this poem have value and would someone want to read it? The poem has value because it has a good message. The message is the unifying of cultures and the showing of gratitude by Williams. "The Red Wheelbarrow" is very simple to read, so there is no excuse as to why someone would not want to read it. In conclusion, the message is worth learning and applying to our lives. Also the poem can be applicable to any generation and any culture.

"My Purpose" by Anonymous Male
I chose to read the poem, "War is Kind" by Stephen Crane. The reason I read it was because I have read some of his books before, and I wanted to try his poetry and see how it compared.
The question I am going to address is, what does this piece have to do with me? I love history, and I love learning wars. Some of my favorite books and movies are about war. In this poem, it is talking about men in war. We always think about the terrible things revolved around wars, and you hear sayings like "War is Hell" all the time. This is similar, but it has a different twist to it. Sure the dead bodies are disgusting, and your friends die, but that is where men belong. Yes the trenches are bad and the bullets are frightening, but men need to be where they are. In my opinion, Stephen Crane was trying to say that despite all the negativity that comes with war, it makes men feel like they have a purpose. "The men were born to drill and die". Women are supposed to have children, men are supposed to fight and defend those children.
Really, there is nothing in war that is good at all. There is death, families are ruined, and are very costly in terms of money. Crane, I think, was just trying to make it not sound as bad from a male point of view. War is kind, in the sense that it lets men do their jobs. In a world and society full of anger, revenge, and sorrow, we need to look at the positives of things more often as Stephen Crane did in this poem.

Heaven help us.

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Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. --Bill Watterson