Wolf of Wall Street

I have seen the movie the Wolf of Wall Street multiple times since it was released to theatres, and on demand. The movie follows a banker who starts off in small firm who works his way up to being one of the most successful stock brokers in New York. It also portrays the theme of the abuse of power. The main character is continuously unfaithful to both of his wives and becomes a drug addict. Before fame money and power Jordan Belford had a loving caring wife who would do anything for him, until she finds him doing cocaine off of his soon to be future wife/ mistresses chest in the back of a taxi. After losing a good job as a stock salesman in a big corporation after the crash of the stock market Jordan has trouble finding a new job until one day he sees an add in the newspaper for a stock salesman, Jordan goes to a small business in a shopping center and learns quickly that he can make a much larger commission selling penny stocks. Unfortunately most rich people don't bother purchasing penny stocks because they usually don't make any money what so ever. Jordan is a very good salesman and finds it very easy to sell thousands of penny stocks to people like bus drivers, plumbers and garbage men. It is sad because the people Jordan sells to trust him and believe that he will make them money but Jordan is only interested in himself, just like he is throughout the entire movie. Before long Jordan is running his own investment company making millions of dollars living the dream. He even takes Steve Madden to the stock market, which makes him even more rich.  He drives the nicest cars, buys his wife a yacht for her honeymoon gift and can buy anything he wants. Jordan and his group of best friends/ co workers use drugs daily care nothing about themselves and making money. The FBI begins to look into Jordan after he is named "The Wolf of Wall street" by Forbes magazine. Jordan knows that he is in trouble. He has been doing insider trading and a countless number of other illegal activities. The FBI agent who first approaches Jordan is embarrassed when Jordan asks him how much he makes and makes a fool out of him in front of his co worker. In the end the FBI agent busts Jordan after some of Jordan's business partners are arrested in the middle of a large money transaction that brings a huge spot light on Jordan and his business. Jordan decides to cooperate with the FBI and puts a lot of his workers away. Due to his cooperation he does two years in a resort like prison in the middle of nowhere. The Wolf of Wall Street is no doubt one of my favorite movies because of the comedy, and non stop entertaining scenes, I would recommend the movie to any of my friends and may look into reading the book to see if there are any big differences between the novel and the movie.

Prey Theme

A constant theme throughout the novel Prey, is the desire to succeed. The two main characters Julia and Jack, her husband strive to do well and be successful in the workplace and at home. The husband, after losing his high ranking job in a technology based company is given a new task, to take care of his family. He has three children to take care of, one of which is a baby. The new "stay at home mom" takes care of all of his responsibilities and takes good care of the children while the mother works in order to pay the bills. It is clear that he really wants to succeed in both his career and family life because he is constantly looking for jobs. The thing is, many jobs come up, but he cant find one close to home. He knows that Julia will not move especially with the job opportunity she has now being given a government contract. He keeps both his career, and family in mind while trying to find a new job, this shows his desire for success in his professional and family life. Though Julia is infected with a swarm when she offers the explanation of wanting to succeed to explain her behavior to her husband Jack, it seems likely that it is the truth. Jack seems to believe that it's true, especially based on the emails he recovered from Julia's computer. Julia says that funding for their project was going to be taken away in a short period of time. While she's busy trying to get funding for a commercial aspect - the medical technology program - she's only seeking to gain some financial input to save the company. She seems still to be intent on the need to successfully complete the project. Unfortunately the husband and wife do not have a balance of wanting both family and professional or work success. Julia is clearly more concerned about her work project than she is her family and it shows when her family life starts to crumble. It gets to a point where Jack considers hiring an attorney and discussing different routes to go on the divorce topic. Even Jacks sister advises him to speak with an attorney after Jack tells her how Julia has been acting lately. Although it is very important to have a desire to succeed, it is also important to find a balance in the things you succeed in. For example, student athletes can't just succeed on the field or the court, they need to be successful in the classroom too because this is what allows them to continue to play the sport they love.  Learning about successful balances was not something that I thought that I would gain by reading the book Prey by Michael Crichton but I did and I am glad I could learn such a good life lesson in one book.

Julia

In life everyone wants to succeed, and make a name for themselves. Julia, the wives desire to succeed surpasses anyone else's desire in the novel. She works hard, comes home late, and most importantly uses and deals directly with hazardous materials. Her husband on the other hand has a desire to succeed but it is not as strong as his wives desire. He is offered jobs in different states that pay good but he does not want to make the family move and he knows that Julia will not agree to moving. Things are getting worse between jack and Julia and Julia is not only turning distant but also abusive to her children, and Julia driving away one night with an unidentifiable passenger in her car. On that same night, Julia is injured in a car accident. There was also an unidentified passenger in the car. After Julia is involved in a suspicious accident, Jack decides to investigate and look into what she has been doing lately with work. He finds she is dealing with nano-particles and also that she has a government contract to make nano-particle-cameras. Jack is offered a job by Xymos, because the project manager and a good friend of Jack, Ricky, is having software issues with the nanobots. After being hired Jack is shown new facilities and also is told what is being researched with nano-particles. Unfortunately there is an outbreak of these particles. The particles are very dangerous to humans and they are also self sustaining and reproducing. After it is found that there has been an outbreak they try to find a way to get rid of the nano particles before they destroy more things and hurt more people.

Prey

As the story line progresses the husband believes that his wife is going to divorce him. She claims that he is turning his children against her, minimizing her, making her feel like she is worthless. All of these things are commonly heard in a divorce court and if the wife says in court, what she just told her husband, she is sure to win custody of the kids. The husband is very passive and allows things to happen without taking much action at all. He even stated that some courts in California would rather give children to a mother who is on drugs, or hits her children (as long as she doesn't hit them too hard) rather than giving the kids to a father because all children need a mother figure to be raised and loved by. Personally if I knew that my wife was having an affair with another man I wouldn't be staying around looking stupid. The husband is out of work and this is another reason as to why his wife is losing attraction towards him. He meets with his job hunt helper and she tells him that there are pleanty of jobs outside of the Sillicon valley that are fit for him and very high paying. She explains to him that his shelf life is not much longer, meaning that if he is out of work for more than half of a year comapanies are going to start to wonder why and not even want to interview him or even view his application. It is explained to him that he needs to act quickly or else he may never hold a job in his career field as high up as he was ever again. He understands and wants to take action but due to some circumstances going on with his family life I feel as if he is going to keep pushing the job hunt back and continue to be Mr. Mom.  The problem is he knows his wife won't want to move, he was offered jobs in Austin, Texas and other places on the east coast but he continued to refuse the move mainly because he  doesn't want to put his children through moving and having to go to a new school and make new friends. Everything is going downhill in his life right now and he knows it, he even states that he is depressed. If i were to guess what was to happen next in the novel I would say that his wife beings to become more and more shady, and he begins to take more and more "crap" from her until he cant take enough and he decides to divorce her.

Infected

In the novel, as the story progresses the husband begins to suspect that his wife is becoming unfaithful. He beings noticing small things such as her change in dress, constantly coming home late, small lies, and her taking a shower right when she gets home as compared to in the morning. He also sees an old co worker at the super market and when his wife comes up in conversation his friend becomes very awkward and tries to change the topic. Another reason that he thinks his wife is having an affair is because one night she comes home especially late and claims that it was because she was working on a demonstrative video, after the husband watches the video, the video ending shows that it was made the day before... meaning the wife had lied about what she had been doing. The family faces tragedy when one night when the wife comes home late and wakes the baby. Hours after the couple is awoken by a harsh scream, the father goes to check on his child, only to find that she is blue. She is rushed to the hospital immediately and no one can seem to know whats wrong. Numerous tests are run and specialists keep coming into the babies room but nobody can seem to find out what has happened or how to help the situation. After staying up all night with the screaming baby, miraculously the baby is healed. Everything becomes fine, her color returned, rash went away, and everything was fine again. The  next day the husband found out through his younger daughter that a cleaning service had come to the house in the middle of the night and cleaned every single thing in the house, including the babies room. After knowing what the wife does for a living, I would predict that she was handling something very experimental at work and when she came home it was still on her and it infected the baby. As the family situation goes down hill, so does the parents relationship. I would predict that the wives hazardous materials that she is dealing with at work will have an outbreak throughout the world and everyone will become infected.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Blog

How do you obtain anything worth having?

As humans we naturally desire to have anything that holds value aka anything worth having. Many things hold worth to people, some much more than others. There are many different ways of obtaining things in life. Some require extremely hard work, some require perseverance, while others are quite easy to obtain. Something in life that is worth having that requires hard work to obtain is money. Unless you are born into a wealthy family, in order to make money and support your lifestyle you need to work hard to get the money. In order to make a living one must do well in high school in order to proceed to college and earn a degree. If one wants to obtain even more money in their lifetime they would go for a higher degree, which would allow them to hold a better job, but would require more schooling, hard work, dedication and studying. Other things worth having take perseverance, for example: getting a wife/ husband. Couples usually date for about a year before getting engaged and in order to keep your significant other happy you need to constantly do certain things to make the relationship workout. Repeating these tasks over and over, month after month, shows that perseverance can work to help someone obtain something worth having, such as a husband/wife. An example of something that is worth having but easy to obtain is a family. Most of us are born into a loving, caring family who would do anything for each other. In order to keep the relationship, a certain amount of respect and love must constantly be shown towards everyone in the family. There are many things that are worth having in life and some ways to obtain these things come from hard work, perseverance, and some just come easy.

Sacrifice as a theme in the Mocking Jay

Since the first book of the hunger games series, sacrifice has been a major theme. The theme of sacrifice is first displayed when Katniss volunteers to be a part in the games so that her little sister, Prim, doesn't have to risk her life. Katniss does this because she knows she has a better chance of surviving the games than her little sister does. Many would think that after Katniss completed the games for the first time her huge display of sacrifice would be over. Throughout the series and in the Mocking Jay, Katniss' sacrifice does not cease. The cruel government brings her back into the games and uses her to convince the citizens that the games aren't really as bad as they seem and that they are neccessary. Katniss becomes the governments spokeswoman throughout the novel. As the Hunger Games grows increasingly out of control Katniss is forced to convince more people that it is a just cause. Katniss is even forced to try to convince people to make the same sacrifice that she has made. Every new character introduced in the series has to give something up or make a huge sacrifice. Whether the sacrifice is moving, a change of career, a loss of family or even death, the act of sacrifice throughout the citizens doesn't stop. It is sad that most characters we come across make the largest sacrifice of all for the games, their life.