The Dark Tales Of A Christmas Carol: The Game

Preface
Throughout this game ( The Dark Tales Of A Christmas Carol), Ebenezer Scrooge attempts to change the way he views life and everyone in it for the better. There are five levels to the game. Level one is when Scrooge is all by his lonesome. Level two is when he meets the Ghost of Christmas Past. Level three is when Scrooge meets the Ghost of christmas present. Level four is where he encounters the Ghost of Christmas Present. Lastly, Level five is when Scrooge “beats” all of the Ghost and has a new look on life and realizes that his life is great and he should be filled with joy. Each time Scrooge encounters a Ghost he has to conquer them to get to the next level until he reaches the end and has a different outlook on life. Scrooge stated, “Spirit,” said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this?” ( A christmas Carol by Charles Dickens pg.116. December 19, 1843). In this quote Scrooge realizes how pitiful his life is and wants to change it.

In level one, Ebenezer Scrooge is portrayed as a negative and narcissistic person. Scrooge starts in his office, as cold as ice, because he refuses to pay for coals to keep it warm. He tells his assistant that he must work on Christmas day before he leaves the office. He is shown walking down the street with an irate look on his face. He goes to his empty and lonely house. Scrooge throughout his day and ends up in bed ready to settle down. Scrooge receives a visit from Jacob Marley, the dead partner of the character.This ghost warns the Scrooge of what will happen in the next levels and what will happen if he does not learn from the levels and progress. The scene closes as the ghost of Jacob Marley fades away.
Level 2 is The Ghost of Christmas Past. Scrooge wakes up just before he is visited by the ghost of Christmas past. The ghost of Christmas past comes along and takes Scrooge on a journey through his past Christmases, such as his Christmas as a child, or his apprenticeship with Fezziwig, or his engagement with a girl. The girl who leaves him due to his love for money and not for her. Scrooge watches in despair and tries to talk to the people in the scene. He does all he can to interact and change the scene he is in but there is nothing he can do and he must endure his own pain. This extremely vivid and eye opening experience moves Scrooge to tears before the ghost of Christmas past takes Scrooge back to his bed. 

In level three, Scrooge is awakened once the clock strikes one. Once Scrooge is awake, the player waits for the arrival of the second spirit. As Scrooge waits a couple of minutes, he starts to get curious and starts to check the other room. As he approaches the door, he hears his name being called and tells him to enter the room. Once Scrooge enters the room, the second spirit announces that he is the Ghost of Christmas present. Scrooge notices that the Ghost of Christmas present is wearing a green robe as the Ghost of Christmas present orders him to touch it. Scrooge notices that everything is starting to disappear and finds himself in the city during Christmas morning. The spirit takes Scrooge to the home of Bob Cratchit where him and his family are having a feast. Scrooge then notices that Bob is carrying Tiny Tim who is crippled. Scrooge asked the spirit whether Tiny Tim will survive. The spirit responds to him saying that there will be an empty chair next year due to the conditions of the Cratchit family. Afterwards, the spirit introduces Scrooge to two children named “Ignorance” and “Want”. Scrooge asked the spirit if they could be helped and the spirit responded by stating, “Are there no prisons?” and “Are there no workhouses?” The clock strikes midnight while the Ghost of Christmas present vanishes. Scrooge then notices a phantom coming his way
In level four Scrooge finds himself in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. Scrooge knew this ghost was different. It was terrifying and wore a dark cloak that hid its features. Scrooge asks the spirit if it is the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, and the spirit does not answer. The spirit takes Scrooge to multiple places, the first being the London Stock Exchange. While there Scrooge listens to a group of men discuss the death of a rich man. The next place is a local pawn shop where Scrooge watches men sell stolen goods of the dead man. The next place is a dinner table where the husband and wife talk about how happy they are that he died because they owed him money. Next Scrooge watches over the Cratchit household as they mourn the death of Tiny Tim. Scrooge begs and pleads with the Spirit to reveal the identity of the dead rich man, but then Spirit says nothing; it just takes them to a graveyard and points at a newly dug grave. Scrooge approaches the headstone and finds that it reads “EBENEZER SCROOGE”. In shock and full of terror Scrooge begs the spirit to undo all of these things and states “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.” (A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens pg.127). After this promise was made, the spirit collapsed in his cloak and Scrooge woke up in his bed after completing level four.
On the last level, level five Scrooge finds himself sitting in his room after a night he’ll never forget. He sits in shock for a moment, and then raises the spirits for a second chance at life. He then shouts “Merry Christmas”. After getting dressed in a hurry Scrooge runs out into the streets and offers the first boy, he finds a good sum of money to deliver a Christmas turkey to Bob Cratchit’s house. That was step one of scrooge writing his wrongs to beat the game. The next step was finding the charity work that he rudely dismissed and promised to donate money to the charity. Scrooge then attends Fred’s Christmas party and fills the room with so much Christmas joy the other guest can’t believe it. Scrooge lives out the rest of his days with a heart full of Christmas Joy and even becomes an important person in Tiny Tim’s life. That is how Ebenezer Scrooge beat “A Christmas Story”.

Citations
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. 1843. Project
Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm. 29 April, 2020

The only thing certain in life is death, but what if there was a way you could live forever? Throughout centuries, people have attempted to pursue immortality. Immortality is an abstraction of eternal life. Many people believe in immortality after their time on earth, whether that means going to heaven or hell. Both in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and William Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”, the authors focus on immortality and what it means to be immortal.

In Mary Shelley’s book “Frankenstein”, Victor Frankenstein who is a mad scientist was fascinated with creating something from the dead that could become alive and be immortal. At a young age, life and death intrigued him. Victor believes that he was creating the monster to better society, but most think he was trying to “play” God. Victor said, “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No, father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs” (Chapter 4 page 3). What Victor means by this statement is that people should kneel before him to show their gratitude because they owe it to him for creating a being.

In “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” the author, William Wordsworth talks about his childhood and how he used to see nature for what it really was and how it was amazing, even mystical. As he gets older, he loses the sight of nature or rather what he used to see in it. Later on in the poem he tells himself that he need not be “gloomy” and that “all of the earth is happy”. In the fifth stanza he stated, “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting” and “Heaven lies about us in our infancy!” (Lines 59 and 66). These are very impactful statements to the poem because what wordsworth means by this is that Infants have some recollection of heaven when they are born and that’s why they can see all of nature’s beauty but as they grow older, the connection between heaven and nature is gone. At the end of the poem the speaker becomes excited because he realizes that he will always be able to adhere to his childhood through his memories of it.

Although both authors have a theme of immortality throughout their readings, their thoughts on immortality and how it works are different. Mary shelly’s version of immortality is living forever and never ceasing to die. Wordsworth’s thinking behind immortality is more mental than anything. He believes that you can “achieve immortality” through memory of your childhood or better times and reliving those events in his head. They differ because Victor Frankenstein is attempting to play God in order to create something immortal and Wordsworth speaks about heaven and God throughout his poem and you can achieve immortality by memories. Even though they don’t have the same reasons or concepts on what immortality is, they both agree on the point of view is to maintain everlasting life on earth.

Shelley, Mary. “Frankenstein”. Introduction and Notes by Karen Karbiener. Barnes and Noble, 2003
Wordsworth, William. “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.” The Norton Anthology of British
Literature: The Romantic Period. 10th ed. Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. W.W. Norton, 2017. pp. 347-52

In the picture above titled “ Disappointed Love” you can see a woman sitting on the edge of the grass at what looks to be a pond. She is sitting alone, but her face is hidden from the viewer. Since Francis Danby made her face hidden it could represent that no one likes her and she doesn’t have any friends.The background is dark and her dress is white so she is the center of attention for this work of art. This image relates to the book “Frankenstein” because Victor Frankenstien was jailed for, “the murder of his best friend Henry Clerval” (chapter 21). So like the lonely woman in the photo, Victor was all alone in jail with no one to help him.

Abstract
When it comes to abuse there are many different types and it affects people differently. There are six main types of abuse: Physical, Sexual, Mental, Verbal, Financial, and cultural. While some of these types of abuses might sound unfamiliar, most people have heard of or gone through some type of mental or physical abuse. When people have been abused they could possibly develop PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) or triggers that could set them off whether that means they will get mad, sad, etc. There have been many tests run by colleges, doctors, etc to find out the effects of abuse and Anyone could be the abuser or the one being abused, it doesn’t have a set race or gender.
The victims of abuse are affected in different ways. Since there are so many types of abuse you could do test on two victims and one could possibly get set off from it and the other victim not be affected by it. Some victims of abuse are also fragile to the topic so if you bring it up or say something about it in a jokingly manner they could get triggered.
What are all the effects of abuse? There is no possible answer to that because everyone reacts differently. Fourtantly, scientist and psychologist have studied victims and find out many effects of being abused including effects like PTSD.
As I go further into my research of the effects of abuse, I am very interested in the outcomes of victims who were traumatized in their childhood by abuse. I will most likely dive even deeper into the effects and how they affect a person’s day to day life. I also would like to find out what psychologist and others are doing to help the victims and what other treatments would work to help the victims get over or ease their trauma.

Annotated Bibliography
Anda, R. F., Felitti, V. J., Bremner, J. D., Walker, J. D., Ch. Whitfield, Perry, B. D., . . . Giles, W. H. (2006). The enduring effects of abuse and related adverse experiences in childhood: A convergence of evidence from neurobiology and epidemiology. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 256(3), 174-186. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00406-005-0624-4
“Childhood maltreatment has been linked to a variety of changes in brain structure and function and stress-responsive neurobiological systems. Epidemiological studies have documented the impact of childhood maltreatment on health and emotional well-being”. (2006) They began a case study to examine the effects of abuse on a child. The ACE test assessed eight adverse childhood experiences which included, abuse, witnessing domestic violence, and serious household dysfunction. These aspects of the study along with a large sample size to educate us on the effects of multiple forms of abuse and related stressors that are cumulative and affect a wide variety of outcomes that might be expected based upon the neurobiological alterations studied above.
These tests are useful because they examine victims of abuse and the trauma they have received from it. I think that there needs to be more research on mental effects of abuse and when the effects can start, but everyone is different because not everyone gets abused at the same time. These tests can also be good for science and their experiments.
Lindert, J., von Ehrenstein, O., & Weisskopf, M. (2013). Long term effects of abuse in early life on depression and anxiety over the life course. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 54(8) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2013.07.038
“We performed a systematic search of the electronic databases (from August 2011-October 2011, all age groups, any language, any population) of three databases: PUBMED, EMBASE and PSYCINFO. Data were extracted after consideration of exclusion criteria and quality assessment, and then compiled into summary tables. To quantify the association of abuse with depression and anxiety we performed a meta-analysis and calculated pooled odds ratios (ORs) with respective 95% confidence intervals (CI). The I 2 statistic was used to assess heterogeneity” (2013). This test was ran to find out the long-term effects of early childhood abuse, so they were put into three different groups: PUBMED, EMBASE and PSYCINFO.
These experiment is useful because scientists are still not sure all of the “long term effects of abuse when a child is still developing” (2013). Scientists need to research and find out about PTSD and trauma that the child goes through by being abused at such a young age.
Stokstad, E. (2002). Violent effects of abuse tied to gene. (Psychology). Science, 297(5582), 752. Retrieved from https://link-gale-com.proxy032.nclive.org/apps/doc/A90387687/SCIC?u=nclive&sid=SCIC&xid=924fdea1
“On page 851, a team led by clinical psychologists Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi, both of King’s College London and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, reports that a certain form of a gene that breaks down neurotransmitters makes men more likely to be violent, but only if they were maltreated as children. “This is a very important piece of work,” says geneticist Greg Carey of the University of Colorado, Boulder. “It’s pretty convincing for just a single study.” As expected, the team discovered that severely maltreated boys were more likely to exhibit so-called antisocial behavior than boys who had suffered little or no abuse. But the researchers also found that antisocial behavior was more likely in males with the genotype for low MAOA activity who had been mistreated. The 55 boys in this group were about twice as likely to have been diagnosed with conduct disorder in adolescence as the 99 mistreated boys with the high-activity genotype. And they were three times more likely to be convicted of a violent crime by age 26. Although the 55 males who had experienced moderate or severe maltreatment and also had the low-activity genotype made up only 12% of the study group, they committed 44% of the crimes. “They’re doing four times their share of rape, robbery, and assault,” Moffitt says.” (2002)
There are a special type of gene(s) in males body that could possibly make them more violent if the genes breaks down neurotransmitters. The violence from the men usually are a result of being mistreated as a child. In fact, when errie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi, performed test they found out that they were three times more likely to be incarcerated for a violent crime by the time the are 26 years old. Caspi stated, “They’re doing four times their share of rape, robbery, and assault” (2002)
This study would be good for scientists, so they can understand the mindset of people who had suffered from abuse. It also gives a closer look on how victims react to being abused when they were younger and the true effects of the abuse. There should be more research on mental health and victims that had previously gotten abused.

Tara Westover is an established writer and a very confident person, but she wasn’t always like this. She grew up in a small town where her father preached about the Bible, did not let them go to school because he thought it would brainwash them. You can also see throughout the book that her opinion doesn’t matter as much because she is a woman. She had a rough upbringing, but that only helped make her the person she is today.
Since Tara was born she was taught what her needs and duties are as a woman. She was a woman and in her household that meant that she was valued less and looked down on. All through the memoir you can see who is in charge of the household. Starting in chapter one of the book. In page one of chapter 1 Tara states, “ A year later my Father told us that story, we gathered one evening to hear him read aloud from Isaiah, a prophecy about Immanuel. He sat on our mustard- colored safo, a large Bible on his lap… “Butter and honey shall he eat,”… “That he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good”. ( Educated, Pg. 1) The nest day Tara’s Dad “purged” the fridge from any dairy products and bought honey instead. This is the earliest showing of her dad being in charge of the house.
Tara’s father (Val) doesn’t just show patriarchy towards tara. He shows his dominance to all the females in the house. Val shows his Supremacy with many things involving women throughout the book. For example, he forces his wife to be a midwife ( a health professional who cares for newborns and mothers). Val also forces on of his daughter ( Audrey) to be married early in life and she had no say so on whether she got married or not.
Shawn taras brother shows signs of patriarchy. In Chapter 12 of the book educated titled “Fish Eyes” he states, that the girls that wear makeup and talks to lots of guys are “fished eyed”. Shawn asserts his “dominance” in the house by mentally and physically abusing tara. Some could say that the reason Shawn is the way he is because that’s what he sees his father do to a certain extent.
Education ties in with her father and him being in charge. Her father thinks that schools are terrible and that the government brainwashes the children that go to school. All of taras siblings to go to school but their father soon took them out. Tyler, one of taras siblings went on to college to pursue his dreams and tara wanted the same but her dad wouldn’t let her at first. She had to convince her dad that she should go to school or at least be able to take school classes at home, but at first it was very hard for tara to understand the content of the school work especially math because she was never taught how to do it. Her father had always made her work at his construction business which meant she wouldn’t have time for school work. Eventually, she started to understand math and other subjects and was able to go to college.
Tara went through many hardships growing up and struggled with abuse. She eventually left the place that had dealt her such a bad hand in life (her home). By her being in those types of situations growing up she was able to become a published writer and write a memoir on how her life used to be.

The 8th wonder of the world: Does Money Buy Happiness?
There has been a burning question since the dawn of currency. The question is, can money buy your happiness? The question will be put to the test by multiple research methods and questions. Do you think money buys happiness and if so, why?
The last research paper I remember writing was last year in English 3. My paper was about whether money bought happiness. After many days of research, I found that many people had very mixed views on if it did or didn’t. I believe that the question mostly depends on your current economic status.
Money can bring happiness, “Under conditions of deprivation, the money people earn has a direct bearing on the fulfillment of their basic needs which could explain the relationship between income and well-being in these contexts” (Greaves et al., 2012). Mankind craves materialistic things.In today’s society so many “influencers” and celebrities promote clothes, makeup, shoes, etc. So in return, many of us have this ideology that if we purchase these items, then we will be content and it will make us happy. For example, the majority of people remember seeing toy commercials as a child and wanting the toy that they saw on tv. The commercial producers make the ad seem bright and the toy joy able. Children are the easiest people to captivate because it doesn’t take much to get their attention and companies realize this. The company influences your mindset on what makes you happy and what doesn’t.
On the other hand, with money comes lots of problems and responsibilities. In order to keep money you have to be wise on what you invest in. Financial stress has always been a problem, “Disagreements over finances rank among the top reasons contributing to divorce” (Lawrence, Thomasson, Wozniak, & Prawitz, 1993). Bob Marley once said, “Money is a number and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end”.
Personally, I believe that money will not buy you happiness but it will keep you satisfied for a while. Money doesn’t solve all of you problems, but it may help your financial stress. Money shouldn’t define someone as a person. Unfortunately, in today’s society many people think that it does. Mediaism plays a big factor in this thought. The media always talks about the rich and famous and how they have such great lives but don’t show what happens behind closed doors. We only get to see what they put out there so we have the thought of how easy life would be if we had their money or “status”. Norton field guide states, “What media are typically used in this discipline? Print? Spoken? Electronical? A combination? Are certain design elements expected?”(Bullock et al. 306).
Money affects many factors in life, the effects could be good or bad. Through many studies, researchers have found that money can’t buy happiness, but it can lead to enjoyment in life. Researchers are continuing to study and find the effects of money.

Since I was very young i’ve gravitated towards music. When I feel anxious, music helps calm me down and bring me back to a positive state of mind. I listen to certain generes of music based of the mood that i’m currently in. For example, I listen to country when im feeling down, Hip hop when ever I want to get hyped, R&B and Alternative when i’m just trying to chill. Music speaks to the soul and helps you get through some rough time in life and I think that evreyone could agree with that statement.

The first Genre of music I started listening to was country. After I started listening to country I open my music selection to all kinds of diffrent generes of music. I can go from listening to Al Green, to Bach, then to lincoln park. I think that listening to many diffrent types of music has helped me be more sociable. For example, no matter what group of friends im hanging out with I can enjoy the music they are listening to becuase I listen to it too.

Eilish, Billie “Bellyache” don’t smile at me, Interscope Records, 2017, track 6, Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/album/7fRrTyKvE4Skh93v97gtcU

Lamar, Kendrick “m.A.A.d city” good kid, m.A.A.d city, Aftermath/Interscope, 2013, Track 8, Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/album/6PBZN8cbwkqm1ERj2BGXJ1

Shelton, Blake “God’s Country”, Warner Records , 2019 Track 1, https://open.spotify.com/album/5b92Q0wcU49AnhBmu3IxOx

The Slump God, Ski Mask, “RIP Roach”, Revenge, Bad Vibes Forever / EMPIRE, 2017, Track 7, Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/album/3vpXJ54S3MXLyzysw8qq7c Cole, J., “G.O.M.D”, 2014 Forest Hill Drive, Dreamville Records, 2014, Track 8, https://open.spotify.com/album/7viNUmZZ8ztn2UB4XB3jIL

Going into this course I had no idea what it was about. I was expecting to write essays every week and read out of textbook. As I later found out English 111 is nothing like I thought it was going to be. For example: we write monthly letters to anyone we would like to. At first I had no idea who I was going to write my letter to, but I decided that each month I was going to write my letters to different people. I wrote my first letter I completed in your class was written for my grandmother, she was so excited that I had written her a letter and she said that she hopes for me to send her more. I really enjoyed writing letters because it was something new and different.
Throughout the course we have only had to write three essays. The first one was about my personal life, the second one was about and ad, and the last one (the one i’m typing right now) is a reflection of class.I write each essay the same way. First, I write down key points that I want to talk about in the essays, then I start my rough draft, after I get done writing my rough draft, I began to type it up. I really enjoyed the long handed aspect of the writing. So many of our lives revolve around technology, so I was nice to get a break and not stare at a computer screen for a little while because we do it everyday in school. After I finish typing my essay I began to read through it multiple times until I think it is good enough to post on my blog and to Blackboard.
My favorite essay that I had written in this class was my first one. I enjoyed every second of writing that essay. That essay gave my peers a personal insight on my life and how I was raised. While I was writing the essay many great memories came back to me as I remembered a simpler time in my life.
Some of the passages that we read this semester were very interesting. My favorite passage that I read during this course was “Se Habla Español” by Tanya Barrientos (The Norton field guide to writing with reading, pg. 645-646) This passage talks about issues in society and how some people struggle to “fit in” with their own ethnic groups because of changes in society. In the story she states that she herself struggled to fit in to her spanish culture because she moved to America when she was young and her parents didn’t want her to know/ learn about any of her culture (spanish). She was encountered with many problems while she was still an adolescent. She didn’t fit in with the Whites because she was spanish, but she also wasn’t embraced by her culture because she she wasn’t the typical spanish girl.
I have really enjoyed this class. I have learned many new things as a result of taking this class. I feel more confident in my writing as a result of taking this course.

Many colleges make ads that persuade you to attend their University. The ads vary of course but most of the time that setting of the ad will be in a classroom full of students and all of the students will be studying. The Lenoir-Rhyne ad states that the students at the University bring a ¨Sense of Style¨ to the campus. The Ad also states that the programs of study are as neat and well put together as the students in the photo. The photo is taken mid day, there are two men and three women that are dressed elegantly and the colors are very bright which makes the school feel welcoming. Although Lenoir-Rhyne may not think so, their ad comes of as the people in the photo are arrogant, conceded,superior, have a chip on their shoulder, and that they are better than everyone else.     

For someone that has never been to a College campus before, the ad makes it seem that you have to dress ¨classy¨in order to attend their college and succeed in life . From the Lenoir-Rhyne ad, it seems that they are conveying the thought that you will only succeed not only at their college, but anywhere if you dress sophisticated. For example, let’s say someone was looking through a magazine and seen the Lenoir-Rhyne ad and that ad had a photo of well dressed people and then text above it that read “Lenoir Rhyne University brings a sense of style as polished as our University.¨ That person may decide to visit the college and when they get there, they are gonna see that the actual campus doesn’t look anything like that one in the picture. That person may be disappointed because they had this great image of what the school looked liked from the ad, then after they sees the campus it is a distorted image of the picture in the ad. An example of what Lenoir- Rhyne is doing is the same thing that commercials on television do, they will advertise this great pan that food doesn’t stick to, so you decide to buy the pan and after your first use of the pan, the food sticks to it.

While the creators of the ad would say that they are trying to persuade the reader to attend the college. It actually does the complete opposite, The reader thinks that they have to look and dress a certain way to attend that college. If Lenoir- Rhyne was trying to persuade the reader to visit and possibly attend their college, they should of had a variety of people, some dressed in button ups and some dressed in regular t-shirts to show a variety of people coming from different socioeconomic statuses. That in return would show that people from different social classes. Lenoir-Rhyne may claim that they made that ad for the young readers who plan on attending their college one day, but in reality they made the ad for the parents who are interested in letting their child attend that college.

Citation

Lenior-Rhyne u Advertisement. our state, Aug, 2015 P.1