to build a fire top honors...

this past post produced some great responses and high grades all around. there are a few that stand out, and these posts stand out because of the original and creative topics addressed. check out rizzuto, havens, missry, zona, stasi, grace (cosgrove), dietel, squassi, lobraico, broderick, roscoe, and burns. here are some examples: rizzuto argues the fire is symbolic of life's struggle against the inevitability of death; havens looks at the fire as the socialist london's struggle against capitalism; missry addresses the struggle of "present" against the subjective concepts of "past" and "future"; stasi and broderick argue the fire is symbolic of the ego, which desperately struggles for survival by creating problems and fears; burns examines the laws of cause and effect that determine man's fate. although it is too difficult for me to choose a top honor, i was really intrigued by Period 3 Grace Cosgrove's argument that the man and the fire represent man's interconnectedness to the world around him. she argues that man's ego believes it to be a separate, isolated fragment in the universe, and this belief leads man to his ultimate demise. only by realizing our interconnectedness to other men and to nature can we survive as a species. however, she asserts that death can be a point of transcendence of the ego that will lead to a greater understanding of the universe. great job to all!