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April 20, 2024, 11:50:16 am

Author Topic: Context marking please  (Read 407 times)  Share 

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Chalkhous

  • Victorian
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  • School: Trinity Grammar School
Context marking please
« on: October 25, 2014, 09:57:40 pm »
0
I was wondering if somebody can mark this context piece asap.
It doesn't have a prompt. The primary text is Death of a Salesman and I was wondering if it had enough of DOAS.

To the Moon and Back

I never thought it possible that I would be an Astronaut. The words felt foreign when I said it. I grew up in a small town of 8000 in South Carolina. I was like any other boy my age. I wore what they wore, my hair was the same, I melted in with them. In the summer months I would spend my nights camping outside, looking up at the night sky. It was so unimaginably vast, and the velvety blackness was so full of something . I wanted to touch it. I would dream about being up there, amongst the stars.For days on end, my mind would be somewhere else, away from the smallness of South Carolina, in the happier vastness of the universe.
Back at home, life was tough for me. Perhaps I was trying to escape. My father was abusive to my mom, and they split up shortly after I was born. The few times I saw him he always had something negative and pessimistic to tell me. But my mother was always very strong.  She always encouraged me to do my best. What can I tell you? I did. I went on camps, played football, baseball, learnt the flute, and all sorts of different entertaining clubs. I made sure I was always on top of homework. When I got to my final year, I was appointed School Body President. I knew my mom wanted so badly to see me succeed, and I had given her that. 
I still remember the first time I saw an aeroplane. I was at a flight show at the US Naval Academy where I was studying at the time, and there were 6 of these B52s in a line, grey and menacing, they looked like they had teeth.  But in the air they were so completely nimble and agile. I wondered if the air could do that to me. Change me from ‘a dime a dozen’, to something else. I knew at that point that I wanted to become a pilot. And I did, I enrolled in the US Air force. But It was when President Kennedy set the goal of landing on the moon that I found my true dream.
Shortly after this, I saw my father again for the last time.  He was sitting at a glass table, in a house with thin papery walls that were falling apart. He was eating American Whipped Cheese on crackers. He didn’t look happy. But how could you? This man had always spoken of his old life on his childhood farm. This place had no green. How could he be happy here? I decided then that all I could do was make myself happy. I told him I wanted to be an astronaut. He scoffed at me, told me I’d never make it. He told me I was better off using my talents for more achievable things. He said I had good looks and I was persuasive.  I could be a salesman, like him. This was heartbreaking to me, because at the time I believed him. I was nowhere near being educated or experienced enough to consider being chosen. I had only just received my pilot licence. But I wasn’t going to let go of my dreams in order follow my father’s desire. So I told him that he was wrong. This was very hard for me. I had never stood up to an adult before. But I reasoned that I had better get used to standing tall, If I were ever to reach the sky.
My father ended up dying a year later in an automobile accident. He drove his beloved ‘Chevrolet’ right into a power pole. At the funeral, I asked mom why she decided to marry him. She finally told me her reasons. Apparently my father was just like me. He worked as a salesman and was funny, charming and ambitious. But shortly after I was born, he lost his job. He was involved in a fraud scandal. He no longer saw America as a land of opportunity but saw it as ‘deceitful, soul-destroying and destructive’.
It was in 1966 that NASA accepted me to be in the fifth group of astronauts. I couldn’t believe it. It was a special moment in my life for sure. I rang mom up on the rotary phone. Always full of love and encouragement she told me she knew I had it in me, and never to let anyone try and pull you down again ‘like your father did.’
Liftoff wasn’t until six years later. It took three days to touch down onto the moon’s surface. I can’t tell you how that felt. To know that I no longer had to look up. I was living my dream, that was 100 percent my own and not my father’s.
I couldn’t always please everyone on the way of course. Success is not about being ‘well-liked’. That’s just not how life works. My father thought I was destined to fail. He told me to stop dreaming and get a normal job. You have to make decisions that you believe are in the best interests of yourself, even if that means going against others’ advice. Listen to those who have faith in in you and will appreciate you no matter what happens. Only through hard work and perseverance can your dreams become true.