Alex rider is with Fiona one day riding horses. Fiona is riding a beautiful horse but gives Alex a smelly horse that attracts a lot of flies probably just to spite him. They ride for a good amount of time before they decided to go home. Fiona kind of forces Alex to go through the dark tunnel to get home despite the risk of getting hit by a train and because she claims its faster. As they were riding Fiona hits Alex's horse causing it to run forward almost causing Alex to fall of. Fiona thinks this is hilarious and is laughing as she begins to leave. Alex is waiting outside of the tunnel when he sees Fiona's horse run out without her on it. Fiona has fallen off of her horse in the tunnel and Alex returns to help her. It turns out that a cobweb hit her face causing her to fall off and hurt her leg. Alex reluctantly decides to help her even after all the things she has done to him. This made me think how can Alex help her after the horrible way she treated him. I have to admire him for that. He was able to put aside all the negative things and realize the right thing to do. This made Fiona have a change of heart and will probably now treat Alex with a little bit more respect.

Alex rider is forced to live with Sir David Friend, a millionaire supermarket owner. During his stay Alex must pretend to be an experiment for Sir David Friends job but outside of he must pretend to be his son. This has to be hard to manage for Alex, but probably the hardest thing Alex has to put up with is Sir David Friends daughter, Fiona. Fiona is about the same age as Alex but they both grew up in entirely different worlds. Alex grew up in the city of London and is often called out and made fun of for it while Fiona grew up in a rich house in the country. Of course with all that money she can have makes her spoiled and snooty. Fiona sees Alex as a burden and a waste of time in her house and wishes he was gone. One day she decided to go shooting with some of her friends and asks Alex to come just to make her father happy. During that time, Alex observes that Fiona and her friends are not very good at shooting and cannot make a clean kill. Alex is disgusted by this and decides to leave. while Alex is walking he finds himself lost in the woods. He doesn't know where to go then suddenly he hears a boom and realizes that Fiona and her friends are shooting at him. He begins to run and then finds a lake which he hides in to escape his pursuers. Despite being in a bad situation Alex was very brave and smart throughout the entire event. He was able to think and use his resources available to him. He jumped into the lake and was breathing through the shotgun barrel to hide from Fiona and her friends. When he found one of them vulnerable he jumped out and hit him with the butt of his gun. Alex asks him for the way out of the woods and throws the boys gun into the lake. I don't think that Alex could have handled that situation anymore perfectly than he did. He was able to remain calm, recognize his resources, and use his skills to hide from them. This is especially handy and a good quality for an MI6 secret agent. He is going to need all of these skills if he is going to be going on missions. I think the average person would scream or yell at them to stop or may even freeze up in this situation. Alan Blunt, the president of MI6 made the right decision in sending Alex to do this mission.

Alex Rider is the main character of the book "Point Blank" by Anthony Horowitz. He is a student that is secretly a member of MI6, a secret agency similar to the CIA. He goes through many challenges in this book. One of the most difficult challenges he must endure is having to change his entire personality and persona which was required for a mission. He was told that he was the only one who do it and that he would have to travel to France. He had to change families, his name, his clothes, his attitude and much more for one mission. Alex is usually very independent and daring but he had to do the exact opposite for this mission. This may have been exceptionally difficult because if he gets out of character in even the slightest of cases it could cause the mission to be a failure and may even cost him his life. Personally I would find this scary and frustrating. Imagine your every move and every sentence is being watched and monitored. Probably the most frustrating things of this mission and even Alex's entire life is not being able to tell anybody about his secret. He has to lie to everyone for the sake of the agency. Honestly I think I would either crack under the pressure or I might accidentally let secrets and classified information slip out of my mouth. Even though Alex did not expect this to be his life, I think he is handling this very maturely and is probably the best person for the job.

In the movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, we could tell that Li Mu Bai had a strong relationship with his master. We could see that he looked to his master as a father figure and maybe even family. It is clear that to be called someones master is a very high honor.
Li Mu Bai had a strong desire to teach Jen because he saw and understood that she had the potential to be a great swordsman. He saw that she had great skill with the Green Destiny but her skills had room for improvement. Li Mu Bai also said to Jen that he really wanted to have an apprentice or pupil to teach. I believe that Li Mu Bai saw that Jen could not be corrupted by Jade Fox and that her skills can continue to excel. We can see that Jen has surpassed her current master Jade Fox in ability and can still improve even more. In a personal note, I think having an apprentice is a way of having immortality. You teach your pupils your ways and motives and people recognize and know that the apprentices style and technique is yours. If this were true, an added bonus to this would be that Li Mu Bai would be ending Jade Fox's potential immortality if he could teach Jen. We could tell that Jen kind of wanted Li Mu Bai to teach her too. After he asks Jen if he could teach her about the ways of the Wudang style, we could see that she was thinking about it a little bit before she ran away. At the end of the movie, Jade Fox explains that the poison dart was meant for Jen, her own protegee, not for Li Mu Bai. If Li Mu Bai didn't get hit, he would have had the perfect opportunity to teach Jen.

Courage is the ability to do something that’s frightens one or strength in the face of fear, pain, or grief. Lieutenant Shinji Takeyama shows courage in the book Patriotism, by Yukio Mishima. One day Lieutenant Takeyama receives news that a mutiny was held against the emperor of Japan and that he must go to aid in the riddance of these insurgents. But he also finds out that the insurgents are members of his unit. Lieutenant Takeyama is forced to choose between his loyalty to his unit or to his emperor. He finally decides to take "the easy way out" and kill himself. When he tells his wife of his decision, she asks if she could join him. Traditionally, suicide is a terrible act that is frowned upon in our society, but in Japan killing one’s self, also known as sepukku, is seen as an act of honor. What really makes this courageous is when he is killing himself; he doesn't end himself in one cut. First he plunges the knife into his stomach which does not kill him. He is able to see and feel everything that is going on. He has the strength to stab himself in his stomach several more times which still does not end his agony. His suffering is finally ended when he stabs himself in his neck. It was one thing to have the strength to decide to perform this ritual, but to have the strength to continue after all of that is unbelievable. This reminded me of Oedipus' strength when he was gouging his eyes out. Both of these characters had to endure a tremendous amount of pain, I’d imagine.

Patriotism is a story about a young army lieutenant named Shinji Takeyama who decides to perform a ritual suicide to escape the decision of remaining loyal to his unit or to his emperor. Personally, I did not enjoy this book. I’m not going to lie, I chose this book by the cover and thought it was going to be a story about a samurai going around, slicing and dicing his foes. Instead I found a book about a man and his wife who spends and entire book preparing for their ritual suicide. This book is extremely gruff and dour. The book was very well written, I understood everything, but it was not my type of book. This book made me have this queasy feeling that I have never had reading a book. I found this book quite boring, weird, and actually pretty creepy. I would definitely not recommend this book to my friends.

Patriotism

Seppuku is a Japanese ritual in which a person commits suicide. It is often performed to escape conflicts such as capture. This ritual is to performed to show the courage of a samurai even when faced with defeat. In "Patriotism" by Yukio Mishima, lieutenant Takeyama Shinji is a member of the Japanese army. Recently, many soldiers and officers started a mutiny and attacked many homes of the Japanese Prime Minister and conquered parts of Tokyo. Takeyama Shinji was called to deal with these rebels on an early morning. Takeyama has recently gotten married to his wife, Reiko.Reiko understands the risks and events that could occur as a wife of a lieutenant in the Japanese army. She understands that at any moment she could become a widow. When Takeyama Shinji returns from his call to duty, Reiko was relieved to see him alive. Takeyama returns with a dreadful decision to make. He tells his wife that he found out that some of the traitors were his friends, young officers, and members of his unit who used to visit him in his home. Tomorrow morning, he will be the commander of a unit ordered to kill them. Takeyama Shinji wanted to stay loyal to his country but that was a difficult order to follow because he also wanted to stay loyal to his unit. At that moment Takeyama Shinji knew he had to undergo Seppuku. Reiku, loving her husband so much asked him if she could join him in this ritual.

In Japan, suicide is not seen as a bad thing. Suicide is honorable in Japanese culture. Japanese culture also does not have Christian laws prohibiting suicide. This made me think and realize how different cultures all around the world are. Takeyama Shinji did not hesitate and waiver on the idea of suicide. He knew he had to do it and he did not feel bad about it. I asked myself, "isn't he abandoning his king by doing this?" But then i realized that this was the only way Takeyama Shinji was going to escape this conflict. In the long run, I think he took the only option he had and that was to kill himself.