Task 1
I honestly think many people could be the narrator in this film, simply because the book has so many great characters. If I have to pick one, it would be the man who discovered it all.

George Gey was the scientist who propagated the HeLa cell line. Using a sample from the cervix of Henrietta Lacks provided by Dr. Wharton, he propagated her cells into an immortalized human cell line. Henriettas’s cells were unique, they could be kept alive and grow, and keep on multiplying forever. Because of this drug, this enormous, momentous discovery, many children have survived polio and many women have survived the awful disease, cancer.

The reason why I pick George Gey, is simply because he was there from the very beginning of this momentous discovery. He could tell everyone how amazing this research was, how many people it has saved, and how proud he was when he found out that exactly her cells could save humans. He began sending Henrietta’s cells to any scientist who was able to use them for cancer research, without promise from the family. Today we send cells in mail, but at that time, they sent it via plane in tubes with a few drops of culture medium, just enough to keep them alive a short time.

Gey flew from one lab to another, from Texas to India, India to New York, New York to Amsterdam. He always flew with tubes of Henrietta’s cells in his breast pocket. He called them “precious babies”. That tells us how much he appreciated them, and that’s why I pick him as the narrator of the film.

Task 2
I can see very many different techniques in this extract from the book Ship Breaker, but I’ll concentrate about time limits and dialogue.

There is a time limit already from the start. The hero/heroine will be under pressure, and quick decisions have to be taken. This is exactly what I see from the start, Nailer want to go warn Tool, but Nita deny him to do so because there is no time. “You can’t help him” she whispered fiercely. He tried to shout to Tool, but she pressed her hand over his mouth. “No!” she whispered. “You can’t, we’ll be caught then!”.

Another tool which is used in this extract, is the dialogue. Short, sharp sentences which make the situation more immediate and move the story fast forward. Such as “It’s them,” “You can’t help him,” “Look out!” are sentences which make the story move quickly forward.

The whole story is made to excite the readers and I think the use of time limits and dialogues are the main things that make this extract so incredibly interesting.

Task 3D (Focus on Money)
Genre: Article

Loving Money
It’s interesting to compare the happiest jobs with the list of the ten most hated jobs, which were generally much better paying and have higher social status. They see little point in what they are doing. The organizations they work for don’t know where they are going, and as a result, neither do these people. This is what underlies the difference between the happiest jobs and the most hated jobs. One set of jobs feels worthwhile, while in the other jobs, people can’t see the point. So I guess we got the answer, money doesn’t makes us happy, money is not important, money is not here to save us, but to brake us.

When it comes to a point, we all have to agree. But the truth is that money is important. Why? Most people would say it is a guarantee to a better life. Money is important because having money means that you won’t be destitute. It is important because it enables you to have more control over your life, more freedom to carve out your own path and less constraints on your choices. How many people aren’t stuck in a career or in a job they hate, but cannot afford to lose, because losing their job would mean losing their house and their health insurance? Money is important because it means being able to give your children the best, the best education, the best health care, the best start in life. Money means less financial worries. It is important because it enables you to give back to your community, to pick the charities and causes you believe in and support them. Having money enables you to live life to the fullest, enjoy adventures and textures and tastes, it enables you to make the most of the eighty years you’ve got.

When it comes to rich people, to people with a lot of money; most of them want to prove to others that they are wealthy by trying to spend even more on ridiculously expensive items with no real use but to “show off”. The guys themselves will find it nice, but it’s a shame to cheer up guys because they can spend millions on their vacations. The money turns these rich guys into brainless, heartless and selfish machines with no compassion. Let’s face it, the world is not going round and round anymore. The rich are getting richer; the poor are getting even worse.

Our culture sends us two very conflicting messages about money. The first, a message that tells us money is everything. Celebrity culture, the rich and famous people, Wall Street greediness, the twinge of jealousy we feel when we see a house bigger than ours, a car newer than our car. The second message tells us that money is nothing. Money should never be the end product to any human beings life. Money is not “dirty,” but money is also not everything. Money is a tool that enables you to protect yourself, to build yourself and your family a better life, and to give back to your community.

We all do care about money, admit it or not. It’s a simple psychological process: you have the basics (shelter, food, clothes) and are fairly happy, although you do worry about dealing with emergency situations; you become wealthier, and you enjoy the extra luxuries very much for a few months, but then it becomes your new “normal”. Now, surrounded by wealthier people, you look around, and you feel unhappy. They have more than you. You want more. But when you get more, you’re unhappy again. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants,” is one of my favorite quotes. Having few wants is probably the best insurance against greediness, because it’s a human nature to keep wanting more, and the more you have, the more you want.

It’s a never-ending cycle and this is what explains why so many ultra-wealthy celebrities keep doing commercials. They have so much, but they always want more. They never get to a point where if someone offered a million dollars for doing a commercial, they simply say, “You know what? No, thank you. I have enough.”

In the end, does being rich make us happy after all? It does to some extent, but that there is more to life than chasing after money. When people say that money doesn’t buy happiness, they generally mean “extra” money. I think we can all agree, and research supports this view, that people whose basic needs for shelter, clothing and food are not met, will find it very difficult to feel happy. Of course, there are exceptions, including people whose religious beliefs dictate that they should be happy with as few materials possessions as possible, but for most of us, we can only be happy once our basic needs are met. Happiness research shows that when people determine their level of happiness, how much they have compared with others is more important how much they have in absolute terms.

The question is why so many people have jobs were they feel lost. It seems like few people have followed Steve Jobs’ words about doing what you love, what your passion is. He once said that the only thing that kept him going, was the love for what he did. “Work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

Every human being should not place money as first priority, but love and desire. So what do you desire? What sort of situation would you like? People want to be poets, painters, writers, but everyone knows you can’t earn any money that way. If you say that money is the most important thing, you’ll spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing, in order to go on living it the same track, which is stupid. Better to have a short life full of what you like doing than a long life which is spent a miserable way. And after all, it doesn’t matter what it is, you can become a master of it, and the only way to become a master of something, is if you really will it. What we’re doing today, is that we’re bringing up children, educating, to live the same sort of life that we ended. We want them to earn money, to be safe, to be happy. It’s simple, if basic needs are met, you’ll for sure be happy without money. Money is a tool, not a destination.

Source:
- Google.com search “money” and “does money make you happy?”
- Wikipedia
- The happiest jobs and the most hated jobs in the magazine. This is also my starting point in the article.