Choose a book from the school's library. After reading the first 20 pages of your book, answer these questions:
1. Setting is the time and place of a text. In 5 sentences, describe the setting of the book so far. 
2. How would the book change if the setting were different? Explain in 5 sentences.
In 7 sentences, describe one of the main characters seen so far. Describe the person’s appearance, age, gender, race, education level, personality, what other characters think of him/her, and what you think of him/her.
How would the book change if the character were a different age, gender, or race? Explain in 5 sentences

          From the early 1900’s, Russia was a place of political and social turmoil. You found that in the main cities, especially St.Petersburg and Moscow, the established middle class was ready to overthrow the oppressive monarchy that was the rule of Czar Nicholas.  While history might often make the Bolshevik revolutionaries (led by Lenin) seem like a unified and organized front, which is not actually the case. The Escape of Alexei shows the utter chaos that followed the royal family’s over-powering, and how a small group of extremists, not Lenin himself, decided to end the family’s life. Amongst the bedlam and disinformation that was the Romanov execution- moving bodies to different locations, not being able to see in he execution room, etc- it is very possible that at least of the Romanovs escaped.

Were Alexei to be in any other time or place, the execution of his family is likely never to have happened. Although the Czar of Russia could be oppressive, czars were generally beloved and it was only the disorder of the government which allowed a small group of men to kill his family as well as him. The middle class would not have had such power ten years before this. Were it in a different location they were likely to have lived as well. Russia is such a cast country that their escaping was almost impossible, but had they been nearer to a sea port they would have been able to escape to other, willing, countries.  Alexei’s possible escape  would not have been very likely after his family’s execution were it to have happened in modern day because or weapons are far more deadly and our means of transportation are better; both of which were problems that experts believe helped him escape.

Were Alexei to have been older, a family might not have been willing to take him in to their house. As it were, he was barely a preteen, and some believe that a peasant family adopted him. Were he a different class, he would not be in such a grave situation because the middle class wouldn’t feel that he was a symbol of oppression and wouldn’t want to destroy that beacon. His gender did not play a role in determining his execution because we know that some of the Ural Bolshevik revolutionaries murdered the women in the Romanov family as well. Were Alexei Romanov of another race, he would front have been part of the royal family of Russia, because they all claim direct lineage to he founders of Russia. If he hadn’t been part of that family, he never would have had to face and execution squad.   

I chose to satirize our country’s priorities when it comes to the news because, I feel there are many social, economical, and political problems that our world should change and pay attention to, but we seem to be obsessed with trivial matters. Many people are more concerned about celebrities and gossip then they are with making a difference in the world. I attempted to show how wrapped up our generation is with things that won’t have a huge impact on us later in life. We need to be focusing on larger issues than celebrities and their personal lives.

My satirical argument is that the girl in my video is overwhelmed by pop culture news and underwhelmed by things like endangered species- showing how petty we can seem.  I made this for the  teen population because, it has many references that we would understand and depicts situations (in a humorous light) that we can relate to. I chose to do this in a video because I wanted to show the stark contrast between reality and the problems we create.

I use satire by having a girl obsess over what she seems to think is tragic- a unsuccessful award show, celebrities cutting their hair, etc and show how there are so many worse things that she is ignoring. Her speech is exaggerated and filled with things like “lol” so as to emphasize how petty the world she has created is.

For my literary devices I used irony.

At the beginning some might assume that both the news reporter and the girl on the phone were talking about the same bomb- they did use almost identical wording afterall. As it turns out, one was talking about the Oscars and the other spoke of an actual bombing.

One of the most prominent devices was the hyperbole. In most of the girl’s sentences she exaggerated the importance of her worries. She said that Justin Bieber getting his hair cut was “the worst thing ever.”

I used a certain amount of Juxtaposition with the two different characters. One- the girl on the phone- had on fangirl clothing and was very made up, whilst the more rational reporter was dressed professionally.

When there was confusion between the words “beaver” and “Bieber” there was a pun.