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About Isaac's life and Easter Rising.
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Page 2-‐ Table Of Contents
Page 3-‐ Our Lives Compared
Page 8-‐ Transition 1
Page 9-‐ Fitting In
Page 12-‐ Transition 2
Page 13-‐ Being Unique
Page 16-‐ Transition 3
Page 17-‐ Religion Vs. Social Life
Page 20-‐ About The Author
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Isaac Alvarenga
Professor Halprin
04/30/12
Our lives Compared
In Easter Rising, A Memoir or roots and rebellion by Michael Patrick MacDonald. One
main picture that it translates to my life is the transition in his life and how his views
of life changed through his life as they did in the book. Four indirect quotes from the
book that are key to his transition help me understand the book through the
experiences in my life. These quotes are critical in the life of MacDonald but also helps
understand what he is going through relating to my life. MacDonald successes in the
end helps me look forward to his steps and gives me hope to one day do better then
what my life has brought me so far.
“That lazy afternoon before Davey jumped, when all anyone can think about was
how hot it was, it was the last time I felt like a kid with nothing much to worry
about”. Throughout the story, and MacDonald’s life, Misery is what followed him and
this was the first time in the story that his view of life changes, almost
instantaneously. Before this had happened, MacDonald life was filled with no life
struggles, no inner responsibilities and no sight of a good future by looking at his
family standard of life. There’s a time in life that sparks a new stage where you stop
observing and remain a shadow, and understand what reality is. In my childhood, the
time came when my parents got separated and I was sent to El Salvador for 3 years
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with my grandparents in order for my parents to “financially restore their lives”.
Compared to MacDonald’s wake up call, mine doesn’t compare, but everyone has
that event that they always remember, that helps them understand that everything
isn’t perfect. This event always stays in my memory because it was the first time I felt
separated from my family and in a different world. This experience happened when I
was only 5 years of age, but since that day I have never seen my parents together,
whether they were fighting or not. But at this time in my life, I didn’t know what the
outcome was going to be, but I knew it couldn’t get any better. In MacDonald’s life;
around the time of Davey’s death nothing looked bright in the future, his Family felt
closer for a bit but then everything went back to normal as if nothing had happened.
He then started to see all the flaws that he and his family had and wanted to have
something different happen, but was too young to understand the change he needed.
He also felt like the odd one in the family and didn’t feel like he had any connection to
any of his brothers or sisters. He felt so different that he feared doing something
stupid in front of his older brothers so that they he would relate him in their lives.
“I was shocked when Frankie called me to the doorway and explained to his friends
that I was his brother”. While MacDonald was going through the stage where he was
deeply into punk music but also searching for his identity, his brother which
MacDonald thought hated him makes him feel wanted and part of something. Looking
up to his brother and fearing his non-‐acceptance was how MacDonald felt. Doesn’t
seem like much but his brother talking to him is a big deal to him and he feel
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accepted. Having a role model is a part of life that many people disregard but it’s a
huge moment for some people. A role model can be anyone from a parent, brother,
coach, teacher, cousin, or anyone that you look up to. In my experience my role
models my freshmen year was anyone that was on the Varsity soccer team, and I felt
that they were all good and deserved respect, as any sport player does when he first
enters a program. Me and two of my friends were the best players in our grade and
one day as the captains divided the Junior Varsity team and the Varsity team, all the
older players were automatically on the Varsity team, and I was the only
underclassman picked on the Varsity squad by the Varsity Captain. This moment
wasn’t as crucial as MacDonald’s moment considering he didn’t have much
communication with his brother. But it made me feel part of something and sort of
“special”. And as I played, I put extra effort and focus in that practice since I knew I
was on the spot and needed to feel accepted by the older guys. In the middle of the
story MacDonald was struggling with many things, such as deaths and still trying to
find his identity. He knew that from his father’s side none of his other siblings had any
connection to, so he had a feeling that that’s why he was always the different one and
was destined for better. His father was never with him and he had never meet him
but he was nineteen when he finally did and didn’t have the same mentality as he
would when he was a little kid, he needed to find his connection to the “Fox family”.
“I was looking at my father for the first time. Ma said he’d come to see me when I
was a baby, but I was nineteen now and he hadn’t came to see me since”. By this
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time MacDonald was maturing and understood what had happened with most of his
life, also had experienced most of his major tragedies. By this time, he was done
trying to identify himself and done looking for something that wasn’t there. But he
felt that his only chance was to look for something to relate him to his Fathers side of
the family. MacDonald knew that there was something different from him and the
rest of his siblings. But he also knew that his father was going to die and it was just the
last step in life. Going back to my parents divorce, when I was little I was confused and
always looking for answers, and wondered why my mom was always alone, and also
why I would only see my dad on summer vacations when I would visit him in Florida.
But as time went on, I started to realize what happened, and the fact that my parents
weren’t together was irrelevant and I had to look at the bright side, and learned to
put up with it. Last year when I graduated high school, my father came to the
graduation from Florida and it was the first time that I had seen both my parents
together since I was little, they had a friendly friendship which made me care less
about the past, but encouraged me to look into making my life as an young adult. In
MacDonald’s experience with the last time he saw his father is relevant to my
experience since he didn’t ask questions about his father not being there, but took
advantage to try to understand his life better through his father. MacDonald’s life was
very adventurous and full of finding his family background not only in the United
States but also with a trip to Ireland. As he started to understand his background and
become more independent he started to change for the good and look forward to a
brighter direction.
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“I’d gotten closer to my family after my first trip to Ireland. At U Mass I
concentrated on the History of Ireland and other colonized countries” MacDonald at
this point is thirty-‐two years old and was living a good life, at this point he brought his
mother to Ireland to visit. MacDonald is now a mature man and even after being a
“teenage screw up” he was determined in life and made a difference in his family.
And the transition throughout the book ends when he lived through the tragedies and
can write this book about his life story. “Some say tragedy is hard to get over, but
sometimes that tragedy means its over”. That was a quote from a song I heard that
related to MacDonald’s situation in my opinion. His life now gives me hope and helps
me look forward to a better life. What I learned about this book was that it lets you
understand that experiences in life make you who you are but only the strong will
overcome a rough past. The question is, where will I end up?
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Transition 1
My life and MacDonald’s life are very different but very similar at the same time. His
life experiences are much more intense and life learning than mine, but our feeling
and thoughts were about at the same level. His transition from the book’s beginning
to the book’s end is very dramatic and explains views that can relate to anyone’s life;
including mine. The transitions help readers understand exactly what MacDonald
feels through every experience and give you an image of his life. One part that I felt
was a huge transition not only for MacDonald but also in my life was the fitting in part
of life. For many people this comes easy but for many, it could take a lifetime to feel
part of something. Fitting in was the most, or one of the most important parts of
MacDonald’s life, because internally he was going through a phase that not many
would be able to get over, including his siblings. This part in my life was huge also,
because fitting in was something that I now am proud of considering I did make it to
College unlike all my other friends. My life helps me understand MacDonald’s because
I have it easy, and his life was much more intense than mine, but he also changed for
the better, and decided to understand where he really came from.
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Fitting In
I was born in Worcester Massachusetts almost twenty years ago, but getting used to it
wasn’t an option. I come from Immigrant parents that migrated to the United States in
the 80’s from Honduras and El Salvador. After only two years of age, my parents were
going through rough times and couldn’t sustain our family without help. That’s when I
moved to El Salvador with my grandparents and lived there for about six years until my
parents had finally put closure to their marriage. Coming back to such a different place
was different and also hard because Spanish was the only language I knew. But at that
age, picking up a language is much simpler than it sounds. When I turned ten my mom
got remarried and we all moved to a little city called Marlborough. Where I’m proud to
say I graduated from, and had lots of success, and still live there.
Marlborough High School was the school that I attended in my four years. It is a very
good school with lots of expectations, and lots of pride, but the most unique part is the
diversity. Diversity is being different, unlikeness or having variety. The ethnic variety in
our school is what makes our school, from the moment you walk in; in the morning you
see where all the different cliques are located. The entrance in our school is like a foyer
and throughout the school people are walking everywhere but mainly you will notice
that the whole second floor is made up of the Football jocks and the “wanna be”
popular kids. You wont miss the third floor where its divided into five different groups,
from right to left; it goes the illegal Spanish kids, the blacks, the Puerto Ricans, the
Mexicans, and the Brazilians. And my group would have to be the Mexicans or the
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“soccer boys” because soccer is what I play and pretty much what everyone in my
school knows me for.
Since I was very little my passion for soccer has been huge, and soccer tradition in our
school is huge. In my opinion, soccer is for everyone, and the only way you can tell the
difference is if you are on the team. The initial view of our soccer team at Marlborough
to everyone is the “minority team” or the “Mexican Team” but in reality; whether we
are White, Spanish, or black we are all a family. Other sports in my school would say
they are all family but would never hangout with each other out of school, or even
during school. Our team would hangout in between classes, after school and even
during weekends and always have “each others back”.
A close friend of mine named Michael Roscoe graduated with me last year. Throughout
his high school career at Marlborough he was only able to play golf and tennis, he felt
that he was too small for football, lacrosse, or basketball. And my junior year in math
class he would constantly make fun of soccer players and say that soccer wasn’t a sport.
I later told him that he wasn’t able to play soccer because he didn’t have the pride that
our team had. Of course he got mad and made a deal with me that he would make the
team for our senior year. My senior year came along and Roscoe had tried out and
made the team, but he found out that it was much harder than it sounded. The season
went on and our season ended in a bad note, we lost in the district semi finals to our
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rivals Algonquin high school. Every last game is tough to go through unless your
victorious, but our last senior game is the worst because it is the last time you will ever
play soccer for that team that you love. And surprisingly everyone that was a senior on
the team had a speech at the end of the game, and as everyone cried from disbelief, I
look at Roscoe and he was crying more than everyone that has been on the team for
years. His speech was on how he underestimated everyone on the soccer team, and
although he had played different sports through high school, the soccer team was his
real family.
Roscoe is now one of my good friends and goes to Bryant University. He learned a lot
from us and now he can say he has enough pride to be on our team. He also showed us
that it doesn’t matter the variety of our team, just that we can accomplish things
together if we work together.
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Transition 2
Fitting in and being unique sound like completely different views, but sometimes being
unique comes with fitting in. In MacDonald’s situation this was the case throughout the
book and all his transitions. In the beginning of his teenage life, he would only look into
fitting into a group but didn’t know what he wanted to do in his life. In my life my fitting
in stage was very critical because it involved a lot of family talk and future goals. Going
to College was the right way to fit into a good life for me, compared to some of my best
friends. And in MacDonald’s case, he needed to find a way to get over all the tragedies
and life experiences by being unique. After he found his way of fitting into a better
environment, he saw his uniqueness through his family and changed. My family
uniqueness is through my families past, and also mine, which has brought me to exceed
the best and be unique doing so.
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Being Unique
What is being unique mean? Now in days being unique is being different, and having
different thoughts and feeling as everyone else. It also leads people to try new things
and do “your own thing”, but most of all; not follow what everyone else does. Many
people like Michael McDonald feel that being unique is crucial for him to survive where
he comes from, or at least excel from that life. Coming from McDonalds experiences and
lifestyle, being “normal” is not what he is looking for. A normal life for McDonald is
growing up to be like someone is his neighborhood, and he almost seems desperate to
leave that lifestyle. But what I see as Unique or different is something totally different.
Coming from a family where my parents migrated to America as teenagers, it is unusual
for them to get education or even good jobs. Many of my friend’s parents are illegal
immigrants here in America or even back in their home countries. Parent’s support is
huge for a high school student, and the chance of them not ending up as dropouts or
with minimum wage jobs is very rare. And from my family back round or ethnic life, a
chance to go to college is something unique or something new.
Out of my family, my older brother was the first to ever-‐graduate high school and I was
the first to get into a college so it was a big deal to come to such a welcoming place. The
same way McDonald feared turning out to be like one of his brothers or someone from
the Southie neighborhood; I was in fear to not go anywhere after high school and
become a bum working to get minimum pay. But I was happy to show my effort and will
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to do something that my family had never got the opportunity to do before. McDonald
feared becoming a drug dealer, or have a bunch of kids from different women, or a
women beater as he had witnessed in his neighborhood. His goal was to become
different but towards the beginning was too afraid to show it. As he bought apparel to
fit into his role models as a punk-‐rocker, “One day I splurged and got ten-‐dollar
wraparound sunglasses, which I might wear downtown but never into Southie. If I wore
them there I imagine that even my older brothers would want to give me a beating” This
shows the fear and unawareness he has toward trying something different.
Wanting to be a punk rocker, or feel like one was a dramatic and even massive change
in McDonalds life. As his life goes on, his feeling about being different were overtaking
and felt good, and at one point he even had a feeling of “exhilaration” as he “walked
into homeroom ten minutes late, and the whole class exploded into fits of laughter”
because of his new hairdo that had “no style”. Throughout his neighborhood and even
with his family and in school McDonald felt that his difference was bringing attention
and that excited him because it was something new to him. McDonald was slowly but
surely becoming what he see’s himself being, a punk rocker. He now doesn’t care about
what anyone thinks, but cares less about it. Learning more about punk music and the
lifestyle brought him to buy clothes and badges that distinguished him to a true punk-‐
rocker, and his hair shaved in different spots to show his lack of interest to “style”.
McDonald was becoming more unique and different from everyone.
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When I found out I was accepted into college, that was when I made my decision to go
to college, like McDonald’s will and determination to be different, I was looking forward
to this experience. Having a couple of friends that had nothing to look forward to, and
having others that were also looking forward to be in my same situation made it more
exciting. Knowing that out of all my friends, I was the only one that took the chance and
had the valor to get my stuff done felt unique and I even felt like a role model. That new
feeling of completing something that once looked hard is a great feeling. McDonald
didn’t have much support or even any knowledge of what he was getting himself into,
but he is starting to get that same feeling I felt. Through the circumstances and the
problems revealed McDonald is getting through to his point of finding his own identity,
as I did, even though his uniqueness is much different from mine and anyone else’s.
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Transition 3
In society today, many teens or young adults don’t show their faith or acknowledgment
to their religious views as a whole. Being unique is something that involves being
different and doing your own thing, not caring about what anyone else thinks.
Throughout Easter Rising A Memoir of roots and rebellion by Michael Patrick
MacDonald, MacDonald tries to find his identity, but while doing that, tries to be
unique. Being unique in his life was trying to change for himself and for his family, after
all the tragedies he went through, he knew he needed to be different. My life
experiences have changed me to be different but also understand where I came from,
as do MacDonald’s; he feels that understanding his roots will help him be unique in
some way, which is what I plan to accomplish.
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Religion vs. Social Life
In the 1960’s through 1990’s El Salvador was going through a tough stage in their
countries government. And in 1980 a civil war began between the military led by the
government and an organization led by the “guerrilla” groups. Before the civil war
actually started there was still lots of tension and violence and it was a very difficult
time for my grandparents, aunts and uncles. Throughout the war one of my uncles
disappeared. In this situation the only focus on many peoples mind would be to look for
God, and pray. My family came from a Christian background but after this crisis, they
knew that it was their only way to live by and took their religion seriously because God
looked over my family. My mother was born in 1972 and since the day she was born the
traditional religion is all she learned. Strict religion was her vision of Christianity, and
since the day my grandparents accepted Christ, it’s been a huge part of our whole
families lives. And now in day all of my mother’s brothers and sisters are all deep into
the Christian ministry.
Living life as a Christian in an extremely religious family is something that I am very
proud of, but it is also very tough to keep true to. Now in day it is normal for teenagers
to drink alcohol, do drugs, party, swear, and even having sex before marriage. In the
Christian religion all these acts are forbidden and are know as temptations. Temptations
that I have fallen into, and temptations that I always say I’m going to stop. This doesn’t
seem like a big deal to many but considering my parents are pastors at my church, it is,
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and that Gap between my religion and my social life in my life only makes me feel
hypocritical. My family in the Christian view is very well respected but also very well
criticized. Any and all of my families actions that are considered a sin will be criticized.
My freshman year in high school I had found out that my brother that was a sophomore
in high school had got his girlfriend pregnant. In our society it is getting more common
for this to happen to a teenager in high school, but for my family it was different and
also very uncommon for someone that wasn’t married. This situation brought lots of
controversy in our church because my brother is a pastor’s kid, and the family
reputation has lots to do with my parents. Abortion was not an option for my brother,
whether it was a sin or not, but to many this was seen as a mistake. My mother and
father were taught since they were very young that everything happens for a reason
and they saw this as Gods reason, so they took it as that but the fact that it happen was
greatly criticized.
Living in college and having to be around all types of people and in a free environment
brings out my second life, my life without being faithful to my religion. Even though
many things I do seem even normal to me, in my religious life it wouldn’t be right. The
worst feeling is feeling like a hypocrite in front of everyone in my church and parents,
like pretending that I’m doing the right things but in reality I’m not. Living a life that
seems phony is worst in Gods eyes even if every night I pray before I go to bed, because
the next day I’m doing the same things I was before I prayed.
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Living two different aspects of lives is not a life someone expects to live or wants to live,
but sometimes it even seems like there is no way out. All the things my friends do, and
even some close family members do are persuading and leading, which guides me the
wrong way. My parents believe everyone has a purpose in life and my purpose in their
eyes is to one day prosper through the church and become a man of faith. In reality I
plan on changing my ways and following my parents footsteps, but as of now its almost
impossible it seems. The real reason why I want to eventually change is because when
I’m with my family, everything seems right and I feel like the morals and life experiences
are right. My roots started when my grandfather decided to dedicate his life to God,
which in my opinion has everything to do with where I am now. The life I have now,
compared to all the people that don’t have the opportunities I do, and even are in their
countries stage of war; is a gift. But knowing that I should be faithful to the God I believe
saved my family, but am not faithful to him, is a feeling that seems hopeless in view of
the pleasures my social life provides.
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About the Author
Isaac Alvarenga, born on March 25, 1992 in Worcester Ma. Son of Gilberto Alvarenga
and Alba Saenz. Graduated from Marlborough high school in 2011 and is now attending
Nichols College with hopes to Graduate in 2015 with a Business Degree. As a child Isaac
was always passionate for his family, friends, church, and soccer. His parents were
separated when he was five years of age and this was a tough time for him and his older
sibling because they had to live in El Salvador for a couple years with their grandparents.
As time went by, he moved to Marlborough and focused a lot in soccer and loved
playing together with friends. High school came along and their high school team
became more of a family to him. He played both high school soccer and club soccer,
which lead him to play at Nichols College for coach Chris Traina’s team. That inner
motivation to look forward and achieve more leads him to come to College and has
helped him strive for more. Him and his Family now live in Marlborough Ma where he
currently has a part time job as a deliver guy in a local pizza shop. He is the first one in
his family to attend college.
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