Don't Give Up (Spring DWA)

Author's Note: This piece was an essay about the theme of Catching Fire, written by Suzanne Collins. I believe the theme for this book is "don't give up." Within this piece, look closer at my comma, colon, and semi-colon usage. 

It was a terrible storm, maybe one of the worst I had ever experienced. The rain was coming down hard and strong, the thunder was louder than I have ever heard. The lightening was brighter than the sun. Everyone was trembling, except for me. I kept saying I will never give up. I kept running and running until I finally reached the finish line.  I ended up coming in first because I never gave up.  Just like in the book Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins, Katniss doesn’t give up on trying to keep Peeta alive. The theme of this book is, “don’t give up.”

In Catching Fire Katniss and Peeta are sent back into an arena for “The Quarter Quell.” A “Quarter Quell” occurs every 25 Hunger Games and always has a special twist put on it.  On this particular year, the 75th annual, one male and one female victor must go back into the arena and fight. Right before Katniss and Peeta leave for the Quarter Quell. Katniss and Peeta once again leave for the “Quarter Quell” and this time Haymitch, their mentor in the first games and in this game, is trying harder to keep Peeta alive than Katniss. In the last Hunger Games Haymitch had more belief in Katniss so he tried harder to keep her alive by sending her more gifts; However in the Quarter Quell Haymitch and Katniss made a deal to try and keep Peeta alive.  There are many examples in the book of how Katniss doesn’t give up on saving Peeta. "Tick tock," is a quote used in the book multiple times and it really means a lot if you have read the book. This quote is explaining the arena they were sent to for the Quarter Quelle and was first stated by Wiress, a tribute in the games. When he first said this he also said that the clock will keep going until the end, but so will I. All of the other people in his group agreed with him and said they will never give up.

Just like in Catching Fire, in this quote written by Babe Ruth, you can never give up.  “You just can’t beat the person who won’t give up.”  ~Babe Ruth~   This quote means a lot to me because of its value. Babe Ruth was a very focused athlete  who obviously knew he should never give up on anything.  When Babe wrote this, he must have just realized that winning is a lot easier when you don’t give up. This relates to Catching Fire because Babe Ruth would never give up on his work, and neither does Katniss. Babe was also really hard to beat in a baseball game because of his strategy to never give up.

In the long run, you should never give up. “Don’t give up,” is the theme of Catching Fire. Babe Ruth once said “You just can’t beat the person who won’t give up.” No matter what happened to Katniss in the arena she kept powering through it to keep Peeta alive. Even if it is a very small possibility that you could win, you should still never give up. 

The Lane Shark

It was a bad night at the bowling alley. Strikes were few and far between.  A far cry from the normal repeated flashing “strike” on the scoring monitor. Bowlers were a buzz about what could be the problem. The bowling mechanic made his usual nightly appearance to greet the bowlers, to see how they were doing. “Something must be wrong with the lanes,”  we all told him. “We are just not scoring tonight. What could be the problem?” 

“Hmmm,” he said. “Must be some dirt on the lanes.”  His comment made one of the bowlers stop and think.  If there is dirt on the lanes, it must need to get cleaned on a regular bas is. Thinking this through, it seemed   like it would take hours for one person to clean that many lanes.  “There has to be a better solution, and I am going to find it,” thought one bowler on an off night of bowling way back in 1987. The cogs started turning and he wouldn’t give up until he had a better solution to the dirty lane problem. He thought and he thought, and he drew and he drew. He built and he rebuilt, until at last…the invention of the Lane Shark lane cleaning machine was born.

Tom Westenberger, the creator of the Lane Shark lane cleaning machine,  is now a successful  bowling contractor and is proud of his invention made in 1998. Tom was at the age of 31 when his brilliant invention of a bowling lane cleaner came to thought.  He had always been  a person who liked to build, improve, and tinker with many things that his dad had lying around. He got inspired by his dad, also a bowling contractor, who was tired of wiping up the floors with a broom and a towel. Tom started working for his dad in the summer at the age of ten. Ever since then he has been very interested in everything that has to do with bowling, bowling lanes, or a bowling alley.

Tom is also interested in creating his own products. He also liked to help his dad with whatever he could help with. Tom invented this machine because of the hours of work it took to clean all of the bowling lanes in one alley. Before he created his machine you would have to clean the top layer of the lane with a towel and sweep it with a towel . You would also have to put a solution of water and soap on the btowel .  After that, you would have to go over the lane again to dry it. Tom was tired of doing this long process, so he created the Lane Shark. The Lane Shark is a machine that automatically squirts the solution of soap and water on the lane, and then vacuums it back up. The only work that requires you to do is gently pushing the machine down the lane and back. Although now they have a machine that goes down the lane and back with the push of a button, I think we can cut him some slack since that was a few years ago!!!

The way that Tom came up with this was with a lot of thinking. He said,” I had to put in lots of tough thinking, and a lot of drawings were also included.” One of the first steps in this idea was to make a working model out of wood, then fabricated with steel.  He also made many improvements within 6-8 months.  There was a total of one main frame, as well as 75-100 different smaller parts.  When he was done building and improving, he worked with a company called DBA Products Company from Chicago. Once he developed a distributorship with DBA ,he sold all machines to their company and DBA sold to all of their distributors. After that the distributors sold Lane Sharks all around the world in individual bowling allies. DBA sold a total of approximately 1,500 Lane Shark’s,  and there is at least one Lane Shark in every country where bowling is popular.

In a nutshell, there is a solution to every problem.   If you think long enough and hard enough, you could just develop the solution to a common problem.  And who knows… if you find one solution, maybe, just maybe, you’ll find more!!!