Published February 17, 2008
It started out as a sort of ludicrous idea. I’m a pacifist, I’ve seen, I know, what violence and war can do. I’d like to see one thing accomplished by war that couldn’t have been better accomplished by talking, diplomacy, or an independent third party. That’s why I have always loved paper cranes. Origami, that art of folding paper, has always been alluring, amazing. And reading that book in fifth grade about Sadako, and her goal of folding a thousand cranes, touched me deeply. She was just a girl, like any other girl, but she managed to leave something behind, a dream, a whisper, and inspiration.
Next to her, my goal seems paltry, fake. Sure, I’ve hit some rough spots, but I don’t have leukemia, I’m not staring death in the face. She was. My goal is simply to honor Sadako and her memory as best I can, to try some small atonement for the hideous crimes my country has committed in the name of war. Now, call me crazy, but I’d say ignoring the million deaths of Tutsis in Rwanda, sending back a ship of Jews to die in Auschwitz, refusing refugees who we’ve made homeless, and ignoring humanitarian situations are crimes.
So, while folding paper cranes may not do anything, it helps spread the message of peace. People see me folding my cranes, and ask what’s going on. After I tell them, they usually seem pretty interested, because a lot of people are getting fed up with this war, and paper cranes are fairly cool. Sometimes, if I’m at school, they want to help, or they have a website, a book, an article to recommend, and that keeps the dream going. My close friends help fold cranes, and we plan what to do with them once we have a thousand. Send them to Hiroshima? Burn them? Try to get it on CNN news?
It just seems like paper cranes, an international and Japanese symbol of peace, are the perfect way to show our unrest, or buried anger, over war. I have yet to see how people committing murder, yes, murder, because of race, nationality, beliefs, or oil, can save the world. Time and again, it’s been proven that the real way to solve problems is peace. And paper cranes, as I’ve said, are my way of spreading that message.
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I read the book about Sadako and the thousand paper cranes too in fourth grade and again last year. It was soooo sad:.(. I think that your goal is awesome! Don't give it up!
Your use of punctuation and spacing are appalling. It makes it very difficult for the reader to comprehend what you're writing about.
As for the content itself:
You've saturated this with description--and that's not a compliment. Passages like, "She managed to leave something behind, a dream, a whisper, and inspiration," can be used very effectively as emphasis--but only if used in moderation. You have too many of them, and even the sentences that don't include laundry-lists of synonyms are drowning in adjectives and adverbs. Don't lean on them; strengthen your nouns and verbs to the point where they can stand on their own, and you won't have to use descriptors as crutches.