Connections essay

In the visual texts Aliens directed by James Cameron and San Andreas directed by Brad Peyton, the short story The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty and the novel The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins a significant connection found across the four texts is the theme ‘My World Turned Upside Down’ .The connections in these texts are important because people can relate to it as their lives are constantly changing wether it be a small change or a massive change. The texts San Andreas and The Sniper have the common connection of destruction around the place they live . In the texts Aliens and The Hunger Games they are connected because they are both set in the future where they show a dramatic change of earth and life. The Sniper and The Hunger games are commonly connected because the people are both fighting within their own country. The connection between San Andreas and The Hunger Games is having to take massive risks to keep themselves and their people alive.
San Andreas and The Sniper are connected by the common occurrence of destruction to their city and country. In San Andreas Ray’s life along with the people living in San Andreas changes when a massive earthquake with the magnitude of 9 hits down the San Andreas fault line. This earthquake was not finished after just one hit, there was more coming and people didn’t know that “People need to know that the shaking is not over. We’re going to get hit again and it’s going to be a bigger monster. ” The earthquake caused massive destruction to people’s homes , skyscrapers and attractions. This is an example of how people’s lives can turn upside down within a moment of seconds, but they will never go back to the way it was before. The Sniper is a short story about the civil war in Dublin from the perspective of one republican sniper. This war caused destruction to Dublin but it the complete opposite way to in San Andreas.The destruction caused by the civil war was a result of cars destroyed, rubble form buildings scattered everywhere and people dead on the streets, one of which was the snipers brother.”He rolled over the dead body, and looked into his brother’s face.” Just like in San Andreas, the lives of the people in Dublin will never be the same as they were living through a civil war which has turned their world upside down. 
Aliens and The Hunger Games are connected with each other because they are both set in the future as humans have not yet come in contact with aliens if they exist, and today’s society is not sorted into districts, having some richer and some poorer. Aliens is a science fiction action film about a planet called LV-426 that has been colonised by aliens. Ellen Ripley went to LV-426 along with a group of other soldiers to find out more about the aliens and to get rid of them. One day while everyone went to look around for the aliens but instead they found a little girl who survived called Newt. What they find out along the way is that these aliens were a lot more capable than they thought, Newt even warned Ellen about them as she knew how they live. ” What do you mean, “They cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They’re animals! ” Ellen, Newt and everyone else’s world has been turned upside down because they have discovered that if they don’t deal to the aliens everyone will have almost certain death. In The Hunger Games Katniss meets a little girl called Rue who she because a motherly figure to as she reminded her of Prim. Sadly Rue gets killed when Katniss tried to get to the middle of the arena for supply’s “. That Rue was more than a piece in their Games.” The game creators started to think that Katniss was getting to close to the border and the games were getting boring so they added in fires and dog like killing creatures. Katniss’s world was turned upside down because she went from living a life she thought was normal to having to kill people to survive. Just like in Aliens, The Hungers Games shows that it is set in future because they both show a dramatic change in earth and life where in The Hinger Games the creators could add animations that became real, and in Aliens there was human contact with aliens. 
 The Sniper and The Hunger games are commonly connected by the main characters both fighting within their own country. The Hunger Games is an action film where two people from every district in Panem go to fight to the death to win food and wealth for themselves, their family and their district, also for the entertainment of the Capitol. Katniss learns that even though she might find it hard to kill innocent people, she has to do it just like everyone else does. In The Sniper, the sniper could see a car across the roads from him with people there. Because it was a civil war the sniper had to kill the other people trying to kill him. What the sniper found out is that the person he killed was his own brother ” he rolled over the dead body, and looked into his brother’s face”. The worlds of the people in The Hunger Games and The Sniper get turned upside down because life before the hunger games and the war was normal where you wouldn’t kill people, but now that there is the hunger games and a civil war, killing becomes part of their normal day. 
The connection between San Andreas and The Hunger Games is having to take massive risks to keep themselves and their people alive. In San Andreas Ray takes the risk to go to save his ex-wife Emma and daughter Blake instead of staying in safety “Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch”. Ray took a massive risk because he didn’t know where Blake was and he didn’t know where she was going durning the earthquake. When Ray finds the two boys that were with Blake he found out she was under the water. When Ray went to get Blake he saw that she was stuck on the other side of a glass wall. Blake drowning was Ray’s worse nightmare as he had already lost a daughter to drowning. Ray took another massive risk by staying to find a way to get Blake out which was a good choice because he was successful. During The Hunger Games on reaping day when district 12 finds out who is going to the games, Katniss Everdeen volunteers to be tribute for the 74th Annual Hunger Games because she found out that her sister Prim Rose Everdeen was picked randomly to go. “I volunteer!” I gasp. “I volunteer as tribute!” Katniss did this just all for Prim’s safety because she knew Prim would not survive in the games. In both The Hunger Games and San Andreas Katniss and Ray’s worlds get turned upside down when they have to take massive risks to save the people they love. 
 The Hunger Games, The Sniper, Aliens and San Andreas are all connected but the theme of my world turned upside down. The texts San Andreas and The Sniper had the common connection of destruction around the place they live . In the texts Aliens and The Hunger Games they were connected because they were both set in the future where they show a dramatic change of earth and life. The Sniper and The Hunger games were commonly connected because the people are both fighting within their own country. The connection between San Andreas and The Hunger Games was having to take massive risks to keep themselves and their people alive. What I have learnt from the theme of “My World Turned Upside Down” is that people lives constantly change for better or for worse. I have learnt that people’s lives change in different ways none the same. All of the texts show that this statement made is true that people lives constantly change.