Nickel and Dimed analysis Essay

In my opinion, I feel that the author of â€Å"Nickel and Dimed†, Barbara Ehrenreich, had ethical intentions when making the decision to investigate â€Å"poverty† by emerging herself in the â€Å"low-wage lifestyle†. The ethical concern, however, is with her approach. I feel that the way in which it was conducted could be viewed as degrading to those who do not have an alternative to this way of living. True, hopeless poverty does not have those â€Å"reassuring limits† that Ehrenreich had the ability to utilize when she was in a position that made her uncomfortable with the consequences of the poverty she was attempting to study. By keeping her car, she writes, â€Å"Yes, I could have walked more or limited myself to jobs accessible by public transportation,† and â€Å"I just figured that a story about waiting for buses would not be very interesting to read.† The sole allowance of this access to transportation, although she also maintained other things such as her ATM card in instances that subject her to hunger or homelessness, was in the interest of entertainment versus science. I do feel, though, that Ehrenreich was aware that she was never going to be able to fully commit to this endeavor when she writes, â€Å"With all the real-life assets I’ve built up in middle age—bank account, IRA, health insurance, multiroom home—waiting indulgently in the background,† she admits, â€Å"there was no way I was going to ‘experience poverty’ or find out how it ‘really feels’ to be a long-term low-wage worker.† I applaud her efforts to whole-heartedly work the low-wage jobs she acquired and submerge herself in a way of life that was completely foreign to her. In doing so, I feel that the research, despite its flaws, succeeded in exploring the plight of the low-wage worker in our society at that time. Her inability to budget her expenses with the minimal income that she received, in itself, was a testament to the trials and tribulations that those women face on a cyclic basis throughout their Many of the life situations that the characters in â€Å"Nickle and Dimed† were dealing with are not commonly discussed in today’s society. Media portrays â€Å"the poor† with stereotypical images. According to an article by Bullock et al. (2001), â€Å"women receiving public assistance are stereotyped as lazy, disinterested in education, and promiscuous.† America is depicted as either a classless society or one in which the majority of people are middle class citizens. Despite the lack of awareness of this type of poverty, I do feel that their arrangements are, unfortunately, not uncommon at all. Ehrenreich’s experience with low-wage work in Florida was significantly different than her experience in Maine. She reports that in Maine, â€Å"Even convenience store clerks, who are $6- an-hour gals themselves, seem to look down on us.† In the predominantly white Maine, the maid profession is viewed at in an almost servant-like way, they are the ones who must do the dirty work for the â€Å"wealthy† and are not seen as equals. The history of maid work was usually given to minorities, which could explain for this treatment. As for Key West, Ehrenreich did not have the same issues with regard to degradation, however, she struggling with maintaining her low- wage lifestyle. The waitressing job at Hearthside paid very little so she had to pick up a second job to make ends meet. Because both jobs were so emotionally and physically taxing, Ehrenreich was only able to maintain this for 2 weeks versus the 4 weeks that she had been able to endure in Maine. Although her job as a maid in Maine was also strenuous, and despite the fact that she also had a second job, I believe that her experience in Florida was tougher on her because it was her first attempt at living this lifestyle. By the time she arrived in Maine, I think she had internalized that much of what she was enduring was the everyday lives of the women who she had gotten to know throughout her experience and relented to the existence of poverty. The drastic increase in affluent households using maid services can be explained by a number of things. According to Ehrenreich, with the influx of women into the workforce, tensions arose over housework. Once women began working and did not solely rely on their husband’s wages, women began to expect more from their husbands. When the idea of this â€Å"equal partnership† was not being fulfilled, it caused many disagreements within households. The maid services â€Å"even saved marriages† and took advantage by obtaining contracts from these   homes by capitalizing on this idea, to intervene and solve their problems by eliminating the need for an argument over housework. In her statement, â€Å"For the first time in my life as a maid, I have a purpose more compelling than trying to meet the aesthetic standards of the New England bourgeoisie†, I believe that Ehrenreich was tired of helping the people she worked for â€Å"keep up with the Joneses†. She had come to the realization that neither her employer, nor the families whose homes she worked in, saw her or the women she worked with as â€Å"human†. When they were feeling ill they were told to â€Å"work through it† despite the extenuating circumstances that surrounded their health issues and the circumstance maintaining them. This quote represents her â€Å"purpose† when having to work to compensate for her ailing teammate and helped explain her views on the injustices that these women were enduring. Besides worrying about the dirt under the carpet that was placed as a test by a home owner or the dust on the hundreds of unread books on shelves, she had to take a step back from the robotic, day to day work of the â€Å"maid†. This helped her truly see the human suffering that she was witnessing firsthand and enraged her to want to advocate for these women so that others were able to see it too. REFERENCES Bullock, H.E., Wyche, K.F., & Williams, W.R. (2001). Media Images of the Poor. Journal of Social Issues, 57(2), 229–246. Ehrenreich, B. (2001). Nickle and Dimed. New York: Picador.

My Summer Vacation Essay

The dream summer holiday of every individual merely comes one time in a life-time. In the summer of 2014 I had merely completed my first twelvemonth of college and my parents wanted to take me some where I’ll ever retrieve for my profound work. I had no hint of what their purposes were or what to even anticipate from them. My parents had invited merely about all of our stopping points relations and household friends to come along and observe the juncture with us. Majority of those that came brought gifts and money to promote me to make good. Of class this made me the most thrilled individual in the universe. because I non merely had household and friends over to observe but they besides spent the dark over for the trip my parents had put together to take us on. The undermentioned forenoon my Father woke everyone up at 2oclock in the forenoon to acquire situated and hit the route for the airdrome by 3oclock. How dry they had everything planned out from the bathroom clip to the seating in the vehicles. But yet each and every clip I pampered the inquiry in their caputs as to where we were traveling they ne'er answered me. Anxious to cognize I was. so one began believing of all the possibilities of the topographic points they’d see traveling. I began to acquire drowsy from how early I woke up and all the wonder running through my venas. After acquiring to the airdrome at 4oclock our flight eventually left at 6:45am and we arrived at our finish into Fort Lauderdale. Florida. We collected our bags and was on our journey one time once more this clip it had felt as if we had been driving everlastingly. I had woken up to shrieks and shouting from about everyone around me. yet I still had no hint as to what was traveling on. As my pa was seeking to happen a parking topographic point I started to look out the window in hunt of any hints that could assist me calculate out where precisely we were. Once we pasted the entryway my eyes blew up when I saw the words Carnival Cruise Lines. After seeing all the commercials with all the celebrations that occur. all the celebrated people that appear in individual. the astonishing games and household activities. the theater and nutrient that was on board. this was so the topographic point I would give the universe to travel to. When asked by my parents how I liked my gift. I became lost for words and could merely smile for how happy and filed with joy I was.

Kahlil Gibran Essay

But Gibran was primarily a poet and a mystic in whom thought, as in every good poet and good mystic, is a state of being rather than a state of mind. A student of Gibran’s philosophy, therefore, finds himself more concerned not with his ideas but with his disposition; not with his theory of love but with Gibran the lover. That Gibran had started his literary career as a Lebanese emigrant in America, passionately yearning for his homeland, twentieth-century and intellectual may, perhaps give a basic clue to his disposition framework. To be an emigrant is to be an alien. But to be an emigrant mystical alienation is added poet is to be thrice alienated. To geographical from both conventional human society at large, and estrangement also the whole world of spatio-temporal existence. Therefore such a poet is gripped by a triple longing: a longing for the country of his birth, for a utopian human society of the imagination in which he can feel at home, and for a higher world of metaphysical truth. This Gibran with the basis for his artistic creatitriple longing provided vity. Its development from one stage of his work to another is only a variation in emphasis and not in kind; three strings of his harp re always to be detected and towards the end of his life they achieve * Al-Majm? ‘ah al K? milahli Mu’allaf? t Gibr? nKhal? lGibr? n,Beirut 1949-50 Sand and Foam, New York 1926 ThePropbet, New York 1923 The Forerunner,New York 1920 Jesus the Sonof Man, New York 1928 The Earth Gods,New York 1931 1 TheProphet, 33. p. 56 almost perfect harmony in his master-piece, The Prophet, where the home country of the prophet Almustafa, the utopian state of human existence and the metaphysical world of higher truth become one and the same. To The Prophet as well as to the rest of Gibran’s works, Music can be considered as a prelude. Published eleven years after Gibran’s emigration to Boston as a youth of eleven, this essay of about thirteen pages marks the author’s debut into the world of letters. Though entitled Music, this booklet is more of a schoolboy’s prosaic ode to on it. As such, it tells us more music than an objective dissertation about Gibran, the emotional boy, than about his subject. The Gibran it reveals is a flowery sentimentalist who, saturated with a vague sees in music a floating sister-spirit, an ethereal nostalgic sadness, of all that a nostalgic heart is not and yet yearns to be. embodiment of the whole essay, both in style and in spirit, is the Representative following quotation, in which he addresses music: â€Å"Oh you, wine of the heart that uplifts its drinker to the heights of the world of imagination;-you ethereal waves bearing the soul’s phantoms; you sea of sensibility and tenderness; to your waves we lend our soul, and to your uttermost depths we trust our hearts. Carry those hearts away beyond the world of matter and show us what is hidden deep in the world of the unknown. â€Å"‘ Between Mztsic of 1905 and The Prophet of 1923, Gibran’s writings as well as his thought seem to have passed through two stages: the youthful period of his early Arabic works, Nymphs of the Wally, Spirits Rebellious, Broken Wings and A Tear and a Smile, published between 1907 and 1914, and the relatively more mature stage of Processions, The Tempests, The Madman, his first work in English, and The Forerunner, his second, all leading up to The Prophet. It is only natural that in his youthful stage Gibran’s longing in Chinatown, Boston, where he first settled, for Lebanon, the country of the first impressionable years of his life, should dominate the two other strings in his harp. Nymphs of the Vallg is a collection of three short stories; Spirits Rebellious consists of another four, while Broken names and Wings can easily pass for a long short story. Overlooking dates, the three books can safely be considered as one volume of eight collected short stories that are similar in both style and conception, even to the point of redundancy; in all of them Lebanon, as the unique 1 See â€Å"al M? ? qa† al-Majm? ‘ah in al-K? milah (The Complete Works), vol. I, p. 57. 57 of mystic natural beauty, provides the setting. The different heroes, though their names and situations vary from story to story, are Khalil Gibran in essence one and the same. They are unmistakably the youth himself, who at times does not even bother to conceal his identity, speaking in the first person singular in Broken Wings and as Khalil in â€Å"Khalil the Heretic† of Spirits Rebellious. This first-person hero is typically to be found challenging pretenders to the possession of the body and soul of his beloved Lebanon. These pretenders in the nineteenth and early twentieth century are, in Gibran’s reckoning, the feudal lords of Lebanese aristocracy and the church order. The stories are therefore almost invariably woven in such a way as to bring Gibran the hero, or a Gibran-modelled hero, into direct conflict with of one or another of those groups. representatives In Broken Wings, Gibran the youth and Salma Karameh fall in love. But the local archbishop frustrates their love by forcibly marrying Salma to his nephew. Thus Gibran finds the opportunity, whilst his love of the virgin beauty of Lebanon, to pour out his singing anger on the church and its hierarchy. In Spirits Rebellious, Iihalil the heretic is expelled from a monastery in Mount Lebanon into a raging winter blizzard, because he was too Christian to be tolerated by the abbot and his fellow monks. Rescued at the last moment by a widow and her beautiful daughter in a Lebanese hamlet and secretly given refuge in their cottage, he soon makes the mother an admirer of his ideals of a primitive anticlerical Christianity and the daughter a disciple and a devoted lover. When he is discovered and captured by the local feudal lord and brought to trial before him as a heretic and an outlaw, he stands among the multitudes of humble Lebanese villagers and tenants and speaks like a Christ at his second coming. Won over by his defence, which he turns into an offensive against the allied despotism of the church and the feudal system, the simple and poverty-stricken villagers rally round him. As a consequence the local lord commits suicide, the priest takes to flight, Khalil marries the daughter of his rescuer, and the whole village lives ever afterwards in a blissful state of natural piety, amity and justice. John the Madman† in Nymphs of the Valley is almost a duplicate of Khalil the heretic. Detained with his calves by the abbot and monks of a monastery simply because the calves have intruded on its property, John, the poor calf-keeper, accuses his persecutors and all other men of the church of being the enemies of Christ, the modern pharisees land 58 on the poverty, misery and goodness of the very people prospering like himself in whom Christ abides. â€Å"Come forth again, o living out of your Christ,† he calls, â€Å"and chase these religion-merchants For they have turned those temples into dungeons where the temples. nakes of their cunning and villainy lie coiled. † 1 Because he was social order uniinspired with sincere truth under a domineering to sincerity and truth, John was dismissed as a formly antagonistic madman. It is easy to label Gibran in this early stage of his career as a social reformer and a rebel, as he was indeed labelled by many students of his works in the Arab world. His heroes, whose main weapons are their eloquent tongues, are always engaged in struggles that are of a social nature. There are almost invariably three factors here: innocent romantic love, frustrated by a society that subjugates love to worldly selfish interests, a church order that claims wealth, power and absolute authority in the name of Christ but is in fact utterly antichrist, and a ruthlessly inhuman feudal system. However, in spite of the apparent climate of social revolt in his stories Gibran remains far from deserving the title of social reformer. To be a reformer in revolt against something is to be in possession of a positive alternative. But nowhere do Gibran’s heroes strike us as having any real alternative. The alternatives, if any, are nothing but the negation of what the heroes revolt against. Thus their alternative for a corrupt love is no corrupt love, the sort of utopian love that we are made to see in Broken Lf/ings; the alternative for a feudal system is no feudal system, or the kind of systemless society we end up with in Spirits Rebellious; and the alternative for a Christless church is a Christ without any kind of church, madman in the kind of role in which John has found himself. Not being in possession of an alternative, a social reformer in revolt is instantly transformed from a hero into a social misfit. Thus Gibran’s heroes have invariably been heretics, madmen, wanderers, and even prophets and Gods. As such they all Boston, drawn represent Gibran the emigrant misfit in Chinatown, in his imagination and longing to Lebanon, his childhood’s fairyland, who is not so much concerned w ith the ills that corrupt its society as with the corrupt society that defiles its beauty. What kind of Lebanon Gibran has in mind becomes clearer in a relatively late essay in Arabic, in which his ideal of Lebanon and that of the antagonists whom he portrays in his stories are set against one another. vol. 1 Al-Majm? ‘ahal-K? mila, I, p. 101. 59 The best that Gibran the rebel could tell those corrupters of Lebanese society in this essay entitled â€Å"You Have Your Lebanon and I have Mine† is not how to make Lebanon a better society, but how beautiful is Lebanon without any society at all. He writes: â€Å"You have your Lebanon and its problems, and I have my Lebanon and its beauty. You have your Lebanon with all that it has of various interests and concerns, while I have my Lebanon with all that it has of aspirations and dreams †¦ Your Lebanon is a political riddle that time to resolve, while my Lebanon is hills rising in awe and attempts Your Lebanon is ports, industry majesty towards the blue sky †¦ and commerce, while my Lebanon is a far removed idea, a burning emotion, and an ethereal word whispered by earth into the ear of heaven †¦ Your Lebanon is religious sects and parties, while my Lebanon is youngsters climbing rocks, running with rivulets and ball in open squares. Your Lebanon is speeches, lectures and playing while my Lebanon is songs of nightingales, discussions, swaying branches of oak and poplar, and echoes of shepherd flutes reverber1 ating in caves and grottoes. † It is no wonder that this kind of rebel should wind up his so-called social revolt at this stage of his career with the publication of a book of collected prose poems entitled A Tear and a Smile. The tears, which are much more abundant here than the smiles, are those of Gibran the misfit rather than of the rebel in Boston, singing in an exceedingly touching way of his frustrated love and estrangement, his loneliness, homesickness and melancholy. The smiles, on the other hand, are the expression of those hitherto intermittent but now more numerous moments in the life of Gibran the emigrant when the land of mystic beauty, ceases to be a geographical Lebanon, in his imagination into expression, and is gradually metamorphosed a metaphysical After such rudimentary as his homeland. ttempts short story â€Å"The Ash of Generations and the Eternal Fire† in Nymphs Gibran has of the Valley, expressive of his belief in reincarnation, managed in his prose poems of A Tear and a Smile to give his homesickness a clear platonic twist. His alienation has become that of the human soul entrapped in the foreign world of physical existence, and his homesickness has become the yearning of t he soul so estranged for rehabilitation in the higher world of metaphysical truth whence it has originally descended. It is for this reason that human life is 1 Ibid. , vol. III, pp. 202-203. 60 expressed by a tear and a smile: a tear for the departure and alienation The historic analogy and a smile for the prospect of a home-coming. of the sea in this respect becomes common from now on in Gibran’s writings: rain is the weeping of water that falls over hills and dales from the mother sea, while running brooks sound the estranged â€Å"Such is the soul†, says Gibran in one of happy song of home-coming. rom the universal soul it takes its his prose poems. â€Å"Separated course in the world of matter passing like a cloud over the mountains of sorrow and the plains of happiness until it is met by the breezes of death, whereby it is brought back to where it originally belongs, to the sea of love and beauty, to god. † 1 When Gibran’s homeland, the object of his longing, was Lebanon, his anger was directed against those who in his view had defiled its beauty. But now that his homeland had gradually assumed a metaphysical Platonic meaning, his attack was no longer centred on local influences clergy, church dogma, feudalism and the other corrupting in Lebanon, but rather on the shamefully defiled image that man, the emigrant in the world of physical existence, has made of the world of God, his original homeland. Not only Lebanese society, but rather human society at large has become the main target of Gibran’s the second stage of his career. isgust and bitterness throughout This kind of disgust constitutes the central theme in Gibran’s long Arabic poem Processions of 1919 and his book of collected Arabic essays The Tempests of 1920, his last work in Arabic, as well as in his first two works in English, The Madman of 1918, and The Forerunner of 1920, both of which are collected parables and prose poems. The hero in Gibran’s poetico-fictional title-piece in The Tempests, Youssof al-Fakhry in his cottage among the forbiddi ng mountains, becomes a mystery to the awe-stricken Only to neighbourhood. Gibran the narrator, seeking refuge in the cottage one stormy evening, does he reveal the secret of his heroic silence and seclusion. â€Å"It is a certain awakening in the uttermost depth of the soul,† he says, â€Å"a certain idea which takes a man’s conscience by surprise at a moment and opens his vision whereby he sees life †¦ projecof forgetfulness, ted like a tower of light between earth and infinity. † 2 Looking at the rest of men from the tower of life, from his giant God-self which he has so recognized at a rare moment of awakening, Youssof al-Fakhry sees them in their forgetful day-to-day earthly 1 Ibid. vol. II, p. 95. 2 Ibid. , vol. III, p. 111. 61 to existence, at the bottom of the tower. In their placid unwillingness lift their eyes to what is divine in their natures, they appear to him as disgusting pigmies, hypocrites and cowards. â€Å"I have deserted people†, he explains to his guest, â€Å"because I have found myself a wheel turnin g he right among wheels invariably turning left. † â€Å"No, my brother,† adds, â€Å"I have not sought seclusion for prayer or hermitic practices. Rather have I sought it in escape from people and their laws, teachings and customs, from their ideas, noises and wailings. I have sought seclusion so as not to see the faces of men selling their souls to buy with the price thereof what is below their souls in value and honour In â€Å"The Grave-Digger†, another poetico-fictional piece in The these men who have sold their souls, and who constitute in Tempests, Gibran’s reckoning the rest of human society, are dismissed as dead, though in the words of the hero, modelled in the lines of Youssof alFakhry, â€Å"finding none to bury them, they remain on the face of the 2 earth in stinking disintegration†. The hero’s advice to Gibran the narrator is that for a man who has awakened to his giant God-self the best service he can render society is digging graves. â€Å"From that hour up to the present†, Gibran concludes, â€Å"I have been digging graves and burying the dead, but the dead are many and I am alone with nobody to help me. † 3 To be the only sane man among fools is to appear as the only fool among sane men. If life, as Youssof al-Fakhry says, is a tower whose bottom is the earth and whose top is the world of the infinite, then to clamour for the infinite in one’s life is to be considered an outcast and a fool by the rest of men clinging to the bottom of the tower. This is first English work, The precisely how the Madman in Gibran’s his title. His masks stolen, he was walking naked, as Madman, gained every traveller from the physical to the metaphysical is bound to be. Seeing his nakedness, someone on a house-top cried: â€Å"He is a madman. Looking up, the sun, his higher self, kissed his naked face for the first time. He fell in love with the sun and wanted his masks, his no longer. Thereafter he was always physical and social attachments, known as the Madman, and as a madman he was at war against human society. Processions, Gibran’s long poem in Arabic, is a dialogue between two voices. Upon close analysis, the two voices seem to belong to one and 1 Ibid. , vol. III, 106. p. 2 Ibid. , vol. III, p. 11. 3 Ibid. , vol. III, 15. p. 62 the same man: another of those Gibranian madmen, or men who have become Gods unto themselves. This man would at one time cast his at people living at the bottom of the tower, and eyes downwards raise his voice in derision and sarcasm, poking fun at consequently their unreality, satirizing their Gods, creeds and practices, and ridiculing their values, ever doomed, blind as they are, to be at loggerheads. At another instant he would turn his eyes to his own sublime world beyond good and evil, where dualities interpenetrate giving way to unity, and then he would raise his voice in praise of life absolute and universal. is to achieve serenity and peace. That To achieve self-fulfilment Gibran and his heroes are still mad Gods, grave-diggers and enemies of mankind, filled with bitterness despite their claim of having arrived at the summit of life’s tower, reveals that Gibran’s self-fulfilment this second stage of his work is still a matter of wishful throughout rather than an accomplished fact. Too thinking and make-believe with his own painful loneliness in his transcendental preoccupied quest, Gibran the madman or superman, it seems, has failed hitherto at the summit, but also to not only to feel the joy of self-realization recognize the ragedy of his fellow-men supposedly lost in the mire instead of love and compassion, down below. Consequently people could only inspire in him bitterness and disgust. The stage of anger and disgust was succeeded in Gibran’s development by a third stage, that of The Prophet, his chef d’? tlvre, Jesus the Son of Man and The Earth Gods. The link is to be found in The Forerun ner of 1920, his book of collected poems and parables. To believe, as Gibran did, that life is a tower whose base is earth and whose summit is the infinite is also to believe that life is one and indivisible. For the man on top of life’s tower to reject those who are beneath, as Gibran had been doing up to this point, is to undermine his own height and become lower than the lowest he rejects. Thus one of Gibran’s poems in The Forerunner says, as though in atonement for all his Nietzschean revolt: â€Å"Too young am I and too outraged to be my freer self. â€Å"And how shall I become my freer self unless I slay my burdened selves, or unless all men become free? † †¦ How shall the eagle in me soar against the sun until my fledglings leave the nest which I with my own beak have built for them. 1 1 TheForerunner,p. 7. 63 Gibran’s belief in the unity of life, which has hitherto made only and at times confused appearances in his writings, has intermittent now become, with all its implications with regard to human life and conduct, the prevailing theme of the rest of his works. If life is one and infinite, then man is the infinite in embryo, just as a seed is in itself the whole tree in embryo. â€Å"Every seed†, says Gibran in one of his later works, â€Å"is a longing. 1 This longing is presumably the longing of the tree in the seed for in the actual tree that it had previously been. Every self-fulfilment seed therefore bears within itself the longing, the self-fulfilment and the means by which this can be achieved. To transfer the analogy to man is to say that every man as a conscious being is a divine seed; is life absolute and infinite in embryo. Every man, therefore, according to Gibran, is a longing : the longing of the divine in man for man the divine whom he had previously been. But, to quote Gibran again, â€Å"No longing remains unfulfilled. † 2 Like the seed, he Therefore every man is destined for Godhood. bears within him the longing, the fulfilment which is God, and the road leading to this fulfilment. It is in this context that Gibran declares in The Forerurcner, â€Å"You are your own forerunner, and the tower have built are but the foundations of your giant self. † 3 you Seeing man in this light, Gibran can no longer afford to be a gravedigger. A new stage has opened in his career. Men are divine and, therefore, deathless. If they remain in the mire of their earthly existence, it is not because they are mean and disgusting, but because the divine in them, like the fire in a piece of wood, is dormant though it needs only a slight spark to be released into a blaze of light. it is not a grave-digger that men need, but an Consequently, a Socratic mid-wife, who would help man release the God in igniter; himself into the self that is one with God. Therefore in this new stage Gibran the grave-digger and the madman gives way to Gibran the and the igniter. rophet In The Prophet of 1923, Almustafa â€Å"who was a dawn unto his own day† sees his ship, for which he had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese, returning to â€Å"bear him back to the isle of his birth†. The people of Orphalese leave their daily work and crowd around him in the city square to bid him farewell and beg for something of his 1 Sandand Foam, p. 16. 1 Ibid. , p. 25. 1 TheForerunner,p. 7. 64 he answers their various befor e he leaves, whereupon knowledge on subjects of their own choosing. uestions It is not hard to see that Almustafa the Prophet is Gibran himself, who in 1923 had already spent almost twelve years in New York city, the city of Orphalese, having moved there from Boston in 1912, and that the isle of his birth is Lebanon to which he had longed to return. But looking deeper still Almustafa can further symbolize the man who, in Gibran’s reckoning, has become his freer self; who has realized the passage in himself from the human to the divine, and is therefore ripe for emancipation and reunion with life absolute. His ship is death that has come to bear him to the isle of his birth, the Platonic world of metaphysical reality. As to the people of Orphalese, they stand for human society at large in which men, exiled in their spatio-temporal existence from their true selves, that is, from God, are in need in their God-ward journey of the guiding prophetic hand that would lead them from what is human in them to the divine. Having made that journey himself, Almustafa presents himself in his sermons the book as that guide. throughout Stripped of its poetical trappings, Gibran’s teaching in The Prophet is found to rest on the single idea that life is one and infinite. As a living being, man in his temporal existence is only a shadow of his real self. To be one’s real self is to be one with the infinite to which man is related. Self-realization, therefore, lies in going out of inseparably one’s spatio-temporal dimensions, so that the self is broadened to the man’s only extent of including everyone and all things. Consequently in self-realization, to his greater self, lies in love. Hence love is the path theme of the opening sermon of Almustafa to the people of Orphalese. No man can say â€Å"I† truly without meaning the totality of things apart from which he cannot be or be conceived. Still less can one love oneself truly without loving everyone and all things. So love is at once an emancipation and a crucifixion: an emancipation because it releases man from his narrow confinement and brings him to that whereby he feels one with the stage of broader self-consciousness with God; a crucifixion because to grow into the broader self infinite, is to shatter the smaller self which was the seed and confinement. For even as Thus true self-assertion is bound to be a self-negation. love crowns you†, says Almustafa to his hearers, â€Å"so shall he crucify 1 you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. † 1 TheProphet, p. 15. 65 love, which is our guide to our larger self, is insepConsequently arable from pain. â€Å"Your pain†, says Almustafa, â€Å"is the breaking of Even as the stone of the the shell that encloses your understanding. fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know 1 pain. † Thus conceived, pain becomes at once a kind of joy. It is the joy of the seed dying as a tree in embryo in a process of becoming a tree in full. and unheeded which is really painful. It is only pain misunderstood self is God, then anything that gives us pain is a witness If our larger that our self is not yet broad enough to contain it. For to contain all is is thus an to be in love and at peace with all. Pain truly understood to growth and therefore to joy. â€Å"Your joy†, says Almustafa, impetus â€Å"is your sorrow unmasked. The deeper that sorrow carves into your 2 being, the more joy you can contain. † If pain and joy are inseparable, so are life and death. In a universe that is infinite nothing can die except the finite, and nothing finite can be other than the infinite in disguise. Death understood is the pouring of the finite into the infinite, the passage of the God in man into the man in God. â€Å"Life and death are one†, says Almustafa, â€Å"even as the And what is to cease breathing, but to river and the sea are one †¦ free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and 3 seek God unencumbered. † If life and death are one even as joy and pain, it must follow that life is not the opposite of death nor death the opposite of life. For to live is to grow and to grow is to exist in a continuous process of dying. Therefore every death is a rebirth into a higher state of being, in the sense of â€Å"the child is father to the man†. Thus in a Wordsworthian chain of birth and rebirth man persists in his God-ward continuous of himself until ascent, gaining at each step a broader consciousness he finally ends at the absolute. â€Å"It is a flame spirit in you†, says Almustafa, â€Å"ever gathering more of itself. † 4 Similarly, nothing can happen to us which is not in fact self-invited, If God is our greater self, then nothing can and self-entertained. efall us from without. Says Almustafa: 1 Ibid. , p. 60. 2 Ibid. , p. 35. 3 Ibid. , pp. 90-91. 4 Ibid. , p. 97. 66 â€Å"The And And And murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder, the robbed is not blameless in being robbed. the righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked, the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon. â⠂¬Å"1 If God is our greater self then there can be no good in the infinite universe which is not the good of every man, nor can there be any â€Å"Like a procession†, evil for which anyone can abjure responsibility. Almustafa, â€Å"you walk together towards your God self. † says â€Å"†¦ even as the holy and righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also. And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all. â€Å"22 It would follow that the spiritual elevation of a Christ is part and parcel of the material villainy of a Judas Iscariot. For in God Christ and Judas are one and inseparable. No man, therefore, no matter how elevated, can be emancipated into his larger self alone. An eagle, however high it can soar, is always bound to come down again to its fledgelings in the nest and is until they too become strong of wing, doomed to remain earthbound and the same is true of an elevated human soul or a prophet. So long as there remains even one speck of bestiality in any man no other human soul, no matter how near to God it may be, can be finally Like the released emancipated and escape the wheel of reincarnation. n Plato’s allegory, he will again return to the philosopher-prisoner cave, so long as his fellows are still there in darkness and in chains. Gibran’s Prophet, as he prepares to board his ship, says: â€Å"Should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again. A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body. A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bea r me. â€Å"3 In literary terms, this moment of rest upon the wind for Almustafa was brief indeed. Only five years elapsed on his departure from 1 Ibid. , p. 47. 2 Ibid. , pp. 46-47. 3 Ibid. , 105. p. 67 Orphalese before he was given birth again; not by another woman, as he had foretold, but by Gibran himself. His name this time was not Almustafa but Jesus. Jesus the Son of Man, Gibran’s second book after The Prophet, appeared in 1928, the first being only a short collection of aphorisms under the title of Sand and Foam. To the student of Gibran’s literary art, Jesus the Son of Man may offer some novelty, but not so to the student of his thought. Gibran in this book tries to portray Christ as he understands him by inviting to speak of him each from his a number of Christ’s contemporaries own point of view. Their views combined in the mind of the reader are intended to bring out the desired portrait. But names, places and situations apart, the Jesus so portrayed in the the book is not so much of the Biblical Christ, as he is the old Biblical a new development Gibranian Almustafa. transformed into another Like Nazarene who Almustafa he is described as â€Å"The chosen and the beloved†, after several previous rebirths is come and will come again to help lead men to their larger selves. He is not a God who has taken human form, but an ordinary man of ordinary birth who has been able through spiritual sublimation to elevate himself from the human to the divine. His several returns to earth are the several returns of the eagle who would not taste the full freedom of space before all his fledgedesire†, says lings are taught to fly. â€Å"Were it not for a mother’s Gibran’s Jesus, â€Å"I would have stripped me of the swaddling-clothes and escaped back to space. And were it not for sorrow in all of you, . I would not have stayed to weep. I Therefore Gibran’s Jesus was neither meek nor humble nor characterized by pity. His return to earth is the return of a winged spirit, intent on appealing not to human frailties, but to the power in man which is capable of lifting him from the finite to the infinite. One reporter on Jesus says, â€Å"I am sickened and the bowels within call Jesus humble and me stir and rise when I hear the faint-hearted an d when the that they may justify their own faint-heartedness; meek, for comfort and companionship, down-trodden, speak of Jesus as a worm shining by their side. Yes, my heart is sickened by such men. It is the mighty hunter I would preach, and the mountainous spirit 2 unconquerable. † Gibran’s Jesus is even made to re-utter the Lord’s prayer in a way 1 Jesus The Sonof Man, p. 19. 2 Ibid. , p. 4. 68 to the heart and lips of Almustafa, appropriate teaching man to himself to the point of becoming one with the all-inclusive: enlarge â€Å"Our father in earth and heaven, sacred is Thy name. Thy will be done with us, even as in space †¦.. In Thy compassion forgive us and enlarge us to forgive one another. Guide us towards Thee and stretch down Thy hand to us in darkness. For Thine is the kingdom, and in Thee is our power and our fulfilment To dwell further on the character and teachings of Jesus as conIn The Prophet, Gibran the ceived by Gibran is to risk redundancy. thinker reaches his climax. His post-Prophet works, with the possible exception of The Earth Gods of 1931, the last book published in his lifetime, have almost nothing new to offer. s a collection of The Wanderer of 1932, published posthumously, and sayings much in the style and spirit of The Forerunner of parables 1920, published three years before The Prophet. As to The Garden of the in 1933, it should be dismissed Prophet, also published posthumously as a fake and a forgery. Gibran, who had planned The Garden outright state of being and of the Prophet to be an expression of Almustafa’s after he had arrived in the isle of his birth from the city of teachings Orphalese, had only time left to write two or three short passages for that book. Other passages were added, some of which are translations from Gibran’s early Arabic works, and some possibly written by another pen in imitation of Gibran’s style. The result was a book to Gibran, in which Gibran’s attributed are poetry and thought to a most unhappy state of chaos and confusion. brought This leaves us with The Earth Gods as the complete work with which Gibran’s career comes to its conclusion. And a fitting conclusion it is indeed. The book is a long prose poem where, in the words of Gibran, â€Å"The three earth-born Gods, the Master Titans of Life† hold a discourse on the destiny of man. is career was a poet of alienation and Gibran, who throughout strikes us in The Prophet and in Jeszrs the Son of Man, Almuslonging, tafa’s duplicate, as having arrived at his long-cherished state of intellectual rest and spiritual fulfilment. Almustafa and Christ, who in Gibran’s reckoning are earth-born Gods, reveal human destiny as being man’s gradual ascent through love and spiritual sublimation 1 Ibid. , p. 60. 69 towards ultimate reunion with God, the absolute and the infinite. It is possible that Gibran began to have second thoughts about the philosophy of his prophet towards the end of his life. Otherwise why is it that instead of one earth God, one human destiny, he now presents us with three who apparently are in disagreement ? Shortly after Jesus the Son of Man, (libran, who had for some time been fighting a chronic illness, came to realize that the fates were not on his side. Like Almustafa, he must have seen his ship coming in the mist to take him to the isle of his birth and in the lonely journey of towards death, armed as he was with the mystic convictions Almustafa, he must have often stopped to examine the implications of his philosophy. In his farewell address to the people of Orphalese, Almustafa saw his departure as â€Å"A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind†. But what of this endless cycle of births and rebirths? If man’s ultimate destiny as a finite being is to unite with the infinite, then that destiny is a virtual impossibility. For the road to the infinite is infinite, and man’s quest as a traveller through reincarnation is bound to be endless and fruitless. ‘ Therefore comes the voice of Gibran’s first God: â€Å"Weary is my spirit of all there is. I would not move a hand to create a world Nor to erase one. I would not live could I but die, For the weight of aeons is upon me, And the ceaseless moan of the seas exhaust my sleep. Could I but lose the primal aim And vanish like a wasted sun; Could I but strip my divinity of its purpose And breathe my immortality into space And be no more; Could I but be consumed and pass from time’s memory Into the emptiness of nowhere. â€Å"‘ In another place this same God says: â€Å"For all that I am, and all that there is on earth, And all that shall be, inviteth not my soul. Silent is thy face, And in thine eyes the shadows of night are sleeping. But terrible is thy silence, And thou art terrible. â€Å"2 1 The Earth Gods, 3. p. 2 Ibid. , pp. 5-6. 70 If man in his ascent to the infinite is likened to a mountain-climber, then these moments of gloom and helplessness only occur when he casts his eyes towards the infinitely removed summit beyond. It is not so when he casts his eyes downwards and sees the heights he has already scaled. The loneliness and gloom then give way to optimism and reassurance. For a journey that can be started is a journey that can be concluded. Gibran on his lonely voyage must have turned to see There we hear the this other implication in Almustafa’s philosophy. voice of the second God, whose eyes are turned optimistically downwards. His philosophy is that the height of the summit is a part of the lowliness of the valley beneath. That the valley is now transcended is a reassurance that the summit can be considered as already conquered. For to reach the summit is to reach the highest point to which a valley could raise its depth. Man’s journey to God is therefore a journey inwards and not an external quest. The second God says to the first: â€Å"We are the beyond and we are the most high And between us and the boundless eternity Is naught save our unshaped passion And the motive thereof. You invoke the unknown, And the unknown clad with moving mist Dwells in your own soul. Yea, in your own soul your redeemer lies asleep And in sleep sees what your waking eye does not see. †¦ Forbear and look down upon the world. Behold the unweaned children of your love. The earth is your abode, and the earth is your throne; And high beyond man’s furtherest hope Your hand upholds his destiny. â€Å"‘ Yet in Gibran’s lonely journey towards death, a voice not so pessimistic as that of his first God nor so optimistic as that of the second from the youthful past of is heard. This voice, coming perhaps Broken Wings and A Tear and a Smile, though not part of Almustafa’s voice, is yet not out of harmony with it. It is the voice of someone who has come to realize that man has so busied himself philosophizing to live it. Rather than the climber about life that he has forgotten terrified by the towering height of the summit or reassured by the lowliness of the valley, here is a love-intoxicated youth in the spring meadows 1 Ibid. , on the mountainside. p. 22. 71 â€Å"There is a wedding in the valley. â€Å"Brothers, my brothers,† the third God rebukes his two fellows, â€Å"A day too vast for recording. †¦ We shall pass into the twilight; Perchance to wake to the dawn of another world. But love shall stay, And his finger-marks shall not be erased. The blessed forge burns, The sparks rise, and each spark is a sun. Better it is for us, and wiser, To seek a shadowed nook and sleep in our earth divinity And let love, human and frail, command the coming day. â€Å"‘ Thus Gibran concludes his life-long alienation. His thought in the twilight of his days seems to have swung back to his youth where it first started. It is a complete cycle, in conformity, though perhaps unconsciously, The tenacious cedar tree which was with his idea of reincarnation. Gibran the Prophet went back again to the seed that it was: to love, to wake to the dawn of another world. â€Å"2 human and frail-â€Å"Perchance N. NAIMY 1 Ibid. , pp. 25-26. 2 Ibid. , pp. 38-41.

Chapter Questions From Global health 101 richard skolnik book Essay - 4

Chapter Questions From Global health 101 richard skolnik book - Essay Example Lack of accurate data also caused the disease to be prevalent over a long time. The lack of political influence was also another cause (Skolnik 65). Intellectual property law affects health care negatively; intellectual property law hinders provision of affordable health care due to high pricing of medicine. The laws also discourage development of generic medication, which should be cheaper than the original (Skolnik 75). The most important issues that may arise when research is conducted in developing countries include the standards of care, after trial benefits for the individuals and community and the care given to the participants after the study not related to the study (Skolnik 80). Scare resources allocated to health care can be justified using one or more principles. One of the principles is health maximization, equality, prioritizing the most affected and personal responsibility. These principles can be combined or used individually to justify resource allocation (Skolnik

Discussion Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Discussion - Movie Review Example He resorts to painting one of the most sarcastic pieces of work he ever did, presenting himself in the painting as the villain of peace thereby suggesting a guilty plea. His youthful life existed during the time of religious dilemma in Italy attributed to artistic symbols used by the Catholic Faithfuls in Italy (Schama 1). The fact that Catholic Faithfuls successfully shot back idolatry accusations leveled against them by the Protestants from Northern Europe offered even better environment for Caravaggio to thrive in his yet to be painting career. Caravaggio’s artistic work majorly revolved around slavish copying of surrounding phenomenon while presenting them in exactly opposite and unexpected form. For instance, he painted himself as Bacchus, the god of wine who was also a symbol of beauty and youthfulness in an opposite but similar way. His nature-twist form of art did catch attentions. He got a special invitation from Maria Del Monte, a Cardinal in Rome to move into the palazzo. However, despite the struggles, recognition and fame, Caravaggio’s life remained more or less the same. He committed murder, ended up in the wrong side of the law. Born in Spain in 1599, Velazquez grew up a talented man in painting. Humbled, relatively peaceful, and benign paintings dominated his artistic choice throughout his pieces of work. His painting reflected the ancient ways of livelihood in Southern Europe. He painted taverns cum pubs, kitchens, and contrasting family pictures showing innocent faces of both old and young alike. The paintings appeared distinct than painting could be, presenting the household picture the way it ought to appear explicit (ZCZFilms 1). Velazquez’s appreciation for the role of the family and religion in social livelihood became a major theme dominant in his paintings. The theme ranged from painting of a pub, kitchen, humbled family members, and a portrait similar to that of Virgin Mary. He valued his wife so much

Reasoning for Bible Allusions in the Bear Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Reasoning for Bible Allusions in the Bear - Essay Example Also Sam Fathers painted Isaac's face with the deer of the blood after his first kill of a deer, a ritual that symbolizes sacrifices. The bear Old Ben, conversely, is a complex object of symbolism. Many scholars interpreted Old Ben as a symbol of strength and willingness of human nature. Some sees him as a symbol of freedom in wilderness. However, in Biblical allusion, Old Ben was compared to the Tree of Knowledge. Hunters are hunting down devotedly the old bear. Not because it was a threat to the nearby civilization, but because of the hunters' pride in the achievement of the wild bear's declination. The curiosity is intriguing and enticing to accomplish. The same goes with the Tree of Knowledge. The fruit of the three was forbidden to eat. Thus it became a center of curiosity for the first man and woman habituated the garden, its taste, its effect after eating it. The majestic figure of the bear fascinated the minds of the Southern Hunters. The rewarding hunters' pride to take down Old Ben was like a devil that tempted Eve to defy and eat the forbidden fruit. It is then tempting the mind towards viciousness of the southern people to go after the cruel reward awaiting. Canaan is obviously referring to the So... It was also directly describing the South where Faulkner himself explored with his early years as well as Isaac's during his early years, as Hebrew Bible illustrated Land of Canaan as extension southward from Gaza to the Brook of Egypt. The civilization in the second part of the story that Isaac gone to had came from the concept of Canaan. Faulkner used both Biblical places to emphasize the contrast between the wilderness and the civilization. From the Garden of Eden, Isaac fled to Canaan, and eventually learned that people in the civilization can be more uncivilized as creatures in the wilderness were, if not being paralleled. This in regards to the lifestyle he witnessed during in his relatives in the South, like McCaslin Edmonds, and Uncles Buddy and Buck. The practice of incest, the deception in the Buck and Buddy's old ledger of ownership, Cass' prejudices, all of these made Isaac to see that Old Ben is a symbol of untamed human willingness and at a same time of great independence of human spirit. The fascination to kill Old Ben was the curse that brought in people's lives towards their greed and viciousness. Now, in the last part of the story, Boon's madness could be the result of the curse in discovering the curiosity of killing Old Ben. The same goes when Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, a curse bestowed to them along with the knowledge they suddenly acquired upon eating the fruit. Boon suddenly thinks he owns everything in the wilderness as he defeated the most regarded powerful creature in it. He acquired a thinking of replacing Old Ben's mightiness. Thus the impossible possession he had will make him madder eventually. A repeat to the excerpt of Faulkner's description "Arcadian Biblical vision of a world which

The Code of Hammurabi Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Code of Hammurabi - Essay Example After it was studied it became clear what it was: a set of laws expounded by the Babylonian king Hammurabi. It revealed the end of the time of tribal custom and the beginning of a new period of history (Johns). Indeed, as a well-preserved artefact, there is much we can gain from its study. It shows us about the development of cities and kingdoms, how power is used and preserved, how commerce and wealth are created. It is a magnificent record of human development. Why was this code of laws important? Why were people excited to discover it? The answer must lie in the role that laws and rules play in our society and in our evolution. In the distant past, people organized themselves in small groups of hunter-gatherers. Perhaps a few families worked together. It was easy to impose order when everyone knew each other. For example, even today most family disputes never leave the house. The mother or father is in charge and imposes discipline. When agriculture was developed, people began to settle in larger groups. Small towns developed. It became much harder to impose rules and disciplines. What was required was an objective set of standards that was widely known. Property disputes and acts of violence needed to be resolved otherwise they would fester and lead to acts of violence, order would be destroyed. Rules and laws were required to maintain the peace. It is hard to know if the code itself was written in response to serious disorder in Hammurabi’s kingdom at the time. What is more likely is that these were rules that were generally accepted and unwritten for many years before it was decided to write them down. Actually inscribing them has some benefits. It gave more certainty to the system; the rules were written down and could not be changed too easily. However, it is doubtful that the average person would have been able to read at this time. It was more likely for the benefit of those in the court and to leave a lasting legacy regarding the strength and order of the kingdom. Perhaps most significantly, we see here the protean version of the Ten Commandments that would become the basis of our own laws and jurisprudence. There are those who suggest that Moses was inspired by the code of Hammurabi too (Cook, 30). More scholarship may be required to prove this idea, but it is an interesting one that may shed even more light on the development of laws. The Code tells us many important things about Hammurabi’s kingdom. While some of the laws may seem a little harsh to us today, for example, plucking out eyes and teeth, they nevertheless show a high degree of sophistication. The also show the Hammurabi was willing to give up a significant amount of his own discretion as king which other kings might normally use to punish people depending on how they felt that day. These rules provide certainty and clarity. They show that Hammurabi was confident in the strength of his kingdom and willing to give up some power to those who would enfo rce the laws of the land. None of the laws seem to be especially unfair (though the punishment may seem violent to us) and that further proves that these rules were the work of a lucid mind and not a product of a crazed dictator. The recognition of private property is also a major shift away from communal property holding and may even signal the very beginning of the capitalist order (John). This is an

Boomtown Girl Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Boomtown Girl - Assignment Example She was also the youngest in the class. Her viewpoint was often unwavering and even though she tended to have a negative view of things, the narrator describes it as a self-defensive mechanism. When they were away from each other, Ma Li and the narrator exchanged letters, as this is how they kept in touch. The narrator pays close attention to Ma Li and appears to have a special interest in her. While working with a jewelry factory in Shenzhen, she registered a positive trend; her salary grew by over 100 %, she entered a serious relationship and her character grew more apprehensive and bold. She is seen standing up to her boss and eventually quitting the job to become an English teacher at the nursery school level. As the plot unfolds, the narrator goes to visit Ma Li at Shenzhen where they bonded for a while. The narrator is seemingly impressed by the progress Ma Li was making especially the fact that ‘she was doing well’ in the narrator’s closing remarks. As the plot unfolds, her character transforms and she becomes more confident. The narrator notes that much of her shyness had faded away as is evident in the way she stands against her boss after breaking curfew for which she was not apologetic at all. Likewise, she was becoming more responsible. She helped her family make ends meet especially by designating a portion of her salary towards paying school fees for one of her siblings. As the narrator writes, the newfound sense of responsibility, as evidenced from her growing obligation towards family, had given Ma Li a novel air of maturity. She was becoming more mature as she entered into a relationship with her boyfriend Gao Ming and started living together. She also felt responsible for her fellow workers and she often spent time with them when they felt lonely. During her college years, the narrator notes that Ma Li was not entirely social with other students (Hessler 3). She often secluded herself and had

Habermas Public Sphere-Market Forces or Political Forces and the Essay

Habermas Public Sphere-Market Forces or Political Forces and the Decline of the Public Sphere - Essay Example According to the compilation of Gripsrud, Moe, Molander and Murdock (2010, p. XIV), Habermas’ concept of ‘public sphere’ relates to the social life of humans and how well they adjust in the society. Adjustments in the society, in this case, relates to an arena whereby the members of the society can come in and discuss the problems that affect them in the society. In the words of Habermas (1989, p. 30), it is this freedom of the public to have varying opinions that the political action is shaped so as to fit the ideas of the ‘public’. The ‘public sphere’ is one that explains that persons and groupings in the society have a right to assemble and deliberate issues that impact them in the course of their livelihood. On the other hand, Gripsrud, Moe, Molander and Murdock (2010, p. XIV) indicate that the ‘public sphere’ is an avenue whereby modern day societies come together and share ideas through discussions, thus creating a channel for airing public opinions. In this instance, it is apparent that a collision between the ‘public sphere’ and the authority that governs or rules the ‘public sphere’ exists. The ‘public sphere’ in this context refers to the civil society – the beneficiaries of social labor – whilst the authority refers to the ruling class or the vehicle that drives the need of the ‘public sphere’ (Gripsrud, Moe, Molander and Murdock, 2010, p. XVII). In the words of Habermas (1991, p. 129), the ‘public sphere’ determines the manner in which the ruling class will govern the ‘public sphere’. Through the ‘public sphere’ the laws and regulations of the market are drawn, and debates on how buying and selling will take place. Habermas (1991, p. 175) indicates that the ’public sphere’ has, in one way or another, control of the state. Habermas (1989, p. 51) emphasizes that the ‘public sphere’ is a form of a regulatory mechanism that prevents the ruling class from oppressing the ‘public sphere’. Gripsrud, Moe, Molander and Murdock (2010, p. XIX) are of the opinion that the ‘public sphere’ is a form of democracy that allows for participation in the course of decision making; thus, the public opinion is turned down into a political action. This is a vivid elucidation of the fact that public opinion rules the authority of law making regulations. From another point of view, Fraser (1990, p. 59) argues that the ‘public sphere’ has been credited for its ability to come up with mechanisms that always ensure that the state remains accountable for its actions in the society.

Pressure Canning Green Beans Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Pressure Canning Green Beans - Assignment Example Pressure Canning Green Beans To pressure can, one should gather the canning supplies that include the pressure canner, canning jars, canning funnel, jar lifter, canning seals and rings, a large pot or blancher, towels and dish cloths, bowls, sharp knife and large spoons. The ingredients needed will include green beans and canning salt, which is optional (Rombauer 37). Snapping the green beans involves breaking off the ends and breaking the remaining one into pieces. Snapping is not necessary do but it is preferable because it helps the beans to fit into the jar properly. The preferable size is 2 inches. One could pack the green beans either hot or cold depending on desirability. A cold pack can also be referred to as raw pack. Cold packing is quicker because it does not require heating of the green beans. In addition, in places of high altitude, cold packing is essential because it helps in achieving high pressure. The advantage with hot packing is that it allows more green beans in a jar. However, hot packing or cold packing all depends with ones choice. Both styles of packing require adding canning salt to the jar. The amount of the canning salt should be half teaspoon for pints and one teaspoon for quarts. The important point here is that canning salt is optional because it is meant for taste only (Rombauer 37). For hot packing, boil the green beans for 5 minutes before packing to the jar. One should then drain the water, pack the green beans to the jar loosely, and cover it with boiling water. One-inch headspace should be left on the jar.

Perception of Beauty Essay Example for Free

Perception of Beauty Essay The term ‘beauty’ is used in multiple contexts. These can be divided into ‘inner beauty’, describing a goodness of personality, and ‘outer beauty’, concerned with aesthetic appearance. On the surface, disfigurement affects outer beauty, but it has been found that changes in appearance can cause anxiety, depression, grief, and a lowered self-esteem. These strongly affect a person’s disposition. Thus, defects in outer beauty can indirectly alter inner beauty. How do human beings decide who is attractive and who is not? Society is full of messages telling us what is beautiful, but what are those definitions based on? Do we consciously decide whom we are attracted to? The issue of beauty and how we define it has been studied for centuries. Scholars from all fields of study have searched for the formula for beauty. Darwin in his book â€Å"The Descent of Man† wrote, It is certainly not true that there is in the mind of man any universal standard of beauty with respect to the human body. It is however, possible that certain tastes in the course of time become inherited, though I have no evidence in favor of this belief. Beauty is an idea. Everybodys idea of beauty is unique. Beauty is a function of culture also. When ideas about beauty make powerful impacts, they can become beauty ideals. What is ideal beauty? We see it everywhere, from paintings, to magazines to TV. Douglas Yu of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, agrees. Its true by definition. Beauty is always judged by the receiver, he says. At the same time, he says in an email there is inter-observer concordance, a measure of objectivity, so that individual perceptions of beauty, factoring in other characteristics such as personality and intelligence, can often be aggregated to form a consensus opinion. Judgment of Beauty According to Kant, the judgment of beauty is different from cognitive or moral judgment because it is affected subjectively, that is, exclusively in reference to the person making the judgment. For a judgment to be truly â€Å"aesthetic†, rather than merely idiosyncratic, the person making the judgment must be adamant that their opinion be consensus. â€Å"A person who describes something as beautiful insists that everyone ought to give the object in question his approval and follow suit. Plato, one of the earliest philosophers to concern himself with beauty, defined it as a â€Å"property intrinsic in objects† which could be measured in â€Å"purity, integrity, harmony and perfection. † Media and Perception of Beauty Research shows that media play a dominant role in influencing females’ perceptions of the world around them, as well as helping them to define their sense of self. The media can definitely change our perception of beauty. It can indeed create a distortion in what a person considers to be ideal beauty or not. It is proven that those that are under the influence of media, either the TV or Print media may unsavorily change what is their idea of beauty by wanting to measure up the ideal or standard portrayed by the media. Another major influence on this centurys attitudes towards beauty was the growth of the film industry. For the first half of the century, all the major beauty icons were film actresses. It was a medium that allowed women who would have previously been overlooked to shine. For instance, the 19th century aversion to redheads was still in place as late as the 20s. It was that black-and-white medium that allowed Clara Bow to be the exception. However, stars such as Bette Davis and Katherine Turner who could not be described as â€Å"conventionally beautiful† invariably came from middle or upper class backgrounds. Beauty was an essential attribute for a working class woman to become successful in Hollywood. This period was also the beginning of the ties between the film and fashion industries, which would continue for decades to come. References Journal of Young Investigators Undergraduate, Peer-Reviewed Science Journal http://www. jyi. org/volumes/volume6/issue6/features/feng. html Utah Education Network  http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=4527

History and Description of a Subordinate Group Member Essay Example for Free

History and Description of a Subordinate Group Member Essay Throughout the history of North America, there has been one ethnic group who has given up almost everything to the European settlers. Land, home, resources, and dignity were stolen from Native Americans. The long history of the American Indian is being written, even today. Approximately forty thousand years ago, the earliest ancestors of Native Americans migrated across the Bering Strait from Asia on pack ice (Hoerder, 2005). The population rose steadily, and by the time the first substantial settlement of Europeans was established in the New World, Native Americans lived throughout the continent. In the search for more farmland, European immigrants quickly pushed the native population out of their traditional homelands. This migration began the crowding of other native bands, forcing eastern natives to move beyond the Ohio River, thus starting a series of relocations for the Native Americans that continued through the next two centuries. Less than fifty years after the end of the American Revolution, many of the tribes in the northeastern United States sold their land under pressure from the newcomers. Before 1850, these natives migrated west of the Mississippi River. If you traveled to Oklahoma today you would find the same bloodlines that once roamed the New England hills (Indians The Readers Companion to American History, 1991). Wanting to live apart from the natives and expecting them to remain controlled, reservations were established, including an Indian Territory (est. 1825) in present-day Oklahoma. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was enacted to populate these newly established areas. President Jackson ordered the forced migration of Native Americans from multiple southeastern tribes. Approximately 4,000 Cherokee Indians perished in 1838-1839 on their 800-mile march, or during their succeeding internment. This tragic event has become known as the Trail of Tears. (American Indian Policy, 2002) Trying to Americanize instead of segregate the Indians, in 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, which broke up reservations and gave land to individual Indian families. The idea of the Dawes Act was to assimilate Indians by giving them land from which they could profit. What followed were laws, over the next few decades, which dissolved tribal governments and placed Native Americans completely under the jurisdiction of U.  S. laws (American Indian Policy, 2002). The reservation system is one distinctive aspect of the Native American culture that materialized from their relationship with other Americans. The United States has 310 reservations within its borders. The federal government owns 298 reservations and 12 belong to the states in which they are located. A total of 437,431 Indians resided on reservations or trust lands. That is approximately 22 percent of the Native Americans defined by the 1990 census (Shumway Jackson, 1995). The United States has proven itself unreliable on its policies and treatment of Native Americans. The government teeters between a policy of segregation, under which Indians are treated as a self-sustaining culture, and assimilation policies, which try to integrate Indian and European cultures. The United States acknowledged Indian sovereignty and established treaties with them. Unlike foreign nations, Indians shared the continent with the quickly growing nation who needed resources, and were quick to form treaties, giving Indians land rights and territorial sovereignty but repeatedly found ways to revoke those privileges.

Foucauldian Discourse on Punishment

Foucauldian Discourse on Punishment Foucauldian Discourse on Punishment It is noteworthy that the power and techniques of punishment depend on knowledge that creates and classifies individuals, and that knowledge derives its authority from certain relationships of power and domination (Sparknotes, 2006). However, it is in the works of French philosopher Michel Foucault on penal institutionsthat the idea of punishment as part of a discourse of power is made explicit. In this paper, I will critically assess Foucault’s discourse concept on punishment as well as Bentham’s panopticon theory demonstrating the extent of Foucault’s concept towards punishment. Disciplinary institutions are, by and large, places where power is exercised and coursed through various mechanisms. Without doubt, it is in Discipline and Punish (1977) that Foucault’s concern with discipline and surveillance becomes even more pronounced than his other genealogical works. In this work he examines the progressive sophistication of disciplinary mechanisms such as punishments employed in prisons that are in fact, upon closer scrutiny, representative of the same progression of disciplinary mechanisms in society. He undertook an examination of power relations using the penal institution as a take-off point, for the primary reason that it is here where the different disciplinary techniques used in the exercise of power are more evident. At the outset, he shows how torture and execution was made a public spectacle; with the condemned man being paraded in a manner deemed suited to the crime he committed. Interestingly however, public tortures and executions soon became a ‘hidden’ affair, with the condemned man being transferred secretly from one place to another in a manner as inconspicuous as possible, using plain carriages with no particular distinguishing mark indicating that the cargo was a convicted felon. Nevertheless, Foucault points out the concern that the institution has with the ‘body’, a preoccupation that the prison has in common with the asylum and the hospital and, upon close examination, with other institutions as well(Foucault, 1977, p.25). The shifting of torture and execution from the public to the private realm (resulting in more economical disciplinary techniques) subtly demonstrates how mechanisms of discipline evolve and take other forms. In an interview, Foucault states: What I wanted to show is the fact that, starting from a certain conception of the basis of the right to punish, one can find in the work of penal experts and philosophers of the 18th century that different means of punishment were perfectly conceivable. Indeed in the reform movement†¦ one finds a whole spectrum of means to punish that are suggested, and finally it happens that the prison was in some way, the privileged one (Foucault, in Lotringer, 1989, p.286). Using the prison as an example, Foucault demonstrates how such disciplinary institutions utilize different techniques to form ‘docile bodies’: a direct coercion of the body to produce both productive subjects and instruments with which to channel power (Foucault, 1977, p.136). This is a positive perspective of power, because through subjection and subjugation, the individual at once becomes a productive body through direct bodily training. There is a purpose to an institution’s exercise of power, depending upon the nature of that institution; at most, what can be said insofar as purpose is concerned is that institutions all aim at producing ‘docile bodies’ in whatever form the latter may take. Again, this depends on what type of individual an institution intends to fashion. Docile body simply refers to the type of individual that is trained and disciplined in the context of a power relation in an institution. In discussing productivity, it can be understood to refer to the capacity of institutions to produce individuals of a specific type, utilizing punishments as mechanisms. In their book, Michel Foucault (1984), Cousins and Hussains write â€Å"that imprisonment is also enveloped in a mechanism of power† (p. 173). Foucault sees discipline, therefore, as combinative: it functions to combine elements, in this case, individuals, into a uniform mass not through the individual variables found in each element, but through the characteristics imposed upon it because of the space it occupies. Hence, the space defines the capabilities of each individual, which in turn contribute to the collective function of the mass. As it were, the individual is trained through its designation or position, the series that is relevant to his codified space, and through the issuance of a systematic order or command from the authority (Foucault, 1977, p.166). In the following part, it will be made evident that for Foucault, the institutional role of the prison-model of society paves the way for control and observation. At the end of the chapter entitled Panopticism, Foucault explicitly stated: The practice of placing individuals under ‘observation’ is a natural extension of a justice imbued with disciplinary methods and examination procedures. Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, and its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons? (p. 228). In this particular passage, Foucault outlines the mechanisms that the prison uses in controlling criminality. On closer examination, what he in fact outlines are the mechanisms that operate within different social institutions. This is a noteworthy point, since the institutions that he mentioned, i.e. factories, schools, barracks, and hospitals, all function in essentially the same way as the modern prison. These all use specific procedures and techniques to discipline subjects. Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the â€Å"Panopticon† became an influential model for modern day architectural efficiency. In short, the prison that he envisioned in the late 18th century was to be constructed in such a way as to have the individual cells arranged in a circular manner, with an observation tower at the centre of the formation, light coming from the outside of the cells illumines the inmate for whoever is staying at the observation tower, while the observer in the tower itself remains hidden from the cells’ occupants (See. Figure 1). This arrangement reverses, yet makes even more powerful, the traditional notion of incarceration that is, the putting away of criminality. Thus, to assume that someone is in the observation tower even if there is no one there is the full effect of the â€Å"Panopticon†. Foucault (1977) further clarified: Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary†¦ in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. (p. 201) It can be seen that central to the effective use of the panoptic principle is the efficiency of surveillance mechanisms. The latter should function in such a way as to force the recipient of disciplinary power to keep watch over his/her own actions, because of the fact that s/he is being observed by the authority figure. The concept of the gaze is what makes discipline work. In the panoptic model, visibility becomes the central principle that governs incarceration. In other words, For Foucault, the â€Å"Panopticon† represents the way in which discipline and punishment work in modern society. It is a diagram of power in action because by looking at a plan of the â€Å"Panopticon†, one realizes how the processes of observation and examination operate (Sparknotes, 2006). To my way of thinking, by and large the foucauldian concept of discourse towards punishment is an explicit, objective and realistic extensive concept with an array of persuasive arguments and insights on power and techniques of punishment that reflect the modern penal system and simultaneously the various mechanisms of observation and examination. On the whole, what is made evident at this point is that punishment in Foucault should be understood as something much broader than simple retribution. Instead, punishment is an act that is subsumed under the notion of discipline, or training. As such, the prison institution is designed to re-form a criminal into an individual who can be reintegrated into mainstream society, in order to be made useful and productive once more. As already mentioned, the mechanisms used by society are by and large the same mechanisms of discipline used in institutions such as the prison. Within this larger framework, it is implied that the notion of punishment, in all its forms, operate as a part of a purposeful social design within which all other theories become possible. What is positive about such a societal setup is the fact that techniques such as punishments are not entirely negative or prohibitive. Relations of power are important for Foucault because of the positive effects borne out of it. As a final positive note, consider what he says that is summed up best in an interview: It seems to me that power is ‘always already there’, that one is never ‘outside’ it†¦ But this does not entail the necessity of accepting an inescapable form of domination†¦ To say that one can never be ‘outside’ power does not mean that one is trapped and condemned to defeat no matter what (Foucault, 1980, p.141). While Foucault did not agree with the prison per se as the best form of punishment, he saw in the prison a mechanism that, as used by the society, functions as a state mechanism for internalizing discipline. That means the individual would be responsible for governing or disciplining himself from within. Every time the person â€Å"feels the gaze† (i.e. domination), he would be forced to govern himself. In other words, the effects of discipline are felt even though the disciplinary power is absent. The prison is therefore not simply a place for punishment, but a model of an effective mechanism. Bibliography Cousins, M. Hussain, A. (1984)Michel Foucault. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Macey, D. (1994) The Lives of Michel Foucault. London: Vintage. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish. Alan Sheridan Trans. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1989.) What calls for Punishment? In: Lotringer, S. ed. Foucault Live. New York: Columbia University, pp. 279-292. Foucault, M. (1980). Power and Strategies. In: Gordon, C. ed. Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon, pp. 134-145. Sparknotes. (2006). Michael Foucault: Discipline and Punish. Available: Last accessed 1 March 2007. Panopticon (Prison’s Plan) Figure 1 From Discipline and Punish, 1977

Economics :: essays research papers

Island of Mocha Essay The Island of Mocha in the video is an example of a traditional economic system evolving into a market system. Every person plays a key role in this traditional system. They had fisherman, coconut collector, melon seller, lumberman, barber, doctor, preacher, brownies seller, and a chief. The Mochans got sick of trading goods all across the island just to get the things that they want or needed. The Chief decided that they would use clam shell for currency instead of trading. The first type of economic system that they movie shows is a traditional system. A traditional economy is an economic system in which the allocation of scarce resources and other economic activity is the result of ritual habit or customs. In other words a traditional economy is a barter or trade system, everybody decides WHAT WHEN and FOR WHOM. When the video first starts the Mochans had to trade all over the island to acquire what needed. After a while they had enough of trading the chief decided to switch to currency instead of trade. The economic system that they switched to is called a market economic system. A market economy is an economic system in which supply, demand, and the price system help people make decisions and allocate resources. So with a market economy you decide WHAT WHEN and FOR WHOM. In the movie Pablo the lumberman starts up a company and sells stock to allow him to be able to get all of the supplies needed. Big Daddy had triplets and need lumber to make the nursery bigger, since they switched to a market economy he had no money because the islanders would give the chief a portion of what they had. So Big Daddy had to start a tax in order to pay for the expansion of the nursery. Since all the businesses were all doing so well every business wanted to expand so the demand for lumber was great which caused a lumber shortage, the lack of resources the price when up which cause inflation all over the island. With inflation going on Big Daddy had to do something in order to stop it. The island of Mocha was going in to a recession so Big Daddy took control and put a price freeze on everything. Now the economic system turned into a command economy. A command economy is an economic system characterized by a central authority that makes most of the major economic decisions.

Personal Narrative: Drafts of my Writing Essay -- Narrative Essay Writ

Failing to mention either the most rewarding or the most distressing aspects of learning to write would be to tell an incomplete story. I have an intimate yet erratic relationship with writing. I am a most ambivalent lover. Stopping to glance at my watch, my fingers still poised above the keyboard, I have smiled, amazed to find that I have been in a state of bliss in which hours have passed without my noticing. I have also flushed and sweated as I stared at my computer screen, reading my own text over and over again, vainly trying to anticipate the criticism I correctly supposed would come. I love, adore, am devoted to, am crazy about writing. The limitations of words are nowhere more apparent that when I try to describe my pleasure, joy, delight, satisfaction at using, playing with, relishing, wielding them. I know about writing; well, the truth is that I sometimes know how to write. How it is that I know how to write is something I don’t know a lot about. I am a creative writer and a formal essayist. I am humorous and deadly serious, courageous and terrified. I write fiction and essay, poetry and prose. That makes me the teller of lies and truths and, perhaps occasionally, a bit of Truth. But I am fragile, so fragile. I can write when approval is heaped on me, layered like blankets; give me flannel, cotton, polyester blends, wool and down. Regardless of their weight or numbers, they never smother me or weigh me down. In truth, they barely keep out the drafts. I am grateful to be able to report that I have been wrapped tightly in such comforters as: â€Å"Good point . . . very impressive work . . . excellent . . . outstanding job.† â€Å"Very good essay, with clarity and insight.† â€Å"A strong paper, certainly no... ...I am grateful to her for saying them. Second, I attended the International Women’s Writing Guild’s Summer Conference last month at Skidmore College. Eunice Scarfe, a Canadian short story writer who teaches at the University of Alberta taught a workshop that I was drawn to attend each day. She called free writing â€Å"the act of writing,† and then described the editing and crafting that follow as â€Å"the art of writing.† That phrase brought a dignity to what had sometimes seemed to be embarrassingly numerous rewrites. It allows me a little shelter from the cold drafts that always threaten. Last, despite the uncertainty I feel about this relationship, despite my anxiety and my love’s many warts, complexities and annoying habits, I tuck the blanket around the two of us. I am conflicted, but still in love and something that I can’t quite name keeps me coming back for more.

Free Essays - The Hazards of Moviegoing :: Example Personal Narratives

The Hazards of Moviegoing    I am a movie fanatic. When friends want to know what picture won the Oscar in 1980 or who played the police chief in Jaws, they ask me. My friends, though, have stopped asking me if I want to go out to the movies. The problems in getting to the theater, the theater itself, and the behavior of some patrons are all reasons why I often wait for a movie to show up on TV.    First of all, just getting to the theater presents difficulties. Leaving a home equipped with a TV and a video recorder isn't an attractive idea on a humid, cold, or rainy night. Even if the weather cooperates, there is still a thirty-minute drive to the theater down a congested highway, followed by the hassle of looking for a parking space. And then there are the lines. After hooking yourself to the end of a human chain, you worry about whether there will be enough tickets, whether you will get seats together, and whether many people will sneak into the line ahead of you.    Once you have made it to the box office and gotten your tickets, you are confronted with the problems of the theater itself. If you are in one of the run-down older theaters, you must adjust to the musty smell of seldom-cleaned carpets. Escaped springs lurk in the faded plush or cracked leather seats, and half the seats you sit in seem loose or tilted so that you sit at a strange angle. The newer twin and quad theaters offer their own problems. Sitting in an area only one-quarter the size of a regular theater, moviegoers often have to put up with the sound of the movie next door. This is especially jarring when the other movie involves racing cars or a karate war and you are trying to enjoy a quiet love story. And whether the theater is old or new, it will have floors that seem to be coated with rubber cement. By the end of a movie, shoes almost have to be pried off the floor because they have become sealed to a deadly compound of spilled soda, hardening bubble gum, and c rushed Ju-Jubes.

Case Study of Lehman Trikes

Lehman Trikes was engaging in a forward integration. They were able to obtain the front end parts needed for their trikes through their deal with Harley Davidson. Where other manufacturers were unwilling to provide these parts, Harley Davidson provided the parts and allowed Lehman to manufacture a completed product. Harley Davidson was engaging in a related diversification strategy.They were already selling motorized bikes but by including Lehman Trikes in the process they were able to sell a different type of bike, a three wheeled motorcycle, allowing them to reach new customers. Lehman had an opportunity to increase production in their manufacturing facilities. A major benefit to Lehman was the potential to gain a larger customer base by teaming with Harley Davidson brand and reputation. They would also benefit from the increase income provided by the manufacturing contract.With this business venture, Lehman also runs the risk of competing against themselves. Since they also produc e three wheeled motorcycles, the products they are producing for Harley Davidson could take away some potential customer do to the popularity of the Harley Davidson brand. Harley Davidson has the opportunity to sell an end product that is expertly built. By outsourcing the job to a company that is an expert in the field, Harley Davidson is able to market their bikes as a well built machine.A major benefit to Harley Davidson was labor provided by Lehman Trikes. They did not have to pay union workers, employed by Harley Davidson, for completion of the bikes but were able to outsource the work for a better rate. Harley Davidson also faces the competition of Lehman Trikes and other companies that Lehman has partnered with. Not only could the Harley Davidson trikes face competition with Lehman build trikes, but also with other trikes but by Lehman for other companies.Considering the state of the economy and its impact on the trike market, it was reasonable for Harley Davidson to bring pr oduction back into their own facilities. By working out a labor agreement with their workers, Harley Davidson was able to reduce cost for the production of its trikes. Lehman should begin pursuing another relationship similar to the Harley Davidson contract. Although they could potentially create more competition for themselves, they could also increased production and be able to increase business by taking on work for other companies.

Its all about life Essay

Life is beautiful but not always easy, it has problems, too, and the challenge lies in facing them with courage, letting the beauty of life act like a balm, which makes the pain bearable, during trying times, by providing hope Happiness, sorrow, victory, defeat, day-night are the two sides of the me coin. Similarly life is full of moments of joy, pleasure, success and comfort punctuated by misery, defeat, failures and problems. There is no human being on Earth, strong, powerful, wise or rich, who has not experienced, struggle, suffering or failure. No doubt, life is beautiful and every moment – a celebration of being alive, but one should be always ready to face adversity and challenges. A person who has not encountered difficulties in life can never achieve success. Difficulties test the courage, patience, perseverance and true character of a human being. Adversity and hardships make a person strong and ready to face the challenges of life with equanimity. There is no doubt that there can be no gain without pain. It is only when one toils and sweats it out that success is nourished and sustained. Thus, life is and should not be just a bed of roses; thorns are also a part of it and should be accepted by us just as we accept the beautiful side of life. The thorns remind one of how success and happiness can be evasive and thus not to feel disappointed and disheartened rather remember that the pain of thorns is short-lived, and the beauty of life would soon overcome the prick of thorns. Those, who are under the impression that life is a bed of roses are disillusioned soon and become victims of depression and frustration. One who faces difficulties with courage and accepts success without letting it go to its head is the one who experience real happiness, contentment and peace in  life. Those, who think, that good times last forever, easily succumb to pressure during difficulties. They do not put in required hard work and efforts because they break down easily. You can take the example of a student, who burns the mid night oil, makes sacrifices and resists temptations so that he can perform well. Similarly, a successful executive has to face the ups and downs of life, not forgetting that life is a mix of success and failure, joy and sorrow. If he loses hope during difficult times, he would not achieve success and would be replaced by others. Even the strongest Kings and Emperors have had their cup of woes. Life has not been a bed of roses for them. The adage ‘Uneasy lays the head that wears the crown’ has been rightly used for people, who are successful and are enjoying power and authority. To sum up, life is beautiful just as roses but it has challenges which are like thorns and have to be faced and overcome by all. Those, who accept these, challenges and succeed, are the ones, who know how to live life in its true sense. Thus, enjoy life but also be prepared to bear the pricks of pain.

Assignment 2 †Why Teaching Essay

It is important not only for you, but for your Field Supervisor and me, to know what led you to enter the teaching profession. For this assignment you are to write a 300-500 word essay on â€Å"Why I Elected to Travel the Road to Teaching. † ***The first part of your paper will explain your life experiences which led you to pursue a career in teaching. ***The second part of your paper will name/identify the 3 main keys to success as identified in â€Å"Keys to Success for New Teachers. † ***The third part of this paper will explain how the knowledge of these keys can help you be a successful teacher? (You will probably need to review these ‘keys’ found in the course material. ) Formal writing is required. Your paper must incorporate correct sentence structure, punctuation, capitalization and grammar. EDTC 5100 – Assignment 2 Name: Cameron Guidry Last 4 digits of SSN#: 2381 1. Why I Elected to Travel the Road to Teaching My road to becoming a teacher is perhaps less romantic than some would like. I didn’t enjoy school when I was younger and felt no inclination to be a teacher. I did, however, find a passion for learning and writing when I was earning my undergraduate degree at The University of Kansas. Meeting instructors who were excited about their subjects got me excited too, and eventually I was getting excited all on my own. The experience was entirely foreign to me. I was reading just to read and writing without being told. I had spent my four years of high school counting the hours until it was time to leave, and it was the realization that this didn’t have to be the high school experience that pushed me toward teaching as a career. I still have a passion for the subject, and I am currently earning a PhD in English, an endeavor that is entirely fueled by my own passion. It is my hope, and experience up to this point, that I can inject that enthusiasm into my classroom. I spent two years teaching at the university level, and found success. It was as I had imagined; I had students who entered my room uninterested and left my room well equipped readers. The issue I saw was that I would only have the opportunity to interact with those fortunate few that made it to my college classroom, and it was my desire to offer what I could to a more diverse group, perhaps illuminating a possibility that wouldn’t be clear without my presence. I don’t expect to create a graduating class of English majors, but I do believe that I can provide the role model that my students can benefit from. I feel an obligation, one that I created myself, to educate. It’s not an obligation I fulfill begrudgingly; it is one that I happily attempt to answer and is my road to teaching. 2. Name the Three Keys They are be reasonable, organize your life, and reflect.3. Tell how the keys can help you to be a successful teacher? These three keys are helpful for life in general, but as a teacher I am finding myself constantly on my back foot while answering questions and asking someone to take their seat. It can be overwhelming, but by finding my center outside of the classroom, and achieving some understanding before the bell rings, attempting to control the chaos becomes a managable thing.Additional Comments: