English-language films Essay Example for Free

English-language films Essay Comprehensive and Intrepretive questions 1.Transcendentalist means The quality or state of being transcendental. It means to when someone finds themself through nature and being in solitude. 2.One of the most used quotations in the night thoreau spent in jail is Retirement? What an absurd idea! Why spend the best part of your life earning money so that you can enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it? Why work like a dog so you can pant for a moment or two before you die?. I chose this as my number one because of its great meaning. Why work during the prime of your life just so you can spend it doing nothing? This quotes meaning is very powerful to me. My second choice is Henry, if love is all around you, like huckleberries, why do you pick loneliness?. I choose this quote as my second because of its truism. This quote is correct, love is all around us. The emotional atmosphere this quote created for me was both a sense of awakening and dissapointment. My third choice out of the eight is You want to be a matchmaker, Lydian? Find me something innocent and natural and uncomplicated. A shrub-oak. A cloud. A leaf lost in the snow. I choose this as my fourth quote because it has a meaning relating to transcendentalism. When you transcend you are one with nature, and nature is simple and calm, unlike the heavily populated cities. My fifth pick is I dont know you, Mr. Congressman. I doubt if the people of Illinois will re-elect you, because you refused to go along. But I shall remember who you are, Congressman. This quotes shows the problems.

Show manliness Essay Example for Free

Show manliness Essay How does A View from the Bridge show manliness, hostility and aggression? In the play A View from the Bridge Eddie Carbone plays the protagonist. Eddie has a very particular view of what it means to be a man and in this sense is the main example of manliness, hostility and aggression in the play. Manliness, hostility and aggression are a big part of existence and of living in the play. Arthur Miller creates this by using the characters against each other, always challenging each one then the other. Throughout the play the audience are reminded of Eddies manliness and what he believes to be manly. The audience are fed an idea of what Eddie presumes to be manliness right from the start of the play. Catherine has just told Eddie that she has got a job as a stenographer, but Eddie thinks that she should stay at school. Catherine then uses the argument that shell be earning $50 a week. Eddie reacts angrily to this look did I ask you for money and then claims, I supported you this long I can support you a little more this gives the indication that Eddie believes that a man should be supporting the family and should go out of his way to make sure his niece doesnt need to go to work. Eddie then gives his views of manliness by judging Rodolfos way of living in an argument with Beatrice about Rodolfos friendliness with Catherine. Beatrice thinks he is a nice boy but Eddie doesnt like him because he sings on the ships, didja know that he then goes on to say that the other men think the same way as him because theyre callin him paper doll, theyre callin him Canary. Hes like a weird Beatrice then argues with Eddie that he is adjusting to American life but Eddie begins to compare him to his brother Marco why dont his brother sing Marco goes around like a man; nobody kids Marco. This is showing that Marco is what he views as a man and Rodolfo isnt. Later Eddie talks to Alfieri, his lawyer, about what he can do to stop Rodolfo seeing/marrying Catherine. He tells Alfieri the guy aint right he claims that the fact that Rodolfo is a blond guy and if you close the paper fist you could blow him over This is saying that to be manly a man should not only act like a man but must look like a man. This is backed up when he says that Rodolfo sings like a woman sometime he hits a note I mean high and if you came in the house you wouldnt be lookin for a him you be lookin for her Eddie keeps on complaining about how Rodolfo makes dresses and a man shouldnt be making dresses he should be buying them he takes the dress cuts it up; one-two-three he makes a new dress. In Act two Eddie shows again what it means to be a man. He fights Rodolfo and pins his arm. Catherine is watching and he is trying to show her that Rodolfo isnt a man because he cant break Eddies grip. He then tells Alfieri about it and explains why Rodolfo isnt a man Im tellin you I know he aint right. Somebody that dont want to break your grip can break it he didnt give me the right kind of fight Mr Alfieri the guy aint right. This is showing that Eddie believes that a man should be strong and if he wants to protect his woman he should fight for her. Eddies views on manliness cause a lot of conflict throughout the play. The first instance of this is when Eddie criticises Catherines new dress I think its too short he then goes on to say that Catherines walkin wavy. This is showing that Eddie doesnt want men to be perving over her and this causes conflict as Catherine is young and immature and doesnt realise that the men are like that. The next instance of Eddies views causing a conflict is when Catherine tells him shes got a job. Straight away Eddie is on the offensive, or what could be called an offensive defence, when he says NO-NO you gonna finish school Catherine tries to calm him down but Eddie continues, You cant take no job. Why didnt you ask me Eddie begins to calm down when he finds out she hasnt accepted the job yet, but becomes strangely nervous and continues to cause conflict with abrupt answers and repudiating any attempt to sway him. This again shows that his views that a man should provide for his family and woman should do what there told causes even more conflict. It is not only Catherine that Eddie causes conflicts with; he can even cause a conflict with Rodolfo when hes not there. This happens when Rodolfo is at the pictures with Catherine and Beatrice makes a comment that Rodolfo is a nice kid Eddie reacts aggressively to this he gives me the heebie-jeebies and starts insulting the way Rodolfo acts and that its not manly he sings on the ships theyre callin him, Canary this is showing that when someone doesnt conform to his views on masculinity he wont hold back in saying so. Throughout A View from the Bridge Rodolfo fails over and over again to conform to Eddies image of masculinity a pivotal moment of this is when he starts to sing paper doll just minutes after arriving. Eddie thinks that your clothes, the way you look, music and seeing sites isnt that important where as this is all Rodolfo seems to spend his money on. This leads to a pivotal and dramatic event in the play when Eddie comes home drunk to find that Catherine and Rodolfo have been in the bedroom together he immediately thinks the worst and tells Rodolfo to get out of his house. Catherine argues with him and then decides that she has to leave as well but Eddie grabs her. Rodolfo reacts angrily to this and flies at Eddie in attack. To this Eddie pins him to the floor and unexpectedly kisses him. Eddie gets up with tears rolling down his face and laughs, mocking Rodolpho. This is a big moment as it is the first time Eddie as acted to back up his displeasure of the way Rodolfo has acted but it evidently hasnt helped his cause of getting Catherine to split up with him and has in fact caused more of a friction between himself and Catherine. Marco, Rodolfos brother, is the complete opposite of Rodolfo and portrays a conventionally masculine appearance. For this reason Eddie is more partial to Marco than Rodolfo and quite often ignores Rodolfo and addresses Marco even when the two of them are together. Arthur Miller uses Marcos manliness as a climatic moment on more than one occasion. For example at the end of Act One Marco and Eddie have a test of strength. One may presume that Eddie would be the one to challenge Marco but on the contrary it is Marco who initiates the challenge as a show of strength, power and masculinity. He does this because Eddie had taught Rodolfo how to box as an excuse to fight him and therefore proof his manliness. Marco does the same thing with the test of strength because after Eddie cant lift the chair Marco doesnt laugh or rub it in his face and just lifts the chair without emotion and then again without emotion looks Eddie in the eye chair raised above his head and gives a defiant warning for Eddie to keep away from his brother. Arthur Miller uses Marcos manliness again to as a climax to the play. The play ends with Marco pressing a knife into Eddies chest and without emotion lets him fall to the ground still clutching the knife that has ended his life. This gives a dramatic end to the play and shows that although Eddie was always critical of others when they werent manly and strong, the fact that he wasnt man enough and strong enough ended his life.

Monomania Psychology Analysis: Ideal Ego and Ego Ideal

Monomania Psychology Analysis: Ideal Ego and Ego Ideal Abstract: This paper Moby Dick: Obsession, Evil and the Passion of Ignorance, argues that monomania is a passion of ignorance. It contends that this passion of ignorance is situated precisely between the ideal ego and the ego ideal. The ideal ego is the fantasy an individual has of themselves, a narcissistic illusion of completeness. It is a representation based on an image of the self fixed at the infantile period. The ego ideal is the goal of a process, a movement towards an idealized self based on internalised significant early role models, people admired and preferred in favour of the self. In monomania, the ideal ego seeks to eradicate the other, the ego ideal. This is an act of envy, an attempt to kill and steal the others good because it represents what one should be or could have been. Such an act is never conscious. It is a passion of ignorance. The saga of Captain Ahab and his obsessive desire to obliterate the Great White Whale is illustrative of this dynamic. The yearning for absolutes is a hall-mark of monomania. Monomania is a passion of ignorance and is to be found in the boundary between love and hate. It is inherently evil because it excludes and destroys reality. In monomania, ignorance functions as a parochial and universalised concept of reality, marked by a certainty and rectitude which enables the harming of others with humanitarian conviction and moral purpose. The passion of ignorance is situated precisely between the subject and the fantasy of himself. The ideal ego wishes to eradicate the other, the ego ideal, What is at the heart all psychopathological behaviour is an incapacity to communicate with aspects of the self that have, as part of the self protective mechanism of the psyche, been obscured because they are too painful to be addressed. At the time of obfuscation, the only perceived path for survival has been the isolation and dissociation of something intrinsic. Analytical psychology recognizes that there are dark recesses people carry deep within in which lurk forbidden secrets which are treated as unapproachable. These dark places and forbidden secrets are not passive, they pulsate with the presence of malignant, carnivorous forces that reek of fear and anarchy. It is no accident that the developmental arm of analytical psychology is preoccupied to the determining effects of family history, for it is in the family setting that people experience the strongest and most primitive feelings, where relationships take on their most stark and forceful forms. A persons experience within the context of family has its genesis at a time before coping mechanisms are developed, before and independent sense of security and stability has had time to consolidate. Analytical psychology understands that the individual is deeply affected by the net of past experiences. They impact on the way in which present experiences are assimilated or repressed. They determine what may be allowed to come to consciousness and what must be assigned to the unconscious. The unconscious is occasioned by a number of factors, by repression, instinctual inheritance, social conditioning and repressed trauma. It can be personal or collective. In all its aspects, the unconscious represents that part of an individuals psychic existence that is, by multiple strategies, consigned to function without conscious control. Thus analytical psychology attempts inexorably to draw one deeper and deeper into a journey of confrontation with ones self. It calls on the individual to overcome his defences, to transcend the bounds of secure systems he has established to keep full and immediate experience at bay. In the tale of Moby Dick, Ahab misuses his power, disregards the safety of his crew and the profitability of the voyage, even forfeits his own life in order to avenge himself on the whale who robbed him of his leg. He does this, all to avoid a confrontation with himself and his own vulnerabilities. The Story: The tale of Moby Dick begins with the enigmatic words of the narrator, Having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntary pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet, and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping onto the street and methodically knocking peoples hats off – then, I account it high time to get to see as soon as I can. (Melville 1992 p. 1) With these words Ishmael the story teller announces his intention to go to sea. He makes the journey to New Bedford, Massachusetts where he takes accommodation at a whalers inn, but as the inn is very full he finds himself sharing a bed with a stranger, Queequeg, a harpooner from the South Pacific. Queequeg is a cannibal from a South Sea Island. His strange physical form appears bizarre to Ishmael. He is covered in strange tattoos and apart from his alien appearance has strange habits and customs. Ishmael is terrified by the encounter but as time passes he is able to move beyond the outward exterior of Queequeg to understand that they are both men, and this strange creature from the South Seas, far from being a terrifying beast is human, and one with a particularly kind heart and generous spirit. The two men join forces and set out to seek work together as whalers. They secure work on the Pequod, a whaling vessel decked out with the bones and teeth of its victims, Peleg and Bildad, t he Pequods Quaker owners, tell them of their Captain, Ahab, who on his last voyage found that sperm whales are not defenceless victims, but creatures with teeth; Ahab has had his leg ripped from him by an enormous white whale. The hunted became the hunter and had struck back. The Pequod leaves the safety of the harbour in Nantucket on a bitterly cold Christmas Day, its crew a diverse mixture of nationalities and cultures. Days later, as the ship makes into warmer waters, Ahab finally appears on deck, balancing unsteadily on his prostheses carved from the jaw bone of a sperm whale. Ahabs intention: to pursue and kill Moby Dick, the great white whale who took his leg. To Ahab, this whale is the embodiment of evil. He must be killed and killed by Ahab. To this end he nails a gold doubloon to the mast and announces to all that the man who first sights Moby Dick will have the coin. Aboard one of these ships is a crazed prophet called Gabriel who predicts doom to all who pursue Moby Dick and the superstitious crew of the Pequod share their sea-stories of how those who hunted the whale met with ill fortune. It is not long before misfortune is seen and known by the crew. While butchering their catch, the harpooner Tashtego falls into the mouth of a dead whale which tears free of the Pequod and sinks. Queequeg dives after the drowning man, slashes into the slowly sinking head with his knife and frees the seaman. During another whale hunt, the black cabin boy Pip, jumps from a whaleboat and is left stranded at sea. He is rescued but the trauma renders him mentally disturbed. He is left mindless and uncanny, a prophetic jester onboard the ship. Still the hunt continues. One day, the Pequod encounters the whaler, the Samuel Enderby. Captain Boomer the skipper has lost an arm in a chance meeting with Moby Dick. As the two captains discuss the whale the contrast becomes evident. Boomer is happy simply to have survived his encounter, and he cannot understand Ahabs lust for vengeance. Queequeg becomes ill and asks the carpenter on board the Pequod to make him a coffin in preparation of his death but he does recover, and the coffin becomes the Pequods replacement life buoy. In expectation of finding Moby Dick, Ahab orders a harpoon to be forged and baptizes this harpoon with the blood of the Pequod harpooners, and his own. Although the Pequod is still hunting whales, it is the hunt for Moby Dick that always hangs over the life of the ship. Then, one day, Fedallah makes a prophesy regarding the death of Ahab. Ahab will see two hearses, the second made from American wood and he will be killed by hemp rope. To Ahab, this means he will not die at sea, for at sea there are no hangings and no hearses. A tropical storm encompasses the Pequod, illuminating it with electrical fire. To Ahab this is a sign of imminent confrontation and success. To Starbuck, the ships first mate, it is a bad omen and he contemplates murdering Ahab to end the obsession. The tempest ends, but then one of the sailors plummets from the ships masthead and drowns—a grave forewarning of what lies ahead. As Ahabs obsessive desire to find and destroy Moby Dick intensifies, the mad Pip becomes his constant companion. It is near the equator that Ahab expects to find Moby Dick, and it is here that the Pequod meets two whalers, the Rachel and the Delight; both have had recent fatal encounters with the Great Whale. The Captain of the Rachel pleads with Ahab to help him find his son, lost in the battle with Moby Dick, but Ahab has only one goal, to find and kill the whale. Days pass, and then, finally, Ahab sights Moby Dick. The harpoon boats are launched. Moby Dick rams Ahabs harpoon boat, destroying it but Ahab is saved by his crew. The next day, Moby Dick is sighted once more. The whale is harpooned but again, Moby dick strikes back and once again rams Ahabs boat. Fedallah is trapped in the harpoon line, is dragged overboard to his death. Starbuck saves his Captain by manoeuvring the Pequod between Ahab and the enraged beast. On the third day, the boats are launched once again and are sent after Moby Dick. The whale turns and attacks the boats, and they see that Fedallahs corpse is still lashed to the whale by the harpoon line. In the ensuing battle, Moby Dick rams the Pequod and she begins to sinks. Ahab, caught in a harpoon line, is hurled out of his whale boat to his death. The remaining whaleboats and crew are caught in the vortex of the sinking Pequod and dragged to their deaths. Ishmael, thrown from his boat at the beginning of the hunt, is the only man to survive. He floats, alone on Queequegs coffin, the only remaining flotsam from the wreckage, an isolated figure in a watery world. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan. (Melville 1992 p. 583) An Uncanny Tale In telling the story of Moby Dick, Melvilles narrator, Ishmael, engages in a process of repetition that brings the dead back to life. His narrator offers what appears to be a sober account of his real experience but in the recounting it is immediately evident that this experience is anything but commonplace. Melvilles combination of reality and the fantastic, the credible and the incredible, compel the reader to accept the narrative on its own terms. The tale confronts the reader with narratorial anxiety in both the telling of the tale and in the horror of its content. Melvilles narrative method exemplifies the de-familiarisation of the familiar, the domestication of terror that characterises the uncanny. Freud characterises the uncanny as that which arouses dread and horror; (Freud 1919 p. 339) it is that class of things which lead us back to what is known of the old and familiar. (Freud 1919 p.340) It is precarious, this combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar, where the opposites of the homely, customary and congenial also denote the secret that is concealed and kept from sight. (Freud 1919 p. 347) We believe we are at home in the immediate circle of beings. That which is, is familiar, reliable, ordinary. Nevertheless, the clearing is pervaded by a constant concealment in the double form of refusal and dissembling. At the bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extra-ordinary, uncanny. (Heidegger 1971 p. 53) Freud argues that one of the most anxiety-producing devices of the uncanny is the double. Freud considers the uncanniness of the double to be the effect of the egos projection of the object ‘outwardly as something foreign to itself. What is inside is experienced as coming from outside, (Freud 1919 p.358) split off and isolated through a process of repression and dissociation. The subject may identify with another to the extent that he is not sure which identity he is or he may substitute the extraneous self for his own. In the tale of Moby Dick it is this lack of difference which dominates Ahabs relationship to the whale. While Ahab may try to establish himself as a saviour, he too, deep down, is dangerous and destructive. It is this sameness that is problematic. When it becomes too obvious that the other is contained in the self, the other becomes an object for irrational hostility. In this dynamic, both the object (the whale) and the subject (Ahab) become doubles of each othe r in the psyche of the person who is enmeshed in the projection. The notion of the double always inspires the subject with dread and can be summed up as a dividing and interchanging of the ego. There is an inevitable cyclic repetition of the initial trauma. It is an inescapable loop until the doubling is concluded. Aboard ship, Ahab imposes an irresistible dictatorship in order to pursue his obsession. Moby Dick had injured him and that fact contravened Ahabs entire view of how the world should be ordered. The self-righteous, imposing Captain of the Pequod smoulders with the fires of hell. His all consuming pride and rage against the white whale blaze in the great speech before his crew where he proclaims, That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or the white whale principal, I will wreak my hate upon him Talk to me not of blasphemy, man, Id strike the sun if it insulted me. (Melville 1992 p. 167) Ahab cannot see Moby Dick for what the great while whale is, because the reality of the animal is subsumed under the passion of Ahabs projection. But because this ‘relationship is skewed, the rest of Ahabs world suffers. Ahab has no connection to any other person or thing beyond the white whale. It is inevitable that the whale proves to be his nemesis; it is the whale that inflicts retribution and vengeance, not Ahab. The Orphan With the first sentence of Moby Dick we are confronted with the complex figure of Ishmael. The narrative begins with the words Call me Ishmael. The name has come to symbolize orphans and social outcasts but it has another aspect to it. The word literally means ‘God hears. Ishmael, according to the Hebrew Scriptures, was the first son of Abraham, born to a slave woman, Hagar because Abraham believed his wife Sarah to be infertile. But when God granted Sarah a son of her own, Ishmael and his mother were turned out of Abrahams household. Isaac inherited the birthright from Abraham. Ishmael was left to die under a bush in the wilderness by his distraught and starving mother. But in her distress she cried out and God heard her cry and the cry of the child. 15When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. 16 And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. 18Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him. 19Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink. 20God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. (Genesis 21: 15 – 20 The Bible NRSV 1988) From a Judeo-Christian perspective Ishmael was an outcast, the result of his fathers failure to believe and obey YHWHs promise to give him a son through his wife Sarah. As a consequence, Ishmael was the one repressed and rejected. But Ishmael was heard and taken care of by God. Throughout his life, Melville was preoccupied with the imagery of orphans and in particular with the character Ishmael. In Mardi he writes, But as sailors are mostly foundlings and castaways, and carry all their kith and kin in their arms and legs, there hardly ever appears any heir-at-law to claim their estate. (Melville 2004 p. 139) In Redburn, Melville writes, at last I have found myself a sort of Ishmael on the ship, without a single friend or companion. (Melville 1957 p. 60) In Pierre Melville writes, so that once more he might not feel himself driven out, an Ishmael into the desert, with no maternal Hagar to accompany him and comfort him. (Melville 1962 p. 125) Edward Edinger argues that Melville had an Ishmael complex which had two sources; personal life experience and identification with an archetypal image. (Edinger 1995 p. 23) The personal cause would be the insanity and death of his father and the ensuing hardships this caused. Melville was twelve and a half when his father died, close to the age of the biblical Ishmael who was thirteen. In addition, he was rejected by his mother, who favoured her first son. According to Arvin Newton, Melville, as an elderly man, once remarked to his niece that his mother had hated him. (Arvin 1950 p.30) The pain of his rejection is poignantly evident in the tale of Mob y Dick Most of the action is seen through the eyes of Ishmael. He will thus represent the authors ego (Edinger 1995 p. 24) Ishmael, the lone survivor of this misadventure is the story teller. At the outset of the story, Ishmael presents as one who is in pain and internal distress. He is impoverished, hostile, depressed and potentially suicidal. He heads for the sea, to Nantucket to find work on a whaler. In the past he has found sea voyages as a way of containing his internal conflict and pain. But before he can find a ship, his poverty forces him to find accommodation in a squalid inn, sharing a bed with a harpooner. When the harpooner enters the room in which Ishmael is sleeping he awakes in horror at the apparition before him, a man who appears to have just returned from the ministrations of a surgeon, his face covered with sticking plaster. But that is not the reality. The harpooner is a cannibal from the pacific, tattooed in his native islander tradition. He carries a tomahawk, a seal skin purse with the hair still attached and a shrunken head. The overall impression is alien, bizarre and terrifying to Ishmael. He watches from beneath the counterpane as the stranger uses the tomahawk as a pipe, then quietly turns into the bed with Ishmael. He is unaware of Ishmaels presence and reacts with instinctive aggression. In the fracas that follows Ishmael calls out in terror to the landlord for help. ‘Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! Save me! (Melville 1992 p. 25) Peter Coffin, the landlord, soothes the moment. He introduces the men to each other and Ishmael is suddenly aware that this frightening apparition is a person, with a name. Queequeg is no longer a nameless savage, a cannibal with a shrunken head and a death dealing tomahawk. The tomahawk is also a peace pipe, and he shares the smoke from this unique instrument with Ishmael. The tomahawk-pipe has now become a symbol for both life and death, a symbol of reconciliation and peace. In this initial encounter with Queequeg a transformation is begun in Ishmael. In symbolic terms, he has embraced, in the symbolic form of Queequ eg, both death and life as indivisible partners, and when he wakes the following morning he begins to see the world from a different perspective. Ishmael understands the mixture of life and death that Queequegs tomahawk-come-pipe represents, and realizes, at least in that moment, that such experience can lead to renewal. The Obsession, Ahab demonstrates the dangers of an all consuming focus; the object of his obsession is the solitary great white whale, nicknamed Moby-Dick by the whalers. On his previous voyage, Ahab had his leg ripped off by Moby-Dick, and at the Ishmaels story begins, he has sworn to take his vengeance by hunting down and killing the great whale. It never occurs to Ahab that he lost his leg while trying to take the whales life and while in the process of killing countless other whales for monetary gain. Ahabs obsession has more to do with what Moby Dick represents than with the great whale himself. He saw Moby Dick as the prey and could not cope with the idea that he was not omnipotent in this relationship, that he was outdone by another creature. As Ahab reasons in a fiery speech to the crew of the Pequod, all visible objects are like pasteboard masks that hide some unknown but still reasoning thing. Ahab hates that inscrutable thing that hides behind the mask of appearance. The only way to figh t against it, he proclaims is to strike through the mask! Moby Dick, as a mysterious force of nature, represents the most outrageous, malevolent aspect of natures mask. To kill it, in the mind of Ahab, is to reach for and seize the unknowable truth that is hidden from all people. He cannot conceive of the concept that there is a simpler reality; he is not the master of all other species. He sees his failure to be able to take life at will as a reversal of his role as the predator and therefore can only conceive of himself now as the one preyed upon. This he cannot accept and so is driven to destroy that which in his mind denies his appropriated reality. Ahabs insane obsession and hunt for Moby Dick describes the consequences of viewing the world as a mask that hides unknowable truth. It is Ahabs frustration with the limits of human knowledge and power that lead him to reject both science and logic and instead embrace violence and the dark magic of Fedallah his demonic advisor. Like Christopher Marlowes Doctor Faustus, he has made a pact with the devil. Thinking he is immortal, Ahab attacks Moby Dick, striking at the mask of appearance that supposedly hides ultimate truth. His devotion to the idea that truth exists behind or beyond the physical world forces him to destroy himself in the attempt to reach it. Ahab can only relinquish his illusion by dying, or killing the object upon which his illusion has rested. Ahabs ideal ego, that is the fantasy he has of himself as one who is in control and omnipotent, is in the process of destroying his ego ideal, that is, his potential as man, captain and hunter. He believes he must eradicate the evil of the whale, but in reality, because he is caught in this doubling with the whale, he is intent on murdering himself. His passion of ignorance has overwhelmed his reason, blinded him to his own creative potential. All that is left is the passion and it knows no reason People thus reduced inflict the traumatic pain of their void on others. The evil they engender is not just about destruction but emerges from the chaotic principle of pure drive which has loss at its centre and therefore must occasion more loss. The important point is not that the symbolism of what Ahab lost, but the symbolism of the loss itself. Revenge is only sought when there has been a great loss, a loss that is seen to embody an injustice, and an injustice imposed by an enemy over whom victory should have been assured. Ahab lost his leg to a beast, an inferior creature. His quest for revenge could just as easily have been instituted by the loss of an arm, a child, or a father. The loss implies inferiority to a foe that is deemed to be unworthy of such a victory. Revenge becomes obsession because only with revenge can the world become again that which supports the adopted perception of order. For Ahab, revenge can only be perceived as the re-imposition of superiority and ascenda ncy. It is the adoption of this delusional sense of what order is, that gives rise to the monomania that attends a thirst for revenge. Ahabs loss of limb is immediate and it is personal but despite losing a leg he can still walk, he can still captain, he can still go on a whaleboat and harpoon. It is the greater loss which is the mechanism standing behind the driving revenge and his monomaniacal pursuit of it. As if to be human is forever to be prey to turning your corner of the human race, hence perhaps all of it, into some new species of the genus of humanity, for the better or for the worse. (Cavell 1998 p.154) For this reason Ahab must inflate the object of his revenge and recreate it as something larger in context. To accomplish this, Ahab must imbue Moby Dick massive power, power beyond comprehension. By placing the capacity of evil upon the whale, Ahab can fool himself into thinking that Moby Dick is a greater being than he really is and therefore his own loss appears greater than it really is. For Ahab, the delusion attendant to the psychosis of revenge suppresses the reality that he is merely a man bent on attempting to restore his lost sense of superiority. This reality is replaced with a grandiose vision of one who is a redeemer for humanity. But it is not humanity Ahab is attempting to redeem; it is his own inflated ego whose ascendancy has been usurped. By imputing to Moby-Dick a demonic power he does not really possess Ahab, blinds himself to any reality of what Moby Dick actually is, to any real strength and intelligence that the whale possesses. This blindness springs not from mere ignorance, but from a consciously willed ignorance, from the desire not to know, from the ambition not to understand. In order to sustain his delusional conception of himself, he must appoint concomitant distortion to the world which surrounds him, and particularly to the object of his obsession. Ahab desperately wants Moby Dick to be inscrutable. He wants him to be a thing that is incapable of being understood, because that enables him to categorize his nemesis as sheer evil. Therefore he is compelled to refuse any effort at understanding and it is this iron-willed ambition to remain ignorant, to label this thing as ultimate evil that generates the ironic twist whereby Ahab himself becomes the ultimate danger, the evil which he imagines he is seeking to eradicate. It is Ahab who causes the complete destruction of all that surrounds him. Evil and the Passion of Ignorance Ahab desires to attach to Moby Dick all the evil that exists in the world. Moby Dick is a creation of his infantile envious omnipotent sadistic phantasies. Ahab himself identifies the ultimately personal source of what he sees as a universal evil when he says, It was Moby-Dick that dismasted me; Moby-Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day! (Melville 1992 p.166). Moby Dick took away Ahabs ability to literally stand on his own two feet. The loss of his leg can also be seen as a symbolic emasculation and that symbolism is made all the more apparent by the fact that Ahabs quest is for a sperm whale. Moby-Dick contains sperm; Ahab does not. In his quest for revenge, all of Ahabs creative potential is voided because he cannot accept that there is a reality that is greater and stronger than himself. It is in the attempt to deny the reality and existence of that which surpasses him that he divorces himself from his own creative life potential. Captain Ahab is both the psychotic parent in command of the infant and the infant overwhelmed with his own omnipotent phantasy. In the tale of Moby Dick, Herman Melville created a character whose motives of vengeance typify the behaviour of a psychotic person. Captain Ahab, in his delusion, could not allow Moby Dick to share the same space in his paranoid and infantile world. Ahab experienced the loss of his leg as a lethal wound that was potentially reparable only by a copy-cat act of vengeance taken upon the alleged guilty Moby Dick. That intangible malignity which has been there from the beginning Ahab did not fall down and worship it, but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it He piled upon the whales hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot hearts shell upon. (Melville 1991 p. 187) We Cannibals must help these poor Christians. The relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg is the antithesis of the relationship between Ahab and Moby Dick. Ishmael and Queequeg develop a relationship that is based on the recognition of their dissimilarity and separateness. Ahab and Moby Dick are joined together by Ahabs projection and obsession. With Queequeg and Ishmael, the difference is something to be explored. The relationship between Queequeg and Ishmael has a germ of creativity; that between Ahab and Moby Dick is founded on destruction and butchery. The initial encounter between Queequeg and Ishmael provokes both terror and aggression. The landlord intervenes, calming the situation and bringing them both to an awareness of the necessity of living alongside of each other. This generates a realisation in both Ishmael and Queequeg that they are both men despite the visual and cultural dissimilarities. As time passes and conversation is enjoined, they begin to comprehend both their differences and their commonly shared objectives. According to the customs of Queequegs home, Ishmael and Queequeg are married after a social smoke out of the tomahawk pipe. Queequeg gives Ishmael half of his belongings, and the two men continue to share a bed. The tattooed body of Queequeg is much like the patchwork quilt that covers them both as they sleep. These tattoos are a written narrative of the universe but no one, save the prophet who inscribed them can decipher their meaning, not even Queequeg. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.(Melville 1992 p. 491) For Ishmael, Queequeg represents the dangerous and the forbidden for which Ishmael secretly yearns. Queequeg also symbolizes the explorative and adventurous aspect of Ishmaels personality. Once Ishmael recognizes this, his fears lessen and he embraces the savage into his life. Ishmaels initial hostility to Queequeg is a projection of the suppression of a part of his own personality. Exotic and unique, Queequeg represents the unknown. Ishmael is able to recognise this, to admit it, and to realise that his fear is due to ignorance. With this awareness comes the further realisation that he, Ishmael, must travel to the sea in order to gain life experience by exploring and embracing the unknown. The friendship between the two men, although troubled by prejudice and slow to develop into a full understanding of one anothers character, is solidified with their ‘marriage contract. They effectively become one person, illustrating the full integration of Queequegs otherness into Ishmaels personality. At the end of the book, Ishmael survives because of Queequegs coffin. In accordance with their marriage contract, Queequeg offers Ishmael protection from the sea-hawks, sharks and sea in the form of his coffin. In turn, Ishmael carries on Queequegs spirit, carved into the wood of the coffin. Queequeg represents that part of Ishmael which

walt whitman :: essays research papers

Walt Whitman   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Walt Whitman, born in 1819 to a family in Long Island, lived a very humble life before becoming a well known writer. He grew up in a community full of Quakers and followed religion very strictly as a child. Whitman loved reading the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson because he thought he related to Emerson’s ideas and theologies which closely corresponded to his own. At the age of 35, Whitman published his first book, Leaves of Grass, which was so successful that it appealed to other known poets worldwide. His talent was a great surprise to many. Whitman's abilities as a poet were unknown because his previous job was working for a local newspaper from which he got fired for being an abolitionist. It is believed, however, that Whitman's inspiration came from his trip to New Orleans and New York. Whether it was a love affair or the great scenery from the countryside that truly inspired him is unknown; nevertheless this first book was the beginning to an exciting c areer. Whitman viewed himself as the first real American poet. His poetry was symbolic of freedom and democracy, as well as emotions and beliefs. Later editions of Leaves of Grass were published in 1856 and 1860. These editions were full of new poems as well as revised earlier ones. At this time, Whitman was the editor of a local newspaper, the Brooklyn Daily Times, in addition to helping is father in carpentry. It was in 1862 when he found out his brother was injured in the war and he traveled South to serve as a volunteer nurse to the military until 1867. During his time as a nurse, Whitman composed several war poems which were published in the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass.

Essay --

Q1: Analysis of the book industry prior to the Internet Consolidation was the major theme in the book publishing industry in the early to mid 1990s; as the result, the industry appeared to be an oligopoly, dominated by only a few names such as Random House, Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, Pearson and McGraw Hill. †¢ Rivalry: high o With the domination of only a few players in the book publishing industry mentioned above, the competition among these publishers was quite fierce. Each of them always attempted to grab more market shares from other competitors to enhance profits and market power. o Major book publishers in most cases offered similar editing and marketing expertise, while the resources for them to generate revenues--the right to publish excellent works and the relationships with promising authors--were scarce. Due to the lack of major differentiators for publishers, the results of resources allocation often depended on the prices they bided on the copyrights. The bidding process could become intense and therefore drove up the price for new books to millions of dollars. †¢ Threat of new entrants: low o To start a new book publishing business, the capital requirement for the upfront payment to offices, equipment and staff would be high, especially during the pre-Internet time in 1990s, in which editing and publishing machineries such as computers and printers were pricy. o Distribution channels were key to the survival of a book publisher. Existing major players had long established stable relationships with book chains and super stores across the country, namely with huge retailers like Barnes & Noble and Borders. New comers in the book publishing industry could hardly obtain similar relationships with these dominatin... ...nline retailing platform that sells both physical books and eBooks, in order to withhold the impact of powerful online retailers like Amazon. Some publishers have already done so. In 2001, Random House, Penguin Putnam, Harper Collins, and Simon and Schuster agreed to skip online retailers and sell contents directly through Yahoo.com †¢ Work closely with Universities and other educational institutions, providing exclusive contents to faculties and students. The proprietary relationships with schools can lock-in a large group of loyal customers. †¢ Develop security technologies against pirating and illegal downloading so that publishers' lawful benefits will not be lost. †¢ Build good relationships with popular authors, solicit more exclusive contracts to produce, promote and distribute their works through publishers' own channels in order to garner the strong demands.

Latin Love :: Online Community Communities Essays

Latin Love I was taken by surprise and intrigued when my teacher told me to join an online community and follow the postings and chats for my next English paper. That same class period I spent a lot of time looking around finding all sorts of sites and topics that could keep my interest. As I explored I was trying to figure out what an online community really was. I wasn’t sure if a site with just a discussion board was enough for this project, so I tried to find others with chat rooms. Finally I came across a subject that interested me and I felt met the requirements for an online community. It was a place where common interests link people to a community online. In Howard Rheingold’s The Virtual Community an online community is stated as, â€Å"an online discussion group in which members develop long-term friendships through their interactions online. In such a community, members become intimate though they have never seen each other face to face.† Such a place is illustrated when Rheingold related the tick story in his book. It was late one night when he and his wife found a tick on their baby’s scalp. They were frightened and didn’t know what to do, so the Rheingold logged onto the WELL, an information site, to see if he could get an answer. Before his wife got a hold of the normal pediatrician, he had received an answer online. â€Å"Many people are alarmed by the very idea of a virtual community, fearing that it is another step in the wrong direction†¦Ã¢â‚¬  However, such a place for people to gather and help is needed, as demonstrated by the tick incident. An online community is a place where peo ple can gather and share information they have learned throughout the years. It is a place of solace to many and a resource to others. â€Å"Who is to say that this preference for informal written text is somehow less authentically human than opting for audible speech† (Rheingold 94)? Who is to say that written text is not as valid as spoken words? Before the time of the telephone, the only form of communication was written letters. The online community I chose tied both the written and the audible to the site. Music was the common interest in my online community.

A Reflection on Plan Evaluation

Topic: PLAN EVALUATION REFLECTION In this topic plan evaluation, I now understand why we always have visitors from the division, region and even from the central office visiting our school to evaluate and observe how things are being carried out. In my three years of service in the government, there was no school year that there was no evaluation. Seeing them holding some checklists made us tremble while asking us things and observing our classes.Being new in the system I wondered and ask myself, is it proper that after evaluation they will have feed backing so that we will be able to know what areas we need to improve and what are their suggestions for the betterment of our school and children. That is one thing that I had observed that after evaluation, results of the observation were not discussed for improvement sake. As I go over with my topic in plan evaluation I was enlightened why they regularly conduct evaluation and why we were not informed about the results of the evaluati on.It was then that the results were for the policy makers, program directors and direct program staff consumption only. If given a chance in the future to plan for an evaluation, I would suggest that any corrections or any part of the program that need some improvement, during the onset of evaluation, feed baking should took place right after the evaluation so that the implementers of the program (teachers) will be able to know where they need some polishing that will be congruent with the objectives of the program.During the design of the evaluation process it would be better if local persons and all those who are involved in the implementation of the program will be present during the discussion period so that opinions are expressed and be validated, for everybody has its part to the success of the program. All evaluation plans should identify both participants and stakeholders, and should include the relevant items developed in the evaluation process.In the monitoring aspect, I would go with the combination of performance evaluation and evaluation done on a continuing program because this will measure the impact of the program on the society or on the people. This is done to improve continuously the performance of the program period after period and in the same way this will enable planners identify shortcomings and can devise remedial actions while the plan/program is still in progress.Thorough studies should be done on what evaluation design will be best applicable to a program and I would recommend applying it or testing first the evaluation design on small population prior to the piloting. Through this, monitoring and evaluation will be manageable and any unexpected occurrences in the program will be observed right away and be given solution.Revisions of the program can be done as early as this stage. Lastly, ensure that the evaluation will be as fair, accurate, and effective as possible. The use of specific tools can help in the success of the project like annual reports, quarterly or monthly reports from the monitoring system, and anything else should equally agreed between the organization and the evaluation team.