Thursday, September 19, 2019

Importance of Art in Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre Essay -- Jane Eyre E

Importance of Art in Jane Eyre      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   It is said that art is like a mirror to the soul, a way to see what the artist is feeling deep down in their heart.   It is as if their most personal thoughts and ideas are reflected in their work, either consciously or unconsciously.   Charlotte Brontà « utilizes this fact in her imagery and portrait of Jane Eyre.   Color and vivid description play a vital role explaining the process of emotional and physical maturation throughout the novel, from young Jane's recollection of the red room in Gateshead to her final reminiscence of Ferndean's gloomy facade. There is no better example of this process than Jane's own artistic abilities as they progress through life.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   To best examine and explore the progress of Jane's emotional and temperamental development, it is important to construct a frame of reference, to have a base from which to work towards her final character. Her childhood home, Gateshead provides the groundwork of her emotional/character being, which at the beginning of the story is an isolated creature, devoid of loving and nurturing contact and shunned by humanity.   Two excerpts from her stay at Gateshead illustrate this fact, her reading of Bewick's "History of British Birds," and her punishment for striking Master John, the stay in the red room of Gateshead.   In the opening scene, Jane is found perusing a copy of Bewick's "History of British Birds," concentrating on the descriptions of the certain landscapes in which some of the birds live.   Her words paint a mental picture, one that represents her childhood,    "Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my o... ...ituality from Helen Burns" is by no means meaningless, but it lacks depth.   To present another facet into the story, imagery reflects the conditions of Jane's life, conferring a tangible and viable outlet for her imagination, and a vehicle to her soul.   As her life develops, so does her ability, and the enjoyment she receives from this talent.   Truly, Jane Eyre would still be a great novel in the absence of the painting, but it would make it that much harder to touch the fabric of it's character's being.       Bibliography    Brontà «, Charlotte.   Jane Eyre.   Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996.    Endnotes    1) Charlotte Brontà «, Jane Eyre (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996), p. 21.    2) Brontà «, p. 131.    3) Brontà «, p.132.    4) Brontà «, p. 233.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Pros and Cons of Birth Control Essay examples -- Contraceptives, Birth

Having babies is a wonderful thing embraced by many women; however, having an unplanned one is not so nice. It is good to have an option of avoiding that, contraceptive methods can hold the pregnancy till the time is right. Thanks to John Rock, who was the first man to ever invent the birth control pill, we have the option of waiting until we are ready. Even though this sounds like a wonderful idea, there are major health risks to receiving any form of contraceptive. Even though your Gynecologist does not mention it, no birth control is truly safe. The first form of birth control came in the form a pill and was approved by the FDA in 1960(qtd in Gladwell ) The pill was said to be the safest form of birth control because it was safe and said to be a natural form of birth control. John Rock was a well know man around the community. Loretta McLaughlin writes, "It was his name and his reputation that gave ultimate validity to the claims that the pill would protect women against unwanted pregnancy.†(qdt in Gladwell) Even back then, with all the research that they set out to do the pill was still know to cause cancer in young women, not only cancer but the miscarrying of children shortly after taking the pill. The most popular form of birth control is the pill. The reason for this is that it is said to be very effective against pregnancy if used correctly, it makes menstrual periods more regular and lighter, they decrease menstrual cramps and acne, makes you less likely to get ovarian and uterine cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease, ovarian cysts, and anemia, and last but not least, it doesn’t interrupt love making. Those are the good things about the pill. There are also a list of negative things: the pill doesn’t protect against S... ... Methods." Youngwomenhealth.org. 03 June 2010. Web. 03 June 2010. . "7 Common Birth Control Side Effects - Birth Control and Your Health - Health.com." Health.com: Health News, Wellness, and Medical Information. 16 Apr. 2008. Web. 08 June 2010. . "Birth-Control Secrets Your Gyno Hasn't Told You - Cosmopolitan.com." The Online Women's Magazine for Fashion, Sex Advice, Dating Tips, and Celebrity News - Cosmopolitan. 04 June 2010. Web. 08 June 2010. . ANNALS OF MEDICINE." Gladwell Dot Com - Malcolm Gladwell, Blink, Tipping Point and New Yorker Articles. 10 Mar. 2000. Web. 08 June 2010. . Keel,Eustacia. â€Å"Birth Control†Questionnaire.Fresno. Heald College,2010

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Nature Essay -- Orangutans Primates Animals Essays

Nature "What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts, also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth." - Chief Seattle The love I have for orangutans comes from an early age. Like most little sisters, my older brother ruthlessly teased me. When I was a baby he would make me mimic funny faces and stick my hair up on end. He said I looked like an orangutan. His teasing continued, but instead of getting mad, I became interested. I began taking a look at these creatures and soon discovered that being compared to one wasn't completely wrong. Actually, orangutans have 97% of the same DNA as humans. So maybe my brother's teasing was not that far off, not that I'll mention that fact to him anytime soon! Orangutans are part of the Great Ape group that are the closest animals related to humans. Orangutans are unique in the ape world in that the other three types, gorillas, chimpanzees, and baboons, are all from Africa. Orangutans are the only apes to come from Asia. Another distinction of the orangutan is their hair, which is bright reddish brown instead of light brown or black like the other species. However, probably the biggest difference is that orangutans are the only arboreal apes. This means that they live primarily in the trees, while the other apes move along the forest ground. In fact, they are the largest animals in the world to dwell in trees. Orangutans used to live as far away as Thailand and Cambodia, but due to human encroachment, they are now only found in the wild in two of Indonesia's islands, Sum... ...f destruction humans have caused to this species. This is especially hard to understand when seeing what close connections humans have with them. It does not take a lot of time spent watching these animals to fall in love with them. While sitting and observing the orangutans at the Denver Zoo, I was amazed at the joy they brought to other visitors, adults and children alike. By slightly modifying our behavior and lifestyle, we can make a difference in the lives of these animals so that they can be seen not only behind glass at zoos, but in their rightful homes among the trees. Researched Sites Balikpapan Orangutan Society-- www.orangutan.com Orangutan Foundation International- www.orangutan.org Lecture Notes Smits, W. (2002, October 28). Saving the Orangutans. [Lecture]. In Lecture Series: Endangered Species. Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Monday, September 16, 2019

Checks And Balances And Seperation Of Powers

The Constitution nowhere contains an express injunction to preserve the boundaries of the three broad powers it grants, nor does it expressly enjoin maintenance of a system of checks and balances. Yet, it does grant to three separate branches the powers to legislate, to execute, and to adjudicate, and it provides throughout the document the means by which each of the branches could resist the blandishments and incursions of the others. The Framers drew up our basic charter against a background rich in the theorizing of scholars and statesmen regarding the proper ordering in a system of government of conferring sufficient power to govern while withholding the ability to abridge the liberties of the governed.The Theory Elaborated and ImplementedWhen the colonies separated from Great Britain following the Revolution, the framers of their constitutions were imbued with the profound tradition of separation of powers, and they freely and expressly embodied in their charters the principle.2 But the theory of checks and balances was not favored because it was drawn from Great Britain, and, as a consequence, violations of the separation–of–powers doctrine by the legislatures of the States were common[p.64]place events prior to the convening of the Convention.3 As much as theory did the experience of the States furnish guidance to the Framers in the summer of 1787.4The doctrine of separation of powers, as implemented in drafting the Constitution, was based on several principles generally held: the separation of government into three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial; the conception that each branch performs unique and identifiable functions that are appropriate to each; and the limitation of the personnel of each branch to that branch, so that no one person or group should be able to serve in more than one branch simultaneously.To a great extent, the Constitution effectuated these principles, but critics objected to what they regarded as a curi ous intermixture of functions, to, for example, the veto power of the President over legislation and to the role of the Senate in the appointment of executive officers and judges and in the treaty–making process. It was to these objections that Madison turned in a powerful series of essays.Madison recurred to â€Å"the celebrated† Montesquieu, the â€Å"oracle who is always consulted,† to disprove the contentions of the critics. â€Å"[T]his essential precaution in favor of liberty,† that is, the separation of the three great functions of government had been achieved, but the doctrine did not demand rigid separation. Montesquieu and other theorists â€Å"did not mean that these departments ought to have no partial agency in, or controul over, the acts of each other,† but rather liberty was endangered â€Å"where the whole power of one department is exercised by the same hands which possess the whole power of another department.†That the doct rine did not demand absolute separation provided the basis for preservation of separation of powers in action. Neither sharply drawn demarcations of institutional boundaries nor appeals to the electorate were sufficient.7 Instead, the security against concentration of powers â€Å"consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.† Thus, â€Å"[a]mbition must be made to[p.65]counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.†

Everyday Use

A Contrast between Dee and Maggie’s View Concerning Their Heritage In my writing essay I shall analyze the way in which heritage can be conceived in Alice Walker’s novel Everyday Use, trying to point out the author’s main ideas concerning the theme of the story. I would also try to describe the two daughter’s points of view, Dee and Maggie’s, about their ancestral heritage. The contrast between these two daughters is more than obvious not only in their appearance but also in their behavior when it comes to quilts from their grandmother. Everyday Use is a story narrated by a rural black woman, who is the mother of the two girls Maggie and Dee Johnson. Mrs. Johnson, is a simple woman but who, in spite of all difficulties that she passed through, she tried to give her daughters if possible, a good education and of course the most important thing, to make them aware of what heritage is indeed, the fact that traditional culture and heritage is not represented only by the possession of old objects, but also by one’s behavior and customs. She outlines in the story that she is not a very educated woman, but this does not mean that the lack of education is also reflected in her capacity to understand, to love and to respect her ancestors. Since the beginning of the story, the narrator makes obvious the contrast between Maggie and her elder sister Dee. Dee is a very ambitious girl, with a well-defined character, the one who had always been successful and ambitious. Maggie thinks â€Å"her sister has held life, always in the palm of one hand, that â€Å"no† is a word the world never learned to say to her. (Walker 2469). Dee denies her real heritage by changing her given name, after her aunt Dee, to the superficially more impressive one Wangero Leewanik Kemanjo, arguing to her mother that â€Å"Dee is dead and I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me† ( Walker 2472), what she does in fact is to reject her family identity. She inspires in her mother â€Å"a sort of aw e and fear more suitable to the advent of a goddess than the love one might expect a mother to feel for a returning daughter† (Farell, â€Å"Flight†). On the other hand, Maggie is the type of simple girl, like her mother, with little education. She is not ambitious like her sister Dee, living somehow in her mother’s shadow. But this might be also because Maggie hadn’t her sister luck and she burned severely in the house fire when she was a child, becoming now a shy and fearful person. These features are more visible in her attitude while waiting for her sister to come home. Mama is projecting her own anger and frustration onto her younger daughter when she speculates that Maggie will be cowed by Dee’s arrival. Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe† ( Walker 2469). As Marianne Hirsch says in one of her critical essays: â€Å"the mother sees in Maggie’s angerless, fear an image of her own passive acceptance of Dee’s aggression, her ow n suppressed anger† Moreover, we can see through the lines of this story that, at the beginning, Dee was the daughter that mother preferred most because of her authority and because she wanted to succeed in life by following her instincts. But when she saw her totally changed, not only physically but also in her mentality, mother realized that Maggie was the one that understood the meaning of â€Å"heritage† and tried to give her justice. It is relevant â€Å"Mama’s awakening to one’s daughter’s superficiality and to the other’s deep-seated understanding of heritage† ( Tuten, â€Å"Alice Walker’s Everyday Use† ). However, Dee seems to despise her sister, her mother and the church that helped to educate her. Intentionally or not, she is selfish and she treats her sister with indifference. While Dee escaped from the poor life she was supposed to live, Maggie, next to her mother, represents the multitude of black women who must suffer. Scarred, graceless, not bright and uneducated, â€Å"Maggie is a living reproach to a survivor like her sister† (Cowart, â€Å"Heritage†) . The contradictions about heritage and culture between Maggie and Dee become more extensive when the quilts take part from the story. After dinner, Dee discovers some old quilts which belonged to her grandmother. She is very excited that found them, thinking that these quilts represent the testament of her ancestors. Without taking into account Maggie’s opinion, she asks her mother if she can have those quilts, arguing that she is the only one who can appreciate and have the right to keep them. At first, mother hesitates to give her an answer and offers her other quilts but Dee gets upset and then mother explains to her that the quilts were from Maggie as a wedding gift. Maggie’s tolerance in the story contrasts with Dee’s boldness. When Dee insists that her sister would ruin grandma’s quilts by using them everyday, and that hanging the quilts would be the only way to preserve them, Maggie â€Å" like somebody used to never wining anything, or having anything reserved for her† says â€Å" She can have them, Mama. I can remember Grandma Dee without the quilts† (Walker, 2474). Mrs. Johnson then realizes what makes Maggie different form her sister. She sees her scarred hands hidden in her skirt and says: â€Å"When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I’m in the church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout† (Walker, 2475). This powerful feelings determines Mama to do something she had never done before: â€Å"she snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap† ( Walker, 2475). Mama’s behavior here is almost like Dee’s because she rebuffs her wishes for the first time and give justice to the most patient Maggie. The fact that she takes the quilts from Dee and gives them to Maggie, â€Å"she confirms her younger daughter’s self-worth: metaphorically, she gives Maggie her voice† ( Tuten, â€Å"Alice Walker’s Everyday Use† ). In conclusion, I can say that Everyday Use is a story about understanding heritage. This concept is very well exposed by the two characters Alice Walker created, Dee and Maggie. These two daughters have a completely different view in what concerns the heritage from their ancestors; in this case their origins and their inheritance, the quilts from Grandma Dee. Maggie is the one who understands that heritage is about respecting family’s traditions and customs while Dee destroys the traditional image kept by Mrs. Johnson and her sister. She denies her true origins by changing the given name into more fashionable one, Wangero Leewanik Kemanjo. One should appreciate his legacy because it represents indeed what we are. We can not hide our roots and even if we want, this would not be possible because it always remains present in our souls and our minds, we like it or not. WORKES CITED PRIMARY SOURCE: Walker, Alice. Everyday Use. In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. SECONDARY SOURCE: Cowart, David . †Heritage and deracination in Walker's â€Å"Everyday Use. † Studies in Short Fiction. FindArticles. com. Farrell Susan. â€Å"Fight vs. Flight: a re-evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker’s â€Å"Everyday Use†- Critical Essay†. Studies in Short Fiction. FindArticles. com. Hirsch, Marianne. â€Å"Clytemnestra’s Children: Writing the Mother’s Anger. † Alice Walker: Modern Critical Views. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1989. Tuten, Nancy. â€Å"Alice Walker’s Everyday Use. † The Explicator 51. 2,1993 Everyday Use Everyday Use Symbolism The Quilts These quilts represent Mama's family and her heritage, they were made by Grandma Dee and Big Dee. Symbolically, each piece of material was made from scraps of clothing that once belonged to someone in their family, including pieces of their great-grandfather's Civil War uniform. . To Maggie, they represent her family; she still remembers with love her grandmother who made one of them and she says it is okay if Dee takes them because she does not need the quilts to remember Grandma Dee. To Dee, however, the quilts have no emotional value.She regards them as a type of folk art that will look impressive hanging upon her walls. (Dee embraces her African heritage while rejecting her personal family history. ) Mama gives those quilts to Maggie because she knows Maggie, unlike Dee, will honor the culture and heritage by using it, or continuing it the way it was originally intended. ‘Maggie can's appreciate these quilts! she said. ‘She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use. ‘ The Butter Churn and the Dasher The author also uses the butter churn and the dasher as a symbol to show mama’s understands of heritage.When Mama takes the dasher handle in her hands, she is symbolically touching the hands of all those who used it before her. Her appreciation for the dasher and the quits is based on the love fort the people who made use of them. Dee wants to use the churn top as a centerpiece for the alcove table and do something creative with the dasher. Mama views and honors her heritage as practical by appreciating what she acquired from previous generations and putting the passed down items into everyday use. Dee views and honors her heritage as superficial by appreciating the passed down items for their materialistic and artistic value Everyday Use A Contrast between Dee and Maggie’s View Concerning Their Heritage In my writing essay I shall analyze the way in which heritage can be conceived in Alice Walker’s novel Everyday Use, trying to point out the author’s main ideas concerning the theme of the story. I would also try to describe the two daughter’s points of view, Dee and Maggie’s, about their ancestral heritage. The contrast between these two daughters is more than obvious not only in their appearance but also in their behavior when it comes to quilts from their grandmother. Everyday Use is a story narrated by a rural black woman, who is the mother of the two girls Maggie and Dee Johnson. Mrs. Johnson, is a simple woman but who, in spite of all difficulties that she passed through, she tried to give her daughters if possible, a good education and of course the most important thing, to make them aware of what heritage is indeed, the fact that traditional culture and heritage is not represented only by the possession of old objects, but also by one’s behavior and customs. She outlines in the story that she is not a very educated woman, but this does not mean that the lack of education is also reflected in her capacity to understand, to love and to respect her ancestors. Since the beginning of the story, the narrator makes obvious the contrast between Maggie and her elder sister Dee. Dee is a very ambitious girl, with a well-defined character, the one who had always been successful and ambitious. Maggie thinks â€Å"her sister has held life, always in the palm of one hand, that â€Å"no† is a word the world never learned to say to her. (Walker 2469). Dee denies her real heritage by changing her given name, after her aunt Dee, to the superficially more impressive one Wangero Leewanik Kemanjo, arguing to her mother that â€Å"Dee is dead and I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me† ( Walker 2472), what she does in fact is to reject her family identity. She inspires in her mother â€Å"a sort of aw e and fear more suitable to the advent of a goddess than the love one might expect a mother to feel for a returning daughter† (Farell, â€Å"Flight†). On the other hand, Maggie is the type of simple girl, like her mother, with little education. She is not ambitious like her sister Dee, living somehow in her mother’s shadow. But this might be also because Maggie hadn’t her sister luck and she burned severely in the house fire when she was a child, becoming now a shy and fearful person. These features are more visible in her attitude while waiting for her sister to come home. Mama is projecting her own anger and frustration onto her younger daughter when she speculates that Maggie will be cowed by Dee’s arrival. Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe† ( Walker 2469). As Marianne Hirsch says in one of her critical essays: â€Å"the mother sees in Maggie’s angerless, fear an image of her own passive acceptance of Dee’s aggression, her ow n suppressed anger† Moreover, we can see through the lines of this story that, at the beginning, Dee was the daughter that mother preferred most because of her authority and because she wanted to succeed in life by following her instincts. But when she saw her totally changed, not only physically but also in her mentality, mother realized that Maggie was the one that understood the meaning of â€Å"heritage† and tried to give her justice. It is relevant â€Å"Mama’s awakening to one’s daughter’s superficiality and to the other’s deep-seated understanding of heritage† ( Tuten, â€Å"Alice Walker’s Everyday Use† ). However, Dee seems to despise her sister, her mother and the church that helped to educate her. Intentionally or not, she is selfish and she treats her sister with indifference. While Dee escaped from the poor life she was supposed to live, Maggie, next to her mother, represents the multitude of black women who must suffer. Scarred, graceless, not bright and uneducated, â€Å"Maggie is a living reproach to a survivor like her sister† (Cowart, â€Å"Heritage†) . The contradictions about heritage and culture between Maggie and Dee become more extensive when the quilts take part from the story. After dinner, Dee discovers some old quilts which belonged to her grandmother. She is very excited that found them, thinking that these quilts represent the testament of her ancestors. Without taking into account Maggie’s opinion, she asks her mother if she can have those quilts, arguing that she is the only one who can appreciate and have the right to keep them. At first, mother hesitates to give her an answer and offers her other quilts but Dee gets upset and then mother explains to her that the quilts were from Maggie as a wedding gift. Maggie’s tolerance in the story contrasts with Dee’s boldness. When Dee insists that her sister would ruin grandma’s quilts by using them everyday, and that hanging the quilts would be the only way to preserve them, Maggie â€Å" like somebody used to never wining anything, or having anything reserved for her† says â€Å" She can have them, Mama. I can remember Grandma Dee without the quilts† (Walker, 2474). Mrs. Johnson then realizes what makes Maggie different form her sister. She sees her scarred hands hidden in her skirt and says: â€Å"When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I’m in the church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout† (Walker, 2475). This powerful feelings determines Mama to do something she had never done before: â€Å"she snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap† ( Walker, 2475). Mama’s behavior here is almost like Dee’s because she rebuffs her wishes for the first time and give justice to the most patient Maggie. The fact that she takes the quilts from Dee and gives them to Maggie, â€Å"she confirms her younger daughter’s self-worth: metaphorically, she gives Maggie her voice† ( Tuten, â€Å"Alice Walker’s Everyday Use† ). In conclusion, I can say that Everyday Use is a story about understanding heritage. This concept is very well exposed by the two characters Alice Walker created, Dee and Maggie. These two daughters have a completely different view in what concerns the heritage from their ancestors; in this case their origins and their inheritance, the quilts from Grandma Dee. Maggie is the one who understands that heritage is about respecting family’s traditions and customs while Dee destroys the traditional image kept by Mrs. Johnson and her sister. She denies her true origins by changing the given name into more fashionable one, Wangero Leewanik Kemanjo. One should appreciate his legacy because it represents indeed what we are. We can not hide our roots and even if we want, this would not be possible because it always remains present in our souls and our minds, we like it or not. WORKES CITED PRIMARY SOURCE: Walker, Alice. Everyday Use. In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. SECONDARY SOURCE: Cowart, David . †Heritage and deracination in Walker's â€Å"Everyday Use. † Studies in Short Fiction. FindArticles. com. Farrell Susan. â€Å"Fight vs. Flight: a re-evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker’s â€Å"Everyday Use†- Critical Essay†. Studies in Short Fiction. FindArticles. com. Hirsch, Marianne. â€Å"Clytemnestra’s Children: Writing the Mother’s Anger. † Alice Walker: Modern Critical Views. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1989. Tuten, Nancy. â€Å"Alice Walker’s Everyday Use. † The Explicator 51. 2,1993 Everyday Use A Contrast between Dee and Maggie’s View Concerning Their Heritage In my writing essay I shall analyze the way in which heritage can be conceived in Alice Walker’s novel Everyday Use, trying to point out the author’s main ideas concerning the theme of the story. I would also try to describe the two daughter’s points of view, Dee and Maggie’s, about their ancestral heritage. The contrast between these two daughters is more than obvious not only in their appearance but also in their behavior when it comes to quilts from their grandmother. Everyday Use is a story narrated by a rural black woman, who is the mother of the two girls Maggie and Dee Johnson. Mrs. Johnson, is a simple woman but who, in spite of all difficulties that she passed through, she tried to give her daughters if possible, a good education and of course the most important thing, to make them aware of what heritage is indeed, the fact that traditional culture and heritage is not represented only by the possession of old objects, but also by one’s behavior and customs. She outlines in the story that she is not a very educated woman, but this does not mean that the lack of education is also reflected in her capacity to understand, to love and to respect her ancestors. Since the beginning of the story, the narrator makes obvious the contrast between Maggie and her elder sister Dee. Dee is a very ambitious girl, with a well-defined character, the one who had always been successful and ambitious. Maggie thinks â€Å"her sister has held life, always in the palm of one hand, that â€Å"no† is a word the world never learned to say to her. (Walker 2469). Dee denies her real heritage by changing her given name, after her aunt Dee, to the superficially more impressive one Wangero Leewanik Kemanjo, arguing to her mother that â€Å"Dee is dead and I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me† ( Walker 2472), what she does in fact is to reject her family identity. She inspires in her mother â€Å"a sort of aw e and fear more suitable to the advent of a goddess than the love one might expect a mother to feel for a returning daughter† (Farell, â€Å"Flight†). On the other hand, Maggie is the type of simple girl, like her mother, with little education. She is not ambitious like her sister Dee, living somehow in her mother’s shadow. But this might be also because Maggie hadn’t her sister luck and she burned severely in the house fire when she was a child, becoming now a shy and fearful person. These features are more visible in her attitude while waiting for her sister to come home. Mama is projecting her own anger and frustration onto her younger daughter when she speculates that Maggie will be cowed by Dee’s arrival. Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe† ( Walker 2469). As Marianne Hirsch says in one of her critical essays: â€Å"the mother sees in Maggie’s angerless, fear an image of her own passive acceptance of Dee’s aggression, her ow n suppressed anger† Moreover, we can see through the lines of this story that, at the beginning, Dee was the daughter that mother preferred most because of her authority and because she wanted to succeed in life by following her instincts. But when she saw her totally changed, not only physically but also in her mentality, mother realized that Maggie was the one that understood the meaning of â€Å"heritage† and tried to give her justice. It is relevant â€Å"Mama’s awakening to one’s daughter’s superficiality and to the other’s deep-seated understanding of heritage† ( Tuten, â€Å"Alice Walker’s Everyday Use† ). However, Dee seems to despise her sister, her mother and the church that helped to educate her. Intentionally or not, she is selfish and she treats her sister with indifference. While Dee escaped from the poor life she was supposed to live, Maggie, next to her mother, represents the multitude of black women who must suffer. Scarred, graceless, not bright and uneducated, â€Å"Maggie is a living reproach to a survivor like her sister† (Cowart, â€Å"Heritage†) . The contradictions about heritage and culture between Maggie and Dee become more extensive when the quilts take part from the story. After dinner, Dee discovers some old quilts which belonged to her grandmother. She is very excited that found them, thinking that these quilts represent the testament of her ancestors. Without taking into account Maggie’s opinion, she asks her mother if she can have those quilts, arguing that she is the only one who can appreciate and have the right to keep them. At first, mother hesitates to give her an answer and offers her other quilts but Dee gets upset and then mother explains to her that the quilts were from Maggie as a wedding gift. Maggie’s tolerance in the story contrasts with Dee’s boldness. When Dee insists that her sister would ruin grandma’s quilts by using them everyday, and that hanging the quilts would be the only way to preserve them, Maggie â€Å" like somebody used to never wining anything, or having anything reserved for her† says â€Å" She can have them, Mama. I can remember Grandma Dee without the quilts† (Walker, 2474). Mrs. Johnson then realizes what makes Maggie different form her sister. She sees her scarred hands hidden in her skirt and says: â€Å"When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I’m in the church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout† (Walker, 2475). This powerful feelings determines Mama to do something she had never done before: â€Å"she snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap† ( Walker, 2475). Mama’s behavior here is almost like Dee’s because she rebuffs her wishes for the first time and give justice to the most patient Maggie. The fact that she takes the quilts from Dee and gives them to Maggie, â€Å"she confirms her younger daughter’s self-worth: metaphorically, she gives Maggie her voice† ( Tuten, â€Å"Alice Walker’s Everyday Use† ). In conclusion, I can say that Everyday Use is a story about understanding heritage. This concept is very well exposed by the two characters Alice Walker created, Dee and Maggie. These two daughters have a completely different view in what concerns the heritage from their ancestors; in this case their origins and their inheritance, the quilts from Grandma Dee. Maggie is the one who understands that heritage is about respecting family’s traditions and customs while Dee destroys the traditional image kept by Mrs. Johnson and her sister. She denies her true origins by changing the given name into more fashionable one, Wangero Leewanik Kemanjo. One should appreciate his legacy because it represents indeed what we are. We can not hide our roots and even if we want, this would not be possible because it always remains present in our souls and our minds, we like it or not. WORKES CITED PRIMARY SOURCE: Walker, Alice. Everyday Use. In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. SECONDARY SOURCE: Cowart, David . †Heritage and deracination in Walker's â€Å"Everyday Use. † Studies in Short Fiction. FindArticles. com. Farrell Susan. â€Å"Fight vs. Flight: a re-evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker’s â€Å"Everyday Use†- Critical Essay†. Studies in Short Fiction. FindArticles. com. Hirsch, Marianne. â€Å"Clytemnestra’s Children: Writing the Mother’s Anger. † Alice Walker: Modern Critical Views. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1989. Tuten, Nancy. â€Å"Alice Walker’s Everyday Use. † The Explicator 51. 2,1993

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Kinetic sculptures; phenakistiscope

Artwork creations consisting of continuous moving parts or sounds are examples of kinetic sculptures. Windmills, wheels, mobiles, lava lamps and water all may be considered kinetic sculptures. Paintings giving illusions of continuing into the unknown, such as towers leading and combining into another item of the painting use kinetic elements. Sculptures containing motion are most commonly referred to as kinetic art. Artists use many scientific elements creating kinetic sculptures. Persistence of vision is a common element used in kinetic sculpturing.Persistence of vision means the human brain fills the blanks between sequential images seen in rapid succession creating an illusion of continuous motion† (Barsamian, July 3, 2006). Film, television and even stage acting adopt persistence of vision techniques making their productions come alive. Often art museums depend on outside affects such as lighting, strobe lights, external lighting, wall coloring and even other artwork to acc ent the kinetic sculptures. â€Å"Through the use or rotating mechanical armatures and synchronized strobe lights, three dimensional objects move horizontally and vertically and change their shapes in real time.The inspiration for this strange and wonderful world are animation techniques that predate the film such as the zoetrope, flip book and phenakistiscope, all of which are based on the persistence of vision, in other words, after image† (Barsamian, 2006). Moving kinetic sculptures originate with very simple lines, shapes, rectangles, and circles everyone learned before pre-K. Phenakistiscope is a spinning disk reflecting images. The wheel continuously spins as the viewer looks into slits of continuous moving reflections. The symbology of images is left up to what the viewer interprets, incorporating the persistence of vision concept.

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult Essay

This is the story of the directionless and destination-less youngsters. This is also the story of the combustible younger generation. Incidents similar to the one depicted in the story can be read in newspapers day after day. The readers are pained, excited and habituated to read such stories and to an extent, have become insensitive as for its implications. If there is no discipline and peace in the society, carry on with the available discipline and peace—seems to be the attitude of the citizens. The blame-game between the politicians, the executive and the judiciary as for the present pathetic state of affairs in the society continues! Nobody is able to give the tangible solution to the octopus-like growing problem. Nagging, abusing and condemning each other have become the way of life. The pages of human history daubed in bloodshed due to the negative attitudes and violence in the name of religion, language, color, race, territorial gains and aggrandizement for wealth, ask the crying question. How to make this Planet Earth heaven-like? The answer is simple and direct. Eyes full of understanding, hearts full of love and the life that refuses conflicts—enough, these alone are enough! What is depicted in ‘Nineteen Minutes,’ is the model of what is happening all over the world on a large scale. The incidents of 9/11 took place in less than 19 minutes. But what were the implications and detailed planning and above all, the mind-set, behind that tragedy! The incident had the potentially to set the entire globe on fire! The hero of Nineteen Minutes, Peter Houghton, 17 years, has been at the receiving end throughout his school life, mentally tortured and tormented, and finally the ‘volcano within him erupts’ He fights back in a dramatic, and perhaps dastardly manner. The shooting at the school leaves nineteen injured and ten dead. The composition of the book has everything to make it an interesting read, and the arguments of the two lawyers, bring out the best as for the life and motives of Peter. The author uses the flashback technique to develop the story. The major players of the plot come to play, Josie Cormier, former best friend of Peter, her mother, the detective and defense lawyer, Peter’s parents-Picoult describes their interactions with sympathy and understanding. He has given to the readers a very interesting book. The theme of the book and the author’s attitude towards the theme, both evoke curiosity. The level of detachment achieved by the author in developing the characters is commendable. Without giving room for too much sentimentalism, a grim situation manifests clearly, grows and attains new dimensions. The book deserves an outstanding position on account of this approach. The mutual interactions over the situation between different characters reveal in the most natural way, the convictions for which the novel stands for. This is the uniqueness of the novel. The narrations are beautiful and as the story develops, it becomes poignant, without losing its ground and reality. If ten or more individuals are united for a cause, and align with the Satan’s domain, that won’t make their alignment stronger. Truth has always been in minority numerically, taking any epic for example, but it is the ultimate victor. Peter’s position is the same. The majority pushed him to the wall and Peter thought that for the desperate situation, desperate remedy is the solution. Some bullets solved his decade-old problem. Those who go through the contents of the book carefully, sympathize with him, not condemn! Everyone has the right of self-defense, and in the process that you kill ten or fifty persons is altogether a different issue. This takes one to the portals of an important social problem. What if the gun control laws were there? Could the tragedy have been averted? The answer is both yes and no. The real problem is not the creation of the gun, but the creation of Peters in the society, for which the society, the parents, brothers and sisters, the friends, the teachers and Preachers, law enforcing authorities, and above all the politicians are responsible—and oh yes, the print and electronic media too, that plays to the gallery and creates deep impact in the impressionable minds of the kids! They must get more and more advertisement revenue no matter what the impact of this white-color robbery on the psyche of the society. These forces have created Peters. So unless the people are basically sound, and basic conditions are created for the people to become basically sound, many more Peters will incarnate. Countries with gun control laws have also Peters. So, changing the gun control laws is not the solution. Changing the thought process of the individuals is! An individual is the foundation stone of the society. Unless one’s thought process changes, one’s action process will not change. When the thoughts are changed, the mind is changed; when the mid is changed, the man is changed; when the man is changed, the society is changed. The message of the book by Picoult is clear. Children-friendly approach is required as for small and big problems confronting them; the teachers need to keep a careful watch as for the groups in classes or the institution as a whole. These groups could be due to any reason, simple jealousies, race and color, rich and poor and this listing of problems can go on and on†¦. The vigilant teaching community has great responsibility in this area. In the materialistic society, due to the impact of industrial and internet revolutions, the parents have little time to spend with the children. The educational institutions are the best alternatives to the prevailing family atmosphere, wherein children can be imparted the moral, ethical and even spiritual education. References Cited: Picoult, Jodi: Book: Nineteen Minutes Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Atria; 1st edition. edition (March 5, 2007) Language: English ISBN-10: 0739480715 ISBN-13: 978-0743496728 ASIN: 0743496728