Size, Facts, and Figures of the Alamosaurus

Although there may be other genera whose fossils have yet to be discovered, Alamosaurus (Greek for Alamo lizard and pronounced AL-ah-moe-SORE-us) is one of the few titanosaurs known to have lived in the late Cretaceous (70-65 million years ago) in North America, and possibly in vast numbers: According to one analysis, there may have been as many as 350,000 of these 60-foot-long herbivores living in Texas at any given time. Its closest relative appears to have been another titanosaur, Saltasaurus. Bigger Than We Thought A recent analysis has shown that Alamosaurus may have been a bigger dinosaur than originally estimated, possibly in the weight class of its more famous South American cousin Argentinosaurus. It turns out that some of the type fossils used to reconstruct Alamosaurus may have come from adolescents rather than full-grown adults, meaning that this titanosaur may well have attained lengths of over 60 feet from head to tail and weights in excess of 70 or 80 tons. The Origin of the Name By the way, its an odd fact that Alamosaurus wasnt named after the Alamo in Texas, but the Ojo Alamo sandstone formation in New Mexico. This herbivore already had its name when numerous (but incomplete) fossils were discovered in the Lone Star State, so you might say that everything worked out in the end!

The Movie, Good Will Hunting Essay - 1338 Words

The movie, Good Will Hunting (1997), is about a young twenty-year-old man named Will Hunting. Will Hunting lives in a rather impoverished area in South Boston and is a young janitor who typically drinks with his friends in his free time, however, Will is actually an indiscreet self-taught genius. During the first week of classes at MIT, Will solves a difficult graduate-level math problem that one of the math professors left an extremely difficult problem on the board to challenge his students, in hopes that someone would solve it by the end of the semester (Van Sant, 1997). However, Will solves the problem but does not want to let anyone know that it was him that solved the difficult equation, therefore it came to everyone’s surprise when they discovered it was actually Will who solved the problem in such a short matter of time, indicating his hidden intellect (Van Sant, 1997). Outside of work, Will got into an argument with a group of boys who previously tried to bully him (V an Sant, 1997). Because of this incident, Will was arrested after hitting the officer who responded to the fight (Van Sant, 1997). Throughout Will’s trial, the math professor who initially wrote the problem on the board, began intervening with his trial, after realizing Will’s potential when he notices Will’s intellect in defending himself (Van Sant, 1997). The professor arranges a deal with the court and Will was offered a choice, he could either go to jail, or he could be released into the professor’sShow MoreRelatedMovie Analysis : Good Will Hunting 1553 Words   |  7 PagesNyfeler EN 211 22 February 2017 Analytical Essay on the Movie â€Å"Good Will Hunting† I have watched a considerable number of movies this semester so it was hard to choose which one to analyze. It came down to â€Å"Remember the Titans† or â€Å"Good Will Hunting†. However, the movie that I will be analyzing is â€Å"Good Will Hunting†. The reason I chose this movie is that it can be analyzed in many different ways. I will be analyzing different scenes of the movie and analyze them from different angles. I will be analyzingRead MoreMovie Review : Good Will Hunting 914 Words   |  4 PagesThe film I chose to write about is one that I only saw a few months ago, which is â€Å"Good Will Hunting†. I have heard lots of people and critics praise this movie over the years, and after watching it I see why. It’s a very gripping story about a college aged janitor who grew up in broken foster homes, but has a genius level intellect and is wicked smaht. The protagonist of the movie is Will Hunting, he is a classic underachiever. The juxtaposition of his intellectual prowess and life circumstancesRead MoreMovie Analysis Good Will Hunting4752 Words   |  20 Pagesï » ¿ Movie Analysis Sociological Perspective: Good Will Hunting SOC103 A Ms. Lim Siow Fei Dier Pulatov J14016731 Aiman Azri Azmi J14016347 Jeffry Tlerey Lister J14016755 Content: 1. Introduction 3 2. Synopsis 3 3. Structural Functionalism 4 4. Social Conflict Read MoreMovie Analysis : Good Will Hunting1952 Words   |  8 Pagesgreat film, Good Will Hunting offers a great basis for which linguistic studies regarding dialect can be done. The film offers a great contrast in characters from â€Å"Southie† to prestigious high-class individuals. While there is a noticeable difference in the dialect used, the focus is primarily on stereotypes between the lower and upper-class individuals. Language and dialects help to reinforce the stereotypes regarding socio-economic classes. The division of dialect in Good Will Hunting reflects theRead MorePsychoanalysis Of Good Will Hunting1253 Words   |  6 PagesPsychoanalysis of Will Hunting Good Will Hunting is a good example of how someone with psychological disorders can overcome their issues through therapy. This is a classic film that was released in 1997. It was directed by Gus Van Sant, and written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. The key actors of this movie include Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver and Stellan Skarsgà ¥rd, with Damon being the main character, Will. In the movie Good Will Hunting, director Gus Van Sant shows thatRead MoreHunting For Men And Meaning : No Country For Old Men1233 Words   |  5 PagesHunting for Men and Meaning in No Country for Old Men This movie is one of many classic movies that have the ultimate understanding of life and the human physiological behavior. This movie entitles three mechanisms of hunting to describe critical aspects of life, hunting for animals, hunting for men and hunting for meaning. Hunting is the act of tracking and taking a life; this act differs from hunting an animal to a human. This particle can teach a lot of principles like being patient, good timingRead MoreSocial-Psychological Principles in Good Will Hunting Essay1542 Words   |  7 PagesSocial-psychological principles in Good Will Hunting Donna Harris SOCI 4340 Good Will Hunting is a story about Will Hunting who works as a janitor at MIT cleaning classrooms. Will is an orphan who grew up in various foster homes and was physically abused as a child. Will is also an extraordinary mathematical genius with a photographic memory, who enjoys solving math problems. Will blames himself for his unhappy upbringing and turns this self-loathing into a form of self-sabotageRead MoreEssay on Good Will Hunting969 Words   |  4 PagesThe movie Good Will Hunting exploits many points of psychology in the character Will Hunting, a janitor at MIT who has a knack for math. Some of the points of psychology include how a character develops after a lot of child abuse during his childhood. It exploits the idea that a child who becomes secluded may never allow an attachment, or when an attachment finally starts to occur, pushes them away. It also exploits the idea that Will Hunting has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Because ofRead MoreGood Will Hunti ng787 Words   |  4 PagesNick Tisdale Heather Julien English 101[16] March 29, 2005 Good Will Hunting The movie Good Will Hunting shows a dramatic relationship between a teacher and student and also relationships between fellow teachers. The film helps you grow with the characters in order to anticipate and acknowledge the ways in which they interact with one another. It also incorporated the way that egos develop and arise due to relationships and how they can interact with the daily lives of people. TheRead MoreEssay on Analysis of the Film Good Will Hunting766 Words   |  4 PagesGood Will Hunting The movie Good Will Hunting shows a dramatic relationship between a teacher and student and also relationships between fellow teachers. The film helps you grow with the characters in order to anticipate and acknowledge the ways in which they interact with one another. It also incorporated the way that egos develop and arise due to relationships and how they can interact with the daily lives of people.

Historical Free Essays

string(33) " and move on towards the future\." Web Case Book on BELOVED by Toni Morrison  © 2007 English Department, Millikin University, Decatur, IL http://www. millikin. edu/english/beloved/Baynar-historical-essay1. We will write a custom essay sample on Historical or any similar topic only for you Order Now html Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Institutionalized Trauma, Selfhood, and Familial and Communal Structure by Klay Baynar Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved is, in fact, a historical novel. It is based on a documented event involving fugitive slave, Margaret Garner, who was arrested for killing one of her children rather than returning her daughter to the dismal life of a slave. Readers might ask themselves why an African American woman would choose to focus her writing on a devastating act of violence within an African American family as opposed to focusing on the white aggression that ran rampant throughout the time period of the novel. However, by focusing Beloved on the infanticide committed by a newly freed black mother, Morrison is able to communicate a strong message, the importance of which spans from the Reconstruction era in the antebellum South to racially charged issues in modern America. Morrison implicitly shows throughout the novel that the psychological effects of slavery on the individual, as well as the whole slave community, were far more damaging than even the worst physical sufferings. In Beloved, Morrison uses symbolism to depict the atrocities of white oppression that caused the loss of African American humanity while also focusing on how the African American community came together to deal with the traumas of the past, thus reclaiming their selfhood. The African American â€Å"veil† acts as a strong symbol of a white dominant society throughout the novel. During the Reconstruction era, black Americans were forced behind this â€Å"veil† that allowed them to only see themselves from the white man’s point of view. Hofstra University’s James Berger cites W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folks, writing â€Å"†¦the American Negro, ‘born with a veil†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ can achieve ‘no true self-consciousness’ but can only ‘see himself through the revelation of the other [i. . white] world’† (410). Morrison herself recognizes this veil by noting â€Å"†¦that slaves narrators, ‘shaping the experience to make it palatable’ for white readers, dropped a ‘veil’ over ‘their interior life’† (Rody 97). This â€Å"veil† represents the unyielding ideologies of white oppression that were exercised throughout the period of slavery and the Baynar 2 period of intense racial tension that followed the Civil War. In Beloved, Morrison writes a false removal of this veil for both Sethe and Baby Suggs. This removal is foreshadowed by the imagery of the Book of Revelation (four horsemen) in the beginning of the infanticide chapter (Berger 409). When Sethe sees the â€Å"four horsemen† coming to retrieve her and her children and return them to slavery, Morrison reveals the thoughts of a black mother when faced with returning to slavery: And if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them. Over there. Outside this place, where they would be safe. (Morrison 192) Due to continuing white oppression after slavery, Sethe believed that the only way to make her children safe was through death. In killing her daughter, Sethe frees her from living a life of dehumanizing slavery. However, this act of violence did nothing to remove the veil. What makes the infanticide a false removal of Sethe’s family from oppression is that the very event that was meant to remove the facade of â€Å"free and equal† blacks (infanticide) actually trapped Sethe’s family in a state where no subjective self could ever be achieved. This familial meltdown stopped history in its tracks. It forces Sethe and Denver into a repressive state in which past traumas are lost. When Denver finds out about that day, she becomes deaf and dumb, unwilling to face the horrible traumas of the past. Sethe represses any and all memories of the past, only allowing them to resurface with the appearance of Paul D and the expulsion of the ghost. Even Paul D has repressed memories, represented by his tobacco tin: It was some time before he could put Alfred, Georgia, Sixo, schoolteacher, Halle, his brothers, Sethe, Mister, the taste of iron, the sight of butter, the smell of hickory, notebook paper, one by one, into the tobacco tin lodged in his chest. (Morrison 133) However, Sethe and her family were not the only people that fell victim to the â€Å"veil† of oppression. White dominance also reappeared for Baby Suggs on the day of the infanticide. When â€Å"†¦they came in my yard† (Morrison 211), Baby Suggs realized that no African American is truly free. Not in a free state, not after slavery, not ever. Baby Suggs’s sense of self was â€Å"unmade† that day when she realized the freedom she thought she was living was false (Boudreau 460). Being a former slave herself, she understood the colonizing ideologies that slavery entailed. When she finally became free, she was able to claim her own humanity: â€Å"She couldn’t stop laughing. My heart’s beating,’ she said. And it was true† (Morrison 166). In this part of the novel, Morrison shows that, for a formerly colonized people, a free identity is only obtained through decolonization. The decolonization of the African American people required the retrieval of past traumas. In In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life, bell hooks writes that â€Å"dec olonization†¦calls us back to the past and offers a way to reclaim and renew life-affirming bonds† (183). So, the key to African American subjectivity lies in the past. This idea is explicitly shown when Paul D’s Baynar 3 tobacco tin, the item in which he locks away the past, bursts open. Sitting on the front steps of a church drinking liquor, â€Å"His tobacco tin, blown open, spilled contents that floated freely and made him their play and prey† (Morrison 258). The content that follows is all of Paul D’s memories. With his tobacco tin open, he is forced to face his past, finally able to free himself and move on towards the future. You read "Historical" in category "Papers" â€Å"Rememory† in the novel explicates the idea that no trauma is ever one’s own, but are shared among groups of people. Rememory† works as a collective way for a community to decolonize themselves (Elliot 183). Sethe explains rememory, saying that, If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world†¦Someday you be walking down the road and you hear something or see something going on †¦And you think it’s you thinking it up†¦But no. It’s when you bump into a rememory that belongs to somebody else. (Morrison 43) A rememory is someone’s individual experience that hangs around like a picture. It can enter someone else’s rememory and complicate one’s consciousness and identity (Rody 101). Rememory is what connects the past with the present, realizing a collective memory that a community uses as a tool to help cope with past traumas. The collective management of these past traumas is best seen at the Clearing. â€Å"†¦Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, woman and child†¦took her great heart to the Clearing†¦laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up† (Morrison 103). Baby Suggs led the community in a therapy session of sorts in order to release bottled up emotions. The Clearing was a place in which the community could go and work through past experiences with the help of everyone, a place to deal with the past in order to love in the present and plan for the future. This idea is revisited at the end of the novel as well. If Beloved represents the manifestation of the day of the infanticide, the day that 124 died and the visits to the Clearing ended, the end of the novel shows how the community comes together again to expel her from 124. Beloved and Sethe looked out the window and â€Å"†¦saw Denver sitting on the steps and beyond her, where the yard met the road, they saw the rapt faces of thirty neighborhood women. Some had their eyes closed; others looked at the hot cloudless sky† (Morrison 308). With this scene, Morrison expresses a positive example of African American communal unity. Beloved is not a novel that is confined in meaning to the Reconstruction era. The publication of the Moynihan report in 1965 sparked a racial controversy regarding the dysfunctional nature of the African American family. Daniel Moynihan reported that â€Å"The family structure of lower class Negroes is highly unstable, and in many urban centers is approaching complete breakdown† (Moynihan). This report resulted in a political divide regarding race that lasted well into the 1980s: The discourse of race in the 1980s, then, was constrained by a double denial: Reaganist conservatives denied American racism and descendants of the New Left denied any dysfunction within African American communities. (Berger 414) Sethe’s family is certainly dysfunctional: A single mother working a low paying job who then Baynar 4 suffers a mental breakdown. Both of her sons ran away, never to be seen again. Sethe murdered one of her daughters and the other is incapable of leaving the yard. The family’s dysfunction stems from their unwillingness to face the ghosts of past traumas. The historical parallel to this are the far right and far left ideologies of racial denial. Beloved represents racial violence in America, willing to return unless the systemic nature of racism is addressed. If traumas are repressed and not worked out, their effects will never go away. The ending pages of the novel give the most powerful representation of the results of historical repression. They forgot her like a bad dream. After they made up their tales, shaped and decorated them, those that saw her that day on the porch quickly and deliberately forgot her. It took longer for those who had spoken to her, lived with her, fallen in love with her†¦So in the end, they forgot her too. Remembering seemed unwise. (Morrison 323-324) Beloved has again been repressed, forced to fade into the subconscious of everyone that had known her. Morrison uses this to parallel race in America. When Beloved was published, Reaganist conservatives denied American racism. Slavery is such a profound black mark in American history, it is better left forgotten; remembering would be unwise. However, if slavery and legal white oppression are allowed to be forgotten, there is nothing standing in the way of their return. Morrison creates a paradox with this idea. The final chapter’s structure is set up with an initial couple paragraphs explaining that everyone eventually forgot about Beloved. Following these paragraphs was a sentence meant to justify the forgetting: â€Å"This is not a story to pass on† (Morrison 324). However, this line is a contradiction. The story that shouldn’t have been passed on is a best-selling novel and is dedicated to â€Å"Sixty Million and more. † By repressing a historical trauma, it is allowed to return. The very last word of the novel, â€Å"Beloved,† attests to that claim. Especially when in regards to racism, â€Å"Only if traumas are remembered can they lose, gradually but never entirely, their traumatic effects (Berger 415). Slave owning ideologies caused intense institutionalized trauma, the damage of which has lasted long after slavery was abolished. Indoctrinated with white ideas about how to view themselves, newly freed African Americans found the veil cast upon their identity difficult to cast aside. Dealing with the past traumas of slavery in a white dominant society required the effort of not only the individual, but also the African American community. Being able to reflect upon past traumas of oppression allowed the community and the individual to move towards a less traumatic future. However, the historical period in which Morrison wrote Beloved suggests that American society, both white and black, have forgotten how to manage the issue of race. Morrison’s ideas concerning the â€Å"veil,† rememory of trauma, and her portrayal of communal and familial structure exemplify the idea that the key to African American societal progression is the recognition of the past. Works Cited Berger, James. â€Å"Ghosts of Liberalism: Morrison’s Beloved and the Moynihan Report. † PMLA 111. 3 (1996): 408-420. Boudreau, Kristin. â€Å"Pain and the Unmaking of Self in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. † Contemporary Baynar 5 Literature 36. 3 (1995): 447-465. Elliot, Mary Jane. â€Å"Postcolonial Experience in a Domestic Context: Commodified Subjectivity in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. MELUS 20. 3/4 (2000): 181-202. hooks, bell. â€Å"In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life† Picturing Texts. Ed. Lester Faigley, Diana George, Anna Palchik, Cynthia Selfe. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. 175183. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987. New York: Vintage International, 2004. Moynihan, Daniel. â€Å"The Negro Family: The Case For National Action. † March 1965. 20 Nov. 2007 . Rody, Caroline. â€Å"Toni Morrison’s Beloved: History, ‘Rememory,’ and a ‘Clamour for a Kiss. ’† American Literary History 7. 1 (1995): 92-119. How to cite Historical, Papers

Significance in the novel Essay Example For Students

Significance in the novel Essay Hard Times is a book written by Charles Dickens and is set in the fictional city of Coketown. In the book Dickens puts across his views about Victorian society through his characterisation of the individuals in the story. The two episodes I will discuss in this essay are, chapter one and chapter six when Gradgrind informs Louisa of a marriage proposal from Bounderby.  I have chosen these two episodes to draw from when discussing Gradginds nature and his portrayal in the novel as they show a progression in his character. In chapter one, Gradgrind, who is not yet named, is shown as a harsh, unattractive figure with a, square forehead. His angular face with its, cave shaped eyes, square, wall of a forehead and, a plantation of firs for hair reflects the, plain, bare, monotonous schoolroom which stands before him. This shows him to be full of facts just as the schoolroom is. The emphasis of the contrast between fact and imagination is portrayed in this chapter through the speaker, Gradgrind, and the narrator. The narrators speech is full of imaginative language and uses plenty of metaphors and similes, for example, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves. This strongly contrasts with the speakers matter-of-fact language, Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are what are wanted from life. The word, Fact is emphasized by its capital letter, this bursts out at the reader, making this their lasting impression of Gradgrind. It is clear that in this episode Dickens, through the characterisation of Gradgrind, is reflecting his views on the education system. He uses Gradgrind, portraying him as a harsh, unattractive, threatening man, to reflect the education system in the Victorian period. He emphasizes the learning of facts and the lack of any imagination through phrases such as, The speaker, the schoolmaster and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels, then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim. This phrase tells the reader that they will be so full of facts that they will be devoid of everything else, the word, vessels also de-personalises the children emphasizing that they will be like fact filled drones. Chapter six shows a dramatic change in the way the reader viewed Gradgrind in chapter one. This chapter is very complicated in the terms of Gradgrinds characterisation. There are three main contrasts in this chapter, that between Gradgrind and Sleary, that between Bounderby and Sleary and that between Gradgrind and Bounderby. These contrasts are very clever as they show Gradgrind to be kinder than Bounderby, which has not been shown in the past, but also show that Gradgrind is not as kind as Sleary who, incidentally is full of imagination (another contrast with Gradgrind to show that being full of facts is unfavourable). The contrast between Gradgrind and Sleary is partially shown through tone of voice. Although husky and drink-sodden, Sleary speaks comprehensibly, far more so that Gradgrind or Bounderby. Slearys speech impediment, thquire, and circus lingo add charm and softness to his speeches, whereas, Gradgrinds matter-of-fact speeches, He is gone away, and there is no present expectation of his return, present him in a somewhat insensitive light. However, although this disparity depicts Gradgrind as having an unsympathetic nature, his actions and his contrast with Bounderby gives us a more positive view of him. Gradgrind is shown to be different from Bounderby at this point as he wishes to take Sissy in, even though she is not full of facts and could influence his children with stories of her time at the circus, whilst Bounderby says to Gradgrind, No. .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca , .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca .postImageUrl , .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca , .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca:hover , .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca:visited , .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca:active { border:0!important; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca:active , .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u0286bed5ea60cb4103d9f39f367f2dca:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: The Inside Of Raymond'S Run EssayI say no. I advise you not. I say by no means. When Gradgrind refuses to listen to his friend and decides to give Sissy a home any way the reader is shocked as just a few chapters previously he thought so much of Bounderbys opinion that he says this repetitively to Tom and Louisa after he finds them peaking in at the circus, What would Mr Bounderby say. We also see another difference between the two friends in the way that they speak to Sissy. Bounderby is so lacking in tact that when he talks to Sissy, Let the girl understand fact. Let her take it from me, if you like, who have been run away from myself. Here, whats your name! Your father has absconded deserted you and you mustnt expect to see him again as long as you live, that Sleary says his employees might, pith you out o winder! Gradgrind speaks in a more caring manor, and he doesnt call Sissy, whats your name! Gradgrind does still speak in a fact full way but he is much more tactful and considerate than Bounderby, I, who came here to tell the father of the poor girl, Jupe, that she could not be received at the school any more, in consequence of there being practical objections, into which I need not enter, to the reception there of the children of persons so employed, am prepared in these altered circumstances to make a proposal. This long sentence also shows that Gradgrind is trying to calm the situation down for Sissy before he makes his, proposal, this is also quite thoughtful. Throughout this episode the relationship that Gradgrind has with children has changed. The reader can no longer imagine him as thinking of Sissy as a vessel as in chapter one. However, the reader also notices that Gradgrind hasnt made a total reform, far from it, and that he still believes tenaciously in facts. The two episodes also show a change in the way Gradgrind views his status. In chapter one it would be inconceivable that he would spend any time talking to, lower, circus people, let alone be thing about taking in a lowly circus child! I think that through the differences between Gradgrinds character in chapter one and in chapter six he is showing that through better communication and understanding the Victorian education system and industry could change for the better. In conclusion, I think that Dickens has used the characterisation of Gradgrind very cleverly. Even his name reflects his character. The, Grad or grade is because of his determination that his children should concentrate on factual matters alone, they are in danger of never fully developing into normal people, and the, grind and its concern with the different stages of our lives. His descriptions of Gradgrind all show links with the Victorian industry and education system in this skilful political novel.

Coleridge And The Explosion Of Voice Essays - Literature

Coleridge And The Explosion Of Voice Coleridge and the Explosion of Voice Coleridge is so often described in terms which are akin to the word, "explosive," and by all accounts he was at times an unusually dynamic,charismatic and unpredictable person. His writings themselves could also betermed "explosive" merely from their physical form; a fragmented mass, some pieces finished but most not, much of his writing subject to procrastination or eventual change of mind. Today I want to address a moment in his life which produced, as Richard Holmes has characterized it, an explosion of his poetic talent[1]--Autumn 1799, when he first met Sara Hutchinson, and wrote, amongst other poems, the ballad, "Love." In addressing this moment, I want to suggest that the voice of Coleridge at this time was explosive, vital and new, but only when set against the "ancient" balladic tradition with which he engaged. Whilst accepting the dynamism and the unpredictability of Coleridge, I want to show that his acceptance of a formal mode allowed him to find his own particular, romantic voice; for, as Stephen Parrish has pointed out, "for Coleridge, the passion was obscured unless the poet spoke in his own voice."[2] The ballad revival of the eighteenth century supplied Romantic writers with an archive of voices from the past, a past which many seemed to idealize as a time of true feeling, when Nature not only had its place but was also imbued with a raw power. Particularly in the late 1790s, Coleridge worked within such a tradition, and in so doing, found his own voice from the minstrelsy of the past. I want to begin by illustrating the literary environment in which Coleridge found himself at the end of the eighteenth century. Ancient ballad and song culture was being revived throughout Europe from the early eighteenth century onwards, possibly beginning with the "Ossian" fragments in Scotland. Although most British commentators were skeptical of the authenticity of Ossian, as Hugh Trevor-Roper reports, they were feted in other parts of Europe; and Germany in particular.[3] The title of this conference is "The National Graduate Romanticism Conference"; the proximity of "Romantic" and "National" in this tag is fortuitous, since it is important to realize the close relationship between the ballad revival and a sense of nationhood. In Johann Herder's famous essay on Ossian, the place of the song or ballad as a kind of national cultural archive is made plain.[4] He refers to the ballads as "the gnomic song of the nation," and continues, in letter form, to his "friend": What I wanted to do was remind you that Ossian's poems are songs, songs of the people, folk-songs, the songs of an unsophisticated people living close to the senses, songs which have been long handed down by oral tradition. Herder locks into the fashionable Rousseauian notion of the "Noble Savage." He goes on: Know then, that the more barbarous a people is - that is, the more alive, the more freely acting (for that is what the word means) - the more barbarous, that is, the more alive, the more free, the closer to the senses, the more lyrically dynamic its songs will be, if songs it has. The more remote a people is from an artificial, scientific manner of thinking, speaking and writing, the less its verses are written for the dead letter. The attraction of this national voice is its proximity to nature; and thus, proximity to a kind of raw reality. Herder makes clear that this "ancient" verse is a superior form for it is from "Nature" and not from "Art." The present age, he observes, has made the mistake of foregrounding Art over Nature: And if that is the way our time thinks, then of course we will admire Art rather than Nature in these ancients' poems; we will find too much or too little Art in them, according to our predisposition, and we will rarely have ears to hear the voice that sings in them: the voice of Nature. Indeed the general thrust of this essay is to cry out for a natural poetic voice, the kind of voice that he found so evident in the Ossian fragments. He complains at the recent German translation of Ossian, by Michael Denis, because he used the polished hexameters of the German neo-classical idiom; a hated, artful masking of the Natural Voice. At the end of the essay, Herder calls to his countrymen for a collection of German folk-songs. They are badly needed, he feels, to remind the nation of their own collective voice, a voice

The Future of Human Space Exploration

The Future of Human Space Exploration From Here to There: Human Space Flight People have a solid future in space, with regular flights to the International Space Station continuing to bring astronauts to low-Earth orbit for science experiments. But, the ISS isnt the only extent of our push to the new frontier. The next generation of explorers is already alive and preparing for journeys to the Moon and Mars. They could be our children and grandchildren, or even some of us reading stories online right now. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station in blue jumpsuits. NASA Companies and space agencies are testing new rockets, improved crew capsules, inflatable stations, and futuristic concepts for lunar bases, Mars habitats, and orbiting lunar stations. There are even plans for asteroid mining. It wont be long before the first super-heavy-lift rockets such as the next-generation Ariane (from ESA), SpaceXs Starship (Big Falcon Rocket), the Blue Origin rocket, and others will be blasting off to space. And, in the very near future, humans will be aboard, too.   Space Flight is in Our History Flights to low-Earth orbit and out to the Moon have been a reality since the early 1960s.  Human exploration of space actually began in 1961. Thats when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man  in  space. He was followed by other Soviet and U.S. space explorers who landed on the  Moon circled Earth in space stations and  labs and blasted off aboard shuttles and space capsules. Yuri Gagarin, the first human to fly to space. alldayru.com Planetary exploration with robotic probes is ongoing. There are plans for an asteroid exploration, Moon colonization, and eventual Mars missions in the relatively near future. Yet, some people still ask, why explore space? What have we done so far? These are important questions and have very serious and practical answers. Explorers have been answering them throughout their careers as astronauts. Living and Working in Space The work of the men and women who have already been in space have helped establish the process of learning  how to live and there.  Humans have established a long-term presence in low-Earth orbit with the International Space Station, and U.S. astronauts spent time on the Moon in the late 1960s and early1970s. Plans for human habitation of Mars or the Moon are in the works, and some missions- such as the long-term assignments in space of such astronauts as Scott Kellys year in space- test astronauts to see how the human body reacts on long missions to other planets (such as Mars, where we already have robotic explorers) or spend lifetimes on the Moon.  In addition, with long-term explorations, its inevitable that people will start families in space or on another world. Very little is known about how successful that will be or what we may call new generations of space humans. Astronaut Sunita Williams exercising aboard the International Space Station. NASA Many mission scenarios for the future follow a familiar line:  establish a space station (or two), create science stations and colonies, and then after testing ourselves in near-Earth space, take the leap to Mars. Or an asteroid or two. Those plans are in the long-term; at best, the first Mars explorers most likely wont set foot there until the 2020s or 2030s. The Near-term Goals of Space Exploration   A number of countries around the world have plans for space exploration, among them China, India, the United States, Russia, Japan, New Zealand, and the European Space Agency. More than 75 countries have agencies, but only a few have launch capability. NASA and the Russian Space Agency are partnering to bring astronauts to the International Space Station. Since the space shuttle fleet retired in 2011, Russian rockets have been blasting off with Americans (and astronauts of other nationalities) to the ISS. NASAs Commercial Crew and Cargo program are working with companies such as Boeing, SpaceX, and United Launch Associates to come up with safe and cost-effective ways to deliver humans to space.  In addition, Sierra Nevada Corporation is proposing an advanced space plane called the Dream Chaser, and already has contracts for European use.   The current plan (in the second decade of the 21st century) is to use the Orion crew vehicle, which is very similar in design to the Apollo capsules (but with more-advanced systems), stacked atop a rocket, to bring astronauts to a number of different locations, including the ISS. The hope is to use this same design to take crews to near-Earth asteroids, the Moon, and Mars. The system is still being built and tested, as are space launch systems (SLS) tests for the necessary booster rockets. Water recovery of the Orion crew capsule in testing. NASA   The design of the Orion capsule was widely criticized by some as a giant step backward, particularly by people who felt that the nations space agency should try for an updated shuttle design (one that would be safer than its predecessors  and with more range). Due to technical limitations of the shuttle designs, plus the need for reliable technology (plus political considerations that are both complex and ongoing), NASA chose the Orion concept (after the cancellation of a program called Constellation).   Beyond NASA and Roscosmos The United States is not alone in sending people to space. Russia intends to continue operations on the ISS, while China has sent astronauts to space, and the Japanese and Indian space agencies are moving ahead with plans to send their own citizens as well. The Chinese have plans for a permanent space station, set for construction in the next decade. The China National Space Administration has also set its sights on the exploration of Mars, with possible crews setting foot on the Red Planet beginning perhaps in 2040. India has more modest initial plans. The Indian Space Research Organization (which has a mission at Mars) is working to develop a launch-worthy vehicle and carry a two-member crew to low-Earth orbit perhaps in the next decade. The Japanese Space Agency JAXA has announced its plans for a space capsule to deliver astronauts to space by 2022 and has also tested a space plane. The far distant future may well hold new ways of getting around space. Here, two spaceships enter a wormhole in outer space to get to another part of the galaxy. Such travel isnt possible yet, so humans are still constrained to exploring near-Earth space. Corey Ford/Stocktrek Images The interest in space exploration continues. Whether or not it manifests itself as a full-blown race to Mars or rush to the Moon or trip to mine an asteroid remains to be seen. There are many difficult tasks to accomplish before humans are routinely jetting off to the Moon or Mars. Nations and governments need to evaluate their long-term commitment to space exploration. The technological advancements to deliver humans to these places are taking place, as are the tests on humans to see if they really CAN withstand the rigors of long space flights to alien environments  and safely live in a more dangerous environment than Earth. It now remains for the social and political spheres to come to terms with humans as a space-faring species.

Discussion Topics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 9

Discussion Topics - Essay Example If not, there will be a total disaster. For instance, last summer, I volunteered in a health organization. Things there were not smooth because of the lack of communication between the manager and supervisor. The power games in the sector, according to Metoyer (2009), are based on resource and technical skill. The political roles displayed by Metoyer (2009) are sub-divided into three parts; firstly, decisional, which relies heavily on information; secondly, interpersonal, which ensures that information is well conveyed and; lastly, informational, which is the back-bone of all these roles and managerial tasks. All these need to be harmonized in the best way possible to have an effective team and ensure no conflicts occur (Johnson, 2008). In case of a conflict, it needs to be effectively resolved to avoid future reoccurrences. Conflicts are solved depending on the nature of the problem (Metoyer, 2009). The manager plays an important role to harmonize the two parties in conflict. A good manager resolves conflicts when perceived in the early stages to avoid the situation to escalate further (Johnson, 2008). The manager should resolve the conflict, appoint a unit to address employee issues and develop a system of encouragement by offering rewards to individuals who do an outstanding job. This, in turn, will initiate team building, as well as create healthy competition among the

History see below Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

History see below - Essay Example In 1720 Charles issues a Pragmatic Sanction to establish the legal basis for transmission of the Habsburg lands to Maria Theresa; the sanction also declared that the Habsburg inheritance was indivisible. The following years the Austrian diplomacy concentrated on persuading the European countries to accept the Pragmatic Sanction. Nevertheless Charles's concessions did not prevent the outbreak of the Austrian Succession War (1740-48) right after his death in 1740. Beside this Frederick William I, the "sergeant major" King of Prussia, died on 31st May 1740 and Prussian throne passed to his ruthlessly ambitious son, Frederick.1 On December 16, 1740 Frederick II having not agreed to the Pragmatic Sanction invaded the rich Habsburg province of Silesia, meanwhile the while French military forces invaded Bavaria. The next year nearly all the powerful countries of Europe were involved in the war, but still the long-suffering military struggle was for Silesia between Prussia and Austria followed by the Convention of Klein-Schnellendorf in October 1741 and finally the Maria Theresa's truce with Frederick II; still it came too late to prevent a Franco-Bavarian occupation of Bohemia the following month; and this ended up with in January 1742 by the election of Karl Albert (elector of Bavaria since 1726) as the new Holy Roman emperor.2 From the beginning of 1742 year the French troops threatened Flanders, a land dominated by Austria and the Dutch Republic. A Pragmatic Army named from Charles VI's Sanctions assembled to counter the French invasion, with troops from Austria and various German states including Hanover. George II, King of England and Elector of Hanover, resolved to send English troops to join the Pragmatic Allies. Ostensibly the army was to fight for Maria Theresa, but George's concern was that the French intended to pass through the Low Countries and invade his beloved Hanover.3 The English forces were sent to Flanders in mid-1742. The first Silesian War was over on the 11th of June 1742 with the signing the separate peace between Prussia and Austria at Breslau. In 1743 the French were almost completely forced out of the empire, and in March and April 1744 Louis XV (ruled 1715-1774) formalized hostilities by declaring war first on Great Britain and then on Austria.1 The death of Charles VII in January 1745 drastically changed the political situation. Max Joseph, his successor as elector of Bavaria, was aware of the impossibility of the Bavarian position, promised to vote for Maria Theresa's husband, Francis Stephen of Lorraine, grand duke of Tuscany, to be the next emperor, which he accordingly became in October.2 On 11 May 1745 Maurice de Saxe, marshal of France, defeated the combined Anglo-Austrian-Dutch army at Fontenoy, and went on to capture a string of fortresses in

Essay question Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 6

Question - Essay Example Or symbolically, that we may be consumed by our problems and challenges because it is too much for us to handle. The words of Christ here may be stern and rebuking but this gave assurance to the faithful that nothing will happen to them even in the midst of the strongest storm if He is with them. The message of the story is that if we have enough unwavering faith in Jesus Christ, our personal storms or problems will take care of its own. And that we should not worry of drowning just like the disciples did because if we have faith in Jesus, no harm would come to us even if the strongest storm will come upon us. Or in short, we should not be afraid of any challenges that life may confront us if we have in Jesus. 3. In Matthew 8:18-22, Jesus revealed the cost of discipleship when the crowd gathered around him and a teacher of the law manifested his willingness to become His disciple and follow wherever he may go. And Jesus told,   Jesus replied,  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Manhas no place to lay his head† (Matthews 8:18-20). Jesus answer was allegory of how demanding the work of a disciple is. It means that they will not have rest for they will live the life of the disciple. Then another disciple ask Jesus to first let him go to bury his father before following him as disciple. Jesus reply here is stern statement and to the modern day reader, this may sound insensitive for Jesus Christ because he will not entertain any sentimentalities from his disciples saying â€Å"Follow me,  and let the dead bury their own dead.† This only manifests the demands to become a disciple of Jesus Christ that one must have an unwavering faith and dedication that things will take care of their own when they follow Jesus. This is supported by the following verses in Matthews when a storm was upon them and the disciples panicked and woke up the sleeping Jesus to save them from

An Analysis Of Shaffers Equus

An Analysis Of Shaffers Equus The play is in two acts, the first consisting of twenty-one; the second of thirty-five scenes. It is not realistic in that it includes flashbacks performed onstage (like a movie). However, it is an explanatory one with Shaffers notes while read. It is a play consisting of individuals rather than types. Each character has his/her individuality along with his/her own perspective of life. We learn about the characters from what other characters tell about them; from what they tell about themselves; as well as from Shaffers explanation about them within parentheses. Although it is an open ended play it goes far from the lineer plot structure with its amazing climax. The forward and backward action of the play makes it a different one. Moreover while the play has speech when the time is present, it contains action when it is backward. It is a symbolic play and can be called a journey into the mind of Alan Strang, a seventeen year old boy. It analyzes Alans religious obsession with horses which is based on his complicated feelings due to his religious background and his increasing sexual side as a teenager. This confusion of religion, in fact, is a consequence of some signals from his religious, middle-class mother and his atheist, working-class father. Alans perception of religion and sexuality is conflicted and his way of praying becomes a fear of a horse spirit named Equus. He ends up with blinding six horses in the stable because of the fact that they have watched him with a girl. Rosefeldt states that Equus is inspired by a real-life event of which the author had very little details. Someone told Shaffer about a boy who blinded horses (Rosefeldt 89). Equus, the horse gradually becomes a source of freedom and worship for Alan. As he worships Equus passionately, Alan goes away from being normal. There are two main characters in the play, Martin Dysart and Alan Strang, the protagonist. While the play is Alans story, it soon becomes Dysarts story, too. Dysart is a psychiatrist and is asked to treat Alan Strang. Dysart admits to treat Alan as a patient, believing his lawyer friend Hesther Salomon that the boy has something special. In Act I, the audiences learn that Alan comes from a Christian mother Dora Strang and an atheist father Frank Strang who have argument in agreeing how to raise Alan. Alans mother tries to impose religion on Alan and does not avoid talking about sex as well. As he grows up and becomes a teenager, his mothers words become confusing for him. Alans obssesion with the horses is actually a typical result of his mothers words: Dora. I used to tell him a funny thing about falling off horses. Did you know that when Christian cavalry first appeared in the New World, the pagans thought horse and rider was one person? Dysart. Really? Alan. (sitting up, amazed) One person? Dora. Actually, they thought it must be a god. Alan. A god! Dora. It was only when one rider fell off, they realized the truth. Dysart. Thats fascinating. I never heard that before . . . Can you remember anything else like that you may have told him about horses. Dora. Well, not really. They are in the Bible of course. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha. Dysart. Ha, ha? (Equus 11) Dora has also let Alan watch some Western films without his fathers knowledge (Equus 12). She is the one in the play introducing the word equus stating that it is a Latin word for horse by which Alan is fascinated since he has not heard a word with two Us (Equus 12). As for Frank, he has never approved of his wife teaching Alan Bible since he is an atheist. For Frank, Alans psychology has been corrupted because of Doras teachings of Bible. Alan has been having nightmares in which he keeps saying Ek! . . . Ek! . . .Ek! (Equus 14). Dysart first tries psychotherapy to learn the reasons for Alans problems. However, those therapies consequently reveal some interesting clues about Dysarts own problems. Alan is a clever boy and he tries to work on Dysarts psychology in the way Dysart does: Dysart. Do you dream often? Alan. Yes, do you? Dysart. Yes. Do you have a special dream? Alan. No. Do you? Dysart. Yes. What was your dream about last night? Alan. Cant remember. Whats yours about? Dysart. I said the truth. Alan. Thats the truth. Whats yours about? The special one. Dysart. Carving up children. (Equus 14) Shapiro who analyzes the play technically, suggests for the relationship between Dysart and Alan: [T]he symbolic aspect is in the phrases Dysart uses to set the scene in motion. What they symbolize is Dysarts dishonesty, as Alans symbolic event also revealsAlan is playing a symbolic event with an iconic, truculent aspect, the object of which is the audiences recognition of Dysarts dishonesty In this case the audience knows from the Nurses previous indexical event that Dysart knew about Alans nightmares. Thus, they should recognize that Dysart began the interview with a lie. Consequently, the interview cannot proceed until Alan turns indexical. He will do this once Dysart becomes truthful. Hence, Alan suggests that they interview each other. (Shapiro 111) In the tenth scene of the first act, the audience is again introduced to a flashback. During this second therapy, Alan goes back to the time when he was six years old: Horseman. Whoa! . . . Whoa there! Whoa! . . Sorry! I didnt see you! . . . Did I scare you? Alan. No! Horseman. (looking down at him) Thats a terrific castle! Alan. Whats his name? Horseman. Trojan. You can stroke him, if you like. He wont mind. (Equus 19) In this scene Alans parents arrive and warn the horseman. His father takes him from the horsemans shoulders and they get angry with the horseman. Frank who is strictly against riding horses is sad to see Alan hurt, however Alan is glad to have ridden a horse. He explains his act saying I wanted to laugh! (Equus 20). It is here clear that Alan as a boy, demands to have joy; no matter how his parents think. It is the passion destroyed by his parents. What Dysart really wants to learn is the reason why Alan blinded the six horses in the stable. As a psychiatrist, Dysart wants to go into the deepest places of Alans psychology in order to give some meaning to this act of Alan. However, Alan neither explains why he blinded the horses nor tells something that can help Dysart find some reason behind it. He continues playing with the psychiatrist. In the eleventh scene we are told that Alan, when he was twelve, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ insisted on buying à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ {the picture of Christ loaded down with chains} with his pocket money, and hanging it at the foot of his bed where he could see it last thing at night (Equus 21). However, Frank, the atheist father tore and threw it away. Instead of the picture, he put a photograph of a horse which made Alan happy. In the fifteenth scene, Dysart has finally managed to have more clues about Alans situation. He has learnt from Frank about a girl in Alans life and decided to ask some questions about the stable. Alan takes the audience to the previous year when he first talked to Jill a middle-class girl in her early twenties. At this time, Alan is working in a shop and Jill has come to the shop in order to buy some blades for a clipping machine to clip horses (Equus 29). Jill is working in a stable owned by Harry Dalton. She suggests Alan ride horses however Alan is here hesitant since he knows his parents would be against it. He finally agrees to go to the stable and meet Dalton. As soon as he arrives the stable, Dalton tells him about the horses and teaches him how to ride a horse. Here we are introduced to Nugget, a horse which will soon have an important part in the play. When Alan is left alone with the horses in the stable, his passion returns. What Dysart wants to learn is whether Alan ha d a date with Jill; however Alan is again escapist in his answers and he instead tries to question Dysart about his own dates. It is in scene seventeen where the audiences come to realize the inner conflict of Dysart. Alan tries to catch Dysart from his weakest point. Dysart has never had any sexual relationship with any women in his life, including his wife. He is nervous when he is asked why he does not have any children and suddenly needs cigarettes. His soliloquy in this scene is a clear evidence about this psychiatrists psychology: What am I, then? . . . Wicked little bastard [Alan] knew exactly what questions to try. Hed actually marched himself round the hospital, making enquiries about my wife. Wicked and of course, perceptive. Ever since I made that crack about carving up children, hes been aware of me in an absolutely specific way. Of course, there is nothing novel in that. Advanced neurotics can be dazzling at that game. They aim unswervingly at your area of maximum vulnerability. . . Which I suppose is as good a way as any of describing Margaret. (Equus 32) The next scene reveals Dysarts problems with his wife Margaret. Dysart explains Hesther why they did not have any children. He blames Margaret for this. He states that Margaret sits beside [their] salmonpink, glazed brick fireplace, and knits things for orphans; for him, his wife is a domestic monster who is the Shrinks Shrink (Equus 34). While Dysart likes to read about Ancient Greece, Margaret hates such things. Their marriage is including two different persons, being very similar to Alans parents marriage. Shaffer prefers to give this marriage from one point of view that of the husband. We never meet the wife. Dysart is unhappy and uncomfortable in his marriage. He tells his friend, Hesther: Do you know what its like for two people to live in the same house as if they were in different parts of the world? Mentally, shes always in some drizzly kirk of her own inheriting: and Im in some Doric temple clouds tearing throuh pillars eagles bearing prophecies out of the sky. (Equus 34) In this scene Dysart seems to cure himself; it is his confrontation with his own confused psychology. He is obsessed with the concept of normal. According to Hesther, Dysart is trying to restore Alan to a normal life and Dysart is confused when he thinks about the meaning of normal and being a normal person. For Hesther, it is the smile in a childs eyes (Equus 35), and for Dysart, [i]t is also the dead stare in a million adults (Equus 36). Rosefeldt explains Dysarts psychology as follows: More than any other character, Dysart is aware that he is trapped in a chain of substitutions. Dysart longs to reach the passion of pagan worship. His wife reduces the sacred acrobats to absurred [50] freaks and equates the heroes of the Iliad with ruffians [50]. He cries out, Oh the primitive world. . . what instinctual truths were lost with it [50]. Alienated and alone, Dysart knows he has lost contact with these primitive truths and is hopelessly trying to regain them. For communicating with the gods, Dysart substitutes the vicarious experience of reading books on the cultural shelf [50]. Instead of reaching up to the gods, he brings home Kodachrome snaps of Mount Olympus [50]. The power of the gods rests in the Hellenic pantheonAlso, Dysart touches a reproduction statue of Dionysus [50}. The power and essence of the god is replaced by the physical presence of the god, which is replaced by the statue of the god, which is replaced by a reproduction of the statue. (Rosefeldt 92) Dysart, in order to learn more about Alan, now chooses hypnosis technique and Alans problems are revealed as follows: Dysart. Now, Alan, youre going to answer questions Im going to ask you. Do you understand? Alan. Yes. Dysart. Good. Now I want you to think back in time. You are on that beach you told me about. The tide has gone out, and youre making sandcastles. Above you, staring down at you, is that great horses head, and the cream dropping from it. Can you see that? Alan.Yes. Dysart.You ask him a question. Does the chain hurt? Alan.Yes. Dysart. Do you ask him aloud? Alan. No. Dysart. And what does the horse say back? Alan.Yes. Dysart.Then what do you say? Alan.Ill take it for you. Dysart. And he says? Alan.It never comes out. They have me in chains. Dysart.Like Jesus? Alan.Yes! Dysart.Only his name isnt Jesus, is it? Alan.No. Dysart.What is it? Alan.No one knows but him and me. Dysart.You can tell me, Alan. Name him. Alan. Equus. (Equus 37) Alan is now unconscious with the effect of hypnosis. In his imagination, the horse is chained like Jesus. Now it is clear that Alans imagination has been influenced by his mothers teachings of Bible as stated before by Frank. For Alan, Equus lives in all horses and is chained because of the sins of the world (Equus 38). When Alan goes back to the time he was twelve, looking at the picture of Equus, Dysart asks him questions about the stable. The stable is the temple of Equus where Alan washes and brushes him. Equus wants to be ridden by Alan but he does not show Alan how to ride him: He showed me nothing! Hes a mean bugger! Ride or fall! Thats Straw Law (Equus 39). Equus is no pagan idol; he is unmistakably the Judeo-Christian God, born in the straw [39] (stable of Bethlehem) and wearing the sandals [40] of Christ. As Christ suffered for mankind, Equus takes the punishment for Alans sake. The Ark of the Covenant symbolizing the contract between God and man becomes the Ark of the Manbit [41], which Alan holds in his mouth. The lump of sugar becomes Equus Last Supper [42]. Alan beckons Equus, Take my sins. Eat them for my sake [43]. Equus is Jesus, the Son of God, the Redeemer who takes away the sins of the world. Just as Christ launched his attack against the House of Mammon, Alan launches Equus against their mutual foes: The Hosts of Philco and The Hosts of Remington, the rulers of the shallow and materialistic world of substitutions. Equus is Alans redeemer, the Godslave [43]. (Rosefeldt 92) Alan rode Equus every three weeks in Daltons stable. He stole the stables keys and went there secretly to ride Equus. Dysart wants Alan to remember a scene in the stable: He throws out his arms and shows himself fully to his God, bowing himself before Nugget (Equus 41). Alan is pleased to touch Nugget but he is distressed when he remembers his eyes. He gives Nuggets sugar, the last supper before Ha ha. Here [Alan] whispers his Gods name ceremonially: Alan. Equus! . . . Equus! . . .Equus! (Equus 42), and he says: Stay, Equus. No-one said Go! . . . Thats it. Hes good. Equus the Godslave. Faithful and true(42). The Equus voice increases in volume Alan. (Shouting) WEE! . . . WAA! . . . WONDERFUL! . . . Im stiff! Stiff in the wind! My mane, stiff in the wind! My flanks! My hooves! Mane on my legs, on my flanks, like whips! Raw! Raw! Im raw! Raw! Feel me on you! On you! On you! I want to be in you! I want to BE you forever and ever! Equus, I love you! Now! Bear me away! Make us One person! He rides Equus frantically (Equus 44) The end of Act I is the climax, a strange combination of religion and sexuality. Equus is now the god that rules Alan. The word AMEN! ends Act I (Equus 44). In Act II, Frank is interestingly absent in the play. (That may be symbolic but we do not know why). Dora seems to realize her faults in rising Alan. She comes to see that it is not the child but the parent who is faulty. She sees Alan as a little victim who has done nothing at all (Equus 47). However in her speech to Dysart, she strangely puts the blame on Alan and blames Dysart for questioning her family as if they are guilty: Dora. (ignoring him; more and more urgently) Look, Doctor: you dont have to live with this. Alan is one patient to you: one out of many. Hes my son. I lie awake every night thinking about it. Neither of us sleeps all night. You come to us and say Who forbids television? Who does what behind whose back? as if we are criminals. Let me tell you something. Were not criminals. Weve done nothing wrong. We loved Alan. We gave him the best love we could. All right, we quarrel sometimes all pparents quarrel we always make it up. My husband is a good man. Hes an upright man, religion or no religion. He cares for his home, for the world, and for his boy. Alan had love and care and treats, and as much fun as any boy in the world. I know about loveless homes: I was a teacher. Our home wasnt loveless. I know about privacy, too not invading a childs privacy. All right, Frank may be at fault there he digs into him too much but nothing in excess. Hes not a bully . . . (Equus 47) This speech of Dora reveals both her and Franks faults although she typically insists that they have been good parents to Alan. Shaffer uses this technique for many characters in this play in order to be effective: The character is here revealing herself through her own words; that is to say Shaffer lets the character talk about herself in order to achieve objectivity. Dora, the religious mother lastly puts the blame on the Devil thinking that Devil came to Alan. She is portrayed as a typical irresponsible mother who is unaware of the process her son grows up: I only knew he was my little Alan, and then the Devil came (47). Both of the parents fail in dealing with their teenager son. It is a step of Alan for adolescence in which Alan is learning about life. Parents quarrelling is not something as trivial as Dora thinks. It really affects the child since he stays between two different versions of beliefs, two different truths those of the mother and of the father. Alans crisis has in fact begun when Jill Mason attempted to seduce him one night when Alans horse god, Equus was there in the stable. Alan blinds six horses with a metal spike (Equus 3) in the second act of the play and it is seen as a consequence of his guilt and shame. Although he does not want to remember anything about Jill, Dysart makes him tell about all at last. It is the most important flashback after the one about Equus. Dysart encourages Alan to remember it in order to get over it. Everything begins with Jills inviting Alan out. Although he has to go home, he accepts her offer and they go to the cinema. At the cinema, Alan tells Jill, there was no girl except for her. Soon, it is understood that the film is a pornographic one. Dysart asks him: Was that the first time youd seen a girl naked? and Alan says Yes! (Equus 58). Then suddenly, Alan realizes that his father is at the cinema, too. With the fear of being caught at such a film, he tries to hide himself. When he is caught, Frank shouts at Alan and the three leave the cinema. Outside, Alan tries to speak to his father: Alan. I I Ive never been there before. Honest . . . Never . . .(to Dysart) He didnt seem to hear. Jill tried. Jill. Its true, Mr.Strang. It wasnt Alans idea to go there. It was mine. (Equus 59) Alan. (to Dysart) The bus wouldnt come. We just stood and stood . . . Then suddenly he spoke. Frank. (stiffly) Id like you to know something. Both of you. I came here tonight to see the Manager. He asked me to call on him for business purposes. I happen to be a printer, Miss A picture house needs posters. Thats entirely why Im here. To discuss posters. While I was waiting I happened to glance in, thats allI had no idea they showed films like this. Im certainly going to refuse my services. Jill. (kindly) Yes, of course. Frank. So long as thats understood. (Equus 59) Interestingly enough, Frank explains why he himself is there instead of asking Alan why he is there. He has certainly come to the cinema for the same reason with Alan and Jill. Thus Alan and Frank are scared of each other. Frank leaves them and Alan stays with Jill. More importantly, Alan has been now introduced to the adult life with the film. He wants to make love with Jill. She takes Alan to the Stables because they cannot go to Alans or Jills house. Alan does not want to go to the Stables; he prefers a home. Alan. Why not your place? Jill. I cant. Mother doesnt like me bringing boys back. I told you . . . Anyway, the Barns better. Alan. No! Jill. All that straw. Its cosy. Alan. No! Jill. Why not? Alan. Them! Jill. Dalton will be in bed . . . Whats the matter? . . . Dont you want to? Alan. (aching to) Yes! Jill. So? Alan. (desperate) Them! . . . Them! . . . Jill. Who? Alan. (low) Horses. Jill. Horses? . . .Youre really dotty, arent you? . . . What do you mean? He starts shaking Oh youre freezing . . . Lets get under the straw. Youll be warm there. Alan. (pulling away) No! (Equus 62) Alan does not want to be seen by the horses since he thinks it would be a shameful act according to his religion. Although Jill shuts all the doors in order not to be seen by the horses, he is not comfortable. Alan cannot help but think of Equus and he sees Equus instead of Jill. Thus, his attempt to make love with Jill fails. Angrily, he shouts at Jill: Get out! (Equus 65). His psychology in this scene is horrible: Alan. (to Dysart) He was there. Through the door. The door was shut, but he was there! . . . Dysart. Laughing? Alan. (to Dysart) Mocking! . . .Mocking! . . . Standing downstage he stares up towards the tunnel. A great silence weighs on the square. (To the silence:terrified) Friend . . . Equus the Kind . . . The merciful! . . .Forgive me! . . . Silence. It wasnt me! Not really me. Me!. . . Forgive me! . . .Take me back again! Please! . . . PLEASE! (He kneels on the downstage lip of the square, still facing the door, huddling in fear) Ill never do it again. I swear . . . I swear! . . . Dysart. And He? What does He say? Alan. (to Dysart whispering) Mine! . . . Youre mine! . . . I am yours and you are mine! . . . (Equus 67) Equuss Nuggets eyes are rolling and Alan is sure that he has seen them make love. Eyes! . . . White eyes! . . . never close! Eyes like flames coming coming! . . .God seest! God seest! . . . NO! . . . (Equus 68). Alan stabs out Nugget and other five horses eyes. He yells in hysteria as he collapses on the ground (Equus 68). Dysart is about to finish his process of normalizing Alan. However he does not know whether he should be happy to have this patient cured. He calls it madness (Equus 68). In the end, Dysart appears to have cured him. {Equus is a] troubling play about a psychiatrists struggle to understand the passionately conceived but torturous personal mythology of Alan, a disturbed adolescent. If a psychologist of religion had gone after the young mans associations to G-o-d, he or she might have retrieved references to the pallid secondhand God of Alans parents, but would likely have missed Alans dramatic psychic creation of a personal diety he called Equus. Although it might be argued that this is the kind of exceptional case that falls more into the psychopathology of religion and is no basis for generalization, I am more and more struck by how distinctive and sometimes quite original are the spiritual formulations of individuals. (Mc Dargh 90) The play really includes the idea of passion versus reason. It is about a psychiatrist who thinks he can solve everything by reason and at the same time about an adolescent who is filled with passion but forced by his family to leave his passion. The battle of passion and reason in the case of Alan seems to end with the defeat of passion; however, Shaffer certainly prefers a combination of two. It is not only Alans but also becomes the inner conflict of Dysart. While the horses represent freedom and sexuality, Martin Dysart represents reason as a doctor. During the play, the two characters have difficult times. Dysart shows a change in his attitude towards passion. As for Alan, he is treated by the psychiatrist to become normal. Alan is caught up between his own creation of religion and what is expected by him. He has to feel himself acceptable (Equus 68) since reason rather than passion is what is accepted by society. Dysart lacks passion and is jealous of Alan (Equus 50); he is u ncomfortable in this process of normalizing. He gradually gets worried that he should not cure Alan because this would be the end of Alans passion, so he does not want to give an end to that passion which he lacks but desires. Dysart confesses to Hesther, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦that boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have ever felt in any second of my life. And let me tell you something: I envy it (Equus 50). Dysart is thus obsessed with passion saying Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created (Equus 69). It is a disturbing play in which Shaffer makes use of sound effects to make it psychologically effective. The horses are performed by actors who wear horse masks. As for the scene props, Shaffer makes use of light in order to emphasize his themes (Innes 228). Light is used in the play as an indication of Alans psychology. There are dream sequences, and a scenic structure that cuts across the logic of time as well as cause and effect following the irrational associations of the subconscious, plus ritual chanting, stylized masks and mythic archetypes (Innes 228). Shaffer ignores the three unities of Aristotle; there are scenes belonging to different places and different times; and there is no unity of action. However, Shaffer directly connects the past action of the play to the plot of present events; and the scenery connects more with the psychological life of the character than to the surface plot. As for the setting, it changes from scene to scene it is both internal and external; even in a single scene being both internal and external. It begins when Alan is seventeen years old and goes back to the previous years. The point of view is also variable; Shaffer lets the audience see the things from each characters point of view and Shaffer uses the omniscient narrator in order to emphasize each point of view. The play is about an adolescent who has deep complicated conflicts in his relationships with his parents and his first flirt Jill. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ {The play is not only} an extremely useful source book for an understanding of madness and family processes, it is also an affirmation of the dramatherapists long-held credo: that art can tell us things that science cannot (Davis xiii). Shaffer is successful at portraying the psychology of characters and Equus is a good work of drama in which the themes of passion, reason and worship and the idea of normal and abnormal are linked by Shaffer in order to make his audience question their beliefs and society.

The Debate Over the Glen Canyon Dam Essay -- Nature Environmental Essa

The Debate Over the Glen Canyon Dam Over the years Glen Canyon Dam has been the spark for hundreds of debates, rallies, and protests. These debates have been going on for almost forty years now. The fact is that the dam created a huge lake when it was built, this is what bothers environmentalists. This lake is called Lake Powell and thousands of people depend on its tourists for income. The lake also filled up a canyon called Glen Canyon, some people say it was the most beautiful place on earth. The anti-dam side of the debate has its basis in the fact that Lake Powell is currently covering Glen Canyon. It was very remote so few people got to witness its splendor. This is probably the reason the dam was built in the first place, ignorance. The lake supports a small city called Page, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who vacation there. The people who live in or around page and the people who use the lake for recreation are the people who like the dam and they hold up the pro-dam side of the debate. The argument is: why should we drain Lake Powell when thousands upon thousands of people enjoy it each year compared to the few hundred if that that might have ventured into Glen Canyon if it were still there. Also people argue that the rock formations, plant life, and even streams and rivers of the old Glen Canyon have long since been destroyed and it will never be the same even if we were to drain the lake. This Paper will describe and analyze three articles pertaining to the ongoing debate for and against Glen Canyon Dam. Two of these articles were found in the 1999 edition of A Sense of Place, and the third was downloaded off a site on the Internet (http://www.glencanyon.net/club.htm). These articles wi... ...ion that the proposal to drain Lake Powell is not a very good one " First off two Club members in page, AZ quit the club over the Lake Powell proposal" (www.glencanyon.net/club). The writer thinks that the board is wrong to propose such an idea "Lake Powell violated the club's policy that major decisions should start at the ground and work their way up" (www.glencanyon.net/club). The author seems to want to clear guilt of the proposal from the club members. The author's point of view seems to be of someone who is involved in the Sierra Club organization itself, whether the author is or isn't a member they have something to do with the organization. The author is in a protective mode, "The Board (of the Sierra Club) pulled this idea out of thin air" (www.glencanyon.net/club) trying to state the fact that not all members are in favor of the plan to drain the lake.

Book Review of 1984 Essay

He was a member of outer party, who has better life than the proles according to the government. Winston did not believe in the party, the Big Brother. He remained the memory before the Revolution, some fragmented memory about a better life than he was experiencing. He held a belief in abiding faith, contrary to the faked fact that he produced for the sake of work. Through the process that how the party reintegrated Winston, we saw the party controlled the society, using what they learned from the history to improve the method of doing a brainwashing. Julia is the second main character. She is Winston’s love, a beautiful young woman. Julia was born after the Revolution. She knew a little about the past through her grandfather, who disappeared when she was eight. She was zealous in the activities that government promotes, like Junior Anti-Sex League, Two Minutes’ Hate and community center. However, she is a girl who does not care about what the life will be tomorrow. She used her body to exchange for inner party’s good. Everything she did for the government was a mask, to distract attentions from sexually promiscuous rebel. She was sex criminal. After she fell in love with Winston, she believed that ‘It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say anything — ANYTHING— but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you. ’ However, she was also tortured to be perfect and even suffered more than Winston. ‘Her face was sallower, and there was a long scar, partly hidden by the hair, across her forehead and temple’. The third main character is O’Brien, a member of Brotherhood, which is leaded by Goldstein, the target of Two Minutes’ Hate. But O’Brien was actually a member of inner party, a zealous supporter of the Party, a thought police, a spy. He made Winston believed in him that he opposed that Party and pretended to be a member of Brotherhood. With the help of Mr. Charrington, Winston was caught by Thought Police, as well as Julia. O’Brien engaged in most part of reintegration of Winston. He was the first one who inspires Winston to oppose the Party, by a sentence, ‘We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,’ O’Brien had said to him. And then he leaded him to believe in the existence of Brotherhood, finally to the love of Big Brother, the death. The story started from Winston Smith, a member of outer party. Winston lived in a dark age, though others may deny it. There are three biggest powers in the world: the Eurasian, Oceania and Eastasia. Winston was in Oceania, under the control of the new party—INGSOC, English Socialism. The official language is New Speak, contrary to the Old Speak. It is used to limit and finally eliminate all modes of thought, therefore nobody would rebel, even just a second’s thought. There are three classes: the Inner Party, the Outer Party and the Proles. Telescreens and microphones are everywhere, monitoring every act of the citizens. There are four ministries, the Ministry of Love, the Ministry of Plenty, the Ministry of Peace and the Ministry of Truth. Each of the ministries is working on the things that are contrary to its name. Winston worked in the Ministry of Truth, where all the documents should be rewritten in order to support the eternal positive of the Party. It is a department that holds the output of Medias, books, news and podcast, falsification was made to the history and facts, which promote the Party doctrine. Winston never believed in the Party. He lived with a mask, controlling every movement, every word that he gave out. However, accidentally he fell in love with a young woman, Julia. They had sex, enjoying the food that Julia brought from the Inner Party, and talked about their doubts on the Party, sharing pieces of memory before the Revolution. They decided to join the Brotherhood, to fight against the Party. They could do everything, except stop loving each other. O’Brien, as a member of Brotherhood, received them and gave them the book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, written by Emmanuel Goldstein. However, when Winston and Julia were still reading the book in Mr. Charrington’s shop, they were caught by though police. The Brotherhood was a trap. O’Brien was actually an Inner Party member. Winston suffered for a long period of reintegration, and finally built up his loyal love to Big Brother, before his death. The mainline is easy to summarize, however the idea that the story wants to tell is difficult. In the book, the politics have been gone to the worst part. Those covers, like â€Å"to help the poor†, â€Å"for the sake of freedom and equality†, or â€Å"to release the proles and reform the society†, are abandoned. The aim of the Party is so direct, that is even adverse, to attain the pure power, nothing else but only the power. The method they used was successful. Language is the access to mind. It is clever to not only limit people to express their opinion but also change their tools, the language itself, by reducing the amount of words and meanings it can represent. It can stop the rebel from the beginning point. â€Å"A thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable. † This aim is attainable as long as the Party could replace the Old Speak entirely. The new generation would know nothing about the Old Speak and have no ways to understand the past since those past were record in the Old Speak and possibly had been rewritten totally by Ministry of True. They are as ignorance as animals, who have no past and even no inherit genes. In order to let people have no spare time to think about the meaning of their lives, to explore the things that the Party does not tell, they have war continuously. This could help to avoid rebellion. â€Å"War is peace. † It also keeps the life standard just right above the poverty line. People have to work hard, though the government has always claimed that they have made progress on production, they still do not have enough to eat or enough fuels to make them warm. The life was terrible that everyone works like animal, do what orders, and no more think. But it was a blast of strong power, to have so much unconscious workforce. â€Å"Ignorance is strength. † To explain the last part of the Party’s practice, â€Å"Slavery is freedom. † it relates to the concept of individual and group. As an individual, you are slaved, but groups of slaved have the strength to achieve power and freedom. One should escape from its own identity, and to be slaved, to be remixed into a group, which finally reaches the ultimate freedom. The story has been making a big background in the Chapter 1. After Winston met Julia, the plot has been speeded up. I think the most special point of this book is that he put the climax as the end. â€Å"He loved Big Brother. † The final turning point, and then everything become silent. Actually it just looks like George Orwell him self’s life, ended at the climax. The book reveals several methods of safeguarding the pure power. They came from George Orwell’s real life. George Orwell had been policing in Burma, and then experienced bottom level life in Paris and London. Then he and his family experience the civil war in Spanish and after that was World War Two. These experiences gave George Orwell the elements needed for this book. The poor life standard, the deep hate to those powerful and rich people, the cruelty of war and all of them made up the main background of 1984. George Orwell was a really sensitive writer, who made words to represents more than it should be. His novel was not long and you seldom see some extremely difficult sentence, but you still cannot get its idea only after one-time read. It takes time to catch the main part. Meticulous as him, the principle of New Speak was also provided at the end, to illustrate how this power weapon works. I would definitely recommend my friends to read this book, since it shows how bad the politics, the government might be, and what they would do to maintain their position. I have heard about a comment, which said that you can find many books to help you know the true face of the politics, say that is 5percent, however 1984 could provide you 100percent of that. Reference: http://ebooks. adelaide. edu. au/o/orwell/george/o79n/contents. html

Free Essays on Greek Legacies

used today in the English language originated from Greek. Greek legacies are their governmental systems, culture and arts, and science and technology. Classical Greece was a time where the growth of a community held strong through times of plague, wars, and numerous breakthroughs. A major legacy left by classical Greece was a government based on direct democracy. With a direct democracy, citizens ruled by majority vote. The citizenship was expanded to all free males, except foreigners. Those not considered citizens were women, slaves, and all foreigners. In 621 b.c.e., Draco, an Athenian lawmaker, wrote the first legal code. In the legal code, Draco dealt with contract and property ownership. It also included debt slavery. In classical Greece, citizens were also allowed to bring charges of wrong doing with a trial by jury. Direct democracy was a new innovation that not only changed the world, but also helped classical Greece become a great and powerful nation. Another legacy left by Greece was their culture and art. With their culture, they created the Greek language. The Greeks also invented their mythology, which included gods and goddesses. Through myths, Greeks tried to understand the mysteries of nature and the power of human passion. Gods lived forever, and Greeks attributed human qualities to them. The Olympic Games were originated in Greece around 776 b.c.e. They were dedicated to the god Zeus. The Greeks even suspended the wars between city-states so the athletes of the Olympics could compete. Philosophers, lovers of wisdom, were determined to seek the truth. There philosophy was based on two assumptions: that the universe (land, sky, and sea) is put together in an orderly way, and subject to absolute and unchanging laws, and that people can understand these laws through logic and reason. The three main philosophers of classical Greece are Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates had many followers due... Free Essays on Greek Legacies Free Essays on Greek Legacies Many of the words used today in the English language originated from Greek. Greek legacies are their governmental systems, culture and arts, and science and technology. Classical Greece was a time where the growth of a community held strong through times of plague, wars, and numerous breakthroughs. A major legacy left by classical Greece was a government based on direct democracy. With a direct democracy, citizens ruled by majority vote. The citizenship was expanded to all free males, except foreigners. Those not considered citizens were women, slaves, and all foreigners. In 621 b.c.e., Draco, an Athenian lawmaker, wrote the first legal code. In the legal code, Draco dealt with contract and property ownership. It also included debt slavery. In classical Greece, citizens were also allowed to bring charges of wrong doing with a trial by jury. Direct democracy was a new innovation that not only changed the world, but also helped classical Greece become a great and powerful nation. Another legacy left by Greece was their culture and art. With their culture, they created the Greek language. The Greeks also invented their mythology, which included gods and goddesses. Through myths, Greeks tried to understand the mysteries of nature and the power of human passion. Gods lived forever, and Greeks attributed human qualities to them. The Olympic Games were originated in Greece around 776 b.c.e. They were dedicated to the god Zeus. The Greeks even suspended the wars between city-states so the athletes of the Olympics could compete. Philosophers, lovers of wisdom, were determined to seek the truth. There philosophy was based on two assumptions: that the universe (land, sky, and sea) is put together in an orderly way, and subject to absolute and unchanging laws, and that people can understand these laws through logic and reason. The three main philosophers of classical Greece are Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates had many followers due...

The eNotes Blog What the $$$$ Just Happened to My StudentLoans!!

What the $$$$ Just Happened to My StudentLoans!! Paying for college is tough enough, but have you heard about the recent hikes in interest rates for student loans? Read on to find out how this affects you as either a current student or someone in repayment, plus how government officials plan to resolve the issue of crippling student debt. As of yesterday, Stafford Loan interest rates doubled from 3.4% to 6.8%. Congress did not pass an alternative measure before the July 4th break, which will end at 2:00pm on Monday, July 8th. However, it still has the option to pass a measure that will retroactively affect the rise in interest rates, altering the Stafford Loan rates for this year’s students and perhaps others. This article will outline a few of the options Congress faces, what changes may be made, and how those changes might affect students with Stafford Loans. Protestors advocate against increased interest rates. What is a Stafford Loan and how does it work? Stafford Loans are the most common kind of federal student loans available. They are available to students at accredited institutions in the United States, a category to which most colleges and universities in the United States pertain. Stafford Loans can be either subsidized or unsubsidized. Of these, subsidized loans tend to have lower interest rates, and the federal government pays the interest that the loans accrue. Contrastingly, the interest that accumulates on unsubsidized Stafford Loans is capitalized, meaning that it is added to the part of the loan on which interest is paid. Subsidized Stafford Loans are available to those who demonstrate financial need via the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form, which must be renewed each year a student wishes to apply. Unsubsidized Stafford Loans are available to all students who meet the Stafford Loan requirements, which can be found here. In addition to Stafford Loans, the government gives out PLUS Loans, which are unsubsidized loans and in the past have had higher interest rates than Stafford Loans. PLUS Loans are available to graduate students and parents of students. The Option Proposed by President Obama: President Obama proposed an option, named Pay As You Earn, which would tie the interest rates of student loans to those of the market, using ten-year Treasury Note interest rates as a benchmark. Subsidized Stafford Loans would have interest rates 0.93% above those of Treasury Notes, while unsubsidized loans and loans given to graduate students and parents would have rates 2.93% and 3.93% higher, respectively. The president’s proposed option would also cap monthly student payments at ten percent of their monthly income, and it would retire any student debt after it has been held for twenty years. While this option could be beneficial to many, it also carries with it a serious downfall: according to the New York Times, Treasury Note rates have been known to go as high as 8 or 9 percent, and if this were to happen again, it could lead to incredibly high student interest rates. Moreover, Obama’s plan would only apply to Stafford Loans taken during or after 2011. Finally, the plan’s use of fixed interest rates could leave students paying very high rates if they attend school during times of economic success. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Plan: Student debt represents a serious economic issue. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, proposed a plan that would provide students with the same interest rates as those given to large banks when borrowing from the Federal Reserve (currently 0.75 percent). Warren voiced that the federal government is going to charge students interest rates that are nine times higher than the rates for the biggest banks the same banks that destroyed millions of jobs and nearly broke this economy (US News). But while Warren’s case may make sense at face value, it does not account for an important fact: banks are only given such low interest rates on very short-term loans, which are often paid back overnight. US News notes, â€Å"Even the U.S. government, the epitome of a trustworthy borrower, is paying around 1.8 percent in interest on its 10-year loans now, and nearly 3 percent on its 30-year loans.† Clearly, it doesn’t make economic sense to provide such drastically low interest rates to students when federal student loan default rates for borrowers are as high as they currently are (read more here). However, while Warren’s plan would cost the government a sizable amount of money, it is only a year long, with its intended purpose being to provide Congress with more time to find an alternative solution to raising student interest rates. Allow Interest Rates to Increase as Planned: Consumer advocate Stef Gray explains the effects of increased interest rates for students: â€Å"Ultimately what this is going to mean for students is that they’re going to pay – given a typical ten year repayment plan – four thousand dollars more. That’s an increase of a thousand dollars per year in college, and I think the average student could use an extra thousand dollars in his or her pocket.† She also highlights the fact that â€Å"the federal government currently makes thirty-six cents on every dollar that students borrow,† relating this to last years $51 billion ‘profit,’ which she points out is larger than the profits of any Fortune 500 company. But the federal government, says Dylan Matthews of the Washington Post, does not actually profit from student loans. In fact, â€Å"they actually lose money.† According to Matthews, this is because the government places â€Å"student loans below the market rate.† Why does this happen? Because the Congressional Budget Office, which is in charge of determining the cost of government loans, is required by law to use a method that â€Å"discounts all government loans using the returns on Treasuries of similar maturity.† Which is economist talk for having too much faith in students’ ability to pay back their loans, since Treasuries are far more reliable than student loans. Why does it look like the government is making money off of students? The method accounts for the higher returns that student loans give the government, but it does not factor in the default rates. In other words, it misses a key piece of information: the number of people that probably will n ot pay the government back. Ultimately, the argument cannot be made that the government is trying to make money off of students by raising interest rates on Stafford Loans because the government’s methods make this impossible. It can be argued, however, that increasing interest rates will also increase the default rates on student loans. What does this all boil down to? According to CBS News Analyst Mellody Hobson, certain social effects that carry deep economic implications have historically accompanied increases in student debt. To name a few, people start families later, home ownership goes down, and investment in new businesses drops, all of which lead to a slower economy. Because of this, the money that the government loses when lowering interest rates could be seen as an investment in the economy. This could be particularly important for congressional officers to keep in mind given the competition between domestic and foreign workers for job positions. If the government does not lower interest rates, students might be caught in a trap: On the one hand, students who pursue more education would be more qualified for jobs but subject to long-term debt that stifles their ability to participate in the economy. On the other hand, students who chose not to pursue higher education would not be subject to massive student debt, but they would be much less competitive in the job market. It would seem that lowering interest rates is not only in the students’ best interest, but also in that of the country. : Ellis, Blake. â€Å"Student Loan Default Rates Jump.† Money.CNN.com. http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/28/pf/college/student-loan-defaults/index.html. (accessed July 1, 2013). Gray, Stef. â€Å"Congress inaction to double student loan rates.† Youtube video, 6:35, posted by â€Å"RTAmerica,† June 21, 2013, youtube.com/watch?v=XfVp3RoD5F4. Kurtzleben, Danielle. â€Å"What Elizabeth Warren Gets Wrong (And Right) About Student Loans.† USNews.com. usnews.com/news/articles/2013/05/09/what-elizabeth-warren-gets-wrong-and-right-about-student-loans. (accessed July 1, 2013). Matthews, Dylan. â€Å"No the Federal Government Does Not Profit Off Student Loans (In Some Years – See Update).† WashingtonPost.com. washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/20/no-the-federal-government-does-not-profit-off-student-loans/. (accessed July 1, 2013). StaffordLoan.com. â€Å"Am I Eligible for a Stafford Loan?† StaffordLoan.com. staffordloan.com/stafford-loan-info/faq/am-i-eligible-for-a-stafford-loan.php. (accessed July 1, 2013). StaffordLoan.com. â€Å"Stafford Loan Frequently Asked Questions.† StaffordLoan.com. staffordloan.com/stafford-loan-info/faq/. (accessed July 1, 2013). Watson, Bruce. â€Å"Obama’s Proposed Student Loan Debt Remedy Carries A Hidden Trap.† DailyFinance.com. www.dailyfinance.com/on/obama-student-loan-debt-remedy-interest-rate-trap/. (accessed July 1, 2013). Weissmann, Jordan. â€Å"Here’s How Expensive Student Loans Could Be Under Obama’s New Plan.† TheAtlantic.com. theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/heres-how-expensive-student-loans-could-be-under-obamas-new-plan/274879/. (accessed July 1, 2013). Wikipedia, s.v. â€Å"Stafford Loan,† accessed July 1, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Loan#Interest_rates.