Histories of Photography Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Histories of Photography - Essay Example The thesis of this paper is that, modern day photography draws its insights from Szarkowski’s principle of photography as an art, since it teaches photographers to be not only creative, but imaginative. Analysis The Thing Itself Szarkowski believed that photography deals with the actual; the photographer has to accept the fact that he had no control of nature, and on in accepting and treasuring this notion would he manage photography. The photographer had to learn that the world was a unique and creative artist in itself. Szarkowski believed that though photographs were factual and convincing, they also differed from reality. The photographer had to see the filtered elements of reality and visualize the photograph before taking it, in order to capture these filtered element of reality on the photograph. The ability to do this was not only artistic; but also a way of showing truth, which the naked eye could not see. Szarkowski quotes from Hawthorne’s book, The House of t he Seven Gables. Holgrave, a fictional character in the story, describes his camera as showing the truth despite trying his attempts to hide reality. In this case, the image survives reality and became the remembered reality. William M. Evans states that, â€Å"people in the nineteenth century believed that what was reasonable was true but in the end, they began believing that what they saw in a photograph was true† (Szarkowski8). The photograph below illustrates this phenomenon: Archaeologia Mundi (40, 55, 82, 108, 133, 135) (2011) by Hagar Schmidhalter. The Detail According to Szarkowski (p. 9), the photographer cannot pose the truth; the truth appears the photographer in fragments, therefore, the photographer is only able to capture fragments of this facts. A photograph cannot tell a story of fact; it can only depict fragments of this fact. However, Szarkowski adds to say that though photographs do not tell stories, they can be read as symbols. People can draw meaning from a sequence of fragmented photographs. Szakowski states that photographs are not meant to tell stories, rather, they are meant to make the story real; he believes narratives to be shallow, and that only photography possesses the power to show symbolic meaning (Szarkowski 42). A picture of a Soccer match does not show the results of the match, but it does capture a moment of happiness or otherwise, that has symbolic meaning to the end result of the game. E.g. Cardiff vs. Manchester United by Stu Foster (1/12/2013). The Frame According to Szarkowski (p. 9), the subject of a photographer is never self-contained; it is part of a bigger picture. The photographer, therefore, decides to isolate what it important (the subject), from its environment using the photographic edges. This frame concentrates on the edges – the line that separates the subject from its environment. In the case of the football match above, the subject is separated from its surrounding by the edges of the photo graph. This defines what the photographer deemed important, but does not tell the whole story since the subject is part of a bigger surrounding. Time Photographs are not instantaneous, but rather exposure of the scene over a period of time result to real image. Photographs always capture the present, never the future; they can allude to the past through its surviving relics or foresight of the future based on

Conservatism and Liberalism Essay Example for Free

Conservatism and Liberalism Essay While there are a multitude of political philosophies in the United States, two have emerged as the dominant and pre-eminent philosophies. They are, of course, liberalism which name derives from liberty and conservatism which derives from conserving the constitution. While there is nothing inherently wrong with either philosophy the minefield of political exclusivity has led to a bitter dispute between both factions that have raged for decades. Many of these disputes are ideological as there are pronounced differences between the two philosophies. In this essay, two major differences will be examined.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   One common difference is that liberalism prefers that a centralized government will guide the economy. Conservatism prefers that the government would play a smaller role in the economy with the hopes that the market will govern itself. In terms of public policy, this has led to a number of battles over regulation vs. deregulation, increased taxes vs. decreased taxes, etc with ach having varying degrees of success at different points in history.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In terms of foreign policy, conservatism has always stressed American exceptionalism whereas liberalism has stressed a more unified one world approach to government. The effect this has had on public policy over the years is evidenced in how often or how little American foreign policy is vetted through the United Nations or under accordance with allies overseas.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Of course, there are many more differences between the two but these two examples illustrate major differences between the two on both domestic and international levels.

Problems With My Neighbors :: essays research papers

How are your neighbors with you? You are lucky if they treat you as a member of their family, but what about if it is the contrary? What about if they treat you as a thing not as a human? If this is your situation, I know how you are feeling. I know it because I am living this kind of life. In other words, I do not get along with my neighbors. From the day I moved into my house, I have had to deal with their unfriendly, dirty, and noisy way of living. First of all, my neighbors are very unfriendly people, and that is why they are hated. For example, during the day when I see them, they do not say hello to me. Sometimes, I try to have a conversation with them, but they always ignore me or give me a cold look. Since the day they ignore me, I began to hate them for being the way they are. In addition, my neighbors are not only mean with me, but with my children, too. Sometimes, when they are playing in front of their house, my neighbors come out and tell them to leave using a filthy language that scare my children. Second, the awful thing is not only that my neighbors are unfriendly, but they are dirty, too. For example, during the week, they often throw their trash in front of my house. Although, whenever I see it, I always clean it, but later they throw more. They are irresponsible people who do not care about others around them. Moreover, their yard looks like a jungle with empty cans and bottles and other trash among the big grass that is growing. Why do not they care about it? How lazy they are! Perhaps, they do not know the meaning of the word ?gclean.?h Finally, the other thing that makes my neighbors mean, besides being unfriendly and dirty, is that they are very noisy. They have three children and the smallest, the baby, is the one that makes all the noise during the day. He is always crying because he is hungry or because he wants something. Why do not his parents try to lull him? Besides the baby, they also have one big dog that barks all the time. For example, the other day I was going to study, but then it began to bark, and thanks to its harmful noise, I could not concentrate on what I was doing. Problems With My Neighbors :: essays research papers How are your neighbors with you? You are lucky if they treat you as a member of their family, but what about if it is the contrary? What about if they treat you as a thing not as a human? If this is your situation, I know how you are feeling. I know it because I am living this kind of life. In other words, I do not get along with my neighbors. From the day I moved into my house, I have had to deal with their unfriendly, dirty, and noisy way of living. First of all, my neighbors are very unfriendly people, and that is why they are hated. For example, during the day when I see them, they do not say hello to me. Sometimes, I try to have a conversation with them, but they always ignore me or give me a cold look. Since the day they ignore me, I began to hate them for being the way they are. In addition, my neighbors are not only mean with me, but with my children, too. Sometimes, when they are playing in front of their house, my neighbors come out and tell them to leave using a filthy language that scare my children. Second, the awful thing is not only that my neighbors are unfriendly, but they are dirty, too. For example, during the week, they often throw their trash in front of my house. Although, whenever I see it, I always clean it, but later they throw more. They are irresponsible people who do not care about others around them. Moreover, their yard looks like a jungle with empty cans and bottles and other trash among the big grass that is growing. Why do not they care about it? How lazy they are! Perhaps, they do not know the meaning of the word ?gclean.?h Finally, the other thing that makes my neighbors mean, besides being unfriendly and dirty, is that they are very noisy. They have three children and the smallest, the baby, is the one that makes all the noise during the day. He is always crying because he is hungry or because he wants something. Why do not his parents try to lull him? Besides the baby, they also have one big dog that barks all the time. For example, the other day I was going to study, but then it began to bark, and thanks to its harmful noise, I could not concentrate on what I was doing.

Drink and Home Countries

When I woke up that day, I was so excited because we were going to go to the holiday. I had packed my stuff the day before. And then we were ready to go! That was my first fly and I was anxious a little bit but my mother told me that there was no reason to be anxious. After an hour, we finally landed to Antalya. Then we arrived to the hotel. While bellboy was carrying our stuff to our room, I was thinking about what will I do next. I decided to go to the pool but I lost my way to the pool. There was noone to help me and I was so scared.Then I found my way to the pool because my cousin arrived my help. We had so much fun in the pool. We dived and danced in the pool. There were some tourists at the pool and we talked with them. One of them is Shymi. She is a Russian. Other one is Harry. He is a British. After we met, we decided to drink something and went to the cafe. My cousin and I ordered lemonade, Shymi ordered coke and Ollie ordered some icetea. While we were drinking our drinks, we talked about our home countries. Shymi told that she like to feel warmth on her skinbut she can barely see the sun in Russia.And Harry said that he can barely see the sun either, because of the pouring rain. After a little more chit-chat, dinner time came and 4 of us went to the dining hall. We ate something, took our drinks and went to the coast. We sat somewhere and while we were dirinking our sodas, we talked abour ourselves. At that time, sea was amazing. While they were talking, My thoughts were engulfed by the sound of waves. That was really amazing. Relaxing sounds took me so inside of them that I couldn’t hear what they said to me. After we sang some songs, we went to our rooms to sleep.Next day I woke up so happy and when I looked my cousin, I saw that she wasn’t wake up yet but my sister had woken up already. I whispered her to go to the bathroom and bring some water. She did what I told and we spilled the water to her face. She woke up screaming and start ed to chase us in the room. We went to the breakfast and ate some careal, drunk some orange juice. As my mother said, when you eat something, you should wait 30 minutes before swim. Otherwise bad things can happen. We played some table tenis while we were waiting. After 45 minutes, we went to the pool and met there with Shymi and Harry.

Motivation & behaviour Essay

Motivation is seen as an internal state of an organism that drives it to behave in a certain way. The behaviour is seen to be goal directed. The clearest examples of this can be derived from the studies made by Cannon. Cannon (1932) developed a primary or physiological drive theory. This theory is associated with the concept of homeostasis, a term used to describe the stable equilibrium of body systems. Claude Bernard (1956) was the first to emphasis the importance of a constant internal environment to survival. The internal environment of the body consists of such systems as the oxygen content of the blood, the concentration of nutrients such as glucose, the water balance and temperature. All of these systems can only fluctuate within narrow limits if health or even survival is to be maintained. As a system fluctuates from its stable state for reasons such as if we go out in the cold or use up a lot of energy, the body tries to restore homeostatic equilibrium through physiological and behavioural mechanisms. For instance if we have not eaten for a while, we develop a body tissue need for food. This leads to a drive to eat, and eating reduces the drive and restores homeostasis. This sequence is a simple example of behaviour motivated by a primary physiological drive aroused by a tissue need, and the whole class of motivated behaviours is represented by these homeostatic primary drives. Cannon’s drive theory has been developed to explain more complicated behaviours. In these models the behaviour is driven by an internal state of need. For example we go to work to earn money, which in turn buys us food, which satisfies our tissue need. The simple picture of a tissue deficiency leading to a specific need, which in turn arouses appropriate behaviour, is very appealing and many experiments have been carried out to see if this is the case. However, most of these studies have been carried out on non-human animals. Therefore this area of study could be criticised for being unrepresentative and ridged. Some behaviours such as why rats eat saccharin cannot be explained by this model, as saccharin is a not a nutritious, but sweet tasting substance, which does not satisfy a primary tissue need. Humans lead full and complex lives; some researches believe that our motivated behaviour cannot be compared to that of a non-human animal. In the past motivation has been divided up into extrinsic and intrinsic motives. With extrinsic motives you can identify a clear reward or incentive or reinforcement for the behaviour. Behaviourists have shown that almost any behaviour can be learnt on the basis of a reward. Other behaviours seem to have no obvious external reward and these are referred to as intrinsic motives. Humans have many behaviours without a strong link to physiology such as curiosity and manipulation. However these drives are simply descriptions of the behaviour so in theory anyone could make up there own set of motives. Murray (1938) used his Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) to provide a more reliable set of motives. TAT consists of 20 pictures of people in various situations. The participant is asked to use their imagination to write a story about each picture. The stories are then analysed in terms of the types of motivation represented. From these analyses, Murray produces a set of 20 social motives, or psychogenic needs. These include achievement, affiliation, aggression, deference, nurturance, play, and understanding. Murray’s list sounds convincing and is based on the TAT. However this itself is a projective test and relies on Murray’s own analysis. McClelland (1961) supported Murray’s motives. By using a rating scale, he measured achievement imagery in the stories that children write. McClelland’s work has given achievement more validity as one of the central human motives. However, McClelland’s work is not representative of the whole as it only takes into account children. Other motives in Murray’s list have not been studied in great detail and so lack a degree of validity.

When bullet points are a bad choice

When bullet points are a bad choice Why bullets wont make your case Bullets are designed to call out key points and help the reader scan large amounts of information. Or at least, thats the idea. You can start out with good intentions when you use them – youre probably trying to make life easier for your readers. Perhaps youre trying to create a document thats snappy, easy to understand, and that looks clean and modern. Unfortunately, in practice, bullet points can do the exact opposite. Endless bullets can be tedious to read. Theyve been around since the 80s, so they no longer automatically make a document look particularly modern. And when theyre used in the wrong context, theyre anything but easy to understand. One way that using bullets can badly misfire is when the author uses them to present an argument. A bullet list does not an argument make The theory: When you have a complex argument or analysis to explain, bullet points are a great idea. By breaking your argument into separate bullet points, you can make it easy to understand. Your reader just takes in each idea, one by one. The reality: This often doesnt work, largely because of what psychologists call the illusion of transparency. The illusion of transparency is the mistaken idea that whatever is going on in our own heads is obvious to other people. A classic demonstration of this is for one person to tap out a familiar tune (like Happy birthday or their national anthem) with their finger and then ask another person to guess the song. Try it for yourself. Think of a famous tune and tap it out to a friend or colleague. You will be amazed at how few people can correctly guess the song youre tapping out – experiments find that listeners guess correctly only around 3 per cent of the time. To you, it seems utterly obvious that youre tapping out a well-known tune. But the listener can only hear disconnected taps. Disconnected points Bullet points do exactly the same thing in writing. If you dont explicitly draw the connections between the ideas in your writing, you cant rely on your readers spotting the connections for themselves. The illusion of transparency reminds us that this is usually the case even when the connections between your bullet points are obvious to you. Of course, you can draw connections in ordinary running text. Our language is full of connective words that show the relationships between ideas. These include words like but, and, so, because, or, either and instead. But while you can (and probably naturally would) use words like these in regular structured prose to link your ideas, bullet points strip all of them away. And without them, you cant say – unequivocally – how ideas relate to each other. You cant talk about how or why a particular point is important – or not. And you cant expect your reader to fill in the blanks between your bullet points, as theyll often miss the links that seem obvious to you. Assemble the pieces You may have seen whole reports, proposals or emails that are little more than a list of bullets. The fact is, sometimes we might reach for bullet points as an alternative to fully planning out what it is were trying to say. It can be tempting, especially under time pressure, to try to skip over this part of the process and leave our reader to put the pieces together. But simply laying out a list of facts in bullet points does not by itself constitute a document, or an analysis, or a summary – its just a shortcut to nowhere. Documents like that never do your expertise and analysis justice, and theyre very unlikely to leave the reader informed, persuaded or happy. Instead, you need to make sure you do the work to assemble your argument first. If you start by being clear in your own mind what the connections are, you can then make these clear to your reader – and be sure theyll get your point. This post is taken from a larger lesson about the perils of misused bullet points (and better alternatives) in our online-learning programme, Emphasis 360. The programme is designed to transform your writing step by step in practical, bite-sized lessons. You can try it out for free here. Image credit: hin255 / Shutterstock

Slangy, Trendy Words Are Still Words

Slangy, Trendy Words Are Still Words Slangy, Trendy Words Are Still Words Slangy, Trendy Words Are Still Words By Mark Nichol YOLO, but biatch, lose the moobs. What do these three words have in common? They are all enshrined in the English-speaking world’s long-reigning record of the language’s vocabulary. That’s right: The Oxford English Dictionary now includes YOLO, biatch, and moobs- and many people are not exactly squeeing about that. They think those words are at best cheeseball and at worst clifty, and they make them want to vom. And why should that prestigious publication stoop to validating these clearly dà ©classà © descriptors and the ones I employed in the previous sentences? Certainly, no self-respecting person would utter one of these abominations, would they? Such reactions are emphatically shared in online forums with clockwork regularity, as the OED is updated four times a year. And the counterargument is expressed with equal vigor each quarter: The OED, like any dictionary, is not a museum that exhibits only a circumscribed lexicography acceptable to readers and writers with high standards of self-expression. As should be clear from the frequency with which the OED is expanded, it is a living document that, for better or worse, accepts virtually all comers. It is a record of what English is, not what it should be. (Or, more formally, it is descriptive, not prescriptive.) But shouldn’t people be discouraged from using such execrable vocabulary? That is not the dictionary’s function. But aren’t many of these terms nonce words- ephemeral curiosities? Yes, many will fade away into obscurity, but not all of them will- nor should they. Our language is full of words once considered slang but now widely accepted (and used) without a second thought. The point is that sometime, somewhere, somehow, someone will read or hear YOLO and want to look it up to see what it means, or will want to find out the etymology of moobs. You may not have any reason to check the dictionary to confirm how to spell biatch. But someone will, whether you approve of the term or not. Not all of the new words being uploaded to the OED word-hoard are potentially objectionable (the list also includes the words chefdom, clickbait, and courtside and the open compounds â€Å"card leader† â€Å"cheek kiss,† and â€Å"cheer squad†), but just as, in championing free speech, we must accept (almost) anything someone might say, whether we like it or not, we must be open to not only slang like freemium and slacktivist but more potentially grating terms like the ones I used above. That doesn’t mean you have to like them. (But c’mon, YOLO, right?) Here are definitions of the neologisms I used in this post: biatch: a euphemism for bitch, used as a jocular or sincere insult card reader: a device that reads data from memory-storage devices or from credit cards and similar objects cheek kiss: a kiss on the cheek as opposed to one on the lips or elsewhere cheer squad: a unit of cheerleaders or similar performers cheeseball: a corny or silly person or thing, or a distasteful person or thing chefdom: the state of being a chef, or the community of chefs clickbait: online content with little intrinsic value that is presented to tempt site visits to click to multiple pages clifty: something or someone stupid courtside: the area adjacent to an athletic court freemium: something offered free but with hidden costs (a portmanteau word derived from free and premium) moobs: overdeveloped breasts on a man (a portmanteau word derived from man and boobs); also called man-boobs squeeing: the act of making a noise expressing delight or surprise slacktivist: a person who only superficially supports a cause (a portmanteau word derived from slack and activist) vom: a truncation of vomit YOLO: an acronym that stands for â€Å"You only live once,† expressed to support the decision to enjoy an experience Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Addressing A Letter to Two People15 Great Word Games7 Other Types of Pronouns

Definition and Examples of Appositives in English

Definition and Examples of Appositives in English In English grammar, an appositive is a  noun, noun phrase, or series of nouns placed next to another word or phrase to identify or rename it. The word appositive comes from the Latin for to put near. Nonrestrictive appositives are usually set off by commas, parentheses, or dashes. An appositive may be introduced by a word or phrase such as namely, for example, or that is. Appositive Exercises Practice in Identifying AppositivesSentence Building with Appositives Examples of Appositives My father, a fat, funny man with beautiful eyes and a subversive wit, is trying to decide which of his eight children he will take with him to the county fair. (Alice Walker, Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self. In Search of Our Mothers Gardens. Harcourt Brace, 1983)The hangman, a grey-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his machine.(George Orwell, A Hanging, 1931)The Otis Elevator Company, the world’s oldest and biggest elevator manufacturer, claims that its products carry the equivalent of the world’s population every five days. (Nick Paumgarten, Up and Then Down. The New Yorker, Apr. 21, 2008)Christmas Eve afternoon we scrape together a nickel and go to the butchers to buy Queenies traditional gift, a good gnawable beef bone. (Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory. Mademoiselle, December 1956)Television was left on, a running tap, from morning till night. (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932)Though her cheeks were high-colored and her teeth strong and yellow, she looked like a mechanical woman, a machine with flashing, glassy circles for eyes. (Kate Simon, Bronx Primitive, 1982) I have had the great honor to have played with these great veteran ballplayers on my left- Murderers Row, our championship team of 1927. I have had the further honor of living with and playing with these men on my right- the Bronx Bombers, the Yankees of today. (Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, The Pride of the Yankees, 1942)The essence of loneliness is that one both remembers and hopes, though in vain, in the midst of ones dissolution. Plain nothingness compared to it is a comfort, a kind of hibernation, a tundra of arctic whiteness that negates feeling and want. (Alexander Theroux, in An Interview with Alexander Theroux. Review of Contemporary Fiction, Spring 1991)The Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, Africas only nuclear power plant, was inaugurated in 1984 by the apartheid regime and is the major source of electricity for the Western Capes 4.5 million population. (Joshua Hammer, Inside Cape Town. Smithsonian, April 2008)The Spectator. Champagne for the brain. (ad slogan for The Spectator magazine) Xerox. The Document Company. (slogan of Xerox Corporation)The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call out there. (Truman Capote, In Cold Blood. Random House, 1966)They passed the last house, a small grey house set in the open field. Yellow gullies ran across the field, bald plateaus of snow-smeared sod between gully and gully. (Robert Penn Warren, Christmas Gift, 1938)Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the cornflake and peanut butter, not to mention caramel-cereal coffee, Bromose, Nuttolene, and some seventy-five other gastronomically correct foods, paused to level his gaze on the heavyset women in front of him. (T. Coraghassen Boyle, The Road to Wellville. Viking, 1993)Dads shop was a messy disaster area, a labyrinth of lathes...My domain was the cramped, cold space known as the music room. It was also a messy disaster area, an obstacle course of musical instruments- piano, trumpet, baritone horn, valve trombone , various percussion doodads (bells!), and recorders. (Sarah Vowell, Shooting Dad.  Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World.  Simon Schuster, 2000) As I stood on the platform beneath another, fairly recent London civility- namely an electronic board announcing that the next train to Hainault would be arriving in four minutes- I turned my attention to the greatest of all civilities: the London Underground Map. What a piece of perfection it is, created in 1931 by a forgotten hero named Harry Beck, an out-of-work draftsman who realized that when you are underground it doesnt actually matter where you are. (Bill Bryson, Notes From a Small Island. Doubleday, 1995)The sky was sunless and grey, there was snow in the air, buoyant motes, play things that seethed and floated like the toy flakes inside a crystal. (Truman Capote, The Muses Are Heard)[N]othing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, letter I in Frankenstein, 1818)And then there was that feeling one gets in a ride to a cemetery trailing a body in a coffin- an impatie nce with the dead, a longing to be back home where one could get on with the illusion that not death but daily life is the permanent condition. (E.L. Doctorow, Homer Langley. Random House, 2009) Observations on Appositives The appositive is a substantive or nominal set off by commas from the word which it identifies. We say that the appositive is used in apposition with the other word. Ex: The king, my brother, has been murdered. Ex: we spotted Tom Hanks, the movie star, at the cafe yesterday.In the first example, the noun brother is used in apposition with the subject king. The appositive renames or describes the subject king by specifying which king the sentence is about. In the second example, the noun star is used in apposition with the proper noun Tom Hanks, a direct object. The appositive clarifies the proper name, telling us which Tom Hanks was seen. For all we know, the writer could have a cousin named Tom Hanks. Remember that the appositive and the noun to which it refers always share the same four properties- gender, number, person, and case- since they both name the same entity. (Michael Strumpf and Auriel Douglas, The Grammar Bible. Owl Books, 2004) Punctuating Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Appositives Bens brother Bob helped him build the house. If Ben has more than one brother, the name Bob would be necessary to identify which brother is being discussed- in other words, to restrict the meaning of the word brother. If Ben has only one brother, the name Bob would be additional information not essential to the meaning of the sentence; Bob would be a nonrestrictive appositive. Nonrestrictive appositives are always set off by punctuation. Since no punctuation surrounds the appositive Bob in this example, we know that Bob is a restrictive appositive (and that Ben has more than one brother). (Gary Lutz and Diane Stevenson, The Writers Digest Grammar Desk Reference. FW Publications, 2005)

Short story Critique Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 2

Short story Critique - Essay Example The effectiveness of the ending is reduced by the language which falls short of the easy flow of the earlier part of the story. However, Virula does succeed in arousing the readers’ curiosity as to why Freddie objects to his Aunt’s church. The weaknesses of the story are (1) there is a sudden change in tense: â€Å"He wipes his sweaty hands on his jeans and gently picked up Robocam† (2) There is a tendency to repeat words in a sentence: â€Å"with Willie in front of him and Tia Eva in front of both of them† (3) There are some glaring errors in punctuation (â€Å"Freddie held robocam in it’s camera form†). The story can be improved by editing the last paragraph, which does not measure up to the writing in the earlier part of the story and has grammatical errors. Inserting necessary commas and making the sentences shorter will add more clarity to the narration. Elizabeth Hall’s beginning is definitely a powerful hook as it leads the reader straight into a dramatic situation, tinged with the suggestion of violence. It also skillfully introduces the profession and personality of the protagonist. The ending is too â€Å"in-your-face† for me. It could be more subtle. Nick’s ranting is out of character with the dignity Hall has given him earlier. His position is already clear to the reader and does not have to be spelled out so explicitly. The weaknesses of the story are (1) Some glaring errors in logic: â€Å"he drove home to the same domesticity, cycling in guilt.† (2) Repetition: â€Å"bought a historic home in the historical Pinch District.†(3) Errors in punctuation, particularly in the use of commas. The story’s strengths are (1) Excellent, detailed descriptions and good similes: â€Å"yellow hair stuck to her head like a layer of enamel.† (2) A sophisticated story line (3) Great depiction of Valerie’s descent into hypochondria. The story can be improved by making drastic changes in the conclusion. The ending should be

Global Strategy College Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Global Strategy College - Essay Example Banai and Sama (2004) argue that empirical evidence indicates that MNCs who betray a preference for home country employees/managers, do not simply establish themselves as foreign entities within their host economies but, place themselves at the forefront of ethical questioning and suspicion. Rather than be regarded by host country citizens as potential employers and sources of foreign investment, they are regarded as conduits for the channeling of financial resources from the host economy to the parent one (Banai and Sama, 2004). Needless to say, this constrains the potential for constructive cooperation between the MNCs in question and the host economy. Insofar as Pfizer is concerned, it will further cast suspicion on the veracity of its publicized slogans. Judging by the stated, therefore, Pfizer should rely on host-country employees. In addition to the above stated the argument for reliance on host country employees is further fortified by the very nature of the industry within which Pfizer operates.

Strategic Analysis Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Strategic Analysis - Research Paper Example However, the company particular focuses to target United States and sustain it edge in the industry. The company is currently facing criticism that Voss contains similar sources as the tap water due to which the company is currently struggling to sustain its positioning in the industry. However, the competition in the bottled water industry is becoming intense with the passage of time. The present document strategically analyzes Voss Water and its positioning in the industry. In order to determine the positioning of the company, industrial analysis, PESTLE analysis and PORTER five forces analysis have been conducted to determine strategic positioning of Voss Water in the  Bottled Water industry (Anon., 2014). The overall trend in Bottle Industry has significantly improved that has significantly affected the sales of the bottled water. According to a report of International Bottled Water Association (2014),  "Bottled Water Industry in the United States has showed significant growth during 2012-2013 after the Great Recession 2009  (IBWA Report, 2014)".  Despite the fact that the United States  has slower economic recovery but has high-income level due to which the consumer are comfortable to spend money on discretionary items, including bottled water. It is predicted that the improvement in the economic conditions will cast  positive impact on the revenues of bottled water industry (Hamphell, 2013). The consumer’s response is improving with the passage of time (2008-2009) due to which the some of the consumers that were distracted from the high-calorie beverages are also now getting back to the same category. On the contrary, the low-income Americans that were also disprop ortionately affected are currently struggling for employment due to which they are inclined towards discounted bottled water. In 2013, the off-trade value sales of bottled water have increased by 2 percent. However, the prices of the bottled water have

Compare what it book says and what textbook says. Ten words from Essay

Compare what it book says and what textbook says. Ten words from textbook - Essay Example At the beginning of the book, Corrie describes the old and strangely built Dutch house, which was the house of her birth because this was to go on to, being the main setting of the book. Inside this house is a secret room where political prisoners and Jews who were getting away from the Nazis were hid. We see from the very beginning of the book that the Ten Booms were essentially very kindhearted people who went out of their way to help the poor and bonded well amongst themselves. Corrie's siblings are portrayed as people she found her best friends in and her aunts as grownups she looked up to. Taking in people to provide refuge started when one Jewish woman ended up at the Ten Booms' doorstep and asked for protection following her husband's arrest by the Nazis. This gave a start to the hiding place for the Jews. However, the story is not a bed of flowers as Corrie and her family soon had to face the Nazi Invasion of Holland, their country of residence. The Ten Booms became an essential part of the Resistance Movement and provided shelter for people fleeing the Nazi forces in a hidden room should the house ever be raided. The book talks about how they did practice runs everyday in case their house was ever raided. During the time all this was happening, Corrie sometimes had serious doubts about whether what she was doing was right or not but always came up with the conclusion that she was by keeping her faith in God strong. Even though the family and their wards prayed very hard that a raid should not happen, it eventually did due to the Dutch traitor named Jan Vogel. Ironically, the Jews in the secret hiding place were saved but the Nazis took the Corrie, her father and sister Betsie into custody. As luck would have it, the father died ten days after arrest and Corrie who was unwell at the time of arrest was put into solitary confinement. The book talks about ho every time Corrie came near despair, her faith in God kept her going y giving her something to do. During her solitary confinement, she just had a black ant for company with whom she shared her bread. This alone gave her the strength she needed to pass the lonely days and nights of her confinement when she saw this ant struggling to take the piece of bread back through the crack in the floor. A few months later both Corrie and Betsie were reunited at Vught Prison and the two sisters were able to catch up on what happened to both of them during the separation. Betsie had a weak heart from birth and Corrie knew she had to be with her sister ever more now. Both sisters wished for release but instead were transported in boxcars into the infamous Ravensbruck Prison in eastern Germany where living conditions were so horrific that Betsie became more and more ill. Despite the uncomfortable living premises and Betsie's continuously failing health, the two sisters kept bringing the word of God to any prisoner who listened and found strength in it. Corrie habitually sneaked in a tiny vitamin bottle for Betsie and also distributed vitamins to whoever needed them. Betsie was very sure that they will be released at the beginning of the year 1945 which

Risk Assessment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Risk Assessment - Essay Example Slip and fall in bathroom 4. Bioterrorism 9. Living near a farm 5. Electromagnetic radiation from above 10. Household pesticides ground power lines Epidemiology 3 Response from a 24 year old female nurse, single, living with parents & working in a hospital. 1. Cigarette smoke 6. Alcoholic beverages 2. Disinfection by-products in drinking water 7. Nuclear radiation 3. Asbestos in drinking water 8. Contaminated chicken 4. Household pesticides 9. Cholesterol 5. Mold in house 10. Sedentary lifestyle Task 4 My response is more similar to that of the female nurse than the male teacher. It is because both I and the female nurse share almost the same attitudes in life as well as risk sensitivity and specific fears. We happen also to have almost the same cultural, educational and social backgrounds as well as some similarities in past experiences. Thus, we have almost the same reaction to risks and acceptance of risks. This cannot be said as to the male teacher who believes that because he has reached such old age despite consumption of alcoholic beverages and cigarettes, contaminated and highly fattening foods, drinking water from whichever source and unhealthy environment, managed to stay alive and relatively healthy. He is more prone to fear of risks in inevitable accidents because...WHO, UN etc.). My response is more similar to that of the female nurse than the male teacher. It is because both I and the female nurse share almost the same attitudes in life as well as risk sensitivity and specific fears. We happen also to have almost the same cultural, educational and social backgrounds as well as some similarities in past experiences. Thus, we have almost the same reaction to risks and acceptance of risks. This cannot be said as to the male teacher who believes that because he has reached such old age despite consumption of alcoholic beverages and cigarettes, contaminated and highly fattening foods, drinking water from whichever source and unhealthy environment, managed to stay alive and relatively healthy. He is more prone to fear of risks in inevitable accidents because he himself at one time or another experienced near or actual accidents of such sorts such as car crash or slip at the bathroom. It should be observed that both subjects agreed only in 2 factors i.e. nuclear radiation and pesticides. It is expected because the female nurse is pious and religious and leaves everything to God's will. Thus, she fears less about car or airplane crashes and terrorism, which the male teacher intensely dreads. It is clear from tasks 2,3 and 4 , that different people from different b

Compare what it book says and what textbook says. Ten words from Essay

Compare what it book says and what textbook says. Ten words from textbook - Essay Example At the beginning of the book, Corrie describes the old and strangely built Dutch house, which was the house of her birth because this was to go on to, being the main setting of the book. Inside this house is a secret room where political prisoners and Jews who were getting away from the Nazis were hid. We see from the very beginning of the book that the Ten Booms were essentially very kindhearted people who went out of their way to help the poor and bonded well amongst themselves. Corrie's siblings are portrayed as people she found her best friends in and her aunts as grownups she looked up to. Taking in people to provide refuge started when one Jewish woman ended up at the Ten Booms' doorstep and asked for protection following her husband's arrest by the Nazis. This gave a start to the hiding place for the Jews. However, the story is not a bed of flowers as Corrie and her family soon had to face the Nazi Invasion of Holland, their country of residence. The Ten Booms became an essential part of the Resistance Movement and provided shelter for people fleeing the Nazi forces in a hidden room should the house ever be raided. The book talks about how they did practice runs everyday in case their house was ever raided. During the time all this was happening, Corrie sometimes had serious doubts about whether what she was doing was right or not but always came up with the conclusion that she was by keeping her faith in God strong. Even though the family and their wards prayed very hard that a raid should not happen, it eventually did due to the Dutch traitor named Jan Vogel. Ironically, the Jews in the secret hiding place were saved but the Nazis took the Corrie, her father and sister Betsie into custody. As luck would have it, the father died ten days after arrest and Corrie who was unwell at the time of arrest was put into solitary confinement. The book talks about ho every time Corrie came near despair, her faith in God kept her going y giving her something to do. During her solitary confinement, she just had a black ant for company with whom she shared her bread. This alone gave her the strength she needed to pass the lonely days and nights of her confinement when she saw this ant struggling to take the piece of bread back through the crack in the floor. A few months later both Corrie and Betsie were reunited at Vught Prison and the two sisters were able to catch up on what happened to both of them during the separation. Betsie had a weak heart from birth and Corrie knew she had to be with her sister ever more now. Both sisters wished for release but instead were transported in boxcars into the infamous Ravensbruck Prison in eastern Germany where living conditions were so horrific that Betsie became more and more ill. Despite the uncomfortable living premises and Betsie's continuously failing health, the two sisters kept bringing the word of God to any prisoner who listened and found strength in it. Corrie habitually sneaked in a tiny vitamin bottle for Betsie and also distributed vitamins to whoever needed them. Betsie was very sure that they will be released at the beginning of the year 1945 which

Digital Image Creation for Interactive Media Assignment

Digital Image Creation for Interactive Media - Assignment Example color, gradients, layers, object, brushes, history, actions, size, resolution; layers, e.g. copying, saving, arranging; flattening; colour selection, e.g. foreground, background, color swatch, eyedropper Advanced tools: effects, e.g. layer effects, filters, channels; image adjustments, e.g. brightness and contrast, hue and saturation, color balance, gradients, transparency, invert; masks; paths, e.g. vector paths, converting text to paths; image slicing 2. To publish gave a name to City Guide Monthly type. The Publication Name is not the same as the Name of the Folio. The Folio Name was visible on web client of Folio producer and Name of publication then was visible on the viewer. 4. Selected the (the Link URL found in the menu, and put address in the field of URL previously used). The URL was http://www.bikeworks.org/. I then deselected the Shared Hyperlink Destination. Selected OK. (Ayoub) 5. In the panel of Folio Builder, clicked twice on the Layout of the Landscape to see the document of Enjoy_h.indd. I copied and pasted object of the hyperlink from the vertical file (‘Enjoy-v.indd’) file to the horizontal file (‘Enjoy_h.indd file’) (Ayoub). I then shifted this object to the log of â€Å"D.I.Y. Meet† . 1. In the horizontal file, selected the File > Place, browsed the CityGuide_Folio > Enjoy Article > Folder links, and clicked twice on the image â€Å"cycling_432x234.mpg† (Ayoub) and shifted this movie file in the right most corner. 2. On the panel of the Media (Window > Interactive > Media), select Chose Poster pop-up menu image. Clicked twice on the Folio of City Guide image â€Å"cyclist.jpg† so that Enjoy Article > Links folder† (Ayoub) In conclusion, the creation of this interactive media was a success as the result was what was expected. The various tools employed in graphics design were applied in the right manner to give the intended

Procter and Gamble Company Essay Example for Free

Procter and Gamble Company Essay Background Procter and Gamble was formed by James Gamble William Procter in 1837 by a candle manufacturer Procter and a soap manufacturer Gamble. This consumer product company started with a vision to grow to a $33 billion company and by 1879 it started selling its products directly to the consumers, by 1890 it has gained its legal corporation and ever since it has doubled it sales every ten years. PG growth was driven by innovation not optimization. Radical innovation served as their backbone to success with other factors such as geographic expansion, product line extensions and acquisitions contributing to its growth. Some of its famous and successful acquisitions were, Duncan Hines, Clorox, charmin Paper mills, Folgers Coffee, NorwichEaton, Vicks (NyQuil), Noxell and Max Factor. It also recieves  the credit for developing innovative and advanced technology based products during 1940’s such as Tide, Crest,Pampers, Bounce etc.By the end of 1980’s PG had its operations in 58 countries,its reputation was built with its new product development strategiesÍ ¾ they produced varied range of consumer products such that these products should meet â€Å"basic consumer needs† and create â€Å"superior total value† creating a brand image for the company. As noted in Kevin Kelly’s quote â€Å"Wealth in new regime flows directly from innovation and not optimization†, i.e. wealth is not gained by perfecting the known, but imperfecting the unknown. PG successfully used this strategy to earn its reputation as one of the largest company in Cincinnati in 1895 and in 1995 earned the National Medal of technology, the highest given award in United states. PG was also known for its strong ethics, values and recruiting the best and brightest. RD was a major focus of PG. In 1995 PG spent 1.3billion on RD,and emphasis was laid on combination of multiple RD competencies and there were a lot of cross fertilization of technology. They also had an attractive work culture, employee compensation and had a structure in place which assured employees of growing within the organization with its up through the rank approach which fostered innovation. In the process of growing, PG moved out of their old tradition of new product development and concentrated completely on the global expansion and development of existing products. With structured product  sectors in place, PG had some difficulty fitting some new product idea into any of the available category which led to the rejection on various novel ideas. In 1993, the company started the Strengthening Global Effectiveness (SGE) with the goal of increasing profits through cost reduction which was achieved by reengineering  and reformation of distribution and manufacturing. This led to a successful increase in profits from 10% to 17% in a year. In the same year, CEO John Pepper said that their was an urge for developments of new brands in order to fulfill the companies longtime goals of increasing their sales. Mark Collar, Vice President and General Manager of New Business Development and a part of SGE said that a breakthrough is required to manage and accelerate the company’s innovation process. In addition, the concept of cross fertilization was fading out gradually so their was a requirement of a new innovation team that can incorporate the old traditions followed by the company during the 1960’s. Therefore this lead to the formation of Innovation Leadership Team (ILT) in 1993. The top seven officers of the company were a part of this team: John Pepper(Chairman and CEO)Í ¾ Durk Jager(President and COO)Í ¾ Wolfgang Berndt(Executive VP North America)Í ¾ Gordon Brunner(Senior VP Research and Development)Í ¾ Gary Martin(Senior VP Information Services and Product Supply) and Eric Nelson(Senior VP and CFO)Í ¾ Robert Wehling (Senior VP Advertising and Market Research). The ILT’s responsibility is to investigate the portfolio of the projects under development and projects on shelf, select valuable projects that add value to the firm. Soon Corporate Innovation Fund(CIF) was established for the funding the research on new products developments. The employees can report projects irrespective of their sector and obtain approval at very fast pace on appropriate projects.

Feminism And Nationalist Themes

Feminism And Nationalist Themes The twentieth century Indian literature has drawn a considerable amount of its themes especially feminism and nationalist themes from two major epics: The Mahabharata and The Ramayana. Like Bible in European culture these two major epics dominates the Indian culture strongly and powerfully because they discuss all the major problems that are faced by all kinds of people. They discuss the issues of social inequality, gender inequality and for the rights of the lower class people too. Especially in India, for most of the people, myth is a lived reality, is a part of ones lived reality, every day existence, and large communities of people live by myths. As Daniel Tehapda, the philosopher from Cameroon states in La Place du my the dans Lexistence du negro-African. Another critic Ritwik Ghatak says the purpose of using such ancient myths and traditional music is to constantly point towards some dormant inspiration that lies hidden in reality. Sita, the female protagonist of the Ramayana and Draupadi, the female protagonist of the Mahabharata have become signs or cultural icons as pativratas (ideal wives) and as earth born Goddess. In the epics and in the culture that influenced and is influenced by them, a woman alone, a woman the powerful, a woman capable of bringing shame upon her family-that is to say, any woman is a woman in need of control. On a relatively innocent level, she is viewed as vulnerable creature in need of masculine protection. More insidiously, she is seen as essentially unable to control her own fatal force. But literary texts have brought subtle readings of these two epic women- sita can wage a psychological war against her captor Ravana; Draupadi can argue. The Mahabharata, attributed to Vyasa, is generally agreed to have been composed between 500BCEto 400CE. The Ramayana, attributed to Valmiki, is likely between 200BCE to 200CE. In the eleventh century, the Tamil poet Kamban wrote a recension in the south, and in the sixteenth century,Tulsidas translated the epic into Avadi(old hindu),which was later brought into Bengali by Krittivasa,and into modern Hindi. William Jones translated it to English. Both the epics recension of oral and written have emerged in all major Indian languages, as well as in European languages, from palm leaf into paper, drama, film, poem, etc. When one speaks of epic in India at large, with its literate and non literate audiences, no one written text is necessary to mind: Mahabharata or Ramayana is more likely to be envisioned. Doordharshan televised version of Ramayana, generally based on Tulsidas, but incorporating other major texts, faithfully watched by over80,000,000viewers,some of whom Bathed before watching, garlanded the set like a shrine, and considered viewing of Rama to be a religious experience. (Rich man 3) Most of the versions of epics focus upon the tradional heroes (Rama in the Ramayana, the Pandava brothers in the Mahabharata); only very few versions focus the views of the heroine. India is casted as Bharathmata, a maternal figure who has been captured, insulted humiliated by evil men or rakshasas (demons) Draupadi at the hands of Duryodhana, Sita at the hands of Ravana. Social activists or writers perceive the darkness and power of sita and Draupadi to rescue from their avenging figure to liberate one of a nation, of a gender, of a class. This chapter concentrates on the major crisis Sitas reunion with Rama at Valmikis Ashram; Draupadis humiliation at Hastinapura after Yudhistra has lost her in a game of dice, the innocent lives of innocent people was written or reworked in literature. Mahaswetha Devi says, Im not a student of history but anyway I read, I wrote, then I tore away the pages, I collected folklores, ballads, things like that. I was drawn to the great importance of collecting the oral traditions. I was only 26 or 28. Because at the time Thakur mansingh was operating. I had left my child son at home with my husband. I went to all these places. Never have I faced any danger, except one small Encounter with a dacoit. That was the time when I realized that oral tradition, folk material, is very important of historical, material. So those must be kept and preserved and printed if possible, because when these people die, the next generation, their life style might change, they will not see these. Indian people anywhere, tribal or non-tribal whatever happens; they keep it alive in folklores. Else, you will be surprised to know how many songs about Telegana struggle have been collected and published. I have taken After Kurukshetra story collection, Dopdi from Breast Stories and Ambais Atavi for the study. In all these stories, the women move on. They do not wait for endings. They meet the demands of life and find resolutions in nature. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana has received a great deal of exegetical and explicatory attention over the years, yet the voices of the oppressed in the great epic have remained a somewhat neglected field of critical enquiry. Mahaswetha Devi and Ambais palpable intention is to underscore the contrast between the Rajavritta and Lokavritta, in which one Honours and celebrates life. Kunti and Nishadin epitomize these two contrasting world vies respectively. The fifteenth chapter of the original version of the Mahabharata the ashram Vasik Parva describes the three years stay of the three familiar characters of the great epic Dhritarashtra, Gandhari, Kunti- in a forest towards end of their lives. After fifteen years of reign, they opt for a life of vanaprastha which is the third of the four stages of life, prescribed tradition for a caste Hindu, the stage of abandoning worldly affairs. Much against his wishes, Yudhistra lets them go. One day, as Dhritarashtra finishes his ablutions and returns to their hermitage, he comes to know that the forest has caught fire. The wind blows and the flames spread everywhere. The animals and the birds start deserting the forest. The blind Dhritarashtra, Gandhari with her blindfolded eyes and kunti, all awaiting death, ready to give themselves up to the flames. They have spent their times in penance, prayers and yogas till their death in the forest-fire. In her attempt to rewrite the story, Devi has made a couple of brilliant interpolations-Kuntis confession, her guilt-stricken conscience at being unwed mother and her helplessness in not accepting Karna as her son in public. What shocks her more is the Nishadins reminder of a greater crime committed by her, of which she was totally unaware, that is, the murder of six innocents belonging to the lower caste society. In her introduction to the politics of literary theory and representation, Pankaj.K.Singh states that, this is an interrogative rewriting of a segment of the Mahabharata from the point of view of the Nishadin whose mother-in-law and her five sons were made to die in the fire of Lakshagriha to cover the escape of Kunti and her sons, and who holds up for interrogation the whole practice of Rajavritta. Commenting upon its cotemporary relevance Singh states further that contemporary India has its own subalterns in the lower castes, the tribal, the landless, the poor and their women, Devi gives voice in her writing. Devi says, its my realization that the more we read through the lines and give voice to the countless infantryman used to protect the landed epical heroes, the dasis (mother of vidura, mother yuyutsu and countless others) and the vratyas used as cannon fodder during rajavritta emergency, the more the mythical time come into focus and the eternal game of politics comes into view. The first thing which strikes us, as the story opens, is the pitiable, pathetic plight of Kunti, the mother of mighty pandavas, queen of Pandu undergoes an existential despair, Mother of the Pandava, wife of Pandu, the role of a daughter-in-law, the role of a queen, the role of a mother, playing these hundreds of roles where was the space, the time to be her true self? All that while, amazingly she never felt that anything was hers, hers alone. She feels betrayed by life, now, she cant bear to keep it all locked inside her. But never tried to learn the life style of Nishadins, even she did not care their presence, one day she sees some middle-aged Nishadins moving about the forest with their children and familiesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Kunti never tried to learns the language they speak. Kunti is not happy, she laments of her present situation, whereas Nishadins are happy without any crumbling. This forest is full of tall, resinous trees. They gather this resin, honey, tubers and roots. They seem to be a tranquil, happy, hardworking lot, their faces always wreathed in breath smiles. After watching nishadins life Kunti feels that she has wasted her life by following the rituals of rajavritta. Watching Nishadins, it strikes her for the first time that she is wasting herself living like this, subsisting on rotting, withered leaves. Blindly following predetermined predestined path to death. Then realizes that, she never knew that she carried within her such a burden of unspoken thoughts. She feels guilty of being on unwed mother to Karna, one of the greatest heroes of Mahabharata and her helplessness, in accepting him openly as her son because of the oppressive patriarchal social order gnaws away at her conscience, Karna looked so much at peace as he lay there, dead. Gandharis piercing cry at the sight of Karnas body struck me like a whip. Why did I not have the courage? To cradle Karnas severed head in my lap and say, this is my first born? Dhananjaya! You have murdered your eldest brother! The son I abandoned for fear of public shame! Had I not disowned him, my name would have been sullied forever. Karna is the only one of my sons whose father I took of my own free will. What irony! What irony! Not one of the five pandavas as is sired by Pandu! Yet they are Pandavas. And Karna? A carpenters son. O! Ancient mother! That day Kunti stayed silent. What greater sin can there be? Gandhari knew she was pure and innocent. This knowledge gave her courage to publicly speak t he truth. Death is approaching slowly towards her and she feels the urge to unburden herself before she dies. She knows that the confession at this stage is urgent because Silence would be unpardonable. Then, her second confession, its about when she directly went to Karna asking him to leave Duryodhana and join to Yudhisthira I hesitated no more. I have not committed just, one sin, after all. I had not told my sons about the birth of Karna. Then, the day before the battle, I went to Karna and told him, abandon Duryodhana, side with yudhisthira. At this time she feels for being Rajavritta, living in the Rajavritta makes one cunning, treacherous. Because love did not dry Kunti to meet Karna only her self-interest did. Against the world of Rajavritta, the dark Virgilian world of deceit, duplicity and double moral standard stands the world of Lokavritta, world of Nishadins that is guided by natures law, where different standards of judgments do not have any place. Natures law. Nature abhors waste. We honour life. When a man and woman come together, they create a new life. But you wont understand. As the Nishadin proudly tells Kuti, we do not deny the demands of life. If we are widowed we have the right to remarry. Those who wish to, can marry again. We did so. We have husbands, childrenà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth that is the way of the Rajavritta. That is what Kurukshetra was all about. The Lokavrittas ways are different. The conversation between Kunti and Nishadin brings out the sharp contrast between the worlds of Lokavritta and Rajavritta, the Rajavritta folk and the Lokavritta folk have different values, different ideas of right and wrong. If a young Nishadin girl makes love to the boy of her choice and gets pregnant, we celebrate it with a wedding. After the conversation Kunti understands clearly that Lokavrittas moral and spiritual ethics have been destroyed by the Rajavritta and which does not allow her to lead instinctive life and to confess her sin. It is in the forest Kunti realizes her true self, do not forgive me, o mother! The brute wealth of the royal palace, the might of the son on the throne, I felt caged and torn to pieces. Kunti dreams of her past life. She recalls her life as Rajavritta, the life of Rajavritta was so different, and she had so many roles to play. Deep in the forest she notices the Nishadins but nothing registers on her mind, oh, yes, I not only understand it, I speak it too. Of course you never thought of us as human, did you? No more than mute rocks, or trees, or animals. The Nishadins are so self-composed, hardworking, innocent people. But Rajavritta knows only to attend the Brahmins and worshipping the Gods. Kunti does not remember ever talking to a lower-class people, how could they? Her life had been the Rajavritta, the Gods, serving the Brahmins. Had she ever spoken to a dasi? Had she developed any genuine bond with hidimba? Life outside the Rajavritta had not touched her at all. Kunti wishes to confess, to purge herself of the sins she had committed. After every confession Kunti finds herself at peace, cleansed light and on every occasion. The nishadins hear her maternal lamentations, but Kunti believes them to be as dumb as rocks. Nishadins do not know her language or Kunti their, still the elderly nishadins reprimands her: no confessing of sins today? Youà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦youà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Ive heard you out day after day, waiting to see if you will confess your gravest sin. Your languageà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦likes mineà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦? Oh yes, I not only understand it, I speak it too. Of course you never thought of us as human, did you? No more than the mute rocks or animals. The elderly Nishadin accuses her of committing the most heinous crime, the massacre of innocents for self-interest. As the Varanavata episode from the Mahabharata was a conspiracy to kill Pandavas. But the Pandavas came to know the plan of Kauravas and hatched a counter-plan for survival. When the vax palace was set to fire by the trusted soldiers of Duryodhana, the pandavas escaped through a secret tunnel. In order to make the Kauravas to believe that Kunti and Pandavas were burnt to death, an elderly Nishadin and her five sons were invited to a feast and oceans of wine were served with food. The innocent Nishadin and her five sons drank too much and slept well. The elderly Nishadin, in Mahaswetas story whom discusses with Kunti is none other than the daughter-in-law of the dead old Nishadin. Kunti is shocked by this revelation and fears for her life. The elderly Nishadin makes clear view of their (tribal) ethics to kunti. She says, no I wont kill you. The Nishadin informs Kunti that a forest fire, which is disastrous natural phenomenon, has already broken out. She says, Yes, we can tell, from smelling the air, just as the other creatures of the forest can, that a fire has started. That is why they are fleeing like we are. Where to? Far away, beyond the reach of the forest fire. Where there are mountains, lakes and winding rivers. Kunti asks for forgiveness but the elderly Nishadin says, three blind, weak and infirm people cannot make it there. One is blind from birth, another has chosen to be a blind, and you, you are the blindest of the three. The thought of forest fire makes Kunti fearful but the Nishadin is not ready to forgive. She believes that it is easy for the Rajavritta to commit sin. to beg forgiveness is typical of the Rajavritta . The narrative ends with Kuntis acceptance of the destiny with the sense of finality. She got up. She has to go back to the Ashram. Wait for the forest fire. Dhritarashtra and Gandhari, after their loss of a hundred sons, are waiting patiently for death, waiting for the final fire to consume them. Kunti also welcomes death. In the story the five women, the narrators are five war widows, their husbands, foot soldiers, died in Kurukshetra war to protect the chariot mounted heroes. these women are not of the rajavritta, women of royalty, nor are they servants or attendants. These women are from the families of the hundreds of foot-soldiers Podatics from various other little kingdom. The women of Rajavritta strictly follow the ordeal but the women of Janavritta lives life in close association with the natural world. The Rajavritta is represented by Kunti, Draupadi, Subhadara and the pregnant Uttara where as the five women from the Kurujangal represent the Janavritta. I am Godhumi. This is Gomathi, holding my hand. That is Yamuna, with the red spot between her brows. That one standing there with a finger on her chin is Vitasta. And this is Vipasha, Vitastas sister. The five women consider the war as futile clash of egos, so many great kings joined in a war between brothers. Some choose one side, some cross over to the other. It was not just brother slaughtering brother. We know of quarrels jealousies rivalries too. But such a war for just a throne? This, a holy war?! A righteous war?! Just call it a war of greed! The five women are appointed to keep Uttara company and help her to overcome her grief. But to Uttara all the five women seems to be inseparable. the five women seem to think as one. They are so close that they seem to understand each other without words, speak to one another with their eyes alone. They look, they understand. The companionship of these five women is in contrast to the isolation of the women of the Rajavritta. Uttara feels as a stranger to them. Uttara, like the other women of Rajavritta believes that all the soldiers who died in the holy war are very secured in Divyalok the heaven, but the five young women reject this idea. Gothumi says, no chariots came down from Divyalok. They did not go to heaven. The foot soldiers, died fighting in the very same Dharmayudha. But no funeral rites were held for their souls. Further they reject the idea of Dharmayudha, this was not out Dharmayudha. Brother kills brother, uncle kills nephew, shishya kills guru. It may be your idea of dharma, it is not ours. The Janavritta women enjoy the public participation where as it is denied to rajavritta. Thus Uttara expresses surprise, imagine men and women singing together. The rajavritta women have no companionship or bond with their child, at best her child will stay with her a year. After that, the wet nurses will take over its upbringing. Royal offspring are not raised by their mothers. Then will begin the prescribed rites and rituals, the self-denial, the penance. So, this story clearly shows that the rajavrittas were restricted by false notions of high civilization. The natural human state is represented by the five Kurunjugal tribal women, whose life, ideas and quests are opposite to the destructive and sterile attitudes of the higher class of society. Uttara understands the difference and is not ready to leave them. But as widows of rajavritta, all the women (widows) concerns only for Uttara and not for the five young widow. Rajavritta women expect them to give a good company to Uttara because she may beget a son for the throne. how anxious her mother-in-law are! Draupadi, Subhadara, all the others, are deeply worried. If Uttara bears a son, he will be a king. After becoming so close with the five people Uttara used to question, did the rajavritta the royalty ever care to know about the Janavritta common humanity? through the story the five women Mahasweta Devi reveals to the reader the other side of Kurukshetra war and the ingenious of rajavritta women towards Lokavritta people. The third story, Souvali focuses on the irreconcibility of the rajavritta and the Janavritta. Souvali is a former handmaid who served to Dhritarashtra and bore him a son named Souvalya; known as yuyutsu. Souvali, a woman from Janavritta is forced to send her son to the Gurugrigha at the age of five. She is not able to bare the life of Janavritta so she gives up her dasi status and lives outside of the town, waiting for her son to return. On the margins of the town live the marginalized. Their settlement is a lively, noisy place. The alleys are narrow, the houses small. Ponds here and there, surrounded by trees, cattle sheds beside the huts. There, on the stoop of a large hut, sat Souvali. Souvalya is insulted and discriminated from the Kauravas, Dasiputra! Slave child! Its because of this Dasiputra that you got water from a sons hand! Kunti! Gandhari! Gandhari never once, in all these years, acknowledged you as a Kaurava. But he only performs the last rites (tarpan) for Dhritarashtra after the forest fire. The conversation between mother and son reveals that Souvalya is happy to rise above the status of dasi-putra by the pandavas. But his mother is not happy to accept the recognition rather she calls it as a farce. She wants her son to be a Janavritta, her son is foolish. Following the norms and customs of royalty even though he is one of the common folk. She thinks to herself, if you must learn, learn from your mother. I was nothing but a dasi in the royal house-hold but here, amongst the common people, Im a free woman. This story shows the difference between centre and the margins of society. its true. Its in the janavritta,amongst the common people, that we are in touch with our natural emotions. Tenderness,caring,compassion romance,love anger,jealousy. But in the rajavritta,you know how they keep such natural emotions strictly in check. Thus, mahasweta devi shows the two types- the subaltern as gendered subject and the subaltern as class subject clearly. The charcters exemplify the twin problems of class and gender. Mahasweta devis another story draupadi concentrates on the major crisis of drupadis humiliation at hastinapura after yudhistra has lost her in a game of dice. Briefly the Mahabharata chronicles the ancestry and the escalating conflicts of two sets of the brothers, the pandavas and the kaurauvas,for ruler ship of the land. In most recensions, drupadi is born from the earth(although some have her emerging from the fire of her fathers ritual sacrifice). Not long thereafter (she emerges as a young woman of marriageable age), her father arranges a sw aymvara, a gathering of eligible men who compete for her hand in marriage. Arjuna, the third of the five pandavas,wins,as she had hoped he would. But when he returns with his brothers to tell their mother the joyful news, their mother thinking he has won some material goods, commands him to share his winnings with his brothers. As her word can never be taken back, arjuna must share her, to the consternation of all. Draupadi marries all five pandavas in turn, yudishtra, the eldest and wisest; Bhima,noted for his physical strength and tenderheartedness; Arjuna, the consummate warrior, friend of Krishna, and Draupadis favourite; and the twins nakula and sahadeva, celebrated for their good looks. They device an arrangement to eradicate jealousy: beginning with Yudhisthira, each brother ha sole right of conjugal acces to Draupadi for a year at atime, during which the other may not even accidently enter the marital bedroom. Draupadi bears a son to each husband. Eventually, due to pressure exerted upon them by the king Dhritarashtra, the two sets of brothers reconcile, although mutual suspicion remains. In a move of anticipatory, Dhritarashtra divides up the kingdom between the two sides of the family: half to the pandavas and the other half to the hundred kauravas, an arrangement most unsatisfactory to the kauravas. The leading kaurava , Aduryodhana, arranges for yudhisthiras horse sacrifice and coronation,followed in the kauravas grand assembly hall by a ritual game of dice in which players are supposed to ceremonially lose to the new king. But Duryodhana puts his maternal uncle Sakuni, a master at dice, to play in his stead, and the loaded dice take away yudhistras land, wealth and slaves. Yudhistra then stakes each of his brothers in turn, again losing each time. He stakes himself, and again he loses. While the pandavas, stripped to their undergarments, stand aside helplessly as slaves, Duryodhana demands that Draupadi be brought out of the womens hall, and sends a messenger to fetch her. Informed about what has just occurred, she asks whether Yudhishtra lost her before or after he lost himself, and argues that one who no longer owns himself cannot own another to give up. She sends back the messenger. Another messenger is sent, and again returns. Finally, in frustration, Duhshasana himself goes to the womens hall; Drupadi tells him to leave her alone that she is having her period and unable to come to mens gathering. Ignoring her protestations, he drags her by the hair out to the assembly hall, where she pleads in vain with her husbands to help her, which they cannot do. Draupadis fury unmans all present. A debate ensues, interrupted by Duhshanans demanding that Draupadi be stripped, and Duryodhana laughingly patting his thigh to invite her to sit. This humiliation in the assembley hall is Draupadis central crisis, and is related in varying ways. Most recensions show her caling for Krishna to protect her; some show her merely as being jeeringly told to pray. In either case, a miracle occurs: as Duhshasana pulls at the cloth, Draupadi remains clothed:sari after sari appears, and ultimately, after pulling off hundreds of saris, Duhshasana collapses,weary and confused. Dhritarashtra halts the proceedings and grands Draupadi twoo boons. She asks for the freedom of Yudhisthira and for that of the other pandavas. The king grands freedom to every one, and restores all of their posssssessions and land to the pandavas. A second dice game ensues, which Yudhisthira again loses:the terms of the loss are that the pandavas must go into exile for twelve years, remain in exile in disguissse for another year, after which their half of the kingdom would be restored.draupadi follows them into exile, and tjhrought their years away from the kingdom is most eager for revenge: Bhima fulfill his promise to break Duryodhanas thigh and to drink Duhshasanas blood. A reworking of the mahabharatas assembly hall scene, draupadi brings forward the struggle of a santal woman(black like the epics draupadi, for whom she has been named by her mothers master). A cadre in the naxalbari rebellion, draupadi, in the text referred as dopdi is ultimately captured by senanayak, a Bengali army officer whose expertise in anthropology makes him perfect for the task of apprehending tribals. in order to destroy the enemy,become one . senanayak has become one just as in the Mahabharata , kauravas planned to wipe out draupadis husband,the five pandavas. Both the narratives clearly show the struggle of less powered people at the hands of powered ones and the less powered peoples wake of the powerful cheating. Similarly to the disempowering of the epic draupadis husbands,who,enslaved by the loss at the dice,cannot move,dopdis husband is murdered. on one such search, army informant Dukhiram Gharari saw a young Santhal man lying on his stomach on a flat stone, dipping h is face to drink water. The soldiers shot him as he lay. As the 303 threw him off spread- eagled nd brought a bloody foam to his mouth, he roared Ma-ho and then went limp. They realize later that it was the redoubtable Dulna Majhi. She refuses to fall into the armys trap by going to bend his body. The problem is thus solved. Then, leaving Dulnas body on the stone, the soldiers climb the trees in green camouflage. They embrace the leafy boughs like so many great God pass and wait as the large red ants bite their private parts. To see if anyone comes to take away the baby. This is the hunters way, not the soldiers. But senanayak knows that these brutes can not be dispatched by the approved method. So he asks his men to draw the prey with a corpse as bait. All will come clear, he says. I have almost deciphered Dopdis song. The soldiers get going at his command. But no one comes to claim Dulnas Corpse. Rather than lead her pursuers to capture other rebels, Dopdilets herself be caught, refuses to tell names.unlike the epic Draupadi,whose sari flow out in endless profusion,she is stripped, Draupadi mejhen was apprehended at 6.53 pm. It took an hour to get her to camp. Questioning took another hour exactly. No one touched her, and she was allowed to sit on a canvas camp stool. At 8.57 senanayaks dinner hour approached, and saying,Make her. Do the needful, he disappeared. The next day she is ordered to senanayaks tent and offered a pot water to slake her by-now overpowering thirst. But her response upsets all expections, Draupadi stands up. She pours the water down on the ground. Tears her piece of cloth with her teeth. Seeing such strange behavior,the guard says,shes gone crazy, and runs for orders. He can lead the prisoner out but does not know what to do if the prisoner behaves incomprehenstably .so he goes to ask his superior. Mahasweta devis Deaupadi refuses to be clothed again. She forces the confrontation with her tormentors-letting them see exactly what they have done to her, refusing to futilely attempt to cover herself. No goddess will come to help her and no king will fight for her behalf. Senanayk is paralysed at what he sees, Draupadistands before him, naked. Thigh and public hait matted with dry blood. Two breasts,two wounds. What is this? He is about to bark. Draupadi comes closert. Stands with her hand on her hip, laughs and says, The object of your search,Dopdi Mejhen. You asked them to make me up, dont you want to see how they made me? Where are her clothes? wont put them on,sir. Tearing them. Drauypadis black body comes even closer. Draupadi shakes wih an indomitable laughter that senanayak simply cannot understand. Her raveged lips bleed as she begins laughing. Draupadi wipes the blood on her palm and says in a voice that is as terrifying, sky spiliting and sharp as her ululation,whats the use of clothes? You can stripe me, but how can you clothe me again?are you a Man? She looks around and chooses thr front of senanayaks white bush shirt to spit a bloody gob at and says, There isnt a man here that I should be ashamed. I will not let you put my clothe on me. What more can you do? Come on, counter me- come on counter me-? Draupadi pushes senanayak with her two mangled breasts, and for the first time senanayak is afraid to stand before an unarmed target, terribly afraid. In the Mahabharata Draupadi is dragged from her menstrual cycle into the assembly hall in one garment, the stained garment is signifier that dushasana is expected to understand. She is not to be touched, and she certainly is not to be brought to the view of men. She reminds him,but he mocks at her and forces her to be in the hall. Dopdis signifiers of bllod, in contrast , mark a rape and torture completed rather than forestalled. The soldiers and senanayak are paralysed rather than goaded like Duhshasana into further action. Like the epic Draupadiu, who decries the impotence of her husbands, dopdi can find no man present within the camp. Ferociously, she defiles senanayak with her blood-she spits on him with her bleeding mouth, and pushes him with her wounded breasts into hiswhite shirt. Occypying his physical, forcing him to see her made up, she shoves his own fear into his face. Unarmed, but threatens what the actions of the next hour may be. In dopds case,the insults she hurls at senanayak and his men- which echo those that the master narrator Vyasa gave to the epic Draupadi in the assembly hall, and even her spitting and her pushing her wounded

Exploring Chance In Pushkins the Queen of Spades Essay -- Pushking Que

Exploring Chance In Pushkin's the Queen of Spades It is said in The Bible that God has given Man 'free will.' Unfortunately for Man, The Bible does not entail exactly what 'free will' is. Some speculate that there is a force called Chance. These people believe that through a serious of coincidence, luck, and their own choices, they can control their future. Others believe in a force known as Fate. With this line of thinking, everything has a goal, and those goals will be met eventually. This gives the believer a sense of inevitability and they tend to be more laid back due to the philosophy of least resistance. Least resistance is the idea of 'it's going to happen anyway, so there?'s no real point in pushing back.' In Pushkin's 'Queen of Spades', chance and fate seem to endlessly intertwine themselves to the point where there appears to be a third force somewhat dictating their actions. In some instances, the lives of the characters seem to be going in a set path (Fate). At other instances, it appears as if had this not just happen ed to happen at this point in time, this person's life wouldn't have been affected in this way (Chance). Are Fate and Chance separate forces, or puppets on the strings of another power' Chances are, they're one in the same.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The play opens with a man, Tomsky, who ?just so happens? to be telling the story of his grandmother and how she ?fatefully? came upon the secret to wealth. First, looking at it from the chance perspective, had this not happened, life would have been altered for many people. Countess Anna Fedrova, Countess A-----, is the person who puts the order of chance happenings in motion. Had she not been born, had she been ?damaged? in some way earlier in life, had she not married the man she did, and many other ?what ifs" and ?if onlys" could have stopped the series of events from occurring. But, ?by chance?, all of these things did happen. ?By chance?, a man who would be interested in learning the secret of the three winning cards was listening to Tomsky. Again, had his life not gone the way it had, he might not have been around Tomsky in the first place. ?By chance?, he was. The pattern of ?by chance? is set up early in the story. The entire story was written ?by chance?, which makes an interesting parallel to real life. Had Pushkin not been born, we would not have the story, and so forth.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Or was i... ...ploring the theme of chance, one realizes that chance is simply a game of perspectives. Random to one was planned by another. Was everything put together as a plan to make Hermann go insane one day?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  ?At that moment it seemed to him that the queen of spades smiled ironically and winked her eye at him. He was struck by her remarkable resemblance.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  ?The old Countess!? he exclaimed, seized with terror.??   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  (Pushkin, pp. 23) Or did it simply just happen to turn out that way?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  ?Hermann went out of his mind, and is now confined in room Number 17 of the Oboukoff Hospital. He never answers any questions, but he constantly mutters with unusual rapidity: ?Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, queen!?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  (Pushkin, pp. 23) As only God knows why all was created, only Pushkin knows why these events happened in the way they did. It all depends on how you look at it. In hindsight, what was once thought to be fate is simply the pattern of chances strung together. Works Cited Pushkin, Alexander. ?Queen of Spades?. Great Russian Short Stories. Ed. Paul Negril. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003. 1-23.

Miracles of Life Essay

IÂ’m standing on the pavement outside my house, a coffee mug warming my hand, my hair dishevelled and my bare feet cold. ItÂ’s dawn. I love the way the purple of the sky stretches across to the fringes of the trees, seeping into the vivid orange of the sun. IÂ’m remembering mornings like this when we stood out here together, a frayed, woollen blanket draped across our shoulders, coffee mugs in our hands, shivering from the cold and gazing awe-struck at the sun as its fiery head slowly rose out from between the trees. The cars on Springvale Rd would buzz past us, whipping wind into out faces. Sometimes we shared opinions on these cars Ââ€" each car contained a person, you told me, and each person had a story to tell. We agreed with wonderment how it was quite amazing, this choreography of life. The cars themselves were moving capsules containing stories. Maybe in that polished Honda, there would be a joyful father and mother, and a new-born cuddled in soft blankets. Or maybe, that sleek, black Holden would contain an ASIS agent, investigating a terrorist attack. You laughed at the latter example, saying that my imagination must have gone wild from reading too much Alex Rider. I protested that possibilities were open and everything was possible. Once, we sat on the street curb, and I told you that I wanted to go to somewhere as exciting as medieval Paris, so that I could hunt on horseback all day and flirt with the lovely ladies. Eyebrows raised, you retorted that I should shut my perverted mouth, before primly reminding me that the medieval French had never heard of McDonaldÂ’s and often went for days without baths.

In Latin and other languages, Fluxus literally means flow and change Essay

In Latin and other languages, â€Å"Fluxus† literally means â€Å"flow† and â€Å"change.† Similarly, the related English word â€Å"flux† is used variously to mean â€Å"a state of continuous change†,†a fusion.† Fluxus ideas were prevalent well before the 1960’s, growing with the idea of intermedia, but first summarised, exemplified and presented in a festival jointly organised by the German, Joseph Beuys, and Lithuanian-born architect and designer, George Maciunas. It was Maciunas’ desire to show the work of a specific group of people, sharing the same thoughts on art at the time and it was he who coined the name Fluxus. The Fluxus performance festival held at the Dà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½sseldorf Art Academy on 2-3 February 1962 was a significant historical marker in the early development of the Fluxus group. Numerous Fluxus and Fluxus-type festivals and activities continued to be presented in Europe throughout the 1960’s after which the focus shifted to New York. Fluxus has been described as â€Å"the most radical and experimental art movement of the sixties.† Fluxus differs from most art in being purely conceptual. Characterized by a strongly Dadaist attitude, Fluxus promoted artistic experimentation mixed with social and political activism, an often celebrated anarchistic change. Although Germany was its principal location, Fluxus was an international avant-garde movement, active in major Dutch, English, French, Swedish, and American cities. Its participants were a divergent group of individualists whose most common theme was their delight in spontaneity and humour. Fluxus members avoided any limiting art theories, and spurned pure aesthetic objectives, producing such mixed-media works as poems, mail art, silent orchestras, and collages of such readily available materials such as scavenged posters, newspapers, and other ephemera. Their activities resulted in many events or situations, often called ‘Actions’ or as known in the USA, ‘Happenings’, which were works challenging definitions of art as focused on objects. Street theatre was very popular as were other performances such as concerts of electronic music. An account given by the American Fluxartist Dick Higgins described the sort of happening you would expect at one of his Fluxconcerts. This particular description is from the concert at Dà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½sseldorf and it had become a kind of set piece for these festival performances. Higgins described his arrangement, Constellation No 4 as follows: â€Å"Each performer chooses a sound to be produced on any instrument available to him, including the voice. The sound is to have a clearly defined percussive attack and a delay which is no longer than a second. Words, crackling and rustling sounds, are excluded because they have multiple attacks and decays†¦Each performer produces his sound as efficiently as possible, almost simultaneously with the other performers sounds. As soon as the last decay has died away, the piece is over.† A person, who attends a Fluxconcert, after the first shock, typically gets caught up in the spirit of it and begins to enjoy it, without consciously knowing why. What the recipient sees is coloured by his or her perception of it and instinctively he or she is matching horizons, comparing expectations, participating in the process; the more actively he or she does so, the more likely they will be able to enjoy the experience. In 1981 Dick Higgins Wrote a list of nine criteria that he suggested central to Fluxus: 1. internationalism 2. experimentalism and iconoclasm 3. intermedia (a term employed by Dick Higgins to describe an art form appropriate to people who say there are no boundaries between art and life) 4. minimalism or concentration 5. an attempted resolution of the art/life dichotomy 6. implicativeness (an ideal Fluxus work that implies many more works) 7. play or gags 8. epehmerality 9. specificity (work to be specific, self-contained and to embody all its own parts) Clearly not every work is likely to reflect all nine of these characteristics or criteria, but the more of them a work reflects, the more typically and characteristically Fluxus it is. Similarly not every work by a Fluxartist is a Fluxwork; typically Fluxartists do other sorts of work as well. The group pioneered these ideas at a time when their thoughts and practices in the world around them were distinct from the art world and different from the world of other disciplines in which Fluxus, would come to play a role. Like Duchamp, many Fluxus pieces (most notably the performance ones), are often characterised by their taking of a very ordinary event from daily life, and their being framed as art by being presented on stage as a performance situation. A collection of Fluxus works will inevitably include some pieces which are untransformed from life. Their significance is their ability to transform viewers’ horizons. According to Joseph Beuys, Fluxus intended to â€Å"purge the world of bourgeois sickness . . . of dead art,† to â€Å"promote a revolutionary flood and tide in art, anti-art, promote non art reality . . .† and to â€Å"fuse the cadres of cultural, social, and political revolutionaries into a united front and action.† I was particularly interested in the work of Joseph Beuys on view at the Tate Modern. He was a shaman, showman, teacher and tireless debater. He used the detritus of daily life in his work; materials representing energy such as fat, felt, wax, honey, and copper, iron, bronze and batteries. His use of felt and fat in particular relates back to his near death experience in World War II when he used the two materials to keep him warm. *Show Pictures* Most of his pieces have changed through time, relying as they do on materials that decay, ferment, dry up, or change colour. â€Å"Since life is in a constant state of flux,† he reasoned, â€Å"art, in order to bring itself closer to life, must be similarly ephemeral.† It was thus, in change, that Beuys sought to bring about the ultimate unity between art and life. Many of the Fluxartists were poor and could not afford to work with fine and costly materials. The sense that if Fluxus were to incorporate some element of ongoing change – flux -that the individual works should change. Many objects therefore were made of ephemeral materials, so that as time went by the work would either disappear or would physically alter itself. A work such as this made a strong statement rather than a work that would last throughout the ages in some treasure vault. Many of the Fluxartists work, such as Robert Fillous’s works have disappeared into thin air. A good example of this is the work we looked at in the lecture last week entitled ‘The artists breath’ by Yves Klein. George Maciunas planned to create a Fluxus Board of Directors which he would head from the Headquarters in New York. Maciunas wrote a letter to Thomas Schmit, in the form of a Fluxus manifesto, as which it is often referred. He stated that: * Fluxus objectives are social and not aesthetic * The gradual elimination of fine arts (music, theatre, poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, etc.) was motivated by the desire to stop the waste of material and human resources and divert it to socially constructive ends such as: Industrial design, journalism, architecture, engineering, graphic-typographic arts, printing etc. * The movement was against the art-object as non-functional commodity to be sold and to make a livelihood for an artist. * It could have the function of teaching people the needlessness of art. Therefore teaching that a work should not be permanent * Fluxus is therefore anti-professional * Against art as a medium or vehicle promoting artists ego. * Applied art should express the objective problem to be solved not by the artist’s personality or ego. * Fluxus art should tend towards the collective spirit, anonymity and anti-individualism * Fluxus concerts and publications are at best transitional and temporary until such time that artists find other employment. Maciunas states that it is of utmost importance that the artist finds a profession from which he can make a living. * He says that there is no such thing as a professional revolutionary. Revolution is for participation of all and that a revolutionary should not practice something he is trying to overthrow or even worse, making a living from it, and that the best revolutionaries practice what they preach. * Fluxartists should not make a living from their Fluxus activities but find a profession (like applied arts) by which he would do best Fluxus activity. * The best Fluxus composition is a most non-personal, ready-made one. * Fluxus way of life is 9am to 5pm working socially constructive and useful work – earning your own living, 5pm to 10pm spending time on propagandizing your way of life among other idle artists and collectors and fighting them, 12pm to 8am sleeping (8 hours is enough) * You cannot live off your family because then you are being just as parasitic as artists living off the society, without contributing anything constructive. Maciunas also calls the need for copyright arrangements. * Authorship of pieces would eventually be destroyed, making them totally anonymous – thus eliminating the artist’s ego. The author would be Fluxus. Maciunas says â€Å"We can’t depend on each artist to destroy his ego. The copyright arrangement will eventually force him to it if he is reluctant.† May I also add at this point, Robert. C .Morgan, art critic, writer, artist and poet says that ‘By creating the absence of authorship, Fluxus has revived itself as a significant tendency in recent art.’ However, no one really wanted to sign the manifesto set out by Maciunas. Dick Higgins says that ‘We did not want to confine tomorrow’s possibilities by what we today. That manifesto is Maciunas’ manifesto, not a manifesto of Fluxus.’ George Brecht notes that: â€Å"Fluxus encompasses opposites.† â€Å"Consider opposing it, supporting it, ignoring it, changing your mind.† Clearly, with Fluxus, normal theoretical positions do not apply. They are not intended to do the same things as say a Jackson Pollock painting. It does not mimic nature in any narrative way. It does not attempt to move the listener, viewer or reader emotionally or intellectually. The Fluxartist does not even begin to reveal him-or herself through the work. The reception of Fluxus, its popularity, influence and in general, its acceptance, varies considerably. A Fluxperformance or an exhibition of Fluxus works attended by a person uneducated about the Fluxus field is apt to having an interesting and pleasurable experience. For most avant-guard art, one needs to know quite a considerable amount of art history in order to get ones bearings enough to be able to fuse one’s bearings and horizons and experience pleasure. There is a progressive intellectualism of the audience, thus more ideas of what will, or should happen. The spectators of a Fluxwork have to learn that these ideas are not under attack and that they are simply irrelevant to the work at hand. There are two bodies of people whose hostility towards Fluxus is profound. These are: 1. Groups of art professionals who work in art institutions and galleries. Fluxworks do not lend themselves easily to becoming precious objects which are sold or beautiful fetishes to immortalize the donor. It has more the quality of a souvenir or a sacred relic than or an exquisitely wrought product of fine craftsmanship. 2. Secondly, it is the artists who are ‘good’ in whatever it is that they do, but who are not good enough to be really secure in it.Such artists feel threatened by Fluxus. Victor Cousin’s phrase of 1816 says of art: ‘It is done for the love of it -‘for its own sake’. The Fluxus Collective believed that if value came to be attached to the work then great! But the work must be un-commercial in its very nature. -Conclusion- Fluxus is more important as an idea and a potential for social change than as a specific group of people or collection of objects, action and life activity. Fluxus tried to eclectically organise itself around the advantages of existing strategies at the same time that it attempted to avoid their abuses. Fluxus was committed to social purpose but opposed the authoritarian means by which it was historically achieved. Today, it is clear that the radical contribution Fluxus made to art was to suggest that there is no boundary to be erased between art and life. The Fluxus movement does not present correct political or social views – all the elements behave democratically. Not one piece dominates another. The movement sees a world inhabited by individuals of equal worth and value. By chance, this movement entered the scene, and changed the worldwide view previously held. For a group of artists who sought the reunification of art & life, the current institutionalization of Fluxus is paradoxical, yet the subversive nature of their project; the challenge to hierarchy and authoritarianism, still persists today