Martin Luther King, Marcus Garvey, & Malcolm X Discussion

2012: Segregation Still at Its Worst The way todays events and the lifestyle of living is approached, the people of our past would have been surprised to know how much we have accomplished, and even more surprised to know some things still remain the same. Since the beginning of mankind, people have fought for their rights in order to make life a much easier way to live with one another. Documents like the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and even far back to the Ten Commandments, have been written to show some sort of peace structure to live by, with out harming one another.In America, freedom, justice, and equality for all has been a major issue that is yet to be fully fulfilled. Although, America is all about supporting the three lifestyles, the people are the ones who make the situation almost impossible to reach. If the strong leaders from our past were alive today helping us reach the right decision to these matters, the solutions would come even sooner to socie ty based on their helpful ideas, or maybe even the people of today would still be capable of assassinating them for their wise words and leadership.Leaders like Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr. , and Malcolm X, already had strong voices of opinion then and would have even higher voices today. Taking that if with the advanced science there is today, we would be able to bring back in time the lives of Martin Luther King Jr. , Malcolm X, and Marcus Garvey; for them to be able to be the same age they were while showing activism, and have an intellectual conversation with one another about the issues we are still facing, what would they have to say about them?Matters to discuss like the campaign election with our black President Obama, gangs in the United States, or an even more poplar subject; the battle for legalizing gay marriage throughout the states. Since Egyptian times there have been records of same sex couples, this is not a new subject to mankind but yet we treat it as if it is something our ancestors have never heard of and a new discovery. Gay marriage has been an on going debate in our society. The government trying to control who someone marries is limiting human rights. May 3rd, 2012.Walking along the beachy streets of Venice, California; Malcolm, Martin, and Marcus, run into each other while still in shock to be alive again where they are. Malcolm and Martin recognizing one another, Malcolm recognizing Marcus, and Marcus not being able to recognize neither since he came from an early time of theirs. After being together for a short amount of time in present day era, they have already learned about many events, issues, and problems there has stumbled through time. Taking a seat on a park bench, they begin to assemble some of their findings and ideas.Marcus: So men, one topic I've been hearing about both negatively and positive about has been the issue on either banning same-sex marriage or legalizing it. What do you all think should be done abou t that? Malcolm: Well beginning off with that, it brings back the dilemma we were fighting for back in our days for the right of our freedom because of the color of our skin. Even though the issue today is whether or not the same sex should be able to marry, but who is the government to tell someone who they could marry or who they cannot?Marcus: If it really is this big of an issue, all homosexuals who want to marry should just move to a state like Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legalized, and they could colonize there to be able to marry and be more comfortable in the communities they are in rather than fighting for it where their state will not allow it. Malcolm: Marcus, my father, may he rest in peace, had a big admiration for you and your ideas about how we should have handled racism your way about moving back to Africa to avoid the segregation here.And so do I. But in this country, we have learned to build up our nation and overcome issues like racism, not fully sin ce it still exists in some ways, but its been handled to avoid discrimination. Now we believe in equality, and equality means that you have to put the same thing over here that you out over there (Malcolm 139). Our country is a nation of freedom, but yet that is taken away when the freedom of others choosing the one to marry, the ones they love, comes to place. Since the beginning of our nation we have been fighting for eligious, racial, and many other basic human rights. Denying gay marriage is fighting against a human’s basic right to love. Marcus Garvey in the beginning of this conversation, is trying to state that if it is really important to homosexuals, they should just leave their state and enter one where same-sex marriage is legal. Something he had also been saying to his people during his reign of leadership, enduring in people's mind to simply go back to Africa where they are sure to receive equal treatment within their colored people.Readings had been done about t he topic by Martin Luther King, who wanted to uncover deeper about the subject of gay marriage. He learned that conservative Theodore B. Olson, of the republican party, states in his article; â€Å" The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage†, that legalizing same-sex marriage would be a recognition of basic American principles, and it would represent the culmination of our nation's commitment to equal rights. Theodore also states that it is the last major milestone to be over came in our fight towards civil rights.After accomplishing the black and white racism battle over the years, much is still the same. Martin Luther King: Well men, after hearing you two discuss yesterday a little of what should be done about the fact of gay marriage, I went off to uncover more about the issue. According to a man by the name of Gary Gates, he did a study of how many homosexuals there are in the United States alone, and it came out to over four million gays, that’s more than four millio n people we are denying equal rights too!This does not include people who claim to be bisexual as well. Marcus: Nothing has changed. These white folks have poisoned the rest of our country to harm not only the rights of a negro anymore, but the rights of regular human beings that would only want to be one and marry. They have lost their sympathies throughout, heterosexuals have settled down to see nothing but their own interest (Garvey 205). Martin Luther King: That is right. The tables have turned that even the white folks, deny their own people of color. Only because of the sexuality they have.Imagine being told the way you were born or see things or feel for them, is wrong? And it had to be untaught to you only because others do not approve for it? Or your religion does not? That is not the way this country should be heading. Malcolm: The internal consciousness of this country is bankrupt. They make it appear they have our good interests at heart, but when you study it, every tim e, no matter how many steps they take us forward, it's like we're standing on a–what do you call that thing? (Malcolm 143). Marcus: †¦ A treadmill! Malcolm: A treadmill!The treadmill is moving backwards faster than we're able to go forward in this direction. We're not even standing still–we're going backwards. If this country really wants to find a solution to gay marriage, I suggest we take it as an aggressively strong approach to get our voices heard, heard aboard! To where others believe this country is all about equality, we will show them we still aren't. Because thats the only way America finds conclusions to her problems. When America is afraid of outside pressure, or when she's afraid of her image abroad (Malcolm 159).Martin Luther King: Wait here Malcolm, I love your enthusiasm when it comes to doing the right thing for our people, but the way we approach this issue should not be aggressively to the point where we involve outside allies to help us solve o ur problems. The government will hear it from us, and only us. Our most powerful nonviolent weapon is, as would be expected, also our most demanding, that is organization. To produce change, people must be organized to work together in units of power. Malcolm: So once again King you think we should still be resolving important issues of our society with the help of nonviolence?Now, I am not judging you on your practice of nonviolence, but I believe that I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I'd say, okay to you King, let's get with it, we'll all be nonviolent with the homosexuals. But I don't go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody's going to be nonviolent. And once that happens, well then, life has really changed. But up until now 40 something years later, things still seem to be the same. So in order to get the human rights there still seems to be achieved, power and aggression should be shown ( Malcolm 139).Martin Luther King: When Negros marched back in our days, so did the nation. If we could only get all the devoted homosexuals who want to marry to unite and march together, the results would be extraordinary. The power of the nonviolent march is indeed a mystery. It will be surprising to have a few hundreds, maybe even thousands, of gays marching to produce a strong reaction in their nation. When marches are carefully organized around well-defined issues, they represent the power which Victor Hugo phrased as the most powerful force in the world, â€Å"an ideas whose time has come. Marching feet announce that time has come for a given idea. When the die is a sound one, the cause is just one, and the demonstration a righteous one, change will be forthcoming. And marching once is not going to get us straight to the conclusion we want, it will take several marches to show how serious this really is to different types of peoples lives (Nonviolence 59). Marcus: I'm beginning to agree with what King here has to say†¦the technique of nonviolence shows to have worked before and it will be a continuous practice to be done in the future obviously.I still think gays should just move together to find their comfort zone where they are accepted, but that does take away from their pride and human rights they deserve. Now I too did more research on this, and sadly marrying the same sex denies you from even greater problems that are plain out unfair. Many people suggest that same sex couples just get domestic partnership or a civil union, but this does not allow them to benefit from health insurance. They cannot gain from their title of being a wife or husband. Employers don't allow spouse or children of same sex to have health care coverage and will only extend it through marriage.Malcolm: That is a big problem. Come to think of it, when someone in your family is hospitalized, the only visitation under critical conditions, are allowed by intermediate family and spouses. So most of these same-sex domestic partnerships are not allowed to see one another if even on the verge of dying. Martin Luther King: They are making it feel that perhaps homosexuals are less than human. The white men at first refused to accept change. And now not only is it the white man who is refusing to accept change it is also the black, the yellow, the brown.The struggles these gays are going through will begin to help them to evaluate themselves, and with their determination to struggle and sacrifice, until the walls of segregation have been fully crushed by the battering rams of justice, should be met again (Nonviolence 7). Facts about how Gay marriage is illegal is unconstitutional, this law takes away basic rights to gays that are important, it really all comes down to love. Looking around at so many gay couples around America, they were so devoted to one another, as a heterosexual couple is as well.After discussing this issue with many people who are against same-sex marriage, one was a changed person in regards to it. Marriage is not just a government form to people; it is a way of expressing their life long commitment to one another. Same sex marriage should be legalized because it supports what our nation believes in and will only unite our nation more. If Martin Luther King Jr. , Malcolm X, and Marcus Garvey were still alive today, this issue would be one they too would be battling for because banning same sex marriage goes against our nations fight towards equality.Basic human rights are taken away from gay couples, the last thing these leaders wanted to leave the Earth by was to know that human rights are still taken away from their own people. Something that they fought so hard to get out of. They would want everyone to see same sex marriage as nothing new or different from heterosexual marriage, just as they taught America and the world to see black and white people no different or greater than one another. Gays are humans too a nd should have the right to commit to the ones they love.

Minimum Wage and Nike Marketing Phrase

Nike is in many ways the quintessential global corporation. Established in 1972 by former University of Oregon track star Phil Knight, Nike is now one of the leading marketers of athletic shoes and apparel on the planet. In 2006, the company has $15 billion in annual revenues and sold its products in some 140 countries. Nike does not do any manufacturing. Rather, it designs and markets its products, while contracting for their manufacture from a global network of 600 factories scattered around the globe that employ some 650,000 people. This huge corporation has made Knight into one of the richest people in America. The Nike marketing phrase â€Å"Just Do It! † has become as recognizable in popular culture as its â€Å"swoosh† logo or the faces of its celebrity sponsors, such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. For all of its successes, the company has been dogged for more than a decade by repeated and persistent accusations that its products are made in sweatshops where workers, many of them children, slave away in hazardous conditions for less than subsistence wages. Nike's wealth, its detractors claim, has been built upon the backs of the world's poor. To many, Nike has become a symbol of the evils of globalization—a rich Western corporation exploiting the world's poor to provide expensive shoes and apparel to the pampered consumers of the developed world. Nike's â€Å"Niketown† stores have become standard targets for anti-globalization protesters. Several nongovernmental organizations, such as San Francisco–based Global Exchange, a human rights organization dedicated to promoting environmental, political, and social justice around the world, have targeted Nike for repeated criticism and protests. News organizations such as CBS's â€Å"48 Hours† hosted by Dan Rather have run exposes on working conditions in foreign factories that supply Nike. Students on the campuses of several major U. S. universities with which Nike has lucrative sponsorship deals have protested against the ties, citing Nike's use of sweatshop labor. For its part, Nike has taken steps to counter the protests. Yes, it admits, there have been problems in some overseas factories. But the company has signaled a commitment to improving working conditions. It requires that foreign subcontractors meet minimum thresholds for working conditions and pay. It has arranged for factories to be examined by independent auditors. It has terminated contracts with factories that do not comply with its standards. But for all this effort, the company continues to be a target of protests and a symbol of dissent. The Case against Nike Typical of the exposes against Nike was a â€Å"48 Hours† report that aired October 17, 1996. 3 Reporter Roberta Baskin visited a Nike factory in Vietnam. With a shot of the factory, her commentary began: The signs are everywhere of an American invasion in search of cheap labor. Millions of people who are literate, disciplined, and desperate for jobs. This is Nike Town near what use to be called Saigon, one of four factories Nike doesn't own but subcontracts to make a million shoes a month. It takes 25,000 workers, mostly young women, to â€Å"Just Do It. † But the workers here don't share in Nike's huge profits. They work six days a week for only $40 a month, just 20 cents an hour. Baskin interviewed one factory worker, a young woman named Lap. Baskin told viewers: Her basic wage, even as sewing team leader, still doesn't amount to the minimum wage †¦ She's down to 85 pounds. Like most of the young women who make shoes, she has little choice but to accept the low wages and long hours. Nike says that it requires all subcontractors to obey local laws; but Lap has already put in much more overtime than the annual legal limit: 200 hours. Baskin then asked Lap what would happen if she was sick or had something she needed to take care of, such as a sick relative, and needed to leave the factory? Through a translator, Lap replied: It is not possible if you haven't made enough shoes. You have to meet the quota before you can go home. The clear implication of the story was that Nike was at fault here for allowing such working conditions to persist in the Vietnam factory, which was owned by a Korean company. Another attack on Nike's subcontracting practices came in June 1996 from Made in the USA, a foundation largely financed by labor unions and domestic apparel manufacturers that oppose free trade with low-wage countries. According to Joel Joseph, chairman of the foundation, a popular line of high-priced Nike sneakers, the â€Å"Air Jordans,† were put together by 11-year-olds in Indonesia making 14 cents per hour. A Nike spokeswoman, Donna Gibbs, countered that this was false. According to Gibbs, the average worker made 240,000 rupiah ($103) a month working a maximum 54-hour week, or about 45 cents per hour. Gibbs also noted that Nike had staff members in each factory monitoring conditions to make sure the factory obeyed local minimum wage and child labor laws. Another example of the criticism against Nike is the following extract from a newsletter published by Global Exchange:5 During the 1970s, most Nike shoes were made in South Korea and Taiwan. When workers there gained new freedom to organize and wages began to rise, Nike looked for â€Å"greener pastures. † It found them in Indonesia and China, where Nike started producing in the 1980s, and most recently in Vietnam. The majority of Nike shoes are made in Indonesia and China, countries with governments that prohibit independent unions and set the minimum wage at rock bottom. The Indonesian government admits that the minimum wage there does not provide enough to supply the basic needs of one person, let alone a family. In early 1997 the entry-level wage was a miserable $2. 46 a day. Labor groups estimate that a livable wage in Indonesia is about $4. 00 a day. In Vietnam the pay is even less—20 cents an hour, or a mere $1. 60 a day. But in urban Vietnam, three simple meals cost about $2. 10 a day, and then of course there is rent, transportation, clothing, health care, and much more. According to Thuyen Nguyen of Vietnam Labor Watch, a living wage in Vietnam is at least $3 a day. In another attack on Nike's practices, in September 1997 Global Exchange published a report on working conditions in four Nike and Reebok subcontractors in southern China. 6 Global Exchange, in conjunction with two Hong Kong human rights groups, had interviewed workers at the factories in 1995 and again in 1997. According to Global Exchange, in one factory, a Korean owned subcontractor for Nike, workers as young as 13 earning as little as 10 cents an hour toiled up to 17 hours daily in enforced silence. Talking during work was not allowed, with violators fined $1. 20 to $3. 0, according to the report. The practices were in violation of Chinese labor law, which states that no child under 16 may work in a factory, and the Chinese minimum wage requirement of $1. 90 for an eight-hour day. Nike condemned the study as erroneous, stating that the report incorrectly stated the wages of workers and made irresponsible accusations. Global Exchange, however, continued to be a major thorn in Nike's side. In November 1997, the organization obtained and then leaked a confidential report by Ernst & Young of an audit that Nike had commissioned of a factory in Vietnam owned by a  Nike subcontractor. 7 The factory had 9,200 workers and made 400,000 pairs of shoes a month. The Ernst & Young report painted a dismal picture of thousands of young women, most under age 25, laboring 10 1/2 hours a day, six days a week, in excessive heat and noise and in foul air, for slightly more than $10 a week. The report also found that workers with skin or breathing problems had not been transferred to departments free of chemicals and that more than half the workers who dealt with dangerous chemicals did not wear protective masks or gloves. It claimed workers were exposed to carcinogens that exceeded local legal standards by 177 times in parts of the plant and that 77 percent of the employees suffered from respiratory problems. Put on the defensive yet again, Nike called a news conference and pointed out that it had commissioned the report and had acted on it. 8 The company stated it had formulated an action plan to deal with the problems cited in the report, and had slashed overtime, improved safety and ventilation, and reduced the use of toxic chemicals. The company also asserted that the report showed that its internal monitoring system had performed exactly as it should have. According to one spokesman: This shows our system of monitoring works †¦ We have uncovered these issues clearly before anyone else, and we have moved fairly expeditiously to correct them. Nike's Responses Unaccustomed to playing defense, Nike formulated a number of strategies and tactics to deal with the problems of working conditions and pay at subcontractors. In 1996, Nike hired Andrew Young, onetime U. S. mbassador to the United Nations and former Atlanta mayor, to assess working conditions in subcontractors' plants around the world. Young released a mildly critical report of Nike in mid-1997. After completing a two-week tour that covered 15 factories in three countries, Young informed Nike it was doing a good job in treating workers, though it should do better. According to Young, he did not see sweatshops, or hostile conditions †¦ I saw crowded dorms †¦ but the workers were eating at least two meals a day on the job and making what I was told were subsistence wages in those cultures. Young was widely criticized by human rights and labor groups for not taking his own translators and for doing slipshod inspections, an assertion he repeatedly denied. In 1996, Nike joined a presidential task force designed to find a way of banishing sweatshops in the shoe and clothing industries. The task force included industry leaders such as Nike, representatives from human rights groups, and labor leaders. In April 1997, the task force announced an agreement for workers rights that U. S. companies could agree to when manufacturing abroad. The accord limited the work week to 60 hours and called for paying at least the local minimum wage in foreign factories. The task force also agreed to establish an independent monitoring association—later named the Fair Labor Association (FLA)—to assess whether companies are abiding by the code. 10 The FLA now includes among its members the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, the National Council of Churches, the International Labor Rights Fund, some 135 universities (universities have extensive licensing agreements with sports apparel companies such as Nike), and companies such as Nike, Reebok, and Levi Strauss. In early 1997, Nike also began to commission independent organizations such as Ernst & Young to audit the factories of its subcontractors. In September 1997, Nike tried to show its critics that it was involved in more than just a public relations exercise when it terminated its relationship with four Indonesian subcontractors, stating that they had refused to comply with the company's standard for wage levels and working conditions. Nike identified one of the subcontractors, Seyon, which manufactured specialty sports gloves for Nike. Nike said that Seyon refused to meet a 10. 7 percent increase in the monthly wage, to $70. 0, declared by the Indonesian government in April 1997. 11 On May 12, 1998, in a speech given at the National Press Club, Phil Knight spelled out in detail a series of initiatives designed to improve working conditions for the 500,000 people that make products for Nike. 12 Among the initiatives Knight highlighted were the following: We have effectively changed our minimum age limits from the ILO (International Labor Organization) standards of 15 in most countries and 14 in developing countries to 18 in all footwear manufacturing and 16 in all other types of manufacturing (apparel, accessories, and equipment. . Existing workers legally employed under the former limits were grandfathered into the new requirements. During the past 13 months we have moved to a 100 percent factory audit scheme, where every Nike contract factory will receive an annual check by Pricewaterhouse Coopers teams who are specially trained on our Code of Conduct Owner's Manual and audit/monitoring procedures. To date they have performed about 300 such monitoring visits. In a few instances in apparel factories they have found workers under our age standards. Those factories have been required to raise their standards to 17 years of age, to require three documents certifying age, and to redouble their efforts to ensure workers meet those standards through interviews and records checks. Our goal was to ensure workers around the globe are protected by requiring factories to have no workers exposed to levels above those mandated by the permissible exposure limits (PELs) for chemicals prescribed in the OSHA indoor air quality standards. 3 These moves were applauded in the business press, but they were greeted with a skeptical response from Nike's long-term adversaries in the debate over the use of foreign labor. While conceding that Nike's policies were an improvement, one critic writing in the New York Times noted: Mr. Knight's child labor initiative is †¦ a smoke screen. Child labor has not been a big problem with Nike, and Philip Knight knows that better than anyone. But public relations is public relations. So he screen. Child labor has not been a big problem with Nike, and Philip Knight knows that better than anyone. But public relations is public relations. So he have to keep a close eye on him at all times. The biggest problem with Nike is that its overseas workers make wretched, below-subsistence wages. It's not the minimum age that needs raising, it's the minimum wage. Most of the workers in Nike factories in China and Vietnam make less than $2 a day, well below the subsistence levels in those countries. In Indonesia the pay is less than $1 a day. The company's current strategy is to reshape its public image while doing as little as possible for the workers. Does anyone think it was an accident that Nike set up shop in human rights sinkholes, where labor organizing was viewed as a criminal activity and deeply impoverished workers were willing, even eager, to take their places on assembly lines and work for next to nothing? 14 Other critics question the value of Nike's auditors, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC). Dara O'Rourke, an assistant professor at MIT, followed the PwC auditors around several factories in China, Korea, and Vietnam. He concluded that although the auditors found minor violations of labor laws and codes of conduct, they missed major labor practice issues including hazardous working conditions, violations of overtime laws, and violation of wage laws. The problem, according to O'Rourke, was that the auditors had limited training and relied on factory managers for data and to set up worker interviews, all of which were performed in the factories. The auditors, in other words, were getting an incomplete and somewhat sanitized view of conditions in the factory. 5 The Controversy Continues Fueled perhaps by the unforgiving criticisms of Nike that continued after Phil Knight's May 1998 speech, beginning in 1998 and continuing into 2001, a wave of protests against Nike occurred on many university campuses. The moving force behind the protests was the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS). The USAS argued that the Fair Labor Association (FLA), which grew out of the presidential task force on sweatshops , was an industry tool, and not a truly independent auditor of foreign factories. The USAS set up an alternative independent auditing organization, the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), which they charged with auditing factories that produce products under collegiate licensing programs (Nike is a high profile supplier of products under these programs). The WRC is backed, and partly funded, by labor unions and refuses to cooperate with companies, arguing that doing so would jeopardize its independence. By mid-2000, the WRC had persuaded some 48 universities to join the organization, including all nine calmpuses of the University of California system, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oregon, Phil Knight's alma mater. When Knight heard that the University of Oregon would join the WRC, as opposed to the FLA, he withdrew a planned $30 million donation to the university. 16 Despite this, in November 2000, the University of Washington announced it too would join the WRC, although it would also retain its membership in the FLA. 7 Nike continued to push forward with its own initiatives, updating progress on its website. In April 2000, in response to pressure that it was still hiding poor working conditions, Nike announced it would release the complete reports of all independent audits of its subcontractors' plants. Global Exchange continued to criticize the company, arguing in mid-2001 that the company was not living up to Knight's 1998 promises, and that it was intimidati ng workers from speaking out about abuses.

Diary of Boo Radley Essay

Pretend you are Boo Radley (from To Kill a Mocking Bird). Write your secret diary entry about how you have been punished and kept in a virtual prison for fifteen years. It has been so very long since my father first locked me up in this house. I mean, I was only a teenager having fun, I did not do anything serious or anything. At first, after a couple of days punishment, it thought I would be finally set free by father. After a couple of weeks, I realised that it seemed I would never be let out. I was correct- as the weeks turned into months, I understood how cruel my father was and that my punishment would last forever. After a year or two, my father died. I was free to go outside into the world- well I could have escaped from imprisonment if I really wanted to, but I did not wish to. My father left me emotionally damaged and ashamed of myself, and I did not and I do not want to show myself in the real world after such a long period of time. Once Nathan arrived, things were just the same as how they used to be with my father. Being locked up in this stuffy house allows me a lot of time to myself. I get to read the local papers- one of the only ‘luxuries’ I am allowed to have and reflect on a lot of things and ponder over them all day long. I think about how people are getting along in Maycomb as I see them walk quite briskly in front of our house and I think about my father and what he did to me. I am usually in a fairly good mood all day long, but when my father comes to mind or Nathan walks past, anger and hatred swells up inside me. I also occupy my thoughts by reminiscing that good times I had when I was a teenager, but also look upon them with deep regret, but I mainly ponder about the two young Finches who live next door†¦ Everyday, I stare through the shutters down through the street main street of Maycomb. I see children playing and enjoy watching them having and joyful and gay time. I have constantly kept my eye on our two neighbours- Jem and his sister, Scout. They play in their yard and in the street, obviously having a great time, and like all other children their age, keep away from  our house. I think they believe it is haunted, by my ghost or some obscenity like that. It amuses me but also makes me sad that I could be so much of a threat to these lovely children, and I do wish my life could be as happy as theirs. Despite their fears of me, Jem and Scout even tried to have a look inside this house once to get a glimpse of me and also tried to communicate with me on several occasions. I have tried communicating with Jem and Scout, by leaving them a trinket or two in the knot-hole of one of the live oaks out the front of our house at night time. After some time, the children began to realise it was me leaving the surprises in the tree, and they decided to write me a little note. Nathan found the note, realised my only source of communication with the outside world and filled the knot-hole with cement. I am only allowed to go outside at night under Nathan’s supervision. Sometimes, Nathan does not even bother looking over me on my night-time strolls because he knows I will be back. I am too attached to this house and living indoors. I don’t want to be released into a world that is too good for me, as my father used to say.

Possible Change of Teachers Attitudes throughout their Career Research Paper

Possible Change of Teachers Attitudes throughout their Career - Research Paper Example Freedman & Carver (2007) iterate that personally-held values and beliefs of the teacher have significant influence on in-class teaching practices. Hall (2005) supports this notion, opining that it is the personal beliefs of teachers that â€Å"inform their professional attitudes and conduct in the classroom.† There is, then, an undeniable link between personal value systems and the evolution of teaching style over time which could, theoretically, have significant impact on the decision to, initially, seek a career as a high school teacher. According to Morris & Maisto (2005), the complexities associated with teaching require a self-actualized individual that finds significant psycho-social rewards for promoting higher learning and educational development in students. Under most models of psychology and sociology, self-actualization is the state of emotional being in which an individual actively seeks to pursue their maximum utility and the pinnacle of their abilities gained on ce self-confidence and self-esteem have been developed within the individual. When a high school teacher first lands their position, they often seek to break the proverbial mold of teaching by attempting to create unique and differentiated classroom content and teaching styles. Filled with fresh ideas, the teacher seeks to create a sense of personal belonging with teaching peers and with students which influences initial teaching styles. Teachers will often seek out alliances with other teaching facilitators and administrators in an educational scenario referred to as communities of practice, a collection of skilled individuals that collaborate to promote learning about a specific skill or practice (Wenger, 2005). However, it is not long into career where such activities will often meet with centralized hierarchies of control where bureaucracy and budget issues prevent effective facilitation of these communities of practice. Many teachers will attempt to create more contemporary and innovative curriculum content, using assistive technologies to facilitate modern learning concepts and principles (Bausch & Hasselbring, 2004). Other teachers in an effort to establish a positive name for themselves in the academic environment attempt experiential learning curriculum, a form of hands-on learning to facilitate a genuine and innovative learning experience (Merriam, Caffarella & Baumgartner, 2007). However, what is unclear is whether these preliminary and initial needs and values remain constant throughout the evolution of the teaching career. A Qualitative Study To determine what impacts attitudes of high school teachers early in career and throughout the evolution of practice, it was necessary to conduct a small-scale qualitative study utilizing a small sample of high school teachers as participants. Qualitative research was the most viable and reliable methodology for this study as measuring complex attitudes in a range of psycho-social principles cannot accurately be measured statistically. It was necessary to conduct semi-structured interviews with currently practicing high school

Globalization and Identity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Globalization and Identity - Essay Example However, it escalated to the period of colonial expansion due to the potential resources, which are abundant in the lands of Asia (Steger 29). Almost all parts of Asia have been subjugated from colonial rule due to such a heated demand to sustain the needs of industrialized nations in terms of raw material supply (Scupin 325). Most Western countries have colonized the Asian lands. India was controlled by Britain. The Philippines by Spain then the United States. The first point I want to analyze, in a critical sense, is the politics, economics and social conditions that surround identity; specifically, the people of a particular nation. One cannot undermine that certain countries in Asia have governments, whether it is an imperial or a feudal one. China, for example, has an imperial government that is centralized. It cannot be denied that China, under political circumstances, already has a sense of belonging and expansion of influence. Other countries, for the same matter, have feudal societies and tribes that already have a systematized government, possibly ethnic or tribal to a certain extent. Identification is present. These established governments are already propagating a sense of identity. The intervention came from the Western countries since they are forwarding a certain political ideology on their part. This would only mean that the West tries to manipulate the identity of the people in these countries to ensure that they are adher ent to the conventions, which are in favor of the Western people. ... Mostly Western countries have colonized the Asian lands. India was controlled by Britain. Philippines by Spain then United States. The first point I want to analyze, in a critical sense, is the politics, economics and social conditions that surround identity; specifically, the people of a particular nation. One cannot undermine that certain countries in Asia have governments, whether it is an imperial or a feudal one. China, for example, has an imperial government that is centralized (Scupin 325). It cannot be denied that China, under political circumstances, already has a sense of belonging and expansion of influence (Steger 24). Other countries, for the same matter, have feudal societies and tribes that already have a systematized government, possibly ethnic or tribal to a certain extent (Nye 162). Identification is present. These established governments are already propagating a sense of identity. Intervention came from the Western countries since they are forwarding a certain pol itical ideology on their part (Nye 163). This would only mean that the West tries to manipulate the identity of the people in these countries to ensure that they are adherent to the conventions, which are in favour of the Western people. One cannot deny that governments have changed and wars between the colonizers and the colonized burst out due to an assertion of independence and self – governance. In terms of economics, identity is indeed affected. Trading happened between countries of the West and Asia. Cultural exchange is one of the crucial things that must be considered (Steger 24). Upon the exchange of goods and technology, one cannot neglect that there will be

Concert Report Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 2

Concert Report - Assignment Example The other being a concert of eccentric performances in a place by the name of Jamming & Apos,: Java in Vienna. Both of the genres of music were new to me but I had an open mind to the experiences. To deeply understand and enjoy music, we must learn to appreciate other genres as well, since music is intertwined. For this music report, I would like to particularly focus on the musical pieces that intrigued me, and the overall experience (Medearis 134). The classical concert involved a sophisticated performance from a number of instruments, which represented different types of music. The atmosphere of the concert was very intense, probably since the concert was housed in a performance hall that could be approximately to the size of a living room, with the capacity to house a maximum seating of approximately 80 people. The chamber performances had two separate parts, having an intermission of approximately 15 minutes apart. There was a group of artists who sat in a uniform manner by the size of the instruments. This group was known as the Washington Symphony. In addition to this, there was an orchestra that was mainly formed by a group of older individuals, wearing black outfits. The beginning of the concert was colorful and rich as two pieces, by the violin and the cello were featured. The two pieces presented an aspect of magnificent darkness since the steady tempo and continuo bass was maintained in the whole piece. The cello, which was more pronounced, gave most of the melodies. At the time the harmonies seemed very piercing to my ear. For an individual with limited knowledge in musical melodies and harmonies, the unusual combination would have been difficult to digest. I personally interpreted the melodies to be carriers of emotion, which was intercepted with sudden burst of anger from the bass which made the piece exciting. There was also a piece that sounded like a love song, it was slow and smooth. I found

Mixing the Ideas of Marketing Strategies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Mixing the Ideas of Marketing Strategies - Essay Example She starts off with a very earthy and grassroots campaign, asking her friends and family what they think about the idea and gathering information. Jessica's strategy is somewhat unique, as it mixes the ideas of several of the main marketing strategies together. That being said, it includes almost no traits of market dominance, as she never mentions hoping to control the entire bridal registry market in its entirety. She never really compares herself to her competition, except that she thinks she can provide a better service than the service that is already available. In that tiny aspect, she could fit into the market challenger, as she is trying to challenge the norm for the market at the time, and providing what she feels is a new and necessary service. The market strategy that I think best fit's Jessica's model is the Innovation Strategy. This is one of the more complex strategies as it relies heavily on the creativity of the person partaking in it. She is trying to innovate the previous business model that was in place and is hoping to bring in revenue by doing so. I think she took a good first step in partaking in a successful innovation strategy, however, there are several things I would have her do differently along the way.

LEADERSHIP STRATEGIES Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

LEADERSHIP STRATEGIES - Coursework Example During the process new leaders are made for the future through proper training and experience. Any organization that is in its finest today whether it be, Apple co, Microsoft, Zara was the result of one or more individuals in their early thirties who possessed leadership qualities. While it is true that for a company to be created and be successful it needs to have something to sell, at the same time they need a great leader. A fine example is the late Steve Jobs who did not create any of the Apple computers but steered them into the right direction with his social intelligence and his eye for design. Change management however, is needed in any and every company that wants success in the long run. It simply might be needed because the customers are bored of the monotonous product that they’re being offered or a more complex reason might be because intrapreneurship is needed in the organization because the previous management system wasn’t effective enough. Sometimes the change might be needed because the competitors have caught up and you no longer hold a competitive advantage. Having discussed leadership and change management, it is true that an organization cannot survive without either one of them. Any organization that comes into being is very informal in the beginning, starting off with very few employees, mostly friends who share the same ideas and visions, working in a small office consisting of a mere two or three rooms. Some of these organizations even start off from the garage of a home. The environment of these organizations is very informal which works in the beginning as they only need enough revenue above breakeven to invest further into the workings of the company. When this organization has matured and has enough employees to push out of a city or district it needs to change from an informal management to a more formal one. This is achieved by hiring leaders or identifying leaders among

Ethics Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 2

Ethics Paper - Essay Example This paper, drawing support from the various media theories, tries to explain the social costs of such advertising approach, the responsibility an advertiser ahs to protect the indirect audience and how the advertiser can protect himself from being unethical when advertising. 1. The Social Costs Associated With Sexually Suggestive Advertising Advertising is a paid form of marketing by a sponsor of ideas, products of services. Advertising is an important tool in marketing and branding since it can be used to modify and drive consumer behavior (Gould, 1994). Through advertising an audience can be persuaded, encouraged to buy a product or otherwise manipulated. The essence of advertising is to create a product image through associating the product with certain desirable values. Of late, many advertisers are increasingly using sexuality to sell their products. Many researches that have been conducted have come to the conclusion that the use of sexually suggestive adverts is more effectiv e than the plain one (Reichert, 2002). This has led to advertisers employing this technique even in products that are not related to one’s sexuality just to attract attention. The use of sexually suggestive adverts started a while ago. Only then, the characters used were not as suggestive as those used these days. Today’s consumers are exposed to ten times more sex advertising than those that lived in the 1940s (Donaldson and Werhane, 1999). This sex appeal approach is proving detrimental to the society raising the question whether it is moral to use sex appeal to channel attention to an advert. The media has a major influence on the behavior and attitudes of the consumers, be it the traditional or the new media. There are several media theories that can be used to support the effect the media has and how these effects impact as social costs. The first theory is the social cognitive theory. This theory was advanced by Neal Miller and John Dollard in 1941. It is not pur ely a media theory as it is also applied in psychology, medicine, social work and education. This theory posits that human beings acquire a major part of their knowledge through observing others’ actions and experiences (Donaldson and Werhane, 1999). It implies that people have a high tendency of copying what they perceive as good to them. According to this theory, a consumer will be driven by cues and then respond to them in the hope of gaining the desired results. In advertising context this involves replication of the actions, dressing or holding to values that the models in the adverts purports to. The social cognitive theory complements the media effects theory. This theory posits the media as a powerful tool that can be used to set the agenda within a society. According to the proponents of this theory, it is easy to influence the public by showing them what need to be seen and thus influencing their behaviors and attitudes through the same. Advertisers are using this t heory of effects to influence consumer behavior by repeatedly airing their adverts in broadcast media and placing them in the print media (Zillmann, 2000). There are several researches that have been conducted to show how the media affects behavior and attitude and how people observe and replicate what they have seen in the media in their social life. A good example that corroborates these theories is a research conducted by Albert Bandura in his paper titled â€Å"

Accidental Death of an Anarchist Essay Example for Free

Accidental Death of an Anarchist Essay Q) Critically analyze the Figure of Madman in Dario Fo’s play The Accidental Death of an anarchist. A) Dario Fo’s play The Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970) lies in the category of revolutionary theatre that challenges the fascist regime of Italy. The play is a farce based on events involving a real person, Giuseppe Pinelli, who fell or was thrown from the fourth floor window of a Milan police station in 1969. He was accused of bombing a bank. The accusation is widely seen as part of the Italian Far Rights strategy of tension. Just like Fo’s other play, this play is also funny and subversive and shows a strong preference for the culture and traditions of the ordinary people and a commitment to the left wing politics. The play moves quickly through a series of farcical situations and exposes the hypocrisy and anti- people character of the bourgeois society and the so called sacred institutions- the police, the judiciary, the religion and the media. The play was originally written and performed in Italian in 1970 and first English translation was done in 1979. Central to the play is the character of The Madman, who is the prime protagonist of the play. Through the story of the madman in a police station Dario Fo has a created a classic example of exquisitely political theatre with a comedy that begins from being realistic, (the stage setting is of a realistic, ordinary police station) moves towards the frankly implausible (the madman, the inspector, the superintendent and the constable singing the song of anarchists in the police station), reaches to the level of grotesque (the constant punching and kicking of Bertozzo by the police officials, and the falling eye) until it ends with a hilarious and ludicrous climax. He (the madman) invents dialogue based on a paradoxical or on real situation and goes on from there by virtue of some kind of natural, geometric logic, inventing conflicts that find their solutions in one gag after another in correspondence with a parallel political theme, a political theme which is clear and didactic. You are moved and you laugh but above all you are made to think, realize and develop your understanding of everyday events that had escaped your attention. Franca Rame on The Character of Madman in Accidental Death of an anarchist The madman is not just a character in the play, but he acts as a literary device in the play. He provides most of the humor content of the play. The madman is whimsical and he constantly contradicts other characters as well as himself. His series of logical/illogical arguments becomes impossible to tackle and it frustrates the Police Department. Even though being termed as psychologically unfit, the madman appears to be the most intelligent character in the play. He ridicules the police officials for missing out on the basic concepts of English grammar and the use of the most important â€Å"COMMA† that changes the meaning of a sentence. He dictates the terms of law and judiciary to police officials. He is extremely sarcastic. He ridicules the superintendent for assuming the railway man planted the bomb in railway station without any substantiate evidence and sarcastically rebukes the â€Å"kindergarten logic†. The people in power appear to be inhuman and brute in their actions, and the â€Å"sacred† governmental place, the police station appears to be a madhouse or a slaughterhouse. The madman, even though he is mad appears to be the sanest character in the play. In fact, he appears to be directing the play according to his wishes. Suffering from a disease of enacting people, he sees the world as a stage and other people as his fellow characters. He warns Bertozzo that soon he is about to be punched by Pisani and warns him to duck. Bertozzo ignores the directorial warning of the madman. Later he tells the superintendent to stop playing around and â€Å"keep to the script†. The actions of the play move around as the madman says and everyone does what he asks them to. Bertozzo, who defies the madman’s instructions, keeps on getting punched and thrown out. Hence, Fo, in his play, takes the power out from the hands of the police, the judiciary, and the media and gives it to the representative of the lower section of society, the madman. By pretending to be, in turn to be various figures of authority – psychiatrist, professor, magistrate, bishop, forensic expert – the Maniac forces officials to re-create the events with the purpose of showing the inconsistencies in the official reports of Pinelli’s â€Å"leap† and to confess their responsibility in the anarchist’s death. The madman manages to create mayhem within the policeman, representatives of law and order and figures of authority are made to appear ridiculous and a target of laughter. He exposes how people in power are all in collusion to save their own. Now I am about to show some of the theatre/TV productions of the play and give brief comments on how the character of madman operates in them. Firstly, take a look at the 1983 British TV movie that was telecasted on Channel 4. In this production, the original Italian setting is mixed with contemporary references to Thatchers Britain. 1) In the beginning itself, various impersonations of the madman are shown pointing towards the crime committed by him. 2) The madman constantly points towards the audience that is standing upwards, and the crew, and chats with them. And he talks to the director about the censorship laws on television in Britain, when the inspector says The â€Å"F† word. (5 minutes 30 seconds). 3) In the play, not only the madman enacts different roles, but the same constable is used on the 2nd floor and the fifth floor and also as a liftman. The madman here is concerned with anti materialist sentiment as well. The madman remarks about the fact low budget of the show saying, â€Å"Couldn’t they get a different actor to play you? Who’s directing this thing, Ian MacGregor?† (17 minutes) and the Maniac, â€Å"This is commercial television in crisis!† Similarly, in The IIT production of the play, which is performed in India, in Hindi, the references are converted according to Indian settings and sentiments. 1) The University of Padua is converted into University of Patiala. The madman teaches the Hindi vowels to the constable and the policeman. (4:30) (A aa e ee) 2) The police inspector in the 6th minute of the play says to the madman that he’s madder than the madman. As I said above the madman appears to be the sanest of characters in the play. My fair Heathen Productions in their September 2007 production actually used a woman for the role of the madman. Hence the madman is enacting as a madman from the beginning and in fact is a mad woman. This does not bring a significant change to the play, except probably the so called marginalized figure of a madman, becomes a more marginalized figure as in this production it’s a woman, who comes to a male dominated domain and creates havoc in the lives of the men from powerful sections of the society. Hence, different theatre companies have used different types of madman to heighten the message of the play.

The Role And Task Culture

The Role And Task Culture Employees decide what best they can do and gladly accept the challenge. Every individual is responsible for something has to take responsibity of the work assigned to him. Nowadays in most organizations there is role culture. It is the specialization of employee to a job where they are the best. By having the role culture in an organization, it should increase the productivity. This is a functional structure and it is also a divisional structure. The task culture: The task culture is to put the right people together and then give them a task. This type of culture is teamwork. The people with more knowledge and experience will lead this type of culture in an organization and bring the teams together to work towards the same goal. Decisions are made quickly because people are able to discuss with each other freely. Staff feels motivated because they are allowed to make decisions within their team. This is a matrix structure. The difference between role culture and task culture is that one is individual and the other one is teamwork. In a role culture power comes from the personal position whereas in the task culture the power is derived from the team. 2) There are three main organizational structures: Functional: The first advantage is the specialization where each unit operates as a type of independent with specific role. Employees develop specialized knowledge. They become experts within their functional area. The company will benefit from their expertise and experience over time. Then we have like advantage the Efficiency and Productivity. It is where a worker completes a tasks with a high level of speed and efficiency, which improves productivity. The employees may be highly motivated to advance their careers, which may also make them more productive. The disadvantage is a lack of teamwork where employee may have difficulty working well with other units. And if they have to work with a team it can be a problem where specialized workers can not be agree with others. Difficult Management Control can also be a problem where management can maintain control when the organization expands. If management doesnt control it, the different department can think that they have autonomy. Matrix A Matrix structure organisation contains teams of people created from various sections of the business. These teams will be created for the purposes of a specific project. At every new project there a new team. The advantages of a matrix are that workers are chosen according the needs of the project. Project manager are directly responsible While the disadvantages can be in conflict between teams mate. And if team have lot of independence it can be difficult to monitor them Task B According to John Ivancevich and Michael Mattson, the major factors that influence individual differences are demographic factors, abilities and skills, perception, attitudes and personality. Demographic Factors: The demographic factors are socio economic background, education, nationality, race, age, sex, etc. companies prefer persons that belong from good socio economic-background, well educate. Young and dynamic professionals that have good educational and effective communication skills are always in great demand. The demographic factor helps managers to select future candidates for job. Abilities and Skills: The physical capacity of an individual can be the ability. Skill is the ability to act in a way to perform well. The individual behaviour and performance is highly influenced by ability and skills. The managers plays vital role in matching the abilities and skills of the employees with the particular job requirement. Perception: It is the process that interprets external environment stimuli. But they are different reasons that can influence the perception of persons. The study of perception plays important role for the managers. It is important for mangers to create the positive work environment so that employees notice them in most favourable way. Employee would perform better within a good environment. Attitude: Attitude is the best way to succeed in life. It is the tendency to respond positively to object, persons or situation. Employees will perform better if they have a positive attitude. They should have the attitude to work with their heart for the company. Job should be a prayer for people. Personality: It is the study of the characteristics and distinctive traits of an individual. Heredity, family, society, culture and situation are factors that influence personality. Its the manner to respond in an environment. Personality offers opportunity to understand the persons. It helps them by motivating them for the accomplishment of the organizational goal. Every organisation demands a particular type of behaviour from their employees. All these factors are important. Lets take an example when a company offers a job of helper. The manager should look the physical capacity of the man before employing him. There are many others example we can make. Individual behavior is very important for an organization because if the manager chooses right workers, his workforce will increase. TASK C There are three types of leadership; the autocratic, democratic and the laissez faire. Melanie seems to use the autocratic leadership style. This leadership is characterized by an individual control over all decisions and little contribution from group members. Autocratic leaders naturally make choices based on their own ideas and hardly accept others suggestions. They control the groups. She makes the decision. Melanie is a leader where she doesnt want to hear NO or WHY when she tells what workers have to do. I think an autocratic attitude is good for the organization because when Melanie has to make a decision it is direct. But by having this attitude, the workforce is falling down. She doesnt have direct connection with his employees; she only gives instruction through officers. The communication is only one side. There is not really a relation between workers and Melanie. Workers have lost interest in theirs jobs thats why the labour turnover is high. Furthmore employee fear Melanie. This situation was created by the instauration of a powerfull discipline of work. As we know, employee should have some flexibility of work. Melanie has just run after high productivity, she didnt take care about the condition of her employee. She should have know that automatically if the workers are not happy the productivity would decrease. But Melanie didnt see that this way she had prefer to take new workers than keeping the ancient one. Which has result to a high labour turnover. Having an autocratic leadership is also good because it helps the company to take decision quickly. This kind of leadership is mostly present in most Small medium companies. 2) There is a problem in Melanies department. To change this, as an HR we can use Maslows hierarchy of need model. Abraham Maslow developed where humans have five needs which will fulfill their needs. Humans need begin with needs, which are vital to survive, and then one by one he try to satisfy higher needs. The needs are as follows: Physiological needs Safety needs Relationship needs, Self-esteem needs Self-actualization needs. In order to improve the organizational performance, it is vital that the company recognizes the individual need and provides openings for satisfaction for workers. At Innovative Prods Ltd., the worker works with fear because if they do something wrong they can be fired and also Melanie has establish a high power discipline. It can be result into a poor productivity. The most basic needs for an employee is to have a decent pay so he can live and make his family living. The safety needs to be fulfilled by having a security of work tomorrow. As we know there is a high level of labour turnover. The relationship need is very important because employees should have a direct contact with their boss. They constantly need to know that their boss is counting on them. They should fell valued. But Melanie does not even talk to her employee. She should start interaction with them so that the motivation level can increase. Melanie is proud of her productivity but she doesnt reward her employees and the need of recognition could enable them to have be valued into this company. Melanie should understand and appreciate her labors efforts rather than staying apart from them. To improve motivation: Esteem needs: Management can reward employees on accomplishing and reaching their targets. Or simply increasing their salary. Social needs: management can encourage teamwork Self-actualization needs: the management can propose professions in which the employees skills and competencies are fully utilized. However, Maslows hierarchy has some limitations in this case. For example, the eight workers may not have any safety needs with regards to their work. Herzbergs theory of motivation could be applied to the present case. For instance, a motivator would be to receive feedback on their performance. And then Melanie has to talk to her workforce about their performance.

Technological Innovations of the Civil War

Technological Innovations of the Civil War Edward Cordero The American Civil War is known for being the most ruthless battle ever fought in American History. The outcome of the war continues to review the disturbing nature that many individuals endure for the unity of our nation. Despite its downside, the Civil War is also regarded as the first modern war.[1] During the Civil War, the improvement of weapons and technologies shaped the way Union and Confederate soldiers approached the front line.   The technological innovations also triggered the surge in death tolls and casualties of many soldiers, which justifies the reason as to why the Civil War currently leads the number of deaths in all American wars. Weapons, communication, transportation, and documentation were all challenging for both the Union Army and Confederate States Army prior to the advancement of technologies. This ultimately made the battles extremely tough and the hardship that soldiers faced is something that would be impossible to imagine in wars that are fought t oday. Therefore, the innovations of the repeating rifle, hot air balloon, telegraph, submarine, railroad, and camera all had an immediate impact on how the Civil War was fought. One of the most outstanding technological innovations of the Civil War was the repeating rifle. At the beginning of the Civil War, soldiers were forced to cope with various type of rifles until it eventually progressed to the repeaters. Soldiers from both the north and south were first given the smooth-bore muskets. The smooth-bore musket had a long barrel that was ineffective because it had a maximum range of about 300 feet.[2] Accuracy was not the only issue, but the amount of time required to reload the muskets caused frustration. Only the most well-trained soldiers will be able to load, aim and fire their weapons three times in one minute.[3] In addition, the smooth-bore muskets could only take in round shaped bullets that were nearly the same size as the diameter of the barrel, making the accuracy of the shot less effective. For soldiers to hit their target successfully, they would have to run closer to their enemies. To improve the accuracy, soldiers turned their interest to ri fled muskets or rifling. Rifled muskets are like the smooth-bore muskets, but the only difference were the design of their barrels. The rifled muskets were designed with a barrel that had grooves[4] that would allow the bullet to spin, which will result in the bullet spiraling its way to the enemy. It did not only cause intense damage to an enemy, it also extended its accuracy up to 500 yards when firing with a conical Minià ¨ ball bullet.[5] Although, both types of musket were still considered ineffective because it could only fire one bullet at a time. Thanks to Benjamin Tyler Henry, the first repeating rifle to be used in the Civil War was invented. Around 1863, Benjamin Tyler Henry invented the Henry Rifle that was capable of firing twelve shots in the span of one minute.[6] The emergence of the repeating rifles was only made available for the Union Army because the Confederates did not have the equipment nor did they have the knowledge on how to produce the rifles. This weapon made it possible for Union soldiers to fire rounds repeatedly, making it a convenient tactic when approaching enemy at a close distance. The only downside to the Henry Rifle was the time-consuming process to reload. Following the invention of the Henry Rifle was another type of repeating rifle called the Spencer Rifle. Christopher Spencer developed another version of the repeating rifle, but his invention could only fire seven rounds.[7] The Union soldiers admired the Spencer Rifle because it was much easier to reload and it could fire seven shots in 30 second.[8] One of the most famous quotes that was written by a Union Soldier in response to the development of the Spencer Rifle is, we have guns that we load up on Sunday and shoot all the rest of the week.[9] Both repeating rifles played an important role during the war, but it was the Henry Rifle that garnered most of the interest of the Union soldiers because of its higher ammunition capacity. The improvements from the rifled mu sket to the Spencer Rifle changed the way soldiers fought the war. Union soldiers were much more capable of causing immediate death to their enemy, making it possible for them to keep pressing forward. The innovation of the repeating rifles is just the beginning for the Union Army. The Union Army continued to improve their military tactics with the aid of the hot air balloon. Professor Thaddeus Lowe innovated the first ever hot air balloon that was used in the Civil War. Despite seeing success in his work, he must first demonstrate his balloon to President Abraham Lincoln.[10] On June 17, 1861, Lowe lofted upward to a height of 500 feet in his balloon- the Enterprise- from the Washington Mall in the vicinity of where the National Air Space Museum now stands.[11]After a successful demonstration, President Lincoln established a Balloon Corp in which Lowe was appointed as commander. Lowe received funds on August 2, 1861 to construct the Union, which was the first hot air balloon to be used in a military combat.[12] The purpose of incorporating the hot air balloon during the Civil War was to provide aerial reconnaissance [13]for the Union Army. The intended strategy that Lowe suggested is to ascend into the air while carrying a telegraph, another technological adv ancement for the Union Army, throughout the trip. By being 1000 feet high in the air, Lowe will be able to examine every movement the Confederate soldiers made. He would then use the telegraph to send back information to the Balloon Corp, stating the locations of the Confederate Soldiers. Easily, the Union soldiers would be able to fire accurately at the locations of the Confederates, without actually seeing them.[14] The hot air balloon provided aerial advantage for the Union Army. Technological innovations continue to be outpouring for the Union Army, following the invention of the telegraph. During the Civil War, the telegraph proved its value as a tactical, operational, and strategic communication medium and an important contributor to Union victory.[15]Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1844 and continued to progress until he sent the worlds first telegraph message from Washington D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland.[16] The telegraph is a machine that made long distance communication possible by sending electric signals over a wire. Prior to Civil War, telegraph lines were seen scattered throughout the East Coast. The Western Union Telegraph Company managed to spread around 15,000 miles of telegraph cable, which was used primarily for military communication.[17] Similar to the innovation of the hot air balloon, the telegraph had to be demonstrated in order to get the approval to be utilize in war. In 1843, Morse made his first demonstration by sending the mess age, What hath God Wrought!, from Washington D.C. to Baltimore.[18] The original document that hold these historic message is located in the Library of Congress. The telegraph played a major role in the Civil War because it made communication much easier. It was used to transmit and receive important messages about the war. It was a necessary device for the Balloon Corp because in order for Professor Thaddeus Lowe to send messages to Union soldiers from the air, he must use the telegraph. The telegraph was also responsible for keeping the media up to date. Without the telegraph, the Union Army would not have that much advantage over the Confederate States Army. The Union Army had greater advantage over the Confederate States Army, but with the innovation of the submarine, the Confederate soldiers found themselves in the process of retaliating. At the beginning of the Civil War, the Union Army already had naval advantage by incorporating the ironclad warships. The ironclad warships were remarkable because it was equipped with armor-cladding[19] and for its ability to destroy while staying afloat on water. The primary purpose of the ironclad warships was to create a barrier to prevent the Confederates sailors from leaving their ports. The innovation of the submarine gave the Confederates the ability to sneak up on the ironclad ships while underwater, which was considered one of the most celebrated tactical innovations of the war.[20] There were many submarines that were developed by the Confederacy, but the most significant creation was done by William Cheeney and Horace Hunley.[21]Hunley created many submarines throughout the Civil War, but he felt the urge to continue improving the features of his submarines. The most outstanding submarine he created was called CSS H.L. Hunley. On February 1864, Hunley was ready to make the first attack with the CSS H.L. Hunley. Lieutenant George Dixon, along with his crew, set out and found the Unions USS Housatonic, an ironclad warship. At this point, Dixon and his crew submerged away from the enemy and rammed the Housatonic with a spar torpedo protruding from the front of the sub.[22] The torpedo managed to hit the side of the enemys ship and was sunk within five minutes. Hence, the CSS H.L. Hunley secured a spot in history as being the first submarine to destroy an enemy ship.[23] Unfortunately, hours after the successful attack, the CSS H.L. Hunley sunk and was never seen again. The submarine played a major role in the Civil War for the Confederates because it gave them the greater advantage in naval warfare. Despite the Union Armys aggression on land, the Confederate States Army were establishing their dominance underwater. Technological innovations seem to be a competition, but the innovation of the railroad was impactful for both the Union and Confederates. Prior to the innovation of the railroad, it was difficult to transport reinforcement troops, weapons, and other military resources. Railroads dramatically increased strategic (and often operational) mobility and armies due to their ability to carry large amount of troops and supplies rapidly.[24] The innovation of the railroad differs between the north and south. The Union Army still had the greater advantage because it constructed 20,000 miles of track, compare to the Confederates 9,000 miles of track.[25] This resulted in the Union Army scattering equipped troops throughout the northern region rapidly. Since the railroad was seen as an advantage for both sides, it made sense that they will try to destroy each others railroad operation. The Union Army created a strategy to attack and divide the Confederacy into non-supporting and isolated zones by cutting water and existing rail transportation line.[26] The Confederate Army wanted to play equal by destroying fixed rail facilities[27] in which the Union Army needed in order to transport troops and supplies. Although, the Confederates did not have that much advantage with the railroads, but they were the first to use trains to their advantage.[28] Since the production of military equipment were increasing during the Civil War, it would be considered useless without a large system to transport and distribute. In addition, without the railroads, animals would be the only option for the means of transportation. The technological innovation that made the Civil War the first war to be documented,[29] was the innovation of the camera. The camera differs from other technological innovations of the Civil War, only because it was not used for military purposes. The camera played a major role during the Civil War because it allowed the horrors and glory of war to be seen by the public for the first time.[30]   One of the most famous photographers during the Civil War was Mathew Brady. Brady did not capture most of the images himself, but he did hire Alexander Gardner and Timothy OSullivan to work in his studio.[31]Capturing photographs during the Civil War was a difficult process because the equipment was heavy and it was time-consuming. Hence, there were no action captured images of the war. It was also a dangerous process because the chemicals that were necessary involved sulfuric acid[32]and it had to be mixed by hand. Wet-plate photography and stereo views photography were two types of method used to capture gruesome images of dead soldiers, as well as the locations where battles had taken place.[33] The stereo views photography was the most popular because it created three-dimensional images. The innovation of the camera made it possible for the memory of the Civil War to live on forever. Without the camera, primary sources of the Civil War would be limited to written documents and artifacts. The photographs captured from the Civil War reveals the technologies that were used and it also give a glimpse of the life soldiers endure. This advancement did not only affect how the war was viewed, but it also inspired future combat photographer[34] to take their camera and venture out to other battlefields such as the Vietnam War and WWII. [1] The US Civil War, the First Modern War, Aeragon, accessed March 5, 2017, http://www.aeragon.com/03/, Par. 1. [2] Civil War Innovations, PBS, accessed March 3, 2017, http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/civil-war-innovations/, Par. 6. [3] The US Civil War, the First Modern War, Aeragon, accessed March 5, 2017, http://www.aeragon.com/03/, par. 19. [4] Civil War Innovations, PBS, accessed March 3, 2017, http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/civil-war-innovations/, par. 6. [5] Richard Moorehead, Technology and the American Civil War, Military Review, vol. 84, no. 3 (2004), last modified June 2004, https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-665061951/technology-and-the-american-civil-war, par. 2. [6] The US Civil War, the First Modern War, Aeragon, accessed March 5, 2017, http://www.aeragon.com/03/, par. 20. [7] Ibid., par. 21. [8] Civil War Technology, A+E Networks, accessed March 9, 2017, http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/civil-war-technology, par. 5. [9] Ibid., par. 6. [10] Army Balloon Corps, Genesee Country Village and Museum, accessed March 3, 2017, https://www.gcv.org/Historic-Village/The-Intrepid/Army-Balloon-Corps, par. 2. [11] Ibid. [12] Ibid., par. 4. [13] Ibid., par. 1. [14] Ibid., par. 5. [15] David Hochfelder, The Telegraph, Essential Civil War Curriculum, accessed March 3, 2017, http://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/the-telegraph.html, par. 1. [16] The US Civil War, the First Modern War, Aeragon, accessed March 5, 2017, http://www.aeragon.com/03/, par. 36. [17] Civil War Innovations, PBS, accessed March 3, 2017, http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/civil-war-innovations/, par. 1. [18] Morse Code the Telegraph, A+E Network, accessed March 11, 2017, http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/telegraph, par. 6. [19] Civil War Innovations, PBS, accessed March 3, 2017, http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/civil-war-innovations/, par. 8. [20] David Stauffer and Lewis West, The Civil and early submarine warfare, The Gilder Lehrman: Institute of American History, accessed March 3, 2017, https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/american-civil-war/resources/civil-war-and-early-submarine-warfare-1863, par. 1. [21] Civil War Submarines, American Civil War Story, accessed March 12, 2017, http://www.americancivilwarstory.com/civil-war-submarine.html, par. 19. [22] Ibid., par. 31. [23] Ibid. [24] David Hollis, The Impact of Railroads on Warfare During the American Civil War, Tocwoc, last modified February 16, 2010, http://www.brettschulte.net/CWBlog/2010/02/16/the-impact-of-railroads-on-warfare-during-the-american-civil-war/, par. 4. [25] Civil War Innovations, PBS, accessed March 3, 2017, http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/civil-war-innovations/, par. 3. [26] David Hollis, The Impact of Railroads on Warfare During the American Civil War, Tocwoc, last modified February 16, 2010, http://www.brettschulte.net/CWBlog/2010/02/16/the-impact-of-railroads-on-warfare-during-the-american-civil-war/, par. 6. [27] Ibid., par. 7. [28] Civil War Innovations, PBS, accessed March 3, 2017, http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/civil-war-innovations/, par. 4. [29] Rebecca Brooks, Civil War Photography, Civil War Saga, Last modified August 9, 2011, http://civilwarsaga.com/civil-war-photography/, par. 1. [30] Ibid. [31] Ibid., par. 4. [32] Ibid., par. 7. [33] Ibid., par. 6. [34] Photography and the Civil War, Civil War Trust, accessed March 3, 2017, http://www.civilwar.org/photos/3d-photography-special/photography-and-the-civil-war.html, par. 12.

Promotion of Democracy and its Purpose in the United States Plans Essa

The United States prides itself on its democratic idealism and believes the every state should have the opportunity to experience the freedom democracy offers. Democracy, in term of American values, allows for the â€Å"right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness† . These are inalienable for everyone and those countries that withhold this must be change or reformed. The United States with other democratic countries has taken on the project of converting all non-democratic states into democratic governments. This process in motivated by the face, many believe democratic nation are better for the world than the latter. Unfortunately moving to such â€Å"perfect† model of government is not easy and sometimes close to an impossible undertaking. The possibility for direct United State intervention is high. With this intervention, the country must take precautionary action in order to enter and exit as peacefully as possible. The induction of further chaos in someti mes an already chaotic nation can only be a further detriment. Democracy is viewed ass the solution to creating a peaceful world, however, creating this prefect world maybe quite impossibility due to all the factors that are involved in switching the governments of these nations. The United States and several other countries around the world embrace the ideology of democracy. It is looked at as the most idealistic form of governmental structure because democracies are viewed to be more peaceful. Lake states, â€Å"Democracies tend not to wage war on each other or sponsor terrorism. They are more trustworthy in diplomacy and do a better job respecting the human rights of their people† . These states are more likely to be less of a threat to the security of the United States. Faili... ...mber 21, 1993. Anthony Lake, â€Å"From Containment to Enlargement† Address at School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, September 21, 1993. Condoleezza Rice, â€Å"The Promise of Democratic Peace: Why Promoting Freedom is the Only Realistic Path to Security† Washington Post, December 11, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901711.html Condoleezza Rice, â€Å"The Promise of Democratic Peace: Why Promoting Freedom is the Only Realistic Path to Security† Washington Post, December 11, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901711.html Condoleezza Rice, â€Å"The Promise of Democratic Peace: Why Promoting Freedom is the Only Realistic Path to Security† Washington Post, December 11, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901711.html

How religion was affected by Industrialization Essay -- Essays Papers

How religion was affected by Industrialization The Communist Manifesto Great changes took place in the lives and work of people in several parts of the world, resulting from the development of the Industrial Revolution. Just before the outbreak of revolutionary violence in Paris due to the consequences of industrialization, Karl Marx wrote â€Å"The Communist Manifesto.† He saw this revolutionary violence as â€Å"the opening episode of a worldwide communist revolution.†1 There was no such revolution, however the communist ideals had been brought about and had taken a toll on society. The relationship between economic development and Communist party strength is significant. Also the significance of religion during this period had changed in large part due to this communist â€Å"revolution.† Marx’s concentration to radical social change and atheism was spread during industrialization. Labor was of such demand that even priests were converted into paid wage-laborers. The â€Å"Communist Manifesto† states, à ¢â‚¬Å"All that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life.†2 Industrialization caused many great changes economically as well as socially. France was dramatically different in many aspects after this revolution. Industrialization caused the communist â€Å"revolution† which in turn caused religious issues in France. The Industrial Revolution was a time in western cultures when the production of goods became urbanized. Spreading from Great Britain, industrialization had become widespread in Western Europe by the mid-1800’s. France, in particular, progressed in the industrialization process from about 1830 to 1850. Industrialization created an enormous increase in th... ...vided by World Book Online, http://www.discoveryschool.com/homeworkhelp/worldbook/atozhistory/i/27588.html (25 October 2001) 7. Peter N. Stearns, The Impact of the Industrial Revolution (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1972) 126, 127, 92-4 8. John H. Kautsky, Communism and the Politics of Development (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1968) 10 9. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000) http://www.dictionary.com (25 October 2001) 10. John H. Kautsky, Communism and the Politics of Development (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1968) 185, 186 11. Lawrence J. Flockerzie and Dennis M. Doyle, â€Å"The Manifesto of the Communist Party† in Sources from the Humanities, trans. by Samuel Moore (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 1989) 40

Of Mice and Men Character Analysis: Loneliness Essay

In Of Mice and Men many characters are lonely or at least act that way. The characters I think are lonely are Lennie, George, Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s Wife. The loneliness in the story is what causes most of the conflict in the story. Everyone in this story is lonely or must have been lonely. I think loneliness is one of the most important parts of this story. Lennie is one of the loneliest characters in the book. He makes friends with animals, he likes to pet them and talk to them even if they are dead. Him being lonely even caused him to get trouble in weed. As a bright side to it, as result he meets his best friend, George, who helps him through the rest of the story. It is truly the best relationship throughout the whole book. Lennie however is still lonely with George. When they get to their new job he gets into even more trouble due to his loneliness; first killing his pup followed by doing the same to Curley’s Wife. Crooks is lonely, however I think he probably most times is just overlooked. No one wants to be with him because of his race. This does take place when there was still segregation. Even his room is set aside from the rest. While everyone sleeps in the bunk house he sleeps out in the stable with the horses. Then one of the only times they spend time with Crooks, in my opinion, was not a pleasurable experience for him. Candy had his dog. Which he must have really liked and he must have had it for a long time because when everyone else was sick of the dog he still kept him around. This is why I think Candy was sad during the duration of the story or before. Eventually he does let go of the dog but he can’t even kill it. Curley’s wife always acts like she is lonely. I say she is most likely acting because there is a possibility that she is the kind of narcissistic person who always needs more and more attention. She is always â€Å"looking for Curley† and she ends up mainly just taking to whoever she finds. She even goes as far as to offer Lennie to feel her hair. At one point at her life she even had the chance to become an actress where she would have been able to reach the maximum level for attention. She had this once in a life time opportunity stripped from her by her mother. That’s why I believe she feels she needs all the attention she actively seeks out. George in the story has only one true friend, Lennie. This friendship is only out of pity, but I don’t think George would purposefully abandon Lennie. George keeps Lennie in good standing with other people and tries to keep him out of trouble. George does get along with the other characters but I don’t think any of them really are a true friendship like what he has with Lennie. The loneliness progress the story like so. Lennnie’s solitude and love to feel soft things causes the accident in Weed with the girl’s dress. George’s seclusion, supervision, and companionship with Lennie grounds George to be entangled with him. Lennie again being desolate makes him ask George for one of Slim’s pups. He kills this pup on accident after it bites him. He is sitting in the barn thinking about what he had done and even talks to the deceased puppy. Curley’s wife finds him in the barn and in a way tries to comfort him. Lennie being the rough person he unfortunately is kills her on accident. All of these events were product of someone feeling alone. As this paper has thoroughly shown most of the characters in Of Mice and Men where lonely and were at one point in their life. All of the conflict originates in someone’s search for attention, love, or friendship. That the main component at the core of the story is loneliness.

The Fatherless Family and Woman in Banana Yoshimoto’s Works

As Yoshimoto is a female novelist writing mainly about women in contemporary Japan, it will be interesting and important to explore more deeply the type and role of the women she portrays. While she seems to describe the lives of independent women, she put them into a mostly traditional setting in the house.As Banana Yoshimoto writes mainly about women's relationships, feelings, and thoughts in relation to Japanese contemporary society from a woman's perspective, the paper will research these aspects of her female protagonists' lives with regard to role of father in a family, family relationships in general and spiritual connection to the world that surrounds them. To comprehend the change that has taken place within the role of women in Japanese literature and possibly Japanese society, we must examine more closely the concept of family as it is in Japan today and in the literature of Banana Yoshimoto.For example, the family and its values is one of the bases for a society, thus, so cietal changes often find their reflection in the family concept. The Family and Father in Contemporary Japan Most of her main characters are young women who have graduated from high school and are either on their way into or out of university, and many of them work in part time jobs. This depiction of young and independent women at an age ‘in-between' main stages of their lives is also typical of shojo culture (Treat 359).In her stories, the traditional family structure seems to have dissolved, and the women, neither ‘just' housewives, nor established as equals, are somewhat floating in a diffuse area ‘in-between'. Yoshimoto's women often do not follow the traditional ways in a society that was changed by the increasing influence from the West. Women in particular are left alone and searching for new ways in a seemingly unstable world. Thus, neither Kazami nor Sui in N. P. , Tsugumi and Maria in Tsugumi, Mikage in Kitchen, Satsuki in Moonlight Shadow nor Yayoi and Yukino in Kanashii Yokan lead a conventional school or work life.All of them are from unconventional families, most of them fatherless. The narrator in N. P. , Kazami, lives with her mother, an English teacher, after her father died in the US; her sister lives in England. Kazami's boyfriend, a translator of Japanese literary works into English who was many years her senior, committed suicide. Only her grandparents who live in Yokohama still seem to lead traditional Japanese lives; however, they do not play an important role in the story. The father of Kazami's mysterious friend Sui, a famous Japanese writer, also committed suicide and leaving Sui to lead most of her life alone.Both young women are somewhat adrift. They are driven through life by upcoming events, and do not initiate the events that shape their lives. They are lost in this world without guidance or ‘fatherly love' in their lives. Different surveys conducted in 1983 in Japan revealed that one out of four couples who marry today divorce, and there is a divorce every 2 minutes and 57 seconds (Yamaguchi 246). While divorce in Japan has not reached the high percentages that exist in Western countries, it is obviously becoming more and more common.However, divorce is only accountable for about half of the households that exist without a father. About 36% of these households are fatherless because of death (Yamaguchi 248). Both factors supply us with insightful background information and a possible explanation for Banana Yoshimoto's family settings. It has often been assumed that such public display of dissolution of the traditional nuclear family as portrayed in Yoshimoto's and other women writer's fiction is still uncommon in contemporary Japan.However, the statistics prove Yoshimoto's fiction to be not quite so far removed from reality in this respect and that her work might be considered a reflection on contemporary Japanese society. Another interesting factor in the 189,000 divorces in Japa n in 1993, the highest number in history, is the so-called â€Å"retirement divorce (Yamaguchi 248). † Women divorce their husbands, who never spent any time at home while they were working, as soon as the husbands retire and end up spending most of their time at home.â€Å"Couples married twenty years or more represented over 15 percent of the total figure; moreover, in the majority of these cases the divorces were initiated by the wife (Yamaguchi 248). † Although divorce is a relatively common phenomenon in Japan today, divorced women are still looked upon rather unsympathetically. However, they are at times respected as individuals since the concept of individualism has grown more influential and is slowly replacing the strict and traditional system. Accordingly, a strong position of women – single, married or divorced – has become more common and more public.Hikami calls this â€Å"the emergence of the strong wife – strong to the point of bein g overpowering — completely sure of herself and quick to give up on her husband for his shortcomings (Yamaguchi 249). † As a result of seeing uncooperative husbands and of witnessing wives abandon their careers to become full-time housewives in their parents' generation, many young women are disillusioned and shy away from marriage. The result is an â€Å"age of nonmarriage (Yamaguchi 249)†. Thus, Yoshimoto's characters are not completely in â€Å"a fantasy land far removed from reality† as Yokochi Samuel claims (229).While it is true that â€Å"familyless children, lesbianism, incest, telepathy and violent death† are part of many of her stories, these situations are exaggerations that reflect a changing reality in Japan today (Samuel 229). They are set, however, before the background of the emotions of the protagonists, feelings of devastation, of longing and a search for happiness on a personal level. These elements are quite common phenomena not only in fiction but also in real life. In fact, her narrations are popular because many people can very well relate to them and see connections to their own lives.While Yoshimoto's fiction is not necessarily a realistic depiction of Japanese everyday life, the observations so far seem to suggest that she captures some essence, undercurrent feelings and ideas, and societal tendencies of life in contemporary Japan in her stories (Samuel). The Fatherless Family in Yoshimoto's Novels The topic of a lack of a father figure runs through all of Banana Yoshimoto's fiction. In Kitchen, Mikage is an orphan confronted with the death of her grandmother who had been her last surviving family member.She is lost and lonely finding the sound of the refrigerator in their kitchen the only consolation – until she meets some people who take her in and thus save her from her immediate (physical) loneliness. Her new host family is not traditional either. Yuichi's mother is dead and his father had operations done which transformed him into an attractive woman, Eriko. This is not described as something extraordinary, however. Rather this type of family seems to be working quite well and seems to give a loving environment to all members. While the family situation in N. P. is equally uncommon, this is not the case in all of Yoshimoto's stories.The main characteristic of the family situations in Amrita, Tsugumi, Kanashii Yokan and Kitchen is still the existence of substitute families that consist mainly of women. There exists a specific connection among the women, which allows for a special way in which they relate to each other. Left alone by the men in their lives (with or without this being their fault) in a world that is confusing, lonely and without guidance, they search for and often seem to find a bond mostly with other women, which provides them with a new support system. This makes them partners in the search for new ways to lead their lives.When describing Yoshimoto's unconventional – the so-called dysfunctional -family of which there is a plentitude in her stories, Treat remarks that this concept is very untypical in Japan. In Yoshimoto's stories â€Å"the family is ‘assembled'. — Blood ties and genealogy are less important than circumstance and simple human affinity (Treat 369). † Traditionally, immense importance was placed on the family as the smallest unit that supports the bigger unit of the state in the Confucian state system and on blood ties within the Japanese society. Considering this Yoshimoto's concept seems quite revolutionary.The concept of family that Yoshimoto describes in her novels is strikingly different. Her families are often not created by marriage and procreation and do not prevail because of blood bonds. Everybody can become a member of the family. As Yoshimoto remarks herself: Wherever I go I end up turning people into a ‘family' of my own. (†¦ ) What I call a family is still a group of fellow-strangers who have come together, and because there's nothing more to it than that we really form good relations with each other. It's hard for us to leave each other, and each time it does I think to myself that ‘life is just saying good-bye.‘ But while it lasts there are a lot of good things, so I put up with it. (Treat 370) These families seem to form almost accidentally, in a casual manner. The real bonds are created through coincidence and through spiritual bonds. These bonds, thus, just like most of the protagonists' lives in Yoshimoto's stories, are of the moment. They are created spontaneously or even somewhat accidentally as is the case for Mikage in Kitchen who is taken in by complete strangers. They can also be dissolved spontaneously as Maria's father's marriage in Tsugumi.Without a value judgment ever being made, the close personal bonds, even if deep at the time, are not necessarily lasting. This is how Sakumi, the young female narrator of the no vel Amrita, describes her own family: Blood ties seemed unrelated to how we were living. (†¦ ) I believe that as long as there is someone in charge of the household, someone who can maintain order among its members, someone who is clearly mature and established as a person, someone, in other words, like my mother, then eventually all who live under the same roof, despite blood ties or lineage, will at one point become family.(Amrita 6) But Sakumi goes beyond this realization: â€Å"If the same people don't spend enough time in a home, even if they are connected by blood, their bonds will slowly fade away like a familiar landscape (Amrita 6). † This hints at the typical Japanese family situation of the 20th century industrialized society in which the husband considers the company he works for his family and spends hardly any time at all at home. People, even those connected by blood ties, are not necessarily an active and real part of a family anymore if they are never at home.Even if younger men are more open to change, they often are forced to put a preference on the company over their families. â€Å"It is the corporate system itself and the culture to which it has given birth which controls the men who work within it. † (Fujimura-Fanselow 231) As a result, men seem to have faded from family life, the result of which, a strong female community, can be seen in Yoshimoto's stories. The real families here seem to be non-biological ones, consisting of people who care for each other and are often centered on one central person, who seems to hold everything together, most frequently the mother.Thus, while men are not necessary anymore for a functioning family apart from their financial support, women are vital to the family. This is also demonstrated in the fact that Yuichi's father in Kitchen has a sex change after the death of his wife so that he can take on the role of the ‘mother' for his/her son. The fathers — if existent -are reduced to the role of the bread-winner and are otherwise emotionally and spiritually completely unattached to women's (or children's) lives. This in no true recreation of the traditional family.Members of the ‘new' families always remain single individuals to some extent, which allows for the spontaneous creation and dissolution of family bonds. This is also the case in Tsugumi where the family of the young female narrator, Maria, consists only of her mother. Together they live with the family of her mother's sister (husband, wife and two daughters), in Lzu, a small town at the ocean. Maria's father is married to another woman and lives, separated from her, in Tokyo. However, in this story, the father eventually divorces his wife.He marries Maria's mother and moves both Maria and her mother with him to Tokyo, trying hard to make up for the missed family life. Maria's family consisted mainly of her mother and her aunt's family in which the husband again played a minor role. It is a family of women who support each other and are best friends at the same time. While Maria and her mother are painfully aware of the fact that their busy and comfortable life among women before the marriage will always be missing from their new life in Tokyo, they both acknowledge the new husband's efforts to create a comfortable and harmonious family home for all of them.However, this traditional family consisting of a father, a mother and a daughter appears to be an artificial construct (albeit a happy one) in comparison to the ‘natural' family both women lived in before. In Tokyo they all must make an effort to be a happy family together while this was a natural given before. Because the three of us were involved in such an uncommon situation, we treated each other so kindly like members of a ‘typical happy family' on a billboard. Every one of us tried not to show the mash of emotions that actually existed in the depths of our souls. Life is a play. (Tsugumi 42)T hus, the traditional family is an artificial construct in contrast to the new concept of a family of women or peers, which is presented as the natural one. Again, Yoshimoto plays with the reversal of the ordinary and the extraordinary. The traditional family here is, however, based on love and care and thus, a positive one in this story. Maria's father explains that such emotions and such constructs as families can be and often are temporary. During the long time that I was separated from you and during which I often felt very lonely, I learned how important to me are the people who are closest to me: my family.It could happen, of course, that my opinion changed someday and that I will treat you and your mother unkindly — but that's life! Maybe someday the time will come when our hearts don't beat so closely together anymore, but exactly because of such times it is important to create many happy memories. (Tsugumi 43) Apart from the traditional family being something of an ar tificial construct, which all members have to work for in order to make it a happy one, here it also appears to be possibly a temporary one.Maria's father talks of the fleetingness of emotions and attachments to other people, similar to the narrator's remarks on various occasions. Maria's father concludes that the temporariness of things forces people to live life to the fullest and enjoy the happiness and friendship at the time you have them because they might be gone soon. This is not said with any feeling of bitterness. Rather, it seems to be a simple statement about certain unchangeable facts of life. The happiness or harmony of a good family life, thus, has to be cherished and all members here are clearly aware of this.In accordance with the life of shojo as a stage in Japanese women's lives, Maria remarks on the temporariness of friendships and the existence of separate circles in one's life. She realizes that life consists of different stages and that you have to finish one s tage in order to move on. One of these stages is her life at the seaside with Tsugumi and her family. When she returns to Tokyo for good after a wonderful summer with Tsugumi she realizes: â€Å"from this point onward my new life will begin (Tsugumi 170). † The experience of living life in separate stages or episodes is also a topic in Kanashii Yokan.After Yayoi's parents die, the first ‘episode' of her life ends. She is adopted into a family with a younger son, Tetsuo. While Yayoi's foster parents take good care of her, she also feels drawn towards her ‘aunt' Yukino, who later reveals herself as her older sister. Yayoi's following search for the memory of her lost family is a third episode in the life of Yayoi during which she manages to bring the past to closure with the help of Yukino. Yukino herself suffered tremendously from the loss of her parents. She was nearly an adult at the time of the accident and did not want to be adopted into a new family.After her parents' death, she was not willing to form close bonds with people anymore. A similar change within the family life takes place in Kitchen and in Amrita. In Kitchen, Mikage goes from having no family at the beginning of the story when her grandmother dies, to a substitute family of a boy, Yuichi, who had befriended Mikage's grandmother earlier in her flower shop and his father Yuji, who had an operation done which transformed him into a woman, Eriko, after the death of his beloved wife. Eriko works in a nightclub. While highly unconventional, these strangers take Mikage in and make her feel completely at home.They become her family. The closeness of this family stems from an initial sympathy, compassion and understanding for one another. On the other hand it is the result of a similarity of experiences of the two juveniles, the painful loss of a beloved family member and the difficulty of dealing with the resulting feeling of loss and loneliness. Both end up as orphans when a forme r customer in the second part of the story stabs Eriko to death. Both young people have to construct their lives completely anew, purely based on their own emotions and intentions. Society does not seem to intrude into these spheres (of the characters' lives).Society does not help these lonely young people, nor does it particularly obstruct their way of finding themselves and their way in life. It simply does not seem to exist anymore. There is no such all-embracing concept as a society anymore that has any lasting influence on the protagonists. People (at least the protagonists) exist only as individuals. Although they try to connect to other individuals and thus create new ‘families', they still remain often lonely individuals. A group identity can rarely be detected, as every individual seems to struggle along their own lonely and sometimes happy path.The only element in their lives they have in common is the necessity to deal with the death of a loved one and the awareness of their own loneliness. In this context it is remarkable how the news of the sex transformation of Yuichi's father is received. Mikage is surprised but, in fact, accepts this extraordinary fact quite easily. And Yuichi explains this surgery in a very calm and natural manner: After my real mother died, Eriko quit her job, gathered me up, and asked herself, ‘What do I want to do now? ‘ What she decided was, â€Å"Become a woman. ‘ She knew she'd never love anyone else. She says that before she became a woman she was very shy.Because she hates to do things halfway, she had everything ‘done' from her to face to her whatever, and with the money she had left over she bought that nightclub. She raised me a woman alone, as it were. ‘ He smiled. ‘What an amazing life story! ‘ (Kitchen 14) Again in Banana Yoshimoto's stories, someone was confronted with an extreme situation, the death of a beloved family member, and she shows his unusual way of dea ling with it. As a result of this situation, the protagonists once again create a ‘fatherless family', with Yuichi, his mother/father Eriko and Mikage. Thus, the juveniles are thrown into adulthood.They â€Å"are not children; they just dream like children. Instead of fathers and mothers, there are surrogate fathers and brothers, dressed in women's clothes† [in Moonlight Shadow] (Buruma 29). Cultural conventions and society are forces that are simply not taken into consideration: the decision to make such an immense change is purely up to the individual. Nowhere is the reaction of society – in form of former co-workers, other family members or friends – ever mentioned. Only Eriko's death in the second part of the story hints at an unusual life: an angry customer of the nightclub shoots her when he finds out she was formerly a man.Her violent death can also be related to the extreme extent and permanence of her change. Hiiragi's cross-dressing in Moonlight Shadow on the other hand is less extreme as it is not permanent. In Kitchen the family life is surely not a traditional one and it does not closely resemble Japanese life in reality. However, it goes beyond reality in a somewhat logical way. The concept of the father- or man-less family also exists in Amrita. In this story a group of women share a household and the only male member is a little boy.Yukiko lives in an apartment with her daughter from her first marriage, Sakumi (22), and her son from her second marriage, Yoshio (10). Other members of the household are Yukiko's niece (daughter of her younger sister), Mikiko, who is a student at a nearby women's college and Junko, a divorced childhood friend of Yukiko. This mostly female cast was created by unconventional situations as both the older adult women, Yukiko and Junko, are divorced single parents. Yukiko even divorced twice. Her first husband, who had died of cerebral thrombosis, was 21 years her senior, and six years after h is death she remarried.Explicit reasons for the split-up with her second husband are hardly given. Just like Eriko's sexual change in Kitchen, this is simply accepted as a fact of life. The focus of the story, thus, is on the â€Å"home brought together nicely like a woman's paradise. † And the narrator Sakumi finds herself â€Å"attracted to the lifestyle — Blood-ties seemed unrelated to how we were living (Amrita 5). † While this family situation does not claim to be ideal, it offers an alternative to the traditional lifestyle. The women in this story are not necessarily happier or more successful by living mainly with other women.It simply seems to be a concept that works better for them and that it is more convenient or harmonic. Premature death is also present in this story. Sakumi's younger sister Mayu, a beautiful young movie actress, dies in a car accident at 18. It is after her death that the story starts, thus showing the reaction of the other family m embers to this death and the searching and the healing process connected to it. However, this process is hardly taking place as a group effort. Rather, each person struggles alone and leads his or her life individually and separately from others.The strain on this family, created by loss and emotional stress, eventually threatens to drive the family members apart. Part of the reason for this is the fact that they hardly ever meet as they did in the past: sitting around the kitchen table in the middle of the night eating or drinking coffee (Simon 34). This fits very well with the concept of the change of the role of the dining table in Japan. In the past (traditionally), all family members would sit around the dining table to communicate, exchange their thoughts and feelings. This exchange holds a family together.In the postmodern society this concept changed as the traditional family lost its strength. Yoshimoto describes different stages of this connectedness of a family using the symbol of assembling around a table. Each story focuses on a different aspect: Tsugumi shows the more traditional concept, in Amrita the kitchen table as a symbol for the unity of the family is in danger of vanishing and in Kitchen it is virtually nonexistent at first but newly created by the new family member Mikage. Overall this concept reveals the dissolution of traditional, and the new creation of alternative families.In the search for structures and new institutions, the kitchen table, thus, plays an important role — it leads the way to a new unity among the family members who still stand somewhat alone as individuals. â€Å"The desertions are in a sense balanced by new unions, though, ultimately, a sense of longing remains (Galef 23). † Conclusion As a result of social, historical and economical developments and the internationalization of Japanese society, strict religious beliefs – whether Buddhist or Shintoist – and the Confucian value system are losing their significance within the lives of young Japanese.This generates a variety of problems including loss of a meaningful context of life and the lack of a social support system for the individual. Banana Yoshimoto describes the resulting feeling of instability in most of her novels, in which the individual often stands alone facing a sometimes threatening world of tragedies to cope with and difficult choices to make. Her characters have to deal with the death of loved ones and other challenging situations without having any support from either family or society. Her real interest is a psychological one.Banana Yoshimoto's characters have to endure hardships and suffering. This experience, however, also has its positive component: it initiates the process of searching for one's own identity and enables the individual to grow mentally. â€Å"Coping with problems and growing: I believe, those are the things that shape the mental and spiritual development of a person, with all his hopes and possibilities. â€Å"182 Thus, her stories describe a healing process after a tragic incident or difficult situation, which leads to personal growth.Yoshimoto makes the suffering of people who do not fit into the ‘system' of Japanese culture and norms and who, therefore, are confined to life at the margin of society, her cause. â€Å"I wanted to communicate the notion that such (troubled) people should be able to live as they please, without interference from others. Anyone should, for that matter. † (N. P. 194) She extends the struggle of her characters to a more general statement about the importance of individualist thinking and the denial of society's controlling function. By doing so she justifies also the dissolution of traditional gender roles in her stories.While it is possible in her stories for men and women to remain in the traditional roles, this is merely an option – and not a very desirable one at that. As most of her characters face extreme challenges in their lives, they search for and – eventually expose their innermost feelings, which — as a result – are often appropriately extreme. Without society as a regulating institution, people choose their individual paths, and it turns out that these paths include the discovery of a female side within the personality of some men.While this is based on purely individualist thought, it incorporates the idea that closer mental contact and understanding between the sexes, which is developing within the younger generations, is also a necessity for interpersonal relationships as young women are not willing anymore to stay within their traditional roles. Accordingly, they do not care to accept men who stick to the traditional male role either. Thus, within her concept of individualism, Banana Yoshimoto supports not a radical but a very strong feminist point of view. Her female characters stand alone and find their own way in life.