Critique of The Stanford Prison Experiment Essay - 757 Words

Critique of The Stanford Prison Experiment The Stanford Prison Experiment of 1973 raises troubling questions about the ability of individuals to exist repressive or obedient roles, if the social setting requires these roles. Philip K. Zimbardo, professor of Psychology at Stanford University, began researching how prisoners and guards assume submissive and authoritarian roles. He set out to do this by placing advertisements in a local newspaper, stating that male college students would be needed for a study of prison life paying fifteen dollars per day for one to two days. Of the seventy-five responses, twenty-one were selected, half of them as guards (Zimbardo p. 364) and the other half as prisoners. (Zimbardo p. 364) Philip†¦show more content†¦In the mock prison, inverse psychological relationships developed between prisoners and guards. Prisoners began to feel that there was no way to beat the system. They felt that it is better to do nothing, except what the guards told them. They didnt want, act, or feel anythin g so they wouldnt get in trouble. Guards, on the other hand, assumed authority roles to control the prisoners and keep the prison in order. Some of the guards reacted extremely, and behaved with hostility and cruelty towards the prisoners. Others, however, were kinder, and occasionally did favors for the prisoners and didnt punish them as much. On the morning of the second day of the experiment, the prisoners broke out in a rebellion. They barricaded themselves in their cells by pushing their cots up against the cell doors; they also proceeded to curse and jeer at the prison guards. The guards regained control of the prison by spraying fire extinguishers on the prisoners and stripping them of their clothing. The guards also forced the leaders of the riot into solitary confinement. Following the riot, the prisoners were more compliant to the rules the guards laid out for them. There was never another united uprising by the prisoners against their authority figures, the guards. After the prisoners had accepted andShow MoreRelatedCritique the Power of Organizations from Weberian and Goffmanesque Perspective in the Stanford Prison Experiment1780 Words   |  8 PagesQ 1. Critique the power of organizations from Weberian and Goffmanesque perspectives in the Stanford Prison This document briefly reviews and critiques the ideas of Weber and Goffman in applying them to the Standard Prison Experiment. Weber identified the significance of bureaucracy within organizations. Within the bureaucratic organization there is a stratification of hierarchy where the legal legitimate authority is invested in individuals who exercise command on the basis of rules andRead MoreSocial Psychology Experiment : The Stanford Prison Experiment967 Words   |  4 Pagessocial psychology experiment, The Stanford Prison Experiment, many have asked whether or not this experiment can really portray how imprisonment can effect an individual. While some say that this experiment is a great representation of the effects caused due to imprisonment, others argue that the experiment was not realistic enough to say it had real effects. Social psychologists Craig Haney and Philip Zimbardo, also the creators of the Stanford Prison Experiment, state that the experiment stimulated aRead MoreCritical View Into Philip Zimbardo s Stanford Prison Experiment 1530 Words   |  7 PagesName: Course Title: Instructor: Submission Date: Critical view into Philip Zimbardo s Stanford Prison Experiment Zimbardo s prison experiment continues to receive a lot of critics from the manner in which it was carried out to the results that its portrayed. Some people believe that as a psychologist, Zimbardo should have done a better job in trying to show how good can turn into evil through the said experiment. The research also demonstrates the interaction between the reality and the illusionRead MoreEssay on Critique of Philip Zimbardos Standfard Prison Experiment1401 Words   |  6 PagesA Critique of Philip Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment â€Å"The Experiment†, an American film in 2010, was directed by Paul Scheuring, and starred by Adrian Brody, 2003 Academy Award’s Best Actor, and Forest Whitaker, a remarkable American actor and director. In the movie, an astounding experiment is conducted by a group of psychological researchers who recruit a group of volunteers to join a prison experiment for cash reward. For two weeks, twenty male participants are hired to play â€Å"prisoners† andRead MoreDD307 TMA062512 Words   |  11 Pagesresearch. The two pieces of research chosen to illustrate this â€Å"Crowds†, the focus of which will be the Stanford prison experiment by Zimbardo (1971) and Professors Haslam and Reicher’s (2002) Prison experiment. Dixon and Mahendran (2012). The second piece of research â€Å"Bystander intervention† focusing on Darley and Latane’s experimental study on the Kitty Genovese murder and Cherry’s feminist critique. Burr (2012) This essay will begin by giving an edited version of Kitty Genovese murder, and why thisRead MoreEssay on Obedience1004 Words   |  5 PagesErin Poulsen ACP W131 Mr. Scanlan 19 October, 2015 Comparative Critique Obedience and Disobedience has been a part of key moments in history. Many have studied forms of obedience to learn how it affects people and situations. For example, Stanley Milgram conducted a well-known experiment in which the subject, named the â€Å"teacher† must shock the â€Å"learner† every time he doesn’t remember a word pair from a memory test. The focus of this study is on the teacher, and whether they will administerRead MoreResearch With Foster Children : Ethical Dilemmas1135 Words   |  5 Pagessensitive issues that come with doing psychological research with human participants. As seen in several famous psychology studies such as the Stanford prison experiment, Milgram experiment, and Tuskegee experiment, ethics in psychological studies are important to protect both the individuals being subjected to research and the researcher. While these specific experiments did not include children, it does bring up an important conversation regarding ethics in research. There are several guidelines put inRead MoreIs Broken Windows A Broken Theory Of Crime?1130 Words   |  5 Pagesminorities. There were two similar experiments that were done: one by the University of Groningen’s social scientist Kees Keizer and his colleagues, and the other by Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist from Stanford. Although the six field experiments done by Kees Keizer and his colleagues did not show that those who committed the crime that were â€Å"artificially created† were white individuals, the experiment done by Zimbardo did (Kelling and Bratton). Zimbardo’s experiment shows that the Broken Windows targetedRead MoreA Critique Of America s Correctional System1444 Words   |  6 PagesA Critique of America’s Correctional System: from prisonization to reform Imprisonment is a rising social issue in America. To put in a numerical perspective, America at only 4% of the world’s population of 7.1 billion is surprisingly the world’s largest jailer at an overwhelming 22 % of the global prison population (Lee 2015). Currently the prison system costs American’s nearly 70 billion dollars (Borowski 2015). With this amount of federal funds going towards housing and feeding inmates, questionsRead MoreHumans : Humans Compassionate Or Aggressive?1880 Words   |  8 Pageshuman species go through all this trouble to prove self- worth? I also believe in the aspect that most people are good natured which would include compassion in their personality. I believe also the idea that Zimbardo, administrator of the Stanford Prison Experiment had which is people can’t be held accountable for their actions it’s the situation This also can be related to the idea aggression only comes out in certain situations in which it is war ranted. The significance of this question can never

Bosch India Free Essays

Submitted by Group E 12: Simon Mohsin Jonas Noel Surojeet Bosch India Bosch is a leading supplier of technology and services in the areas of automotive and industrial technology, consumer goods and building technology in India. The Bosch Group operates in India through six companies, viz, Bosch Limited, Bosch Chassis Systems India Limited, Bosch Rexroth India Limited, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Limited, Bosch Automotive Electronics India Pvt Ltd, Bosch Electrical Drives India Pvt Ltd. In India, Bosch set up its manufacturing operation in 1953, which has grown over the years to include 13 manufacturing sites and seven development and application centres. We will write a custom essay sample on Bosch India or any similar topic only for you Order Now The Bosch Group in India employs over 25,000 associates. In India, it generated consolidated revenue of over Rs. 11,300 crores in 2011. Bosch Limited is the flagship company of the Bosch Group in India. It earned revenue of over Rs. 8000 crores in 2011. The business sectors of Bosch include Automotive technology, Industrial technology, Consumer Goods and Building Technology, and Engineering and IT services. Vision: Creating Value, Sharing Values. Mission: To improve the quality of life with Bosch products and enabling customers by maximizing value as an offshore partner in technology and business solutions. ENVIRONMENT SCANNING Competitive structure of industry The Auto Components sector in India registered a strong growth rate of 36. 3% as compared  to 30. 6% growth rate in FY’2010. The revenue growth in the domestic automotive component market can be attributed to the reduction in excise duties on certain  vehicles and the grant of 100% foreign investment in the component sector. However, poor market sentiments, increased food amp; fuel prices and interest rates took their toll, what with the sale of passenger cars in October 2011 falling to the lowest in two years forcing the industry to slash forward looking forecasts. The widening price differential between petrol and diesel has further favoured the demand for diesel cars. This notwithstanding, OEMs continued to launch new models in all market segments especially passenger cars. Overall, the automotive sector was able to sustain double digit growth aided by a solid performance in the first half of the year 2011 and partially aided by stable rural demand. Factors affecting the Industry: Economic: * The auto ancillary industry has been one of the fastest growing sectors in the Indian economy. It has a CAGR of 24% over the last 5 years. It had a sale of Rs 1600 billion in the year 2010-11. * Capacity utilisation rates of the auto ancillary sector as a  whole decreased significantly in light of  reduced exports and  slowdown in the domestic markets. The industry players had to grapple with the issues of extreme volatility in rupee and input cost and as a consequence, tremendous pressure was witnessed on margins. * In terms of international trade, the auto components industry grew rapidly in both exports and imports over last 5 years. Political: * The government has taken many  initiatives to promote foreign direct investment (FDI) in  the industry. * A utomatic approval for foreign equity investment upto 100% of manufacture of automobiles and components is permitted. * The automobile industry has been  de-licensed. There are no restraints on import of components. * To identify the necessary activities, the DHI (Development of Heavy Industries) has setup the Development Council for Automotive and Allied Industries (DCAAI) * The Governments infrastructure initiatives such as  the Golden Quadrilateral project and NHDP (National Highway Development Program) also  have an  indirect favorable effect on the industry. Technological: The auto components industry is a very technology-intensive industry. Historically, India’s strength in exports has lied in forgings, castings and plastics. But this is changing with more component manufactures investing in up gradation of technology in recent years. The organised sector has increased focus on quality and has been recommended setting up of an auto design centre at National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmadabad. The DHI has recommended the creation of a Rs 1000 crore modernization/automotive development. ACMA has also spoken about a similar fund. Social: Social environment is intrinsically linked with automobile sector and has changed the demand to the tune of preferences of customers in major way. 1. Business is booming as  the Indian middle class is  increasing its consumption. 2. The increased focus on environment sector has also resulted in companies researching in developing parts to use energy efficiently and reduce carbon emissions. 3. Also more and more companies are getting ISO 14001 certification (Environment Management System). 4. Entry of global players has also necessitated a change in the organisation culture. Competitive position of Bosch India Core Competencies: Bosch core competency revolves around developing high class innovative products and achieving cost leadership. For that it invests heavily in Ramp;D and focus on a lean efficient system in highly competitive environment of auto component sector. With investments in Ramp;D, Bosch is able to focus more on cleaner and economical product. Also with economies of scale and skilled, educated workforce of India, it is able to reduce cost. 1. High Market Share: With a market share of almost 95%, it has a virtual monopoly in the Diesel Fuel Injection Equipment. 2. Technological competencies: a. Manufactures modern gasoline and diesel engine systems of high quality, cleaner and economical. . Diesel Fuel Injection Equipment (FIE) has been the core business of Bosch Ltd. , right from its inception in 1951. c. Today  MICO (Motor Industries Co. Ltd. , a Bosch company) continues to be a supplier of FIE to a majority of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a market share of over 81%. d. MICO  has also earned a place for itself, in the Bosch world, where it has been identified as Center of Competen ce for Single Cylinder pumps, Multi-Cylinder Inline (‘A’  and ‘P† type) and Distributor pumps (Mechanical and Electronic type). 3. Alternative Energy: MICO Bosch is moving towards energies such as electricity while also improving existing power train technologies, including diesel systems, gasoline direct injection and hybrids to reduce the energy from conventional resources. It has also taken up bio diesel and CNG technologies to address energy challenges. 4. Service: In India 50 per cent of Bosch’s current business is accounted for by the diesel segment. Bosch positions itself as a one-stop shop for sales and service and to make available the entire range of products to those who come for service. Bosch is expanding the product range in this business by bringing some of its global technology products into India. It is also planning to manufacture some of these products in India. A CORE COMPETENCY CENTRE has been created in the country to manufacture these equipments in the MICO production complex. 5. Quality: MICO Bosch has ISO Certified Quality Management System. Certified Locations are MICO, Incorporated; MICO Europe ltd. and MICO Mexico. Sources of Competitive Advantage: 1. The company is highly centralised by the headquarters in Germany. The headquarters keeps things firmly under control. Strategic departments such as Research and Development, Corporate Identity, Production, Purchase and External affairs are based in Stuttgart and dictated to the worldwide subsidiaries. Decentralised are only operational departments like Personnel, Sales or Accounting. Furthermore, decisions given to responsibility of subsidiaries are mostly of operative quality only. 2. Based on the business strategy that complies with the value chain and support activities, the company holds the competitive advantage of selling products at a price radically less than the offer of its competitors. . Global Ramp;D hub: Over the years, focus on producing innovative products with continued Ramp;D has led to many firsts like ABS, EPS, PAS , FIE etc and thus has provided competitive edge in industry. 4. Large Contact Base: MICO has a large supplier and customer base and maintains a long term relationship with them. VRIN Analysis of Strategic capabilities: Bosch capabilities satisfy the following 4 conditi ons – 1. Valuable – Bosch’s capability to manufacture high quality diesel and gasoline systems provide cleaner and economical alternatives, thus adding value for the customer. . Rare – Bosch has pioneered the Ramp;D in these technologies, and remains highly innovative to differentiate its products. Most component manufacturers fall into Tier III and Tier IV. Bosch is one of the rare Tier I manufacturers. 3. Costly to Imitate – Bosch also has been building these capabilities over many years. Huge Ramp;D investments prohibit others to imitate Bosch’s Technology. 4. Non-substitutable – In this technology-intensive industry, having high quality and efficient products is the only way to gain competitive advantage. Opportunities and Threats Based on the above analysis of the external and competitive environment, we can identify the opportunities and threats as follows. Opportunities 1. Domestic Investments and Growth a. The size of the Indian automotive industry is expected to grow at 13 per cent per annum to reach around US$ 130 billion to US$ 150 billion by 2016. b. The demand growth at 14% CAGR makes India one of the fastest growing markets. c. Though India’s auto component industry has conventionally relied on exports for its profits, the domestic market itself is ripe with rapidly growing opportunities. . Industry experts are hopeful that the country will be able to offset China and other Southeast Asian countries’ traditional manufacturing advantage in the coming years, facilitating the industry’s achievement of its targeted market value of US$ 40 billion by 2014. e. During the quarter ended June 2009, all costs as a percentage of sales have seen a decline except for power, oil and fuel costs. Raw material costs have contributed the maximum to improvement in margins as these costs have come down from 63. 3 per cent in March 2008 to 57 per cent in June 2009. . The relaxation of FDI norms for the small-scale sector could emerge as one of the key growth drivers in the long run. g. With investments around US$ 15 billion slated for the sector over the next few years, the prospects for India’s auto market look very bright indeed. 2. Huge Labour Force a. With 400,000 engineering graduates every year, out of which 7 million enter the workforce, there is a huge supply of labour force. b. Skilled labour costs in India are also among the lowest in the world. 3. Linked to Automobile Sector The opportunities for the industry are also tied to the fortunes of the automobile industry. As the Porter’s Five Forces Analysis showed above, auto manufacturers hold the greatest influence. a. The automobile sector is cyclical and dependent on the growth of the economy and improvement in infrastructure. Factors like increased public spending, favorable interest rates and general improvement in per capita income point towards higher demand for automobiles in the future. b. There has been a conscious effort by auto manufacturers to improve productivity of their suppliers (i. e. component providers) in the past few years. Though the number of active vendors has declined significantly for auto manufacturers, technology transfer and fresh fund infusions have resulted in improved productivity in the remaining ones. c. The growing Chinese automotive market also presents attractive business opportunities for automotive component manufacturers for exports. Threats 1. Lower Margins a. Highly competitive: Margins are likely to come under pressure in the long term because as competition increases, auto manufacturers will find it difficult to increase prices and will try to cut costs. The burden will eventually fall on auto ancillary players. b. Consolidation: As manufacturers sourcing components are keen to get components from fewer sources in future, this will lead to consolidation in the sector. Companies will have to focus on quality and abide by delivery schedules if they want to survive. 2. Trade Agreements The growing number of Free and Preferential trade agreements being signed by India with countries like Thailand, Singapore and other ASEAN countries will hurt the cost competitiveness of Indian companies as Indian players play significantly higher duties than their Asian counterparts. Therefore, Indian companies might lose out on big orders if the duty structure is not rationalised. Competitiveness amp; Position of Major Rivals The Company is operating in a highly competitive market which may exerts pressure both on the top line as well as the bottom line of the company. The market structure is fragmented for a large number of ancillary products. The net profit fell 11. 5% year-on-year to Rs 247 crore  in the quarter ended June 2012 on rising depreciation cost. It’s competitor Motherson Sumi has recently acquired Peguform and Visiocorp and Vivek Chaand Sehgal and the acquisitions have reaped good returns so far. Its current turnover stands at Rs 15,000  crore. WABCO India has reported a sales turnover of Rs 249. 29  crore  and a net profit of Rs 41. 84 crore for the quarter ended Jun ’12. The slowdown in auto sales is having a cascading effect on ancillary units forcing them to to cut production as inventories have started piling up due to demand slump. Bosch is not the only auto component supplier to curtail production. Other companies such as Mother Sumi Systems, which supplies parts to Maruti Suzuki, have also seen a drop in demand. According to Automotive Component Manufacturers’ Association of India, growth of auto component industry is expected to slow down to 6-7% this year compared to 14% in 2011-12. As the growth is likely to be less, this might result in companies getting more competitive to get deals in their hand. Following are the few competitors of Bosch Ltd Name| Last Price| Market Cap. (Rs. cr. )| Sales Turnover| Net Profit| Total Assets| Bosch| 8,734. 75| 27,426. 15| 8,162. 06| 1,122. 56| 5,035. 57| Exide Industrie| 151. 85| 12,907. 25| 5,111. 02| 461. 17| 3,057. 32| Motherson Sumi| 160. 95| 9,462. 9| 3,587. 46| 317. 17| 2,152. 70| Amara Raja Batt| 224. 30| 3,831. 32| 2,371. 03| 215. 06| 907. 54| WABCO India| 1,629. 25| 3,090. 29| 1,045. 64| 153. 40| 529. 97| Amtek India| 100. 15| 2,771. 91| 1,886. 62| 151. 25| 3,758. 02| Amtek Auto| 88. 40| 1,949. 64| 2,368. 56| 288. 13| 7,533. 64| Federal-Mogul| 204. 85| 1,139. 62| 1,151. 48| 37. 46| 569. 03| Wheels| 745. 80| 736. 06| 2,077. 54| 34. 35| 55 5. 58| Sundaram-Clayton| 185. 45| 703. 51| 1,033. 94| 61. 17| 620. 78| Automotive Axle| 381. 90| 577. 13| 1,012. 49| 57. 56| 305. 65| Banco Products| 65. 95| 471. 67| 559. 63| 72. 43| 417. 1| Jamna Auto| 117. 20| 462. 78| 955. 58| 42. 84| 272. 62| PORTER’S FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS Porter’s 5 forces and analysis of the competitive environment in this sector: Threat of new entrants (Moderate) 1. De-licensing has opened the market new entrants. 2. However, there are still many barriers to entry for the auto components market. Initial capital is very huge in the organised market restricting smaller players. 3. Technology and quality demands are very stringent. 4. As OEMs constitute the largest customer segment, component manufacturers get into strategic long term relationships, esp. or high value items. 5. Other advantages to existing players include customer service and distribution network. We can conclude that threat of new entrants is moderate. Bargaining power of supplier s 1. Raw material cost comes to 50-60% of the total production cost. 2. Suppliers to the auto component sector include companies from the electronics, fabrication, plastic and rubber, casting/forging, machine tools industries. 3. Bargaining power is low for high technology products. 4. Unorganized sector dominates the domestic component market due to excise benefits. Generally, excess supply persists. Bargaining power of customers (High) Bargaining power of customers is very high. The demand for auto ancillary products in linked to automobile demand. Demand is derived from – OEMs| Low Margin| Largest Demand, Stringent Requirements| Replacement Market| High Margin| Presence of Small competitors with cheaper prices| Exports| High Margin| Increasing Demand, Focus on Quality| This means: 1. The OEM market is very competitive and component manufacturers have to compromise on margins to bag bulk orders. 2. Moreover, delivery schedules and quality standards have to be adhered to very strictly. Companies operating in the export market face competition at a global level. Export demand is linked to the increasing acceptance towards outsourcing. In light of increased competition in the global market and oversupply situation, large auto manufacturers faced significant pressure on margins. Moreover, the imperative to invest in new product development increased. This resulted in global majors increasing budget for outsourcing of components in order to save cost. Threat of Substitutes (Low) The only substitutes to auto component manufacturers are organised component players working closely with R;amp;D teams of OEMs. However, this threat is very low. The unorganised components market faces a greater threat as replacement market consumers are shifting to genuine components. Rivalry among Competitors (Moderate) Competition is moderate. At the domestic level, market structure is fragmented for a large number of ancillary products. Most companies adopt low cost and differentiation strategies. In some products (like batteries), only two or three companies control over 80% of the market. Competition in coming period is expected to intensify, as global players enter the market leading to consolidation. The dereservation of Small Scale Industries will result in access to capital and technology. EXTERNAL FACTOR EVALUATION MATRIX Key External Factors| Weight| Rating| Wtd Score| Opportunities| | | | | | | | Human Capital| 0. 10| 3| 0. 30| Labour Cost| 0. 10| 1| 0. 10| Domestic investment and growth| 0. 05| 2| 0. 10| Continuous Improvement of Products| 0. 10| 3| 0. 30| New Product Opportunities| 0. 05| 3| 0. 15| Festive season| 0. 05| 4| 0. 20| | | | | Threats| | | | | | | | Regulatory risks| 0. 10| 2| 0. 20| Input cost and inflation| 0. 10| 1| 0. 10| Currency risk| 0. 05| 1| 0. 05| Lack of demand| 0. 0| 1| 0. 10| Growth of Auto component sector to drop to 6-7%| 0. 05| 2| 0. 10| Labour Strikes| 0. 15| 1| 0. 15| | | | | Total| 1. 00| | 1. 85| | | | | The weighted score of EFE matrix is 1. 85. The score shows that the company is not very effective in taking advantage of the existing opportunities along with minimizing the potential adverse effects of external threats. References: 1. http: //www. boschindia. com 2. www. moneycontrol. com 3. News Article : http://online. wsj. com/article/SB10001424052748703909804575122832895561158. html? mod=WSJ_latestheadlines 4. http://www. bosch. com How to cite Bosch India, Papers

Novel Study To Kill A Mocking Bird English Literature Essay free essay sample

Scout Finch was six and lived with her 10-year-old brother, Jem, and her widowed attorney male parent, Atticus, in the little town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression yearss of the 1930s. The narrative began when Scout and Jem met a new playfellow, Dill, who came to pass the summer with his aunt. Dill became fascinated with the spooky house on their street called the Radley Place. Arthur Boo Radley had lived at that place for old ages without embarking outside. The kids spent their summer inventing games intended to acquire Boo to come out, but they had no success. The undermentioned summer, when Dill returned, the kids one time once more schemed to convey out Boo, but they easy began to recognize that Boo was non the monster they had imagined. They shortly discovered that Boo was the one departure nowadayss for them. Meanwhile, Atticus agreed to support a black adult male named Tom Robinson who had been accused of ravishing a white adult female named Mayella Ewell. Atticus knew that Tom was guiltless, and despite the name naming and bullying from Whites, Atticus gave Tom his best defence as the kids watched the test from the colored balcony. Yet, despite the important grounds indicating to Tom s artlessness, the all-white jury convicted him. When he subsequently attempted to get away from prison, he was shot and killed. Scout, Jem, and Dill learned hard lessons about the nature of unfairness. Lookout was so placed in danger by a barbarous white adult male, Bob Ewell, who wanted retaliation on Atticus because he defended Tom Robinson and made a sap out of his household at the test. Merely the gallantry of Boo Radley, who stabbed Bob Ewell to decease, saved Scout from being killed. Finally, Scout learned the existent significance of courage, credence, and compassion. In the terminal, Scout felt as though she could conceive of what life was like for Boo. Finally, he had become a human being to her. Lookout decided to encompass her male parent s advice to pattern understanding and apprehension and demonstrate that her experiences with hatred and bias would non impact her religion in human goodness. II. Vocabulary 1 ) 5 words that I thought were troublesome: Pg. 97 ~ It was obstreperous, disorderly and opprobrious, Obstreperous noisy, blatant, or rambunctious ; boisterous Pg. 99 ~ Her usage of bathroom invective leaves nil to the imaginativeness. Invective opprobrious linguistic communication Pg. 106 ~ No, he s merely ambling along, so slow you ca nt state it. Ambling traveling in a at leisure, relaxed manner Pg. 115 ~ Once she heard Jem refer to our male parent as Atticus and her reaction was apoplectic. Apoplectic fury, a tantrum of utmost choler Pg. 136 ~ There was no mark of piano, organ, hymnals, church plans the familiar ecclesiastical obstruction we saw every Sunday. Impedimenta luggage or other things that retard one s advancement 2 ) Wordss that best describe the stoping of the book and why: Prejudice, artlessness, and wickedness are the best words to depict the stoping of this novel. Boo Radley and Tom Robinson were both prejudged by the citizens of Maycomb County. While Tom was stereotyped because of his tegument coloring material, Boo was gossiped approximately because he chose to populate reclusively. These two were work forces of virtuousness although the population thought otherwise. It is a wickedness to kill a mocker, as they were guiltless animals who had neer hurt anyone. They provided pleasance to people with their charming vocals. In the novel, Tom Robinson and Boo Radley could be symbolized by mockers. Their lives were destroyed by society s unfairness. 3 ) Two illustrations each of the following from the novel: Effective Description: Pg. 9 Inside the house lived a malevolent apparition. This describes how Boo Radley was blamed for every immorality that occurred. Pg. 95 Nigger lover! Atticus Finch was called this because he was supporting an honest, decent, and hapless black adult male, Tom Robinson, who was accused of ravishing a white adult female. Alliteration: Pg. 3 When he was about 13, my brother Jem got his arm severely broken at the cubitus. Pg. 18 By the clip Mrs. Cat called the apothecarys shop for an order of cocoa malted mice the category was writhing like a pail of Catawba worms. Similes: Pg. 149 Aunt Alexandra fitted into the universe of Maycomb like a manus into a baseball mitt, but neer into the universe of Jem and me. Pg. 287 You tell Cecil I m about every bit extremist as Cotton Tom Heflin. Metaphors: Pg. 133 In add-on to Jem s newly-developed features, he had acquired a crazing air of wisdom. Pg. 170 Starkly out of topographic point in a town of square-faced shops and steep-roofed houses, the Maycomb gaol was a illumination Gothic joke one cell broad and two cells high, complete with bantam crenelations and winging buttresses. Emphatic Repeat Pg. 197 aˆÂ ¦Mr. Ewell was sitting smugly in the informant chair, appraising his handiworkaˆÂ ¦ gavel lights-outs decreasing in strength until the lone sound in the courtroom was a subdued pink-pink-pink: the justice might hold been knaping the bench with a pencil. In this sentence, pink-pink-pink emphasizes that the sound of the gavel is really quiet because Mr. Ewell is non concentrating. Pg. 233 But there is one manner in this state in which all work forces are created equal there is one human establishment that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid adult male the equal of an Einstein, and the nescient adult male the equal of any college president. In this quotation mark, Atticus is seeking to stress the importance of equality. III. Puting The narrative began one summer in 1933 in the rural town of Maycomb, Alabama, United States. This was during the Great Depression of the 1930 s. The fresh clearly indicated the economic adversities. The segregation of inkinesss and Whites was the jurisprudence in Alabama at the clip. IV. Word picture 1 ) Scout Finch is a major character in the novel. Innocent: She was a charitable 6-year-old kid who had no experience with the immoralities of world. Lookout was able to chase away a rabble of work forces purpose on lynching a black adult male with her simple action of childlike friendliness. Similarly, Scout s artlessness prevented her from seeing Boo s efforts to hold a function in the kids s lives. She had a basic religion in the goodness of the people in her community. As the novel progressed, this religion was tested by the hate and bias that emerged during Tom Robinson s test. Scout developed a more grown-up position that enabled her to appreciate human goodness without disregarding human immorality. Mature: Lookout was surely a dynamic character and had decidedly grown and matured through the class of the novel. Although she retained her childlike artlessness to the terminal, she had learned the importance of go forthing people entirely when they did non harm others, of leting people the right to be different ( e.g. Boo Radley ) . Individualist and Independent: While most misss in Scout s place would be have oning frocks and larning manners, Scout wore overalls and learned to mount trees with Jem and Dill. She fought male childs without fright. She was unusual for being a romp in Maycomb. Intelligent and Thoughtful: She learned to read before get downing school, something unheard of during that clip period. She learned from her male parent that worlds had a great capacity for immorality and good and that the immorality could frequently be defeated if one approached others with a sense of understanding and apprehension. As the novel progressed, Scout learned to meet immorality and she would retain her scruples without going misanthropic. 2 ) Boo Radley was a minor character in the novel. Benevolent: Although he was annoyed by Jem, Dill, and Scout s games intended to convey him out from his house, he still left little gifts for them in the knothole of a tree at the corner of his belongings. Although the childs believed that he was an evil monster, Boo saved Scout and Jem by fatally knifing Bob Ewell. 3 ) Which character from the book would I prefer to be? Why? I would prefer to be Atticus Finch who was a widowman with a dry sense of temper. Atticus had instilled in his kids his strong sense of morality and justness. He was one of the few occupants of Maycomb committed to racial equality. When he agreed to support Tom Robinson, a black adult male charged with ravishing a white adult female, he exposed himself and his household to the choler of the white community. He practiced the moralss of understanding and apprehension that he taught to his kids and neer held a score against the people of Maycomb. He taught his kids to esteem others through the illustration of the manner he lived his life. One clip he said, You neer truly cognize a adult male until you stand in his places and walk around in them. He besides taught morality, bravery, and about human relationships. It s a wickedness to kill a mocker, said Atticus to Scout and Jem. The mocker symbolizes human existences who bring joy and do no injury. V. Plot Analysis 1. Sketch the secret plan of the novel Crisis Tom Robinson, a decent, honorable black adult male, was accused of crushing and ravishing a white adult female named Mayella Ewell. Complicating Incident Atticus Finch defended Tom Robinson in tribunal and tried to turn out his artlessness against complainant Bob Ewell. Major Events Atticus was appointed to be Tom s attorney. Atticus defended Tom in tribunal and proved his artlessness. In malice of the grounds, the all-white jury could non allow a finding of fact in favor of Tom over Bob Ewell, a white adult male, because of his race. Tom was found guilty of ravishing Mayella Ewell. Watching the test, Scout and Jem could non understand how a jury could perchance convict Tom Robinson based on the Ewell s specious narrative. Tom was sent to province prison and there was hope for an entreaty of his test. Climax Tom Robinson was shot while seeking to get away from prison. The guards who shot him set 17 slugs into him, another case of obvious racism. Denouement When word spread that Tom Robinson had been shot while seeking to get away from prison, Jem and Scout struggled to come to footings with the unfairness of the test and of Tom s destiny. Atticus informed Tom s married woman of the calamity. 2. Examples of the undermentioned footings: Supporters Scout Finch, Jem Finch, and Atticus Finch Adversary Bob Ewell, the adult male who accused Tom of ravishing his girl Subplots a ) The kids were fascinated with the cryptic and recluse Boo Radley. They tried to acquire him out. They had a series of brushs with him as Boo left little nowadayss for them. However, the kids neer saw him in individual. B ) After doing menaces to Atticus and others connected to the test, Bob Ewell assaulted Scout and Jem as they walked place one dark. Boo Radley heroically saved the kids and fatally stabbed Ewell. The sheriff, cognizing that Boo, like Tom Robinson, would be misunderstood and probably convicted in a test, protected Boo by stating that Ewell tripped and fell on his ain knife. After sitting and speaking with Scout briefly, Boo retreated into his house, and Scout neer saw him once more. Boding Burris Ewell s visual aspect in the school foreshadowed the filth of Bob Ewell. The nowadayss Jem and Scout found in the oak tree foreshadowed the eventual find of Boo Radley s good-heartedness. Bob Ewell s menaces and leery behavior after the test foreshadowed his onslaught on the kids. VI. Triumph or Tragedy There were no victory in this novel. Tragically, the novel took topographic point during a clip when racial favoritism was rampant. The primary individual symbolized by a mocker would be Tom Robinson, a nice black adult male. After assisting a hapless, white miss, she turned on him and finally caused his decease. Besides, Maycomb was a little, rural town where people knew their topographic points, where one behaved as others expected, and where households were labeled as holding streaks which were inherited. A mocker besides symbolized Boo Radley who left little nowadayss for the kids. However, society was cruel to him as he was a hermit. VII. Major Conflict: Human vs. Human The childhood artlessness with which Scout and Jem began the novel was threatened by legion incidents that exposed the immorality of human nature, notably Tom Robinson s guilty finding of fact and Ewell s vindictiveness. As the novel progressed, Scout and Jem struggled to keep religion in human goodness without disregarding human immorality. They eventually agreed with the moral that their male parent taught them people have both good and bad qualities, but we should look up to the good while understanding and forgiving the bad. This position protected the inexperienced person from being destroyed by contact with immorality. VIII. Internalize One of the subjects was about bias, including bias against black people ( the Tom Robinson test ) and bias against people who were different in any manner ( like the misjudgement of Boo Radley ) . Another subject was about turning up ( the kids learned to avoid unprompted behavior, see the universe from other people s point of position, and accept the fact that everyone was different ) . It was besides about morality. Atticus believed that human existences must face moral issues as he mounted the defense mechanism of Tom Robinson. The last subject was about the importance of compassion. Scout and Jem learned to esteem other people s differences and to admit their privateness. At the terminal of the narrative, Scout walked Boo place, neer to see him once more. This implied that Scout and Jem had learned to go forth Boo entirely. I truly enjoyed this novel as it was a historically fabricated rite of transition book. In the narrative, Scout, Jem, and Dill matured as clip progressed by being confronted with some evil worlds that they were non exposed to in their childhood. By witnessing these events, they gained better opinion accomplishments. Although the narrative took topographic point in the fanciful town of Maycomb, it was still credible because the writer, Harper Lee, took great clip in showing the inside informations of the Great Depression and the segregation of inkinesss and Whites which prevailed during that clip ( 1930 s ) .

japanese aisatsu Essay Example

japanese aisatsu Paper In college, as in life, some things are unavoidable: tuition, essays, bad-for-you food and roommates. Unless you live at home while going to school, from the time you enter the higher education world until you leave it, you will be coping with people in your personal space. In the land of shared space, problems arise frequently and if you never deal with them, they have the potential to ruin any relationship. Use these tips from experts and real college girls on getting along with your roommate whether your roomie is a random assignment or your best friend. Talk. If somethings bugging you, bring it up in a non-defensive way rather than assume your roommate can read your mind. Nothing can change unless you acknowledge it. Its possible that your roommate may not even be aware of the problem. 2. Focus on behavior, not personality. Its not reasonable to ask people to change who they are, but you can ask them to tone down how they express themselves, especially when its invading your tu rf. So, you cant criticize someone for being perky, but you can ask for someone not to talk so much while youre studying. 3. Stay flexible. Its not your job to fix anybody else, and it helps to recognize that no one is perfect. Be willing to look at your own behavior. Consider what you could do differently to help the situation instead of only blaming your roommate. 4. Start with one pet peeve. What can you absolutely not deal with? What do you find extremely irritating, but could live with if you had to? There are probably tons of things your roommate does that get on your nerves. But nothing kills a relationship faster than listing dozens of reasons why you dont like a person. We will write a custom essay sample on japanese aisatsu specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on japanese aisatsu specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on japanese aisatsu specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Instead, both of you need to list your number one pet peeve and focus your energy on solving that first. 5. Consider the positives. Before you decide that life would be better with a roommate exactly like you, think of what you could gain by living with your opposite. Were often attracted to people who are different from us because they represent qualities we wish we possessed. If youre shy, maybe being around a more outgoing person will force you out of your shell. When one persons strength makes up for the others weakness, being opposites is an dvantage. Sharing your place with another person, whether this is a new experience for you or youVe had years of practice, is never easy. Use these tips to keep hostility at bay, and youll be gossiping about the cute guy in your chem lab rather than the newest annoyance your roommate has inflicted upon you. Trust me, your friends will thank you. The reflection of reading: Living with another is not convenient for me. Because when I doing anything I should consider my roommates how to do it wont disturb her. But the advantage of iving with another is that I can know my roommates who from other countries with different life background and we can share about our lifestyle as well as some growing experience. If we are match at interest and view of events, we will be the good friends soon! The disadvantage is that I need control my bedtime not affecting her, when the roommates friends visit her, they chatting some topic that I cant Join Ill feel so embarrassed. Getting along well with roommate is not easy, but Ill try to use this tips and

My Client Tina is in a Depression Essay

My Client Tina is in a Depression Essay My Client Tina is in a Depression Essay General Psychology Project July 08, 2014 My client Tina is in a Depression. Tina visit my office at least once a week, and she will be advised to remain a client for the next few months. Thursday April 5 Tina knocked on my door at two o’clock for her therapy session. I am therapist Tracy Ford. I greeted Tina at the door with pleasantries, and told her to come in and have a seat on the couch. I ask her to begin by telling me how she feel today. The story of Tina is her parents died in a terrible automobile wreck when she was seven years old. Tina had to live with her grandparents who love her so much. She began expressing disturbing behavior in her childhood. Her grandparents did all they could to help her deal with the loss of her parents. Then at the age of eighteen her grandparents was diagnosis with cancer. Her grandmother had colon cancer and her grandfather had prostate cancer. Tina was twenty-one years old when her grandparents died. She was on her own. She was employed at a restaurant where she was severely burn. Tina begin to fall into a deep depression. She begin to drink large amount of alcohol beverages. Tina also surrounded herself with the company of many men. In a destructing behavior. In Tina unconscious mind her thoughts and behavior frequently involve looking at her childhood experiences. I diagnosis Tina with Psychoanalytic Therapy. This is a form of talk- therapy as Tina and I spend session together. I listen as a therapist at the difficult experiences in her life. The role in her mind of her parents in her life, and the short time they had together. The grandparents dying when she was twenty-one. As a therapist, I set an empathetic and none judgemental environment where Tina can feel safe in revealing her feeling or action that have led to her stress, tension, and depression in life. When she share her burden with me this is beneficial in therapy. I suggested a moderate medication in a prescription; because, Tina is very nervous at times. Working through the treatment process with the client

German Language and Culture

German Language and Culture This article is the direct result of a thread (of related messages) in one of our forums. The discussion centered around the supposedly simple concept of being nice, as in smiling or wishing someone a nice day. It soon became apparent that just because you CAN say something in German does not mean you SHOULD. The phrase Ich wà ¼nsche Ihnen einen schà ¶nen Tag! sounds rather odd. (But see the comment below.) Trying to say Have a nice day! in German is a good example of language that is culturally inappropriate- and a good illustration of how learning German (or any language) is more than learning just words and grammar. It is becoming more common in Germany to hear the phrase Schà ¶nen Tag noch! from sales people and food servers. In an earlier feature, Language and Culture, I discussed some of the connections between   Sprache  and  Kultur  in the broadest sense. This time well look at a specific aspect of the connection, and why it is vital for language learners to be aware of more than just the vocabulary and structure of German. For example, if you dont understand the German/European approach to strangers and casual acquaintances, youre a prime candidate for cultural misunderstanding. Take smiling (das Lcheln). Nobodys saying you should be a grouch, but smiling at a German for no particular reason (as in passing on the street) will generally get the (silent) reaction that you must be a little simple-minded or not quite all there. (Or if theyre used to seeing Americans, maybe youre just another one of those weird smiling  Amis.) On the other hand, if there is some apparent, genuine reason to smile, then Germans can and do exercise their facial muscles. But what I may consider nice in my culture may mean something else to a European. (This smiling thing applies to most of northern Europe.) Ironically, a scowl may be better understood and accepted than a smile. Beyond smiling, most Germans  consider the phrase have a nice day an insincere and superficial bit of nonsense. To an American, its something normal and expected, but the more I hear this, the less I appreciate it. After all, if Im at the supermarket to buy anti-nausea medicine for a sick child, I may have a nice day after all, but at that point, the checkers polite have-a-nice-day comment seems even more inappropriate than usual. (Did she not notice I was buying nausea medicine, rather than, say, a six-pack of beer?) This is a true story, and a German friend who was with me that day happens to have a good sense of humor and was mildly amused by this strange American custom. We smiled about that because there was a real reason to do so. I personally prefer the custom of German shopkeepers who rarely let you out the door without saying Auf Wiedersehen!- even if you didnt buy anything. To which the customer replies with the same farewell, just a simple good-bye without any dubious wishes for a nice day. Its one reason many Germans would rather patronize a smaller shop than a big department store. Any language learner should always keep in mind the saying: Andere Lnder, andere Sitten (roughly, When in Rome...). Just because somethings done in one culture doesnt mean we should assume it will automatically transfer to another. Another country does indeed mean other, different customs. The ethnocentric attitude that my cultures way is the best wayor equally unfortunate, not even giving culture a serious thoughtcan lead to a language learner who knows just enough German to be dangerous in a real-life situation.

Medical Marijuana Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Medical Marijuana - Essay Example According to the essay the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States has approved the use of chemicals extracted from marijuana known as cannabinoids. The endorsement was made after scientific studies conducted on chemical components of the drug. Further, pharmaceutical drugs have been developed using marijuana chemicals for therapeutic purposes at the same time removing chemicals that have been causing side effects and highness.This study declares that medical marijuana laws MML have was passed in states like Maryland to remove penalties imposed on users of marijuana whenever they are got in possession of or using marijuana. According to medical marijuana laws, doctors are expected to provide approval to patients regarding the use of marijuana for medical benefits. The approval given to patients will render them immune to any prosecution by states when they are got in possession or using marijuana.  Marijuana use has been associated with increased motor vehicle accid ents and increasing burden on healthcare. Longer use of the drug has contributed to brain damage, cognitive impairment and respiratory damage when smoked. Other heath related risks associated with the use of marijuana includes bronchitis, lung cancer, heart attack and wheezing.  Use of marijuana for a long time is likely to cause severe implications stated above. Those against the use of marijuana for medical purpose explain that marijuana has two chemical components  that are harmful to human.

Pre-1500 And Post 1500 History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Pre-1500 And Post 1500 History - Essay Example History is paramount in learning about our obligation and responsibilities as global citizens. The people who lived in the pre-1500 possess the same humanness we have today and thus their hopes, egos, as well as dreams we still have them today. Therefore, through the study of those who lived before us enable us gain understanding and know their mistakes and how to rectify them for our own good? It is because people remain the same, although technology may change. The memory of the past is the key to our identity. For example, in 1492, Columbus led the invasion of America where he found a new land (Tignor, 2011). This history gives us an account of how America was founded and makes the citizens develop a sense of identity. This is a historical event that has significance in our today global citizenship. The knowledge acquired helps us establish a clear understanding of the American history and the changes that has been realized in today’s America. Moreover, the global history h as enabled us gain knowledge that help in shaping the present. Migration Migration is another aspect of understanding global citizenship reflecting on migration that took place before 1500 especially in Europe. For example, the knowledge of the Europe invasion starting 800 BC to 400 BC is useful in our modern world as global citizens.

Sylvia Plaths Psychic Landscapes Essay Example for Free

Sylvia Plaths Psychic Landscapes Essay In the following essay, I will examine the development of Plaths poetry through analysis of major themes and imagery found in her description of landscapes, seascapes, and the natural world. Following the lead of Ted Hughes, critics today tend to read Sylvia Plaths poetry as a unity. Individual poems are best read in the context of the whole oeuvre: motifs, themes and images link poems together and these linkages illuminate their meaning and heighten their power. It is certainly easy to see that through almost obsessive repetition some elements put their unforgettable mark on the poetry: themes such as the contradictory desires for life and death and the quests for selfhood and truth; images like those of color, with red, black and white dominating the palette; and symbols of haunting ambiguity, for example, the moon and the sea. But equally obvious is the striking development that Plaths work underwent in the course of her brief career as a professional poet. This is perhaps most readily seen in the prosody: from exerting her equilibristic skill at handling demanding verse forms, such as the terza rima and the villanelle, she broke free of the demands of such literary conventions and created a personal verse form which still retained some of the basic elements of her earlier academic style. She turned the three-line stanza of the villanelle into a highly flexible medium. Freed from the prosodic strictness of poems like Medallion, written in 1959, this verse form reappeared in poems composed in the last year of her life in a superbly liberated yet controlled form. Some of her finest and most personal poems are written in this medium, for example, Fever 103 °, Ariel, Nick and the Candlestick, Lady Lazarus, Marys Song, and the late Sheep in Fog, Child and Contusion. More important, though, is the development one can observe in Plaths handling of images and themes, of settings and scenes. My concern in this essay is Plaths use of landscapes as settings. There are indoor settings in her poetry, such as kitchens and bedrooms, hospitals and museums, but the outdoor ones are in overwhelming majority. Plaths use of landscapes and seascapes is indeed one of the most characteristic features of her poetry. They put their mark on a considerable part of the work and appear throughout her career, linked as they are to her experiences as a woman and a poet. The seascapes with their crucial relevance for themes like the daughter-father relationship, loss and death, deserve a special and thorough treatment of their own and will have to fall outside the scope of this essay. No reader can fail to note the many items of nature that Plath makes use of as setting and image. Three scholars have paid special attention to this aspect. In her pioneering work, The Poetry of Sylvia Plath: A Study of Themes (1972), Ingrid Melander includes analyses of poems set in different landscapes and seascapes that Plath knew; in addition to discussing a group of poems connected to the sea, she deals with the following landscape poems: two poems on the moorland (Hardcastle Crags and Wuthering Heights); two idylls (Watercolor of Grantchester Meadows and In Midas Country); and three landscapes as experienced by the traveller (Sleep in the Mojave Desert, Stars over the Dordogne and Two Campers in Cloud Country). Melanders approach is thematic and she makes no attempt to suggest development or continuity concerning this aspect of the poetry. In Jon Rosenblatts Sylvia Plath: The Poetry of Initiation (1979), in my view still the most useful book-length critical study, the idea of development is a main concern. He devotes one chapter to Plaths use of landscapes and seascapes, focusing on the transition from early to late poetry as part of his overriding argument: that Plaths poetry enacts a ritual of initiation from symbolic death to rebirth. He programmatically refrains from placing her poems in extraliterary contexts, such as her biography. Edward Butscher, on the other hand, goes to the other extreme in his critical biography, Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (1976), where he makes no essential difference between the life and the poetry. While he offers many imaginative and perceptive comments on Plaths anthropomorphizing of nature, they naturally become subsumed in the telling of the story of the poets life and also, frequently, slightly distorted by Butschers  psychoanalytically loaded thesis about the emergence of Sylvia Plath the bitch goddess. Since the appearance of these three studies Sylvia Plaths Collected Poems has been published (1981) with a securer and more precise dating of the poems than before, and we are now in a better position to deal with the poems chronologically. The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982) also add to our knowledge of the composition of the poems. Linda W. Wagner-Martins recent biography (1987) has given us a firm platform to build our critical studies on, by confirming or correcting information provided by previous biographies and memoirs. With the premise that Plaths poetry should be read as a unity I wish to study the development of her use of landscapes throughout her career, paying special attention to the role the landscape plays in the individual poemquantitatively and qualitativelyand to the way the poet creates psychic landscapes out of concrete places, scenes and objects. I tie this discussion firmly and consistently to actual landscapes Sylvia Plath had seen. With a poetry like Plaths, which is highly subjective and concrete, it is surely a disadvantage to disconnect the poems from the poets life. My use of biography aims at illuminating the poetic process, and my main interest is in the subtle and gradual shift in the poets technique: the process by which her landscapes become increasingly psychic and at the end fragmented. Sylvia Plath evidently looked upon herself as a city person (in spite of her documented love of the sea). Amidst the beautiful scenery at an artists colony in upstate New York she complained: I do rather miss Boston and dont think I could ever settle for living far from a big city full of museums and theaters. Nevertheless she seldom used the cities and towns where she lived, more or less permanently, as settings in poems. Cambridge, England; Northampton, Massachusetts; Boston and London, these places made little impact on the poetry as cityscapes. When she draws on such settings, she usually lets her persona move from the streets and buildings to parks or gardens or surrounding fields. When she remembers Cambridge, she sees meadows and fields outside the town, as in Watercolor of Grantchester Meadows (1959). Of Northampton she commemorates above all a park with frog pond, fountain, shrubbery and flowers, as in Frog Autumn and Childs Park Stones, both written in 1958. Where the town of Northampton itself does figure, in Owl (1958), it is as a frivolous contrast to harshly elemental nature. Commenting on an actual experience in the summer of 1958 such as described in this poem, she noted: Visions of violence. The animal world seems to me more and more intriguing. One of the rare poems with a London setting is Parliament Hill Fields (1961), but typically the scene has a rural touch. (It is set on Hampstead Heath). Inspiredand sometimes proddedby her husband who was versed in country things, Sylvia Plath the city person turned to nature for topics and scenery. Shortly after having met Ted Hughes in the spring of 1956 she confided to her mother: I cannot stop writing poems! . . . They come from the vocabulary of woods and animals and earth that Ted is teaching me. Prodded or inspired, Plath drew on her personal experiences of different places and landscapes as raw material for many of the poems. One might actually plot locations and stages of her life on the map of her work. Among the poems that open her career as a professional poether debut can conveniently be set to 1956we can find scenes from her stay in England and her travels on the Continent. Later there will be scenes from New England and other parts of the United States and Canada. After her return to England in 1959 she set many of the poems in Devon and a few in London. Ones immediate reaction to Plaths outdoor scenery is that the per sona never seems to be quite at home in nature. Descriptions of nature will most often register feelings of estrangement, fear and the like. This is true even of poems commemorating travel experiences in happy moods, such as camping in a California desert (Sleep in the Mojave Desert) or by a Canadian lake (Two Campers in Cloud Country), poems written in 1960. Plaths depictions of places and landscapes reveal her interest in pictorial art. She said that she had a visual imagination and that her inspiration was painting, not music, when I go to some other art form. We know of this interest in art, American and European, and the inspiration she derived from specific paintings resulting in, for example, the poems Snakecharmer (1957) and Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies (1958), both modelled on paintings by Henri Rousseau, and Sculptor (1958), dedicated to her friend Leonard Baskin. Her own efforts as a draftswoman establish a link between her verbal gifts and her graphic talents. Some of her drawings have been reproduced; The Christian Science Monitor (November 5 and 6, 1956) illustrated her reports about a summer visit to Benidorm in Spain with a couple of strictly realistic sketches by her hand: sardine boats pulled up on a beach; a corner of a peasant market; and trees and houses clinging on to steep sea cliffs. In his collection of essays on Plaths poetry, editor Charles Newman included three drawings of scenery that we can recognize in the poems; strong pen strokes show an old cottage in Yorkshire (Wuthering Heights); an irregular row of houses in Benidorm; and small fishing boats left for the winter on the bank of a river nea r its outlet into the ocean at Cape Cod. She evidently did not give up the habit of drawing. As late as October 1962, in a letter to her mother, she rejoices over the gift of pastels that she will surely find time to use. By and large Plaths early poems betray the same sort of literary artificiality that marked most of her Juvenilia; they strain too noticeably toward effect and cleverness. But there are some whose subjects and settings introduce thoughts and moods which reverberate in the rest of the oeuvre. Winter Landscape, with Rooks is one such poem. The very title tells us that this scene is rendered by a painterly poet. It describes a pond where a solitary swan floats chaste as snow. To the observer-speaker it is a landscape of chagrin scorn[ed] by the setting sun. The speakers mind is as dark as the pond: walking about like an imaginary rookthe only creature fit to match the wintry landscapeshe finds no solace from her sorrow at the absence of a cherished person. In a journal entry for February 20, 1956 Plath outlined the scene that inspired some of the realistic details of this poem. On her way to a literature class which was to be held at some distance from her Cambridge college, she noticed rooks squatting black in snow-white fen, gray skies, black trees, mallard-green water. The real rooks are missing from the  poem; there is only a metaphorical one. We find features that will characterize a great deal of the poetry to come: the color scheme of black, white and red; the theme of loss and frozenness; and the parallel between landscape and human observer. Plath referred to the poem as a psychic landscape. From now on her poetic landscapes will embody association between scene and mood. What marks Winter Landscape, with Rooks as an early poem is the lack of proportion between the loss suggested and the mood resulting from the contemplation of a calm winter scene. The poem ends with a sigh of self-pity: Whod walk in this bleak place? The punning title of another poem written in 1956, Prospect, suggests comparison with a painting, calling to mind, for example, the Italian veduta of landscape or city. We find in it some of the same elements as in Winter Landscape, with Rooks: the fen, here with its gray fog enveloping rooftops and chimneys, and this time not with a metaphorical rook but two real ones sitting in a tree, with absinthe-colored eyes cocked on a lone, late, / passer-by. As in an impressionist painting much is made of colororange, gray, black, greenat the expense of line and composition, but here too there is suggested a psychic element: the solitary human being neither seeks nor derives protection or comfort from nature. Alicante Lullaby, one of several poems inspired by Plaths stay in Spain in the summer of 1956, attempts to record the actual sounds of a busy little Spanish town. The poet uses onomatopoeia to recreate realistic sounds. (Evidently Sylvia Plath regretted that she did not have an ear for music.) In another poem, Departure, the speaker, taking leave of her temporary Spanish refuge sketched in bright colors, is able to note, with self-irony, that nature does not grieve at all at the parting. The reason why she leaves is decidedly unromantic: The moneys run out. The last glimpse of the scene is unromantic in another way and may suggest a parallel between the speakers mood and nature: what she sees is a stone hut Gull-fouled and exposed to corroding weathers, and morose and rank-haired goats. It may all be in the viewers eyes. Returning to the favored rook in Black Rook in Rainy Weather the poet again  musters up self-irony to face her urge to commune with nature. She might wish to see some design among the fallen leaves and receive some backtalk / From the mute sky, but this, she knows, would be to expect a miracle. Still, she leaves herself open to any minute gesture on the part of nature lending largesse, honor, / One might say love even to the dullest landscape and the most ignorant viewer; this could be achieved, for instance, by letting a black rook arrange its feathers in such a way as to captivate the viewers senses and so grant // A brief respite from fear / Of total neutrality. The miracle has not happened yet, but the hope of such a moment of transcendent beauty and communion is worth the wait. She knows that it might in fact be only a trick of light which the viewer interprets as that rare, random descent of an angel. The next set of landscape poems, chronologically, are located in the West Yorkshire moorland which Sylvia Plath knew from visits with her husbands family. November Graveyard introducing this group describes a setting where naturetrees, grass, flowersstubbornly resists mourning over death. But it does not deny death; the visitor notes the honest rot which reveals natures unsentimental presentation of death and decay. And the poet concludes that this essential landscape may teach us the truth about death. Coming at the end of Plaths first year as a professional poet this poem may be seen to exemplify a minor change in her depiction of landscapes; elements of nature are discreetly anthropomorphized: skinflint trees refuse to mourn or wear sackcloth, the dour grass is not willing to put on richer colors to solemnize the place, and the flowers do not pretend to give voice to the dead. Two other Yorkshire poems, The Snowman on the Moor and Two Views of Withens, written the following year, offer realistic glimpses of the moorland as backdrop for descriptions of relationships between people and of attitudes to nature. In the first poem, a condensed narrative relates a husband-and-wife quarrel with the woman being brought down from her pride by a vision of indomitable male power in the guise of a giant snowman; and in the second, we have in capsule form a definition of two very different  attitudes to natureperhaps also to lifeepitomized in two persons differing responses to a bare landscape and a dilapidated farmhouse with literary and romantic associations. (The scenery is associated with Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights.) The speaker of the poem regrets that she cannot respond the way the you does. To her, landscape and sky are bleak and the House of Eros is no palace. Hardcastle Crags gives a harsher view of a human being alone and defenseless in an unresponsive, absolute landscape. The poem derives its power from a very detailed, realistic picture of fields and animals, stones and hills. The last Yorkshire poem written in 1957, however, with the title The Great Carbuncle, brings in an element of wonder performed by nature: a certain strange light with magical powerits source remains unknowncreates a moment of transfiguration for the wanderers. The Great Carbuncle may allude to a drop of blood in the Holy Grail. But it is a painfully brief moment: afterwards the body weighs like stone. In a poem written in September 1961, Wuthering Heights, Plath returned to the ambiguous fascination this moor landscape held for her. The mood, though, has now become unequivocally sinister. The descriptive details have lost much of their realistic significance. The solitary wanderer bravely step[s] forward, but nature is her enemy: the alluring horizons dissolve at her advance, wind and heather try to undo her. Images of landscape and animals are consistently turned into metaphors for the human intruders feeling of being insignificant and exposed. A seemingly harmless thing such as the half-closed eyes of the grandmotherly-looking sheep makes the speaker lose her sense of identity and worth: it is as if she were being mailed into space, / A thin, silly message. This landscape is indeed psychic to an extent that Winter Landscape, with Rooks was not. This is most certainly a result of Plaths greater ability to transform realistic, concrete objects and scenes into consistent sets of me taphors for her thoughts and emotions. New Year on Dartmoor is a somewhat later poem, inspired by a walk Sylvia Plath took with her small daughter on Dartmoor some distance from the Hugheses home in Devon; the poem may have been written in late December 1961. NEW YEAR ON DARTMOOR This is newness: every little tawdry Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar, Glinting and clinking in a saints falsetto. Only you Dont know what to make of the sudden slippiness, The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant. Theres no getting up it by the words you know. No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe. We have only come to look. You are too new To want the world in a glass hat. The poem shows how Plaths technique of using landscape scenes has changed even more. Here there is very little realistic description; the setting becomes completely metaphorized and gives rise to the speakers inner words, both sad and humorous, addressing her child who is accompanying her. The year is new and to the child the newness is exciting but baffling. Only the mother is aware of a rawer reality beneath the glinting and the clinking, and she knows what newness entails of challenge and hardships. In the fall of 1959 Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes spent several weeks at Yaddo, the artists colony in upstate New York. Although she was at first charmed by the old-fashioned beauty of the estate, she soon tired of it, and on the whole the Yaddo poems do not express any genuine pleasure in nature. Some of  the poems she set in the grounds of the estate evidence a certain strain of finding something to write about and of getting the most out of the scenery. She was pleased with Medallion, a poem she defined as an imagist piece on a dead snake. Nature is here in a somewhat macabre fashion used to aestheticize death. The speaker is only a cool observer. In another Yaddo poem featuring animals, Blue Moles, with its unequivocal message that strife and violence are the modes of nature, nature is anthropomorphized; the speaker empathizes with the moles (Down there one is alone) while the sky above is sane and clear. The anthropomorphizing tendency is strong in the Yaddo poems; it does not serve to explain nature, rather to express the human protagonists feelings and moods. Thus in Private Ground the grasses / Unload their griefs in the protagonists shoes, and in The Manor Garden items from nature are used to parallel and explain the growth of a foetus in a human body. It is not enough for Plath in these poems to call forth a human mood or attitude from a fairly detailed, more or less realistic picture of objects and scenes in nature; now she will more readily metaphorize natural processes, and detailed pictures become rarer. Often key words or phrases will suffice to hint at a parallel or an origin in nature. Early in 1959 Plath had made clear what she wished to achieve in her nature poems. After finishing Watercolor of Grantchester Meadowsa memory of the Cambridge surroundingsshe noted: Wrote a Grantchester [sic] poem of pure description. I must get philosophy in. As every reader knows, Plath was wrong about this poem: in her picture of a seemingly idyllic landscape, cruelty and violence are lurking beneath the smooth appearance. The realistic scenery is distorted, not in the direction of the ugly and the grotesque, but in the direction of nursery-plate prettiness. The philosophy is apparent: terror and violence in the shape of an owl swooping down on an inoffensive water rat are at the heart of creation. Melville had said the same thing in Moby Dick when he let Ishmael reflect on the tiger heart that pants beneath the oceans skin. Plaths most ambitious piece of writing done at the artists colony was the  sequence Poem for a Birthday. Making notes for it she acknowledged the influence of Theodore Roethke. The greenhouse on the estate must have been a special link to him; it was a mine of subjects. Her tentative plans for the poem were these: To be a dwelling on madhouse, nature: meanings of tools, greenhouses, florists shops, tunnels, vivid and disjointed. An adventure. Never over. Developing, Rebirth, Despair. Old women. Block it out. Her ambition was to be true to [her] own weirdnesses. Starting as an end-of-autumn poem it immediately turns into a seemingly random search for the origins and processes of the self; the landscape disappears, and forays into the past take over. The poem comes full circle by ending with a hope of birth into a new life. Poem for a Birthday is an indication of the direction Plaths poetry was to take from now on: toward greater use of free associations and juxtaposition of fragment s of scenes and objects, experiences lived and imagined, feelings and thoughts harbored. Sylvia Plaths life and surroundings in Devon, where she lived from September 1961 to December the following year, provided rich material for poetry. Court Green, the thatch-roofed house the Hugheses had bought, sat in a two-acre plot with a great lawn, in spring overflowing with daffodils, with an apple orchard and other trees that found their way into the poems. The settings of the poems she wrote in Devon are very varied. Several are set indoors, for instance, in a hospital (The Surgeon at 2 a.m., Three Women), a kitchen (An Appearance, The Detective, Lesbos, Cut, Marys Song), an office (The Applicant), or an unspecified interior (The Other, Words heard, by accident, over the phone, Kindness). These interiors are never described; they are often to be inferred by a situation dramatized or an action going on, such as cooking a Sunday dinner or being served tea. Action and character play the greater role. The trees and flowers of the Court Green garden appear in several poems, such as Among the Narcissi, Poppies in July and Poppies in October, all from 1962. But in these poems too there is much more story or incident than description. The Moon and the Yew Tree offers a good example of how Plath used nature as material for poetry at this transitional stage in her career. Written in October 1961 this was the first poem for which she drew on her immediate  Devon surroundings. As we see from Ted Hughess comments, she still needed an occasional prodding to find a topic: The yew tree stands in a churchyard to the west of the house in Devon, and visible from SPs bedroom window. On this occasion, the full moon, just before dawn, was setting behind this yew tree and her husband assigned her to write a verse exercise about it. This nature poem is marked by the metaphorical mode already in the opening line: This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. Using a phrase from an earlier poem (Private Ground) the poet creates a transition to the garden landscape by anthropomorphizing nature: The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God. The light of the mind does not help. The speaker complains: I simply cannot see where there is to get to. Following the upright lines of the yew tree, the speakers eyes seek the mother moon. Yew tree and church, one planted in the earth but striving toward heaven, the other bringing the message of heaven to earth, have nothing to give the speaker. She faces her real self: it is not the Church with its mixture of far reaching authority (the booming bells), its holiness stiffened by convention (the sculptured or painted saints floating above the heads of the churchgoers) and its somewhat sentimentalized sweetness (the mild Virgin), it is not these she can identi fy with: she is the daughter of the wild female moon with her dark and dangerous power. Plath herself evidently read this poem slightly differently. Introducing it in a BBC program she said that a yew tree she had once put into a poem began, with astounding egotism, to manage and order the whole affair. It was not a yew tree by a church on a road past a house in a town where a certain woman lived . . . and so on, as it might have been in a novel. Oh no. It stood squarely in the middle of my poem, manipulating its dark shades, the voices in the churchyard, the clouds, the birds, the tender melancholy with which I contemplated iteverything! I couldnt subdue it. And, in the end, my poem was a poem about a yew tree. The yew tree was just too proud to be a passing black mark in a novel. As I have indicated, another reading of the poem highlights the moon as the one who is taking over the scene. The yew tree appears again in Little Fugue, written in 1962, but only as an introductory image bringing in a contrast through its blackness counterpointed with whiteness in the concrete form of a cloud (The yews black fingers wag; / Cold clouds go over). Black and white do not merge, just as the blind do not receive the message of the deaf and dumb. These counterpointing absences prefigure the main theme of the fugue: the speaker-daughters despair at not being able to reach her dead father: Gothic and barbarous he was a yew hedge of orders. Now he sees nothing, and the speaker is lame in the memory. The fugue ends by finally joining the two items from naturethe black yew tree and the pale cloudas images of a marriage between death and death-in-life. The Devon milieu is the scene also for Among the Narcissi. Here an ailing old neighbor is the main subject, the flowers attending upon him like a flock of children. Another poem with a Devon setting is Pheasant. It is a scene in the drama of tensions in a marriage, of suspicions, hurt, jealousy and anger, which was begun in Zoo Keepers Wife and continued in Elm, The Rabbit Catcher, Event, Poppies in July and Poppies in October. Two poems written in the last month Sylvia Plath spent in Devon, Letter in November and Winter Trees, testify to the almost uncanny equilibristics she was capable of by now in realizing highly different topics, scenes, moods, as it would seem from one moment to the next. Anger at deception (The Couriers), longing for spiritual rebirth (Getting There), tender anguish at a childs future (The Night Dances), revulsion at death (Death Co.) and fascination with the dynamics of motion and life (Years), naked hatred and contempt (The Fearful), these are some of the emotions embodied in the November poems. Letter in November is set in the Court Green garden. It is unusual for Plath at this stage in her career in that it contains a fairly detailed picture of the scenery. The letter is addressed to an unspecified receiver (perhaps a child) apostrophized as love. It describes, in a relaxed tone, details of a well-known garden which in this moment of seasonal transition is shifting color and form as if by some kind of magic that a child would  understand. The speakers boots squelch realistically in the wet masses of fallen leaves. The old corpses buried under the death-soup she is walking in prefigure the despair at total defeat revealed in the final allusion to the destruction of a heroic army at Thermopylae (The irreplaceable / Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae). Was the lovingly detailed description of her garden an incantation for a moments relief from pain? Winter Trees is also set in the garden. WINTER TREES The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve. On their blotter of fog the trees Seem a botanical drawing Memories growing, ring on ring, A series of weddings. Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery, Truer than women, They seed so effortlessly! Tasting the winds, that are footless, Waist-deep in history Full of wings, otherworldliness. In this, they are Ledas. O mother of leaves and sweetness Who are these pietas? The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but easing nothing. The opening image, of trees barely visible in the early morning fog, might have led us to expect a landscape of the kind Plath wrote in her earlier years, that is, a fairly realistic description with a mood attached or a philosophy as the outcome of pictures turned into metaphors. In this poem, however, trees are immediately turned into an aesthetic product: a drawing presenting themselves (On their blotter of fog the trees / Seem a botanical drawing)! This idea is at once dropped and without the modulating help of language we are brought into the human domain of memories, relationships between people, values and morality. Memories, rings, weddings, abortions, bitcherythese words hint at a miniature narrative of past love and union, contrasted with ugly losses and failures. The speakers muted despair has turned into disgust at the very idea of human femaleness. The trees have become symbols of ideal humanity: at the same time as they partake of the solidity and security of elemental earthliness, they achieve spirituality. Visited by a god, these Ledas share in the sacred, but being Ledas they also know suffering. In a last transformation, the trees take on the appearance of the grieving mother of another god. The final lines of the poem express the speakers anguished cry lamenting her inability to partake of the perfection and pity of nature. Being a woman she appeals to a Mother Goddess for a clue, but no sounds or sights in nature bring her relief. This superb poem is an example of the skill and power Plath had reached in her thirtieth year. Within the span of a few short lines she manages to create a complex of sight and sound, history and myth, Christian and pagan, ugliness and beauty, hope and despair. As has been argued by a recent critic, this is a fine example of Plaths ability to raise her poetry above the level of the private and the confessional to a level of universality. The poems Sylvia Plath wrote in the last few weeks of her life maintain  continuity with her earlier work in subject matter and style. She still favors the two- or three-line stanza, and essential also in these poems are emotions and attitudes such as love for childrenwhat Helen Vendler so succinctly refers to as the small constructiveness of motherhoodhatred of deception, and conflicting urges toward stasis and motion. But as a whole they are more concise and more referentialeven to the point of obscuritythan earlier poems. They do not offer easy readings, for one thing because images from strikingly different spheres of life are juxtaposed, with no apparent associations to join them. By establishing links to the earlier poetry as reference and source material we may be in a better position to read these difficult texts. Plaths use of landscapes is one such line to pursue. In these late poems recognizable, actual landscapes do not occur; here the poet uses only fragments from her experiences of various kinds of scenery, fragments that often suggest moods and attitudes similar to those that the more fully described landscapes had once signified. The first poem dated 1963, Sheep in Fog, was begun in December 1962 and completed the following January, and it works as a transitional poem. It is the last poem Plath wrote in which we can recognize the outlines of an actual landscape. It keeps some of the elements of poems set in an English landscape, with touches of the moorland, perhaps Dartmoor where Plath took riding lessons. She introduced the poem for a BBC program with these words: In this poem, the speakers horse is proceeding at a slow, cold walk down a hill of macadam to the stable at the bottom. It is December. It is foggy. In the fog there are sheep. This is of course only the bare skeleton around which the poem itself has been fashioned. The title suggests a realistic landscape with figures, and we find several such items: hills, horse and fields. No sheep are visible in the poem; the dolorous bells indicate their presence. There is a watercolor aspect to the hills dimly seen in the fog, the faint line of smoke from a passing train and the touch of color provided by the horse. Human references, which are counterpointed with the touches of nature scenery, take over in the latter part of the poem. The speaker interprets the scene as an expression of her own situation. Resignedly registering her own inadequacy (People or stars / Regard me sadly, I disappoint them) she  perceives her situation as darker and darker. Against the normal order in nature All morning the / Morning has been blackening. She fears that she has to accept nothingness as her lot, even after death; this is expressed in the image of the distant fields which thr eaten / To let me through to a heaven / Starless and fatherless, a dark water. This is no longer a psychic landscape of the kind exemplified by Winter Landscape, with Rooks; in Sheep in Fog the landscape as reality almost ceases to exist. Items from Sheep in Fog reappear in even more fragmentary form in Totem, a poem written on the same day as the former one was completed. Here we find a train on a useless journey, darkened fields, and mountains letting us glimpse an unchanging sky. These fragments of a landscape are only small signs in a composition overwhelming in its rich confusion, of images which all spell the greed of inevitable death. Plath spoke of this poem as a pile of interconnected images, like a totem pole. Other late poems have a similar quality of interconnected images like a totem pole in which fragments of landscapes may reappear in a weak or distorted form. In The Munich Mannequins the yew tree from beside the Devon church has been transformed into a part of a womb (the womb // Where the yew trees blow like hydras); an unhappy memory of Sylvia Plaths own visit to Germany in 1956 in search of roots identifies the city of Munich as a place of death and sterility. In Child, expressing a mothers wish to create a happy world for her child, there are remnants of the Devon garden in bloom as a contrast to the mothers worried Wringing of hands. Gigolo recalls a Mediterranean setting with crooked streets, cul-de-sacs and fruits-de-mer, alluring and disgusting as the professional seducer himself. In Mystic there may be traces of a summery Atlantic coastmemories of smells of pines, sun-heated cabins and salty windsas well as references to the harsh London winter Sylvia Plath was facing while she was composing these poems (The chimneys of the city breathe, the window sweats). These fragments accompany a more important religious imagery. The poem has been interpreted in several ways; one interpretation sees it as the mystics dark night of the soul, but the last line, The heart has not stopped, indicates hope of an end to this night. And in Edge, one of the two last poems Plath  wrote a few days before her death, she may have drawn on visual memories of the Yaddo estate. The perfected body of the woman whose epitaph the poem is and her children make up a sculptured group of death. In addition to other allusions, such as the Laocoon group, here inverted from struggle against death to fulfilled death, this group may vaguely recall the marble statuary at Yaddo. In the preceding pages we have seen how Sylvia Plath sought inspiration and raw material for her poetry in different settings and how she very early saw the potential for psychic qualities or parallels in realistic word paintings. In depicting external reality she is not concerned with representing, as faithfully as possible, shapes and lines, color and light, objects and figures. She hardly ever devotes an entire poem to something that looks like mere description of a scene in nature. There is always a metaphorical touch or dimension to the realistic composition. At times there is a narrative hinted at or rendered in some detail. Her landscape poems do not give the impression of a spontaneous pleasure in nature, nor of a wish to understand the processes of nature. They seem rather to serve as mirrors for a self in search of identity and truth. Plaths career as a poet was brief, but even so it is possible to see a development in her use of landscapes, toward more metaphorizing, more anthropomorphizing of nature, and in the late poems, more fragmentation of scenes in nature. In the early poetry she includes more documentable detail, sometimes established already in the titles of poems, such as Hardcastle Crags and Two Views of Withens. She may have coerced herselfor been proddedto broaden her palette by consciously turning to now one, now another landscape that she had experienced, but at the end she no longer had to look for settings as inspiration. Elements of landscapes came to her when she needed them as pieces in a mosaic more fraught with meaning than the early psychic landscapes. She had at her command an extraordinary set of highly diverse materials which she juxtaposed into poems of striking originalitysometimes with less than complete success. Even though we may not be able to reach into the obscurest crevices of her imagery and thought, the poems Sylvia Plath wrote in the last few weeks of  her life haunt us with their cries and whispers. Recognizing fragments of earlier landscapes may not be the most important clue to these and other poems, but it may help us clear the ground for entering deeper into her poetic world. Source: Brita Lindberg-Seyersted, Sylvia Plaths Psychic Landscapes, in English Studies, Vol. 71, No. 6, December, 1990, pp. 509-22.

Hamlet again :: essays research papers

Scene i: The play opens in the dead of night on the walls of Elsinore Castle. Gloom, uncertainty and anxiety hang over the kingdom of Denmark, the first words spoken coming as the sentinel's challenge, "Who's there?" In short order we learn from the guard of the night watch that the long-time King of Denmark, "Old Hamlet" or "Ur-Hamlet," died mysteriously just two months earlier, that his brother, Claudius, has taken the throne, and that Claudius has married the dead king's wife, Queen Gertrude. The members of the watch, including Prince Hamlet's loyal friend Horatio, are further alarmed over the recent appearance of a ghost who resembles Hamlet's late father, and they plan to tell Hamlet about this disturbing apparition. (Jump to the text of Act I, Scene i) Scene ii: The play now shifts to the royal court of King Claudius and his new wife, Queen Gertrude, as we first see Hamlet's uncle dealing capably with affairs of state. In this, he is advised by his chief counselor, Polonius, and the King has a cordial exchange with his minister's son, Laertes. Hamlet, however, remains in the background, a surly figure muttering resentful asides. Claudius rejects Hamlet's request to return to college at Wittenberg, and urges him to cease his "unmanly" mourning for his father. When the royal entourage departs, Hamlet speaks a soliloquy about his resentments toward his stepfather, his mother, and their incestuous marriage. Horatio and his cohorts arrive and tell the prince about the ghost they have seen. Hamlet vows to observe it himself. (Jump to the text of Act I, Scene ii) Scene iii:The scene is comprised of an exchange among Polonius, his son Laertes and his daughter, Ophelia. The young maiden Ophelia reveals to her father and brother that Prince Hamlet is "madly" in love with her. Both Polonius and Laertes strongly warn her about any romance with a prince of the realm, particularly one who seems to be mentally unbalanced. (Jump to the text of Act I, Scene iii) Scenes iv-v: Back at the walls of the castle, the Ghost of Hamlet's father speaks to his son directly and urges him to follow him to a one-on-one encounter. Hamlet has misgivings, but he obeys and the ghost then confirms that he is, in fact, the dead King. He also discloses that he was the victim of a murder, that Claudius poured poison into his ear while he was asleep.

Charles Dickens – Pip’s problems come from arrogance

Charles Dickens' Great Expectations is the tale of one character's troubled journey of self delusion in the pursuit of false ideals. Pip, the book's protagonist, is a morally good and honest boy corrupted by the glitz and glamour of nineteenth century bourgeois society. Although Pip's arrogance and pretentiousness ultimately creates a great deal of problems for him, it would be inaccurate to claim that they are the central causes of Pip's troubles. Instead it is the lack of affirmation and self-worth he experiences in his early childhood that instigates his downward spiral of morality and must be blamed for the cause of his problems. Fortunately, Pip is able to eventually realize the nobility of humble characters such as Joe and understand the importance of values such as compassion in gaining true gentility. Primarily, Pip's lack of self-confidence and lowly impression of himself are the most notable aspects of his early childhood. Under the tyranny of Mrs Joe, Pip is constantly made to feel inferior and has his self-esteem destroyed with snipes such as â€Å"in a low reproachful voice (she said) â€Å"Do you hear that? Be grateful. â€Å". Not only is he physically abused in the household having been â€Å"brought up by hand† but also there is clearly a lack of adequate love and affirmation in his childhood years, reinforced with the absence of a mother and father. Though Pip is able to find some refuge in his friend and father figure Joe, it seems hardly enough to build his self-worth. As well as this, he must contend with the obnoxious and overtly pretentious Mr Pumblechook. The Christmas dinner scene in which Pip is constantly patronized by the mean-spirited adults in his life is almost a parody of disparagement. Harbouring this sense of inferiority, Pip's visit to Satis House evokes in him the fantasy of reinvention that ultimately brings about his downfall. The supercilious Estella, encouraged by Miss Havisham, mocks Pip's â€Å"coarse and common† ways, further playing on his lack of self-worth and eating away at his self-confidence. The highly impressionable young boy, fuelled by this inferiority, sees the glamour of Satis House as his only chance of ‘bettering' himself. It is here he forms the illusion that becoming a gentleman consists of merely assuming the outward trappings of gentility – an illusion that will ultimately create a great deal of trouble for him. He is caught up in the allure of Estella's beauty and her lifestyle, yet fails to see that beneath this exterior lies a loveless and heartless world. Therefore it is Pip's dissatisfaction with himself combined with the influence of his visit to Satis House that is the fundamental source of his problems. This being said, once he is given the financial means to live out this fantasy his priggish arrogance further distances him from his true and honest childhood values. Debt, bad company and a wasteful lifestyle are the troubles that come with his obsession to uphold the gentlemanly faiade he has created. Most notably, his pretentious treatment of Joe, â€Å"If I could have paid money to keep him away I would have paid it,† denize him association with this noble character and in turn denize him the ability to realize the importance of the values he stands for. Likewise there is the manner in which he patronizes Biddy â€Å"You never had a chance before you came here, and see how improved you are! † The rejection of these noble characters prevents him from being able to gaining true ‘gentility'. As Pip himself incredulously states after helping Herbert â€Å"to think, that my expectations had done some good to somebody,† for his expectations combined with his arrogance had succeeded only in creating problems for him. While Pip's ability to learn the importance of humility is vital to his redemption, it is his return to compassion and good heartedness that rescues him and allows him to become a better person. Although initially Pip's motives for protecting Magwitch are entirely selfish, attempting to maintain his own credibility in London, he begins to develop a sense of concern for the old man, as his childhood value of compassion is gradually reinstated. This compassion becomes the first step towards obtaining true gentility. From there the loss of his fortune and his symbolic illness in which Joe appears selflessly nursing him back to health and paying off his debts provides Pip with a vital lesson in fellow feeling. Pip can finally understand the nobility of characters such as Joe, Biddy, Clara and Wemmick (Walworth). He embraces the simple lives of these characters and also learns humility, by leaving to work for Herbert in Egypt, living an earnest and hardworking life. After years of such a humble lifestyle, Dickens rewards his protagonist with the love of Estella, who has likewise come to understand the importance of â€Å"a good Christian Heart. Therefore, the central cause of Pip's problems was clearly the result of years of self dissatisfaction caused by a lack of love and affirmation. This self-worth was dealt a mortal blow upon his arrival at Satis House, the consequence being Pip's fantasy of re-invention that ultimately leads him to much of the troubles in his life. His boorish arrogance mana ges to create further problems for him and it is not until his rediscovery of the importance of compassion and fellow feeling that he is able to become a true gentlemen.