Lyricist Lounge, Volume 2 free essay sample

Lyricist Lounge, Volume 2, though almost ayear old, is still one of the best-selling rap albums out there. Forget the name,this album has many hardcore rappers including Mos Def, Pharoahe Monch, Q-Tip,Talib Kweli, Notorious B.I.G., and Big L. These rappers arent recognized inmainstream mu-sic as they should be; people dont respect their music becauseits urban. This album sends a positive message to those from more urbanareas. These tracks dont brag about big-screen TVs or how badly men treat women.It doesnt talk about drugs or killing people, it simply stays on the subject ofwhat happens on the streets. This album is fantastic, and the rapperskeep it real. A favorite track is Oh No by Mos Def, Nate Dogg andPharoahe Monch. The artists bring it to the top, and hold it down. Ive liked itsince I first heard it. Of a possible five stars, I give LyricistLounge, Volume 2 all five. We will write a custom essay sample on Lyricist Lounge, Volume 2 or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The album is a total package: great lyrics, thebest emcees and a positive message. The music makes you want to get up and dance,so I urge you to get it.

The Harlem Renaissance And Langston Hughes Essays - Free Essays

The Harlem Renaissance And Langston Hughes Essays - Free Essays The Harlem Renaissance And Langston Hughes Humanities 1020 November 29, 2000 The Harlem Renaissance and Langston Hughes The Harlem Renaissance was a great and powerful era in black history, It was an African American cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s that was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City (Harlem Renaissance). Langston Hughes wrote Blues and Jazz flourished throughout the streets of New York, and young black artists began to arise [. . .] (63). An important part of this era had to be the inspirational writings of Langston Hughes. James Mercer Langston Hughes, born in Joplin, Missouri, February 1, 1902, was raised by his grandmother after his parents divorced (Sporre 551). He graduated from high school in Cleveland, Ohio and went off to Mexico to live with his father for fifteen months (Jackson 1). While in Mexico, Hughes lived a very rural life and wrote many of his first poems which, although never published, began to distinguish him as a writer. Hughes attended Columbia University for one year, then returned to home for a short period in 1923 before he joined the crew of the SS Malone bound for Africa (A Salute to Hughes). From there he visited many places including Paris, Venice and Genoa before once again returning to America to live in Harlem, New York, in November 1924 (Andrews 65-69). While working in Washington D.C. as a busboy, Hughes left three of his poems beside the plate of Vachel Lindsey, an American poet, who liked Hughes poetry and helped him publicize his writings (Jackson 3). Hughes first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926 (Langston Hughes). He was a great writer who completed a two volume autobiography, and edited many anthologies and pictorial volumes. Hughes dazzled writing for forty years and never gave up protesting for the rights of African Americans. He gave many motivational speeches across the nation supporting the black movement. Hughes continued his career publishing many books of poetry and prose. Langston Hughes went on to inspire the world through his literature until his d eath in Harlem on May 22, 1967 (Sporre 551). Living in Harlem, he soon discovered the culture and literary circle of the Harlem Renaissance. As best said in the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Hughes brought the spirit of the African American people to life, using blues and jazz as the basis of his poetic expressions [. . .] (Andrews 1252). This is evident in some works such as The Negro Speaks of Rivers, and The Weary Blues. Most of his influences came from fellow black writers. Names such as, Dubois, Locke, Jesse Redmonfaset, Jean Toomer, Arna Bontemps, and Carl Van Vechten, inspired Hughes in his form and writing style (Andrews 929-930). His poems often portrayed the trials, tribulations, struggles and thoughts of a young Negro growing up in the twenties through sixties. His main goal was to express concern about the treatment of African Americans in this country, and to pursue civil and social justice. One of his most famous works is his continuing sage of Jesse B. Semple, also known as Simple. Hughes wrote columns about this fictional character, who dealt with very non-fictional problems. Jesse, who was really Hughes voice, expressed the views and ideas of young black Americans (Andrews 1252-1253). Creating Simple to be smart, strong witted and wise, allowed Hughes to publish and undermine the standard of our pretentious society, while ironically and humorously pointing out the hypocritical nature of American Racism (Andrews 1257-1263). Hughes went on writing four series of writings about Simple. Hughes used a variety of themes in both his poetry and his prose. Nathan Irvin Huggins wrote His voice was very moving when he read his poems publicly. His voice was both rich and poetic and gave strong inspiration and love to the black community (Andrews 1253). One work of his is particularly interesting. It shows the emotion and creativeness of the Harlem Renaissance in a few short lines. Hughes named this poem Cross. My old mans a white old man And my old mothers black. If I ever cursed my old white man I take my curses back. If ever I cursed my black old mother And wished she were

A letter from an exchange student in Australia Essay Example for Free

A letter from an exchange student in Australia Essay ? I’ve been in Australia for about 2 months now and I’m still speechless. It’s such a beautiful country! The land, the people, the climate, everything is amazing! I’ve gotten to experience the most remarkable/wonderful things, things I never could have imagined. As you know I went here as an exchange student and I’m living with a wonderful host family in Brisbane. They have been very welcoming and loving, the student exchange agency made such a good match. Brisbane is located in the east of Australia, in the state called Queensland. I’m attending the Brisbane State High School where I’m taking all the mandatory classes like English, math’s, science, social studies, art, health and physical education and so on. I’ve gotten to continue my French education as well, but everyone in that class is way better than me! Luckily they are all so nice and very patient with me, and that goes for all the classes! I had a hard time understanding the Australian accent at first, but it gets easier and easier every day. My host family taught me some Aussie-slang to help me out a bit, like â€Å"hoo roo† which means goodbye, â€Å"ripper† means something like fantastic or great, â€Å"sheila† is a girl and â€Å"dunny† is a toilet. A word that’s very confusing is â€Å"thongs†. It does not mean what you think it means! It’s another word for flip-flops, which can create quite an awkward situation. Fortunately I managed not to humiliate myself! Anyway, like I said are there mandatory classes just like there is in Sweden. Australia has a national curriculum to make sure that they have the same educational standards in schools all over the country, which resembles our â€Å"Skolverket†. You asked a lot about the schools over here in your last letter, so I’ve asked my new friends in my classes and found out some basic info. Like, something that’s similar to Swedish schools is that you’re in kindergarten or pre-school when you’re 3-5 years old. In Australia you go to Primary School between the ages 6 to 11, unlike Sweden where we go to â€Å"Là ¥gstadiet† and â€Å"Mellanstadiet† when we’re 6 to 12. One year doesn’t make that big of a difference, but Secondary School (High School) resembles both â€Å"Hà ¶gstadiet† and â€Å"Gymnasiet† together. So from what I understand, you can’t choose a specific program like in Sweden, but you can choose some classes you want to take (other than the mandatory ones) in High School. When you graduate from Secondary School you can apply for a University, just like in Sweden. As you can tell there are a lot of similarities to  Australian and Swedish schools, but I found out that there are many differences as well. School uniforms for example, we don’t have any rules about dress code in Sweden, but over here it’s a part of life, at least for the students who attend High School. Almost every school has a special uniform that every student has to wear, even I have to wear one when I go to school. Even in gym class we wear matching shorts and shirts. I think those outfits are better because they’re unisex, and the rest of the day the girls wear skirts while the boys wear pants. I’m not very comfortable in skirts and dresses so I think that if you want to wear pants you should be able to! It’s kind of nice not having to choose an outfit every morning, you only have one thing to wear and everybody else wears it too. There’s not any pressure about having the latest fashion or not changing it up every day. The only thing you have to worry about is bad hair-days! I have to admit that I wish we had to wear these in Sweden as well†¦ Not only are they a gift from heaven for the morning-tired person, they make you feel a bit more fancy and formal too. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that comfortable being formal all the time and I’d probably get sick of wearing it every day, but I like the idea a lot at the moment. I never think it would work, introducing this to Sweden though. Everyone would lose their right to express themselves through their clothes. If we would have to wear school uniforms, I strongly vote for pants for the girls! Most students bring their own lunch to school. There is a cafeteria, but you have to pay for everything there. That is something I miss about Sweden, even though it’s not great food all of the time it’s still really convenient. I’m having a hard time remembering to bring my lunch every day†¦ That makes me really angry with myself because both of my host parents make really good food, especially sandwiches. I promise you, they’re amazing! Public schools here are free and run by the government of state or territory they’re in, just like in Sweden. Parents are asked pay a voluntary contribution fee and they can also contribute to camping trips and extracurricular activities, but it’s all voluntary. Something that also differs from Sweden is the fact that they have 4 semesters. The school year starts in early February and ends in December. They have short holidays between every semester and their summer holiday is in December and January, during Christmas! I know it’s really strange, but that’s when the Australian summer is! I had no idea that the seasons were so  off over here, but I think it’s really amazing how the world works. Apparently all countries south of the equator have their summer during our winter, and their winter during our summer! A few weeks ago I got to be a part of the Australians celebration of ANZAC Day. ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. This day is special to Australians because of what happened on this date 1915. The First World War had just started and Australia wanted to create a reputation for themselves to the rest of the world, since they’d only been a nation for 13 years. They joined forces with New Zealand and set out to take control over the Dardanelles (a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey) so that their allies could travel through. When ANZAC landed on Gallipoli in Turkey they were met by Turkish defending forces. A lot of Australian soldiers lost their lives and today the Australians take this day to remember not only them and their bravery, but every soldier who has died in any war or military operation Australia’s been a part of. Each year the remembrance begins with memorial services in big cities all over the country, they’re known as the â€Å"Dawn Services†. Later in the day there are parades where ex-militaries march along. Aussies also celebrate this day off from work and school with drinking and games! They also have the Australia Day, their National Day. I’m not going to be here for that because it’s celebrated on January 26th, but I really wish I were! They celebrate everything that’s good about the country and being Australian, it sounds like a lot of fun! My host family tells me that you can see the Australian flag hanging from windows of cars and houses and that the whole neighborhood smells like barbeque. There are usually fireworks and music as well! It’s more upbeat than the ANZAC Day. We don’t have anything like this in Sweden, which I think is a bit sad. What I mean is, we don’t really have a day where we remember something or celebrate just being Swedish. I feel like we don’t have that kind of love for our country that the Australians do. At least I know I don’t. I only enjoy our National Day because I don’t have to go to school. I honestly don’t even know why we celebrate it, and if I asked my friends I’m sure they would say the same thing. It would be nice to feel that unity and pride that the Australians have. We’ve been in wars, I’m not sure how many or what kind, but we don’t take pride in them. We don’t have any war heroes we remember. During World War 1, Sweden was neutral. We didn’t officially pick a side; we did  everything we could to not get attacked by anyone. We let Germany use our railways to transport iron-stone, which kept us from getting involved in the war (even though that made us a part of Germany’s success). I think we’re right not to take any pride in that†¦ Something that also would be fun to experience here â€Å"Down Under† is Christmas. Since their summer is during December the climate is at its warmest during Christmas. My friends told me that even though it’s sunny and warm everyone still decorates with snowmen and Christmas lights! Most families have a Christmas tree too. Here in Brisbane they apparently have a competition every year for who has the best Christmas lights. I would love to see all of the extremely decorated houses! We should do something like that at home, we should engage more! In some ways our counties spend Christmas alike, but some prospects are still very different. In Sweden, we open presents, eat delicious food and get a visit from Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. In Australia they only make the last preparations on Christmas Eve, because it’s all about Christmas Day. Children hope to find presents in stockings or under the tree when they wake up, families go to see their relatives and everyone (most people anyway) spend the evening with their loved ones. Some families eat dinner that’s similar to Europe’s Christmas food, but most Australians barbeque or have a picnic on the beach or in the park. On the beach you can see surfing Santa Clauses too. It sounds really laid back and comfortable, so I would love to be able to experience it (even though it’s no real Christmas without snow!). It’s hard to think of Swedish traditions when you don’t usually acknowledge them, but most traditions come with the holidays. Almost all of our holidays have religious significance, like Easter and Christmas for example, but these holidays are not really about what they originally mark in history (if you’re Christian). Easter is more about dressing up as a witch and knocking on doors collecting candy, than remembering Jesus’s crucifixion. Christmas is all about Donald Duck and opening presents, we don’t celebrate Jesus being born. This is the case in Australia too, except for the witches and Donald Duck. In Australia they celebrate Easter by organizing Easter egg hunts (mostly for the purpose of making the children happy), and you’ve probably heard of the ‘Easter Bunny’? Well, over here they’ve exchanged it for an ‘Easter Bibly’. A bibly is a small rodent, who’s an endangered species and they’re hoping this kind of advertisement is going to help save  it. Besides, rabbits are considered pests in Australia as they destroy crops and other things. As you can tell there are a lot of both similarities and differences between Sweden and Australia, but they are both great counties! Unfortunately I only have a month left of my studies, but I am thinking about living here for a year or so when I graduate. I have fallen in love with this land†¦ Enough about me, how have you been? Is everything as usual back home? Hope to see you soon, Sources of information: Aussie slang: http://stricktlydating.hubpages.com/hub/Common-Aussie-Slang-Words 2013-04-14 http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html 2013-04-14 About school: http://www.workingin-australia.com/education/system/overview#.UWr117XIagc 2013-04-14 http://www.studyinaustralia.gov.au/en/Courses/Schools/Australian-School-System/Australian-school-system 2013-04-14 http://www.studiesinaustralia.com/types-of-education/secondary-education 2013-04-16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_uniform#Australia 2013-04-16 http://brisbaneshs.eq.edu.au/sites/default/files/bshs/PolicyDocuments/PandC/CanteenMenu.pdf 2013-04-17 http://www.fairhillshs.vic.edu.au/app/webroot/uploaded_files/media/uniform_information_2013.pdf 2013-04-17 http://australianschool1.hubpages.com/hub/Australian-School-Uniform2013-04-16 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090821161522AAUv95m 2013-04-16 http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/austn-weather-and-the-seasons2013-04-16 Traditions: http://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac/anzac_tradition.asp 2013-04-21 http://www.realaustraliatravel.com/australian-traditions.html 2013-04-21 http://www.realaustraliatravel.com/Christmas-in-Australia.html 2013-04-21 http://www.realaustraliatravel.com/christmas-lights-brisbane.html 2013-04-22 http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/australia/christmas-day 2013-04-22 A letter from an exchange student in Australia. (2016, Apr 29).

Feminism Role in Photography Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Feminism Role in Photography - Essay Example The essay will focus on the roles women play in photography and determine if children sexual photography will ever be ethical. Women are often seen as sexual creatures globally when it comes to some of the roles they play in photography. It is a belief that sex sells, thus the need to portray it more often in attracting male or the opposite sex. Men are chauvinistic on women being behind the camera as it is, and they assume that women are not good at it. The notion has remained since the 20th century, but many women are changing these facts. In the 1950s, female photographers were about 10% in California; this figure, however, increased to about 20% in the 1970s (Warren 2006). Now, female photographers have significantly increased to about 40%. Women, however, have been taking different career roles in photography including final retouchers, print-finishers, camera operators, gallery owners and the most obvious one models (Warren 2006). The major role of women in photography is model ing. They are the people in front of the camera, making poses for the photographer’s needs (Ang 2002). The pictures produced by the photographers are never the real image of the person modeling, and this has often caused many controversies. The images, which portray a thin, tall and flawless woman, are normally not real thus a fairy tale. Edits on the images make women go through many struggles and troubles to lose weight and look flawless including surgeries (Aadland 1996). It is a major problem because of the women, who try to look like their counterparts in magazines, go through all the surgeries to be something that is not real. I recently did a photo shoot with an 11-year old girl who wanted it to be sexy. The poses were controversial and more adult like. My inspiration for the photo session was the shoot of Thylane Blondeau, an 11-year old model who featured in Vogue magazine. The images were deemed seductive, and many people disagreed. Children should be fully clothed when taking photographs like photographs that are commercial. Children should be fully clothed

Factors Contributed to the Great Famine in Ireland Research Paper

Factors Contributed to the Great Famine in Ireland - Research Paper Example The political, social and economic reasons for the famine have long been the subject of historical discussion and debate. The fact that from 1801, under the Act of Union, Ireland was governed as part of the United Kingdom, with executive power in the hands of British officials, is a damning reality and one that casts primary blame for this historically horrific event squarely on Britain. The role of in the tragedy cannot be denied. ...That an island which is said to be (following quote from the Act of Union, repeated in the Continental Congress of America Address from its inclusion in Mitchel’s The Last Conquest of Ireland )an integral part of the richest empire on the globe—and the most fertile portion of that empire;—with British Constitution, Habeas Corpus, Members of Parliament, and Trial by Jury—should in five years lose two and a half millions of its people (more than one-fourth) by hunger, and fever the consequence of hunger, and flight beyond sea to escape from hunger,—while that empire (Britain) of which it is said to be a part, was all the while advancing in wealth, prosperity, and comfort, at a faster pace than ever before ,—is a matter that seems to ask elucidation.2 Elucidation of the subject comes to a great degree from John Mitchel, political writer and Irish patriot whose The Last Conquest of Ireland provides valuable and extensive information to support the thesis that Britain, while not entirely responsible for the causes that created the famine, was largely responsible for the extent to which the Great Famine, as it is called, devastated the country. Other primary and secondary resources support the information covering the two major elements involving the British government that contributes powerful and devastating evidence of British nonchalance in the face of the tragedy, collusion with powerful entities.  

Brown V. Louisiana Essay Example for Free

Brown V. Louisiana Essay During the 1960s, many African-Americans believed that civil rights should become a national priority. Young civil rights activists brought their cause to the national stage and demanded the federal government assist them and help resolve the issues that plagued them. Many of them challenged segregation in the South by protesting at stores and schools that practiced segregation. Despite the efforts of these groups and Supreme Court rulings that ordered the desegregation of buses and bus stations, violence and prejudice against African-Americans in the South continued Meyer, F. S. , 1968). In the 1960s many things were off limits to African-Americans. They werent revered as equals and suffered greatly because of it. Theres an unfamiliar case to most that took place in Louisiana that helped shaped the use of public facilities for all people. This case is known as Brown v. Louisiana. The Audubon Regional Library in Clinton, Louisiana, Parish of East Feliciana did not serve blacks. Blacks, at that time, were expected to use one of two bookmobiles. The red bookmobile served whites and the blue bookmobile served blacks. On March 7, 1964, ive young African-American males entered the adult reading room and one of the men, Brown, requested a book called, The Story of the Negro, by Arna Bontemps. The assistant librarian checked the card catalogue and discovered that the library did not have the book. She told Brown that she would request it from the state library and he could either have it mailed to his home address or he could pick it up from the bookmobile. After the men had been given the news about the book they sat down quietly. After the men failed to leave the library, the assistant librarian requested that they go. They did not. Brown sat down while the others stood nearby. The assistant librarian then went to the head librarian who requested them to leave as well. Again, they did not. A few moments later, the sheriff arrived and requested that they leave again, and again, they did not. The sheriff arrested them and charged them with the intention to provoke a breach of peace and failure to leave a public building when ordered to do so (Coates, R. , 2005). The five men were tried and found guilty. Brown was sentenced to pay $150 for court costs or spend 90 days in Jail. The four other men were sentenced to $35 for court costs or 15 days in ail. Under Louisiana law, the convictions werent appealable therefore; their requests for discretionary reviews were denied. The Supreme Court granted certiorari. A certiorari is an extraordinary privilege injunction granted in cases that otherwise would not be entitled to review. In writing for the majority, Justice Fortas first examined whether the protesters could be convicted for refusing to leave the library. He concluded that they could not since their protest was peaceful and blacks could not be denied access since whites were allowed inside as well. He reviewed the onduct of the men and felt that this had no merit either. The state argued that the men were proving their intent to disturb the peace and upset the librarian. Justice Fortas concluded that the arrest was a violation of the mens First and Fourteenth Amendment rights that guarantee freedom of speech and assembly and the right to opposed this opinion and took to issue with the majoritys reasoning. He disagreed that the Constitution prohibits any state from making sit-ins or stand-ups in public libraries illegal. Second, Black argued that the previous breach of the peace cases in Louisiana differed from Brown v. Louisiana. Previously there had been several other situations where there were peaceful demonstrations over discriminatory practices. Garner v. Louisiana (1961) involved a sit-in at a lunch counter to protest service for whites only. In Taylor v. Louisiana (1962) blacks again protested the presence of bus depot that was for white customers only. In Coxv. Louisiana (1965) a man led a demonstration near the courthouse and Jail to protest the arrest of other demonstrations. Each of the protests, along with Brown v. Louisiana, was all orderly and peaceful and was over discriminatory practices that denied the protesters rights hat were guaranteed to them under the Constitution. Justice Black opposition was joined by three other Justices. They argued that the First Amendment did not guarantee to any person the right to use someone elses property even that owned by the government and dedicated to other purposes. On Wednesday, February 23, 1966 the decision was made; 5 votes for Brown and 4 against him (Coates, R. , 2005). The young men won! The Courts ruling in this case, along with the others, proved vital to the Civil Rights struggles and also to the Vietnam War protests that would follow. Indeed, without these rulings the 1960s and early 1970s may have been a completely different period in time, especially when it comes to the Civil Rights movement. In the last line of Justice Blacks opinion in Brown v. Louisiana he wrote: The holding in this case today makes it more necessary than ever that we stop and look more closely at where we are going (Meyer, F. S. , 1968). In conclusion, had it not been for demonstrations of this kind, and the Supreme Court granting certiorari there is a strong possibility that none of this would have ever taken place. Oftentimes, it is in a ime of pain and suffering that the Just shall prevail, and I believe this is no different. There is more work to do but with the Supreme Court being behind you, at least you know its not in vain.

Software Piracy and Copyright Laws: United States vs Vietnam Essay

Software Piracy and Copyright Laws: United States versus Vietnam I. Introduction "Software piracy is the unauthorized duplication, distribution or use of computer software". Five main types of software piracy exist: publisher patent and copyright infringement, industrial piracy, corporate piracy, reseller piracy, and home piracy. Software piracy is a large global issue, which has become a more pressing issue due to a number of reasons: software is now easier to distribute on a global scale due to global access to the internet; culturally, people have not been taught that copying software is like stealing; a physical component does not need to be manufactured; and finally individuals state that they cannot afford the high cost of software and state that they would not use the pirated software if they had to pay for it.1 Software piracy is being dealt with on a global level by implementing global copyright laws. However, to date, no completely successful way has been implemented to deal with copyright issues. I believe that software piracy is unethical, but copyright laws need a fine balance between the rights of the copyright holders and the fair use rights of the individual. The Berne convention implements copyright laws that many nations of the world have signed. The US has taken extreme measures to protect copyright with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA not only protects copyright owners, but it has been used to infringe on fair use and has promoted anti-competitive actions. Vietnam is on the other extreme. It has finally started to implement and enforce copyright laws, but due to cultural, economic, and legal views, it still has one of the highest software piracy rates in the world... ...ikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works>. Coping With the Berne Convention, 1989, Sheldon & Mak, May 27 2004, <http://www.usip.com/articles/bernec.htm>. Shelley Warwick, Is Copyright Ethical? An Examination of the Theories, Laws and Practices Regarding the Private Ownership of Intellectual Work in the United States, June 4-5 1999, Intellectual Property and Technology Forum, May 27 2004, <http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/commentary/content/1999060505.html>. Moral Rights, March 22 2004, Wikipedia, May 27 2004, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights>. Michael C. McFarland, Intellectual Property, Information, and the Common Good, June 4-5 1999, Intellectual Property and Technology Forum, May 27 2004, <http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/commentary/content/1999060503.html>.

How to Say Nothing in Five Hundred Word Essay

Paul McHenry Roberts (1917-1967) taught college English for over twenty years, first at San Jose State College and later at Cornell University. He wrote numerous books on linguistics, including Understanding Grammar (1954), Patterns of English (1956), and Understanding English (1958). Freshman composition, like everything else, has its share of fashions. In the 195Os, when this article was written, the most popular argument raging among student essayists was the proposed abolition of college football. With the greater social consciousness of the early ’60s, the topic of the day became the morality of capital punishment. Topics may change, but the core principles of good writing remain constant, and this essay as become something of a minor classic in explaining them. Be concrete, says Roberts; get to the point; express your opinions colorfully. Refreshingly, he even practices what he preaches. His essay is humorous, direct, and almost salty in summarizing the working habits that all good prose writers must cultivate. — Editors’ note from JoRay McCuen & Anthony C. Winkler’s Readings for Writers , 3rd ed., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980 It’s Friday afternoon. and you have almost survived another week of classes. You are just looking forward dreamily to the weekend when the English instructor says: â€Å"For Monday you will turn in a five hundred-word composition on college football.† Well, that puts a good hole in the weekend. You don’t have any strong views on college football one way or the other. You get rather excited during the season and go to all the home games and find it rather more fun than not. On the other hand, the class has been reading Robert Hutchins in the anthology and perhaps Shaw’s â€Å"Eighty-Yard Run,† and from the class discussion you have got the idea that the instructor thinks college football is for the birds. You are no fool. You can figure out what side to take. After dinner you get out the portable typewriter that you got for high school graduation. You might as well get it over with and enjoy Saturday and Sunday. Five hundred words is about two double -spaced pages with normal margins. You put in a sheet of paper, think up a title, and you’re off: WHY COLLEGE FOOTBALL SHOULD BE ABOLISHED College football should be abolished because it’s bad for the school and also for the players. The players are so busy practicing that they don’t have any time for their studies. This, you feel, is a mighty good start. The only trouble is that it’s only thirty-two words. You still have four hundred and sixty-eight to go, and you’ve pretty well exhausted the subject. It comes to you that you do your best thinking in the morning, so you put away the typewriter and go to the movies. But the next morning you have to do your washing and some math problems, and in the afternoon you go to the game. The English instructor turns up too, and you wonder if you’ve taken the right side after all. Saturday night you have a date, and Sunday morning you have to go to church. (You can’t let English assignments interfere with your religion.) What with one thing and another, it’s ten o’clock Sunday night before you get out the typewriter again. Y ou make a pot of coffee and start to fill out your views on college football. Put a little meat on the bones. WHY COLLEGE FOOTBALL SHOULD BE ABOLISHED In my opinion, it seems to me that college football should be abolished. The reason why I think this to be true is because I feel that football is bad for the colleges in nearly every respect. As Robert Hutchins says in his article in our anthology in which he discusses college football, it would be better if the colleges had race horses and had races with one another, because then the horses would not have to attend classes. I firmly agree with Mr. Hutchins on this point, and I am sure that many other students would agree too. One reason why it seems to me that college football is bad is that it has become too commercial. In the olden times when people played football just for the fun of it, maybe college football was all right, but they do not play college football just for the fun of it now as they used to in the old days. Nowadays college football is what you might call a big business. Maybe this is not true at all schools, and I don’t think it is especially true here at State, but certainly this is the case at most colleges and universities in America nowadays, as Mr. Hutchins points out in his very interesting article. Actually the coaches and alumni go around to the high schools and offer the high school stars large salaries to come to their colleges and play football for them. There was one case where a high school star was offered a convertible if he would play football for a certain college. Another reason for abolishing college football is that it is bad for the players. They do not have time to get a college education, because they are so busy playing football. A football player has to practice every afternoon from three to six and then he is so tired that he can’t concentrate on his studies. He just feels like dropping off to sleep after dinner, and then the next day he goes to his classes without having studied and maybe he fails the test. (Good ripe stuff so far, but you’re still a hundred and fifty-one words from home. One more push.) Also I think college football is bad for the colleges and the universities because not very many students get to participate in it. Out of a college of ten thousand students only seventy-five or a hundred play football, if that many. Football is what you might call a spectator sport. That means that most people go to watch it but do not play it themselves. (Four hundred and fifteen. Well, you still have the conclusion, and when you retype it, you can make the margins a little wider.) These are the reasons why I agree with Mr. Hutchins that college football should be abolished in American colleges and universities. On Monday you turn it in, moderately hopeful, and on Friday it comes back marked â€Å"weak in content† and sporting a big â€Å"D.† This essay is exaggerated a little, not much. The English instructor will recognize it as reasonably typical of what an assignment on college football will bring in. He knows that nearly half of the class will contrive in five hundred words to say that college football is too commercial and bad for the players. Most of the other half will inform him that college football builds character and prepares one for life and brings prestige to the school. As he reads paper after paper all saying the same thing in almost the same words, all bloodless, five hundred words dripping out of nothing, he wonders how he allowed himself to get trapped into teaching English when he might have had a happy and interesting life as an electrician or a confidence man. Well, you may ask, what can you do about it? The subject is one on which you have few convictions and little information. Can you be expected to make a dull subject interesting? As a matter of fact, this is precisely what you are expected to do. This is the writer’s essential task. All subjects, except sex, are dull until somebody makes them interesting. The writer’s job is to find the argument, the approach, the angle, the wording that will take the reader with him. This is seldom easy, and it is particularly hard in subjects that have been much discussed: College Football, Fraternities, Popular Music, Is Chivalry Dead?, and the like. You will feel that there is nothing you can do with such subjects except repeat the old bromides. But there are some things you can do which will make your papers, if not throbbingly alive, at least less insufferably tedious than they might otherwise be. AVOID THE OBVIOUS CONTENT Say the assignment is college football. Say that you’ve decided to be against it. Begin by putting down the arguments that come to your mind: it is too commercial, it takes the students’ minds off their studies, it is hard on the players, it makes the university a kind of circus instead of an intellectual center, for most schools it is financially ruinous. Can you think of any more arguments, just off hand? All right. Now when you write your paper, make sure that you don’ t use any of the material on this list. If these are the points that leap to your mind, they will leap to everyone else’s too, and whether you get a â€Å"C† or a â€Å"D† may depend on whether the instructor reads your paper early when he is fresh and tolerant or late, when the sentence â€Å"In my opinion, college football has become too commercial,† inexorably repeated, has bought him to the brink of lunacy. Be against college football for some reason or reasons of your own. If they are keen and perceptive ones, that’s splendid. But even if they are trivial or foolish or indefensible, you are still ahead so long as they are not everybody else’s reasons too. Be against it because the colleges don’t spend enough money on it to make it worthwhile, because it is bad for the characters of the spectators, because the players are forced to attend classes, because the football stars hog all the beautiful women, because it competes with baseball and is therefore un-American and possibly Communist-inspired. There are lots of more or less unused reasons for being against college football. Sometimes it is a good idea to sum up and dispose of the trite and conventional points before going on to your own. This has the advantage of indicating to the reader that you are going to be neither trite nor conventional. Something like this: We are often told that college football should be abolished because it has become too commercial or because it is bad for the players. These arguments are no doubt very cogent, but they don’t really go to the heart of the matter. Then you go to the heart of the matter. TAKE THE LESS USUAL SIDE One rather simple way of getting into your paper is to take the side of the argument that most of the citizens will want to avoid. If the assignment is an essay on dogs, you can, if you choose, explain that dogs are faithful and lovable companions, intelligent, useful as guardians of the house and protectors of children, indispensable in police work — in short, when all is said and done, man’s best friends. Or you can suggest that those big brown eyes conceal, more often than not, a vacuity of mind and an inconstancy of purpose; that the dogs you have known most intimately have been mangy, ill-tempered brutes, incapable of instruction; and that only your nobility of mind and fear of arrest prevent you from kicking the flea-ridden animals when you pass them on the street. Naturally personal convictions will sometimes dictate your approach. If the assigned subject is â€Å"Is Methodism Rewarding to the Individual?† and you are a pious Methodist, you have really no choice. But few assigned subjects, if any, will fall in this category. Most of them will lie in broad areas of discussion with much to be said on both sides. They are intellectual exercises, and it is legitimate to argue now one way and now another, as debaters do in similar circumstances. Always take the that looks to you hardest, least defensible. It will almost always turn out to be easier to write interestingly on that side. This general advice applies where you have a choice of subjects. If you are to choose among â€Å"The Value of Fraternities† and â€Å"My Favorite High School Teacher† and â€Å"What I Think About Beetles,† by all means plump for the beetles. By the time the instructor gets to your paper, he will be up to his ears in tedious tales about a French teacher at Bloombury High and assertions about how fraternities build character and prepare one for life. Your views on beetles, whatever they are, are bound to be a refreshing change. Don’t worry too much about figuring out what the instructor thinks about the subject so that you can cuddle up with him. Chances are his views are no stronger than yours. If he does have convictions and you oppose him, his problem is to keep from grading you higher than you deserve in order to show he is not biased. This doesn’t mean that you should always cantankerously dissent from what the instructor says; that gets tiresome too. And if the subject assigned is â€Å"My Pet Peeve,† do not begin, â€Å"My pet peeve is the English instructor who assigns papers on ‘my pet peeve.†Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ This was still funny during the War of 1812, but it has sort of lost its edge since then. It is in general good manners to avoid personalities. SLIP OUT OF ABSTRACTION If you will study the essay on college football [near the beginning of this essay], you will perceive that one reason for its appalling dullness is that it never gets down to particulars. It is just a series of not very glittering generalities: â€Å"football is bad for the colleges,† â€Å"it has become too commercial,† â€Å"football is big business,† â€Å"it is bad for the players,† and so on. Such round phrases thudding against the reader’s brain are unlikely to convince him, though they may well render him unconscious. If you want the reader to believe that college football is bad for the players, you have to do more than say so. You have to display the evil. Take your roommate, Alfred Simkins, the second-string center. Picture poor old Alfy coming home from football practice every evening, bruised and aching, agonizingly tired, scarcely able to shovel the mashed potatoes into his mouth. Let us see him staggering up to the room, getting out his econ textbook, peering desperately at it with his good eye, falling asleep and failing the test in the morning. Let us share his unbearable tension as Saturday draws near. Will he fail, be demoted, lose his monthly allowance, be forced to return to the coal mines? And if he succeeds, what will be his reward? Perhaps a slight ripple of applause when the thirdstring center replaces him, a moment of elation in the locker room if the team wins, of despair if it loses. What will he look back on when he graduates from college? Toil and torn ligaments. And what will be his future? He is not good enough for pro football, and he is too obscure and weak in econ to succeed in stocks and bonds. College football is tearing the heart from Alfy Simkins and, when it finishes with him, will callously toss aside the shattered hulk. This is no doubt a weak enough argument for the abolition of college football, but it is a sight better than saying, in three or four variations, that college football (in your opinion) is bad for the players. Look at the work of any professional writer and notice how constantly he is moving from the generality, the abstract statement, to the concrete example, the facts and figures, the illustrations. If he is writing on juvenile delinquency, he does not just tell you that juveniles are (it seems to him) delinquent and that (in his opinion) something should be done about it. He shows you juveniles being delinquent, tearing up movie theatres in Buffalo, stabbing high school principals in Dallas, smoking marijuana in Palo Alto. And more than likely he is moving toward some specific remedy, not just a general wringing of the hands. It is no doubt possible to be too concrete, too illustrative or anecdotal, but few inexperienced writers err this way. For most the soundest advice is to be seeking always for the picture, to be always turning general remarks into seeable examples. Don’t say, â€Å"Sororities teach girls the social graces.† Say, â€Å"Sorority life teaches a girl how to carry on a conversation while pouring tea, without sloshing the tea into the saucer.† Don’t say, â€Å"I like certain kinds of popular music very much.† Say, â€Å"Whenever I hear Gerber Sprinklittle play ‘Mississippi Man’ on the trombone, my socks creep up my ankles.† GET RID OF OBVIOUS PADDING The student toiling away at his weekly English theme is too often tormented by a figure: five hundred words. How, he asks himself, is he to achieve this staggering total? Obviously by never using one word when he can somehow work in ten. He is therefore seldom content with a plain statement like â€Å"Fast driving is dangerous.† This has only four words in it. He takes thought, and the sentence becomes: In my opinion, fast driving is dangerous. Better, but he can do better still: In my opinion, fast driving would seem to be rather dangerous. If he is really adept, it may come out: In my humble opinion. though I do not claim to be an expert on this complicated subject, test driving, in most circumstances, would seem to be rather dangerous in many respects, or at least so it would seem to me. Thus four words have been turned into forty, and not an iota of content has been added. Now this is a way to go about reaching five hundred words, and if you are content with a â€Å"D† grade, it is as good a way as any. But if you aim higher, you must work differently. Instead of stuffing your sentences with straw, you must try steadily to get rid of the padding, to make your sentences lean and tough. If you are really working at it, your first draft will greatly exceed the required total, and then you will work it down, thus: It is thought in some quarters that fraternities do not contribute as much as might be expected to campus life. Some people think that fraternities contribute little to campus life. The average doctor who practices in small towns or in the country must toil night and day to heal the sick. Most country doctors work long hours. When I was a little girl, I suffered from shyness and embarrassment in the presence of others. I was a shy little girl. It is absolutely necessary for the person employed as a marine fireman to give the matter of steam pressure his undivided attention at all times. The fireman has to keep his eye on the steam gauge. You may ask how you can arrive at five hundred words at this rate. Simple. You dig up more real content. Instead of taking a couple of obvious points off the surface of the topic and then circling warily around them for six paragraphs, you work in and explore, figure out the details. You illustrate. You say that fast driving is dangerous, and then you prove it. How long does it take to stop a car at forty and at eighty? How far can you see at night? What happens when a tire blows? What happens in a head-on collision at fifty miles an hour? Pretty soon your paper will be full of broken glass and blood and headless torsos, and reaching five hundred words will not really be a problem. CALL A FOOL A FOOL Some of the padding in freshman themes is to be blamed not on anxiety about the word minimum but on excessive timidity. The student writes, â€Å"In my opinion, the principal of my high school acted in ways that I believe every unbiased person would have to call foolish.† This isn’t exactly what he means. What he means is, â€Å"My high school principal was a fool.† If he was a fool, call him a fool. Hedging the thing about with â€Å"in-myopinion’s† and â€Å"it-seems-to-me’s† and â€Å"as-I-see-it’s† and â€Å"at-least-from-my-point-ofview’s† gains you nothing. Delete these phrases whenever they creep into your paper. The student’s tendency to hedge stems from a modesty that in other circumstances would be commendable. He is, he realizes, young and inexperienced, and he half suspects that he is dopey and fuzzyminded beyond the average. Probably only too true. But it doesn’t help to announce your incompetence six times in every paragraph. Decide what you want to say and say it as vigorously as possible, without apology and in plain words. Linguistic diffidence can take various forms. One is what we call euphemism. This is the tendency to call a spade â€Å"a certain garden implement† or women’s underwear â€Å"unmentionables.† It is stronger in some eras than others and in some people than others but it always operates more or less in subjects that are touchy or taboo: death, sex, madness, and so on. Thus we shrink from saying â€Å"He died last night† but say instead â€Å"passed away,† â€Å"left us,† â€Å"joined his Maker,† â€Å"went to his reward.† Or we try to take off the tension with a lighter clichà ©: â€Å"kicked the bucket,† â€Å"cashed in his chips,† â€Å"handed in his dinner pail.† We have found all sorts of ways to avoid saying mad: â€Å"mentally ill,† â€Å"touched,† â€Å"not quite right upstairs,† â€Å"feebleminded,† â€Å"innocent,† â€Å"simple,† â€Å"off his trolley,† â€Å"not in his right mind.† Even such a now plain word as insane began as a euphemism with the meaning â€Å"not healthy.† Modern science, particularly psychology, contributes many polysyllables in which we can wrap our thoughts and blunt their force. To many writers there is no such thing as a bad schoolboy. Schoolboys are maladjusted or unoriented or misunderstood or in the need of guidance or lacking in continued success toward satisfactory integration of the personality as a social unit, but they are never bad. Psychology no doubt makes us better men and women, more sympathetic and tolerant, but it doesn’t make writing any easier. Had Shakespeare been confronted with psychology, â€Å"To be or not to be† might have come out, â€Å"To continue as a social unit or not to do so. That is the personality problem. Whether ’tis a better sign of integration at the conscious level to display a psychic tolerance toward the maladjustments and repressions induced by one’s lack of orientation in one’s environment or — † But Hamlet would never have finished the soliloquy. Writing in the modern world, you cannot altogether avoid modern jargon. Nor, in an effort to get away from euphemism, should you salt your paper with four-letter words. But you can do much if you will mount guard against those roundabout phrases, those echoing polysyllables that tend to slip into your writing to rob it of its crispness and force. BEWARE OF PAT EXPRESSIONS Other things being equal, avoid phrases like â€Å"other things being equal.† Those sentences that come to you whole, or in two or three doughy lumps, are sure to be bad sentences. They are no creation of yours but pieces of common thought floating in the community soup. Pat expressions are hard, often impossible, to avoid, because they come too easily to be noticed and seem too necessary to be dispensed with. No writer avoids them altogether, but good writers avoid them more often than poor writers. By â€Å"pat expressions† we mean such tags as â€Å"to all practical intents and purposes,† â€Å"the pure and simple truth,† â€Å"from where I sit,† â€Å"the time of his life,† â€Å"to the ends of the earth,† â€Å"in the twinkling of an eye,† â€Å"as sure as you’re born,† â€Å"over my dead body,† â€Å"under cover of darkness,† â€Å"took the easy way out,† â€Å"when all is said and done,† â€Å"told him time and time again,† â€Å"parted the best of friends,† â€Å"stand up and be counted,† â€Å"gave him the best years of her life,† â€Å"worked her fingers to the bone.† Like other clichà ©s, these expressions were once forceful. Now we should use them only when we can’t possibly think of anything else. Some pat expressions stand like a wall between the writer and thought. Such a one is â€Å"the American way of life.† Many student writers feel that when they have said that something accords with the American way of life or does not they have exhausted the subject. Actually, they have stopped at the highest level of abstraction. The American way of life is the complicated set of bonds between a hundred and eighty million ways. All of us know this when we think about it, but the tag phrase too often keeps us from thinking about it. So with many another phrase dear to the politician: â€Å"this great land of ours,† â€Å"the man in the street,† â€Å"our national heritage.† These may prove our patriotism or give a clue to our political beliefs, but otherwise they add nothing to the paper except words. COLORFUL WORDS The writer builds with words, and no builder uses a raw material more slippery and elusive and treacherous. A writer’s work is a constant struggle to get the right word in the right place, to find that particular word that will convey his meaning exactly, that will persuade the reader or soothe him or startle or amuse him. He never succeeds altogether – sometimes he feels that he scarcely succeeds at all — but such successes as he has are what make the thing worth doing. There is no book of rules for this game. One progresses through everlasting experiment on the basis of ever-widening experience. There are few useful generalizations that one can make about words as words, but there are perhaps a few. Some words are what we call â€Å"colorful.† By this we mean that they are calculated to produce a picture or induce an emotion. They are dressy instead of plain, specific instead of general, loud instead of soft. Thus, in place of â€Å"Her heart beat,† we may write, â€Å"her heart pounded, throbbed, fluttered, danced.† Instead of â€Å"He sat in his chair,† we may say, â€Å"he lounged, sprawled, coiled.† Instead of â€Å"It was hot,† we may say, â€Å"It was blistering, sultry, muggy, suffocating, steamy, wilting.† However, it should not be supposed that the fancy word is always better. Often it is as well to write â€Å"Her heart beat† or â€Å"It was hot† if that is all it did or all it was. Ages differ in how they like their prose. The nineteenth century liked it rich and smoky. The twentieth has usually preferred it lean and cool. The twentieth century writer, like all writers, is forever seeking the exact word, but he is wary of sounding feverish. He tends to pitch it low, to understate it, to throw it away. He knows that if he gets too colorful, the audience is likely to giggle. See how this strikes you: â€Å"As the rich, golden glow of the sunset died away along the eternal western hills, Angela’s limpid blue eyes looked softly and trustingly into Montague’s flashing brown ones, and her heart pounded like a drum in time with the joyous song surging in her soul.† Some people like that sort of thing, but most modern readers would say, â€Å"Good grief,† and turn on the television. COLORED WORDS Some words we would call not so much colorful as colored — that is, loaded with associations, good or bad. All words — except perhaps structure words — have associations of some sort. We have said that the meaning of a word is the sum of the contexts in which it occurs. When we hear a word, we hear with it an echo of all the situations in which we have heard it before. In some words, these echoes are obvious and discussible. The word mother, for example, has, for most people, agreeable associations. When you hear mother you probably think of home, safety, love, food, and various other pleasant things. If one writes, â€Å"She was like a mother to me,† he gets an effect which he would not get in â€Å"She was like an aunt to me.† The advertiser makes use of the associations of mother by working it in when he talks about his product. The politician works it in when he talks about himself. So also with such words as home, liberty, fireside, contentment, patriot, tenderness, sacrifice, childlike, manly, bluff, limpid. All of these words are loaded with associations that would be rather hard to indicate in a straightforward definition. There is more than a literal difference between â€Å"They sat around the fireside† and â€Å"They sat around the stove.† They might have been equally warm and happy around the stove, but fireside suggests leisure, grace, quiet tradition, congenial company, and stove does not. Conversely, some words have bad associations. Mother suggests pleasant things, but mother-in-law does not. Many mothers-in-law are heroically lovable and some mothers drink gin all day and beat their children insensible, but these facts of life are beside the point. The point is that mother sounds good and mother-in-law does not. Or consider the word intellectual. This would seem to be a complimentary term, but in point of fact it is not, for it has picked up associations of impracticality and ineffectuality and general dopiness. So also such words as liberal, reactionary, Communist, socialist, capitalist, radical, schoolteacher, truck driver; operator, salesman, huckster, speculator. These convey meaning on the literal level, but beyond that — sometimes, in some places — they convey contempt on the part of the speaker. The question of whether to use loaded words or not depends on what is being written. The scientist, the scholar, try to avoid them; for the poet, the advertising writer, the public speaker, they are standard equipment. But every writer should take care that they do not substitute for thought. If you write, â€Å"Anyone who thinks that is nothing but a Socialist (or Communist or capitalist)† you have said nothing except that you don’t like people who think that, and such remarks are effective only with the most naive readers. It is always a bad mistake to think your readers more naive than they really are. COLORLESS WORDS But probably most student writers come to grief not with words that are colorful or those that are colored but with those that have no color at all. A pet example is nice, a word we would find it hard to dispense with in casual conversation but which is no longer capable of adding much to a description. Colorless words are those of such general meaning that in a particular sentence they mean nothing. Slang adjectives like cool (â€Å"That’s real cool†) tend to explode all over the language. They are applied to everything, lose their original force, and quickly die. Beware also of nouns of very general meaning, like circumstances, cases, instances, aspects, factors, relationships, attitudes, eventualities, etc. In most circumstances you will find that those cases of writing which contain too many instances of words like these will in this and other aspects have factors leading to unsatisfactory relationships with the reader resulting in unfavorable attitudes on his part and perhaps other eventualities, like a grade of â€Å"D.† Notice also what etc. means. It means â€Å"I’d like to make this list longer, but I can’t think of any more examples.†

The Brave One Essay

Movie: The Brave One Actress: Jody Foster playing Erica Bane In The Brave One, Jody Foster plays Erica Bane she is the host of a radio show call Streetwalk. The movie starts out showing her happy. She is planning her wedding, picking out colors for invitations. She attends a friend's art show. He fiance show up to surprise her after he says he can't come. They walk home together arm in arm. They then get their German Shepard, Curtis, and take him for a walk in the park. They throw a ball and Curtis runs into a tunnel to go get it but doesn't return.After a few minutes they go to look for him. In the tunnel there are two mean with a video camera and they are holding their dog. Erica and her husband ask for the dog back but they two men start to taunt them. They grab at her and begin to hit them both very violently. They beat them with a metal pipe and all the time they are video taping and the dog is barking. Erica wakes up in the hospital where they tell her that her fiance is dead a nd they have already buried him. She has been out for several days. There are detectives at the hospital viewing a body of a murder victim.They talk to the dead woman daughter who is in the waiting room and her step father shows up. The detectives ask Erica to look at some mug shot and what she can remember but it hard for her to talk about and she doesn't remember much. She returns home and starts having flashbacks of the attack. She wakes up in the middle of the night and takes some kind of pills. A friend calls on the answering machine and asks to take her out to do something but she just ignores the call. When she leaves the apartment, I child on a skate board startles her and she seems agitated.Erica then goes to the police station to see about her case and she is told to wait. After a while she leaves and you get the sense that she feels helpless. She goes and tries to buy a gun. The man at the store tells her that there is a thirty day waiting period. To this she replies that she won't survive thirty days. She gets a gun from some man and he teaches her how to use it. She starts smoking. The detective from the hospital is trying to keep the little girl away from her step father because he is trying to make a case against him and think that he killed the little girls mother because she was going to testify against him.A little later in the movie Erica is in a store and the clerk gets shot. She is in the back and the shooter didn't know she was there until her phone rang. He looked for her and she shot him before he could shoot her. She is also having trouble at work and talks on her show about how she fears New York, the city she once loved, and wonders if she will ever be the person she once was. She is riding the subway and some men start to harass another passenger. He gets off but she stays in her seat. They then start to harass her and she shoots them also.She notices that her hands aren't shaking anymore. She knows what she is doing is wrong and th at she didn't have to shoot them. She returns to the scene after police have arrived and she talks to the detective telling him that she is interviewing him for her show. He recognizes her from the hospital. The police come up with a vigilante theory. Erica becomes friends with the detective and she does a piece for her show about him. She walks alone at night almost seeming to look for trouble and finds herself in a few more situations where she kills people who mean to harm her or someone else.During this time she has become close friends with the detective and he kinda suspects that it might be her committing these crimes. He tells her that they found a ring that was stolen from her during her attack and she looks for the men following a lead from the pawn shop where he ring was found. She finds them and kills them. The detective responds to the shots and he finds her there. He tells her to take the dead man's gun and shoot him in the shoulder and get out of there. He doesn't tur n her in. She gets her dog and the movie ends.I think that Erica Bane has Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. From my lecture notes someone most present at least one thing from each of the following categories. 1. A life threatening event 2. A response the event-helplessness or fear, recurring thoughts about the event or flashbacks, or nightmares 3. Avoidance- problems with memory, decreased interest in activity, foreshortened future, a decrease in affect, and or a detachment from other people through derealization, depersonalization, or dissociation 4.Physical symptoms of arousal such as sleep problems, irritably/anger, problems concentrating, exaggerated startle response, and or hypervigalence Erica's symptoms: -Life threatening event- being attacked and having her fiance killed -She avoids talking about what has happened with the cops saying that its hard for her to talk about -After returning home and throughout the movie she has flashbacks of her attack -She has trouble sleeping an d is taking some type of medicine when she wakes in the night -She doesn't answer calls from friends who want to do things with her -She spooks easily, kid on skate board She buys a gun saying that she has to have it now that she won't survive 30 days -She starts smoking and when a neighbor tells her that it will kill her she says that she doesn't care -She says that she feels like there is a stranger inside her -She has problems at work -Goes out walking the streets alone at night looking for trouble putting herself in more danger

Civil Rights Act essays

Civil Rights Act essays Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "bans discrimination, including sex-based discrimination, by trade unions, schools, or employers that are involved in interstate commerce or that do business with the The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in a broad array of private conduct including public accommodations, governmental services and education. One section of the Act, referred to as Title VII, prohibits employment discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion and national origin (Milestones 2). The Act prohibits discrimination against the aforementioned protected classes in the areas of recruitment, hiring, wages, assignment, promotions, benefits, discipline, discharge, layoffs and almost every aspect of employment (Milestones No Date). Title VII also created the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a five-member, bipartisan group. The Commissioners, no more than three of whom may be from the same political party, are appointed to five-year terms by the President after the Senate's confirmation (Milestones 2). The Chair of the Agency appoints its General Counsel. EEOC opened its doors for business in 1965, one year after the enactment of Employers under Title VII's jurisdiction include trade unions, schools, or employers that are involved in interstate commerce or that do business with the federal government (Britannica 1)." The EEOC law also specifically covers employment agencies (Milestones 2). The origins of the passage of Title VII can be considered to have begun in 1787 with Article VI of the U.S. Constitution which prohibited religious discrimination. Then, in 1864, the 13th and 14th Amendments were added which prohibited slavery and provided equal protection to all US citizens. In 1883, the Civil Service Act substituted merit for politics which thereby eliminated the "spoils system" (Milestones 1). ...

Discuss this quote in relation to Nelson Mandelas inaugural address Essay

Discuss this quote in relation to Nelson Mandelas inaugural address - Essay Example Mandela tactfully addressed a number of issues that faced the country in the past while attempting to strike a balance between the minority white and the majority blacks. The speeches raises pays a particular appeal to the pathos of the audience, an aspect that helps reduce the tension and emotions that could have arose. Mandela points out a number of issues that South Africa requires including unity, tolerance, and developing the image of the country. In his address, Nelson Mandela uses a number of linguistic devices to communicate to the people of South Africa when delivering his first inaugural ceremony in the University of Pretoria. The fact that he is not a native English speaker demonstrates an accent in his pronunciation of the English words. The punctuation of his speech is quite impressive. In addition, he demonstrates good command of language and uses a figurative language that has a good choice of semantics and lexical devices. The choice of words in every sentence has been carefully done in order to convey a specific message to the South Africans as well as the rest of the world. His speech demonstrates a dedication to unite South Africans in order that the world may have a view of what it means be have order, equality, justice, and freedom. The linguistic mastery of Mandela in this speech confirms Boussoffara-Omar’s (2011) saying that, â€Å"linguistic choices and discursive practices are never ‘value-fr ee’ or neutral, they are always situated in histories, whether they are personal, local or global†. In the inaugural speech, Mandela is very systematic in the way he presents issues. The first thing is that he presents a greeting that acknowledges all the participants in a special way. He refers to them using highly dignified words, â€Å"majesties, highnesses, distinguished guests, comrades, and friends.† This opening statement gives a special appreciation to the South Africans as well as the other individuals from the

An analysis of Edgar Allan Poes Annabel Lee Research Paper

An analysis of Edgar Allan Poes Annabel Lee - Research Paper Example This all-encompassing love filled Annabel Lee’s mind when she was still alive as stated in the line, â€Å"And this maiden she lived with no other thought/ Than to love and be loved by me† (Poe, â€Å"Annabel Lee,† lines 5-6). The line clearly states that there was nothing else that Annabel Lee thought of other than this love the author had for her. Although this may simply be a mere exaggeration on the part of the poet, still the line emphasizes the greatness of such a love and the idea that this love probably inspired most of Annabel Lee’s daily life prior to her death. Furthermore, this love shared by Annabel Lee and the poet when the former was still alive was one shared mutually. All that Annabel Lee thought of was â€Å"to love and be loved† by the poet (6), which means that she did want to show him her love but at the same time, she expected him to do the same to her. In short, this love was not one of a sacrifice where only one would love th e other. Moreover, Poe affirms this mutual love when he says, â€Å"But we loved with a love that was more than love† (9). The first mention of the word â€Å"love† was the great love the author believed he and Annabel Lee shared while the second mention of the word â€Å"love† was somehow the kind of mediocre love he believed was shared by other people. Although, in the second stanza, there was a hint of childishness in the love that the poet shared with Annabel Lee for â€Å"I was a child and she was a child† (7), Poe assures the reader that this is nothing childish. He specifically counters this argument regarding childish love in the fifth stanza as he says, â€Å"But our love was stronger by far than the love/ Of those who were older than we-/ of many far wiser than we-† (27-28). From this line, the reader is made to believe that both the poet and Annabel Lee could love better and so much more than even the old and the wise. Furthermore, it wa s to be proven later on in the poem that indeed this love is something extraordinary and greater than death. This great, all-encompassing love is indeed put to the test when â€Å"A wind blew out of a cloud,/ [and chilled] my beautiful Annabel Lee† (15-16). The death is the test of their love, but far from this idea of a test, the poet believes that this is more of a result of envy on the part of fate, represented by the angels: â€Å"The angels, not half so happy in heaven,/ Went envying her and me-† (21-22). The envy must have been caused by the great pride both the poet and Annabel Lee shared when it came to their love when the latter was still alive. Nevertheless, although the reader may not be able to distinguish whether the poet’s love for the dead Annabel Lee is one brought about by pride or true love, it remains clear that his love for someone dead is just all the same as the one when she was still alive. Although there is no more clue as to whether this love is still mutually shared by the poet and the dead Annabel Lee, this love remains to be strong. Poe proves this by stating his convictions in the line, â€Å"And neither the angels in heaven above,/ Nor the demons down under the sea,/ Can ever dissever my soul from the soul/ Of the beautiful Annabel Lee† (30-33). The mention of the word â€Å"soul† may suggest suicide on the part of the poet but it may