Music and no music condition Essay

The use of music seems to be a good way of operationalising the IV as many people do learn to the sound of music so therefore the difference between the music and no music condition should be marked. Also, getting the participants to write down the words is a good way of measuring the DV as it means it is easy to collect and analyse the data.  The study itself was quite simple and it seemed to measure what effects music has on learning. The independent variable was manipulated in such a way that it was hard for there to be anyway the results could have been affected significantly. Also because the measurement method was very simple there isn’t a chance that the results could be interpreted in the wrong way. As the study was a laboratory experiment it doesn’t have as high validity as a field experiment. Although the participants were not in a strange environment, the fact that they knew they were being studied may lower the ecological validity of the study.  Leading on from the fact that the study might have bad ecological validity, there is also the problem of the study having bad participant reactivity. Seeing as they know they are being studied and they know they have to learn the list of words given to them, they may try much harder than they normally would in their everyday life. There is the factor of social desirability and how some participants may deliberately try to recall fewer words. Improving Validity  Although it would be very difficult and expensive it could be possible to take the study outside the laboratory to increase the ecological validity of the study. You could monitor the participants while they are learning for something at home and while they are playing their own music in their rooms. They could then be tested unknowingly at school by one of their reachers.  However, even if these changes were made, the results would probably still stay the same. It has been proved before by numerous studies done by different scientists that music does help when trying to learn. This is why students are encouraged to listen to wordless music when revising for exams. These changes would also help improve participant reactivity if they are studied in a familiar environment. It would give them a sense of security and the need to look ‘cool’ is not needed anymore and there is no extra pressure put on them to learn because they don’t have the feeling they are being examined.  So, these changes could actually change the results slightly if only with a few participants. It might be found that there is higher recall in both conditions though but the difference may still stay the same. Reliability  The study is very easy to replicate as there is many references to other studies similar to it. Also because the study is quite simple in itself and very cheap to do there are very rarely any problems in recreating it for different purposes.  One possible confounding variable was introduced by the fact that there were four researchers in the room at the time of the study and they all knew the hypotheses. They may have tried give the participants help in recalling the words by giving hints and clues so that the results were more conclusive. This may have led to unreliable comparisons between conditions. As the study was a laboratory experiment it meant the researchers had good control over the study. The words that were chosen were all unambiguous so the participants would not have interpreted them in different ways. Also the test had been severely standardised. The words were shown on an over head projector so they were all looking at the same thing when learning was taking place. Also the testing was completed in the same room and at the same time of day for each condition so the participants were not feeling more tired in one condition than the other. Improving reliability  The only possible way to improve reliability was to keep researcher contact to a minimum or have a person in the room that was unaware of the hypothesis so they couldn’t alter the study in any way. This would be difficult though because once they are in the room it does become quite obvious what the study is about.  This could be controlled for by using an outside civilian to be the one person giving the participants instructions on what they have to do. There could be one person chosen for each condition so that they don’t guess what the study is about.  Even if these changes did increase the reliability of the study the only difference they might make to the results is to decrease the differences found between the two conditions.

Elizabeth Short Case

The Black Dahlia Judge Eckert Judicial Function Pueblo Community College Abstract In the following paper I will be sharing the Elizabeth Short (Black Dahlia) case that took place in Los Angeles, in 1947. This case was so famous because the case was unsolved, the woman was beautiful, and the murder was so gruesome. On January 15, 1947 her body was found sliced in half and her body mutilated. A few days after the murder her killer called and said he would be sending her belongings. 0 days after the murder a package was delivered to the Examiner newspaper with Elizabeth’s belongings inside. The killer sent letters to the police and continued to toy with them till he sent a final letter declaring he would not reveal his identity. Media from all over the world wanted a piece of this story and the story was headlining for weeks. The story still gets attention from books and movies, but has slowed down since no other evidence has been found. Even though her killer hasn’t been found a case is important no matter what. The Black DahliaOn January 15, 1947, in a Los Angeles vacant lot, the mutilated body of a woman was found by Betty Bersinger and her 3 year old daughter (Elizabeth Short, Page 2). The victim had been sliced in half, beaten, and her intestines had been removed. The killer also slashed 3 inch gashes into the corners of her mouth, drained her body of blood, cut off her nipples, and put grass up her vagina. Bruising around her wrists and ankles indicated she had been bound with rope and tortured. At the scene, the body was washed clean of evidence and was lying top of dew determining she was killed elsewhere.Her murderer cleaned her body so well you could see the bristle marks from a brush. The only real evidence at the crime scene was a tire track, a bloody heel mark in this tire mark, and there was a paper cement sack with blood on it. The main detectives on the Black Dahlia case were Harry Hansen and Finis Brown. The detectives gathered her f inger prints and identified the woman as Elizabeth Short. At this point the media was all over this story. The Examiner reporters used this information to call Short’s mother and inform her Short had won a beauty contest.Before revealing the true reason they called the reporters gathered as much information as they could before informing her of her daughter’s death. The cause of death was hemorrhage and shock due to blows to the head and face (Scheeres, Page 3). Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia, was a beautiful woman who was aspiring to become an actress in Hollywood. She was born on July 29, 1924, in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. She got the name â€Å"Black Dahlia† because of her black hair and black wardrobe. She spent a lot of her time in radio stations, bars, and nightclubs with new acquaintances.Her friends described her as the type of woman who got a lot of attention from men and went on a lot of dates. She depended on small jobs and the men sh e was around to support her. And as many men as she dated, it is hard to say which and if one of the men murdered her. The last time anyone saw Elizabeth was around 10:00 pm at the Biltmore Hotel on January 09, 1947. A couple days after the murder, the murderer called Jimmy Richardson, city editor of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, and described the mutilation to the body and said he would send the police Shorts belongings.The personal belongings were photographs, her social security card, birth certificate, and an address book. The murderer sent other letters to toy with the police officers. Than finally, the killer sent a final letter stating â€Å"Have changed my mind. You would not give me a square deal. Dahlia killing was justified†. There were over 75 suspects in the Black Dahlia case but a lot of those suspects got thrown out. The main suspects in her case were Robert Manley, Mark Hansen, Cleo Short, Carl Balsiger, and George W. Welsh, Jr.Robert Manley was the first s uspect in her case because he was the last person to be with Elizabeth outside of the Biltmore Hotel. He was also given truth serum and found not guilty. In 1949, suspects testified in front of the Grand Jury and did not find anyone guilty. The case continued to be investigated but the Grand Jury stopped issuing progress reports by 1950. Sadly, this case has never been solved, but the media has always covered this case. When the murder was released the police and newspapers got tips and as well as confessions for Elizabeth’s death.For weeks this story was headlining papers and had citizens in a worry. Even today this case is so popular it has even made its way into movies and books(Who Was Elizabeth Short? , Page 4. ) This case is important because a young woman’s life was taken and no one has been found guilty of her murder. Every case is important, especially when searching for someone as twisted as Short’s killer. No one wants someone like that around others in society. Even though Short’s murderer is probably dead, it is always important to close a case for the sake of the victim and their family.References Elizabeth Short: The Black Dahlia. (n. d. ). Crime and Investigation Network. Retrieved February 7, 2013, from http://www. crimeandinvestigation. co. uk/crime-files/elizabeth-short-the-black-dahlia/biography. html Scheeres, J. (n. d. ). The Black Dahlia Story. truTV. com. Retrieved February 7, 2013, from http://www. trutv. com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/dahlia/index_1. html Who Was Elizabeth Short? (n. d. ). The Black Dahlia Website. Retrieved February 7, 2013, from http://www. bethshort. com/about-beth. php

Functional requirement Essay

1. Physician Users Authorized The system will allow authorized login input The system will allow physician order medicine * System will allow physician search for medicine 2. Search The system navigates to correct patient. The system will allow search the medicine in ABC’s order The system will allow verification of doses based on age & weight The system check for allergies & contra-indications The system check medicine in stock The system send over to pharmacy 3. Pharmacist The system alert the pharmacy with medicine order The system will allows approval from Pharmacist for revaluates the order within allergy guideline * The system allows approval from Pharmacist to send order to tech for processing The system allow approval from Pharmacist for correct process Of the tech System send the order to the nurse for administer the drugs. 4. Nurse The system allow nurse to verifies the order The system allow nurse locate patient’s ID The system allow nurse to document the medicine The system allow nurse to add witness if necessary The system allow nurse to document the waste The system allow nurse to document patient’s reaction Nonfunctional Requirement 1. Operational The system should integrate with the pharmacy system The system should work any web browser The system should allow the verification for incorrect doses The system should check incorrect allergy & contra-indications of drugs The system enable for alternative options if medicine is out of stock The system enables the automatically order for medicine out of stock The system should allow disapproval or approval for pharmacist verify incorrect doses and not meet allergy guideline to be send back to physician 2. Performance The system should not exceed 2 seconds The system should be available 24 hours per day, 365 days per year Download speeds will be monitor and kept at an acceptable level. 3. Security Only authorized users are allow to use the system Patients information should be secure Viruses, worms, Trojan horses, etc should protect the system. The system should automatically exit when there is inactivity 4. Cultural and Political Personal information is protected in compliance with HIPPA

(Ecology) Plant Competition Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

(Ecology) Plant Competition - Lab Report Example Hence, it is logical to think that as the density of the plant increases, the more intense the competition becomes. In fact, this was demonstrated by Kothari et al. (1974) on Dichanthium annulatum, a dominant perennial grass species. It was observed in the study that as the number of plants increased from 17 to 135 individuals per meter-squared of land, the mean dry weight and nitrogen content per D. annulanum significantly decreased as compared to the other set-ups with lower plant densities. Meanwhile, interspecific competition refers to the interaction between two different plant species vying for the same resources (Freedman, 2011). Crops interspersed with weeds would be a good example of interspecific competition. Those species equipped with the least capacity to compete for the same environmental supply has to adapt or die eventually (Went, 1973). One of the earliest experimental investigations which catalogued the existence of competition within the floral community was conduc ted by Clements et al. (1929). Clements and his team planted sunflower, wheat, potatoes, and other plants species in varying distances with each other. Height (cm), leaf area (cm2), and dry weight (g) were then taken 80 days after planting (Clements et al., 1929). Results of the experiment indicated that the closer the plants are to each other, the more apparent growth inhibition becomes. Interestingly, increasing the number of plants per plot resulted to an overall production reaching a maximum value, which did not change even if spacing was decreased (Clements et al., 1929). It was also noted that growth of all plants within the same plot were equally inhibited (Clements et al., 1929). However, a different finding was observed by Wan et al. (2006) with the growth of Leymus chinensis, a C3 grass species and Chloris virgate, a C4 grass in a mixed pot culture. The researchers cultivated L chinensis in a 21 cm-diameter pots with 2 individuals per pot (monoculture) or mixed with C. vir gate. Assimilation rate, quantum efficiency, light-saturated assimilation rate were then recorded for each set-up (Wan et al., 2006). Results revealed that interspecific competition significantly reduced the measured parameters for the C3 species. However, the presence of the C3 plants had no effect on the C4 species (Wan et al., 2006). The result suggested an asymmetric competition between a C3 and C4 species, with the negative effect taking its toll on the C3 plants only. Njambuya et al. (2011) also provided evidence in support of Wan et al. (2006) that indeed, asymmetric competition occurs. But Njambuya and her team discovered a significant finding: the response of the mixed culture of Lemna minuta, an invasive species and Lemna minor, a native species is also affected by the amount of nutrients supplemented into the culture. In the presence of high nutrient availability, the invasive species exhibited higher Relative Growth Rate (RGR) as compared to the native species (Njambuya et al., 2011) However, when under low nutrient conditions, the native species showed higher RGR relative to the invasive spec

Midterm Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Midterm - Essay Example The proposed rule aims to eliminate this loophole by allowing the employees to be acquainted with the specific provisions of law so that they may not be taken advantage of. This protection of labor is enshrined in the laws of the nation. Under Section 7 of the NLRA, the law provides for the employees’ basic right to self-organization by forming or joining a union freely and actively to bargain collectively towards â€Å"mutual aid or protection.† This right to organize is likewise coupled with the right not to self-organize or to join any organization of the same nature at the election of the employee and upon his own volition. The employer cannot impede this right to organize and to collectively bargain as this will lead to economic unrest. Furthermore, it is safe to pinpoint that to do such acts would be tantamount to unfair labor practice and proscribed by law. Consequently, the protection of labor is seen as mutually beneficial not only between the labor force and t he corporations but ultimately beneficial to the entire nation. The NLRB proposes that as to the employers, there will be requirements of notice and posting that they must comply with. The Board exemplifies that the notice requirement is contained in other relevant and analogous laws but interestingly enough is not contained in the NLRA. This is addressed by the proposed rule as penned by the NLRB. This proposed rule enumerates the major aspects of the employee notice as to the ‘content requirements,’ ‘size and form requirement’ and such other relevant matter as ‘knowing noncompliance as evidence of unlawful motive.’ These matters shall be determined and enforced by the NLRB for the strict compliance of the employers. Among other things, there must routine posting in conspicuous areas that will elicit attention from the employees concerned. Because of the nature of today’s interactions, there is also consideration to the possibility of n ot only physical posting but also through electronic medium. This will be a great addition founded upon good intention to provide for the employees the opportunity to acquaint themselves of their own rights. As previously pointed out, many remain unaware of these and thus have a higher tendency to fall victim to unfair labor practices. The obligation upon employers to somewhat contribute to their education introduces transparency to the workplace. Though it is a maxim that ignorance of the law excuses no one, it remains imperative that people, especially the labor force, are informed and constantly made aware that these laws exist for their benefit and not the other way around. The proposed rule would now have the provident task, as pointed out in the dissenting opinion of Brian Hayes, that the Board is not given the power under the NLRA to address acts of noncompliance. Nonetheless, this opinion is not entirely base on solid ground as the NLRB has the mandate fundamentally to imple ment the NLRA. Establishment of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness Executive Order 13564 of January 31, 2011 The issue of unemployment persists to be the most pressing issue faced by Pres. Barack Obama. This problem has been the most heated subject of the just recently held presidential debate with reference to no less than Big Bird even being made mention of by his opponent Mitt Romney. People out of job have been a prevailing concern lingering within the past few years which

Assume that Canadian Tire is opening up a store in Ghana Essay

Assume that Canadian Tire is opening up a store in Ghana - Essay Example It was dominated by two colonial powers, which are France and Great Britain. In time, Britain was able to dominate both the political and cultural forces in Canada. Two significant communities are distinguished by language, culture, religion and politics and they live separately from each other since they have divergent views on the history of Canada as a nation. In comparison to Ghana, Canada has two distinctive characteristics of everyday consumptions. Canadians are big eaters where meat tends to be the dominating portion of each meal. They have three regular meals in a day where breakfast is the largest and most important meal of the rural people. Canadians take lunch at midday, and the urban people take a snack but it remains an important meal to the rural people. Dinner is the final formal meal of the day, which is taken by residential group as a whole, and it can be extended to nonfamily members. Ghana’s main diet is made up of starchy staples accompanied with soup or stew. Forest crops such as cassava and tropical yams are mostly consumed in the south (Kaminski, 2012). Corn and rice are most important among the Ga community though their main food is fufu combined with cassava. Soup ingredients in many communities include common vegetables accompanied by animal proteins, especially fish. In addition, palm nuts and peanut crops a re the favorite among different communities in Ghana. Indigenous foods are eaten at all social functions even by the western people. It is rare to find restaurants outside urban business districts though most local bars offer various foods to workers and bachelors. Ghana’s economy mostly depends on primary products such as cocoa, gold and timber. International trade contributes to one-third of the GDP while 70 % of export income comes from the latter three major commodities. The domestic economy is mainly involved with primary agriculture

Legal Environment and Business Decisions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Legal Environment and Business Decisions - Essay Example The Law of tort is used to punish people mishandling their rights carelessly or deliberately. The 14th century French word â€Å"Tortum† translating to ‘twisted’ is the base of the legal word â€Å"tort† (Smellie, 2002). Negligence is an unintentional irresponsible act considered as a breach of legal duty which any rational person would not do under normal circumstance. Any breach of duty which harmed the victim due to defendant’s fault can fetch the victim proper compensation for the injury or damage caused, under the negligence of tort law (Winfield, 2006). According to the Law of Tort, the prima facie case requirements for the victim to file a case are as follows 1. As strong evidence for breach in duty of care 2. Proof that the plaintiff’s damage is caused in connection to the defendant’s negligence 3. Proof that the foreseeable nature of the harm or damage was ignored by the defendant due to their negligence (Cooke, 2005). Analysis There are five important elements of consideration in this case. (1) Did the defendant Michael owe Anna duty of care? (2) If so, how did Michael breach his duty of care? (3) What damages have Anna suffered due to his Negligence? (4) Room for contributory negligence and voluntary assumption of risk in the case (5) Sort of compensation Anna is seeking and the chances for reduction Anna will be compensated only if the first three elements are proved to the satisfaction of the court. Tort law will provide the required remedy as compensation to the plaintiff based on the next two elements. The compensation may be of any form ranging from injunction to monetary rewards (Harowood, 2003, p.5). Duty of Care A person shall be subjected to trial if they fail to fulfill their â€Å"Duty of care†. Donoghue v Stevenson case, states Michael was supposed to help Anna according to the â€Å"Neighbor principle† in a vulnerable situation. Michael did so, but was not able to fulfill his â€Å"Duty of Care† completely as he did not foresee an accident. Breach in Duty of Care Michael was drunk and had difficulty in driving when Anna approached him for lift. He offered to help Anna considering her risky situation. But did not take enough care to drive safely. The defendant did and did not offer reasonable care in this case. â€Å"Reasonable care when dealing with others† is the most emphasized point in duty of care. Each case has a different level of reasonable care in accordance with the people and the situation dealt. The tort law determines what is reasonable care based on the explicit situation defined in each case (Atiyah, 1972). Anna’s Damages Anna suffered severe physical injuries along with Michael when the vehicle slipped off. She suffered monetary losses due to absence from work. The physical pain and monetary loss caused her great mental agony leaving her in a state of depression. Can Michael be held responsible for Anna’s loses? According to Anna, Michael was committing a legally wrong act by driving drunk. His decision to take Anna along with him when he himself had difficulty driving safely was a breach in duty of care. Contributory Negligence Anna noticed Michael smelled strongly of alcohol before parching on his vehicle. Since it was raining, late night and the plaintiff did not see any other means of transport

Discuss the Ethnicity, Race in new cinema and how these elements Essay

Discuss the Ethnicity, Race in new cinema and how these elements represent the culture identity in new cinema - Essay Example Countless movies have been made that placed the white race concept atop the pedestal. This is apparent in many genre, setting and context. Films strengthen the existing prevailing social concepts (Kellner, 1995, as cited in Brayton, n.d.) that refer to a middle class white heterosexual male as the normative figure (Brayton, n.d.). The concept of race is a social construction and originally defined by western people. The general notion brought by this concept is that the white people are superior over those with colored skin. This prevailed during the colonization period where the colonizers were white people. Whiteness reached its peak after the colonial era though (Lopez, 2005). Thus, having colonized lands with black people, the latter were treated as inferior and were made slaves. The same treatment is accorded to people with brown skin. The concept of whiteness was perpetuated even after colonialism as desirable and utilized to repress and marginalize the others (Lopez, 2005). Th e concept of â€Å"personal whiteness† referred to by W.E.B. Du Bois has been readily and systematically accepted by groups which were â€Å"racialized, enslaved, conquered and colonized,† but who regard â€Å"white power and white pretense† as critical concerns (Towards a Bibliography 2006, p. 5). Although numerous groups are working to counter this unequal social construct, there are still segments in society as well as individuals who retained such white supremacy notion. Even those not belonging to organized groups, their individual attitude towards colored people show antagonism or disgust. Individuals who do not belong to the whiteness group are categorized as belonging to the â€Å"other† (Performing Whiteness n.d.). The concept of race can be found in many cultural materials such as stories, narratives, habits, etc. and perpetuated in cinema (Critical Race Theory 2011). Although socially constructed, race has been institutionalized in the US throu gh systematic and deliberate actions, thus creating social structures and consequences (Lipsitz, 1995). In cinema, race is constructed continually as a performance and â€Å"understood as a set of cultural tastes,† but not in relation to biological or cultural existence (Brayton, n.d., p. 63). The lifestyle of the rich upper class whiteness is portrayed as the proper norm (Johnson and Roediger, 1997, as cited in Brayton, n.d.). It is played around the concept of consumer choice (Brayton, n.d.). Academic debates on race focus on cultural identity, the roots of the group, and how members see themselves as a cultural group (Bernardi, n.d.). Identity does not remain the same. It undergoes continuous change and transformation (Hall, 1989, as cited in Bernardi, n.d.). White dominance as a performance is aptly described by Orwell (1936 as cited in Lopez, 2005) in saying that by wearing a mask, the face grows to fit with it. Shifting Focus of Whiteness Racial formation, according to Omi and Howard (1994, as cited in Bernardi, n.d.), is a divide grounded on cultural and physiognomic parameters that tells who should have access to institutions. Racial formation changes like identity (Bernardi, n.d.). During the early developments in cinema, the concept of race was dominated by social Darwinism and eugenics wherein humanity is placed in a â€Å"hierarchy of human cultures and histories† with the Anglo-Saxons at the top, followed by the other Caucasians, the

Analysis of Ethnic Cleansing Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Analysis of Ethnic Cleansing - Research Paper Example The practice dates back in historical times and as old as the eleventh century. Just like modern populations, ancient communities also grappled with conflicts and wide-ranging social problems. The compelling urge for power is the main reason why respective communities engaged in gruesome practices such as ethnic cleansing. It is against this background that this paper reviews the various episodes of ethnic cleansing that occurred before as well as during the two World Wars. In addition, it explains the extent to which the nature of these World Wars contributed to the state of affairs. To ensure a harmonic consideration, it begins by defining the term ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is an all-encompassing term that is closely related to the concept of genocide. It refers to the removal from a certain territory a faction of a population through intimidation and violence (Thum, 2010). It is comprehensive and includes population transfer, forced migration and or deportation. In most i nstances, this occurs between neighboring communities and is geared towards ensuring the purity of a certain population. Historical evidence ascertains that it is a major cause of genocide that occurs on a wider scale. Comparatively, genocide tends to be more violent and has wide-ranging implications on both the perpetrating and affected community. Also worth noting is the fact that the relative negative implications are lasting and contribute significantly to future conflicts. As indicated earlier, ethnic cleansing is a historical occurrence that has its roots in ancient conflicts. According to Brubaker (1996), conflicts are a common characteristic of both current and historical populations. However, the complexity of conflicts and relative wars increased during the twentieth century. These further culminated in the first and second world wars. Notably, ethnic cleansing was a common occurrence during both instances. Thus apart from being one of the contributory factors, it can also be considered to have been a major product of the two world wars. There are various instances of ethnic cleansing that attest to the foregoing proposition. To begin with, between 1919 and 1920, there was an ethnic cleansing occurrence between the Bolshevik regime and Don Cossacks. This took place during the Russian civil war and its implications were immense. In particular, it saw a significant 500,000 Don Cossacks being deported within this short period of time (Merriman, 2010). Another episode of ethnic cleansing occurred in 1923 between the Greeks and Turkish. In this regard, there was a major population exchange between Turkey and Greece that can be defined as ethnic cleansing.     

Apartheid in South Africa Essay Example for Free

Apartheid in South Africa Essay The Apartheid legislation was a system of governance that made a huge impact in South Africa in the 20th century. It was introduced by the national party after they were elected in the 1948 election. It was a form of segregation that discriminated against the races in South Africa. It was the law in South Africa for 46 years. The Apartheid sparked lots of internal resistance with violent riots and protests taking place by groups of people. Nelson Mandela was a leading force in the opposition on Apartheid and did everything in his powers to destroy it. His voice was heard all over the country when he was the leader of Anti Apartheid movements and when he was in jail. Apartheid Legislation had a detrimental impact on society in South Africa. It was pioneered in 1948 by the newly appointed national party of South Africa when they came to power. The struggle for the end of Apartheid was long lived as it lasted until 1994 when the National party lost the election. Apartheid was the segregation of the South African people into different race groups such coloured, white, Asian and Indian. Residential areas were segregated as well as Education, medi-care, beaches, and other public areas. Although the residential areas and other public facilities were separated, the quality of living for the blacks was substantially less than that of which the whites enjoyed. Sports in South Africa were also majorly affected as South Africa was banned from some international sports such as cricket. Women weren’t left out of the equation as they struggled to gain proper rights and freedoms as most of the men experienced. Black people or natives, over time, were deprived of their citizenships and forced to live in tribes with their own people away from the city. Numerous laws were made that affected the black people immensely and stripped them of their rights and freedoms. Apartheid struck society hugely at the time of its induction and changed the way life was lived. Many factors contributed to the severity of Apartheid, no more so than the new laws that were created shortly after its introduction. These laws were made to discriminate directly against the blacks of South Africa and create white supremacy. As a result of these laws many black people in the community struggled for basic rights and freedoms. The first powerful law to be created was the  Preservation of Separate Amenities Act 1953. This law separated all parts of society from blacks and whites. The separation wasn’t equal and as a result of this the black people got the inferior side of every facility. This was the separation of every aspect of society from beaches and parks to toilets and shops. The main aim was to exclude citizens from Premises, vehicles or services based on their race. The best facilities were reserved for the white people. Education was not spared as another law was made (Bantu Education Act 1951) that restricted black children from receiving the same education as the white children. The government at the time thought that the career opportunities for black kids were limited and they were best to learn skills that would help their families in their tribes. As of that day, the black children received a substantially lower level of education than the white children of South Africa. The government spent six times as much money on white education which only made up about 20% of the country at that time. Nelson Mandela valued Education so highly in his views and once said that â€Å"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. [1] Both of these laws helped to create a large gap in society between the black and white people, one being very much better off than the other. Apartheid in South Africa aimed to strip the black people of all their rights and freedoms. This was achieved by two controversial laws. The Abolition of passes act 1953 and the Bantu Homeland act 1952. The abolition of passes act forced black people to carry identifica tion with them at all times. A pass included a photograph, details of place of origin, employment record, tax payments, and encounters with the police. It was a criminal offence to not be carrying a pass when encountered by a police officer. Africans were frequently harassed for their passes and countless numbers were arrested for it. Local citizens burned them or didn’t carry them as a sign of protest. Mass protests by blacks by not carrying their passes lead to the murder of 69 in the ‘Sharpeville Massacre’. The Bantu Homeland act was the second law that took everything away from the blacks. Through this law, the white government declares that the lands reserved for black Africans are independent nations therefore, not being a part of South Africa. In this way, the government was able to strip millions of blacks of their South African citizenship and force them to become residents of their new homelands. Blacks were then considered foreigners in white-controlled South Africa, and needed passports to enter. Blacks only entered to perform jobs that assisted whites. The law was made to ensure that the White people of South Africa would inhabit most of the main areas of the country leaving the Blacks to live on the outskirts in shocking conditions. A quote by an influential student leader Steve Bantu Biko The blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing. They want to do things for themselves and all by themselves. [2] suggests that the blacks were sick of having no place in society and want their own rights and freedoms which was the obvious feeling at the time. This law is a huge violation of human rights and really emphasised the affects of the new government regime at the time. The Anti Apartheid movements were influential movements that fought for the destruction of Apartheid legislation in South Africa. They were a worldwide movement that aimed to abolish South Africa’s government system of Racial Apartheid. The anti Apartheid movement came into action both within and outside South Africa. The ANC was the first movement to be created. A second organization Split from the ANC and called themselves the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). They used civil disobedience, strikes and protest marches to oppose the apartheid legislation. After the ‘Sharpeville Massacre’, when police opened fire and killed 69 protestors, the direction of the movement changed. The ANC decided to adopt armed resistance against the state. This sparked many protestors to speak out. Both Organisations were banned after this Massacre and it forced them to move into hiding and continue their operations in private. They created an armed military wing ‘Umkhonto we Sizwe’ lead by Nelson Mandela and planned attacks on the state. After their first attack, their leader Mandela was sent to jail for life along with a few other leaders. At the trail to his sentence Mandela he said We are not anti-white, we are against white supremacy †¦ we have condemned racialism no matter by whom it is professed. [3]This quote shows that Mandela wasn’t racist and just wanted quality and proper human rights. Many bouts of protest broke out in South Africa after the massacre and trial, mostly by school students, and groups were made to speak out against the Apartheid legislation. The movement were starting to gain momentum and there voices were being heard further around the world. The Anti Apartheid movements were the cor nerstone to the destruction of Apartheid legislation. The movements are the reason for the popularity loss of Apartheid and the rise of Nelson Mandela as a civil rights activist. The Arrests and killing of influential members of the movement only sparked up a bigger, more aggressive reaction and more people wanted to get involved in the cause. The black conscientious movement was made by black tertiary students in 1971 and represented black pride. This idea of black pride empowered many South Africans to believe that they are a strong people and can fight for their rights. Students in Soweto in 1979 rose up against Apartheid inspired by many around them. While in protest 29 were killed and many injured by police opening fire. This sparked more and more people to rise up against the state. Labour unions played a massive role in the struggle against apartheid. In 1979 as a result of the protesting, black trade unions were legalized which was a massive win. At the same time church groups also spoke out against the evils of Apartheid. All of these people were inspired by the actions of the Anti Apartheid movements that went before them. Thabo Mbeki a South African Politian summed up the views of many South Africans at the time by saying â€Å"South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black or white. [4] This view was felt across the country by the struggling black people. The ANC and PAC affected most of the population of South Africa in some way and help get rid of the Apartheid legislation. They were the cause for the changes that took place in society over the years. Nelson Mandela played arguably the biggest role in the destruction of the Apartheid legislation in South Africa. Working with the ANC he S poke out against Apartheid and the injustice to his people. Mandela worked hard as the leader of the ANC and planned many protests on the state to help push for the abolishment of Apartheid. He was one of the most influential speakers of his time and many oppressed people heard his voice loud and clear. Under apartheid Mandela served nearly 27 years in prison but he never gave up the fight. When Mandela was imprisoned at Robben Island he continued his work and teachings. In South Africa and around the world, Nelson Mandelas anti-apartheid messages gained in popularity. This meant that his voice was heard by more and more people. Many tried to free him when he was in jail. Support for Mandela was so immense that he was able to be equitted of his charges and released in 1990. Before he was released the PM of South Africa at the time said As soon as he renounces violence and undertakes not to start violence in South Africa, government will release him. [5]The quotes suggest that the government did not want any further violence from his demonstrations in the near future otherwise he would be kept in jail and if he showed no signs of violence he would be let out. This shows trust between the two. He was able to become the leader of the ANC once again and was a leading force in South Africa. He was able to negotiate a multi-racial election in 1994 where his party won. He became prime minister and with this he abolished Apartheid legislation. In his Inaugural speech as prime minister he says â€Å"Today we are entering a new era for our country and our people. Today we celebrate not the victory of a party, but a victory for all the people of South Africa†[6]. This optimism really highlighted his attitude towards life and freedom and is why he was such a loved and influential leader. Without his voice throughout the country and the world, South Africa would have struggled to get out the Government legislation that was Apartheid Apartheid legislation in South Africa was immensely influential on society. It was one of the worst legislations to ever be put down by a government. The black community of South Africa was severely affected by this legislation with most of their rights and freedoms stripped off them. As a result of the laws and other factors, the majority of the native South Africans lived a lift without the freedom and rights that most enjoy today. Nelson Mandela with the help of the Anti Apartheid organisations pushed to stop the legislation in its tracks. He was eventually successful with his peruse of freedom and because of this he is one of the most influential men to have ever lived.

Organic Solar Cells History, Principles and Efficiency

Organic Solar Cells History, Principles and Efficiency Solar Cells Solar cells are cells or devices use for converting sunlight into electric cur ­rent (electricity) or voltage. They are also called photovoltaic cells (PV) or devices and the process of generating electricity from sunlight is called pho ­toelectric effect. Solar Energy conversion through photovoltaic effect can be achieved with many materials at different lifetimes. Over the years many research and development have been conducted in the area of solar energy (thin film applications)[1]-[3]. But most of these developments have been in inorganic solar cells with conventional silicon base solar cells dominating in the production of solar energy in the commercial market [4]-[5]. Silicon base cells for thin film application have enormous advantages like good absorp ­tion rate of sunlight, suitable band gap for photovoltaic applications, longer lifetimes and improving efficiency. But the process of silicon base cells gen ­eration of voltage is tedious and above all very expensive fo r the commercial market. Research for alternatives to silicon has been ongoing for some time now with some other inorganic materials like Copper Indium Gallium Sele ­nium (Cu-In-Ga-Se)[6], Cadmium Sulfide (CdS)[7], Lead Cadmium Sulfide (PbCdS)[8], etc. But some have similar production problems like the silicon and as well expensive. Others also are of dangerous elements which are not environmentally friendly (CdS, PbCdS, etc). Another alternative to silicon base cells in terms of thin film (solar cells) research for photovoltaic applica ­tion could be organic solar cells (also known as plastic solar cells)[9]. With this, photocurrents are generated from organic materials. In this review, brief history of organic solar cells is discussed, the basic principle of operation is outlined and some performance in terms of the materials absorption rate, efficiency, stability and degradation and comparison between organic solar cells and inorganic solar cells (silicon) are also discussed. Chapter 2 Organic Solar cells (Plastic Solar cells) The infancy of organic solar cells began in the late 1950s [10]. At this time, photoconductivity in some organic semiconductor cells (anthracene, chlorophyll) were measured with voltage of 1 V by some research groups[11] ­[12].They proposed that if a single layer PV cell is illuminated consisting of an organic layer, sandwich cell with low work function metal (aluminum, Al) and a conducting glass of high work function (indium tin oxide, ITO), photoconductivity will be observed. With this interesting result and less cost effective of these organic semiconductor cells and also a possibility of doping these materials to achieve more encouraging results caught up with many researchers in this field. The work done since has been unprecedented as shown in figure 2.1 on the next page. In the 1960s, semiconducting properties were observed in dyes partic ­ularly in methylene blue [13]. Efficiency of 10−5 % in sunlight conversion was reported in the early 1970s to an improvement of 1 % in the early 1980s [14]. This was achieved through an interesting phenomenon known as heterojunction[15]. This phenomenon is a surface between semiconduct ­ing materials of dissimilar layers. Photovoltaic devices were applied with heterojunction where donor-acceptor organic cells were tailored together. In recent years, photoconductivity has been measured in dyes and the dye so ­lar cells have progressively been improved for laboratory cells[16]. Currently power conversion efficiency of organic photovoltaics in single-junction devices is over 9 %[17] and that of multi-junction cell is over 12 %[18]. Some materials of organic solar cells are dyes and some polymers like origomers[19], dendrimers[20], liquid crystal materials[21] and self-assembled monolayers [22]. All these need to be prepared carefully to obtain optimum efficiency and stability[23] Figure 2.1: Number of publications is plotted against the year of publications. This shows the inception of organic solar cells and how much interest the field has generated among scientists and the commercial entities over the years. Years below 1990 saw less publication (1960 to 1970 -10 and 1980 to 1990  ­29) compared to the years in the figure. Principle of Operations. In recent time, organic solar cells are of different operations due to their usage. Similar to inorganic solar cells, organic solar cells can be used to convert sunlight into electricity with the aid of a semiconductor. The basic principle behind this operation is outline below: Most organic solar cells have very thin material layer either single or multi-layer where there is a strong absorption of light sandwich between two electrodes, an anode (A) and a cathode (C). The anode (usually indium tin oxide ITO) is transparent and has a high work function. The cathode (aluminum) is opaque and has a low work function. The material layer is usually a photosensitive organic semiconductor. When light of appropriate energy (sunlight) is incident on it, an electron is excited from the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) to a lower uncopied state called lowest uncopied molecular orbital (LUMO) leaving a hole in the HOMO. This leads to exciton formation. That is, there is a creation of an electron-hole pair which is strongly bounded together. As the electron stays at the LUMO, there is a loss in energy by the electron through thermal relaxation as the electron penetrates the energy band gap. The electron-hole pair diffuses in ­dependent of the electric field and are separated (exciton dissociation) at the interface between the donor state (HOMO) and the accepter state (LUMO). The electron is collected at one end of the electrode (cathode) and the hole at the other end of the electrode (anode) thereby generation photocurrent in the process. If the electron and the hole after separation do not reach the interface, their absorbed energies are dissipated out and no photocurrent is generated. Step by step principle is illustrated in pictorial form below: Figure 3.2: a) Light is incident on an electron (red). (b) Electron is excited from the HOMO to the LUMO creating a hole (black) at the HOMO. (c) Exciton formation of electronhole pair. (d) Diffusion of exciton independent of electric field. (e) Exciton dissociation. (f) Collection of charges. Chapter 4 Performance 4.1 Absorption of light. In organic solar cells, the thin organic semiconducting layer is responsible for light absorption. This layer has a valence band which is densed with electrons and a conduction band. These bands are separated by an energy gap. When the layer absorbs light, an excited state is created. This state is characterized by an energy gap. The energy gap is the energy difference between the higher energy state (LUMO) and the lower energy state (HOMO). It is usually of the range of (1.0 -4.0) eV[24] and it is determined as: Eg = ELUMO − EHOMO . (4.1) Where Eg is the energy gap in electron volts (eV), ELUMO is the energy at LUMO (higher energy state) and EHOMO is the energy at HOMO (lower energy state). The energy gap usually serves as an activation energy barrier. This acti ­vation energy barrier needs to be overcome before an electron is excited from the lower energy state to the higher energy state. The excited electron has energy greater than or equal to this activation energy barrier. This energy is determined as: h.c Ephoton = ≠¥ Eg . (4.2)ÃŽ »photon Where Ephoton is the energy of the incident photon (light), h is Plancks constant (6.626 Ãâ€"10−34 Js), c is speed of light (2.997 Ãâ€"108 ms−1) and ÃŽ »photon is wavelength of the photon (≈ (400 -700) nm). As the excited electron remains at the LUMO, a hole is created in the HOMO. The electron undergoes thermal relaxation as it remains at the LUMO and this result in loss of energy by the electron. This energy loss is compensated for as: El = Eelectron − Eg . (4.3) Where El is thermal energy loss of the electron, Eelectron is the energy of the electron at the LUMO and Eg is the energy gap. Figure 4.1: (a) Thin organic semiconductor layer (with both LUMO and HOMO) with energy gap (Eg). (b) Incident light of greater energy than the energy gap excites electron (red) from HOMO to LUMO. This creates a hole (black) at the HOMO (c) Energy lost by the electron through thermal relaxation. 4.2 Stability and Degradation In solar cell application, long operational lifetime performance is required. To achieve this, stability and degradation are few of the key important issues to look at in real-time application. Over the years, stability of organic solar cells has improved very much in terms of their power conversions[25]. This is clearly shown in the figure below: Ideally the advantages of organic solar cells with their low cost materi ­als, recyclable, easy production and production in large quantities, à ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å¡exibility and durability (low weight), stability should be optimum. These advantages somehow also affect the stability of the organic cells. The active layer (thin organic semiconducting layer) component which is a core component of the cells is sometimes prone to degradations. These degradations occur dur ­ing their production (printing in bulk quantities and rolling them together thereby introducing some mechanical properties which then affect the mor ­phology of the active layer) and also reactions from weathering (UV light, oxygen, water). Extensive work on photo stability of some organic solar cells (large number of polymers) has been investigated by Manceau et al[27]. Figure 4.2: Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) production with progression in years shown. The years below 2010 had lower production of OPVs (> 0.5 MW) [26]. Chapter 5 Comparism between organic solar cells and inorganic solar cells (Silicon base solar cells). Organic and inorganic solar cells serve similar applications but they interest ­ing differences in terms of how they are made. Organic solar cells are cheap in terms of materials, production and are recyclable, they have very thin solar cells with little energy in making them, they are à ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å¡exible, durable and have low weight, they are colourful and they have easy production and can be produced in large areas. But they have low efficiency and lifetime compared to silicon base solar cells. Inorganic solar cells are cost effective in terms of materials, production and are not recyclable, much energy is need to have thin layer cells, they are rigid and not durable, they are of dark grey materials with dark blue to black coat ­ing, they have complicated production and are difficult to produce in large areas. But they have good light absorption rate, better efficiency and longer lifetime. Chapter 6 Conclusion Organic solar cells can be alternative to silicon base solar cells with its in ­teresting applications. They can be fabricated into our day to day usage materials and equipment with low cost technology in serving their purpose. Efficiency and stability still remains areas that should be addressed in the future to optimally have good power conversions.

Tokyo Riots Essay examples -- Papers

Tokyo Riots The heaving mass of people pushed and hurled abuse at the front line of the riot police. There were hundreds of them, some of them genuine, protesting for something they feel is right, however, others just want trouble. The police know that they can only strive to prevent a disaster, they cannot stop one, only contain it and the problem is that the rioters know this too. They also know that the police cannot kill them or even harm them, their only weapon is arrest. The wave of pushing against the police teams shields drones on and on gradually getting larger and more powerful. The police officers faces are etched with fear as they attempt to hold back the swarm of people. Their attempts were failing, they were becoming tired and sub-consciously hurt by the comments being fired at them. It wouldn't be long until their wall of resistance would be smashed. Suddenly, in the corner of the team commander's eye through his grid locked riot helmet he could just see one of his men fall to the ground as the rioters penetrated the line. This was the signal to the rioters, chaos broke out immediately, action had to be taken. Everyone began fighting each other, vandalising property and attacking the police. The police were vastly outnumbered and had to think quickly. Re-enforcements ran into action attempting to push the rioters back out and arrest the offenders. Police vans were constantly escorting arrested rioters to the police station. Overhead, a helicopter surveyed the riot searching for instigators and known criminals so as to alert the troops below. "Hotel Echo Lima India to ground patrol, main instigator and drugs... ...how, I doubt that. For you see, I'm not really hereà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦" and with that Willis wellà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ vanished. Was there a crime? Two shadows danced in the shadows as its two matching figures walked hand in hand down the dimly lit back alley. Gone was the rubbish dump but the stench of downtown Tokyo clung to the walls as though it had been burnt by the hot sun of many scorching days only to be cooled by the sticky hot nights that hid all dark and devious deeds. As the previous two figures passed under the soft orange glow of a nearby streetlamp their faces emerged from the darkness that had previously smothered their features. One was a man and one was a woman. The man in his forties, although he looked sixty-odd, and the woman had dark brown shoulder-length hair andà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦a tattoo on her left shoulder of an elaborate red dragon.

How The Adams-Onís Treaty Affected The Growth Of Our Nation :: American America History

How The Adams-Onà ­s Treaty Affected The Growth Of Our Nation Americans were interested in further expansion and looked to the weak Spanish provinces of East and West Florida. The Spanish were reluctant to give up what is now Florida, but in the end they worked out an agreement called the Adams Onis Treaty. In this essay I will describe how the Americans eventually got these provinces, the set backs of the signing of the treaty, and how it effected the economic growth of our nation. Americans living in West Florida between the Iberville and Perdido Rivers declared their independence, and President Madison ordered the Governor of New Orleans Territory to take control of the independent land. The Americans now had control over half the territory they wanted but this did not satisfy them, this only made them more eager to gain control of East Florida. Almost two years after this event peace concluded, but Spain still had possession of East Florida. This time Spain only had two solutions to avoid a shameful political break down over this region. One was to gain support of a European ally, and the second was to get some form of honor in this event by winning some of the United States best land else where in North America. The first plan fell through, Britain and other European nations refused to help Spain. They eventually fell to having discussions with the United States. The American government was entirely willing to have discussion of the East Florida issue become the end result of all Spanish-American boundary questions. John Quincy Adams was the Secretary of State and was the person taking care of all discussions between the U.S. and Spain. He saw that this was a perfect time to try to extend the boundary to the Pacific Ocean. Luis de Onà ­s was the minister of Spain at the time and he was the Spanish representative to the U.S. His instructions from the Spanish government was to transfer the Florida's to the United States in return for the American settlement west of the Mississippi. Onis was also to get a promise that the United States would not give material aid to, or recognize the independence of Spain's colonies in South America because of their lack of cooperation. Difficulties came up over negotiating a satisfactory boundary in the West and also over the command to put American military in East Florida in 1818.

Use of Proper Judgment in Othello :: Othello essays

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   A central tenet of Othello is the concept of proper judgment, and to always use it when making decisions. The renaissance definition of proper judgment can be illustrated by the "hierarchy of proper judgment." Governing all is reason, which includes understanding and will. Below reason are common sense, memory, and imagination. Finally, at the bottom are the 5 senses, emotions, and passions. In order to judge properly, it was believed that reason had to govern all else. Proper judgment could never occur if only one item was relied upon to make the decision. In Othello, Shakespeare uses this concept to demonstrate how proper judgment occurs, and the consequences when it does not.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The first scene in which proper judgment is used is when the Duke makes a decision as to what should be done about the expected Turkish invasion. He does not immediately act on the information he receives, instead, he thinks out the steps logically. When he states, "I do not so secure me in the error, but the main article I do approve in the fearful sense (I 3 12-14)," he is showing that he will not rely solely on the information he is receiving, but also use common sense, memory, and understanding, and therefore judge properly. Only after Proper judgment was used did he take action, and therefore avoid disaster. The Duke is a model of Proper judgment who can be compared to other characters in the play to show their weaknesses and shortcomings.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In the same scene, proper judgment is demonstrated again by the Duke, when he is faced with the mater of Othello marrying Desdemona. Initially, the Duke rejects wise judgment by promising to allow Brabantio to sentence whoever had done this to whatever punishment he saw fit, without analyzing the situation further, and without even knowing who that man was. However, upon assessing the situation more, he realizes the consequences of not using Proper judgment, and, after hearing all sides of the story, tell Brabantio to "Take up this mangled matter at best. Men do their broken weapons rather use than their bare hands (I 3 199-201)." Later on, he gives Brabantio wise advice when he tells him that "to mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief in (I 3

Interpersonal Needs, Firo

Fundamental Interpersonal Relationship Orientation Interpersonal, FIRO, are the relations between people. Each party takes account of the other; behavior is affected by the other or determined by expectations of another. Interpersonal Behavior, otherwise known as FIRO-B, refers to a person’s feelings and actions. People join groups to satisfy interpersonal needs. Interpersonal needs are based on self-image. Being a distinct person – having a particular identity, happens and shows early in the group formation process.Our needs to be included help drive how we communicate, three basic human needs are Inclusion, control and affection. Inclusion The need to matter so people will care about you. Refers to feeling of importance to the extent to which we include ourselves with others. Inclusion reveals itself in people that want to be attended to, wanting to attract attention and/or wanting interaction with others. People with low inclusion needs tend to be introverted and wit hdrawn.An example would be; â€Å"No one is interested in me, because I am worthless, I’m not going to risk being ignored, so I will stay away. † Control Refers to feelings of competence, being seen as able to cope with the world, to the extent of which we control other’s actions or desire for them to guide us. If inclusion is about belonging, then control is about winning. A person seeking inclusion wants to be part of the argument, win or lose. One seeing control wants to win, even if he’s not accepted by the group. Control also deals in areas of power, influence and authority.Someone in the extremes of control needs, desire the control over others – and over one’s future, or the desire to be controlled – to have responsibility lifted The person who will not take responsibility for anything, an example, â€Å"Whatever you say boss. † Affection Refers to the feeling of being lovable, definition in your text is simplistic. An a mount to which we express affection to others and desire that from them. Close emotional feelings between two people – only between two people. Inclusion needs and control needs can exit between dyads or etween one person and the group. Last phase to emerge in human relationship Conclusions Inclusion is about prominence, control is about winning and affection is about interpersonal relationships. In inclusion phase people encounter each-other and decide if they will continue the association. In control the confront each other and work out how they will be related. In order to continue the relationship, affection ties must form and people must embrace each other to form a lasting bond, and also say goodbye. Control deals with power while affection deals with emotional ties.Get down to business vs. get to know each other. References Class Book Joining Together: Group Theory and Group Skills Custom Tenth Edition David W. Johnson, Frank R. Johnson Websites * About Personality htt p://www. aboutpersonality. co. uk/about_firob. html * Cowsfrommywindow http://www. cowsfrommywindow. com/assessmentsfirob. php * Leadership Champions http://leadershipchamps. wordpress. com/2011/03/28/firo-b-an-excellent-instrument-to-assess-your-interpersonal-behavioral-needs/ * Wikipedia http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Fundamental_interpersonal_relations_orientation

Time Machine

Eliot states that, â€Å"Home is where one starts from, as we get older, the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated. † I do agree with T. S. Eliot, and I do have one story about my past that will prove his quotation. When I was 4 years old, I thought that life was a fairy tale. A typical fairy tale where I would be married to a handsome prince, and we will live happily ever after. Life would be very simple and laid back.All I needed to do was to learn how to read, write, and count numbers. I didn't have any bills due at the end of every month, and I did not have to work very hard to get what I want. I remember those days where crying gave me everything I desired. I wish that I can stay young forever; however, that is not how life works. Life is about growing up and maturing whether I like it or not. As I get older, things become more complicated, and I learned that not everyone will always stay by my side. Especially my dad who died in the early age of my life. M y dad had been a huge art of my life.He molded me and taught me a lot of things about life. I learned that there will come a time where I have to stand up on my own, and not depend on someone to defend me. Time is the only thing that I could never bring back, no matter how hard I try. I Just wish I could make things right with my dad so he would know that I really love and cherish him always. I was seventeen years old when I lost my dad. I could still remember his warm smile that brightened up my darkest day. My dad have a slightly squint-eyes that guided me to the inner side of his soul.With is deeply tanned skin and calloused hands, I could proudly say that he worked hard day and night Just to give my family a better life. One day, a single car crash took away the life of my dad. If I could be with my dad again, I would treasure him more and take another chance to correct my previous mistakes. Regrets make my life miserable in different areas. Never a day that passes by that I do not ask myself, â€Å"What if my dad were still alive? † This thinking drives me crazy, and I wish I could travel back in time so I could make some changes; however, that is Just an illusion.Time is the only thing that we could never bring back, no matter how hard we try. I just wish I could make things right with my dad so he would know that I really love and cherish him always. My dad worked odd Jobs, took night classes to get his high school diploma, and raised us with love and discipline. I knew I wasn't an easy kid but he never complained, not even once. As a teenager, I always envied my classmates who have everything they ever wanted in life. Their parents were executives, ambassadors, or celebrities.One time, I saw Tiffany bragging about her Calvin Klein lack leather Jacket, a white mid-thigh length Dolce and Cabana sundress, and a pair of knee-high Giorgio Airman leather black boots. I felt insecure when I looked at myself, wearing my usual clothing; baggy t-shirt and Jeans. When I got home, I excitedly ran and knocked on my parent's room. My dad gestured his arms widely so I could give him a warm hug. With a big smile, I asked my dad if he could buy me some beautiful clothes so that I could feel beautiful like the other girls in my class. His face suddenly changed and I could trace the confusion from his eyes.With a gentle and raring voice, he told me that real beauty is about being comfortable in my own skin. It is about knowing and accepting who I really am. It is not measured by the brand of clothes I wear nor the amount of cosmetics I put on. Inner beauty comes from the inside and captivates the heart of a true person. I could see the sincerity in his eyes as he looked at me with integrity. I could sense the emotion and honesty in every word that he say. The 21st of August, 2013, is the most unforgettable tragedy in my life because that is the day when my dad passed away.The moment I woke up to repaper for school, my mom knocked at my door and with a shaky, yet gentle voice she told me that my father died in a car crash back in the Philippines. When I heard that, I was speechless; I was lost. My body violently shook, the fear ran cold in my veins. I broke out in a nervous sweat, but I could not stop shivering like I was suddenly in southern part of Antarctica. My fingers had held a vice grip onto the legs of my tights, my nails dug holes into the seams. Tears drenched in every inch of my face, all over my cheeks, and over my chin.Liquid ran down my neck and devoured y clothes beneath it. I wanted to stop shaking; I wanted to be able to breathe again. I could not believe that my dad is gone and I could not do anything because I am in America. All off sudden, our happy memories started to play in my mind. I remember when he went to my high school graduation; he was so proud of me because I was one of the top students. My dad and I went to the salon to get ready for my graduation. We rarely visit salons and malls due to lack of budget, but this time he said that he could buy me a new shoes because I did a great Job in school.He wore his favorite polo with a Ana blue neck tie and his hair is brushed on one side. When the principal called my name, he proudly stood up and accompanied me to the stage. My dad walked on the stage with a smile that is brighter than the sun, he hung the shiny gold medal on my neck. I felt like I am on cloud nine. The flowers danced and rejoiced over my success. I heard the people clapped their hands while the principal announced all the achievements that I had during my high school years. I remembered the day when we were at the airport, the day when I last saw my dad's beautiful face.We did not have any conversation on our way to the airport. The car was filled with silence and I felt the sadness in his eyes. I have a lot of things that I want to tell him, but I could not figure out what words would exactly fit the emptiness and grief that I am feeling inside. The moment that I laid my feet on the airport, my shoulders became heavier, hours became minutes, and minutes became seconds. The lady announced that we have to fall in line because our plane would depart in less than fifteen minutes. My dad held my hands and hugged me.I saw my ad's tears ran down his cheeks, but he tried his best not to cry in front of me. His once tanned face became red and looked like he would burst in tears in Just a matter of seconds. His red lips became pale and his hands are shaking. He ran his fingers through my hair and put it beneath my ears. My dad looked at me with sincerity and told me that he loved me. The words were so heartwarming that it left me with tears. I did not want to look at him anymore because it would only make me cry harder. Those memories would forever be treasured in my heart.I would never forget those detersives moments that I had with him. I regret many things in life. If only I could go back in time; then I wouldn't have to worry anymore. I cou ld be with my loved ones for as long as I could. I would make our time together to be as memorable as possible. I could correct those errors, and maybe my dad would know how much I loved him before he died. Since time machines do not exist, all I could do is to accept the fact that everybody would leave me; nobody would stay with me forever. Death leaves a heartache no one could heal, and love leaves a memory no one could steal.Without all those trials and circumstances, I would never be the person that I am right now: stronger and braver than I was before. What I did wrong before is that I never treasured the people that surrounded me. I thought they would be with me forever so I took them for granted. Life is so unpredictable, which makes it challenging. Growing up is not easy especially when a huge part of my life is gone; however, that is how life works. People come and go no matter what happen. The main question is, are we prepared to lose someone during our Journey in life? 1 572 words

Death of a Salesman Critical insights Essay

In a 2003 interview with his biographer, Christopher Bigsby, about the inherent structure of his plays, Arthur Miller explained, â€Å"It’s all about the language† (Bigsby, â€Å"Miller†). Miller’s declaration about the centrality of language in the creation of drama came at the end of his almost seventy-year career. He had completed his final play, Finishing the Picture, and a little more than a year later, he became ill and subsequently died in February 2005. Thus Miller’s statement can be seen as a final avowal about how language operates in dramatic dialogue, a concern that had obsessed him since the start of his career when he wrote his first play, No Villain, at the University of Michigan in 1935. Despite Miller’s proclamation, not enough critical attention has been paid to the sophisticated use of language that pervades his dialogue. Throughout his career, Miller often was subject to reviews in which critics mostly excoriated him for what they judged as a failed use of language in his plays. For example, in the Nation review of the original production of Death of a Salesman in 1949, Joseph Wood Krutch criticized the play for â€Å"its failure to go beyond literal meaning and its undistinguished dialogue. Unlike Tennessee Williams, Miller does not have a unique sensibility, new insight, fresh imagination or a gift for language† (283-84). In 1964, Richard Gilman judged that After the Fall lacks structural focus and contains vague rhetoric. He concluded that Miller’s â€Å"verbal inadequacy [has] never been more flagrantly exhibited† (6). John Simon’s New York review of the 1994 Broadway production of Broken Glass opined that â€Å"Miller†™s ultimate failure is his language: Tone-deafness in a playwright is only a shade less bad than in a composer.† In a June 2009 review of Christopher Bigsby’s authorized biography of Miller, Terry Teachout judged that Miller â€Å"too often made the mistake of using florid, pseudo-poetic language† (72). These reviews illustrate how, as a language stylist, Arthur Miller was underappreciated, too often overshadowed by his contemporary Tennessee Williams, whose major strength as a dramatist for many critics lies in the â€Å"lyricism† of his plays. As Arthur K. Oberg pointed out, â€Å"In the established image, Miller’s art is masculine and craggy; Williams’, poetic and delicate† (303). Because Miller has so often been pigeonholed as a â€Å"social† dramatist, most of the criticism of his work focuses on the cultural relevance of his plays and ignores detailed discussions of his language–especially of its poetic elements. Most critics are content to regard his dialogue as â€Å"colloquial,† judging that Miller best used what Leonard Moss described as â€Å"the common man’s language† (52) to reflect the social concerns of his characters. The assumption is often made that the manufacturers, salesmen, Puritan farmers, dockwork ers, housewives, policemen, doctors, lawyers, executives, and bankers who compose the bulk of Miller’s characters speak a realistic prose dialogue–a style that is implicitly antithetical to poetic language. This prevailing opinion of Miller as a dramatist who merely uses the common man’s language has been reinforced largely by a lack of in-depth critical analyses of how figurative language works in his canon. In his November 1998 review of the Chicago run of the fiftieth anniversary production of Death of a Salesman, Ben Brantley noted that, â€Å"as recent Miller scholarship has suggested again and again, the play’s images and rhythms have the patterns of poetry† (E3). In reality, though, relatively few critics have thoroughly examined this aspect not only of Salesman but also of Miller’s entire dramatic canon.1 Thomas M. Tammaro judges â€Å"that critical attention to Miller’s drama has been lured from textual analysis to such non-textual concerns as biography and Miller as a social dramatist† (10).2 Moreover, classroom discussions of Miller’s masterpieces Death of a Salesman and The Crucible (1953) mostly focus on these biographical an d social concerns in addition to characterization and thematic issues but rarely discuss language and dialogue. Five years after his passing, it is time to recognize that Arthur Miller created a unique dramatic idiom that undoubtedly marks him as significant language stylist within twentieth- and twenty-first-century  American and world drama. More readers and critics should see his dialogue not exclusively as prose but also as poetry, what Gordon W. Couchman has called Miller’s â€Å"rare gift for the poetic in the colloquial† (206). Although Miller seems to work mostly in a form of colloquial prose, there are many moments in his plays when the dialogue clearly elevates to poetry. Miller often takes what appear to be the colloquialisms, clichà ©s, and idioms of the common man’s language and reveals them as poetic language, especially by shifting words from their denotative to connotative meanings. Moreover, he significantly employs the figurative devices of metaphor, symbol, and imagery to give poetic significance to prose dialect. In addition, in many texts Miller embeds series of metaphors–many are extended–that possess particular connotations within the societies of the individual plays. Most important, these figurative devices significantly support the tragic conflicts and social themes that are the focus of every Miller play. By deftly mixing these figurative devices of symbolism, imagery, and metaphor with colloquial prose dialogue, Miller combines prose and poetry to create a unique d ramatic idiom. Most critics, readers, and audiences seem to overlook this aspect of Miller’s work: the poetry is in the prose and the prose is in the poetry. Indeed, poetic elements pervade most of Miller’s plays. For example, in All My Sons, religious allusions, symbols, and images place the themes of sacrifice and redemption in a Christian context. In Death of a Salesman, the extended metaphors of sports and trees convey Willy Loman’s struggle to achieve the American Dream. In The Crucible, the poetic language illustrates the conflicts that polarize the Salem community as a series of opposing images–heat and cold, white and black, light and dark, soft and hard–signify the Salemites’ dualistic view of the world. In A View from the Bridge, metaphors of purity and innocence give mythic importance to Eddie Carbone’s sexual, psychological, and moral struggles. After the Fall uses extended metaphors of childhood and religion to support Quentin’s psychological quest for redemption. The Ride Down Mt. Morgan connects metaphors of transportation and travel to Lyman Felt’s literal and figurat ive fall, and Broken Glass uses images of mirrors and glass to relate  the world of the European Jew at the beginning of the Holocaust to Sylvia and Phillip Gellburg’s shattered sexual world. That most critics continue to fail to recognize Miller’s sophisticated use of poetic elements is striking, for it is this very facility for which many other playwrights are praised, and the history of drama is intimately intertwined with the history of poetry. For most of Western dramatic history, plays were written in verse: the ancient Greek playwrights of the fifth century b.c.e. composed their tragedies in a verse frequently accompanied by music; the rhyming couplets of the Everyman dramatist were the de rigueur medieval form; and English Renaissance plays were poetic masterpieces. Shakespeare’s supremacy as a dramatist lies in his adaptation of the early modern English language into a dramatic dialogue that combines prose and poetry. For example, Hamlet’s â€Å"quintessence of dust† speech is lyrical prose. In the twentieth century, critics praised the verse plays of T. S. Eliot, Maxwell Anderson, Christopher Isherwood, and W. H. Auden. Even more baffling about this critical neglect is that Miller readily acknowledged his attraction to poetry and dramatic verse. His views on language, particularly poetic language, are evident in the prodigious number of essays he produced throughout his career. Criticism has mostly ignored this large body of nonfiction writing in which Miller frequently expounds on the nature of language and dialogue, the tension between realistic prose and poetic language in twentieth-century drama, and the complex evolution of poetic language throughout his plays.3 For example, in his 1993 essay â€Å"About Theatre Language† he writes: It was inevitable that I had to confront the problem of dramatic language. . . .I gradually came to wonder if the essential pressure toward poetic dramatic language–if not of stylization itself–came from the inclusion of society as a major element in the play’s story or vision. Manifestly, prose realism was the language of the individual and private life, poetry the language of man in crowds, in society. Put another way, prose is the language of family relations; it is the inclusion of the larger world beyond that naturally opens a play to the poetic. . . . How to find a style that would at one and the same time deeply engage an American audience, which insisted on a recognizable reality of characters, locales, and themes, while opening the stage to considerations of public morality and the mythic social fates–in short, the invisible? (82) * * * Miller’s attraction to poetic dramatic dialogue can be traced back to his development as a playwright, particularly his time as a student at the University of Michigan in the mid-1930s and the early years of his great successes in the 1940s and 1950s, when his views on dramatic form, structure, aesthetics, and language were evolving. Miller knew little about the theater when he arrived in Ann Arbor from his home in Brooklyn, but during these formative college years, he became aware of German expressionism, and he read August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen, whom he often acknowledged as major influences on him. Christopher Bigsby has pointed out that Miller always remembered the effect that reading Greek and Elizabethan playwrights at college had on him (Critical Study 419). However, Miller was markedly affected by the social-protest work of Clifford Odets. In his autobiography, Timebends (1987), Miller describes how Odets’s 1930s plays Waiting for Lefty (1935), Awake and S ing (1935), and Golden Boy (1937) had â€Å"sprung forth a new phenomenon, a leftist challenge to the system, the poet suddenly leaping onto the stage and disposing of middle-class gentility, screaming and yelling and cursing like somebody off the Manhattan streets† (229). Most important for Miller, Odets brought to American drama a concern for language: â€Å"For the very first time in America, language itself had marked a playwright as unique† (229). To Miller, Odets was â€Å"The only poet, I thought, not only in the social protest theater, but in all of New York† (212). After Miller won his first Avery Hopwood Award at Michigan, he was sent to Professor Kenneth Rowe, whose chief contribution to Miller’s development was cultivating his interest in the dynamics of play construction. Odets and Rowe clearly were considerably strong influences on Miller as he developed  his concern with language and his form broke out of what he termed the â€Å"dusty naturalistic habit † (Timebends 228) of Broadway, but other influences would also compel him to write dramatic verse. The work of Thornton Wilder, particularly Our Town (1938), spoke to him, and in Timebends Miller acknowledges that Our Town was the nearest of the 1930s plays in â€Å"reaching for lyricism† (229). Tennessee Williams is another playwright whom Miller frequently credited with influencing his art and the craft of his language. He credited the newness of The Glass Menagerie (1944) to the play’s â€Å"poetic lift† (Timebends 244) and was particularly struck b y A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), proclaiming that Williams had given him license to speak in dramatic language â€Å"at full throat† (Timebends 182). Moreover, Miller practiced what he had learned and espoused. In fact, he reported that when he was first beginning his career he was â€Å"up to [his] neck† in writing many of his full-length and radio plays in verse (â€Å"Interview† 98). When he graduated from Michigan and started his work with the Federal Theatre Project in 1938, he wrote The Golden Years, a verse play about Montezuma. In a letter to Professor Rowe, he reported that he found writing verse much easier than writing prose: â€Å"I made the discovery that in verse you are forced to be brief and to the point. Verse squeezes out fat and you’re left with the real meaning of the language† (Bigsby, Arthur Miller 155). Also, he explained that much of Death of a Salesman and all of The Crucible were originally written in verse; the one-act version of A View from the Bridge (1955) was written in an intriguing mixture of verse and prose, and Miller regretted his failure to do the same in The America n Clock (1980) (Bigsby, Critical Introduction 136). However, Miller found an American theater hostile to the poetic form. Miller himself pointed out that the United States had no tradition of dramatic verse (â€Å"Interview† 98) as compared to Europe. In the 1930s, Maxwell Anderson was one of the few American playwrights incorporating blank verse into his plays, and the English theater witnessed some interest in poetic drama in the 1940s and 1950s, most notably with Christopher Fry and T. S. Eliot. In reality, dramatic verse had been in sharp decline since the late nineteenth century, when the realistic prose dialogue used by Henrik Ibsen in Norway  was adopted by George Bernard Shaw in England and then later employed by Eugene O’Neill in the United States. Miller also judged that American actors had difficulty speaking the verse line (â€Å"Interview† 98). Further, Miller came of age at a time when American audiences were demanding realism, the musical comedy was gaining in dominance, and commercial Broadway pr oducers were disinterested in verse drama. Christopher Bigsby has pointed out that Miller was â€Å"in his own mind, an essentially poetic, deeply metaphoric writer who had found himself in a theater resistant to such, particularly on Broadway, which he continued to think of as his natural home, despite its many deficiencies† (Critical Study 358). Struggling with how to accept this reality, Miller accommodated his natural inclination to verse by developing a dramatic idiom that reconciled his poetic urge with the realism demanded by the aesthetics of the American stage. Thus he infused poetic language into his prose dialogue. * * * Let’s examine how some of these poetic devices–symbolism, imagery, and metaphor– operate in Miller’s masterpiece, Death of a Salesman. From the outset of the play, Miller makes trees and sports into metaphors signifying Willy Loman’s struggle to achieve the American Dream within the competitive American business world. Trees symbolize Willy’s dreams, sports the competition for economic success.4 Miller sustains these metaphors throughout the entire text with images of boxing, burning, wood, nature, and fighting to make them into crucial unifying structures. In addition, Miller’s predilection for juxtaposing the literal and figurative meanings of words is particularly evident in Salesman as the abstract concepts of competition and dreaming are vivified by concrete objects and actions such as boxing, fists, lumber, and ashes. Trees are an excellent illustration of how Miller uses literal and figurative meanings. Two references in act 1, scene 1, immediately establish their importance in the play. When Willy unexpectedly arrives home, he explains that he was unable to drive to Portland for his sales call because he kept  becoming absorbed in the countryside scenery, where â€Å"the trees are so thick, and the sun is warm† (14). Although these trees merely seem to distract Willy from driving, he also indicates their connection to dreaming. He tells Linda: â€Å"I absolutely forgot I was driving. If I’d’ve gone the other way over the white line I might’ve killed somebody. So I went on again–and five minutes later I’m dreamin’ again† (14). Willy’s inability to concentrate on driving indicates an emotional conflict larger than mere daydreaming. The play reveals how Willy often exists in dreams rather than reality–dreams of being well liked , of success for his son Biff, of his â€Å"imaginings.† All of these dreams intimately connect to Willy’s confrontation with his failure to achieve the tangible aspects of the American Dream. He is a traveling salesman, and his inability to drive symbolizes his inability to sell, which guarantees that he will fail in the competition to be a â€Å"hot-shot salesman.† The action of the play depicts the last day of Willy’s life and how Willy is increasingly escaping the reality of his failure in reveries of the past, to the point where he often cannot differentiate between reality and illusion. The repetition of the mention of trees in Willy’s second speech in scene 1 cements the importance of trees in the play as a metaphor for these dreams. He complains to Linda about the apartment houses surrounding the Loman home: â€Å"They should’ve had a law against apartment houses. Remember those two beautiful elm trees out there? When Biff and I hung the swing between them?† (17). However, these trees are not the trees of the real time of the play; rather, they exist in Willy’s past and, more important, in the â€Å"imaginings† of his mind, the place where the more important dramatic action of the play takes place. Miller’s working title for Death of a Salesman was â€Å"The Inside of His Head,† and certainly Willy’s longing for the trees of the past illustrates how dreaming works in his mind. Throughout the entire play, trees–and all the other images connected to them–are complicated symbols of an idyllic past for which Willy longs in his dreams, a world where Biff and Hap are young, where Willy can believe himself a hot-shot salesman, where Brooklyn seems an unspoiled wilderness. The irony is that, in reality, the past was not as idyllic as Willy recalls, and the play gradually unfolds the reality of  Willy’s failures. The metaphor of trees also supports Willy’s unresolved struggle with his son Biff. Willy’s memory of Biff and himself hanging a hammock between the elms is ironic as the two beautiful trees’ absence in the present symbolizes Willy’s failed dreams for Biff. Throughout the play, Miller significantly expands upon the figurative meaning of trees. For example, in act 1, scene 4, Willy responds to Hap’s claims that he will retire Willy for life by remarking: You’ll retire me for life on seventy goddam dollars a week? And your women and your car and your apartment, and you’ll retire me for life! Christ’s sake I couldn’t get past Yonkers today! Where are you guys, where are you? The woods are burning! I can’t drive a car! (41) Willy’s warning that â€Å"the woods are burning† extends the tree metaphor by introducing an important sense of destruction to the trees of Willy’s idyllic world of the past. Since the trees are so identified with Willy’s dreams, the image implies that his dreams are burning too–his dreams for himself as a successful salesman and his dreams for Biff and Hap. The images of burning and destruction are crucial in the play, especially when Linda reveals Willy’s suicide attempts–his own form of destruction, which he enacts at play’s end. We realize that since Willy is so associated with his dreams, he will die when they burn. In fact, Willy repeats this same exact line in act 2 when he arrives at Frank’s Chop House and announces his firing to Hap and Biff. He says: â€Å"I’m not interested in stories about the past or any crap of that kind because the woods are burning, boys, you understand? There’s a big blaze going on all around. I was fired today† (107). This line not only repeats Willy’s warning cry from act 1 but also foreshadows Biff’s climactic plea to Willy to â€Å"take that phony dream and burn it† (133). The burning metaphor–now ironic–also appears in Willy’s imagining in the Boston hotel room. As Willy continues to ignore Biff’s knock on the door, the woman says, â€Å"Maybe the hotel’s on fire.† Willy replies, â€Å"It’s a mistake, there’s no fire† (116). Of course, nothing is threatened by a literal fire–only by the figurative blaze inside Willy’s head. Once aware of how tree images operate in the play, a reader (or keen theatergoer) can note the cacophony of other references that sustain the metaphor in other scenes. For example, Willy wants Biff to help trim the tree branch that threatens to fall on the Loman house; Biff and Hap steal lumber; Willy plaintively remembers his father carving flutes; Willy tells Ben that Biff can â€Å"fell trees†; Willy mocks Biff for wanting to be a carpenter and similarly mocks Charley and his son Bernard because they â€Å"can’t hammer a nail†; Ben buys timberland in Alaska; Biff burns his sneakers in the furnace; Willy speculates about his need for a â€Å"little lumber† (72) to build a guest house for the boys when they get married; Willy is proud of weathering a twenty-five-year mortgage with â€Å"all the cement, the lumber† (74) he has put into the house; Willy explains to Ben that â€Å"I am building something with this firm,† something â€Å"you ca n’t feel . . . with your hand like timber† (86). Finally, there are â€Å"the leaves of day appearing over everything† in the graveyard in â€Å"Requiem† (136). Miller similarly uses boxing in literal and figurative ways throughout the play. In act 1, scene 2, Biff suggests to Hap that they buy a ranch to â€Å"use our muscles. Men built like we are should be working out in the open† (24). Hap responds to Biff with the first sports reference in the text: â€Å"That’s what I dream about, Biff. Sometimes I want to just rip my clothes off in the middle of the store and outbox that goddam merchandise manager. I mean I can outbox, outrun, and outlift anybody in that store† (24). As an athlete, Biff, it seems, should introduce the sports metaphor, but, ironically, the sport with which he is identified–football–is not used in any extensive metaphoric way in the play.5 Instead, boxing becomes the extended sports metaphor of the text, and it is not introduced by Biff but rather by Hap, who reinforces it throughout the play to show how Willy has prepared him and Biff only for physical competition, not business or eco nomic competition. Thus Hap expresses his frustration at being a second-rate worker by stressing his physical superiority over his managers. Unable to win in economic competition, he longs to beat his coworkers in a physical match, and it is this contrast between economic and physical competition that intensifies the dramatic interplay between the literal and the figurative language of the play. In fact, the very competitiveness of the American economic system in which Willy and Hap work, and that Biff hates, is consistently put on physical terms in the play. A failure in the competitive workplace, Hap uses the metaphor of physical competition–boxing man to man–yet the play details how Hap was considered less physically impressive than Biff when the two were boys. As an adult, Hap competes in the only physical competition he can win–sex. He even uses the imagery of rivalry when talking about his sexual conquests of the store managers’ girlfriends: â€Å"Maybe I just have an overdeveloped sense of competition or something† (25). Perhaps knowing that they cannot win, the Lomans resort to a significant amount of cheating in competition: Willy condones Biff’s theft of a football, Biff cheats on his exams, Hap takes bribes, and Willy cheats on Linda. All of this cheating signifies the Lomans’ moral failings as well. The boxing metaphor also illustrates the contrast between Biff and Hap. Boxing as a sports metaphor is quite different from the expected football metaphor: a boxer relies completely on personal physical strength while fighting a single opponent, whereas in football, a team sport, the players rely on group effort and group tactics. Thus the difference between Biff and Hap–Hap as evoker of the boxing metaphor and Biff as a player of a team sport–is emphasized throughout the text. Moreover, the action of the play relies on the clash of dreams between Biff and Willy. Biff is Willy’s favorite son, and Willy’s own dreams and disappointments are tied to him. Yet Hap, the second-rate son, the second-rate physical specimen, the second-rate worker, is the son who is most like Willy in profession, braggadocio, and sexual swagger. Ultimately, at the play’s end, in â€Å"Requiem,† the boxing metaphor ironically points out Hap’s significance as the actual competitor for Willy’s dream, for he decides to stay in the city because Willy â€Å"fought it out here and this is where I’m gonna win it for him† (139). Biff’s boxing contrasts sharply with Hap’s. For example, Biff ironically performs a literal boxing competition with Ben, which juxtaposes with the figurative competition of the play. The boxing reinforces the emphasis that  has been placed on Biff as the most physically prepared â€Å"specimen† of the boys. Yet Biff is defeated by Ben; in reality he is ill prepared to fight a boxing match because it is a man-to-man competition, unlike football, the team sport at which he excelled. He is especially ill prepared for Uncle Ben’s kind of boxing match because it is not a fair match conducted on a level playing field. As Ben says: â€Å"Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll never get out of the jungle that way† (49). Thus the literal act of boxing possesses figurative significance. Willy has not conditioned Biff (or, by extension, Hap) for any fight–fair or unfair–in the larger figurative â€Å"jungle† of the play: th e workplace of the American economic system. Willy, too, uses a significant amount of boxing imagery, much of it quite violent. In the first imagining in act 1, Biff asks Willy about his recent sales trip, â€Å"Did you knock them dead, Pop?† and Willy responds, â€Å"Knocked ’em cold in Providence, slaughtered ’em in Boston† (33); when he relates to Linda how another salesman at F. H. Stewarts insulted him, Willy claims he â€Å"cracked him right across the face† (37), the same physical threat that he will later make against Charley in act 2 on the day of the Ebbets Field game. Willy wants to box Charley, challenging him, â€Å"Put up your hands. Goddam you, put up your hands† (68). Willy also says, â€Å"I’m gonna knock Howard for a loop† (74). Willy uses these violent physical terms against men he perceives as challengers and competitors. As with the tree metaphor, this one is sustained throughout the scenes with a plethora of boxing references: a punching bag is inscribed with Gene Tunney’s name; Hap challenges Bernard to box; Willy explains to Linda that the boys gathered in the cellar obey Biff because, â€Å"Well, that’s the training, the training†; Biff feebly attempts to box with Uncle Ben; Bernard remarks to Willy that Biff â€Å"never trained himself for anything† (92); Charley cheers on his son with a â€Å"Knock ’em dead, Bernard† (95) as Bernard leaves to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court; Willy, expressing to Bernard his frustration that Biff has done nothing with his life, says, â€Å"Why did he lay down?† (93). This last boxing reference, associated with taking a dive, is a remarkably imagistic way of describing how Biff initially cut down his life out of spite after discovering Willy’s infidelity. * * * Miller also uses images, symbols, and metaphors as central or unifying devices by employing repetition and recurrence–one of the central tenets of so-called cluster criticism, which was pioneered in the 1930s and 1940s.6 In short, cluster criticism argues that the deliberate repetition of words, images, symbols, and metaphors contributes to the unity of the work just as significantly as do plot, character, and theme. These clusters of words can operate both literally and figuratively in a text–as I. A. Richards notes in The Philosophy of Rhetoric–and, therefore, contribute significantly to the overall aesthetic and thematic impact. For example, in Arthur Miller, Dramatist, Edward Murray traces word repetition in The Crucible, examining how Miller, â€Å"in a very subtle manner, uses key words to knit together the texture of action and theme.† He notes, for example, the recurrent use of the word â€Å"soft† in the text (64). My own previous work on T he Crucible has examined how the tenfold repetition of the word â€Å"weight† supports one of the play’s crucial themes: how an individual’s struggle for truth often conflicts with society. Let’s examine an intriguing example of word repetition from Death of a Salesman.7 The words â€Å"paint† and â€Å"painting† appear five significant times in the play. The first is a literal use: at the end of act 1, Willy tells Biff during their argument, â€Å"If you get tired of hanging around tomorrow, paint the ceiling I put up in the living room† (45). This line echoes Willy’s previous mockery of Charley for not knowing how to put up a ceiling: â€Å"A man who can’t handle tools is not a man† (30). In both instances, Willy is asserting his superiority on the basis of his physical prowess, a point that is consistently emphasized in the play. The second time â€Å"paint† appears is in act 2, when Biff and Hap abandon Willy in Frank’s Chop House to leave with Letta and Miss Forsythe. Hap says to Letta: â€Å"No, that’s not my father. He’s just a guy. Come on, we’ll catch Biff, and honey we’re going to paint this town!† (91). Of course in this  line Miller uses the clichà © â€Å"Paint the town red† for its well-known meaning of having a wild night of partying and dissolution–although it is notable that Miller uses a truncated form of the phrase. Nevertheless, here the clichà © takes on new significance in the context of the play. Willy defines masculinity by painting a ceiling, but Hap defines it by painting the town with sexual debauchery and revelry, lording his physical superiority and his sexual conquests over other men. The third, fourth, and fifth repetitions occur in act 2 during the imagining in the hotel room when Biff discovers Willy with the woman. When the woman comes out of the bathroom, Willy says: â€Å"Ah–you better go back to your room. They must be finished painting by now. They’re painting her room so I let her take a shower here† (119). When she leaves, Willy attempts to convince Biff that â€Å"she lives down the hall–they’re painting. You don’t imagine–† (120). Here, painting is simultaneously literal and metaphorical because of its previous usage in the play–but with a high degree of irony. Willy’s feeble explanation that Miss Francis’s room is literally being painted is a cover-up for the reality that Willy himself has painted the town in Boston. Biff discovers that Willy’s manhood is defined by sexual infidelity–ultimately defining him as a â€Å"phony little fake.† * * * Another relatively unexplored aspect of Miller’s language is the names of his characters. Miller chooses his characters’ names for their metaphorical associations in most of his dramatic canon. Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays’s 1997 text The Language of Names revived some interest in this technique, which is known as literary onomastics and is considered a somewhat minor part of contemporary literary criticism. Kaplan and Bernays examine the connotative value of names that function in texts as â€Å"symbolic, metaphoric, or allegorical discourse† (175). Although some scholars have discussed the use of this technique in individual Miller plays, most readers familiar with the body of Miller’s work notice how consistently he chooses the names of his characters to create symbols, irony, and points of contrast. For example, readers and critics who are familiar only with Death of a Salesman among Miller’s works have long noted that Willy’s last name literally marks him as a â€Å"low man,† although Miller himself chuckled at the overemphasis placed on this pun. He actually derived the name from a movie he had seen, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, in which a completely mad character at the end of the film screams, â€Å"Lohman, Lohman, get me Lohman† (Timebends 177-79). To Miller, the man’s cry signified the hysteria he wanted to create in his salesman, Willy Loman. Many critics also have noted the significance of the name of Dave â€Å"Singleman,† the eighty-year-old salesman who stands alone as Willy’s ideal. Despite Miller’s consistent downplaying in interviews of the significance of his characters’ names, an examination of his technique reveals how extensively he connects his characters’ names to the larger social issues at the core of every play. For example, the last name of All My Sons’ Joe Keller, who manufactures faulty airplane parts and is indirectly responsible for the deaths of twenty-one pilots, resembles â€Å"killer.† In previous work on the play, I have noted the comparison of the Kellers to the Holy Family, and how, therefore, the names of Joe and his son, Chris, take on religious significance. Susan C. W. Abbotson has noted how the first name of The Ride Down Mt. Morgan’s Lyman Felt suggests the lying he has lived out. She also has analyzed the similarities between Loman and Lyman, and has argued that Lyman is a kind of alter ego to Willy some forty years later. Frank Ardolino has also examined how Miller employs Egyptian mytholog y in naming and depicting Hap (â€Å"Mythological†). An intriguing feature of Miller’s use of names is his repetition of the same name, or form of the same name, in his plays. It is striking how in Salesman Miller uses the name â€Å"Frank,† or variations of it, five times for five different characters, a highly unusual occurrence.8 In act 1, during Willy’s first imagining, when Linda complains to Biff that there is a cellar full of boys in the Loman house who do not know what to do with themselves, Frank is one of the boys whom Biff gets to clean up the furnace room. Not long after, at the end of the imagining, Frank is the name of the mechanic who fixes the carburetor of Willy’s Chevrolet. In act 2, in the moving scene in which  Howard effectively fires Willy and Willy is left alone in the office, Willy cries out three times for â€Å"Frank,† apparently Howard’s father and the original owner of the company, who, Willy claims, asked Willy to â€Å"name† Howard. Willy also meets the bo ys in Frank’s Chop House and, in the crucial discovery scene in the Boston hotel room, Willy introduces the woman to Biff as Miss Francis, â€Å"Frank† often being a nickname for Francis. There are significant figurative uses of â€Å"Frank† too, for, although the word means â€Å"honest† or â€Å"candid,† all of the Franks in Salesman are clearly associated with work that is not completely honest. Biff uses the boy Frank and his companions to clean the furnace room and hang up the wash–chores that he should be doing himself. Willy somewhat questions the repair job that the mechanic Frank does on â€Å"that goddam Chevrolet.† Despite Willy’s idolizing of his boss, Frank Wagner, Linda indicates that Frank, perhaps, promised Willy a partnership as a member of the firm, a promise that kept Willy from joining Ben in Alaska and that was never made good on by either Frank or his son, Howard. Miss Francis promises to put Willy through to the buyers in exchange for stockings and her sexual favors, but it is uncertain whether she holds up her end of the deal, since Willy certainly has never been a â€Å"hot-shot† salesman. And, of course, Frank’s Chop House is the place where Stanley tells Hap that the boss, presumably Frank, is going crazy over the â€Å"leak in the cash register.† Thus Miller clearly uses the name Frank with a high degree of irony, an important aspect of his use of figurative language in his canon. Of course, all this business dishonesty emphasizes how Salesman challenges the integrity of the American work ethic. Miller’s careful selection of names shows that he perhaps considered the names of his characters as part of each play’s network of figurative language. As Kaplan and Bernays note, â€Å"Names of characters . . . convey what their creators may already know and feel about them and how they want their readers to respond† (174). Thus, in his choice of names, Arthur Miller may very well be manipulating his audience before the curtain rises, as they sit and read the cast of characters in their playbills. Finally, being aware of Miller’s use of poetic language is crucial for  however we encounter his plays–as readers who analyze drama as text or as audience members in tune with the sound of the dialogue. It is, indeed, â€Å"all about the language†Ã¢â‚¬â€œthe language we read in the text and the language we hear on the stage. Notes 1. Although some critics have examined Miller’s colloquial prose, only a few have conducted studies of how poetic devices work in his dialogue. Leonard Moss, in his book-length study Arthur Miller, analyzes Miller’s language in a chapter on Death of a Salesman, a section of which is titled â€Å"Verbal and Symbolic Technique.† In an article titled â€Å"Death of a Salesman and Arthur Miller’s Search for Style,† Arthur K. Oberg considers Miller’s struggle with establishing a dramatic idiom. Oberg judges that Miller ultimately â€Å"arrives at something that approaches an American idiom to the extent that it exposes a colloquialism characterized by unusual image, spurious lyricism, and close-ended clichà ©Ã¢â‚¬  (305). He concludes that â€Å"the play’s text, although far from `bad poetry,’ tellingly moves toward the status of poetry without ever getting there† (310-11). My 2002 work A Language Study of Arthur Millerâ₠¬â„¢s Plays: The Poetic in the Colloquial traces Miller’s consistent use of figurative language from All My Sons to Broken Glass. In other studies discussing individual plays, some critics have noted poetic nuances in Miller’s language. In â€Å"Setting, Language, and the Force of Evil in The Crucible,† Penelope Curtis maintains that the language of the play is marked by what she calls â€Å"half-metaphor† (69), which Miller employs to suggest the play’s themes. In an article published in Notes on Contemporary Literature, John D. Engle explains the metaphor of law used by the lawyer Quentin in After the Fall. Lawrence Rosinger, in a brief Explicator article, traces the metaphors of royalty that appear in Death of a Salesman. 2. Thomas M. Tammaro also points out that the diminished prestige of language studies since the height of New Criticism may account for the lack of a sustained examination of imagery and symbolism in Miller’s work. Moreover, Tammaro notes that Miller’s plays were not subjected to New Critical theory  even when language studies were prominent (10). In his new authorized biography Arthur Miller: 1915-1962, Christopher Bigsby clearly recognizes Miller’s attempts to write verse drama, but this work is largely a critical biography and cultural study, not a close textual analysis. 3. Most notable among these works are the following: â€Å"The Family in Modern Drama,† which first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1956; â€Å"On Social Plays,† which appeared as the original introduction to the one-act edition of A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays; the introduction to his 1957 Collected Plays; â€Å"The American Writer: The American Theater,† first published in the Michigan Quarterly Review in 1982; â€Å"On Screenwriting and Language: Introduction to Everybody Wins,† first published in 1990; his 1993 essay â€Å"About Theatre Language,† which first appeared as an afterword to the published edition of The Last Yankee; and his March 1999 Harper’s article â€Å"On Broadway: Notes on the Past and Future of American Theater.† 4. For a more detailed discussion of these metaphors, see â€Å"Death of a Salesman: Unlocking the Rhetoric of Poetic Power† in my 2002 volume A Language Study of Arthur Miller’s Plays. Also, in â€Å"Figuring Our Past and Present in Wood: Wood Imagery in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and The Crucible,† Will Smith traces what he describes as a â€Å"wood trope† in the plays. 5. When Biff discovers Willy with the woman in the hotel room in act 2, she refers to herself as a football (119-20) to indicate her humiliating treatment by Willy and, perhaps, all men. 6. Frederick Charles Kolbe, Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, and Kenneth Burke pioneered much of this criticism. For example, Spurgeon did groundbreaking work in discovering the clothes imagery and the image of the babe in Macbeth. Kenneth Burke, in The Philosophy of Literary Form, examines Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy as a play that uses language clusters, particularly the images of the â€Å"prizefight† and the â€Å"violin,† that operate both literally and symbolically in the text (33-35). 7. In his work Arthur Miller, Leonard Moss details the frequent repetitions of words in the text, such as â€Å"man,† â€Å"boy,† and â€Å"kid.† He notes that forms of the verb â€Å"make† occur forty-five times in thirty-three different usages, ranging from Standard English to slang expressions, among them â€Å"make mountains out of molehills,† â€Å"makin a hit,† â€Å"makin my future,† â€Å"make me laugh,† and â€Å"make a train.† He also notes the nine-time repetition of â€Å"make money† (48). Moss connects these expressions to Miller’s thematic intention: illustrating how the American work ethic dominates Willy’s life. 8. In â€Å"`I’m Not a Dime a Dozen! I Am Willy Loman!’: The Significance of Names and Numbers in Death of a Salesman,† Frank Ardolino takes a mainly psychological approach to the language of the play. He maintains that â€Å"Miller’s system of onomastic and numerical images and echoes forms a complex network which delineates Willy’s insanity and its effects on his family and job† (174). Ardolino explains that the name imagery reveals Biff’s and Willy’s failures. He sees the repetition of â€Å"Frank† as part of Miller’s use of geographical, personal, and business names that often begin with B, F, P, or S. Thus the names beginning with F â€Å"convey a conflict between benevolence and protection on the one hand and dismissal and degradation on the other† (177). Benevolent Franks are Willy’s boss, the boy Frank who cleans up, and the repairman Frank. Degrading Franks are Miss Francis and Frank’s Chop House, which contains the literal and psychological toilet where Willy has his climactic imagining of the hotel room in Boston. Works Cited Abbotson, Susan C. W. â€Å"From Loman to Lyman: The Salesman Forty Years On.† â€Å"The Salesman Has a Birthday†: Essays Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of Arthur Miller’s â€Å"Death of a Salesman.† Ed. Stephen A. Marino. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000. Ardolino, Frank. â€Å"`I’m Not a Dime a Dozen! I Am Willy Loman!’: The Significance of Names and Numbers in Death of a Salesman.† Journal of Evolutionary Psychology (August 2002): 174-84. ____________. â€Å"The Mythological Significance of Happy in Death of a Salesman.† The Arthur Miller Journal 4.1 (Spring 2009): 29-33. Bigsby, Christopher. Arthur Miller: A Critical Study. New York: Cambridge UP, 2005. ____________. Arthur Miller: 1915-1962. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008. ____________. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama, Volume Two: Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee. New York: Cambridge UP, 1984. ____________. â€Å"Miller and Middle America.† Keynote address, Eighth International Arthur Miller Society Conference, Nicolet College, Rhinelander, WI, 3 Oct. 2003. Brantley, Ben. â€Å"A Dark New Production Illuminates Salesman.† New York Times 3 Nov. 1998: E1. Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form. 2d ed. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1967. Couchman, Gordon W. â€Å"Arthur Miller’s Tragedy of Babbit.† Educational Theatre Journal 7 (1955): 206-11. Curtis, Penelope. â€Å"Setting, Language, and the Force of Evil in The Crucible.† Twentieth Century Interpretations of â€Å"The Crucible.† Ed. John H. Ferres. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972. Engle, John D. â€Å"The Metaphor of Law in After the Fall.† Notes on Contemporary Literature 9 (1979): 11-12. Gilman, Richard. â€Å"Getting It Off His Chest, But Is It Art?† Chicago Sun Book Week 8 Mar. 1964: 6, 13. Kaplan, Justin, and Anne Bernays. The Language of Names. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Krutch, Joseph Wood. â€Å"Drama.† Nation 163 (1949): 283-84. Marino, Stephen. â€Å"Arthur Miller’s `Weight of Truth’ in The Crucible.† Modern Drama 38 (1995): 488-95. ____________. A Language Study of Arthur Miller’s Plays: The Poetic in the Colloquial. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002. ____________. â€Å"Religious Language in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.† Journal of Imagism 3 (1998): 9-28. Miller, Arthur. â€Å"About Theatre Language.† The Last Yankee. New York: Penguin, 1993. ____________. â€Å"The American Writer: The American Theater.† The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin and Steven R. Centola. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996. ____________. â€Å"Arthur Miller: An Interview.† Interview with Olga Carlisle and Rose Styron. 1966. Conversations with Arthur Miller. Ed. Matthew C. Roudanà ©. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1987. 85-111. ____________. â€Å"Death of a Salesman†: Text and Criticism. Ed. Gerald Weales. New York: Penguin Books, 1967. ____________. â€Å"The Family in Modern Drama.† The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin. New York: Viking Press, 1978. ____________. â€Å"Introduction to the Collected Plays.† The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin. New York: Viking Press, 1978. ____________. â€Å"On Broadway: Notes on the Past and Future of American Theater.† Harper’s Mar. 1999: 37-47. ____________. â€Å"On Screenwriting and Language: Introduction to Everybody Wins.† The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin and Steven R. Centola. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996. ____________. â€Å"On Social Plays.† The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Ed. Robert A. Martin. New York: Viking Press, 1978. ____________. Timebends: A Life. New York: Grove Press, 1987. Moss, Leonard. Arthur Miller. New Haven, CT: College and University Press, 1967. ____________. â€Å"Arthur Miller and the Common Man’s Language.† Modern Drama 7 (1964): 52-59. Murray, Edward. Arthur Miller, Dramatist. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1967. Oberg, Arthur K. â€Å"Death of a Salesman and Arthur Miller’s Search for Style.† Criticism 9 (1967): 303-11. Otten, Terry. The Temptation of Innocence in the Dramas of Arthur Miller. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2002. Richards, I. A. Richards on Rhetoric: I. A. Richards–Selected Essays, 1929-1974. Ed. Ann E. Berthoff. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. Rosinger, Lawrence. â€Å"Miller’s Death of a Salesman.† Explicator 45.2 (Winter 1987): 55-56. Simon, John. â€Å"Whose Paralysis Is It, Anyway?† New York 9 May 1994. Smith, Will. â€Å"Figuring Our Past and Present in Wood: Wood Imagery in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and The Crucible.† Miller and Middle America: Essays on Arthur Miller and the American Experience. Ed. Paula T. Langteau. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007. Spurgeon, Caroline F. E. Leading Motives in the Imagery of Shakespeare’s Tragedies. 1930. New York: Haskell House, 1970. Tammaro, Thomas M. â€Å"Introduction.† Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams: Research Opportunities and Dissertation Abstracts. Ed. Tetsumaro Hayashi. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1983. Teachout, Terry. â€Å"Concurring with Arthur Miller.† Commentary 127.6 (June 2009): 71-73.