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The song Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke featuring Pharrell Wiliiams & T.I was released on March 20, 2013 and was on the Billboard Hot 100 for 33 weeks. Unfortunately the song is very sexualised in regards to the lyrics and the video clip especially shown through the women wearing close to nothing throughout the whole video. The sexualised themes that are throughout the song include objectification of women, women being dependant on men, sexual consent and men having a higher status as well as having complete control in a relationship. When songs like Blurred Lines are played around the world it means countless amount of citizens will hear and watch the song and video clip which can create ideas and expectations around relationships and behaviour in a young persons life, leading them to act differently around others.
Get original essayThe target audience of the song is for both men and women of younger ages and those who are in relationships. When young women watch a video clip like this the messages that is brought across, implies that women should act in a ‘sexy’ manner when around men by wearing a minimal amount of clothing, dancing, and allowing men to take complete control over them. I think this sort of behaviour is first introduced to teenagers through pop culture, it greatly influences them and allows them to believe that this is how they should act. This song was also aimed at young men it makes them believe that they are more superior since they are fully dressed whilst the women are not. It gives the impression to men that they can act however they like towards any woman. It also is directed to anyone who is in a relationship as it suggests that this is how each person should act towards each other, basically in a sexual way. Overall the audience is for young people as this video is accessible through the media which many teenagers and children have easy access to. This song is directed to young people not only because of the actions of the people in the music video but also because it is a pop song which is a very popular genre of music for younger people.
From having issues around sexual consent to objectification this song and video clip is undeniably sexualised towards women. Throughout the whole video clip it shows young women being treated like objects shown though the way that the men act towards them. In the video the men are pulling the girls hair as if it doesn’t concern them and it will not hurt the young ladies suggesting they are like objects which don’t have feelings. Another example of objectification towards women is when Robin Thicke blows a puff of cigarette smoke into the womens face, the lady reacts by coughing slightly but Robin does not seem to care at all. Once again suggesting that he believes women are a status of an object where he can do anything to them and they won’t object against it. This video mainly shows sexualisation through the women as they are basically not wearing any clothes which is making the content have a sexual characteristic.
Sexualisation is also shown through the lyrics when it is referring to not giving sexual consent to a women when it says “You know you want it” the way it is said it seems as if he is not giving the victim a choice whether it will happen or not. Saying “You know” seems as if he is pressuring the person into something thinking he knows what is best for them, we can already get the hint to what ‘it’ is through listening to the lyrics and watching the video clip- ‘it’ is referring to sex. The audience may think of this lyric as being ‘rapey’ as you can only know someone wants something unless they tell you, so in this part of the song it sounds like he is tell her what is best for her. This is sexualised as it is basically referring to him knowing when she wants to have sex.
The song also seems to have the theme that women are male dependant, this is shown through the video clip as the women are barely ever captured without a man and when they are in a shot together they are often quite close giving the audience the impression that the women cannot stay away especially since she is the one with no clothes on whilst the men are fully dressed. The women are almost parading around the men as if they cannot get enough of them and they cannot stand to be without them.
Sexualisation is shown when we get the impression that within a relationship a man has more power and a higher status over a women shown through the women wearing close to nothing whilst the men being fully clothed. This shows the injustice and the sexualisation that is being communicated throughout the song as the man and women aren’t equal in a relationship implying that the man will be in power.
From sexualised songs like Blurred Lines there is a major impact on young peoples behaviour and expectations in relationships. From seeing this video a young woman might think they have to change their behaviour to look like the people on the video clip. Throughout the video the ladies are parading around the men in a minimal amount of clothing, the impact of sexualisation is especially in a shot where it is a long shot of a womens body characterising how a women should look; thin, pretty, perfect face, ‘thick’ and … By showing this view women might believe that they have to look like this thus changing their behaviour for example someone might self exploit themselves to make them look flawless like in the videos. Although when they do start changing their behaviour to look a certain way it can lead to illnesses like anorexia (eating less to try and look thin), anxiety (from not looking perfect all the time), social anxiety (when around people someone may suffer from stress because of what others says and do that relates to looks) , self harm (caused from someone being angry for not being perfect), substance abuse (to try and change what you look like normally through drugs) and clinical depression (getting influenced and allowing it to change you and make you miserable).
From these videos relationships may be ‘one way’ meaning the male has the only input to what happens and he has a higher status over the women. For example this is shown in the video when the women is lighting the cigarette for Robin which is implying that the women is only a slave to him and he has complete power over what she says and does. So through these videos it can effect relationships as it makes people believe that there is no equality and the relationship is revolved around the male.
From analysing the song Blurred Lines we are able to understand how a relationships shouldn’t be and can acknowledge how a good relationship should look like. A good relationship would show equality for both the man and the women , they would both have an input to what happens, women wouldn’t be shown as objects, women would be seen as independent thus not having to rely on men.
In the media they could show the women and the men in a much different light, showing them as being equal and free to do what they want depending on what they feel like. Videos in the media shouldn’t be showing clips like the ones in Blurred Lines as it implants wrong ideas into young peoples minds which influences their relationships and their behaviours. For example it impacts a young persons expectations in a relationship, it can include the male to think that he is more superior, it can allow women to believe they need to act in a ‘sexy manner’ and always have to be perfect.
When hard times hit, families must often take desperate actions in order to ensure financial stability in their household, and the Samsas in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis are no different. After Gregor, the main breadwinner of the family, wakes up one morning as a bug, the Samsas must take in three gentlemen as boarders in order to bring in money. However, what they end up bringing in proves to be far worse than just three men. The three boarders are more than characters who make the Samsas their servants. Rather, they are representative of a more sinister foe. The three boarders are a representation of the harsh world outside of Gregor’s apartment, where uselessness is not tolerated and where the people with power need to suppress the weak in order to establish authority.
Get original essayFrom the instant the three boarders are introduced, it is made clear that “unnecessary clutter was something they could not tolerate, especially if it was dirty” (35). For this reason, the Samsas move all the trash and objects that have no place in the house into Gregor’s room. Trash and unnecessary items serve no purpose but to take up space. Much like Gregor as a bug, these items are useless. The trash piled up in Gregor’s room is symbolic of the people that society casts aside because they serve no purpose in the world, and the fact that it is stored in Gregor’s room serves to highlight that Gregor is as useless as the trash. Therefore, the boarders cannot stand to be around the trash. In order to fit into society, an individual must have a useful role because if they do not have one, society will cast them out. Furthermore, useless people must remain out of sight from useful people in order to not impede the useful people from doing their job. That is why seeing Gregor repulses the three boarders. The boarders instantly “asked Gregor’s father for explanations” as to what was happening “and moved back towards their rooms only very slowly” (38). They label the Samsas’ flat as having “repugnant conditions” because the mere idea of sharing an establishment with a useless individual is an insult to their status as powerful, useful members of society (39). The boarders’ reactions also serve to highlight another reality of society: the refusal to accept those who are different. Gregor as a bug is not only useless, but he is also different from everybody else. While his thoughts are still humane, his appearance is not, so society views him as something inhuman. The boarders need to stay away, then, because if they are seen living with someone not accepted by society, they, too, would be viewed as different. Then, the boarders will be made outcasts, and they will begin to lose their authority and power, two traits the boarders worked very hard to gain.
In order to establish themselves as figures of authority, people in power believe they need to suppress the weak. One way of doing this is by imposing one’s beliefs and ideas on others. When the boarders moved into the Samsas’ apartment, they “brought most of their own furnishings and equipment with them” (35). A person’s furniture represents their humanity, their beliefs, and their passions. That is why when Gregor’s family removed Gregor’s furniture from his room, Gregor felt as if his family had given up on him and were taking his humanity away. When the boarders decided to bring their own furniture with them to the Samsas’ apartment, they are removing the Samsas’ furniture and replacing it with their own. More than that, they are removing the Samsas’ humanity and beliefs and installing their own beliefs in their place. In effect, this dehumanizes the Samsas because their humanity, much like Gregor’s, is being taken away. This makes it easier for the boarders to take control of the household and make the Samsas subservient to them. This concept of one group disregarding the beliefs of another group is very prevalent throughout society and is equally demonstrated by the boarders.
After the boarders move in, the Samsas are no longer the masters of their own house. Gregor’s father no longer occupies the seat at the head of the table during dinner as is customary for the patriarch of a household. Now, the boarders “sat up at the table where, formerly, Gregor had taken his meals with his father and mother,” and the “family themselves ate in the kitchen,” like servants (36). Before taking his meals in the kitchen, “Gregor’s father came into the living room…bowed once with his cap in his hand and did his round of the table,” further showing that it now the task of the Samsas to please the boarders (36). The Samsas are relegated to eating their meals where laborers and servants typically eat when, in fact, they are supposed to be the leaders of the house. This shows an obvious shift in the authority from the Samsas to the boarders, showing that in the world outside their house, authority is gained by suppressing the weak. The Samsas are vulnerable at the moment because they need the money from the boarders, and this gives the boarders the opportunity to establish power and dominance over them. In society, people are in constant competition with each other, and in order to prove one’s worth over another, people tend to exploit their competitors’ weaknesses. This happens when people are vying for leadership positions or the economic sector with businesses competing with each other. For the boarders, it is no different with the Samsas, demonstrating that the boarders are, indeed, a representation of the outside world.
The Samsas spent much of their time enclosed in their apartment that they sometimes failed to see the realities of the world outside their home. However, their choice to take in boarders brought them face-to-face with the harsh realities of life. In order to be accepted as members of society they have to rid themselves of useless possessions and people and forgo their attachment to Gregor. Once they do that, they will no longer be considered weak and no one can ever have complete control over them. The boarders, if anything, served as a learning experience for the Samsas; now, they know what to do to ensure that they never become servants to anyone again.
Thomas Richards, in his 1990 critical exposition, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851-1914, states: “In the mid-nineteenth century the commodity became the living letter of the law of supply and demand. It literally came alive.”(Richards, 2) The “commodity” adopts a corporeal cling to Victorian society in the form of the female body, as proposed in Christina Rossetti’s 1862 poem, Goblin Market. The story of Lizzie and Laura’s venture into goblin territory, or rather, male-dominated economic territory, marks a feminine intervention into the capitalist system; similarly, Rossetti’s female authorship attempts to venture into the masculine field of literary economy. The economy of writing in the height of the Victorian era, as explored in Richards’s text, misrepresented female writers severely and instead subjugated women to literary commodities.
Get original essayThis subjugation is visible in the poem, as Laura and Lizzie possess little agency in the marketplace of the goblins. In consultation with Helen Cixous’s 1975 essay The Laugh of the Medusa, the women, both Rossetti and her fictitious counterparts, can be examined as early examples of women ‘writing’ themselves into the social sphere in order to acquire agency. Cixous presents the issue of female entrapment in their own bodies by a language that does not allow them to express themselves, and the possibility of utilizing their bodies as a means to communicate. Though feminine psychoanalytic theory did not exist yet in Rossetti’s time, her poem still exemplifies the issues that the theory aims to resolve: to infuse female activity in both the marketplace and the literary sphere with authority, through bodily communication unique to women, or as Cixous indicates, “ecriture feminine”.
Goblin Market is in essence, an analogy drawn between the commodity/bodily exchange, which the sisters apply fastidiously to their experience in the goblin market, and the grand narratives of Christianity and Capitalism, which are rigorously applied to our own. Each is a manner of giving form and significance to existence in the same way as narrative itself tends towards a similar ‘fictitious’ ordering of experience. Rossetti positions herself in this analogy through the act of ‘writing’ herself into the literary economy and giving agency to the underrated female voice in that economy. Thus, Rossetti alludes to a conceivable reality but at the same time contests the validity of the forms we use to give shape to it.
Helene Cixous aimed at rendering literal the figures of femininity in the theory of criture and exploring the consequences of that lateralization. She did not simply privilege the “female” half of an existing binary opposition between “male” and “female”; like other theorists of criture, she questioned the very adequacy of logics to name the complexity of cultural realities. She acknowledges that the female body has been repressed in writing, much like Rossetti’s protagonists assume an inferior position in the presence of the goblins and their marketplace. Lizzie, perhaps the more logical sister, is aware of this inferiority: “No,” said Lizzie, “No, no, no;/Their offers should not charm us,/Their evil gifts would harm us.”(Rossetti, lines 64-66) The fear of bodily harm is inherent in Lizzie, for she does not realize the potential of bodily communication until Laura’s downfall. Cixous opens her essay with the following passage:
“Woman must write herself: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies—for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement.”(Cixous, 1942)
The act of a woman “writing” herself is applicable in both a fictional sense and an authorial sense; Rossetti accomplishes communicative authority in her characters as well as for herself. In order to comprehend the body as a mode of communication, the sisters must be contextualized in economic terms associated with the capitalist system of the late 19th century; their bodies must be characterized as “commodities”.
The issue of human agency, particularly that of the female gender, is discussed in Richards’s text. In accordance with the rise of capitalism, Richards relays the conflict between agency and the capitalist structure: “The problem of attributing human agency to advertised commodities becomes much more pronounced whenever anyone attempts to write about them. The very conditions of language function to invest commodities with many of the attributes of the human agents of history.”(Richards, 10)
Essentially, Richards is concerned about the state of language when it is housed in the capitalist space. Rossetti litters her poem with mercantile language, “Come buy, come buy,” the repetitive cry of the “merchant men” that is interspersed throughout the poem indicates a transition to a language that is economically motivated. Though the genre of the poem is often debated, Rossetti’s rhetoric is influenced by the rise of capitalism and the politics that were associated with it during her literary age; the “mercantile language” serves to create a platform for the female, both the heroines and Rossetti herself, to interact with the market.
Richards also references the importance of Karl Marx’s text, Capital, with particular emphasis on the first volume, which includes the fetishism of the commodity; fetishism, or the process whereby the society that originally generated an idea, eventually, through the distance of time, forgets that the idea is actually a social and therefore all-too-human product. Richards appears to be critical of the concept since language and “fetishism” are not entirely compatible:
“He highlighted manifest metaphors like “fetishism” while ignoring the latent anthropocentrism that characterizes everyday speech. Because language has a maddening way of transforming the means of description into a high drama of human agency and intention, a study of the barest facts of commodity culture always turn out to be an exploration of a fantastic realm in which things think, act, speak, rise, fall, fly, evolve.”(Richards, 11)
According to Richards, the language used to convey “commodity culture” is steeped in human agency. The goblin men, for example, promise to Laura that their goods are unique to their particular market; “One began to weave a crown/Of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown/(Men sell not such in any town)”(Rossetti, lines 99-101) The goblins are careful in saying that “men sell not such in any town”, both informing and insisting to Laura that she purchase the crown due to it’s rarity and masculine manufacturing. Cixous’s theory is conscious of male-female economic exchanges also:
“…Sexual opposition, which has always worked for man’s profit to the point of reducing writing, too, to his laws, is only an historico-cultural limit. There is, there will be more and more rapidly pervasive now, a fiction that produces irreducible effects of femininity.”(Cixous, 1949)
Rossetti illustrates a similar sexual opposition in Laura’s initial meeting with the goblins by gendering the advertisement in masculine terms; however, as Cixous proclaims, the emergence of female writing will establish a mode of communication unique to women. This mode will pertain to the body, and in examining the crossing of economical and gendered boundaries and corporal exchanges, Laura and Lizzie, and ultimately Rossetti, acquire agency.
Laura and Lizzie become physical icons for commodity culture when they venture into the marketplace and actively bargain and barter with the goblins, especially so when their bodies are economized. Richards defines the effects of advertising on the Victorian body, when he states that, “…by then the quacks had already dug the pincers of the marketplace deeply into the flesh of the consumer. The body had become the prevailing icon of commodity culture, and there was no turning back.”(Richards, 205) In the case of Rossetti, the “prevailing icon” was that of the female body and the “pincers” belong to the goblin men, and their tempting fruit in particular. “Eat me, drink me, love me,” Lizzie begs Laura, “Laura, make much of me;/For your sake I have braved the glen/And had to do with goblin merchant men.”(Rossetti, lines 471-474) Lizzie resists the offers made by the goblins, but more importantly, the “merchant men”; this label encompasses the capitalist system and male control within it. Cixous, similarly to Lizzie, begs women to write and reject submission to men and “capitalist machinery” of which they are the engineers:
“Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you; not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs ; and not yourself.”(Cixous, 1944)
Cixous’s message is devoted to female authors like Rossetti; she is a woman “writing” about women, engaging in the development of an intrinsically feminine mode of writing and communicating that is fundamentally based in the body. Lizzie utilizes her body to absorb the juices of the goblins’ commodities, and through this immersion, her body becomes a commodity itself to heal her sister. Thus, for the females of the poem, the body regulates as a mode of movement in the capitalist space and as a means of survival in that space. Rossetti’s participation in the authorial economy is analogous to this, as she “writes” herself into the system for literary survival.
The grand narratives that dictated to Victorian society a set of values and morals that were rapidly changing, were also becoming more interwoven, as the rhetoric to relay the values and morals looked increasingly similar. These grand narratives, Christianity and Capitalism, pervaded Rossetti’s life, and as Mary Wilson Carpenter outlines in her criticism of the poem, ““Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me": The Consumable Female Body in Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market,"” religious context was highly significant:
“I would propose that the foundation of Anglican Sisterhoods associated directly with the two churches which Rossetti is known to have attended, and the work of those Sisterhoods with homeless, destitute, and fallen women, gave the poet access to a uniquely feminocentric view of women's sexuality and simultaneously opened her eyes to its problematic position in Victorian culture.”(Carpenter, 417)
Carpenter labels Rossetti’s view of female sexuality as “uniquely feminocentric”, and since capitalism dictates the importance of multiplicity and mass production, a “unique” outlook on female sexuality seems very singular. Richards explains the blurring of Christianity and Capitalism, in regards to economy within the church:
“…The quacks were men who sought out a large and diverse audience of women. Like male ministers in nineteenth century churches who tailored their sermons to a female clientele and propounded a gendered vision of Christianity, the quacks adapted their message to a female audience and advanced a gendered vision of consumption.”(Richards, 206)
Richards’s exposition of economy in the church compliments Carpenter’s argument for the religious discourse that shaped Rossetti’s authorial intention. Evidently, glimpses of said discourse occur in the poem: “"Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted/ For my sake the fruit forbidden?/ Must your light like mine be hidden,/ Your young life like mine be wasted,”.(Rossetti, lines 478-481) The “fruit forbidden” can be interpreted as an allusion to the forbidden fruit of Eden; this, in effect, is Richards’s conception of “a gendered vision of Christianity” and more significantly, “a gendered vision of consumption”.
In terms of religious connotations, and the biographical data that Carpenter provides, perhaps Laura and Lizzie are authorial projections of Rossetti’s own body. Laura, ignorant for a moment of the dangers she faced in indulging in the goblins’ products, asks Lizzie whether she engaged in mercantile activity. Though she does not participate in consuming the merchandise, her external absorption of the juices is enough to assert her, or rather, her body’s position in the marketplace. Carpenter expands on this idea when she states conclusively, “The sisters represent women’s double plight in the Victorian sexual economy: either risk becoming a commodity yourself, or risk never tasting desire, never letting yourself “peep”.”(Carpenter, 428) The ultimatum that Carpenter presents is reminiscent of Cixous’s implications of females “writing” themselves into economic and sexual existence. She warns, similarly, that the feminine voice will be lost entirely in a body that cannot express itself, unless females utilize their bodies for distinctly feminine communication.
The protagonists most closely resemble commodities in a bodily sense when the exchange goes beyond advertisements and recurring jingles; Lizzie literally embodies consumer desire while obeying the terms established by the goblin men:
“"You have much gold upon your head,"/They answer'd all together:/"Buy from us with a golden curl./She clipp'd a precious golden lock,/She dropp'd a tear more rare than pearl,”(Rossetti, lines 124-127)
The male figure is in control of manufacturing the merchandise, as well as distributing, circulating, and pricing it; the entire economic structure of the market is male-dominated, leaving little room for female activity, unless it takes on the form of merchandise as well. Richards comments on the relationship between consumption of commodities and feminine elements: “…the woman does not consume commodities in her own right; she operates as an extension of the male. Clearly advertisers saw women as go-betweens between men and their commodities.”(Richards, 206) Cixous’s theory is compatible with the space between, as “feminine ecriture” capitalizes on the void as a platform for female speech as expressed by the body:
“Because the “economy” of her drives is prodigious, she cannot fail, in seizing the occasion to speak, to transform directly and indirectly all systems of exchange based on masculine thrift. Her libido will produce far more radical effects of political and social change than some might like to think.”(Cixous, 1949)
Laura’s act of cutting her hair for monetary exchange seems to occur under male instruction; however, the act is highly erotic and occupies a justification in the capitalist space in accordance with the passage from Cixous’s essay. This is analogous to Rossetti’s act of writing the poem; the subject matter is erotic, the language insinuates sexual temptation, repression and desire, and it manages to be situated marginally between children’s folklore and adult prose fiction. Richards returns again to the “gendering of consumption” when he states:
“The female labor of consumption remains bracketed within male production and consumption as women become the go-betweens mediating men and their particular desires. The gendering of consumption thus works exclusively to masculine advantage, freezing women in postures prescribed by the watchful gaze of the male.”(Richards, 247)
It is important to consider the conclusion of the poem in regards to Richards’s passage; the domestic desires of women are examined as dramas of competitive buying and selling in which women are always at risk as objects to be purchased yet also implicated as agents of consumption. The sisters retain a peaceful home life after their venture into capitalist territory, but the domestic sphere still prescribed them with the assigned lives of mothers and house-wives. Cixous prescribes “writing” as a means to express, that which transcends beyond market values and economic exchanges: “I maintain unequivocally that there is such a thing as marked writing; that, until now, far more extensively and repressively than is ever suspected or admitted, writing has been run by a libidinal and cultural—hence political, typically masculine—economy.”(Cixous, 1945)
Marked writing refers to the “ecriture feminine”, the inherent feminine voice in women’s writing. Cixous continues on the next page: “By writing herself, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display…”(Cixous, 1946) The story of Lizzie and Laura represents a specifically female experience of Victorian political economy; Rossetti’s fable of female consumption is inherently suspicious of a world of unrestricted buying and selling associated primarily with men. But Rossetti assumes that women are already implicated as both agents and objects in an economics of consumption. Likewise, Rossetti herself, as an author, expels an innately female voice, one that is inconspicuously inserted into the literary market in order to critique the values and concealed suppositions of capitalism.
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Get custom essayHelene Cixous’s final lines in her essay demonstrate the function of “ecriture feminine” as a mode of inclusion in male-dominated spaces, such as the capitalist sphere, but also as a mechanism for escape and female individuality: “This is an “economy” that can no longer be put in economic terms. Wherever she loves, all the old concepts of management are left behind. At the end of a more or less conscious computation, she finds not her sum but her difference.”(Cixous, 1959) Rossetti’s poetic fantasy challenges the prevailing ideology of production and consumption by relocating human value in female sexuality and sisterhood. In doing so, she offers cognition of female economics that could serve as a prototype for twentieth-century feminists, such as Helen Cixous. Goblin Market is in essence, an analogy drawn between the bodily mercantile exchanges, which the sisters apply fastidiously to their experience, and the grand narratives of Christianity and Capitalism, which are rigorously applied to our own. Each is a manner of giving form and significance to existence in the same way as narrative itself lends towards a similar ‘fictitious’ ordering of experience. Rossetti also positions herself in this analogy by “writing” herself into the literary economy.
Nonverbal communication is the first thing that interests me because of its importance. I believe that many individuals underestimate the significance of nonverbal communication. We normally think of communication in reference to what we say or the words we utilize. Interpersonal communication encompasses far more than the literal definition of words and the details or connotations that they give. It also includes nonverbal behaviors that convey implied messages, whether they are intentional or unintentional. Face expressions, voice tone and pitch, body language gestures (kinesics), and physical distance between communicators (proxemics) are all examples of nonverbal communication. Beyond oral communication, these nonverbal cues can provide insights, supplementary information, and meaning. In a study of kinesics conducted by anthropologist Ray Birdwhistell, it was discovered that nonverbal communication accounts for more than 65 percent of all communication.
Get original essayNon-verbal conversation occurs besides the use of any oral or written word. Instead of written or oral words, it relies on a variety of non-verbal cues like physical movements, tasks, colors, signs, symbols, signals charts, etc. to express feelings, attitudes or information. Although no phrase is used in non-verbal communication, it can effectively speak many human feelings greater precisely than verbal strategies of communication.
There are three main aspects of nonverbal communication: facial expression, gestures, and tone of voice.
Facial expression is the most universal form of language in the world. Therefore, in order to have a good first impression and grabbing audience’s attention. It is because the similarity of facial expressions used to convey fear, anger, sadness, and happiness are very high around the world. It’s the easiest way for us to identify a person’s attitude at a first sight. Let’s think for a moment that we are able to convey with just looking at a face. For example, a smile implies happiness or approval, while a frown may imply unhappiness or disapproval. Therefore, the expressions on our face can help convey authenticity and building trust from others if we can control it and manage well. According to a study, it is suggested that the most trustworthy expression is a smile and slight raise of the eyebrows that shows your friendliness and confidence to others. As a result, the way you communicate with audience will determine how they respond to you.
Apart from facial expression, gesture is the second most direct and obvious non-verbal signals. For example, gestures like waving, pointing, and using the fingers to indicate greetings and numbers are very common in the world. However, although gesture is universal, the meaning of a specific gesture may not be the same. They vary differently across cultures and sometimes ambiguous. Therefore, if you would like to communicate with peers across the world effectively, it is crucial for you to have at least a basic understanding of different types of nonverbal cues based on culture and country of origin.
For example, the 'okay' gesture means 'okay' or 'all right ' for most of us. However, in some parts of Europe, it is used to indicate that you are nothing. Besides, it is even a vulgar gesture in some South American countries. Another example is the V gesture, it means victory. We use this gesture when we are celebrating a happy moment However, in the United Kingdom and Australia, it carries an offensive meaning if the back of the hand is put in front of others.
Last but not least, tone of voice, pitch range and volume is easily neglected by many people. However, it can convey a lot of information like ranging from enthusiasm to disinterest. Therefore, it is suggested to be aware of your tone of voice. It affects how others respond to you. And try to control your volume when you want to emphasize on some ideas. For example, if you want to show interest in some aspect, you can express your enthusiasm by using an animated or energetic tone of voice. In such action, not only does it show your feelings towards a topic, but also help generate interest from audience who are listening to your speech.
Your nonverbal communication indications, such as how you listen, look, move, and respond, reveal to the individual with whom you are communicating whether you care or not, if you are being truthful, and how effectively you are listening. When your nonverbal signals correlate with what you are verbalizing, trust, transparency, and rapport grow. When they do not, tension, doubt, and uncertainty might arise. Nonverbal cues can be as significant as what we say, if not more so. Non-verbal communication can have a significant influence on the listener and the communication’s outcome.
To conclude, nonverbal communication is essential in our lives because it improves an individual’s capacity to relate, participate, and build significant relations. Those who obtain a better knowledge of this nonverbal communication may be able to form more meaningful connections with others. Nonverbal communication takes different forms and is understood in a variety of ways by various people, especially throughout cultures. The absence of nonverbal clues can be significant as well and can represent nonverbal communication itself. Every maneuver and mix of kinesics of the body, like demeanor alterations, eye direction, limb motions, and facial expressions, send cues to others. These cues can be unapparent or evident as well as contradictive: an individual might say one thing while nonverbally conveying an entirely different message. Especially if the individual is not being truthful. People have less purposeful control over their nonverbal communications than they do with what with the words they speak. Nonverbal communication is more informative of an individual’s actual feelings because it is usually instinctual and difficult to falsify. If there is a disconnect between the two, believe the nonverbal indications rather than the words being utilized.
Treating someone differently because of their body-style is the same and no more acceptable than treating them differently because of their race, skin-tone or nationality or cultural heritage but it has become common in some social circles because people presume that a person’s body style, such as weight, is completely under their control. It is the same as calling someone lazy because they are shorter than average or slow-witted because they are taller than what is considered normal by that group. When it comes to simply carrying a few extra pounds there have been times in the past when that was considered a sign of intelligence, wealth and success because poor people had to work hard physically and often did not have access to an abundance of food as such that they would ever have weight problems. This was true to such an extent that a famous painter named Rubens painted portraits (likely on commission) of wealthy women who would all be considered carrying a few extra pounds by today’s standards and his work was so popular and lasting that the term Rubenesque is still in use today among educated and cultured people. African American women, it seems, have bucked the societal stereotype that thin is in stout is out but it is rare for any social sub-group to take control of a cultural narrative and trained stereotype and prejudice this way.
Get original essayLikewise, in those times and even in the plantation aristocracy in the United States, pale white skin so pale that it would be considered severe by today’s standards was considered to be a sign of intelligence, wealth and success as well because it signaled that unlike poor people who had to work hard physically in the beating sun, that this woman was of a cultured and refined class. This is all to say that our ideas about and conceptions of body image are learned from others and a product of cultural relativity and may or may not have any basis in fact or valid meaning. In other words, fat shaming is a product of a culture that seems to want us to discount and disparage anyone who is different than us while at the same time encourages us to be unique and individual. This is not to say that there are not many people who are overweight because they do not exercise enough and make bad dietary choices, but that it is not something that one can tell for sure just by looking at them. There are many reasons that someone might be carrying a few extra pounds or even obese, that may be beyond their control (Chrisler, 2017). We are shown pictures over and over of celebrity moms who have bikini-ready bodies soon after giving birth and are taught, if not conditioned, to believe that they are the norm and what should be expected, not the exception to the rule when it comes to body style.
There are many reasons and causes for weight-gain and some are within a person’s control and others are not and some are border-line where a great amount of discipline and self-control are needed to overcome adding extra pounds and taking them off once they are gained. Our society, the same one that seems to encourage that we treat those who are overweight as outcasts, encourages unhealthy living and food addiction. The corn syrup that is added to modern food in America is highly addictive because it is known to raise the dopamine levels in our brain and when those levels recede we are compelled to seek-out more food with corn syrup in it. In this way diet soda though it might be lower in calories, actually increased odds of food addiction with the corn syrup that is in it. Most advertising in American culture leads us towards unhealthy living and weight gain simply because unhealthy food is easier and cheaper to manufacture and so provides the corporations that make it higher profits and the investors who own stock greater dividends. This is why it is confusing to many as to why many people who are poor and on government assistance are overweight; it might not be as much because they are lazy and do not exercise enough as it is the fact that unhealthy fatty foods loaded with starch and carbs and corn syrup are cheaper by the pound than healthy choices.
And so for all these years people have talked about comfort foods that remind one of growing up and their mother’s or grandmother’s cooking, there is actual science now that tells us why those foods make us feel good. They comfort us because they create those spurts of dopamine in our brains that other things that stimulate us and give us joy do like working-out or like sex or like cocaine, and dopamine is just as addictive. So when someone is under a lot of stress or lonely or depressed or quitting smoking or going through any number of things they are more likely to turn to food and depending on many other factors including their genes might put on a few extra pounds or more. One example is the freshmen fifteen that says, true or not, that many students put on ten or fifteen pounds their first year away at college and this could be from the stress of being away from home for the first time or could be because for the first time in their lives they are without supervision and can eat whatever they want as often as they want and as much as they want. We are all just human and we all have our faults and weaknesses but it just so happens for those of us who have a certain metabolism and gain or are consistently overweight that is not a weakness or problem we can hide from others like most problems and so we are more likely to be picked-on because of it. Scientists have identified more than 100 differences in DNA that appear to be linked to obesity and so no one can say if a person’s weight is their fault or just a fact of their genetic make-up (Haspel, 2018). This may be there the apology or polite reference that someone is big boned may come from but that quaint saying does not really cover and explain the science adequately.
So not only do our corporations and food producers encourage fatty and unhealthy foods, at the same time our society and advertisers of product set an ideal body style and BMI (Body Mass Index or ratio of height-to-weight) that if difficult to attain. Corporate advertisers market almost all products using models with body styles that are often unreasonable and even impossible for some of us. Bullying is most often a sign that the bully has their own issues that they are compensating for and trying to hide and so fat-shaming is an activity that anyone who weighs less than the victim can join-in on. In a January 10, 2018 article for The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics entitled Everyday Indignities: Using the Microaggressions Framework to Understand Weight Stigma’ author Lauren Munro, a doctoral candidate who is a fat activist, artist, and writer who strongly believes in the importance of integrating academia and grassroots activism to create projects that push boundaries and challenge the status quo it is explained that while those who offend with remarks about might feel that these kinds of micro-aggressions are not damaging, their repeated occurrence constitutes a level of cumulative stress for those on the receiving end (503). Munro explains, citing D.W. Sue, editor of the book Microaggressions and Marginality: Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact that environmental micro-aggressions refer to the numerous demeaning and threatening social, educational, political and economic cues that are communicated individually, institutionally, or societally to marginalized groups. Sue describes the damage that can be cause as being part of four distinct pathways that microaggressive stress that it caused can be manifested through:
There is much more to fat shaming and bullying than simply hurting someone’s feelings for a short time and expecting them to get over it and move on.
Despite a united and widespread pushback effort created by big girls who one can assume are mostly young women of color, the stigma and the targeting by bullies continues. BBW big beautiful woman has become a badge of honor and these women have successfully changed the white standard of beauty forced on young black women by getting men to admit that they like and enjoy women with ample posteriors and this is a rare thing for an unorganized group to actually overcome and change a stereotype imposed by corporations and the larger society (Black & Peacock, 2011). Evolution, including things like median-age of first menstruation, is speeding-up (perhaps partly because of large amounts of estrogen found in our drinking supply) and so it might not be a stretch to say that more plus-sized women are having babies at younger ages and this is changing the shape of things to come (pun intended). It is difficult for most women to lose those extra pounds gained during pregnancy when they are literally eating for two and hard to cut-back on caloric intake after baby is born.
Palmer-Mehta and Shuler (2017) examined a FaceBook page by Jade Beall Photography started as a photo album titled, A Beautiful Body Project featured two children happily hugging the sagging, stretch-marked belly of their mother and noted that by October 2016 that single post with just that one picture and invitation to join the group gotten 497 comments, 4,836 shares, and 8,300 likes and more than sixty other pictures featuring a diverse images postpartum bodies including stretch marks, cellulite, sagging breasts, and cesarean section scars (360). This project illustrated again that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that body image prejudice is taught and learned like any other stereotype.
The misinterpretation and misapplication of messages about the importance of promoting health and healthy lifestyles is giving critical scholars cause for concern. This growing problem might be compared to complaints voiced when former First Lady Nancy Reagan introduced her simplistic Just say NO to Drugs Campaign which critics said caused undue suffering in millions as it discouraged doctors from prescribing pain medications as much as they should have. In this case calling attention to how contemporary postsecondary institutions are increasingly calling attention to healthy paradigms is reinforcing a size matters message and fueling harmful attitudes and judgments about body-style rather than focusing on increasing and promoting good health. This is likely true about all secondary education systems where and is causing discrimination against those with high BMI rather than focusing on promoting healthy lifestyle choices. In other words, it is easy just to not hire fat employees and faculty in order to portray the idea that your institution is health-conscious. In research reported on by Cameron (2016) entitles Challenging Size Matters Messages: An Exploration of the Experiences of Critical Obesity Scholars in Higher Education published in Canadian Journal of Higher Education it was found that existing literature (supports) that weight-based oppression in higher education is a significant current social justice issue.
In surveys, approximately 80% of participants reported they faced significant resistance because of their weight that they felt had altered their career paths (120). The problem described here of institutions and businesses facing problems by altering the perception rather than honestly dealing with it are likely found across of range of organizations and industries and not just when it comes to dealing with prejudice based on body-style but with all forms of institutional discrimination and injustice.
In an article published by the American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C. entitled, Fat Shaming in the Doctor’s Office Can Be Mentally and Physically Harmful it was reported that even doctors are guilty of, Disrespectful treatment and medical fat shaming, in an attempt to motivate people to change their behavior, is stressful and can cause patients to delay health care seeking or avoid interacting with providers and to make matters even worse (if that is at all possible, research found that doctors are less likely to take an obese person’s complaints and descriptions of their symptoms seriously and too often prescribe or do not prescribe tests and treatments much different than what they would a person who they feel is more height to weight proportionate (Chrisler, 2017). This means that they might fail to recommend appropriate tests and medications that they should based solely in BMI. And this is not just an imagined problem: In a study of over 300 autopsies, obese patients were 1.65 times more likely to have undiagnosed medical conditions like endocarditis, ischemic bowel disease, lung carcinomas and other diseases and condition that indicate misdiagnosis or inadequate care by their physicians (Chrisler, 2017). This means that sizeism as the they study of discrimination based-on body style has been come to be called is not just a matter of hurting people’s feelings but can be a matter of life and death and needs to be addressed and stopped.
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Get custom essayDealing with extra pounds, whether many or few and whether because of the 100 or more known hereditary factors or medical conditions or because of environmental factors, long-term or short, is difficult enough without having to endure judgmental remarks and bullying. Everyone wants a long and happy life and no one wants to have to deal constantly with weight gain and loss and trying to become healthier as to be there for not just their children but their children’s children as well. That body-shaming is a thing in our society and a huge problem as illustrated by this research just shows how primitive (un-civilized) a culture we actually live in. Fortunately those with all kinds of weight battles whether it be postpartum eight gain or food addition or hereditarily being big boned are stepping-up and speaking-out to defend those who are unfairly targeted and to educate those who are ignorant of the facts of the matter. When it comes to understanding extra-weight and the problems that tend to go along with it there is no one size fits all explanation but when it comes to educating the insensitive and uninformed there is.
Many people over the past centuries have been trying to determine who the main protagonist of Paradise Lost really is. The eternal battle that exists between the forces of good and the forces of evil is a central theme throughout much of the world’s literature. Evil characters are typically identified through their associations with tragedy, anger, confusion and despondency, typically as the instigators of these experiences in the lives of the protagonists. As the ultimate expression of evil, one of the most often seen characters in both religious and secular literature forms continues to be about Satan. Even the Holy Quran makes frequent allusions to this character and his background. In other forms of literature, Satan is depicted in a variety of different ways, similar to the way in which several other popular fictional characters take on different attributes as they progress through time and interpretation. There are many reasons these differences emerge, including religious or philosophical interpretations, social settings at the time the work is written as well as the social understanding of the time period in which the story is set and the attitudes of the author toward the character. Although there are several characters that continue to appear in literature throughout history, Satan takes on a special significance precisely because of his central role in the production of evil action as well as his inherently malleable character from the beginning. Because he has been the subject of a great deal of serious treatment, Satan is a character worthy of further exploration in working out the similarities and differences of his portrayal within both the Arabic and English literary traditions by referring to specific works in which he holds a key role.
Get original essaySatan’s importance to the fundamental tale behind Paradise Lost is apparent from his first introduction. Milton’s sympathetic portrayal of the fallen angel plunges into the depths of the character, presenting a powerful and complex image of Satan that betrays Milton’s own ability to relate to the character’s situation. Throughout the epic poem, Milton abstains from making a clear judgment on Satan, presenting the reader with a number of viewpoints and allowing the reader to determine whether Satan is entirely evil. Milton endows his character with magniloquence and heroic qualities that allow him to appear overwhelmingly impressive to his followers as well as to those within hearing of his voice. At the same time, Satan proves to have an impressive ability to corrupt those around him, effortlessly convincing them of his own good despite knowledge to the contrary. In doing this, Milton illustrates how the line between good and evil is not always sharply defined and highlighted but can instead often hide behind a silver tongue or a beautiful voice.
The presentation of Satan in Paradise Lost has long been a source of critical debate among literary critics since its production in 1667. It has been suggested by several critics that Milton never intended for Satan to be seen in an admirable light. Regardless of what his intention was, though, this portrayal of the character remains sufficiently ambiguous as to allow for a wide variety of conflicting interpretations. Despite their differences, critics generally classify Satan in one of two major categories, he’s either the hero or he’s the antagonist depending upon the standpoint taken by the critic toward the work in general. As it can be seen in the character himself, the complex and subtle nature of Milton's epic allows people of varying perspectives to come to different interpretations. While there can be many reasonable considerations regarding Milton’s intentions and how well they match with these various interpretations, the question of whether this is a valid or necessary discussion in determining the significance of the work remains itself a matter of various interpretations.
It is generally understood that Milton’s intention in writing the epic was to explain the biblical story of Adam and Eve in expanded terms. Although the epic is similar to the Biblical story in a number of ways, Milton’s story is structured quite differently from the story told in the Bible. Throughout the poem, Milton attempts to portray his characters in a more humanistic light, giving them depth and form rather than the two-dimensional images seen in biblical texts. In the second book of Paradise Lost, Satan is seen as an individual possessing several heroic traits, including a tragic flaw in his interpretations that eventually leads to his downfall. Many critics have pointed out the various methods by which Milton constructs this heroic view of Satan. One of these constructs is the presentation of Satan as one of the best and brightest angels in heaven, holding a position of significance even as compared to the other angels. He is described as one of the wisest and most beautiful of the angels, but his power remains the most significant clue to his character. The characteristics Milton associates with Satan’s heavenly position subtly allow the reader to begin identifying Satan as the second in command in heaven, holding a position nearly equal to God himself. This positioning is essential in explaining not only how Satan might begin to have thoughts of rebellion, but also providing motivation for the other angels to follow his lead. Satan’s depiction as a heroic figure doomed to failure helped give rise to a new classification in heroic literature, that of the ‘suffering hero’. While true heroes are rewarded at the end, a suffering hero is punished.
This somewhat sympathetic view of Satan began to change during the Romantic period, which occurred during the first part of the 1800s. For example, C. S. Lewis believed that 'To admire Satan in Paradise Lost is to give one's vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography.' His expression of his views of Satan in Paradise Lost is perhaps the best representation of Romantic thought on the subject.
What we see in Satan is the horrible co-existence of a subtle and incessant intellectual activity with an incapacity to understand anything. This disaster he has brought upon himself; in order to avoid seeing one thing he has, almost voluntarily, incapacitated himself from seeing at all. And thus, throughout the poem, all his torments come, in a sense, at his own bidding, and the Divine judgment might have been expressed in the words ‘thy will be done.’ He says ‘Evil be thou my good’ (which includes ‘Nonsense be thou my sense:’) and his prayer is granted.’
Far from seeing Satan as a suffering heroic character, Lewis calls Milton’s Satan a comic spirit within the text. To Lewis, Satan is a character who exists without the capacity 'to understand anything'. Helen Gardner, on the other hand, views Satan's characterization as basically tragic.
Not all critics focus exclusively upon the basic character of Satan as he was intended or appears, though, instead attempting to examine why this character has such a dramatic effect upon his readers. Neil Forsyth's The Satanic Epic attempts to explain how and why Milton's Satan is so tempting. Within this work, Forsyth emphasizes the importance of Satan against those like Lewis who would minimize the poem's compassion with the devil. By doing this, Forsyth again illustrates the depth of not only the character, but also of Milton’s understanding of him. Citing William Blake, Forsyth agrees with Blake’s assessment of Milton as a true poet because he was 'of the Devil’s party' even though his intention was 'to justify the ways of God to men.' In his search to learn why Satan is so appealing, Forsyth digs deep into a range of topics including the origins of evil, the significance of witchcraft to the status of the poetic narrator, the epic tradition, the nature of love between the sexes, and seventeenth-century astronomy.Forsyth considers each of these topics as Milton introduces them: as Satanic subjects.
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Get custom essayThroughout this analysis, Satan emerges not as a necessarily evil individual but instead as the major opponent to Christian faith, a subtle but distinct difference. It is Satan who doubts and speculates and denounces. He is the skeptic who gives voice to many of the arguments that Christianity has instigated from within and without. By rooting his Satanic interpretation of Paradise Lost through Biblical and other sources that would have possibly been available to Milton, Forsyth finds not only an attractive and heroic Satan but a Milton whose energies are personified in a Satanic character with an existence of his own.
Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
Get original essayJonathan Swift
When Gulliver's Travels was first published in 1726, Swift instantly became history's most famous misanthrope. Thackeray was not alone in his outrage when he denounced it as "past all sense of manliness and shame; filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene" (quoted in Hogan, 1979: 648). Since then, few literary works have been so dissected, discussed and disagreed apon. It is the magnum opus of one of the English language's greatest satirists, but certainly does not offer any easy answers. It is written like the typical travel book of the day, but instead of offering a relaxing escape from the real world, it brings us face to face with reality in all its complexity.
Of the four books comprising the work, by far the most controversial has been the last: "A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms". In it, the narrator, Gulliver, is deposited by mutineers on an island inhabited by two species. The Yahoos are dirty, savage and barbaric, with no capacity for reason. These wretched creatures physically resemble humans but immediately fill Gulliver with loathing. The Houyhnhnms, on the other hand, are a race of talking horses governed completely by reason. They lead natural, simple lives, and use the Yahoos for menial labour. They are so honest they cannot conceive of the notion of dishonesty. They regard Gulliver as a precocious Yahoo and, after a few years, banish him from the Island. Gulliver is heartbroken, having developed a love for these serene creatures and their way of life. He spends the rest of his life in England, trying talk to horses and regarding his fellow humans "only with Hatred, Disgust and Contempt".
Until the 20th century, criticism of book four tended to equate Gulliver with Swift. Gulliver would rather jump from the ship that "rescued" him than re-enter human society He cannot bear to look at his own reflection because of the resemblance he bears to the Yahoos. He sees himself as unworthy even to kiss the hoof of his Houyhnhnm master. This deeply offended an England which regarded man as the apex of creation and the paradigm of reason. Swift seemed to be damning mankind to a useless, horrible existence, without the prospect of any self-improvement or progress.
Modern criticism, however, can be divided into two broad schools of thought concerning the extent Swift wished to present the Houyhnhnm society as ideal. James L. Clifford distinguishes between a 'soft' and a 'hard' approach (Lock, 1999). The approach one takes has a bearing on one's entire notion of the book: on the narrative technique, on the genre, and, most importantly, on the target of Swift's satire.
The soft approach, currently the more popular of the two, defends Swift from his 18th century detractors by refuting the idea of Swift as a people-hater. Exponents believe that there is a clear distinction between Gulliver and Swift, and that Swift is satirising his narrator rather than speaking through him. The Houyhnhnms are ironic devices not meant to be taken as ideal. Similarly, the reader is not to despise the Yahoos as Gulliver does, because the Yahoos, too, are abstractions. Gulliver's behaviour at the end is so absurd and silly that all the "insight" he has gained cannot be taken seriously. He regards the kind Captain Mendez as just another Yahoo, thus he is clearly unreliable, say the critics.
Furthermore, the Houyhnhm society is, by modern standards, far from ideal. Houyhnhnms love all members of their race equally, yet feel no romantic or sexual love. As supremely rational creatures, they see it as folly to mourn the death of a particular family member or friend. They reject anything that they are not familiar with. They exploit the Yahoos and procreate according to strict eugenic principles so as to breed an inferior servant class. Their language is limited and their culture primitive. They come across as remote, cold and dreary. George Orwell takes particular exception to the Houyhnhnms, calling them walking corpses. He sees their society as the epitome of totalitarianism, where the attitude is "we know everything already, so why should dissident opinions be tolerated?" (Orwell, 1971: 353).
Surely this could not have been Swift's idea of an ideal society, says the soft school. The Houyhnhnms must be symbols for man's rational element, and the Yahoos symbols for man's appetitive, sensual qualities. Swift hated deistic rationalism, popular in the 18th century, which relied on reason as the only guide for belief and action. Thus Gulliver is satirised for failing to find a balance between his humanity and his intellect. Crane sums up the imputed moral: "human nature is bad enough, but it is not altogether hopeless; reason is a good thing, but a life of pure reason is no desirable end for man". This critical approach tends to see Gulliver's Travels as a novel. Gulliver is a psychologically complex character and Swift uses him as a dramatic device.
This paper wishes to reject the easy compromises of this approach in favour of the traditional, ?hard' school of thought. Gulliver's Travel's is a satire, and Gulliver as satirical device does not have a fully-fledged personality. Although it is dangerous to equate narrator with author completely, Gulliver and Swift share the same basic view of human nature. The difference, as R. Crane says, is simply "between a person who has just discovered a deeply disturbing truth about man and is considerably upset and one who has known this truth all along and can therefore write of his hero's discovery calmly and with humour". There are no indications anywhere that Swift did not himself believe the words he puts into his hero's mouth. Readers have no other source but Gulliver, no contradicting views between which to decide. The ending of the book is not comical, but poignant. Gulliver, once so self-assured and proud of his species, has undergone a tragic disillusionment which cleverly forms the climax of the entire work.
The view that Gulliver's Travels does in fact despair of the human condition ties in with what is known of the author. His declaration that "Principally [he] hate[s] and detest[s] that animal called man" (quoted in Columbia, 1993) is certainly unequivocal enough. Swift was an orthodox Christian and a conservative. His puritanical views caused him to regard man as "fallen", as inherently sinful and evil. The Houyhnhnms represent prelapsarian existence. Unlike them, Adam and Eve were not content to live in blissful ignorance and brought about man's wretched state by following their appetites rather than their reason. Similarly, Gulliver's curiosity and thirst for adventure is the cause of all his troubles and of his cruelty to those he leaves behind.
He was certainly no democrat he hated lords and politicians but felt no better about the lower classes. To claim Swift could not have sanctioned the exploitation of the Yahoos or lower caste of Houyhnhnms is to assume that Swift had modern values such as freedom and equality. These values resemble meliorism, which argued for the possibility of progress and improvement of society and which Swift dismissed even in his own day.
We also know, from another work, the Battle of the Books and from book three's Voyage to Glubdubbdrib that Swift had great respect for Classical Man. Although the Ancient Greeks and Romans were still human, they were as noble, uncorrupted and sensible as man could get. The Houyhnhnm society reminds of the Classical society in its simplicity. It corresponds particularly well with Plato's description of his ideal state in the Republic. In the Republic, everyone knows their place and duties in society. Inferiors do not strive to be equal to their superiors, and superiors do not ill-treat their inferiors. Children are educated only in mythology and physical fitness. The rulers have no private property or families, having given their children to the "community" at birth. Plato felt that only a few people possessed the capacity to reason properly, but that this capacity was the most valuable. He also distrusted the written medium, which he regarded as imperfect and misleading.
It seems as if Swift had Plato specifically in mind when creating the Houyhnhnms. Plato did not believe that his ideal society would ever come into existence, and Swift probably believed so even less. But unlike the soft school, which says that a life of reason is unattainable and undesirable, Swift believed that it is only unattainable. Whether Swift portrays the Houyhnhnm society as perfect for humans is an almost superfluous question, as it will never come about. Rather, it is a foil for human society, a device to show that we are not as rational as we think. Swift, in a letter to Pope, says that Gulliver's Travels aims at "proving the falsity of that definition animale rationale; and to show that it should be only rationis capax" (quoted in Hogan, 1979: 648). By this he means that man has the capacity for a smattering of reason, but that instead of using it to uplift himself, he uses it to increase his depravity. The singularly human phenomenon of war, for instance, so ridiculous when explained by Gulliver, requires some intelligence on the part of humans but not much. Gulliver's sleeping quarters are literally halfway between the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms, and this becomes a metaphor for man's paradoxical state. Swift includes sympathetic characters like Captain Mendez in the book to drive home the point that he is referring to all humans, including the reader who may imagine himself exempted.
Perhaps this is the reason why readers are so eager to soften the message of Gulliver's Travels because they want to deflect the harsh glare of his satire away from themselves. This is certainly why the work has become a popular children's story. The idea that we are all Yahoos for life alarms people as much today as it did almost three centuries ago. Then there are the numerous references to excrement, which becomes a symbol for man's filthiness. When the Yahoos first see Gulliver, they defecate on his head, whereas Swift's ideal being, the horse, has particularly inoffensive dung and lives cleanly. This ties in with the contrast between the Yahoo diet and the Houyhnhnm diet. Gulliver cannot live on the monotonous but healthy diet of the Houyhnhnms, and this is further proof of barbarism.
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Get custom essayHowever, Swift does, ultimately, give us a glimmer of hope for humanity. After all, this is the Irish patriot who pronounced Ireland "the most miserable country apon earth". Although he is passionate in his hatred for humankind, he is almost equally passionate in his love for it. True, this is no gentle humanist who sees the world basking in a rosy glow. Yet no-one who really does not care for his own species is so angry at finding it deficient. If Swift were really an all-out misanthrope, he would not have seen the point of trying to make humanity aware of its condition. He would not have given two thirds of his earnings to the poor. In his own forceful way, Swift dedicated his life to improving society. He knew he could not make Houyhnhnms of humans, but at least he could hold up his famous mirror of satire to show his fellow Yahoos what they really are.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like growing up in the inner city of Chicago, Illinois? The title of my first quarter book report is The House on Mango Street, written by Sandra Cisneros. Ms. Cisneros was born in Chicago December 20, 1954. The publisher of The House on Mango Street is Vintage Contemporaries in 1984 in New York. This novel is a fiction book. The genre is adolescent literature. The point of view of this novel is from a female’s perspective. The main character of this novel is the narrator who is the protagonist. The antagonist of the novel would be the many situations which she must go through. The plot summary of this novel are the joys and pains of growing up as a teenager in the inner city of Chicago.
Get original essayIn my opinion I would not recommend this novel because I prefer novels which are more happier. The memorable quote which I will analyze in this report is from page 9, from the chapter titled Boys & Girls. The quote which I have picked is “Until them I am a red balloon tied to an anchor. ”
To begin with, the main character of this novel is Esperanza, the narrator, who is the protagonist. For instance, Esperanza is the kind person of the novel because she becomes more mature through the book. Within the novel, The House on Mango Street implies, “q” This evidence explains that. The antagonist At first, Esperanza had situations to go through.
For example, at the beginning of the book Esperanza had to go threw a process of not having anybody she could trust and tell her secrets too. In the novel page 8 it claims, “Nenny is too young to be my friend. Someday I will have a friend all my own. One I can tell my secrets too. One who will understand my jokes without my having to explain them. ” This evidence explains that she has no one to talk to not even her sister because her sister is too young. Finally, Esperanza had problems too go through.
To start with, the plot summary are the joys and pains that Esperanza experience. For example, one of the pain Esperanza experience was when she had to go through aunt Lupes death.
In, The House on Mango Street, it states, “Lucy and Rachel pray to. For ourselves and for each other…because of what we did to Aunt Lupe. ”(pg. 58) This evidence illustrates that Esperanza is scared too go to hell because Lucy, Rachel and her were imitating ant Lupe before she passed away. Another example that shows that Esperanza experience a joyful moment was when the monkey in her neighborhood moved too Kentucky. For instance the author writes that, “The monkey moved-to Kentucky-and took his people with him. And I was glad because I couldn't listen anymore too his wild screaming at night, the twangy yakkety-yak of the people who owned him”(pg. 94). Too illustrate Esperanza feels happy about that monkey family leaving because she doesn't have too hear the monkey scream anymore. All in all, Esperanza had some joyful moments and some painful moments throughout the novel. AnalysisMy point of view of this novel is that I do not recommend it for many reasons.
For example one reason why I don't recommend it is because it is scary, like when Esperanza gets raped. In the novel The House on Mango Street it illustrates, “You're abuelito is dead, Papa says early one morning in my room. Está muerto, and then as if he just heard the news himself, crumples like a coat and cries, my brave Papa cries. ” This evidence describes that this book is depressing because people lose their life in the book which makes me emotional. In conclusion I do not recommend this book for people that are unhappy and heartbroken.
In this novel, I found this memorable quote that relates to my life. In addition, the quote connects to my life because im going threw the same process Esperanza is going threw, like not having a friend I could tell my secrets too.
In page 9, of The House on Mango Street it demonstrates, “Until then I am a red balloon, balloon tied to an anchor. ” This is the quote that explains the process me and Esperanza going threw, like we have no one to trust and tell jokes to because our little brother or sister is to small too understand them. In result, the memorable quote links to my life because of one reason like not having no one as a friend.
Too conclude this, The House on Mango Street is a 1984 novel by Mexican-American author Sandra Cisneros. It has to do with Esperanza Cordero, a small mexican girl, and her life living and being raised a the inner city of chicago.
The title The Shining is a very strange one to say at least. The Shining has been mentioned throughout the story. The Shining is basically the power/ability that Danny has that can help him see certain things or fright him. The Shining relates to Danny’s supernatural ability to read the minds of others and the only way he can talk to his imaginary friend.The author of The Shining is Stephen King, the genre of the book is psychological horror, horror, gothic novel. The events of The Shining happen at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado from September 30 through December 3rd. Which the Overlook Hotel is inspired by the Stanley Hotel. Stephen King himself also stayed in the Stanley Hotel during his visit he got the inspiration to write the book The Shining that he would later be published in 1977 and 3 years after in 1980 The Shining had a theatrical release.
Get original essayThe story follows the Torrence family as they settle in Jack’s new job at the Overlook Hotel. Jack (Father), Wendy (Mother), Danny (Son) Dick Hallorann is an employee of the Overlook hotel when it’s in the operating season. Delbert Grady was the caretaker of the hotel before Jack. Grady worked at the hotel 5 years before but during the interview Jack was informed that the last caretaker killed his family with a hatchet but Grady eventually killed himself with a shotgun. Jack was fired from his old job back home at Covington.,' Danny said candidly, 'my daddy got fired from his teaching job and that's why we're in Colorado, I guess.' (King pg 59) Jack didn’t have a job anymore but being the caretaker of the hotel was the job he can land but there was a fair warning during the interview that would foreshadow the events that are to come.
The more time that passes at the Overlook Hotel. Danny and Wendy begin to notice that Jack’s everyday behavior is changing and it's not any good. As time passes Jack descends into insanity. Wendy notices that her Jack’s drinking habits begin to come back and that Jack is getting rather violent and causing him to lose his cool easily. Wendy is determined that it was Jack who hurt Danny again, as he did two years prior in a drunken rage when Danny accidentally ruined a bit of his work. Their history of bad times in their marriage and bad experiences causes Jack and Wendy to destroy the relationship between them. As the family is in the hotel severe snow made them stay inside thus making the family isolated from the world outside of the hotel. An internal conflict is Tony because he creates the episodes that Danny goes into, even though they do help him see things. It's like an eye that looks into the future either showing great fortune like when they took Danny to the amusement park for his birthday. The looking eye Danny has also showed him great despair that scared him immensely, that is what Dick calls The Shining.
Danny is seeing multiple awful dreams from the shining. His imaginary friend Tony keeps showing him what bad things are going to happen. Everything is getting worse. Danny and Wendy are hoping that Dick Hallorann to come to the hotel immediately, but he is having many difficulties to get through the awful storm that has slightly delayed his flight. Jack has now become a lunatic because the previous caretaker Grady has complete influence over Jack. The only way the hotel could get Danny is if Jack killed him, and that is what he was going to do. One afternoon, Danny was hiding because Jack was chasing him armed with a roque mallet. Jack also seems to have to be influenced by past guests of the hotel and hallucinates that there are people there and talks to people who aren’t there. Jack really believed he was talking to a man named Grady for reals but it wasn’t real at all. Grady influenced Jack to finally carry out the killing of Wendy and Danny just like what Grady did to his daughter’s with a hatchet and a shotgun for his wife and himself.
The climax occurs when Jack is fully possessed and makes the decision that he must murder Wendy and Danny. Using a roque mallet. A couple of nights before Jack and Wendy were in a bit of a fight in which Jack got a couple of good blows on Wendy and she hits Jack back, but that night if it wasn’t for getting a good hit to knock Jack out Wendy most likely would’ve been dead. The family did not have much time on their hands if Dick was stuck in a delay during air travel or a crash alone could’ve sealed the fate for the family. However, due to his timely arrival, Jack could not finish the job. While Dick leads Jack's wife and son away from the Overlook, the boiler blew because of the collected steam that Jack had forgotten to empty.'The boiler!' Danny screamed. 'It hasn't been dumped since this morning! It's going up! It's going to explode!'. If Jack found Danny, he would’ve beaten him down with a mallet until he was dead. The same can be said for Wendy but due to Dick arriving at the nick of time to save them, they were available to see the sunrise over them again.
The conflict has not really been solved as now the family has to deal with reality and how the future is going to play out. This was Jack's last attempt at killing Wendy and Danny. Jack died in the explosion, but everyone else got out safely. Wendy and Danny now live without a husband/father, and Hallorann got a job as a chef at a different hotel. Every summer, Wendy and Danny come to the hotel to visit him. Their lives would never be the same, and they had many horrifying images of the hotel. They struggle to keep those horrifying images out of their heads, and the rest of their lives were affected daily. As that day was just a new as it has just begun Jack failed to maintain the boiler so as soon as the elevator fell Jack could’ve survived the fall, but the explosion was the finishing blow to Jack. Words turned into a shriek of triumph, and the shriek was swallowed in a shattering roar as the Overlook's boiler exploded. (King pg 297) Dick’s timely arrival to the hotel saved Danny’s and Wendy’s life. Jack’s failure to maintain the boiler caused him to lose his life while in the pursuit to take the life of his wife and son.
The book calmed down in terms of action, as Wendy and Danny made it out of the Hotel before the explosion that claimed Jack. They had their coats and rode off with Dick Hallorann on a snowboard. Hallorann and Danny and Wendy reached them fifteen minutes later. They would escape and watch the hotel explode, while relieved that the nightmare is over. It's summertime about 2 years have passed since the hotel incident when he was 5. Danny will be turning 7 pretty soon. Wendy, Danny, and Dick Hallorann enjoyed a summer evening as what it seems to be at a lake or river having a swell time fishing as an avid fisher would have with their own child. Wendy, Danny, and Dick miss Jack but they are relieved that the nightmare at the overlook hotel is over. They all sit down beside Danny as he’s reeling in a catch slowly, as Dick, as it seems, is giving a little lesson. The three characters sit on the dock grazing in the afternoon sun, looking into what possibly to future can uphold for the three of them.
Danny Torrance is a unique and overall smart kid for his age with a great gift. He is also the protagonist of the book. He loves his father so much and thinks the highest of him and believes he’ll change into the best father he can be. Danny has a special ability, Dick calls 'The shining.' This power comes out through Tony, who helps Danny see visions of events that can possibly happen in the future. By the end of the novel Danny eventually comes to terms with Tony and the reality of his father. The shining is a unique power that allows you to see into the future and read minds. However, the shining ends up being a curse for the whole Torrance family at the Overlook Hotel. I believe that Danny is the main character because he has a special insight that Dick insights that’s it's called the shining, its kinda like a vision sort of thing and is well to Dick a blessing in disguise a great and unique gift.
Jack Torrance is a character in which you see his problems set into place that develops him to become the antagonist of the book. At the beginning of the novel, he is a sober, loving father and husband, who is just looking for work. All Jack wants to do is take care of Wendy and especially Danny. He wants to be the best father he can, and control his temper, to not end up like his father. When Jack takes the job to be the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, He begins to be his old self and begin his terrible habits. As weeks pass on the isolation of the hotel and how Grady has been influencing him slowly drives Jack into insanity.
My favorite character in the story is Wendy Torrance because she is a very dependent wife and a loving mother to Danny. When Jack takes the job at the Overlook hotel. Jack wouldn’t be a drunken mess but instead a loving caring husband. At the hotel, she does her daily duties that a housewife will do like clean and do laundry also being loving and caring to make sure that Jack is focused on when he is at work. Wendy becomes very independent and tries to take matters into her own hands when Danny is in danger or is in need of care. Wendy is very caring and is a perfect motherly figure just as she calms Danny down after a nightmare. Wendy is a perfect motherly figure looking out and only giving Danny the best she can and offering great care to him.
All three members of the Torrance family believed they had responsibilities to do, when at the end that was what hurt their relationships. For example, Jack was hired to take care of the hotel. Hiring Jack to the hotel was a responsibility he couldn’t run away from. The Overlook Hotel was a responsibility Jack had to take on since he did lose his previous job and of course he needs to bring home money to support his family. Towards the end of the story, it was his attachment to the hotel and how Grady influenced jack that made him attack his family. This shows that taking care of the hotel was a responsibility they couldn’t ignore, but at the end of it all, the Overlook Hotel hurt the Torrance family greatly.
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Get custom essayI would totally recommend my friends to read to what I believe is Stephen King's best work. When I read the book after a long time I really got into reading it I struggled to put the book down and the hesitation to stop doing classwork and read the book during class, in which I know I shouldn’t be doing that cause well I could be missing out on valuable class time and miss out on notes that I will need to copy down in order to do well in my test or quiz. The book is very thrilling as the suspense builds up and tension rise between Jack’s psychological thinking. My friends may enjoy the book due to the fact they enjoy Stephen King's other brilliant storytelling like the book IT.
Antigone written by Sophocles, speaks about the power struggle between Antigone and her Uncle Creon who is the King of Thebes. Both characters seemed to have their own beliefs in how Antigone’s brother Polyneices should be buried. With both Creon and Antigone being strong-willed individuals, they refrain from changing their morals for anyone.
Get original essayAs the play progresses to the end, it can be shown that both characters play part as the tragic hero. They can both be seen as characters that made judgmental errors leading to their downfall. However, there seemed to be one character that played the real tragic hero of the story. With Creon’s authority, stubbornness, nobility and flaws, he is the real tragic hero in the play.
Creon is known as the King in the play Antigone. An example of Creon’s antagonist actions is quoted: “…Polyneices, I say, is to have no burial: no man is to touch him or say the least prayer for him; he shall lie on the plain, unburied; and the birds and the scavenging dogs can do with him whatever they like” (Sophocles 1. 43-46).
Though he is perceived negatively, he is still perceived as superior to Thebans. Antigone was known in the society as the princess; but, was not known as a grand person. Creon is very proud of his status in society and is prideful of his city and his decisions. Creon said proudly, “You forget yourself! You are speaking to your King!” (Sophocles 5. 66) Creon shows his level of his status in this quote. Antigone is widely known for being the princess of the former king and disobeying Creon’s intentions of giving her brother an improper burial.
Creon and Antigone are similar in nobility. Creon was the brother of Oedipus. Quoted, “But now, at last, is our new King is coming: Creon of Thebes, Menoikeus” son.” (Sophocles 1. 1-2) This quote shows that Creon was raised in a noble family and had a higher status compared to other Thebans. Antigone was also born into nobility, as she was the daughter of Oedipus, but Creon was still in a higher position than she was.
As addressing his servants, “Unfortunately, as you know, his two sons, the princes Eteocles and Polynices have killed each other in battle; and I, as the next in blood, have succeeded to the full power of the throne” (Sophocles 1. 15-19). This shows Creon’s notability. Creon’s nobility made him a very greedy person but his character fits a part of the definition of a tragic hero.
One of the many characteristics that can thoroughly describe Creon is prideful. Throughout the tragedy, Creon reveals he has a flaw: Self-pride. Antigone is considered to have the tragic flaw of too much ambition. : “…Is less of importance; but if I had left my brother lying in death unburied, I should have suffered. Now I do not” (Sophocles 2. 79-81). In this quote, she is shown to have the ambition to disobey Creon.
On the flipside, characters have the ability to obtain the ambition trait; whereas self-pride is a trait unique to certain individuals. Creon’s pride put him in a bad situation and caused him to pay for his own consequences, but a tragic can learn from their own mistakes. Creon learned from his actions. It is not clear if Antigone learned from hers. This quote from Creon helps support this.: “Good. That is the way to behave: subordinate¬- Everything else, my son, to your father’s will” (Sophocles 3. 13-14). Creon’s flaw of self-pride explains why he is the tragic hero of the Greek tragedy, not Antigone.
Why would readers or viewers of this play assume that Antigone is the tragic hero of Antigone? When readers start reading the Greek Tragedy, you assume that Antigone is the main character because the play is named after her, therefore making it reasonable why people assume that she is also the tragic hero.to her family and to the gods, she might be a hero but she is not the tragic hero. “I should have praise and honor for what I have done.
All these men here would praise me- Were their lips not frozen shut with fear of you” (Sophocles 2. 113-115). This quote explains Antigone belief that she is a hero. Readers, after reading the play, think that Antigone was such a great character, and she should be deemed. The Tragic Hero. Lastly, readers often feel that since Antigone is the protagonist, then she is automatically the tragic hero. This quote shows that she is the protagonist: “Creon is not strong enough to stand in my way” (Sophocles Prologue. 36). This quote definitely shows that she is a protagonist, but there is a difference between the protagonist and tragic hero.
A tragic hero is said to have the following: superiority, near to perfection, a tragic flaw, a noble birth, or he discovers that the person’s downfall is a result of their own actions. As stated in previous sections of this argument, Creon fits the mold of a tragic hero more than Antigone. For instance, did most Thebans look more up to King Creon or Antigone? This quotation answers the question.: “This is my command, and you can see the wisdom behind it.
As long as I am King, no traitor is going to be honored with the loyal man” (Sophocles 1. 47-49). This shows Creon’s power. Antigone at one time may have been superior, but when her father, Oedipus was forced to exile all of that went away. Creon’s proves that he is the tragic hero by his nobility. Who is nobler: the current king, or the daughter of the former king? Creon’s family background defeats Antigone’s in nobility. As shown in other parts of the argument, the self-pride is more unique and it is less common to characters. Whereas Antigone’s flaw, excess ambition is more likely to be given to main characters in a story in an attempt to make the character look more heroic. Sophocles made Creon the tragic hero of this play because he wanted to illustrate that not all heroes have to be necessarily pleasant.
At end of the story Creon says, “…I have been rash and foolish. I have killed my son and my wife” (Sophocles Exodus. 142-143). This illustrates Creon’s realization to his decisions. He sees that his decisions were costly to the people he cared most about. Based off the tone of his voice, he seemed to be regretful in what he has done since he has inflicted pain upon himself.
Creon and Antigone were both vital characters of the play. These two characters make the play relevant. Creon’s stubbornness to provide an improper burial for Polyneices due to his own beliefs led to his downfall. His decisions and choices had affected everyone around him which in-turn affects him.
Antigone beliefs to give Polyneices a proper burial to please the Gods led to her downfall. Due to her beliefs, she leaves the play as a character who committed suicide. Creon, being alive, suffers through the guilt and pain he acquired through the decisions he made. He will live with the pain and guilt that he caused upon himself with is a very hard thing to do. With Creon’s status in society, his flaws and characteristics, he appeared to be more of a tragic hero in comparison to Antigone.