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Voltaire's Candide bears the mark of a piece written during a time of reform. It is heavy with satire, poking fun at whatever issues become tangled in its storyline. The subjects tackled range from the political to the religious, and each receives its share of criticism. In many ways, it is what should be expected from an Enlightenment-era work: a criticism of the old ways. In a time of changing political, religious, and scientific beliefs, the literature produced should was often intended to reflect this flux in attitudes. Candide easily accomplishes this by criticizing class boundaries, religion, slavery, and, most importantly, the military.
Get original essayThrough Candide, Voltaire is able to criticize numerous topics. The story's premise is set around Candide being thrown out of the Baron's household for having ignored class rules and fallen in love with Miss Cunégonde (Gordon 43). This incident sets the story in motion and makes it fairly obvious that Voltaire did not believe in the legitimacy of such class boundaries. Religion is another topic that comes under attack by Voltaire - albeit in perhaps a slightly less brutally manner. A utopia is found in which religion is delegated to the people and, subsequently, there are no priests or other clergy (79); Voltaire, it seems, shunned the idea that clergymen were liaisons to God. Even the issue of slavery is mentioned when Candide stumbles upon a slave who has lost his hand and leg (82). Although the slave seems to think it is normal behavior for a master to treat a slave in such a way, Candide recoils in horror, much as Voltaire himself would likely have done (83). In addition, the military is attacked numerous times by Voltaire as being pointless or convoluted.
Voltaire first criticizes the military by having Candide recruited on the sole basis of his height. Upon seeing him, a man of the military remarks, "Comrade...there is a well-built lad, and he is the right height too" (Gordon 43). Candide is invited to dinner and asked to drink to the health of the King of the Bulgars (44). Once he does so, the men declare "That's enough...you are now the pillar, the upholder, the defender, the hero of the Bulgars: your fortune is made and your glory assured" (44). By having Candide recruited after such a menial action and chosen on such a pointless basis, Voltaire criticizes the aims of the military. Because height is not generally a factor that can inspire or deter a successful military career, Voltaire seems to be saying that the military is primarily concerned with petty, superficial matters. Further, by only asking that Candide drink to their king, the military men are accepting him without knowing his true intentions. They could care less whether he really means to be true to the king or country. By portraying the recruiters in this light, Voltaire makes the military seem more concerned with numbers and appearances than with actual causes.
Voltaire continues his attack on the military by describing a battle between the Bulgars and the Abars. He begins by focusing on contradictory notions; the battle is first described as "splendid...brisk...[and] brilliant," but contains mention of how the "cannons laid low about six thousand men on each side; then the musketry removed from the best of worlds around nine or ten thousand..." (Gordon 45). Voltaire inspires readers to consider how the deaths of thousands of men can be both splendid and brilliant, and in doing so, to conclude that the military must truly be an awful thing. For mass death to be associated with such glorious superlatives there must be something askew, and that thing is the military. After the battle, "each king [has] his forces celebrate victory with a Te Deum" (46). Obviously the battle is pointless if each side celebrates victory despite such heavy casualties.
Later in the story, Voltaire criticizes the Pope's army in the story of the old woman. She tells of being attacked by pirates and how "[their] soldiers defended themselves like true soldiers of the Pope: they all kneeled down, threw aside their arms, and begged the pirates for absolution [at the point of death]" (Gordon 61). Here, Voltaire depicts the soldiers as cowards or, at the very least, useless. When danger is apparent, they drop their weapons instead of fighting for those whom they are supposed to protect. It is possible, too, that Voltaire is criticizing the Pope in addition to the military. The soldiers seem to exemplify an attitude of placing religion before practicality. In such a situation, it would be practical to at least keep a weapon nearby instead of casting it aside.
Voltaire further argues against current military practices in Candide's visit to England. Upon arriving at Portsmouth, Candide observes "a large crowd of people covered the shore, looking out intently at a rather stout man who was on his knees, blindfolded, on the deck of a naval ship" (Gordon 98). Soon, "four soldiers stationed in front of this man peacefully [fire] three bullets each into his brain; and the entire crowd [goes] away extremely satisfied" (98). Candide learns that the man was an admiral who "didn't kill enough people" and "engaged in a battle with a French Admiral and was later judged to have kept too great a distance from the enemy" (99). Candide argues that it makes no difference because "the French Admiral was as far from the English Admiral as the latter was from the former" (99). He then receives the response that "it's good to kill an Admiral from time to time" (99). In this episode, Voltaire portrays military justice as being misguided and unjust. The comment that "it's good to kill an Admiral from time to time" especially betrays Voltaire's feelings on the subject: there's no reasoning behind it except to say that it's "good," which is hardly a reason at all. Candide refuses to set foot on the land of a country that would do such a thing, which makes it fairly obvious just how strongly Voltaire's feelings were on the subject.
Voltaire's criticisms were not without basis, nor was he alone in his resistance. Candide was published in 1759, in the midst of the Seven Years' War (Hunt 634). It was this war that "prompted the French crown to introduce far-reaching reforms that provoked violent resistance and helped pave the way for the French Revolution of 1789" (634). During this time, hostilities between England and France were seen everywhere, including North America, the West Indies, India and central Europe (636). The use of military force was so widespread that it "permeated every aspect of rural society, fusing army and agrarian organization" (638). Because the Enlightenment was largely an urban phenomenon, it would follow that the military, which was tied to rural areas, would seem unenlightened.
One of Voltaire's criticisms was directed at the Prussian army. He notes in Candide how easy it was to join the Bulgar army. Between the years 1740 and 1789, "the Prussian army...nearly tripled in size" (Hunt 634). It makes sense that in order for such a major expansion to take place, the military would have to relax its standards. Also, Candide's recruitment due to his height seems to be aimed at the Prussian army, too. In a footnote, it is revealed that "Frederick the Great took pride in the height of his soldiers" (Gordon 44). Here, Voltaire is directly criticizing the Prussian army and their pride over such a petty matter as height.
In Candide, Voltaire criticizes many aspects of Enlightenment-era French society. He touches on colonialization, the cruelty of slavery, institutionalized religion, and the military, among other subjects. In the case of the military, armies are described as being flippant; they're easy to join and just as easy to leave. Battles are declared victories despite major losses of life. Things such as height and proximity to the opposing army are held in high esteem, regardless of what should be important. Voltaire saw these flaws and, through use of his satirical piece Candide, attempted to draw the public's attention to them.
Works Cited
Gordon, Daniel, trans. Candide. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
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Get custom essayHunt, Lynn et al. The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures; Volume II: Since 1340. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003.
Candle Making is one the most prevalent side of interests that can enable you have a relaxed feeling in the wake of a prolonged day at work. In excess of a leisure activity, Candle making has turned into an artistic expression. People have their very own plans and thoughts for candles and for this situation, regardless of what configuration is made, it turns into art, in any event to the maker. Candle making is just one among many of any simple work to do. Nothing is difficult as much and also needs simple products to come up with. One can do this work in just a simple room without any form of disturbances. The best thing about this interest is that on the off chance that your outline isn’t great, you can melt down the candle back to liquid form and make one once more.
Get original essayCandle in the past and presently, have been utilized as alternative source of light down the line for over 5,000 years. Early origin and use of candles are traced back to Egypt who were used to making rushlights, they used to place terse center of reeds into dissolved animal fats. This acted as a candle like feature that slowly pioneered the idea of candle making.
Candles have been utilized as a wellspring of light and to enlighten festivities for over 5,000 years, yet little is thought about their origin. The most punctual utilization of candles is regularly ascribed to the Ancient Egyptians, who made rushlights or lights by dousing the terse center of reeds in dissolved creature fat. Notwithstanding, the rushlights had no wick like a genuine flame.
Candle making involves accumulating lots of materials which are basic in the process. Firstly, candle moulds will be of great importance and key requirement. These moulds can be sourced from any art shop. Secondly, granular or square blocks of paraffin wax should be obtained for candle making. Additionally, you need to purchase a substance added to liquefied wax with the goal that the candles you portray turn as hazy, hard and long copying, this substance is called stearing. In the event that you are utilizing 450 grams of wax then the standard extent of stearin to be used would be 3 tablespoons. On the off chance that you are utilizing dye-colors then first you should break up it in stearin and after that add it to the softened wax blend. Addition of little portions of beeswax to it can make paraffin wax burn for more longer than expected. Below are some of other materials that you need to acquire for candle making process, they include:
Note: For easier tidying up of working zone after the whole work of candle making, make a point of covering the burners with aluminum thwart and furthermore spread an old rag or some newspapers on a flat working zone.
Candle making as seen above, needs some startup capital that will end up eating some good cash in order to run the hobby effectively and lovely as you expected. In simple terms, $150-$250 start up ought to give you the nuts and bolts. It ought to be sufficient to enable you to take in the specialty of candle making and making a couple of tests. This hobby can turn out to be business and significantly you may want to expand it therefore, you will need to put more resources into provisions and hardware that will enable you to make more assortment.
Candle making alone is not enough to make one feel relaxed but, in the essence, the end product of it is the one that will give such an extensive creative satisfaction. If at all you are perfect and accurate in this job, you can significantly consider beginning a locally situated candle making business that is accessible at your convenience and gain some additional cash to supplement your personal needs. This diversion can be an exceptionally pleasant ordeal for anybody. Since it is simple and safe, you can even request that your children help you in the entire procedure. It very well may be an extraordinary method for investing quality energy with them yet keep in mind to direct their exercises. Ensure that when you are working around open fire, gear for staying away from any potential unsafe circumstance is there in your home. Despite the fact that candle making is innovative and fun, you should give it your full focus. When you work with hot wax, don’t take a stab at performing multiple tasks since it won’t just be risky yet the wax will likewise turn chilly quick. Kits for candle making can be of incredible help to you in seeking after this hobby. These kits are ideal for fledglings to acquaint themselves with the specialty of Candle making. When you know about the essential know how of Candle making, these kits will demonstrate to you the fundamental systems and steps that can enable you to make quality and selling candles.
Making sure that Candle making workstation is protected and cared for is one of the most important part of this hobby. This is so simple, spread old newspapers or rags on the flat surface. Since there are no much complex machinery to be applied in this process of making wonderful candles, the cost of it all is just credible manageable. On the off chance that you can’t spend on costly extravagant gear, at that point a thermometer and simmering dish would likewise do. Wellbeing is a basic part of this side interest. Melting wax is a generally simple process yet exceptional cautiousness should be observed while undertaking this task. Try not to give your youngsters a chance to draw near to it or contact it. You can purchase Scents and colors from art shops. Make sure to include the color in the liquefied wax gradually so it gets totally broke down. Continuously include colors at each step one by one one in turn so you get the chance to see which one is working best from the others. Carefully observe the melting in order to note any occurrence of more heat since it can flame up. In the event that it begins to smoke, expel it from the burner rapidly however don’t give it a chance to spill on you. Regardless of whether it occurs, don’t wipe yet run it under chilly water with the goal that it solidifies and falls off.
Some of difficulties that may hinder, bring down the morale of adopting candle making as a hobby is failed results. This can make one get discouraged. Therefore, one can
Generally, Candle making process is just simple and easy to master. The fact that it is enjoyable and passion oriented gives it an opportunity to turn into a hobby. Materials and equipment to use are also simple and accessible. Beginning your very own candle making business is an ideal case of how you can without much of a stretch transform a hobby into an exceptionally productive low maintenance or full-time cash producer. Actually, candle making is something that anybody can learn moderately rapidly. Furnished with a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of provisions, one can easily set up simple factory to produce candle.
In the world of literature, it is all about your reputation.
Get original essayMargaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, an Orwellian romp into the near future lead by a female protagonist, received both the kiss of death and the gift of notoriety when it was labeled a “feminist dystopia.” Similar to when a celebrity “tweets” a comment that is remotely debatable, the conversation among literary critics erupted following this instance of labeling. However, the situation surrounding Atwood’s novel was slightly different from celebrity Twitter fodder because the author never actually labeled her book a feminist dystopia; others did it for her. In fact, Atwood has tended to resist the label others have given her work. When pressed about her own beliefs, she admitted that she is a feminist if the definition of feminism is a “belief in the rights of women... [as] equal human beings” adding that if “practical, hardline, anti-male feminists took over and became the government” she would “resist them.”
Nevertheless, critics continue to debate over whether or not The Handmaid’s Tale is a feminist text. Of course, it is difficult to debate this topic objectively because, like Atwood, individuals have their own definitions of feminism ranging from Atwood’s perspective to definitions that necessitate solely blaming men for the oppression of women.
Luckily, some literary critics consider variables other than a maliciousness supposedly inherent in men to explain the gender relations present in this text. The existing critical conversation surrounding this novel has done a fine job of recognizing the relevance of the enhanced capitalism of the 1980s to the text. Karen Magro affirms the relationship between “unbridled capitalism” and gender, claiming that Margaret Atwood herself found the “gains” women had made in the later half of the twentieth century “precarious,” presumably because of the disenfranchisement of women in the midst of increased materialism and commodification (Magro 118). Likewise, Shirley Neuman posits that Atwood’s speculations are derived from the “early 1980s reactions to the successes of the women's movement as well as the intersections of these reactions with some of the...excesses of the period” (Neuman 859). Though both of these critics mention the role of capitalism in regards to female oppression both in and outside of the novel, it is Kristen M. Billy who focuses on the ways in which capitalism in the form of gendered commodification functions in The Handmaid’s Tale, particularly the commodification of procreation. Still, even Billy portrays this behavior as a biological imperative of the male sex. Other critics, such as Barbara Ehrenreich, take a different approach, viewing the novel as a backlash against radical feminism, exemplified through the the role that heteronormative romance plays as the “only truly subversive force” in Gileadean society (Ehrenreich 34).
While I do not think that this novel engages in an “anti-male” agenda like Billy, I am unable to ignore the presence of certain men at the center of Gileadean systems of oppression, particularly wealthy men who control the means of production. Moreover, I intend to combine the wisdom of these critics in order to demonstrate how capitalism and love are interconnected in this text. Initially, I plan to briefly establish the realistic origins of this text that stem from 1980s economic ideology and evince Atwood’s negativity toward these ideals through textual evidence. Then, my intention is to demonstrate the relationship between capitalism and gender. Finally, I will posit love as Atwood’s response to the gendered problems derived from capitalism. Ultimately, I aim to prove that this novel portrays Reagan era capitalism and materialism as the patriarchal force that transforms men into oppressors, leading to the eventual subjugation of the female sex. Nevertheless, Atwood champions men as individuals when she evinces heteronormative love as Gilead’s rarest and most important resource.
Atwood herself claimed that there is “nothing in the book that hasn't already happened”and that “all the things described in the book, people have already done to one another” (Magro 118). Perhaps that is why this text seems so familiar to the reader, as if leaving echoes of a nightmare they may have already had. In order to understand Gilead we must first understand the societal parameters that made Gilead a reality. For the purposes of this novel and this essay, it is important to remember the socio-economic environment that existed while Atwood was writing, conditions that are then exaggerated in Offred’s descriptions of pre-Gileadean America. Atwood’s discourse often reveals an aversion to Reaganomics and the materialistic mentality of the 1980s. This perspective on the era is affirmed by economist and journalist Jim Collins who recalls the “Wall Street” culture of this decade, that celebrated “the twin propositions that ‘greed is good’ and that ‘more is better’” (Collins 1).
Initially, Gilead subjugates its citizens by class in addition to gender. The commanders, for example, are wealthy men who hold the highest rank in society. They also seem to flaunt their wealth and Atwood’s diction reveals that she does not approve of this practice. When Offred is describing the Commander’s “very expensive” car, she claims that it is “ much better than the chunky, practical Behemoth,” and elaborates on its black color when she likens it to “the color of prestige or a hearse, and long and sleek” (Atwood 20). Though Offred’s description is sincere, Atwood’s intentions are slightly different. First, labeling the fancy car as “much better” than the practical option has a sarcastic connotation that connotes the author’s negativity toward materialism. In addition, comparing the car to a “hearse” equates this material luxury with death. Furthermore, Atwood uses economic language while describing facets of life that seemingly do not hold material value. For instance, Offred labels sanity as a “valuable possession” (Atwood 109). This quote further emphasises my claim that this novel is about commodification in its most extreme form because Offred’s tendency to view the intangible concept of sanity in economic terms shows how saturated the society is with capitalist ideology . Offred agrees, speculating that Gileadean society is not about “control” but about “who can own whom,” using the concept of ownership, which typically is applied to items instead of people, to affirm the connection between interpersonal relationships and economy (Atwood 135).
Still, how does this negative focus on capitalism relate to gender?
First, we would be remiss to assume that Atwood spontaneously generated a connection between gender and economy. In fact, keeping in mind her quote about the realistic genesis of this book, we can prove that this socioeconomic relationship is far from a fictional invention. During Ronald Reagan's presidency, “women made up an increasing percentage of those in the lowest-paid occupations, and they made no gains or lost ground in the better-paid trades and professions” (Neuman). This was likely the result of increased competition for jobs in an economy that was beginning to globalize. Incidentally, the general consensus is that capitalism also creates a feeling of entitlement among the elites who are, in Western society, historically wealthy, white, property owning men. It is not outlandish to understand how this sense of material entitlement could be extended toward people, possibly making these men feel as though they are just as entitled to do what they please to women as they are to their impractical and fancy cars.
Kristen Billy cites Azizah Al-Hibri who claims that “men need to dominate women in order to exclude them from production” explaining that “patriarchy results from men’s desire for immortality” and feelings of “inadequacy” that result from their inability to carry children (Billy 24). However, in the sociological article “Capitalism and the Oppression of Women”, Martha Gimenez argues against the idea that patriarchy is a biological imperative of men, insisting that gender inequality is a “structural characteristic of capitalist social formations” that is not sufficiently explained through “microfoundations” such as “men’s or women’s intentions” and biology because gender inequality is “the structural effect of a complex network of macro-level processes through which production and reproduction are inextricably connected” (Gimenez 24). This explanation coincides with the novel’s portrayal of capitalism as an agent of oppression. Furthermore, the article argues that since a capitalist system is unable to provide “full employment and pay to all workers...male and female workers are forced to compete with each other for scarce jobs” (Gimenez 30). This system, in turn, creates two spheres of occupation. Women are allocated to the “sphere of reproductive labor” because men are unable to reproduce in the same fashion while property owning men are given the scarce paid jobs. Essentially, Gimenez is suggesting that in a perfect world in which everyone could obtain employment, gender inequality would vanish.
It is impossible to discern from just one work of literature whether or not Atwood herself is anti-capitalist or anti-materialist however, she indisputably recognized some of the problems that these economic practices created for women. This understanding is exemplified in the novel, in which women’s bodies are commodified for procreative purposes. According to the text, this began, presumably, with the commodification of sexual pleasure in pre-Gileadean society, showcased by the presence of places like “Porno-Marts.” Moreover, in the scenario Atwood presents, fertility has become a scarce resource perhaps as a result of these commodified sexual practices or environmental degradation. Whatever the cause, infertility grew rampant, giving the Gileadean regime the impetus to seize power. Since men control the means of production, fertility becomes another resource that they have dominion over. However, although the conservative regime sought to end the less moral sexual excess of contemporary America, they still commodify sex, further subjugating women. Childbearing in Gilead is “rationalized, made vastly more efficient, and becomes more and more public—part of an integrated social network” (Billy 19). When procreation is industrialized, the sex/gender system of Gilead is reduced to one official function: reproduction.
In the time before the fertility epidemic, similar to the 1980s, women were becoming a more integral part of the workforce and using reproductive technologies to reproduce without men, which potentially excluded men from both the productive and reproductive spheres. This problem is alluded to in one of Offred’s Scrabble conversations with the Commander:
“The problem wasn’t only with the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them anymore.
“Nothing?” I say. But they had . . .
“There was nothing for them to do”, he says.
“They could make money”, I say, a little nastily…
“It’s not enough”, he says. “It’s too abstract. I mean there was nothing for them to do with women.” (Atwood 210)
Therefore, widespread infertility provided men with a way to relegate women to the reproductive sphere, giving the men “something to do” with them, and effectively eliminating their competition for success in the capitalist system.
Using this logic, it would seem as though Atwood is suggesting that, under capitalism, the only way to achieve equilibrium is to subjugate half of the population. In this fashion, the novel reveals sexism as a necessary component of capitalism, a radical and frightening notion, considering the fact that her audience is composed of people entrenched in similar- albeit far less extreme- capitalist societies.
Thankfully, Atwood provides her readers with some reassurance. Return for a moment, to the excerpted conversation between the Commander and Offred. The Commander wants “something to do” with women, not to them or against them. Buried beneath the more prominent elements of the novel, Atwood posits a possible solution to this problem; love. In The Handmaid’s Tale, love is the force able to connect men and women independently of production and reproduction. Moreover, love is the only force with the potential to subvert the system of capitalist subjugation because it is the only resource that cannot be controlled or purchased.
In chapter nineteen, Aunt Lydia says that “A thing is valued...only if it is rare and hard to get.” This astute observation is the principle that governs economic and interpersonal relations in the novel. In Gilead, love is the only resource rarer than fertility and therefore vehemently sought after. Offred herself ruminates on “falling in love”, observing that the more “difficult” love was the more powerful it seemed, and acknowledging love as a word so powerful that it “made flesh” (Atwood 225). Here, the protagonist is recognizing the power the concept of love has over the human psyche.
This theme is shown primarily through Offred’s relationship with both the Commander and her possibly deceased husband. The Commander is a man of the highest rank who enjoys the fruits of capitalism that Gilead has to offer, such as his previously described car and his access to rare items such as hand lotion and magazines. He even has access to non-procreative sex, as evinced during Offred’s trip to Jezebel’s. However, though the Commander has all that he could purchase, he still longs for love. This is revealed during his meetings with Offred which are ultimately about emotional companionship as opposed to the lewd alternatives that Offred imagines. Rather than asking Offred to perform sexual acts the Commander asks her to play Scrabble with him and to kiss him as if she “meant it” (Atwood 140). Though she finds it peculiar at first, Offred uses love as a subversive tool, exploiting the Commander’s desire in exchange for small conveniences like hand lotion and prohibited information about Gilead.
However, the Commander is not the only character suffering from the absence of love. Offred often longs for the love she experienced with her husband Luke. In one of her late night introspections she admits that she wants “to be held” and told her name. She wants to “be valued” in ways that she is not, to be “more than valuable” (Atwood 97). Technically, Offred is already the most valued commodity in Gileadean society because she is a fertile woman, but this quote implies that Offred wants more than to be valued as a rare commodity; she wants to be loved.
It may seem peculiar that Atwood spends a significant portion of her novel describing Offred’s relationship with Luke, a character that never actually appears. However, when juxtaposed with descriptions of Offred’s relationship with the Commander, it evinces the difference between real love and the type of love that can be bought. The Commander attempts to find love with Offred through an economic exchange, but the type of love he’s looking for, the type that Offred had with Luke, is invaluable. This is further emphasised in a particular description of Offred and Luke’s relationship:
Luke and I used to walk together, sometimes, along these streets. We used to talk about buying a house like one of these, an old big house, fixing it up. We would have a garden, swings for the Children. We would have children. Although we knew it wasn't too likely we could ever afford it, it was something to talk about, a game for Sundays.
Such freedom now seems almost weightless. (Atwood 120)
Gimenez insists that men and women need each other for purposes of procreation, and this potential is controlled by economic factors. Though it “wasn’t too likely” that Offred and Luke could afford the material markers of a family unit, ie: (a big house, “swings for the children”) their economic inabilities do not infringe on their happiness and do not lessen their bond. Moreover, it is important to give attention to the connotation of the word “weightless.” Perhaps Atwood uses this word to describe Offred’s freedom because her freedom is intangible, especially when compared with her discussion of the tangible items she and Luke could not afford. This connotes to the reader that it is not the material luxuries that Offred values even though they were the subject of her conversation with Luke. Instead, she values the freedom of discussion and the intimacy she shared with her husband. Furthermore, they do eventually have a child despite these economic difficulties, showing that the desire to procreate out of love supersedes economic boundaries.
Still, one could argue that even Offred’s relationship with Luke is affected by economic factors and that Offred intimates that her husband shares the traits of other repressive men. In this case, their relationship would not represent the pure, unsullied love that I have been describing. This alternative view of Offred’s relationship with Luke is best presented when Offred loses her job. Luke attempts to comfort Offred, saying that “it’s only a job” and that he will “always take care” of her. Initially, Offred thinks that he is patronizing her but then changes her mind, acknowledging that she is “starting to get paranoid” (Atwood 179). Nevertheless, this example does reveal a possible issue with argument this discourse has presented in favor of true love. Moreover, if Luke exhibits behavior that perpetuates the ideals of a “patriarchy”, this example dissembles claims that Atwood is not blaming men as a gender for creating and enabling this horrific society. However, when reading the above excerpt, it is prudent to keep in mind the novel’s mantra, “context is all.” Luke’s behavior seems patriarchal in the context of the sexist capitalist system that has rendered his wife jobless. Under different circumstances, his promise to “take care of” his wife would not have such a negative connotation and Offred herself realizes this when she recognizes her own paranoia.
In a hyper-capitalist society like Gilead, that which cannot be commodified retains the most value and in this case that is love, specifically the love shared between a man and a woman. Atwood portrays heterosexual love as humanity’s most benevolent and simultaneously subversive asset. For this reason, it is impossible to say that Atwood “blames” the biological imperatives of men for her dystopian vision because she includes them as a necessary part of the solution. This book is much more concerned with presenting a society in which capitalism has run amuck and human beings are commodified than it is with the “patriarchy.” Thus we return to the original question of critics and readers alike:
Is The Handmaid’s Tale a feminist text?
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Get custom essayAccording to the author’s own definition the answer is affirmative. This text promotes a belief in the “rights of women”, particularly women disadvantaged by the sexism inherent in capitalism and it does so without “blaming” or excluding the male gender. It promotes the rights women have to think, to learn, to live, and especially to love both themselves and the male receivers of their affection. Perhaps this is the most feminist claim a person could make; to advocate for a future in which a woman does not need a man for survival or social utility but still retains the privilege to love be loved in return and to not feel entitled to anybody but each other.
While Dante is supported, both physically and mentally, by his guide Virgil throughout Canto 17, he demonstrates his increasing independence and understanding via his analysis of the events he faces. Dante is required to call on the spiritual and mental understanding he gains in this canto to overcome the challenges that hamper him in later cantos. In fact, even translations of the Inferno that differ in significant ways are in concordance on these aspects of Dante's evolution as a protagonist.
Get original essayIn preparation for the journey to the eighth circle, Dante and his reliable guide, Virgil, survey “the beast with the pointed tail, that passes through mountains and pierces walls and armor” that will bring them into the lower realms of Hell (Inf. 17.1-2). Dante takes a moment to examine the mythological monster whose “face was that of a just man… and the rest was that of a serpent” (Inf. 17.10-11). Later, Virgil reveals his name to be Geryon. Before Virgil commands the beast to act as their vessel, he instructs Dante to “carry away full experiences of this subcircle” by seeing the last of the sinners in the seventh circle. (Inf. 17.37-38). The shades whom Virgil refers to are usurers who are condemned to stare at the “bag of special color, with a special emblem” that hangs from their necks. After briefly speaking with them, Dante returns to Virgil, and together they mount Geryon starting their decent into the eighth circle. On the flight down, Dante observes “the great evils that come closer on every side” (Inf. 17.125-126). Once they dismount, Geryon briskly disappears.
While Dante’s interactions with Geryon are not independent from Virgil, his analysis is thus showing his progression towards independent thought. Dante uses Geryon to personify the traits of fraud since “fraud makes all physical barriers and defenses (mountains, walls, and armor) useless” (Martinez and Durling 268). He makes note of the physical appearance that contributes to Geryon’s “filthy image of fraud” by comparing the beast to German skiffs “positioned to wage war” and with additional details describing his tail as a “poisoned fork that armed its tip like a scorpion’s” (Inf. 17.7, 20-22, 26-27). Both of these similes highlight the juxtaposition between Dante’s use of “kind” describing Geryon’s upper half and the brutality of what follows beneath the rest of the “wicked beast’s” torso (Inf. 17.23). From this interaction, Dante bolsters his ability to discern interior deceit from the superficial exterior that often glosses over fraudulent acts and sinners. Later, Dante relies on his ability to see through fraud’s facade while exposing Ulysses in Canto 26.
When Dante approaches the usurers, he walks “all alone” (Inf. 17.44). Virgil encourages Dante’s exploration through self-learning which illustrates Dante’s acquired autonomy. Although Dante’s time spent with the sinners is concise, his descriptions are not. As he describes, the usurers continue to uselessly hope that their money and family stature will grant them immortality through the legacy they left on Earth (Inf. 17. 55-56). However, as Dante’s analysis implies, ignorance besieges these shades for true immortality is granted through the divine power not through the power of one’s wallet.
Although his independence is growing, Dante still depends on Virgil in daunting situations. Turning back towards his guide, Dante is told to “be strong and bold” as they descend into the eighth circle (Inf. 17.80-81). Dante later adapts this phrase. Fighting off the exhaustion he faces in Canto 24, Dante claims, “I am strong and bold” emphasizing his growth as an individual and the necessity to continue pushing forward despite adversity (Inf. 24.59-60). While Dante is unable to verbally communicate his fears within Canto 17, Virgil understands Dante’s unspoken emotions and “clasps and braces [Dante] with his arms” (Inf. 17.95-96). During departure, Virgil directs the beast to be cautious and “consider the new weight [he] carries” referencing that, unlike the shades who reside in hell, Dante is living and has a physical mass (Inf. 17.98-99). While this quality adds another physical layer of separation between him and those who surround him, it metaphorically highlights Dante’s ability, with Virgil’s guidance, to move and shape the environment around him molding the path that leads towards salvation.
Before safely landing, Dante depicts his fear using two allusions to Phaethon and Icarus.
“I believe there was no greater fear when Phaethon abandoned the reins, so that the sky was scorched, as still appears, nor when the wretched Icarus felt his loins unfeathering because of the heated wax, as his father shouted to him, ‘You’re on a bad course!’” (Durling Inf. 17.106-111).
The theme of overreaching is found within both of these allusions. In the first one, Phaethon solicits his father, Helios, to permit him to steer the chariot of the sun “as proof of his divine origin” (Martinez and Durling 273). Consequently, Phaethon loses the reins after the horses are frightened by the constellation Scorpion, similar in nature to the beast Geryon on which Dante rides, and streaks the sky with fire. In the latter allusion, Icarus flies too close to the sun melting the wax that bonds his wings together thus plummeting to his death. Both of these stories portray men who thought their capabilities were greater than what could be supported by their skill. Unlike the wretched individuals in these allusion, Dante knows his limits are bound by the will of God, and thus he will successfully finish his journey.
Looking at another translation of this passage by the poet Ciardi shows that there are slight nuances in translated word choice that steer the passage.
“I think there was no greater fear the day Phaethon let loose the reins and burned the sky along the great scar of the Milky Way, nor when Icarus, too close to the sun's track felt the wax melt, unfeathering his loins, and heard his father cry, ‘Turn back! Turn back!’” (Ciardi, Inf. 17.106-111).
The Durling translation uses the word “believes” compared to the Ciardi translation which uses “think”. The act of believing implies a more spiritual understanding rather than simply thinking which can be interpreted in a secular fashion. Dante believing there “was no greater fear” ties into his belief that God will carry him through. Likewise, Durling’s use of “abandoned” creates the image of Phaethon actively leaving his position because he did not have the willpower and capability to overcome fear. Dante, on the other hand, has the mindset and resources, albeit he is scared, to complete the divine task set before him. Ciardi’s use of “loose” is more passive and does not as strongly critique Phaethon’s loss of control.
One other word choice to note is Ciardi’s use of “the great scar of the Milky Way” compared to Durling’s use of “the sky was scorched”. The former illustrates the vastness of the aftermath which the latter does not achieve. The result of Phaethon’s mistakes stretches deep, injuring the cosmos; however, Dante’s journey will achieve the opposite affect by illuminating the world with the divine power. In terms of writing styles, the Durling translation focuses on intention and personal action while the Ciardi translation highlights the overall consequences. Both translations, however, create juxtaposition between the failed heroes mentioned, and the successful protagonist Dante is and will become.
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Translated by Robert Durling, Notes by Robert Durling and Ronald Martinez, Oxford University Press, 1996.
Ciardi, John. “Full text of ‘The inferno’”. Archive.org, https://archive.org/stream/inferno00dant_2/inferno00dant_2_djvu.txt, Accessed 22 September 2017.
Canto IX of Dante's Inferno is remarkably representative of the work as a whole. It includes a number of prominent themes, among them the role Virgil plays as the manifestation of human reason and the argument that faith can achieve what reason cannot, as well as contrapasso¸ or the matching of sins on Earth to punishments in Hell. Canto IX also demonstrates the marked divide between the first five circles of Hell, housing the Incontinent, or relatively minor sinners, and the next circle 'the Violent' whose damned God despises much more. A microcosm of the entire epic, the importance of Canto IX lies in the themes and values it reflects.
Get original essayCanto IX begins with Virgil's failure to penetrate the gates of Dis. His attempts at reason with its demon guards are useless; Dante fears desertion. He is rightly frightened by Virgil's sudden weakness. In the first eight cantos, the shade is a surefooted, confident guide; he surmounts obstacles with ease and disarms all challengers handily. His abrupt impotence leads a pallid Dante to ask discreetly for reassurance that Virgil is still in command of their journey. Virgil begins to explain that he is, but the anxious poets are interrupted by a fearsome sight, three Furies tearing at their breasts, calling for Medusa to turn Dante into stone. Virgil takes the threat seriously, he considers Dante's hands to be insufficient protection for his eyes and blindfolds his ward himself. Dante is terrified, helpless. Then an earthquake. This sequence of events 'compounded by Virgil's uneasiness' is not mere drama. The barrage is something new for The Inferno. For the first time there is a real, almost palpable sense of danger. Dante clearly intends for Virgil's ashen face at the start of Canto IX to represent fear there is no evidence offered to the contrary, as in a similar scene in Canto IV, when Dante,
Who'd seen the change in his complexion,
Said: "How shall I go on if you are frightened,
You who have always helped to dispel my doubts?" (IV: 16-18)
There, the shade reassuringly explains: "The anguish of the people / whose place is here below, has touched my face / with the compassion you mistake for fear. (IV: 19-21)" Dante is convinced; the shade's pallor is not mentioned again. In Canto IX, however, Dante is not comforted by Virgil's words in fact, the opposite occurs:
[H]is speech made me afraid,
Because I drew out from his broken phrase
A meaning worse, perhap, than he'd intended. (IX: 13-15)
Virgil's sudden vincibility and the newfound possibility of harm also signify a shift in the type (and awfulness) of sin that the pair are about to encounter: they are leaving the first five circles, home of the Incontinent, and taking a large step downward to the Violent. The souls they encounter will no longer be accidental sinners such as those whose only crime was living before Christ, and so were unable to live according to his teaching, but those who deliberately harmed themselves or others. This is a significant escalation in severity of sin. The notion that Virgil might be unable to protect Dante permeates the rest of the epic, creating tension as the duo descends deeper. The poets are clearly entering an entirely new region of Hell, fraught with danger.
The surefooted Virgil, who for most of the work shepherds Dante through danger with physical and verbal protections, is the embodiment of human reason. This makes Virgil an excellent escort, and for most of the journey he knows his route and occasionally lends mettle to the weak-kneed Dante. This is why Virgil's stark failure at the gates of Dis is so thematically important: it represents the limits of human reason. There are certain places, Dante the poet implies, that even as eminent a man as Virgil cannot tread upon when he counts but reason among his faculties. Reason has literally and allegorically taken Dante the character as far as it can go. For the pair to progress, Faith must step in, and it does, via a deus ex machina intervention by a Heavenly messenger, who opens the gates of Dis with ease. (Throughout the poem, Hell's creatures serve as obstacles to Dante's trek and Heaven's messengers act as catalysts;
"What good is it to thrust against the fates?" the messenger asks the fallen angels rhetorically (IX: 97).) The clear implication: Faith succeeds where Reason fails. A harbinger of this sequence occurs in Canto I, when Virgil informs Dante that he will lead him through the deepest circles of Hell, but no further, for he is unworthy of entering Heaven:
If you would then ascend as high as these ["the blessed people"],
A soul more worthy than I am will guide you;
I'll leave you in her care when I depart,
Because that Emperor who reigns above,
Since I have been rebellious to His law,
Will not allow me entry to His city. ( I: 121-126)
In both instances, there is only so far Reason can go; it is powerless without Faith. This characterizes The Inferno as a primarily Christian poem. For all his disparaging of Church figures, even popes, Dante the poet implies through his writing that God is indeed omniscient and omnipotent, that his wisdom is infinite, and that faith in him will save one's soul.
The final verses of Canto IX hint at another prominent theme of The Inferno: contrapasso, or the matching of eternal punishments to worldly sins as part of God's infinite justice. For example, Diviners, Astrologers and Magicians, who in life claimed to see the future, all have their heads turned backward; Thieves are transformed into serpents and must bite the similarly damned to regain their form. As Dante enters the Sixth Circle, Virgil explains the flaming tombs around them:
"Here, like has been ensepulchered with like;
Some monuments are heated more, some less." (IX: 130-131)
That is, within this particular circle of Hell, each of the damned is punished according to the extent of his heresy. The flames are a fitting punishment for the Heretics, who obstinately believed in their interpretations of Christianity instead of the Church's, and so they are encased in correspondingly immobile tombs. The flames of the Sixth Circle are in marked contrast to the swampy Styx, in whose murky depths the sullen lie submerged.
Cape Town, home to approximately 4 million people, listed as the 10th most populous city in South Africa. Cape Town is a coastal city located in the South West region of South Africa, a coordinate of approximately 33.9249°S, 18.4241 The water crisis began in 2014, when the captured amount of rainfall in the Western Cape has experienced a dramatic decreased. Due to the severity of the crisis, it has been noted as a “national disaster” by the South African government. It was at this crucial point where taps were expected to fully dry out, or also known as “Day Zero.”
Get original essayDuring specific and crucial months, Cape Town receives rainfall that fill the dams with water. These dams, also known as reservoirs, are the main water supply of Cape Town. Since 2014, the rainfall has gradually decreased year after year, and has led to a prolonged drought in Cape Town. This substantial decrease in the supply of water and an inevitable “Day Zero”, has led to the municipal authority telling the residents to minimise excess demand by reducing their water consumption (Muller, 2018).
Cape Town has 6 major dams installed that supply the majority of water to the city and people. They are known as the “big 6”, holding approximate 99.6% of water capacity in the city while the rest are stored in minor dams. Figure 2 is a line graph that illustrates the total water storage level in the “Big 6” from May 1st, 2014 to September 1st, 2018. It can be seen from this graph that there is a negative correlation between the total water storage of the Big 6 and the dates listed which are the period of drought in figure 2. Specifically, there was a calculated 79.3% decrease of water stored in the Big 6 between Oct 1st, 2014 and May 1st, 2018. Figure 2: Graph illustrating total water storage in given months. If Day Zero do comes which was dated indefinitely after it was postponed in May, 2018, the city will have to decrease their average water consumption from 522 million litres per day to only 43 million litres per day (Luxande & Mdunyelwa, 2018). Conclusively, the water crisis has affected both the Capetonian, but also to the whole country itself.
The water crisis has caused negative influences to the welfare of the 4 million Capetonian, by disrupting different sectors of businesses and exacerbating the effects of poverty resulting in negative effects to the city’s/country’s revenue. For example, the households in Cape Town were allocated to only 50 litres of water each day. This has led to different lifestyle changes such as reduction to four minutes showers, reduction in toilet flushing (if it is yellow, let it mellow), and restriction to car wash and gardening. The sudden change of lifestyle to households has led to huge inconveniences. These inconveniences exuberated the effects of inequalities within the country itself. For the rich, they were able to gain access for water in many other ways such as: borehole digging, purchasing technological filters, and buying bottle waters. With one of the highest GINI coefficient around the world, South Africa has a poor population that is all the more vulnerable from the lack of water access (Sieff, 2018).
Different sectors of businesses were also affected by the crisis. City/country wise, it resulted in a significant reduction in businesses that heavily rely on water such as: hair salons, car wash services, and gardening services. In particular, the tourisms industry were affected significantly, which is one of the main revenues of the country. The tourism sector contributes approximately 7.5% of the city’s gross domestic production calculated in 2016 by the World Travel and Tourism Council. According to Stats SA, there was only 2.6% growth in the tourism sector in 2016 (Smith, 2017). This is considered a poor improvement as the global average was 7%. Furthermore, the number of overseas tourist has increased less than 1% in December 2017, taken into consideration the significance of the water crisis (Smith, 2017).
As a result, many whom were working in this sector were plagued by unemployment issues due to the crisis. Furthermore, the economy itself was alerted when its rating was threatened by the ratings agency Moddy’s. Cape Town was at the edge of being rated as junk status, which some believed it will affect the country’s entire rating. According to Anthony Turton, a professor at the University Free State, he claims that “there is no way that any foreign investor will invest a cent into a country that cannot supply basic water and energy” (Tshwane, 2018). 1.3 Severity of the drough. tReturn period is a term used to describe the estimated recurrence interval of something happening such as earthquake, drought, flood, etc. Through the scientist’s analysis of data of the rainfall areas of WCWSS dams (Western Cape Water Supply System), it is concluded with strong confidence that this drought comes between 105 and 1280 years.
Calculations and data show that the 2015-2017 dry period has been the driest since 1933; it is significantly rare and severe (Wolski 2018). The depletion of the reservoir has imposed conspicuous concern to the lives in the nation. In May 2018, the city has measured the Big Six to be storing approximately 20.9% of its capacity. If it was to drop further to approximately 13.5%, Day Zero will be announced (Luxande & Mdunyelwa, 2018).1.4 Root Causes The weather phenomenon known as “ENSO” has led to a global weather pattern shift towards the easterly direction (Trenberth). As a result, instead of the summer rainfall regions being located in areas of South Africa, it has shifted more towards the Southern Indian Ocean and the Madagascar (Hedrick & Dimmich, 2015). The drought has worsened by leaps and bounds due to climate change.
According to Chris Funk, who is a climate scientist at the University of California Santa Barbara, he claims that in recent years there has been a decrease in “long rain”. In normal years, Africa, in particular East Africa receives less rainfall because warm wet air rises from the Western Pacific, and dry cool air sinks around East Africa. In the past decade, the temperature of the western pacific water has been warmer than the average. This is directly linked to enhanced greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, enhancing the severity of droughts in Africa (Baragona, 2017).
The failure and lack of governmental regulations has also contributed to the problem. Primarily, both the local government and the country’s government did not handle the problem effectively, allowing the excess demand to continue. Farmers and other large businesses continued to use the water supply, and the governments did not speak upon it because they underestimated the severity of the water crisis. Ultimately, the lack of infrastructure (number of dams) indicates that Cape Town was determine to fail as the city at the first place since the city relies purely on rainfall for their water resource.
Recently I watched “The exonerated”, and it has come to my attention that there are several issues concerning capital punishment. Capital punishment, which is the legal execution of a prisoner is another expression of the death penalty. To find out more about capital punishment and how the issues raised in the film apply to our current society of the United States, I decided to do my research report on this. My hypothesis is ‘Capital punishment is an unfair and cruel system that should be abolished in the United States.’ My three key questions to prove my hypothesis are; where is capital punishment legal in the United States, and has it proven to be effective in deterring crime? What are the flaws in the capital punishment system that makes it unfair and cruel? Is life imprisonment without parole a more beneficial alternative to capital punishment?
Get original essayThe article from The Sun titled “On death row: which US states still have the death penalty?” states that capital punishment is legal in 28 states, with it being abolished in 22 states since it became legal in the United States. It also declares that there has been a decline in the support for capital punishment over the years. According to Gallup, public support for the death penalty has dropped dramatically, from 80% in the mid-1990s to just 55% in 2020.
This data makes me feel relieved and gives me a sense of hope that our society is recognising the flaws in the capital punishment system and it will soon be abolished in all states in the United States.
A report written by The American Civil Liberties Union titled “The case against the death penalty” states: “the death penalty is not a viable form of crime control”. When asked to rank the most effective methods of crime reduction, police chiefs ranked the death penalty as the least effective in terms of deterrence. They stated that the more efficient factors for lowering crime rates were “curbing drug use and putting more officers on the street, longer sentences, and gun control.” This demonstrates that the death penalty has had no significant impact on crime deterrence in the United States. The most popular argument in favor of the death penalty is that the threat of execution has a greater impact on criminal behavior than incarceration. I disagree with this argument because the vast majority of capital offenses are committed under extreme emotional stress or while under the influence of drugs or alcohol when rational thinking is impaired. This means violence is often perpetrated by those who are oblivious to the implications for themselves and others, implying that the threat of execution does not influence their decision to commit violent crimes. Furthermore, because the majority of capital crimes are committed in the heat of the moment, it is difficult to see how the threat of any punishment might deter a non-premeditated offense. I think all this information clearly shows that capital punishment doesn’t solve the crime problem in America. The states where the death penalty is legal don’t have lower criminal homicide rates than the states where the death penalty is illegal. Between 2000 and 2010, states that practiced capital punishment had 25-46% higher rates than the states that did not. The author claims that the reason behind this is because “a return to the exercise of the death penalty weakens socially based inhibitions against the use of lethal force to settle disputes.” Although the death penalty guarantees that the convicted prisoner will not commit any additional crimes, there is no evidence that it has a deterrent impact on society. All of this evidence reveals that the most popular argument in favor of the death penalty is wrong, as it has shown no effectiveness in deterring crime in the United States. This leads me to consider if the death penalty doesn’t deter crime, what is another viable reason as to how it positively affects society? I believe that the millions of dollars that are paid towards these executions should be allocated to different areas that would benefit and improve the criminal justice system in the United States. By abolishing the death penalty, more time and money could be allocated to solving the root causes of crime, such as mental health, housing, educational access, and long-term employment opportunities. This information helps further prove my hypothesis that “Capital punishment is an unfair and cruel system that should be abolished in the United States” because once these problems are addressed, it would help create safer communities and possibly prevent future crime.
A report from the Equal Justice Initiative titled “Death Penalty states: “the death penalty in America is a flawed, expensive policy, defined by bias and error”. This source is reliable because it contains relevant information and it is a government official website. The author claims that the death penalty system in the United States treats the rich and guilty better than the underprivileged and innocent. I agree with this claim because the quality of a defendant’s legal team is the main factor in determining whether or not they will be sentenced to death, and hiring an effective lawyer is expensive. Since most defendants facing capital charges cannot afford to hire an attorney, they are assigned lawyers who are usually overworked, underpaid, and inexperienced in death penalty cases. Few states in America provide sufficient funding for capital defense counsel, meaning there is a critical lack of resources for investigation and expert assistance. This means these appointed lawyers frequently fail to conduct thorough investigations, call witnesses, and challenge forensic evidence, resulting in death sentences for a large number of innocent people. Since 1973, 1532 people have been executed in the United States, with 183 inmates being exonerated and released from their death row sentence. This shows that for every nine people executed, one person on death row has been innocent. Not having adequate funding for capital defense counsel, I find to be a fixable excuse. I believe that insufficient funding for capital defense counsel is an unacceptable reason why innocent people are being placed on death row. I also believe this is a reflection of humanity prioritizing the wrong things. This is because these innocent prisoners are being subjected to long-term physiological harm, which could have been prevented if our society prioritized improving the broken justice system in the United States. This article also states that ‘’People of color are more likely to be prosecuted for capital murder, sentenced to death, and executed, especially if the victim in the case is white’’. The author argues that the death penalty in America is a “direct descendant of lynching”. I agree with this because similarly, an article written by Emmaline Soken- Huberty titled “5 reasons why the death penalty is wrong” states: “when researchers delve deeper, they discover patterns of discrimination based on race”. Emmaline explains that although black people only make up 13% of the US population, they make up over 40% of the prisoners with a death sentence. I think all this information clearly shows that the capital punishment system in the United States is biased and filled with errors. I think the author’s view of capital punishment emphasizes that the death penalty is unfair and cruel and needs to be abolished in the United States and should cause our society to lack faith in the United States criminal justice system.
The article “Botched executions: Infamous examples of trouble on death row” written by Crystal Ponti, explains the cruelty and the effect that botched executions have on a prisoner. I find this source to be reliable as it was published in August 2020 and contains recent and relevant information by a qualified journalist. According to Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College and author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions “A botched execution is an execution which does not follow the legal protocol or, more importantly, it doesn’t comport with what might be called the standard operating procedure”. An estimated three percent of all executions in the United States between 1890 and 2010, were botched. These estimates show that the procedure for executing prisoners in the United States is seriously flawed. When executions are botched it results in a long and extremely painful death causing the prisoner to suffer immensely. Despite lethal injection being the most ‘humane’ option, it has the highest rate of error. Several failed or botched executions are documented in this article. One of these botched executions occurred on July 23rd, 2014 when Joseph Wood was executed by lethal injection. Joseph Wood should have died within 10 minutes of receiving the first injection, but it took an agonising two hours due to a violation of the Arizona protocol. This botched execution was blamed on the fact that the state had used a new cocktail of lethal drugs. This proves to me that this is a cruel punishment as several witnesses stated that for an hour and forty minutes Joseph continued to gasp, gulp, and struggle to breathe. I also believe that these botched executions need to receive more attention and not be described as a slight error in admission. According to Sarat, history has proved that finding a failsafe method of taking a human life during execution is unlikely. I agree with this statement since it is in our nature for humans to make mistakes, therefore as long as humans are in charge of the process, there is always the risk of human error. This information proves that the process for executing a prisoner is cruel, as it causes severe suffering when carried out incorrectly, and it is unlikely to execute a prisoner without any complications every time.
According to a report titled “Aging death row: Is executing old or infirm inmates cruel?” written by Kim Chandler, the death row population in the United States is aging. There are approximately 2,800 people on death row in prisons across the United States, with approximately 1,200 of them being over the age of fifty. It is often argued that executing someone who is mentally frail or whose medical conditions could complicate the execution procedure is cruel. This article provides information into the case against someone that was serving the death sentence named Vernon Madison. Vernon Madison is sixty-seven years of age, and has been serving decades on death row, he was convicted in 1985 for the murder of a police officer. Since his incarceration his speech has become slurred, he suffers from confusion, causing him to sometimes believe he is near release. Maddison’s attorney, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, claims that “killing a fragile man suffering from dementia is unnecessary and cruel.” The source “On death row: which US states still have the death penalty?” was also relevant to this point, as it stated that for those found guilty, the average time between sentencing and execution is fourteen years and eight months. I found this source reliable and useful as it was published on 20th, November 2020 so the information is recent and relevant, but it also made me question the lengthy process for the execution of a prisoner. When I considered this new information I realized that the lengthy process between sentencing and execution is one of the biggest flaws in the capital punishment system. I think we need to consider that after this time are the prisoners being executed the same people who committed the crime? Vernon Maddison’s case brings me back to this question. I believe that if the convicted prisoner has gained a mental illness during their time in incarceration that causes them to have no memory of the crime they committed, they do not need to be executed. They are no longer a threat to society or anyone else, so I think they should be allowed to live out the rest of their days in prison. If the execution procedure would be complicated due to a medical condition, which would cause the process to be extremely agonising it would be inhumane to subject any prisoner to this punishment.
Christopher Reinhart, a chief attorney, explained the differences in how inmates are treated on death row compared to inmates serving a life without parole sentence in an article titled “Prison conditions for death row and life without parole inmates.” I find this source to be reliable as it contains relevant information and the author has credentials and is qualified to write about Capital Punishment even though the article was published in April 2011. It is often argued that life without parole, or commonly known as LWOP, is a more ethical alternative to capital punishment. The article explains that life without parole inmates have fewer restrictions than death row inmates and have more access to exercise, sunlight, and social interactions. Death row inmates are allowed two hours of recreation outside of their cells six days a week and are always isolated from other prisoners, whereas life without parole inmates can spend six to seven hours each day out of their cell and are allowed to interact with other prisoners. This has had a positive effect on the prisoners, as they have been shown to have better mental health than death row inmates because they are not subjected to as much isolation as death row inmates. I believe that conditions for inmates in prisons in the United States need to be improved, but the conditions for those on LWOP are better than on the death penalty. This makes me believe that replacing the death penalty with this sentence would be an improvement. Another advantage to the life without parole sentence is that it is less expensive than capital punishment, with capital punishment costing roughly half as much. If the death penalty were abolished and replaced with this sentence, this money could be used to improve the criminal justice system in the United States. This money could be used to fund more rehabilitation programs for prisoners, which would assist them after their release and make them more productive members of society. All of this information illustrates that life without parole has more societal and economic benefits than the death penalty. This illustrates that the death penalty should be abolished in the United States and replaced with this sentence.
The article “Life without parole is no moral alternative to the death penalty “ written by America Magazine claims that life without parole has the same result as the death penalty: death in prison. In 2000 the U.S Catholic bishops wrote that “Abandoning the parole system, as some states have done…turns prisons into warehouses where inmates grow old, without hope, their lives wasted.” And, as Pope Francis stated in the 2015 United States Congress, “A just and necessary punishment must never exclude the dimension of hope and the goal of rehabilitation.” This is a valid statement because without hope and redemption what motivation do the prisoners have to live. Also, neither of these sentences allows for the prisoners to undergo a personal transformation or repair the damage they have caused. ?? Additionally, four percent of those on death row were wrongfully convicted according to a National Academy of Science survey on previous exonerations. If that figure applies to those serving a life without parole sentence, it means that an estimated 2,000 people are incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. A consequence of this alternative sentence is that the innocent people serving life without parole are unlikely to have their convictions overturned because they do not have the same access to state-funded legal assistance and unlimited appeals as those on death row do. This brings me back to the topic of hope; the lives of these innocent people, and their chance for justice, have been squandered because their case is unlikely to be investigated. “I wish I still had that death sentence,” Randy Arroyo, an inmate currently serving the LWOP sentence said. “I believe my chances have gone down the drain. No one will ever look at my case.” This information makes me wonder whether life without the possibility of parole is a better punishment or if it has just as many disadvantages as the death penalty system. However, there are still advantages that come with the LWOP sentence that need to be considered. The author’s perspective on capital punishment made me consider things I hadn’t previously considered. While several valid points were made about why life without parole is not a viable alternative to the death penalty, I still believe it is a better system. It eliminates several of the risks associated with the death penalty and is more cost-effective, which means that if capital punishment is replaced with this sentence, more money will be available to improve prisons in the United States. As a result, I continue to believe that the death penalty should be abolished, as it is an antiquated form of punishment.
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Get custom essayIn conclusion, through my findings, I have been able to further prove my hypothesis that capital punishment is an unfair and cruel system and should be abolished in the United States. The evidence I found to support this was proof that the capital punishment system is cruel and unfair because it has a high rate of error and bias. It also subjects the prisoners to severe physiological harm and what has been described as 'torture.' Based on my research our society should lack faith in the criminal justice system in the United States and consider replacing the death penalty with alternatives that are less biased and have fewer failure rates. Life without parole is a more beneficial approach to punish prisoners in both an economic and societal way.
In the video the car hit the wall, in physics it means the dummy will resist the change in motion, and unless something else stops it first, the dummy will crash in to the object. Momentum steps in in the scene, since the car is very heavy and its velocity is quite fast therefore it has a great source of momentum, the formula of momentum is P=mv. Since this there are two types of collision, elastic and inelastic.
Get original essayElastic collisions are collisions in which both momentum and kinetic energy are conserved. The total system kinetic energy before the collision equals the total system kinetic energy after the collision. Video here is inelastic, occurs when the momentum remains the same but the total kinetic energy changes before and after collision, they don’t separate. But in this case its Inelastic, the video represents everything.
In this video there is a dummy in the Car driving then suddenly crash to the wall. In the first law, the absence of external forces, an object at rest remains at rest and an object in motion remains in motion with a constant velocity.
Since there is unbalanced force acting on the car, it will not maintain its motion and will immediately decelerate to rest. The passenger will share the same state motion of the car. The passenger and the car will decelerate as one body.
Second law describes that the force that the driver hits that object is based off their mass and acceleration of the car. In the video eventually, the driver will come in contact with another object (airbag).The constant of proportionality is the dummy’s, mass, therefore mathematically,
F=ma, where F is the force acting on the dummy, m is mass and a is acceleration.
Third law shows here that airbags are created to absorb the force that your body would apply on the airbag in a car crash.
In every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If this law did not exist, therefore the car will not be damaged at all. All these laws must be respected in order for you to get respected as well.
Seat belts and airbags are your last hope in accidents, seat belts safely provide an outside force that can stop down your body when the car stops or slow down airbags work by increasing the time of impact and decreasing the force of impact thus stopping the dummy from getting hurt and being killed.
With no seatbelt to stop the driver with the car, the driver flies free until stopped suddenly by impact on the steering column, windshield, etc. With no seatbelt to stop the driver with the car, the driver flies free until stopped suddenly by impact on the steering column, windshield, etc. The stopping distance is estimated to be about one fifth of that with a seatbelt, causing the average impact force to be about five times as great. The work done to stop the driver is equal to the average impact force on the driver times the distance traveled in stopping. When a seat belt is not used, the passenger will tend to continue with their state of motion. Thus, they will be propelled from the automobile and then be hurled onto the air. Impulse played an important role in the video, the seatbelts and the airbag. Understanding impulse, impulse is caused by a force during a specific time interval is equal to the body’s change of momentum during that time interval: impulse, effectively, is a measure of change in momentum. Impulse can choose force or time, if time is big so as impulse, if force is big so as impulse. Airbags lessens the time of the face to hit the steering wheel while seatbelts are to prevent reaching a distance that you are supposed to be crash.
In the first law it states that this law is best exemplified when driving trucks or cars. As a matter of fact, a body’s tendency to continue moving is a very common cause of various transportation injuries. For example, let us consider a case where a car accidentally collides with a stationary wall. When a car collides with a wall, an external and unbalanced force acts on the car, which leads to the car being abruptly decelerated to rest. All other passengers inside the car are also decelerated to rest in case they are buckled up. When you are tightly strapped to car, you will also be in the same motion state as the car.
When a car accelerates, passengers will tend to accelerate with it. When it decelerates, passengers also decelerate with it. If the car is going at a constant speed, the passengers will also maintain the same constant speed.
Should a car stop abruptly after a collision with the wall, the passengers won’t be sharing the same motion state as the car. Using seat belts ensures that there are necessary forces to accelerate or even decelerate motion. Second law states that an objected acted upon by the force will undergo acceleration in such a way that the force equals the mass multiplied by acceleration. Mathematically, this is represented as F=ma. In other words, it states that the force that is applied in the crash is proportional to mass of impacting cars. This means that the bigger the force of impacting cars, the bigger the force applied, which implies a greater destruction. The reverse is also true. If the mass of the impacting vehicles is smaller, less force will be applied, meaning less destruction in general. Last but not the least the third law,
This law states that action and reaction are equal and opposite. In short, for every action, there will be an equal opposite reaction. The law is about conservation of energy and also mentions contribution of force. Essentially, a force is defined as a push or a pull on a certain object and this is due to interaction with that object. In the context of a car accident, it means that the force that a car crashes into a wall leads to the wall exerting same amount of force upon the bonnet, which results to damage. The forces’ direction will also be opposite.
Front airbags have been standard on all new cars since 1998 and light trucks since 1999. Most vehicles had them even before then. Crash sensors connected to an onboard computer detect a frontal collision and trigger the bags. The bags inflate in a few milliseconds — the blink of an eye — then immediately start deflating.
While airbags have saved thousands of lives, they also have the potential to cause injury or even death to children or to occupants who aren’t using a seatbelt. Children under 12 should be seated in the rear in an appropriate restraint system and rear-facing child seats should never be installed in front seats equipped with airbags.
Adaptive, or dual-stage front airbags, introduced in 2003, became standard across the board by the 2007 model year. Most airbag systems now detect the presence, weight, and seat position for the driver and front passenger, and deactivate or de-power front airbags as appropriate to minimize the chance of injury to drivers positioned close to the wheel, out-of-position occupants or children.
Side airbags. Torso protecting side-impact airbags for front-seat passengers are also nearly universal, and some automakers offer side airbags for rear-seat passengers, as well. Side airbags are fairly small cushions that pop out of the door trim or the side of the seatback. They help protect the torso, but most aren’t effective in protecting the head. Nearly all new models today also include additional "side curtain" bags that deploy from above the windows and cover both front and rear side windows to prevent occupants from hitting their heads and to shield them from flying debris. A curtain bag often also stays ‘inflated’ longer in most cases to also keep people from being ejected during a rollover or a high-speed side crash. The better head-protection systems deploy the side-curtain bags if the system detects that the vehicle is beginning to roll over,
Electronic stability control (ESC) takes traction control a step further. This system helps keep the vehicle on its intended path during a turn, to avoid sliding or skidding. It uses a computer linked to a series of sensors—detecting wheel speed, steering angle, sideways motion, and yaw (rotation). If the car drifts outside the driver’s intended path, the stability-control system momentarily brakes one or more wheels and, depending on the system, reduces engine power to pull the car back on course.
Modern cars protect drivers and passengers in frontal, rear and offset crashes by using crumple zones to absorb crash energy. This means that the car absorbs the impact of the crash, not the driver or passengers.
Crash test research has shown that this can reduce injury to the passenger. Modern cars are equipped with large bumpers made of relatively soft materials, so that the front and the rear sections will crumple into a controllable size during a crash. The "crumple zones" reduce much of the impact force by lengthening the impact time. Old cars have poor crumple zones, so they decelerate extremely rapidly in a crash and exert an enormous force on the passengers. That is why passengers in an old car suffer from more serious injuries in a traffic accident.
The passenger section is between the front and the rear sections of a car. The bumpers in the front and the rear section are designed to protect the passenger section. Modern cars have a very strong and rigid passenger section which can withstand high energy load in a crash. Some cars have steel tubes embedded inside the doors to protect passengers against a side-on collision.
Car manufacturers are developing a new technology that can make a car crumple in a progressive manner. Physics principles can help scientists to understand how accidents happen, so they improve car safety.
All in all, three laws are presented in the video, the car is a good example of three laws. Whenever you feel a bad feeling (drunk, depressed, etc.) don’t drive this can increase the risk of killing yourself. Force is always force, as we understand the third law, the force you have given is also the force that you have received, all of these are highly great observation and knowledge by Isaac newton. These laws are everywhere, also these laws, must be respected in order for your butts to be respected as well, just a full understating of physics can also lead us to safety.
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Get custom essayThanks to Isaac we have a great lesson to be learned, physicist are born, science and mathematics teachers are born as well and Isaac quote "If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought." understanding physics needs to have a great patience to understand this.
According to this article”Carbon Capture and Storage as a Method to Mitigate Climate Change”, climate warming and greenhouse effect have become serious challenges for global environment. Climate change is one of the most complex issues facing us today. It involves many science, economics, society, politics and moral and ethical questions and is a global problem, felt on local scales, that will be around for decades and centuries to come.(nasa ,no date). Especially in some special fields, such as power plants, chemical factories, mining plants, the issue of carbon dioxide emission has become the focus of people's attention. Through the analysis of the geochemical cycle of carbon, it can be clearly known that carbon is exchanged and recycled in the natural cycle, including long-term and short-term processes. In order to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions, this article deeply discusses the methods of carbon capture and separation and comprehensive analyze the way of carbon storage. The first is the capture and storage of carbon, which involves different processes including the pre-combustion, post-combustion and oxyfuel combustion(Leung et al., 2014). Pre-combustion capture usually occurs in coal or natural gas, and post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) technology is a relatively mature technology in power plant systems.Oxygen fuel combustion is also used in various power plants. In order to store carbon, the carbon is separated after capture.The main methods are absorption, adsorption and membrane separation. The commonly used solvent for absorption is the monoethanolamine (MEA). Adsorption are usually attached to the surface of adsorbent during Carbon dioxide adsorption process. The last way to separate carbon is to use membrane adsorption with high carbon dioxide permeability and selectivity.
Get original essayThe separated carbon is stored in physical and biological ways. Physical carbon storage methods and technologies usually store carbon dioxide in different geological structures, such as abandoned oil and gas reservoirs, deep-sea storage, and saline aquifers.Photosynthesis plays a key role in the carbon cycle, so afforestation not only stores carbon but also increases its capacity to sequester it. Ocean carbon sequestration is also a Giant container to storage the carbon basing on photosynthesis. At present, there are pilot experiments to test whether this method is effective. Microalgae and cyanobacteria have high carbon sequestration capacity also basing on photosynthesis, both of which cost too much.
In conclusion, each carbon capture and storage method shows promise for climate mitigation, but there are many limitations, such as cost and immature technology and so on. Physical methods are relatively immaturity and play a small role in some industries. Lack of government incentive mechanism, high cost operation. Blue bacteria and algae are also being studied. Carbon sequestrationg are the advantage methods in order to mitigate climate change and reduce greenhouse gases emissions, although the limitations of technology now.
I choose this article as my reading journal, I think that the main reason is related to my major and the worrying environment in my hometown. My undergraduate major is environmental engineering, so I want to know more about the relevant knowledge of my major. When I saw the topic, I thought that I will be very interested in this topic. As for the environment of my hometown, I remember when I was a child, my hometown was all green mountains and waters of nature, with beautiful scenery and fresh air. Nowadays, people waste all the natural resources and build a large number of factories, power plants and the environment becomes worse. Every day, we can see the haze and we could no longer see the blue sky and white clouds as a child. So, I think the environment problem is a very serious topic, it is related to people's living environment and global climate warming, I eagerly hope to have a reliable and effective method or technology to mitigate climate problem. That's why I chose this article.
In this article, the authors are informing a large amount of references and seriously studied various imformation. By comparing the advantages and disadvantages of various carbon capture and storage methods, author have clearly shown the current effective method for mitigating climate change. The article is meant for those who are interesting in global climate change issues and the students who are major in environment and the environmental scientists or professors and some governmental staffs.
The author is a Bachelor of Science, specializing in chemical materials, and has some research in this area. Due to the fact that the article is based on collected studies there are hardly any opinions in it. The authors present a balanced attitude in summary of the physical and biological methods of carbon storage, and respectively compare the advantages and disadvantages of the different methods. This article is very convincing to me, although there are many limitations and technical immaturities in these methods to mitigate climate change, these efforts are all aimed at mitigating global climate change. It is no doult that the carbon capture and storage would be a valid way to mitigate climate change. In my opinion if the government and relevant departments can pay attention to this aspect of research, encourage and invest in some scientific institutions, I believe that there will be greater progress in this regard.
In the report of the UN Strategy Group, the UN's climate panel has published the third part of its long-awaited report- on strategies for mitigation. The organization propose that we should alleviate the problem of climate warming and require us to use new technologies, new energy sources, and change people's behaviors to achieve energy conservation. In the case of new energy, it generally refers to renewable energy, including wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric or nuclear. But there are many limitations to these technologies. However, fossil fuels still account for 80% of all energy. Faced with serious challenges, this article also mentions carbon sequestration capture technology, which can help alleviate some of the pressure. Although CCS theoretically limits the amount of carbon that enters the atmosphere, the amount of carbon dioxide does not decrease, but only in one form. Therefore, renewable energy such as solar energy is the key to solving this challenge.
All living things are made of carbon. Carbon is also a part of the ocean, air, and even rocks. Because the Earth is a dynamic place, carbon does not stay still. It is on the move! In the atmosphere, carbon is attached to some oxygen in a gas called carbon dioxide.
Get original essayPlants use carbon dioxide and sunlight to make their own food and grow. The carbon becomes part of the plant. Plants that die and are buried may turn into fossil fuels made of carbon like coal and oil over millions of years. When humans burn fossil fuels, most of the carbon quickly enters the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and traps heat in the atmosphere. Without it and other greenhouse gases, Earth would be a frozen world. But humans have burned so much fuel that there is about 30% more carbon dioxide in the air today than there was about 150 years ago, and Earth is becoming a warmer place. In fact, ice cores show us that there is now more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there has been in the last 420,000 years.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere prevents the sun’s eat from escaping into space, very much like the glass walls of a greenhouse. This isn’t always a bad thing – some carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is good for keeping the Earth warm and its temperature stable. But Earth has experienced catastrophic warming cycles in the past, such as the Permian extinction, which is thought to have been caused by a drastic increase in the atmosphere’s level of greenhouse gases. No one is sure what caused the change that brought about the Permian extinction. Greenhouse gases may have been added to an atmosphere by an asteroid impact, volcanic activity, or even massive forest fires. Whatever the cause, during this warming episode, temperatures rose drastically. Much of the Earth became desert, and over 90% of all species living at that time went extinct. This is a good example of what can happen if our planet’s essential cycles experience a big change. Another important variable effected by the carbon cycle is the acidity of the ocean. Carbon dioxide can react with ocean water to form carbonic acid. This has been an important stabilizing force of of the carbon cycle over the years, since the chemical equilibrium between carbon dioxide and carbonic acid means that the ocean can absorb or release carbon dioxide as atmospheric levels rise and fall.
However, as you might guess, increasing ocean acidity can mean trouble for sea life – and this might eventually pose a problem for other parts of the carbon system. Many forms of sea life that have shells, for example, can take carbon out of the water to create the calcium carbonate that they make their shells out of. If these species suffer, the ocean may lose some of its ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Lastly, of course, there is the role of living things in the carbon cycle. The activity of plants and animals has been one of the major forces affecting changes to the carbon cycle in the past several billion years. Photosynthesizers have changed Earth’s atmosphere and climate drastically by taking huge amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and turning that carbon into cellular materials. Those activities created free oxygen and the ozone layer, and generally set the stage for the evolution of animals that obtain their energy by breaking down the organic materials created by photosynthesizers and extracting the energy that the photosynthesizers used to make those molecules. With one particular species of animals – humans – making big changes, the future of the Earth’s carbon cycle is uncertain. All such cycles in closed systems eventually correct themselves – but sometimes this happens through drastic population reduction of the offending species through starvation.
The carbon cycle consists of many parallel systems which can either absorb or release carbon. Together, these systems work to keep Earth’s carbon cycle – and subsequently its climate and biosphere – relatively stable.
One major repository of carbon is the carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. Carbon forms a stable, gaseous molecule in combination with two atoms of oxygen. In nature, this gas is released by volcanic activity, and by the respiration of animals who affix carbon molecules from the food they eat to molecules of oxygen before exhaling it. Humans also release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning organic matter such as wood and fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide can be removed from the atmosphere by plants, which take the atmospheric carbon and turn it into sugars, proteins, lipids, and other essential molecules for life.
The Earth’s crust – called the “lithosphere” from the Greek word “litho” for “stone” and “sphere” for globe – can also release carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere. This gas can be created by chemical reactions in the Earth’s crust and mantel. Volcanic activity can result in natural releases of carbon dioxide. Some scientists believe that widespread volcanic activity may be to blame for the warming of the Earth that caused the Permian extinction. While the Earth’s crust can add carbon to the atmosphere, it can also remove it. Movements of the Earth’s crust can bury carbon-containing chemicals such as dead plants and animals deep underground, where their carbon cannot escape back into the atmosphere.
Among living things, some remove carbon from the atmosphere, while others release it back. The most noticeable participants in this system are plants and animals. Plants remove carbon from the atmosphere. They don’t do this as a charitable act; atmospheric carbon is actually the “food” which plants use to make sugars, proteins, lipids, and other essential molecules for life. Plants use the energy of sunlight, harvested through photosynthesis, to build these organic compounds out of carbon dioxide and other trace elements. Indeed, the term “photosynthesis” comes from the Greek words “photo” for “light” and “synthesis” for “to put together.”
The Earth’s oceans have the ability to both absorb and release carbon dioxide. When carbon dioxide from the atmosphere comes into contact with ocean water, it can react with the water molecules to form carbonic acid – a dissolved liquid form of carbon. Like most chemical reactions, the rate of this reaction is determined by the equilibrium between the products and the reactants. When there is more carbonic acid in the ocean compared to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, some carbonic acid may be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
All life requires nitrogen-compounds, e.g., proteins and nucleic acids. Air, which is 79% nitrogen gas (N2), is the major reservoir of nitrogen. But most organisms cannot use nitrogen in this form. Plants must secure their nitrogen in "fixed" form, i.e., incorporated in compounds such as: nitrate ions (NO3?) ammonium ions (NH4+) urea (NH2)2CO Animals secure their nitrogen (and all other) compounds from plants (or animals that have fed on plants).
Steps: Four processes participate or steps are involved in the cycling of nitrogen through the biosphere:
Nitrogen fixation
Decay
Nitrification
Dentrification
Microorganisms play major roles in all four of these.
Atmospheric Fixation
The enormous energy of lightning breaks nitrogen molecules and enables their atoms to combine with oxygen in the air forming nitrogen oxides. These dissolve in rain, forming nitrates, that are carried to the earth. Atmospheric nitrogen fixation probably contributes some 5– 8% of the total nitrogen fixed.
Industrial Fixation
Under great pressure, at a temperature of 600°C, and with the use of a catalyst, atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen (usually derived from natural gas or petroleum) can be combined to form ammonia (NH3). Ammonia can be used directly as fertilizer, but most of its is further processed to urea and ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3).
Biological Fixation
The ability to fix nitrogen is found only in certain bacteria and archaea. Some live in a symbiotic relationship with plants of the legume family (e.g., soybeans, alfalfa). Some establish symbiotic relationships with plants other than legumes (e.g., alders). Some establish symbiotic relationships with animals, e.g., termites and "shipworms" (wood-eating bivalves). Some nitrogen-fixing bacteria live free in the soil. Nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria are essential to maintaining the fertility of semi-aquatic environments like rice paddies.
Biological nitrogen fixation requires a complex set of enzymes and a huge expenditure of ATP. Although the first stable product of the process is ammonia, this is quickly incorporated into protein and other organic nitrogen compounds.
The proteins made by plants enter and pass through food webs just as carbohydrates do. At each trophic level, their metabolism produces organic nitrogen compounds that return to the environment, chiefly in excretions. The final beneficiaries of these materials are microorganisms of decay. They break down the molecules in excretions and dead organisms into ammonia.
Ammonia can be taken up directly by plants — usually through their roots. However, most of the ammonia produced by decay is converted into nitrates. Until recently this was thought always to be accomplished in two steps: Bacteria of the genus Nitrosomonas oxidize NH3 to nitrites (NO2?). Bacteria of the genus Nitrobacter oxidize the nitrites to nitrates (NO3?). These two groups of autotrophic bacteria are called nitrifying bacteria. Through their activities (which supply them with all their energy needs), nitrogen is made available to the roots of plants.
However, in 2015, two groups reported finding that bacteria in the genus Nitrospira were able to carry out both steps: ammonia to nitrite and nitrite to nitrate. This ability is called "comammox" (for complete ammonia oxidation). In addition, both soil and the ocean contain archaeal microbes, assigned to the Crenarchaeota, that convert ammonia to nitrites. They are more abundant than the nitrifying bacteria and may turn out to play an important role in the nitrogen cycle. Many legumes, in addition to fixing atmospheric nitrogen, also perform nitrification — converting some of their organic nitrogen to nitrites and nitrates. These reach the soil when they shed their leaves.
The three processes above remove nitrogen from the atmosphere and pass it through ecosystems. Denitrification reduces nitrates and nitrites to nitrogen gas, thus replenishing the atmosphere. In the process several intermediates are formed: nitric oxide (NO) nitrous oxide (N2O)(a greenhouse gas 300 times as potent as CO2) nitrous acid (HONO) Once again, bacteria are the agents. They live deep in soil and in aquatic sediments where conditions are anaerobic. They use nitrates as an alternative to oxygen for the final electron acceptor in their respiration.
Anammox (anaerobic ammonia oxidation) Under anaerobic conditions in marine and freshwater sediments, other species of bacteria are able to oxidize ammonia (with NO2?) forming nitrogen gas. NH4+ + NO2? ? N2 + 2H2O The anammox reaction may account for as much as 50% of the denitrification occurring in the oceans. All of these processes participate in closing the nitrogen cycle.
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Get custom essayAre the denitrifiers keeping up? Agriculture may now be responsible for one-half of the nitrogen fixation on earth through the use of fertilizers produced by industrial fixation the growing of legumes like soybeans and alfalfa. This is a remarkable influence on a natural cycle. Are the denitrifiers keeping up the nitrogen cycle in balance? Probably not. Certainly, there are examples of nitrogen enrichment in ecosystems. One troubling example: the "blooms" of algae in lakes and rivers as nitrogen fertilizers leach from the soil of adjacent farms (and lawns). The accumulation of dissolved nutrients in a body of water is called eutrophication.