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Wes Moore, the author of the book called 'The Other Wes Moore,' describes the st ...

Wes Moore, the author of the book called 'The Other Wes Moore,' describes the story of himself and another person named Wes Moore born in a somewhat similar circumstances in Baltimore. However, where the author Moore himself grew up to do great things, “the other” Wes Moore in jail will spend his remaining life in prison every day on charges of murdering Sergeant Bruce Prothero. After learning about the other Wes Moore, Moore, the author begins a letter with him and eventually visits him in jail. They share many of their experiences about each other’s childhood, environment they had, and the people they are involved with. The two work together to create a book about their life, gaining insight into the nature of fate and encouraging young people.

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The book 'The Other Wes Moore' claims how important the family, their environment, and the people involved around are in their development. The book charts the author Wes Moore's development, from reckless children to trained eminent teenagers and adults. He explains how our destiny is determined by the external environment throughout this book. Moore admits that there is not much difference in distinguishing his destiny from the other Moore's, but says that the most important factor was the support of his mother, Joy, along with other families and communities. His father Wesley appears very short in this book, but the impact on Moore is very large. Westley graduated from Bard College and hosted his own public program as a radio journalist. Moore states “I tried to copy his walk, his expression. I was his main man. He was my protector”. He had a very positive influence on Moore, demonstrating fair, responsible and compassionate masculinity. His words also show that kind words are a better form of discipline than harsh punishment. However, his father passed away unfortunately. He also points out “I thought about my father and the name he chose for me”. Moore suggests that his father formed a person who would still be Moore even if he did not exist physically in his life.

After Westly's death, Moore’s mom, Joy feels strongly responsible for protecting her children because of her husband's absence. She does three things to support his family and sends Moore to Riverdale, a private school like the university with John F. Kennedy. Moore points, “My mother saw Riverdale as a haven, a place where I could escape my neighborhood and open my horizons”. Joy believes that when registering Moore in Riverdale, this will help him widen the 'horizon' and make a better life. She hopes this will allow Moore to escape his neighbor while pursuing a brighter future. At this point, she shows that she is trying to provide a better environment for her son. Moore also claims, “Wes, you are not going anywhere until you give this place a try. I am so proud of you, and your father is proud of you, and we just want you to give this a shot. Too many people have sacrificed in order for you to be there”. This quote reveals Joy's approach to Moore. She says she and her husband think Moore is a proud son, supporting and encouraging him. She tried to reinforce her son to be responsible, notifying that others would sacrifice for him.

On the other hand, the prisoner Wes's mother Mary is undoubtedly wise, altruistic and hard working. The author demonstrates, “Since leaving high school years prior, Bernard hadn’t found a steady job. He spent most of his time searching for himself at the bottoms of liquor bottles”. His father Bernard, on the other hand, ruined his life with irresponsibility, destructiveness and addiction. These two oppositions exist on Wes's path. Wes feels that Mary needs to be protected because his father has never come to help her. Although his half brother Tony and his mom Mary make efforts to keep Wes on a responsible path, he ultimately ends up following his older brother into the drug game. The author states “And the drug game was everywhere, with a gun handle protruding from the top of every tenth teenager's waistline. People who lived in Murphy Homes felt like prisoners, kept in check by roving bands of gun-strapped kids and a nightmare army of drug fiends. This was where Tony chose to spend his days”. Tony spent most of his time at Murphy Homes Projects and has been dealing with drugs since the age of ten. At the age of 14, he is a 'certified gangster' with a fierce reputation. Tony constantly tries to persuade Wes to pursue another path, but he admits that there is no way for him to give up and make the same decision as himself. Wes ignored Tony's words and admired his brother for his actions. Regardless of Tony's words, Wes is impressed by Tony's tough position and tries to act like his older brother without following the advice. The author Moore has good friends around him.

Moore's best friend, Justin, is one of the only black kids in Riverdale. The author says, “I had forgotten how to act naturally, thinking way too much in each situation and getting tangled in the contradictions between my two worlds. My confidence took a hit. Unlike Justin, whose maturity helped him handle this transition much better than I did, I began to let my grades slip”. Justin is a great student and was warned by the Riverdale faculty to avoid Moore, but Justin ignores this advice. Justin has a special level of difficulty in his life. His mother died of Hodgkin's lymphoma when he was in high school, and in college, Justin develops a rare form of cancer at the same time his father dies from a home fire. Nevertheless, Justin recovered and had a successful career in education. Moore must have been challenged by his friends to see him live hard in difficult circumstances. Another person who influenced him through book would be Captain Hill. He says, “With the support of people like Cadet Captain Hill and the others in my chain of command and on faculty, I’d actually started to enjoy military school”.

Captain Hill is a young black man with an exceptional level of differentiation at Valley Forge. He became one of Moore's mentors and was one of the groomsmen at Moore's wedding a few years later. Two more people to be announced as good friends are Zinzi and Simo. Both boys and Moore met when Moore visited South Africa and got closer. The author states “My friendship with Zinzi and Simo had also grown significantly”. Moore experienced other cultures and gained enlightenment through both of his friends. As such, Moore had many great people who influenced him, and they were clearly the ones who helped him to be better. The other Wes in the prison also had friends who influenced him in good and bad ways. When Wes moves to Northwood, Woody becomes friends with Wes. “They ignored Woody until he shouted out, “If y’all don’t let him go, I’m gonna have to kill somebody!” Moments later, Woody was in handcuffs too”, according to author. As a child, Woody has a positive effect on Wes and prevents him from pulling the knife of a neighboring boy. Woody is the only group of Wes's friends to graduate from high school, but he still spends time in prison after this point.In the end, he decides to leave the street by getting a job as a truck driver. Cheryl is a Wes’s girlfriend. A little older than Wes, she is a heroin addict and does not attempt to hide drug use from him.

The author writes, “Just a month ago, he’d noticed he was missing money and lectured Cheryl: Stop bringing your friends into my house if they’re going to be stealing my stuff!”. Her appearance does not help Wes as a spouse or partner at all, but rather shows a worse influence. Wes thinks his life is frustrating at some point because of looking at her and his two children. He was sick and tired of watching drugs destroying families and community. Levy is a friend of Wes who seeks advice if Wes decides to leave the drug game. The author demonstrates, “He knew the pay would be lower than what he was making on the streets, but the work was steady and honest, and he would have more time to give family without injury, death, or incarceration looming”. Throughout the whole story, Levy is the only friend who escaped from where drag games present. Wes seems to lack the people who will lead him out of harmful decisions. The author Moore's environment are not in fact perfect or good. He lost his father as a child, and his mother had to live with the obsession with protecting her children. Perhaps that's why she sent Moore to Valley Forge. She would have thought that the environment there would be better for her son.

According to the author, “That’s when I started to understand that I was in a different environment. Not simply because I was in the middle of Pennsylvania instead of Bronx or Baltimore. It was a different psychological environment, where my normal expectations were inverted, where leadership was honored and class clowns were ostracized”. It was a wise choice of his mother Joy to send him to a military school. There he realizes how good his environment is. Not only the environment itself, but also the esteemed people and colleagues that exist there, he learns and feels a lot. Eventually there he had the opportunity to meet Captain Hill, the manto of his life. As such, environmental factors provide relationships not only with the environment itself, but with the people in it. The environment in which Tony and Wes faced was perhaps a fate that had to be accepted by them. The author describes, “Wes noticed one of his boys leaning out of a window along with dozens of other people, who were now curiously watching. The boy was one of Wes’s partners in his drug operation, and when he saw Wes standing in the night air, face bloodied, with the gun in hand, he had his cue to join the fight”. In this situation, it is clear that Wes could not pretend not to know. The place where he lived was a scene of drug trafficking that was so full of dangerous elements. It was Wes himself who decided to sell the drug, but he pushed him into such an environment because his older brother started the drug earlier than that. Trying to get out of the environment would not be easy for Wes.

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The author states, “In Baltimore in 1991, 11.7 percent of girls between the ages of fifteen and nineteen had given birth. More than one out of ten. He also didn't feel burdened by the thought that early parenthood would wreck his future plans – because he didn't really have any future plans. And he wasn’t overly stressed about the responsibilities of fatherhood – he didn’t even know what that meant. But in some unspoken way, he did sense that he was crossing a point of no return, that things were about to get complicated in a way he was unequipped to handle.” The community where Wes lived was where one in ten teenagers had a baby. It has many meanings, indicating that it is a poorly educational environment, where poverty exists, and where parental involvement is poor. Wes was also a boy with all of these environmental factors, and it gave him the experience of being a father at teenager. Moore describes that the story of himself and Wes's life will be of interest not only to the two, but also to a larger audience who are interested in how people shape their destiny and how their fate is formed by people and environments. Moore states “The chilling truth is that his life could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his”. They lived in the same place, Baltimore, but live in different directions. However, if they had other family members, friends and surroundings at that time, their lives might have really changed each other. Had he and his family not immigrated, if he had lived in a different environment, his life would have changed as well. As such, the impact of their family, friends and the environment on people is very large and important.


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Eli Whitney was one of the most influential industrialists and one of the greate ...

Eli Whitney was one of the most influential industrialists and one of the greatest pioneers of the Industrial Revolution in early American history. He lived in the south for only a few years, yet, during this time, he created an invention that would revolutionize the agricultural industry. The creation of the cotton gin, an machine that could pick the seeds out of cotton, breathed new life into the dying southern economy. Whitney was driven to bankruptcy after his invention s patent was stolen. This did not deter him though. He moved back to the north where, under the patronage of the United States government, he altered the very face of manufacturing with his factory that mass-produced guns. This new manufacturing methodology introduced the revolutionary concept of interchangeable parts.

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Whitney's was born in Westborough, Massachusetts on December 8, 1765. He was brought up by his parents, Eli, Sr. and Elizabeth. Disaster struck when his mother became terribly ill after the birth of her fourth child. She died in 1777. Whitney, Jr., only twelve years old at the time, was the eldest of the children and felt bound to care for his younger siblings. Even after his father remarried a woman named Judith Hazledon, Whitney still carried his burden for his sister and two brothers.

The economy in the colonies was in poor shape when the Revolutionary War broke out. During these troubled times, young Eli started his first successful business. He made nails in his father s workshop. Nails were a rare commodity in the states. Using his tools, he also became one of the only hatpin makers in the colonies. Whitney began to learn the finer points of mechanics during the time he spent in his father s workshop. As he grew older, he set his sights on going to college, where an education would allow him to further develop his skills. Due to lack of money, his father was unable to support his dream. Eli was forced to seek his own fortune.

Whitney moved to Grafton, Massachusetts where he found a job teaching. He spent his free time furthering his education while attending Leicester Academy. He studied for the college entrance exams during this time. His efforts were rewarded when he was accepted at Yale University in 1797. At the age of 24 he began his higher education and graduated with a college degree three years later. Whitney could not find a position that fit his aspirations, nor mechanical experience, upon his graduation. He reluctantly accepted a position as a private tutor for a southern family in South Carolina. On the way to South Carolina he met Mrs. Catherine Greene, the widow of a Revolutionary War hero and plantation owner. Phineas Miller, the plantation's manager, accompanied Green.

The three established a good friendship upon arriving in South Carolina. When Whitney's tutoring job did not work out, he willingly accepted Greene's offer to remain on her estate. His plan was to study law, but his attentions became directed elsewhere. He quickly learned that most planters could no longer afford to keep slaves because they had no crop that made enough money. Tobacco had been the major cash crop, but most of the land's fertility was depleted within a few harvests. Corn and indigo crops were worth too little, and cotton crops were too labor intensive. Green seed cotton demanded constant maintenance, taking days to remove the seeds from the fibers by hand.

Whitney used his mechanical background to construct a simple machine that would turn cotton growing into a lucrative business. A trained slave could harvest fifty boils of cotton a day, but it would take that same slave twenty-five days to de-seed the same amount. Whitney s invention, the cotton gin, could dramatically increase the speed of the de-seeding process. The gin had wire combs that would remove the cotton fibers from the seed. The seed would drop, and a brush would remove the fibers. When Whitney did a demonstration of the gin for Greene's friends and acquaintances, he was able to do one half day's work within an hour.

Whitney did not grasp how important his creation would become to the planters, though he did know that his invention had the potential to revolutionize the agriculture industry in the South. He and Miller joined together in hopes of making a profit off of the machine. Whitney moved to New Haven, Connecticut where he applied for a patent and continued to make cotton gins. He then sent the simple machines to Miller in South Carolina where, instead of selling the gins, the manager planned to de-seed the planters' cotton for them, for the price of one-third of their profits. Under these business conditions, this plan had the potential to make the men millionaires.

Whitney and Miller were not so fortunate though. They experienced many difficulties that kept them in the red. The first sign of trouble came when Whitney's patent application was delayed. A yellow fever epidemic in Washington, D.C. crippled communications and delayed the patent for months. To make things worse, Southern planters expectations ran high as they heard of the new machine s capabilities. In preparation for cotton profits, farmers planted row upon row of the new money making crop of cotton. As harvest time drew closer, the problems became compounded. Farmer s refused to pay Miller's exorbitant price, and a few stole the plans for the gin and constructed the machines themselves. These planters made a fortune by pirating the concept of the gin. To add to the duo s bad luck, unwarranted rumors concerning the Whitney gins had begun to convince many farmers that their cotton would be ruined by his machines. The "straw that broke the camel s back" happened in 1795 when a fire at the New Haven workshop destroyed all twenty-five of Whitney's gins and the tools needed to make more of the machines.

The two business partners refused to sit idly by while others stole their patent. They brought their case before several southern courts. Their court battles were long and arduous and often frustrating. After a few years of combat in the courts, they only received $90,000, a mere portion of what they could have made if the plans had never been stolen. Neither man was able to enjoy the money at all as it went to lawyers bills and court fees. In 1803 some of the states actually reneged on their judgements and asked for the money back.

Whitney was at his wit's end. The court conflicts had made him jaded. He abandoned the business and moved north to get away from the frustration, returning to the South only briefly when trials in South Carolina seemed to be going well. In the mean time, though utterly defeated and without any money at the age of forty, he was ready to tap into his entrepreneurial spirit and mechanical abilities. He heard that the U. S. government was looking for a private contractor to help them build up their supply of weapons. At the turn of the century, renewed conflict in Europe made America nervous. Whitney presented the government with a risky, but promising idea. He believed he could build a factory that would produce gun parts that were so identical to one another that they would fit any gun. With this proposal, Whitney had come up with the revolutionary concept for interchangeable parts.

Whitney had been diligent in proving that he was the inventor of the cotton gin. The US government trusted in Whitney's reputation as an inventor, and signed a military defense contract with Whitney in 1800. Whitney promised the government that he would provide 10,000 of his rifles within two years. In exchange, the government would provide funding for the factory and pay him $134,000. Upon signing, he immediately set to work by building his factory, securing waterpower and hiring employees. However, Whitney again experienced numerous setbacks. A yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia slowed shipping of supplies, and a fierce winter made it nearly impossible to find iron. All told, it took Whitney eight years to provide the number of rifles he promised. Whitney did learn many things during those tumultuous eight years. He had begun to perfect the manufacturing process. When the US asked him to make 15,000 more rifles in 1811, he was able to provide the results in only two years.

Whitney had spent the better of his life inventing and defending his inventions. He finally settled down and married on January 6, 1817. He and his wife, Henrietta Edwards, had four children. He was able to spend a few healthy years with his new family. He became ill when his prostate gland became enlarged in 1822. He was able to invent a catheter-like instrument that reduced his pain, but his illness finally led to his death in 1825.

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Whitney was a remarkable inventor who had the ability to understand the needs of a given situation and the mechanical knowledge to solve the problem. Using this innate ability, he was able to create machines that could increase productivity. The cotton gin was one of those inventions. It revived the southern economy making cotton farming a profitable investment. The cost effectiveness of the gin allowed farmers to keep slaves and stabilize the southern economy. Whitney endured years of hardship as he battled the courts to recognize the gin as his invention. After his battles, he moved to the north where he was able to secure a military contract with the US government. His concept of interchangeable parts would be the foundation of mass production possible and lay the groundwork for the prosperity of future industrialists.


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A machine no bigger than a microwave doubled the population of slaves in the US ...

A machine no bigger than a microwave doubled the population of slaves in the US and also made world economies blow up. This machine is called the cotton gin and was invented by Eli Whitney, an innovative and crafty man. His intent for the machine was to speed the process up for the separation of cotton fibers and its seeds. He had no idea what the machine’s effects would have on the nation. Eli Whitney single handedly sparked “The Cotton Kingdom” and became the driving force of the US economy. As cotton prices fell and demand for cotton increased, so did demand for slave labor. Although Eli Whitney’s intentions weren’t to increase slavery with the cotton gin, slavery was, in fact, increased in the United States.

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Eli Whitney is known as a successful inventor and a successful entrepreneur. He is also known as a leader of the industrial revolution. He’s earned these characteristics because of the fact that he invented the cotton gin and also came up with the process of mass-producing parts. He is also known for his innovative and entrepreneurial actions in his adolescent years. Eli’s intelligent character is built at a young age with his understanding of mechanisms and his high levels of literature and creativity. When Eli was in his mid to late teenage years, he worked for his father in a workshop. He was learning handyman skills such as carpentry and blacksmithing to help his father make repairs for his customers. While he was still working for his father, he thought he could make some money off selling nails. He convinced his dad to allow him to do that because of the fact that they were in high demand throughout the Revolutionary War. Later, Eli went to the college of Yale and after he left college, he was unemployed and was in search of a job. Eli worked as a tutor for a couple of years before his friend, Phineas Miller, suggested a job to him consequent to his failing tutoring jobs. He took the job and worked for Catherine Greene who was a businesswoman and manager of a plantation. He tutored at the plantation for a while before she gave Mr. Whitney the job of creating a machine that could make the process of taking the seeds out of cotton easier. This invention finally evolved the thousand-year traditional hand-picking method.

The history of cotton first starts around 6000 BC where it was believed to be first used in South Asia. Cotton wasn’t a big trading item in these times much because of the fact that it was difficult to separate the seeds from the cotton fibers. Cotton was mainly used in small primitive groups to make traditional clothing. Thousands of years later, cotton was found in the Bahamas by Christopher Columbus and then later planted in continental America. Since then, the plant had been grown in the southern region of the US and harvested by slaves. The traditional way to separate the seed from the fibers is by doing it by hand which has been used for thousands of years. Before the cotton gin, the US was still a major exporter of cotton to countries around the world, especially in Europe. The cotton process was time consuming, labor intensive and also notoriously known for its slave use so the demand for cotton has always been low. The whole idea originated from a gathering of some local neighbors of Catherine Greene and they conversed about the difficulties they were having with making cotton profitable due to the fact that it was so difficult to separate the seed from the cotton fibers and cleaning it. Eli was given the task to try and find an easier and more efficient way to separate the seeds.

It didn’t take long for Eli to start experimenting with different ways to make the process more efficient. From the design process to the finalization of the patent, the cotton gin only took around a year to invent. From 1773 to 1774, Eli worked on the cotton gin under Catherine Greene as a job. Once Eli finally completed the design and felt like he had a good marketing strategy, he applied for a patent for 30 dollars. When Eli was receiving his patent, Thomas Jefferson sent him a letter in regard to the finalization of the patent process for the cotton gin and he was very intrigued by the design of the cotton gin. He also expressed how using slaves for the seed picking process is an embarrassment to the country and that this invention should help water down the notorious. The machine itself was very innovative and very efficient. The machine itself would produce 10 times more cotton than one person in a day. The machine only required one user and their only job was to feed the machine cotton and crank it with their hand. Although this is a very attractive reason to buy the machine Eli Whitney had very bad sales strategies a poor production process. The design of the cotton gin was very simplistic and easy to replicate which happened. It came to be where Eli lost more money suing people for infringement than from the profits of the machine. In 1797, Eli had accumulated as much as 4000 dollars’ worth of debt. It seemed to be that everyone except Eli was making money off cotton.

Although Eli never made any profits from the machine, many economies around the world did especially Britain because they would export the clothing from the cotton from America. The cotton gin totally changed the US economy and even helped spark the industrial revolution. Rancher weren’t the only ones making a profit off cotton in America. Banks in North America, shipping merchants, stakeholders, and textile companies were all making profits off cotton at the time. Also, any fertile land stretching from Georgia to Texas was extremely valuable. By the start of the War of 1812, South America was producing around 75 percent of all the cotton in the world. The southern cotton industry was also creating more millionaires per capita around the Mississippi River than anywhere in the world. With the rapid rise in “the Cotton Kingdom”, cotton became the driving force of America and also the whole world. Textile manufacturers fueled the industrial revolution for the entire world. From around 1820, 39 percent of all US exports were cotton. Around 1836, 59 percent of all US exports were cotton. Up until 1836, the value of cotton sold overseas is worth around 71 million dollars. Although, the US had good side effects of “the Cotton Kingdom”, there were some serious side effects from the effect cotton had on the nation.

Slavery played a big role in the upbringing of the US. A lot of Atlantic civilizations were built on the back of enslaved field hands. Slavery increased in the US even though slave labor got reduced in the cotton cultivation process, cotton got so big that the demands were not getting met by the number of slaves in the south so slaves also grew in demand. Eli Whitney didn’t mean to increase slavery in the US but he was the biggest reason why it happened. One could even say he tried to reduce it because of the fact that the cotton gin was intended to reduce the labor involved in the cottonseed picking process. The cotton gin did just that but it worked too well. Cotton started to become big and the demand for it surpassed the production. Therefore ranchers needed more slaves to increase their production rates to meet the demand. As a result of ranchers needing more slaves for higher production, slavery almost doubled in the south in the span of the next 20 years. From 1790 to 1810, the number of slaves in the south started with 657,000 slaves and ended up with an absurd 1.3 million slaves. Besides all the money and new technologies cotton brought to the world, slavery was one of the most impactful and notorious events that have ever happened in the US.

Eli Whitney never had the intent to increase slavery in America. He invented the cotton gin to reduce the labor needed to separate the seed from cotton fibers at a quicker pace. The side effects of the cotton gin were almost impossible to think about. Economies grew and a lot of money was being made throughout the world. The one negative effect the cotton gin had on the US was the unbelievable demand for slavery. This was just a side effect of the high demand cotton had on the US. Plantation owners could not resist being a part of “the Cotton Kingdom” so they kept buying slaves as field hands. As cotton got cheaper, the demand of cotton went up causing a domino effect on slavery which caused it to also go up in demand. All these consequences occurred because one simple man created a tiny machine. 

Works Cited

  1. Breen, T. H. (2005). The marketplace of revolution: How consumer politics shaped American independence. Oxford University Press.
  2. Brown, D. S. (2014). The cotton revolution. Oxford University Press.
  3. Genovese, E. D. (1974). Roll, Jordan, roll: The world the slaves made. Vintage.
  4. Gutman, H. G. (2003). The Black family in slavery and freedom, 1750-1925. Oxford University Press.
  5. Johnson, W. D. (1999). The cotton gin: A groundbreaking invention. ABDO Publishing.
  6. Lurie, J. (2006). Eli Whitney: Master of invention. Yale University Press.
  7. Ransom, R. L., & Sutch, R. (2001). One kind of freedom: The economic consequences of emancipation. Cambridge University Press.
  8. Stampp, K. M. (1990). The peculiar institution: Slavery in the ante-bellum South. Vintage.
  9. Taylor, A. J. (2017). The internal enemy: Slavery and war in Virginia, 1772-1832. W. W. Norton & Company.
  10. Weinberg, M. A., & Wright, L. E. (2002). Breaking the chains: Slavery, bondage, and emancipation in modern Africa and Asia. University of Wisconsin Press.

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IntroductionELIE SAAB (also referred to as ES) is a high fashion brand founded b ...

Introduction

ELIE SAAB (also referred to as ES) is a high fashion brand founded by Lebanese fashion designer Elie Saab in Beirut in 1982. (FMD, n.d.) In the 1980’s his creations characterised by embroidered lace, precious fabrics, beading, crystals and other rich details started attracting royalty from all over the world, which had a positive impact on his label’s reputation. (FMD, n.d.)

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In the 1990’s, Elie Saab achieved remarkable recognition outside of Lebanon after presenting his haute couture and ready-to-wear creations in Rome, Milan and Monaco. (FMD, n.d.) However, it wasn’t until 2002 that ELIE SAAB became an internationally established luxury brand, when African American actress Halle Berry received the Best Actress Oscar in a highly decorated red gown designed by the Lebanese fashion designer.

As of today, Elie Saab has a showroom in Paris and a limited number of flagship stores and boutiques in Europe, Lebanon and Dubai. (Shuayto, N. and Kayyal, H., 2013) As a result of its distribution strategy which focuses mainly on Europe and the UAE, Elie Saab has a very weak presence in the Asia-Pacific region, which has already been targeted by most of its competitors in view of its high potential and growing number of high-net-worth individuals (henceforth, HNWIs). (Capgemini Lorenz Curve Analysis, 2013a)

In view of these considerations, this essay will analyse ELIE SAAB’s business model using a combination of theoretical frameworks and socio-economic data which will be used to gain insight into its current strategy. Then, the information collected about the company’s strengths and weaknesses will be used to devise a distribution strategy which should help it to expand and increase its brand awareness without jeopardising its luxury status.

As Shuayto and Kayyal (2006) pointed out, ELIE SAAB’s main goal has always been to attract and keep customers who appreciate and demand high-end, unique fashion designs made from the richest materials. As a luxury fashion brand, one of the main challenges faced by ELIE SAAB is to satisfy consumers’ varying needs and achieve steady revenues without losing its prestigious status. (Okonkwo, U., 2007)

With regards to distribution, Orlovic (2003) noted that those who manage luxury companies must pay great attention not to ruin their brand image when selecting key distribution channels, as apparently advantageous options such as partnerships and licensing agreements may end up devaluating even the most successful luxury brands. In fact, in order to be perceived as exclusive and extraordinary, a luxury fashion brand should be constructed in such a way to be associated with wealthy individuals who belong to the highest strata of society and can afford extremely expensive, unnecessary goods. (Kapferer, J., 2012) In light of these observations, it can be inferred that the strategic plan adopted by ELIE SAAB has certainly proved effective as thanks to its limited number of flagship stores, reasonable licensing strategy and association with royalty and celebrities, the Lebanese brand is mainly associated with rarity, exclusivity and fine materials and evokes desirable and appealing lifestyles.

As Osterwalder and Pigneur (2013) pointed out, there is a number of elements that should be analysed in order to evaluate a company’s business model and to provide a clear picture of its current market position, such as value propositions, key resources, key partners, cost structure, revenues, key activities, distribution, customer relationship and customer segments. The table below uses the “blocks” outlined by Osterwalder and Pigneur (2013) to analyse ELIE SAAB’s business model.

ELIE SAAB aims to create exceptional, high-end designs made from exquisite materials and to offer competitive prices without sacrificing quality or exclusivity. (F.M.D., n.d.) • Flagship stores, salons, fabrics, materials, sewing and design tools (physical resources)

  • Website, trademarks (intellectual resources)
  • Designers’ talent, skills and creativity; salesforce in flagship stores (human resources)
  • Shareholders’ equity (financial resources). Retailers and department stores, including Harrods (Elie Saab. 2014)
  • Pronovias (Pronovias.com, 2014)
  • Beaute Prestige International (Elie Saab, 2011)
  • Fabric and material suppliers
  • Manufacturers of Ready-to-wear clothes, accessories and footwear
  • Companies investing in hotels (Trade Arabia, 2008)
  • Yacht companies - Oceanco and Weyves International Ltd (Lorie, A., 2010)

Key activities Cost structure Revenues

  • Haute couture design
  • Design of ready-to-wear clothes, accessories and footwear
  • Wedding gown design
  • Luxury flagship store design
  • Website maintenance Materials
  • Fabrics
  • Selling, general and administrative expenses (salaries, commissions, marketing, advertising, travel-related costs)
  • Manufacturers
  • Fashion shows Direct sales
  • Indirect sales
  • License agreements
  • Partnerships

Customer segments Customers relationship Distribution channels

  • ELIE SAAB’S main target customers are: elegant and wealthy women who appreciate unique, high-end clothes, accessories and footwear made from top quality materials
  • Celebrities (natural target)
  • Royalty (natural target) ELIE SAAB’s main goal is to retain existing customers whilst attracting new ones. Their customer management strategy revolves around:
  • Dedicated assistance support in flagship stores
  • Personal, exclusive services offered to selected customers (mainly royalty and celebrities)
  • Excellent customer support offered by carefully selected partners Distribution has certainly played a fundamental role in creating specific emotional associations with ELIE SAAB, as the Lebanese designer’s creations are only distributed through the following channels:
  • Company’s flagship stores
  • A limited number of multi-brand retailers like Pronovias
  • Exceptional concessions
  • Fashion shows

As a growing company which operates in various markets, ELIE SAAB cannot be analysed only in relation to its internal forces, strategic plan and goals. In fact, as Bamford and West (2010) noted, a business’ management, operations and ability to achieve its goals is affected by a variety of internal and external factors which can be analysed through a very common management tool known as SWOT (acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).

The main advantage of SWOT analysis is that it allows management to determine whether strategic goals have been achieved whilst devising a new strategy that maximises a firm’s strengths, minimises or eliminates its weaknesses, reduces its vulnerability to external threats and helps it to take advantage of new opportunities. (Bamford, C. E. and West, G. P., 2010) From an analysis of ELIE SAAB’s operations, business model and internal/external environment through SWOT, it was found that one of the company’s weakest areas is its low presence in markets with high HNWIs, especially Asia, which means that an adequate distribution and brand strategy should be developed for this particular area. (Appendix A)

In view of the data and observations illustrated so far, it can be inferred that one of ELIE SAAB’s main weaknesses is its weak presence in Asia, whose potential has already been recognised by numerous luxury brands which have already established themselves in various locations within the Asia-Pacific region. (Daedal Research, 2013) Therefore, this section will present a new strategy aimed at minimising ELIE SAAB’s distribution-related weaknesses which emerged from the company’s business model evaluation and SWOT analysis. (Appendix A) The said strategy will revolve around company-owned flagship stores which should help to increase the brand’s reach in the Asia-Pacific region, without causing it to lose its luxury status, exclusivity or credibility.

As Chevalier and Mazzalovo (2012) observed, there are various dynamics and factors which should be taken into consideration when developing a distribution strategy for a luxury brand. First of all, a luxury brand should embody timelessness, rarity, continuity, stability, wealthy lifestyles and prestige as without these associations it wouldn’t be perceived as luxurious, otherwise it would be considered as an ordinary fashion brand. (Chevalier, M. and Mazzalovo, 2012) In fact, the difficulties encountered by companies such as Burberry, Gucci and Chanel suggest that when a luxury brand is managed in such a way to make it too available through uncontrolled licensing agreements and inefficient management control, its image would be severely damaged which would cause it to become diluted, suffer losses and even to lose its luxury status. (Kapferer, J., 2012; Moore, C. M. and Birtwistle, G., 2004)

In this regard, ELIE SAAB’s distribution strategy has contributed to preserving its exclusivity and qualitative rarity by making its lines available through a limited number of channels, including a few flagship stores, department stores, concessions and fashion shows. (Elie Saab, 2014) However, as of today, ELIE SAAB’s haute couture line can only be purchased at its flagship stores in France, Lebanon, whereas its ready-to-wear line is distributed through a limited number of boutiques in North America, Mexico, Hong Kong, Europe, Lebanon and in the UAE. (Elie Saab, 2014) Thanks to special concessions and licensing agreements, however, the brand’s ready-to-wear collections can also be found in South Africa, South America and in Russia.

Considering that the global distribution of wealth has changed significantly during the past decade, it follows that ELIE SAAB’s initial distribution strategy should be adapted to the latest socio-economic phenomena in order not to prevent it from becoming a strong brand in high-potential markets where competing luxury brands are already well established. (Daedal Research, 2013) In fact, ELIE SAAB has a very weak presence in the Asia-Pacific region, where the number of HNWIs rose by almost 13% in 2012, reaching 3.68 million people whose total wealth amounts to around $12 trillion. (Capgemini Lorenz Curve Analysis, 2013a) To be more precise, China is an ideal target market where ELIE SAAB would certainly benefit from the establishment of a new flagship store and the implementation of a brand strategy aimed at increasing its brand awareness and strengthening its presence. The main reason why China was chosen as the area on which the company’s distribution strategy should be focussed is because its HNWI and GDP statistics are very promising and numerous competing luxury brands have already identified it as a high-potential market. (Daedal Research, 2013; Capgemini Lorenz Curve Analysis, 2013b) Moreover, as Kapferer (2012) pointed out, the luxury sector is still experiencing remarkable growth in Asia, in spite of the negative effects of the 2008 financial crisis, which suggests that by launching a new flagship store in China, ELIE SAAB would become less vulnerable to financial crises and other potentially negative economic phenomena.

Although there are various distribution channels which ELIE SAAB could use to enter the Chinese market, the launch of a company-owned flagship store combined with an adequate promotional campaign would increase brand awareness in the aforementioned area giving the company full control over its customer service and pricing strategy without diluting the brand. In fact, cases like Gucci and Burberry suggest that as advantageous as licensing agreements and concessions may seem, mainly due to their lower expenses and easier manageability, they can easily lead to brand dilution and decreased sales when partners are not chosen very carefully (Moore, C. M. and Birtwistle, G., 2004) In view of these considerations, it should be noted that ELIE SAAB’s current brand strategy has allowed it to retain and strengthen its association with royalty, celebrities and luxury and that its position in the Asia-Pacific region is not strong enough to risk being perceived as a diluted brand. Therefore, it follows that the best way for the company to expand in China would be to establish a new flagship store showcasing the brand’s haute couture, ready-to-wear and accessory lines in order to increase its brand awareness and ensure that consumers in the Asia-Pacific region see it as an exclusive and prestigious brand before considering more convenient distribution channels.

With regards to China, an analysis of the country’s GDP distribution across different provinces combined with more practical considerations, such as strategic placement, wealth concentration and geographic/international relevance, revealed that Beijing would be the most adequate location for ELIE SAAB’s new flagship stores. (The Economist, 2011; Lu, P. X., 2011)

As MacPherson (2013) reported, Wangfujing is a shopping area in Beijing which is known for its wide range of department stores, shops and high luxury shop density. Therefore, it follows that a flagship store in Wangfujing would increase ELIE SAAB’s brand awareness in China whilst placing it at the same level as other popular luxury brands, including Chanel which has a boutique in the same area. (Chanel, n.d.)

Both interior design and architecture play a fundamental role in ELIE SAAB’s flagship store strategy, to the extent that Elie Saab has personally contributed to the design and decoration of most of his boutiques. (Elie Saab, 2012) The company’s existing flagship stores share a number of common features, such as simplicity, a luxurious atmosphere and modern details, which should be preserved in order to ensure continuity and consistency.

As can be seen from the above images of ELIE SAAB’s flagship stores in Dubai and Paris, travertine stone, leather furniture, dark wood and warm lighting are also part of the company’s global approach to interior design which should be complied with when designing its new flagship store in China. Unlike the majority of ELIE SAAB’s stores worldwide, the new flagship store will showcase not only the Lebanese designer’s accessory and ready-to-wear line, but also his haute couture creations. Therefore, it would be appropriate to divide the internal space into two separate sections, one for the brand’s ready-to-wear and accessory line and one for its haute couture range, in order to create a slightly different atmosphere for the latter which may emphasize the higher value, luxury and exclusivity of Elie Saab’s high-fashion designs. With regards to brand name translation, most people in China cannot speak English, which means that the company should have a Chinese version of the ELIE SAAB logo in its new flagship store in order to allow locals to understand and familiarise themselves with its brand name. (Zou, S. and Fu, H., 2011)

As Hines and Bruce (2007) pointed out, marketing plays a very important role in the creation and growth of luxury fashion brands and the launch of flagship stores can help to create brand awareness whilst increasing customer loyalty in a certain area. By opening a new flagship store in a strategic shopping district in China, ELIE SAAB will place itself as a luxury brand and will be able to strengthen its brand image within the Asia-Pacific region. However, in order to do that, the company will have to support its flagship store strategy with a number of promotional activities aimed at making consumers aware of the brand’s expansion. First of all, three fashion shows could be held the new flagship store to draw consumers’ attention and make opinion formers aware of the brand’s offering. It would be ideal if local celebrities were invited to attend in order to strengthen ELIE SAAB’s association with famous people and glamorous lifestyles. According to Kent and Brown (2009), another excellent way to promote a newly-opened flagship store would be to attract the fashion press by offering local fashion icons free products so that they can be photographed leaving the store.

Second of all, the company should ensure that local fashion magazines and newspapers dedicate special sections inclusive of articles and images to the launch of ELIE SAAB’s new flagship store and to the fashion show which will be held to promote it. As far as international promotion is concerned, the company could use its website’s news section as an inexpensive means to inform visitors about the upcoming flagship store and to publish pictures and videos of the aforementioned fashion show.

Administrative expenses, salaries and other costs are among the main weaknesses associated with the establishment of a new flagship store. In this regard, Kent and Brown (2009) pointed out that flagship stores are usually quite expensive to set up and operate, which is why the majority of luxury brands can only afford to have a limited number of company-owned boutiques worldwide. Moreover, the company would have to deal with a number of potential obstacles, such as cultural differences and tax barriers which would require it to invest in relevant research and investigations. For instance, most of the promotional activities which would be needed to launch ELIE SAAB’s new flagship store could not be undertaken without the knowledge and expertise of one or more marketing professionals who can help the company to understand and enter the Chinese market. Last but not least, the company may find it difficult to fully manage and control its Beijing-based flagship store, mainly due to geographical and administrative reasons.

Considering that excellent customer service is key to offering people a unique and luxurious shopping experience, ELIE SAAB will to pay special attention to the selection and training of the staff members who will be working at its Beijing-based flagship store. As Kent and Brown (2009) observed, employees’ helpfulness and knowledge play a very important role in helping a company relay a certain message through its flagship stores. That is why ELIE SAAB should evaluate its current sales workforce in order to identify at least two individuals who have been working for the company for at least two years and who have stood out for their ability to assist customers and perform store-related operational tasks in accordance with the brand’s philosophy. The said individuals should then be invited to travel to Beijing to train the employees who will be working at the new flagship store. Training should mainly revolve around customer service, merchandise management and brand knowledge.

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Conclusion

The theories and data presented in this essay indicate that luxury brands like ELIE SAAB should always be managed in such a way to achieve an adequate balance between contradictory forces and concepts including exclusivity and availability in order to ensure growth, profitability and success. It follows that distribution plays a very important role in a luxury brand’s overall strategy, which is why strategic channels should be chosen after analysing their advantages and disadvantages, as well as the impact they could have on the brand’s image. From an evaluation of ELIE SAAB’s current distribution strategy, it emerged that the company has a weak presence in the Asia-Pacific region, whose potential has been growing exponentially during the past few years, thus encouraging most luxury brands to strengthen their presence within this region. (Daedal Research, 2013) From an analysis of socio-economic indicators it emerged that the launch a new flagship store in China would greatly benefit ELIE SAAB in terms of profitability, brand image and stability, as it would give the company full control over its customer service and pricing strategy, without risking diluting the ELIE SAAB brand. Moreover, a series of promotional activities including a fashion show, editorial coverage and celebrity gift giving should be undertaken in order to increase awareness among Asian consumers and opinion formers.


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Table of contentsAbstractIntroductionEnvironmental ProblemsGlobal climate change ...

Table of contents

  1. Abstract
  2. Introduction
  3. Environmental ProblemsGlobal climate change (Greenhouse Effect)Energy conservationRenewable Energy SourcesSustainable Energy
  4. Conclusion
  5. References

Abstract

People need energy and related services to ensure social and economic development, and prosperity and to improve health care. In trying to achieve all of these, many environmental negative consequences appear. RES (Renewable Energy Systems) are considered resources that are clean and minimize negative environmental effects. At the same time, RES minimizes secondary waste and is sustainable based on current and future economic and societal needs and energy conservation is a significant step to prevent emerging environmental problems. In this essay, environmental problems are discussed, and the effects of renewable energy sources and energy conservation are introduced and consequently, greenhouse gas emission and climate change mitigation ways are proposed.

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Introduction

Environmental issues have been affecting developments in the energy sector for some time, while climate change poses a completely different challenge. Problems such as acid deposition can be partly solved by administrative measures such as exhaust standards of vehicles or emission limits for power plants, which can affect a relatively small number of economic actors. In the combustion reaction, the carbon in the wood combines with O2 to form CO2, which then is absorbed by the plants and converted back into carbon for use as fuel. Although there have been several warnings in the past about the risks of greenhouse-gas emissions, no significant restrictions have been put in place to prevent environmental pollution, and now many researchers have concluded that global warming is occurring. The number of people in the world is expected to double in size by the middle of the 21st century. And economic development will continue to grow. Global demand for energy services is expected to increase by an order of magnitude by 2050, while primary energy demands are expected to increase by 1.5-3 times. This means that there will be more harmful gases released into the atmosphere and problems will increase. The purpose of the article is to discuss the environmental problems such as stratospheric ozone depletion, acid precipitation, greenhouse effect, and the ways to reduce these problems.

Environmental Problems

With the invention of fire, the release of extra carbon into the atmosphere began. Since wood could not meet the demand for fuel, the Industrial Revolution began with the use of fossil fuels, for example, oil, coal, and gas. The usage of such fuels increased the concentration of CO2 in the air which led to the onset of global warming.

It is well known that ozone located in the stratosphere plays a natural, equilibrium-inducing role, such as the absorption of ultraviolet (UV) radiation and the absorption of infrared radiation. Ozone depletion in the stratosphere can lead to damaging levels of ultraviolet radiation entering the earth, causing skin cancer, eye degeneration, and other harms to many biological varieties Figure 2 displays a schematic representation of the sources of natural and anthropogenic ozone depletes.

Although energy activities such as fossil fuel and biomass combustion account for 65-75% of anthropogenic N2O emissions, CFCs, which are used as a coolant in air conditioning and cooling devices and as blowing agents in foam insulation, play the most vital role in ozone consumption.

Acids produced by burning fossil fuels (e.g. nonferrous ores, industrial boilers, and smelters for transportation agencies) can be carried over great distances through the atmosphere and deposited through the rain on Earth on ecosystems that are remarkably risky to excess acid. Figure 1 shows the processes leading of acid rain. This acid deposition was observed to be mainly connected to emissions of SO2 and NOx.

The associated effects of acid precipitation involve lakes, rivers, and acidification of groundwater, fish and aquatic life damage to woods and crops, damage to buildings, metal structures, acid precipitation and causes degeneration of fabrics.

Some energy-related projects are an important source of acid precipitation. For example, power plants, domestic heating, and manufacturing energy use account for 80% of SO2 emissions, while coal use alone values for about 70% of SO2 emissions. Road Transport is a major source of NOx emissions, accounting for 48% of total emissions in OECD countries. The countries of the world that contribute major to acid emissions are the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China.

Global climate change (Greenhouse Effect)

Likely the most serious environmental problem with energy application is global climate change, also known as global warming or the greenhouse effect. The rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the environment, such as CO2, CH4, CFCs, halons, N2O, ozone, and peroxyacetyl nitrate, increase in the way these gases capture the heat transmitted from the Earth's surface, hence increasing the Earth's surface heat. In table 1, the role of different substances in the greenhouse effect is shown. Earth's surface temperature has risen by about 0.6 C in the last century, and as a conclusion, the sea level is measured to have risen by perhaps 20 cm.

Energy conservation

Energy conservation is vital to sustainable improvement. Energy maintenance is of great significance in terms of sectoral energy usage,nthe range of industrial energy profits is between 24% and 34% of the total industrial fuel used. Developed energy depletion reduction programs can be implemented by countries. Energy consumption programs can benefit not only consumers and utilities but also the community. In particular, efforts to reduce energy consumption lead to reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the environment.

Renewable Energy Sources

The sun is the source of all energies and the initial forms of solar energy consist of heat and light. Heat and light from the sun can be absorbed, modified, and used in many ways. Renewable energy technologies such as biomass, wind, and water replace traditional energy sources, providing an excellent chance for tasks such as diminishing greenhouse gas emissions and preventing global warming.

Unlike energy sources whose formation requires millions of years and many conditions, renewable energy sources (RES) are constantly renewable, inexhaustible, sustainable, and harmless to the environment and human health, despite problems such as lack of fossil fuels, injury to the environment by nuclear sources, and political disagreements. To satisfy the demand for energy and sustainability of future ages, shifting to renewable systems to help mitigate climate change, to reduce the acid precipitation and stratospheric ozone depletion is an extraordinary step, but it needs to be sustainable to ensure a sustainable future and leave coming generations a legacy to answer their energy needs.

Sustainable Energy

The word "sustainability" is becoming increasingly popular because of the vital problems people face, such as the risk of depletion of resources and increased human harm on the environment. Reducing the negative effects of energy consumption is one of the most effective ways to achieve sustainability. A positive result can be achieved during the mitigation phase by using energy-saving programs and measures or by using power generated from renewable energy technologies.

Conclusion

Energy resources and their use are remarkably connected to sustainable development. For organizations to achieve or try to reach sustainable development, there is a great need not only to explore sustainable energy resources but also to improve the energy resources of the processes using these resources. Besides, environmental problems should be addressed. Several important observations can be drawn from this essay are as follows:

  • Greenhouse gas emissions must be balanced or reduced, with the help of RES and energy conservations.
  • Energy conservation is vital to sustainable development and, although it has its limitations, it must be performed in all possible ways. This is necessary not only for us but for the next generation as well.
  • Renewable energy sources and technologies should be used more to prevent upcoming energy shortages and environmental problems.

References

  1. Energy, environment and sustainable development Ibrahim Dincer a, *, Marc A. Rosen
  2. A review of renewable energy sources, sustainability issues and climate change mitigation
  3. Perman R, Ma Y, McGilvray J. Natural resource and environmental economics. London: Longman, 1996.
  4. Dincer I. Energy and environmental impacts: present and future perspectives. Energy Sources 1998;20(4-5):427-53.
  5. Aebischer B, Giovannini B, Pain D. Scienti®c and technical arguments for the optimal use of energy. Geneva: IEA, 1989.
  6. Anon. Global energy perspectives to 2050 and beyond. London: World Energy Council Technical Report, 1995

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As in other plays, reflecting a specific culture, “Death and the King’s Hors ...

As in other plays, reflecting a specific culture, “Death and the King’s Horseman” has kept close to religious and traditional issues, but it has shaped culture into a great tragedy. Aristotle defines tragedy in his book poetics as:

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A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in a dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions. (Aristotle, 23)

Death and the King’s Horseman encompasses tragic events that excite the audience’s emotions. It could be inferred from “catharsis” that the aim of a tragic work is delivering the author’s thought and notions through affections, an effective device that could penetrate the soul. The feelings of pity and fear, aroused within the audience, are not mere affections towards the hero, but they enable the audience to accommodate the play’s main message and theme as well as be fully convinced of the author’s thought. Death and the King’s Horseman is a tragedy that aims to manifest the tragic consequences of disobeying the gods and not maintaining a state of order among the three worlds of the unborn, the living, and the ancestors. Greek tragic dramatists, Aeschylus and Sophocles, wrote religious dramas that were concerned with the relation between gods and the hero. Further, the play is full of poetic language and is built on real events. Hence, Soyinka’s play is very close to the Greek tragedy. A protagonist within a tragedy must be also tragic. According to Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, the tragic hero has certain characteristics.

Aristotle says that the tragic hero will most effectively evoke both our pity and terror …, and also that this tragic effect will be stronger if the hero is “better than we are”, in the sense that is of higher than ordinary moral worth. Such a man is exhibited as suffering a change in fortune from happiness to misery because of his mistaken choice of an action, to which he is led by hamartia-his “error” or “mistake of judgment” or, as it is often, although misleadingly and less literary translated, his tragic flaw. (Abrams, Harpham, 315)

The definition corresponds almost verbatim to the character of Elesin. Having the position of the king’s horseman, he ends up suffering and dies with shame. His demise is the consequence of his error that is the failure to fulfill his ritual duty. Elesin’s fall and agony arouse the audience’s compassion toward him and fear for themselves lest they may fall in the same mistake. Nonetheless, there is one thing that distinguishes him from the Greek tragic hero. Whereas the focus in the Greek tragedy is on the individual, the African theatre centers upon the community. In all these respects, Death and the king’s horseman is a tragic play that exposes the Aristotelian tragic hero, yet it includes one difference, differentiating it from the Greek tragedy.

The main reason behind Elesin’s tragic fate, according to Soyinka and the Nigerian ethos, is Elesin’s dereliction of duty. After having a very high position in life, Elesin’s negligence in accomplishing his ritual sacrifice decidedly begets tragic sequels.

How can that be? In all my life as Horseman of the King, the juiciest Fruit on every tree was mine. I saw, I touched, I wooed, rarely was the answer No. The honour of my place, the veneration I Received in the eye of man or woman prospered my suit and Played havoc with my sleeping hours. (Soyinka, 76)

Socially, he becomes prostrate with humiliation, and, spiritually, he becomes a sinner and a defiant against the gods. Besides, he causes disastrous chaos among the world of the dead, which, according to the Yoruba community, is duplicated in the world of the living. Soyinka's Praise Singer-guardian of culture rebukes his erstwhile leader, “Elesin, we placed the reins of the world in your hands yet you watched it plunge over the edge of the bitter precipice” (Soyinka, 75). Lyaloja, also, admonishes him severely.

You have betrayed us. We fed you sweetmeats such as we hoped awaited you on the other side. But you said No, I must eat the world's left-overs. We said you were the hunter who brought the quarry down; to you belonged the vital portions of the game. No, you said, I am the hunter's dog and I shall eat the entrails of the game and the faeces of the hunter. We said you were the hunter returning home in triumph, a slain buffalo pressing down on his neck; you said wait, I first must turn up this cricket hole with my toes. ( Soyinka, 68)

The play turns into a tragedy when Elesin is prevented from doing his ritual assignment. His son, Olunde, is the most person who pays for his father’s mistake. When he sees that his father is still alive, he is filled with shame and sadness,” I have no father, eater of left- overs” (Soyinka, 61) and ,thence, the climatic catastrophe happens. He kills himself in order to compensate the shame his father has caused and make a contrite apology for the ancestors and his people. Lyaloja comments on that, pointing to Elesin the consequences for what he has done.

Because he could not bear to let honour fly out of doors, he stopped it with his life. The son has proved the father Elesin, and there is nothing left in your mouth to gnash but infant gums. (Soyinka, 75)

Seeing the corpse of his son, Elesin is fixated on Olunde, and, thereupon, suddenly, he strangles himself with the chain before anyone can intervene. Lyaloja censures the white men for trying to stop him, commenting that he has finally gone on even though it is too late.

He is gone at last into the passage but oh, how late it is. His son will feast on the meat and throw him bones. The passage is clogged with droppings from the King's stallion; he will arrive all stained in dung. (Soyinka, 76)

Elesin’s “hamartia” that is the reason of the nonfeasance of his mission could be interpreted as his surrender and submission to the European colonizer. Tanure Ojaide writes:

Elesin’s failure is not refusing to die, but not dying at the appropriate moment. It is a ritual and there is a time for everything. However, Elesin delays and provides the opportunity for his arrest and the excuse not to die. (Online, Ojade)

Elesin in a moment of “blasphemy” surrenders to the outer forces.

It is when the alien hand pollutes the source of will, when a stranger force of violence shatters the mind's calm resolution, this is when a man is made to commit the awful treachery of relief, commit in his thought the unspeakable blasphemy of seeing the hand of the gods in this alien rupture of the world. I know it was this thought that killed me, sapped my powers and turned me into an infant in the hands of unnamable strangers. I made to utter my spells anew but my tongue merely rattled in my mouth. (Soyinka, 64)

Blaming the white man, his gods, and his bride, he forgets to consider his own role, “my weakness came not merely from the abomination of the white man who came violently into my fading presence, there was also a weight of longing on my earth-held limbs” (Soyinka, 65). Further, in another quotation, he almost admits that he yields up his will to the European hands, “My will was squelched in the spittle of an alien race” (Soyinka, 65). In addition, while Lyaloja is reprimanding Elesin, she alludes darkly to his submission and says that he has allowed them to be the dominators of the situation (Soyinka, 65). In fact, Lyaloja’s words could be hitting home as when the inducement of death came from Elesin’s heart, nothing prevented him from fulfilling his duty, neither the iron bars nor the “alien race”.

The very feature that distinguishes Death and the King’s Horseman from the Greek tragedy is the thought of individualism which could be seen as a fundamental tragic crux. Yoruba religion pivots wholly on the community’s good and prosperity. The thought of individualism is considered as a great ignominy. Since they deem that the whole humankind is correlated, the individual’s selfishness afflicts the three worlds of the universe (the living, the ancestors and the unborn) and, as a corollary, the individual himself is afflicted. Therefore, there is no room for egotism.

In "The Fourth Stage" and later in Myth, Literature and the African World, Soyinka explores what he understands to be the relation in Yoruba cosmology between man, the gods, and the an- cestors. The essence of this cosmology, as he expounds it, is in direct contradiction to the Christian and European emphasis on the individual and individual salvation. For the Yoruba the emphasis is on community, and community in this context makes no distinction between the dead, the living, and the unborn. The emphasis is on continuity, on maintaining the continuous and contiguous relationship of these three stages of being. (Ralph Bowman, 82)

Mark Ralph-Bowman asserts that in order to appreciate the "religious mystery" (82) which lies at the heart of the play we must forget "the whole western tradition of individual tragedy" (84). Although the protagonist has the appearance of a tragic hero, "the grandeur, dignity, and pathos of Oedipus; the questing anguish of Hamlet" (94), one must not be misled into interpreting the play in such terms. What it asserts, according to Ralph-Bowman, is not the tragic loss of an individual, but the communal Yoruba values by which Elesin is found wanting, and condemned. "Though a creation of such stature," Ralph-Bowman argues, "he has to be totally and unequivocally renounced" (94). Elesin is rejected by the world of the play because he allows himself to be di- verted by selfish individualism from the sacrificial death that his Yoruba religion prescribes. (Booth, 529)

Soyinka explicitly shows this idea in the play. Elesin illustrates to Pilkings that what he has done does not harm him only, but it afflicts the whole community,” I am stopped from fulfilling my destiny. Did you think it all out before, this plan to push our world from its course and sever the cord that links us to the great origin?” (Soyinka, 63). Another instance is the story of the captain in the war that is emblematic of these opposing viewpoints: Jane sees the man's deliberate death as unreasonable and unjustified,” Nonsense. Life should never be thrown deliberately away” (Soyinka, 53), and Olunde lauds it as self-sacrifice and a great honor. The conversation between Olunde and Jane manifests these divergences. Jane asks Olunde if he can explain how he has this acceptance and satisfaction with his father's death. Olunde replies that he started mourning for his father as soon as he heard of the King’s demise (Souinka, 53). He asserts that it is Elesin’s duty towards his community and that he mustn’t dishonor his people,” What can you offer [Elesin] in place of his peace of mind, in place of the honour and veneration of his own people?" (Soyinka, 53). These divergences in thought may be the main reason behind Elesin’s tragic fate, and because the English colonizer is the stronger in this battle, he managed to interfere. Lyaloja’s ultimate words to Pilking avers that. When Pilking asks her if this tragic end is what she wants. Turning her blame and venom on him, she replies:

No child, it is what you brought to be, you who play with strangers' lives, who even usurp the vestments of our dead, yet believe that the stain of death will not cling to you. The gods demanded only the old expired plantain but you cut down the sap-laden shoot to feed your pride. ( Soyinka ,83)

Thus. Eesin tragedy could be summed up as a great man is undone for his aim is butted up against the law of the European man. In all these respects, the difference between the ideologies of the two tragedies, begetting the tragic destiny, is obvious. The Nigerian tragedy is not about the tragic fall of an individual; it is the whole community that is in distress.

The Nigerian audience would be inclined to despise such weak character as Elesin; however, Soyinka has very skillfully heightened the human interest of the play, and thus enlisted the audience’s pity and fear. It is in his suffering in prison and his son’s death that Elesin rises to the heights of the tragic grandeur, and the audience forgets his fault. For the last act of the play, the incidents and the poetic language Soyinka applies restore the fallen Elesin’s hold on the audience.in a scene of gloom, Elesin is chained up in a prison cell, in a state of melancholy. His heart is full of guilt and shame. All the people come to humiliate and admonish him, and he asks forgiveness from them, ”may the world for give me” (Soyinka, 73) . The people, who to a great extent are responsible for his misery, has put him in prison and confined his freedom. He is in complete paralysis and confusion; he does not know who to put the blame on his gods, or the white man, or himself. In this scene, Soyinka has laid bare the suffering soul of Elesin. In addition, the spectacle in which Olunde lays dead and his father is looking at him captures the essence of tragedy. The last act closes with two corpses on the stage, making Death and the King’s Horseman a great tragedy.

All things considered, Elesin, in all aspects, is regarded as Aristotelian tragic hero, except for the notion of individualism. He is a distinguished person who falls into misfortune on account of hamartia or a tragic flaw. The tragic destiny he ends with arouses the audience’s feel of sympathy and fear. Soyinka’s application of tragic events looms large the theme of Death and the King’s Horseman that is condemning and disparaging the European colonizer.

Works cited

Abrams, M.H, Geofrrey Galt. A Hand book of Literary Terms. India: Cengage Learning, 2009. Print.

Booth, James. “Self-sacrifice and Human Sacrifice in Soyinka's "death and the King's Horseman"”.Research in African Literatures 19.4 (1988): 529–550. Web. 15 April 2016.

Butcher, A. Translation by SH. "The poetics of Aristotle." (1942). Print.

Ralph-Bowman, Mark. “"leaders and Left-overs": A Reading of Soyinka's "death and the King's Horseman"”. Research in African Literatures 14.1 (1983): 81–97. Web.15 April 26, 2016.

Soyinka, Wole. Death and the king's Horseman). London: Methuen Drama, 1998.

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Ojaide, Tanure. "Teaching Wole Soyinka's" Death and the King's Horseman" to American College Students." College Literature 19.3/1 (1992): 210-214.


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Use this anecdotal introduction strategy: Indicate the importance of relationshi ...

Use this anecdotal introduction strategy: Indicate the importance of relationships in the shaping of character and how the same applies to the characters of a novel. Indicate the importance of taking less prominent but still influential characters.

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Use: Elizabeth Bennet is indeed prejudiced, but her strongest predilection is not directed at its most commonly interpreted target, Darcy. Instead, it is directed toward Wickham. In neglecting to analyze Elizabeth’s relationship with Wickham, critics fail to see significant evidence in the appropriateness of the novel’s title.

Use as topic sentence: Elizabeth’s prejudice is directed most strongly toward Wickham because she is determined to like him as a result of a mutual hatred of Mr. Darcy.

Use this quote: “It is only in regard to Darcy’s alleged injustice to Wickham that an element of prejudice enters in, but even this is superficial and temporary, (Fox 187).

Restate the quote: The critic mentioned Wickham as he pertains to Darcy and Elizabeth’s relationship, claiming that Elizabeth shows faint signs of prejudice toward Darcy as a result of Elizabeth’s limited knowledge of that injustice.

Explain the quote as such: The critic limits his analysis to the relationship between Darcy and Elizabeth, neglecting the interactions Elizabeth has with other characters. Therefore, he misses the point that Elizabeth’s prejudices are much stronger and lasting, though directed more positively at another character.

Use this quote: “As to his real character, had information in her power, she had never felt a wish of inquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner had established him at once in the possession of every virtue” (Austen 200).

Restate the quote: Elizabeth realized that she had felt no need to question Wickham’s virtues because she believes in the integrity of her preconceived notions from their first meeting.

Explain that the quote means: Elizabeth was therefore prejudiced in her interpretation of Wickham. She was determined to like him, perhaps even more so than she was determined to hate Darcy. She also felt so inclined because Wickham had reiterated her own sentiments through his recounting of the “injustice.”

Use the closing statement: Elizabeth’s beliefs about Wickham indicate a strong, lasting prejudice toward the man that stemmed out of her wish to like the man.

Transition to this topic sentence: The prejudice that Elizabeth expresses stems from her high estimation of her own abilities, as is evidenced not only by her interactions with Darcy but with Wickham as well.

Use this quote: “Both qualities, pride and prejudice, result in severe limitation of human vision and are essentially selfish in that they start from an egoistic attitude; one either severs oneself from others or limits one’s concern for them to narrow to self-interest” (Zimmerman 66).

Restate the quote: Zimmerman claims that Elizabeth cares too little about the men to give them anything more than a cursory interpretation of their characters, thus leaving her to prejudiced ideas based on reports from others.

Explain that the quote means: Elizabeth blinds herself by her lack of interest in investigating the characters of Darcy and Wickham.

Use this quote: “How despicably I have acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust! How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind!”

Restate the quote: Elizabeth finally recognizes that she had been acting on various prejudices based on her faulty original ideas of each man.

Explain the quote as such: Elizabeth’s own pride in her ability to judge people lead her to blind herself from other possible interpretations of character. This pride was fed by her correct assumptions about Miss Bingley. She also sought nothing more from Wickham than to find him agreeable to her thoughts.

Use the closing statement: Elizabeth is prejudiced toward Wickham because she is egocentric, seeking validation of her own ideas, rather than a true interpretation of character.

“Drive the thesis statement home” Overall, Wickham’s involvement must be included in any interpretation of Elizabeth’s prejudice as he is the recipient of most of that attention.

Make argument relevant to modern reader by stating: One must be careful not to judge another too quickly as even a favorable judgment incorrectly placed can be a dangerous blinding habit.


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Table of contentsMarriage in Pride and Prejudice: essayConclusionWorks CitedMarr ...

Table of contents

  1. Marriage in Pride and Prejudice: essay
  2. Conclusion
  3. Works Cited

Marriage in Pride and Prejudice: essay

The institution of marriage is an important theme throughout Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as it was portrayed as a dominant force during this time. Marriage circulates around each of the Bennet daughters with their mother, Mrs.Bennet being consumed by the desire to see her daughters married to a wealthy man. This can be distinguished whenever the third person narrator states; ‘the business of her life was to get her daughters married.’ This exemplifies that during Austen’s period women believed that they could do nothing but what was expected from them. Due to this, marriages were arranged mostly within the same social class as Charlotte Betts, a literary academic states, ‘a good marriage to a man with a comfortable income was vitally important for a woman as she rarely had any other means of financial support.’ This further adds to the reason why Mrs.Bennet desires to have her daughters marry a wealthy man as he can provide money and security to them. Her actions can also be considered on her behalf a loving act as she wishes nothing but the best opportunities for each of her daughters. This is enhanced through her statement, ‘if I can have one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield and all the others equally married, I shall have nothing to wish for’. Austen therefore expresses that parental approval is vital to a woman’s happiness until she becomes married, as further identified by academic Swords ‘woman can be seen as oppressed victims of a patriarchal society, subordinate first to their fathers and, then to their husbands who had, of course, been selected by their fathers.’ This portrays the many limitations placed on women as it factors in the issue that they could not inherit property as once married, they do not have control over their possessions and their fate becomes their husband’s property.

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Elizabeth does not conform to the expectations listed out from her mother as she follows her own morals and does not wish to marry for money. With her rejecting Mr.Collins proposal, it can be suggested that Elizabeth’s actions to not marry him can be seen as one of the most revolutionary things a woman during this period could possibly do. Charlotte Betts expresses in her article about women throughout the Georgian era, ‘many marriages were arranged between families where the bride had little say in the choice of her husband.’ This can show that Elizabeth’s differs from the traditional woman’s role in society as she preferably would marry for love than to indulge in her husband’s wealth. Elizabeth can also differ from a traditional woman’s role in society as she disregards Mr.Collins’ proposal due to the many irrationalities in his tone regarding his proposal to Elizabeth. She does not appreciate that he decided to have ‘set about it in a very orderly manner’ with all the observances which he supposed a regular part of the business.’ For a nineteenth-century man, marriage became an act of economic utility- a strategy by which he could increase his personal fortune. This can be said through Mr.Collins viewpoint of marriage, he overlooks his proposal to Elizabeth as a minor business transaction which is why Elizabeth intends to marry a man who makes her happy, and not purely for the care of financial stability that would be provided for her. However, noted in Elizabeth’s letter to Jane stating the relocation of her family to London, she recognizes that marriage is vital during her time as she is not independently wealthy. She comments in the letter that ‘we are not rich enough or grand enough for them.’ This shows that it is critical to underline that income matters as a ‘good marriage in the society Jane Austen depicts, is always one which enhances status, and status is primarily a matter of wealth.’

In contrast to Elizabeth’s values towards marriage, her closest friend Charlotte Lucas represents a traditional woman’s viewpoint, as she states whenever she discusses Jane Bennet and Mr.Bingley’s wedlock, ‘if she is secure of him, then she will have the leisure to fall in love as much as she chooses.’ Here Charlotte prioritises security rather than love, as (Reena 130) has pointed out, ‘Charlotte finds herself with little to recommend her and even fewer options on the marriage front.’ Underlying the societal views of marriage, Charlotte is not a young woman anymore and would be considered a spinster if she did not accept Mr.Collins proposal. Due to this, she states to Elizabeth;

‘When you have had time to think it all over, I hope you will be satisfied with what I have done. I am not a romantic, you now. I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr Collins’ character, connections and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair, as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.’

Charlotte has decided that she wants security to be prioritised before love, she is not as strong willed as Elizabeth as her concern is to secure herself financially without necessarily wanting a happy relationship with Mr Collins. Much like Mr Collins, marriage is a sort of business transaction whereby marriage is a high priority to them. The romantic plots throughout Pride and Prejudice can be seen as ironic in many ways, with Austen showing dismissal of romantic love through characters such as Mr.Collins who has openly suggested marriage being a meer ‘business transaction’ and Charlotte who would signify marriage as ‘decorous’ as she embraces the simulacrum of the ‘Proper Lady’ Poovey has identified. , Mary Poovey’s study of the struggle of three prominent writers to accommodate the artist’s genius to the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century ideal of the modest, self-effacing ‘proper lady.’ Interpreting novels, letters, journals, and political tracts in the context of cultural strictures, Poovey makes an important contribution to English social and literary history and to feminist theory.

Unlike Elizabeth who has chosen to marry ultimately for love rather than anything else, her sister Lydia Bennet can prove that the societal views of marriage during the eighteenth and nineteenth-century suggested that scandal might prove the death of reputation. This is evident whenever Lydia Bennet elopes with Mr.Wickham. being an officer who was coloured by his contemporary reputation for sexual dalliance. Lydia was captivated by the officers dazzling uniforms, likewise to her mother, Mrs.Bennet who admits that she remembers ‘the time when I liked a red coat myself very well.’ Like her mother, Lydia does not think, therefore she simply acts on her impulses that lead her to near ruin which positions her family in despair due to her being a respectable lady who ends up marrying a common soldier. Tim Fulford further adds that ‘from the beginning soldiers are seen in terms of the romantic naivete of the younger sisters and of the nostalgia of Mrs.Bennet, who has learned nothing from her greater experience.’ A woman’s reputation depended on her social status, this was especially true for the women who were young and unmarried. However, Lydia has ruined any opportunity for an advantageous alliance. Her immatuirty has lead to her reputation being lost, as it is stated in the text that ‘once a woman’s reputation is lost, it is lost forever.’ This passage deems her marriage to Wickham losing her reputation, as Austen represents the relationship between them being purely based on physical gratification, neither for financial security or love. By stating this, Mr.Collins highlights that ‘this will be injurious to the fortunes of all the others.’ Here he is highlighting that Lydia’s elopement and the scandal associated with Wickham will impact negatively on the reputation of the other Bennet sisters, which is why their relationship was poorly rejected by her sisters and both her parents.

An attentive reader such as Marie N. Sorbo believes that Austen’s ‘attitude towards marriage is thoroughly ironic.’ Through characters such as Lydia, who marries out of vanity and not love. Sorbo further states that ‘Austen comes close to giving us a disillusioned dismissal of romantic love, as if the narrator is teasing us that she knows we have come to the book for romance, but romance does not exist, only speculation.’

Vivien Jones argues that in Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice that the relationship between marriage and money are the main plots of each novel. However it seems that Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley are an exception as they fall into the category of marrying preferably for love rather than money, with Bingley being identified as ‘modest and had no opinion about his marriage.’ Both of them genuinely love each other despite Mr.Bingley’s sisters not accepting Jane as they wanted their brother to marry Mr.Darcy’s sister, who they deemed more ‘superior’ to Jane. However, he does not conform to his sister’s wishes and marries Jane, who seems to have little concern over money and stability, with Bingley also swaying from the challenges of social norms, as he is not preoccupied with the background of the Bennet family. Similarly, Elizabeth and Mr.Darcy are an exception to societal norms as they both marry each other for love rather than money. Austen’s major study of the links between intelligence and freedom is cast as a love story and of a sort which she delighted in characterizing as ‘rather too light, and bright and parking.’ As Suan Morgan identifies, ‘Most of the action in Pride and Prejudice can be accounted for as a tale of love which violates the traditions of romance.’

Lady Catherine De Bourgh through Mr.Darcy’s proposal to Elizabeth believed that Pemberly as well as the family associated alongside it would lose its status and grandeur due to Elizabeth’s inferiority. However, Mr.Darcy states during his proposal to her ‘in vain I have struggled. It will not do.’ Here he suggests that he loves Elizabeth against his will due to their class differences, rather he admires her as she presents an incongruent example of maidenly decorum with her displaying intellectual curiosity and independent thought, which was an alternative to the average Georgian lady. As Mrs.Bennet states, ‘Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters’. Elizabeth embodies the enlightenment ideas of John Locke; ‘the reason and free will are great indications of one’s success and fate.’ Furthermore, noting that she also has many similarities to a blue-stocking woman with considerable scholarly, literary, or intellectual ability or interest. This was a literary society led by Elizabeth Montagu and others in the 1750s in England. Elizabeth Montagu was an anomaly in this society because she took possession of her husband’s property when he died. This allowed her to have an impact in her world.

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Conclusion

The main heroine of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet marries solely out of love, rather than money or physical gratification. She is therefore rewarded at the end of the novel with the satisfaction of finding happiness within herself, but also accepts the luxuries that she is presented with as Lady of Pemberley House.

Works Cited

  1. Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Penguin Classics, 2003.
  2. Betts, Charlotte. "The Institution of Marriage in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice." Literature Compass, vol. 9, no. 10, 2012, pp. 707-715.
  3. Swords, Catherine. "Jane Austen's Marriages: The Business of Love in the Eighteenth Century." Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, vol. 37, no. 1, 2016, pp. 84-99.
  4. Reena, A. "Marriage and Love in Pride and Prejudice." Literary Insight, vol. 7, no. 3, 2016, pp. 130-138.
  5. Fulford, Tim. "The Soldiers in Pride and Prejudice." The Review of English Studies, vol. 63, no. 257, 2012, pp. 94-115.
  6. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. University of Chicago Press, 1985.
  7. Sorbo, Marie N. "Jane Austen's Attitude towards Marriage in Pride and Prejudice." Edda, vol. 111, no. 3, 2014, pp. 239-248.
  8. Jones, Vivien. "Money and Marriage in Austen's Novels." The Review of English Studies, vol. 41, no. 161, 1990, pp. 482-493.
  9. Morgan, Susan. "The Making of a Marriage Plot: The Business of Love in Pride and Prejudice." SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, vol. 38, no. 3, 1998, pp. 441-460.
  10. Montagu, Elizabeth. "The Blue-Stocking Society." The Bluestocking Archive, bluestocking.lmc.gatech.edu/archives/5-0/montagu.

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Table of contentsElizabeth Blackwell's Early LifeHer Road to Making HistoryBlack ...

Table of contents

  1. Elizabeth Blackwell's Early Life
  2. Her Road to Making HistoryBlackwell's History-Making Medical Degree
  3. Accomplishments
  4. Death
  5. Other Interesting Facts About Elizabeth Blackwell
  6. Elizabeth Blackwell and Her Adopted Daughter, Katherine Barry
  7. Conclusion

Over the course of history, women all over the world have been challenging status quos, in pursuit of the freedom to live and achieve their dreams. In January 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell made history as the first formally accredited female physician in the United States, thereby charting a new course for women in medicine all over the world. Being the first of her kind, Blackwell encountered several challenges in the early years of her career as a physician. However, she soldiered on through it all and made a name for herself as a role model. For aspiring female physicians in the US, her home country, England, and the world at large.

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Elizabeth Blackwell's Early Life

Elizabeth Blackwell was born on February 3, 1821, in Bristol, England, to Hannah and Samuel Blackwell. Her parents adopted a liberal disposition in her upbringing in terms of education, religion, and social ideologies. Equal educational opportunities were given to both the male and female children of the family. She had private tutors and other requirements designed to grant her an unlimited development of her abilities. However, she turned out to be slightly socially isolated from her peers. In 1832, the Blackwells immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City. Six years after, they changed their location again to Cincinnati, Ohio. Elizabeth Blackwell was raised in a large household. She had two older siblings Anna and Marian and six younger ones  Samuel, Henry, Emily, Sarah Ellen, John, and George. Her family fell into financial difficulties during her early adulthood. In a bid to supplement the family's income, Blackwell and her older sisters Anna and Marian set up a school known as The Cincinnati English and French Academy for Young Ladies.

Her Road to Making History

Elizabeth Blackwell's conversion to the Unitarian Church also roused her desire for intellectual self-improvement. While working as a teacher to pay her bills, she embarked on an aggressive quest for knowledge through the study of art, attending lectures, and also taking part in the religious services of all sects. Ultimately, her interest in medicine was kindled after she bore witness to her friend's illness. During the experience, her friend noted her sickness would have been more bearable if a female doctor treated her. This incident lit a fire under Blackwell, and she began saving up for the cost of medical school while working as a teacher in Asheville, North Carolina, and later in Charleston, South Carolina. Blackwell eventually moved to Philadelphia in 1847 with the desire to get admitted into one of the medical schools there. However, she was met with stiff resistance at every corner, with many of her rejection based on beliefs that she was intellectually inferior to men. Those who supported her advised her to either camouflage as a man or move to Paris to study. Both of which she rejected.

After sending applications to twelve schools, she was eventually accepted into Geneva Medical College (now Hobart College) in October 1847 after her application received a unanimous vote by the 150 all-male student-body of the school. However, Blackwell's challenges persisted even after gaining admission to medical school. Her attempts at gaining clinical experience during the summer holidays in Philadelphia were rebuffed as she was rejected in several institutions in the area. After she was accepted at the Blockley Almshouse, she received some initial resistance from several young physicians who refused to assist her in attending to her patients. Despite the bottlenecks, she was able to complete her studies and graduate from medical school. On January 23, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell was conferred with her medical degree, making history as the first woman in the United States to receive a medical degree.

Blackwell's History-Making Medical Degree

She moved to Europe in April 1849, where she obtained further studies in obstetrics and pediatrics. She first enrolled at La Maternité, a maternity clinic in Paris, France, on the premise that she would be regarded as a midwife in training and not a physician. Her stint at the facility came to an end in November 1849 after she accidentally contracted an eye infection, which eventually cost her the use of one eye. After a long period of treatment and recovery, Blackwell enrolled at St Bartholomew's Hospital London in 1850, where also she met some degree of resistance. She eventually returned to New York City the following year with the hope of establishing her practice.

Accomplishments

In 1858, Elizabeth Blackwell established a dispensary - the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children alongside her sister Emily Blackwell, who had also obtained a medical degree and Marie Zakrzewska, a young female doctor from Poland. The institution was the first of its kind as it had women serving on its administrative board and also as attending physicians. On January 1, 1859, Blackwell became the first woman physician to be listed on the UK Medical Register under a provision in the Medical Act of 1858, which acknowledged doctors with foreign degrees to practice in Britain before 1858. The London School of Medicine for Women was established in 1874 by Elizabeth Blackwell and Sophia Jex-Blake. Elizabeth Blackwell later lost much of her influence in the institution to Jex-Blake and was elected as a lecturer in midwifery, a position she quit in 1877. She also contributed to medical research, with a total of 17 medical journals and writings credited to her. Some of them include Scientific Method in Biology (1898) and Essays in Medical Sociology (1902).

Death

Elizabeth Blackwell remained active even as an octogenarian though her activities were greatly restricted by old age. She fell from a flight of stairs in 1907 while vacationing in Kilmun, Scotland, which left her incapacitated both mentally and physically. Three years later, on May 31, 1910, at her home in Hastings, Sussex, after suffering a partial stroke. Her ashes were deposited at the cemetery of St Munn's Parish Church, Kilmun.

Other Interesting Facts About Elizabeth Blackwell

The Elizabeth Blackwell Medal is awarded annually by the American Medical Women's Association to a female doctor who has made giant strides in promoting the cause of women in the field of medicine. The award was instituted in 1949, a century after Blackwell received her medical degree. Blackwell's younger sister Emily Blackwell equally toed her sister's footsteps into the field of medicine and was the third woman to earn a medical degree in the US. Just like her older sister, Emily Blackwell was rejected at several medical schools before eventually getting accepted at the Medical College of Cleveland, Ohio (now Case Western Reserve School of Medicine). She graduated in 1854. Among other collaborations, the Blackwell sisters established the Women's Medical College in New York City in 1868.

Elizabeth Blackwell and Her Adopted Daughter, Katherine Barry

In 1856, Elizabeth Blackwell adopted an Irish orphan, Katherine 'Kitty' Barry (born 1848) from the New York House of Refuge. Barry's education was well catered for though she did not have the freedom to pursue her interests. She escorted Blackwell on her many travels and remained with her until her death. Barry moved to Kilmun in Argyllshire, Scotland, following Blackwell's death in 1910. She later moved in with the surviving Blackwells and also took up the 'Blackwell' last name.

Conclusion

In addition to her trail-blazing the medical career, Blackwell was also an excellent author and a social reform activist. She took an interest in many reform movements, all of which were centered on the goal of 'evangelical moral perfection.' A staunch conservative, she was strongly opposed to licentiousness, prostitution, and the use of contraceptives.


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The Leadership is a characteristic of the person that drives the motivation of t ...

The Leadership is a characteristic of the person that drives the motivation of the followers in order enhance their capabilities and influence them to work together to achieve the desired goals beneficial for all (Vroom & Jago, 2007). Elon Musk (C.E.O of Tesla Motors) have proved that he is a successful entrepreneur and influential leader who converted his dreams into reality by achieving every single target one by one from the success of PayPal to SolarCity and from Tesla Motors to SpaceX. There are two types of leadership, in which one is transactional leadership and other is transformational leadership. The transactional leadership concentrates on receiving rewards in exchange of the efforts of subordinates. On the other side, the transformational leadership concentrates on intrinsic needs; in other words, going beyond the acquirement of short term goals. The transformational leaders have four features such as inspirational motivation, idealized influence, individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation (Podsakoff et al, 1990). Consequently, Elon Musk has all these four features making him a transformational leader.

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Despite being the most innovative company, Tesla Motors is still trying hard to penetrate in the market in order to change the concept of external stakeholders by avoiding the use of conventional gasoline car and start using new fully electric vehicle. But the market is vast and the product is still in the development phase. By only considering the overall sales of passenger vehicles in 2016, it has been observed that over 74 million vehicles were sold and three major players of automotive industrial segment (e.g. Toyota, Volkswagen and Daimler) earned revenue more than $600 billion. The major producers of cars were China, Japan, Germany and U.S. This shows that the automotive market has much potential but introducing such novel product can be difficult for companies like Tesla. The product lifecycle of Tesla Motors’ new cars are still in the initial level of growth phase but crossed the introduction phase (see figure 2). Within the introductory phase, the company has few or no competitors so that the resources are allocated for the development and marketing of the new product as shown in the valley of death curve (figure 3) but the risk of product failure is high. However in growth stage, the product become commercialized and company start making profit from the launch of its product (Onkvisit & Shaw, 1986).

However, it is an alarming situation for the management of Tesla Motors that the company has reached at growth phase and still not earning the desired amount of profit. The target of Tesla Motors is to produce 500,000 cars every year by 2020. In that case, the company should take further steps with change management strategies and result-oriented environment that can help in achieving the desired target. The fact is that the production of such amount of vehicles by 2020 per year is not so farfetched according to the size of the market if proper steps are taken. But at this stage, the overall sales of Tesla Motors can contribute only 1% to the total sales of cars in 2016 (Statista, 2016). Being a revolutionary company does not mean that all odds will be in favor of that company, but there are always loopholes and gaps present between the desired outcome and actual outcome. In case of Tesla, the company is currently facing tremendous amount of pressure in terms of sales, revenue and manufacturing. The third quarter earnings report have shown very disappointing figures which forced the C.E.O to review his decisions and implement change management strategies that can help the company to overcome the issues (NBC News, 2017).

Supply chain analysis helps to see how the industry is growing and what decisions has to be made in improve it’s growth. This analyze helps to check which suppliers would be the best and which prices would be good for the company. According to According to Ellram (1991, pp.13), supply chain management represents a network of firms interacting to deliver a product or service to the end customers.

Tesla Motors has shown that the idea of commercializing electric vehicles on a large scale is practicable if proper measures are taken with efficient utilization of capital and technology. The dream of the company has not been achieved yet but the process of prosperity is on its way. However, it is quite difficult for any newcomer to enter in the market of automotive industry where the major players have positioned themselves firmly but Tesla Motors have proved wrong and surviving in the market with commitments and promises. The target of manufacturing 500,000 electric vehicles is not farfetched as the C.E.O has already proved himself the great entrepreneur of 21st century. But this dream can only be achieved if proper decisions are taken with better change management strategies. Through proper leadership style, the company can meet the desired target on time and can reduce the stress level and anxiety among the minds on employees. If transactional leadership is implemented then employees can be internally motivated and work hard so that they can be rewarded accordingly.

 

Works Cited

  1. Vroom, V. H., & Jago, A. G. (2007). The role of the situation in leadership. American Psychologist, 62(1), 17–24.
  2. Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Moorman, R. H., & Fetter, R. (1990). Transformational leader behaviors and their effects on followers' trust in leader, satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. The Leadership Quarterly, 1(2), 107-142.
  3. Onkvisit, S., & Shaw, J. (1986). Product life-cycle evolution: Implications for strategy formulation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 14(3), 8-15.
  4. Statista. (2016). Global car sales by brand from 2000 to 2021. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/272848/global-car-sales-by-top-brand/
  5. NBC News. (2017). Tesla shares plunge after weak Model 3 deliveries. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/tesla-shares-plunge-after-weak-model-3-deliveries-n806611
  6. Ellram, L. M. (1991). Supply chain management: The industrial organization perspective. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 21(1), 13-22.
  7. Pekovic, S., & Jankovic, M. (2015). Transformational leadership: The effect on organizational and leadership effectiveness. Management: Journal of Sustainable Business and Management Solutions in Emerging Economies, 20(75), 55-62.
  8. Yukl, G. (1999). An evaluation of conceptual weaknesses in transformational and charismatic leadership theories. The Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 285-305.
  9. Marques, J. (2019). The Role of Leadership in Organizational Change: A Review. Journal of Management Development, 38(2), 184-200.
  10. Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership. Psychology Press.

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