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The greatest scenes in Fellini films are often the most surreal. In 8 ½, Fellini depicts the creative process (and correspondingly, the creative block), a famously surreal subject in and of itself. Perhaps one of the most iconic scenes in cinematic history is the beginning dream sequence, in which a director, Guido (played by Marcello Mastroianni), is inexplicably trapped in his car in the midst of a traffic jam, struggling to escape as a bilious cloud of smoke slowly asphyxiates him. This introductory scene perfectly captures the stifling inner anxiety Guido will experience throughout the film, a contained panic that manifests itself in ways seemingly unnoticed or trivialized by those around him. While he pants and slams futilely against the car windows and doors, the camera pans over the surrounding cars, in which his gridlock neighbors stare blankly with bystander detachment. Some continue on with their own activities, sleeping at the wheel or lewdly grabbing at their young, voluptuous female passengers as one older male demonstrates, all unresponsive or oblivious to Guido’s muffled, increasing desperation. Then for a moment, all human noise drops out to foreground the soft sound of wind, and Guido is shown escaping through the sunroof and floating away from the ghostly impasse and toward the heavens. The clouds swirl about him in the same manner as they briefly swirl around a monstrous launch pad structure, and we then see that he is suspended above a beach. Two film industry professionals from below look up and notice him; one snaps at him as if calling him back to earth and reality, before laughing and tugging at the kite string tied to Guido’s leg. He pulls Guido down, who is unceremoniously dumped into the ocean in an effectively nightmarish sequence. Then sound returns, and Guido awakens with a gasp, hand outstretched, into a new sort of congestion. At present he is in a creative standstill, this time surrounded by detached industry professionals bussing about, tending to his health with incessant questions and hounding him with concerns about his upcoming film project.
Get original essayThis strongly self-referential Fellini film is loaded with symbolism. On one level, this beginning sequence lends itself to continuing the endless reflexivity that defines 8 ½—it is a dream that parallels actual conflicts in Guido’s waking life, in which his attempts to direct a film (specifically, the film 8 ½) ultimately serve as the plot of 8 ½ itself. Guido dreams of being reborn, and his emergence from the car represents a birth experience. The film essentially documents his spiritual death and resurrection, and in one of the last fantasies, he commits suicide before calling off the film in real life and subsequently reaching a sort of enlightenment. In the introductory dream, Fellini releases Guido from the car and sends him flying across the sky, much like the statue of Christ in the beginning of La Dolce Vita, furthering this theme of death and resurrection.
The traffic jam in the dream is analogous to his creative gridlock; he is trapped by his mind (one could see imagination as a mental vehicle) just as he is trapped by the self-destructive car. His state of confusion is caused by his inner conflict, suffering, and emptiness, which stagnates and confines him within his creative block. The noxious gas in the car, the traffic jam, the manager and publicist of Claudia Cardinale (who yanks Guido into the ocean), the monstrous, imposing structure on the launch pad—everything on earth is representative of the film industry’s suffocating presence in Guido’s life. The machinery of filmmaking reels Guido back down to earth with a rope indicative of the near-total control and ownership that the industry has over his life (later on during the screen tests Guido fantasizes that this same rope which constrains him is instead turned onto his disapproving co-writer, Daumier, for a delicious lynching). In every way, Guido’s close brush with death in his dream is intimately tied to the overwhelming sense of stagnation and deadness in his waking life, in which he is trapped in the infinite regression of truth and lies that comprises 8 ½. He is a man acutely aware of his age and mortality, incapacitated by creative exhaustion, and utterly confused by his seeming inability to love.
Guido is surrounded by a mob of yes-men eager to capitalize on his next surefire hit. His name has allowed him an excess of artistic license that has set the machinery of production into motion without even a prerequisite script to show for it. The titanic shuttle that has been erected in the faith of his ability appears in both his dream and reality, highlighting an artistic insincerity and pretense that has come to rack his conscience. Fellini writes of his own guilt-ridden director’s block, “…I was stammering and saying nonsensical things when Mastroianni asked me about his part. He was so trusting. They all trusted me.” Guido becomes increasingly obsessed with the idea of purity and cleansing that only Claudia can bring to the tainted set. In his mind, her arrival is the only justification for his film, and the only salvation for himself. In the traffic jam dream, he is shown cleaning away at nothing in particular in his car—a wiping motion that will be mirrored by his mother in his father’s grave scene, and an obsession for rebirth epitomized by his weighty question to Claudia: “Could you leave everything behind and start from zero again?” Guido is so far into this production process that the launch pad is essentially his Rubicon and his Tower of Babel—a point of no return and a symbol of his arrogance—and the desperation of his predicament leads to his construction of an implausibly panacean image of Claudia.
The phallic nature of the structure further suggests his sexual arrogance and infidelity. One can easily imagine Guido’s anxiety when the producer jokes rather threateningly about the millions the set has cost him. Fellini voices Guido’s economic concerns through his own fretful experience, “I was about to cost all of these people their jobs. They called me the Magician. Where was my magic? Now what do I do?” Guido continues to coast along with increasing heaviness, aware that his Potemkin film is soon to collapse. The dread that weighs upon Guido manifests itself in his continuous references toward truth in his film—“And above all… I don't feel like telling another pile of lies.” He wishes to “bury all that is dishonest in us,” and yet before him stands this massive scaffolding of indecision and dishonesty, a structure which cannot be buried. The dream sequence seems to satirize his reality with increasing accuracy, as the industry professionals who gridlock him literally watch his public display of a meltdown, though nobody seems to acknowledge it, and nobody will properly criticize him for his lack of progress (in order to guilt Guido into cooperation at one point, the producer even argues that he has been paying for Guido’s breakdown). Unbeknownst to all, Guido has no script, no film, and is plagued with self-doubts about his artistic integrity. He feels a deep desire to say something new, original, and profound in his new film, but wonders if he has lost his artistic impulse—or if he ever even had one. Towards the end he says aloud, “I thought I had something so simple to say. Something useful to everybody… When did I go wrong? I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same.”
In addition to the tremendous professional pressure, Guido is racked with chaos in his personal life. He has difficulty reconciling his sincere love for his wife with his sincere attraction to every woman in his life. He is noticeably disgruntled when remarks are made about his inability to love (i.e., the two nieces tease that he can’t make a movie about love, and Claudia sweetly refuses any other excuse for his inability to create a film). Guido’s creative life force seems indeed to be tied to his romantic life, and his fear of decreasing professional relevance through aging helps engender his creative impotence. The lascivious old man groping his female passenger in Guido’s dream is equivalent to Guido’s friend Mezzabotta, who embodies Guido’s fear of aging as he pathetically attempts to recapture youth through an engagement with the much younger Gloria. Mezzabotta’s actions send Guido’s male neuroses into overdrive, as his dreams focus almost entirely on creative and sexual virility, suggesting that they are one and the same.
This emphasis on the female is seen in Fellini’s films La Strada and La Dolce Vita as well, particularly in symbolizing a dichotomy of purity and sexuality. Giulietta Masina’s character, Gelsomina, is the embodiment of innocence in La Strada, set in direct opposition to the brutish, worldly amorality of Zampano. It is her mental destruction and loss of spirit that leads directly to the once unshakable Zampano’s emotional breakdown. In La Dolce Vita, Fellini creates a personification of innocence through the youthful blond waif Paola, who waves at the Marcello in the end across an inlet, as if offering the lost wastrel an image of purity he once could have attained. This vision of female innocence offering salvation is a significant archetype in Fellini’s films, as Guido also constructs an image of Claudia Cardinale as a type of deus ex machina, though in the end, he does not find his salvation through her either. The women Marcello lusts after in La Dolce Vita fall into stock categories of eroticism. One example is Anita Ekberg’s Sylvia Ranken, an icon of voluptuous femininity who radiates joyous sexuality similar to that of Carla in 8 ½, Guido’s adult version of his childhood fascination, Saraghina. When Carla is shown in a feverish sweat at the hotel (reflecting her intemperate nature), it is hard not to visually link her to the Saraghina through her running makeup, flashing eyes, animalistic open mouth, and wild hair. Fellini furthers this Madonna-whore complex through his desexualization of Luisa, which included having Anouk Aimee’s long eyelashes cut and directly associating her distinctively mature, soulful character with Guido’s mother in a dream sequence. Luisa’s boyish haircut, practical attire, and intellectual glasses also visually juxtaposes her with the oversexualized, gaudily dressed, childish and gluttonous Carla.
Guido’s inability to reconcile his desires for different women is seen in one hotel fantasy, in which Claudia Cardinale is stripped of her nurturing white nurse uniform and shown instead in a suddenly sexualized context, lying in Guido’s bed stroking herself in a flimsy negligee with her hair down. Another fantasy reconciles his desire for the desexualized mother and the oversexualized lover in a humorous sequence between Luisa and Carla at the outdoor café, as both women complement each other delightedly while the approving Guido applauds from the side. These hallucinatory visions are brought to a climax in the harem scene, in which Guido reigns supreme over a farmhouse of all the women in his life (with the exception of Claudia), relegating those who are past his dictated age limit out to pasture in the upstairs confine, and glowing in the doting attention of all his mistresses. Interestingly, the harem sequence is shot in the same farm setting as the Asa-nisi-masa memory (which fetishizes the innocence of youth), emphasizing Guido’s desire for maternal comfort more so than eroticism in the harem. Indeed, by standards of male sexual fantasies, the harem scene is decidedly more concerned with capturing the beauty of childhood, a wishful desire for male regression and “control over an out-of-control reality,” as critic Jacqueline Reich describes. Guido is bathed in both farm scenes by flocks of nurturing women, and among the many images the two sequences share is one of a burning hearth, which captures the sense of emotional warmth and security Guido idealizes.
However, unlike the idyllic childhood memory which runs smoothly and ends with fond nostalgia, the utopist order and rhythm of the harem sequence quickly disintegrates into a chaotic revolt by the women, who criticize Guido’s ability as a lover much in the same way Daumier criticizes his ability as an artist. Guido is forced to resort to a whip to re-instate order, though in doing so he calls into question his own masculinity by resorting to an outside object, and furthermore, the ultimate phallic symbol. The scene ends on a palpably anxious note of melancholy, bringing the viewer back to Guido’s present state of sexual doubt. It is worth noting, too, that while the childhood memory does not leave the viewer with as much unease, it also references Guido’s actual state of impotence—artistically. In a magically haunting scene, the young girl in his memory tells Guido that the magic words, “Asa Nisi Masa,” have the power to make the portraits move. In Guido’s adult reality, it is precisely this ability to create moving pictures that he is trying so desperately to regain.
While Fellini is self-deprecating in his image of Guido as a creatively desiccated artist, his brilliant portrayal of this artistic crisis shows that Fellini himself is certainly not dried up. 8½ effectively demonstrates this difference between a film that has nothing to say, and a film about having nothing to say. Although Guido ultimately does not complete his project in the movie, Fellini has succeeded in creating a film with brilliantly portrayed messages about midlife crises, childhood, memories, desires, reconciling reality with fantasy, relationships, and more. As film critic Dan Schneider said, “[Fellini] delivers his exercise in introspection with such mastery of images, one has to impressed by the vehicle as well as the passengers. This is not style over substance. This is profound substance delivered with consummate style. That the substance happens to be about inner psychic emptiness is irrelevant.” This distinction is important because 8 ½ is often criticized for a disjointed narrative, lack of cohesive unifying philosophy, and being over-indulgently nostalgic and self-referential (self-criticisms, in fact, that Fellini anticipates through Daumier’s attacks toward Guido’s nascent film). Toward the end, Daumier disparages, “Why piece together the tatters of your life—the vague memories, the faces—the people you never knew how to love?” Like La Strada and La Dolce Vita, many of Fellini’s films nostalgically draw upon autobiographical experiences, sometimes to a point that has been criticized as masturbatory. Indeed, 8 ½ is an unending hall of mirrors that reaches a new level of autobiographical intensity: his films almost always reference, in some capacity or other, his former circus experience, infidelity with women, high society events, inner angst, loneliness, anomie, disillusionment with the Catholic Church, and so forth. Yet, while the film does indeed have autobiographical elements, to oversimplify it into an autobiography would be missing Fellini’s very universal messages. He succeeds in sharing his life experience and personal insights in a way that impacts others in a profound way, which is truly brave and beautifully illuminating.
Fellini himself has deemed Daumier’s character as Guido’s greatest adversary, marking the critic as the most castrating figure in the collection of those who hold back an artist. He seems to argue that while a critic’s remarks may often be intelligent (as Daumier certainly makes some legitimate observations), they are not always constructively shared, instead stifling an artist’s freedom to take liberties and make mistakes, without which there can be no great art. Fellini acknowledges the use of 8 ½ for his own intensive introspection through these self-mocking criticisms he writes into the film, but in doing so, diminishes their relevance in the protagonist’s greater search for meaning. The criticisms become just another secondary obstacle, along with the economic concerns of the producer and the incessant questioning of the actors, agents, journalists, and intellectuals, in what is principally a conflict between Guido and himself. Guido is a man who has lost the will to create—a loss of inspiration that calls everything else in his life into question. Without his primary generative force, all secondary conflicts are no longer applicable: the concerns of the film industry ride entirely on the expectation that Guido will produce a new masterpiece; with no film, all criticism and industry pressures are moot. Additionally, his artistic confusion is intimately linked to his sexual chaos—the primary source of his relationship struggles. For Guido then, creating is a first. For Fellini as well, this is precisely the case, and he delivers a remarkable film regardless of his stylistic idiosyncrasies and breaks from traditional narrative structure. In a sense, the primacy of personal creation is his justification for trying to escape from everybody and doing things his way in the end. Fellini sees his self-actualization and authenticity, creative or sexual, bogged down primarily by his impossible efforts to resolve the cutting criticisms of all those around him. “Happiness,” he once says through Guido, “is being able to tell the truth without ever making anyone suffer.”
Thus, the introductory dream sequence mirrors the overall theme of Fellini’s film, which is ultimately more about one man’s personal creative block than about the filmmaking process in general. When Claudia appears, she is the polar opposite of what Guido had envisioned: dressed in all black, she emerges from the shadows of the theatre rather than from light, accompanied by Saraghina’s song rather than the airy Barber of Seville theme, and proves psychologically and emotionally diametric to Guido—she laughs while he is anguished, she dislikes the “unreal” set location whereas he likes it enormously, she sits while he stands, she makes touchy jabs at his hat and age, and so forth. This distance and disappointment reaffirms that only Guido can provide himself salvation. When Rosalina channels her spirits, she reminds Guido that he is free after all, for he is the creator of his own confusion. Similar to his work in Nights of Cabiria, Fellini depicts his dissatisfied protagonist finding some sense of order and rightness in the world in the midst of a carnivalesque celebration. Cabiria is shown stumbling into some youthful festivity shortly after losing everything in life—newly destitute, homeless, heartbroken, dehumanized, and betrayed, she finds it within herself to smile once again, resilient and determined. In an inspired metacinematic gesture, the camera pans in on Cabiria, and she smiles directly at the audience for the only time in the length of the film. In that moment, the film acknowledges itself as film, in order to offer the audience the same sort of hope that this character has achieved. Likewise, Guido triumphantly reconciles fantasy with reality as all the disparate figures in his life come together in a large circus-like dance (the first sequence he actually directs in the film), celebrating the beautiful confusion that is his life.
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Get custom essayThis conclusion does not entail resolution of all his problems—he still yearns for his distant mother, has not reconciled his desire for Carla, and has not fully settled his marriage with Luisa. Nonetheless, his resolution is an embracement of these chaotic flaws in his life, empowering him to move on in life despite the continuance of elements that once paralyzed him. He accepts life as a continuous refutation of resolution, and finds solace in a world where one can create and live at the same time. This seems a markedly optimistic conclusion compared to that of La Strada and La Dolce Vita, in which the weight of life leaves both men defeated on a beach, with the main difference being that Zampano cares (for what, we cannot know for sure), and Marcello does not. Mastroianni’s protagonist in La Dolce Vita never comes to terms with his inner yearnings, instead abandoning his once higher aspirations of journalism and spiraling into directionless hedonism by the end, losing his soul one sunrise at a time. In contrast, Mastroianni’s 8 ½ protagonist, Guido, is rejuvenated from the same deadness that tormented Marcello, and in a moment of sudden insight and enlightenment, finds harmony and beauty inside this confusion that is his life—his film is inside this confusion. Upon this moment of understanding, the magician Maurice suddenly appears to him. “We’re ready to begin,” he declares. “Congratulations.”
La Haine (1995) 24 hours in the lives of three young men in the Paris slums the day after a violent riot. After one finds a police officer’s discarded weapon, their night seems poised to take a deadly turn. As much a realistic portrayal of a divided community as it is a cinematic achievement, La Haine is mandatory viewing. La Haine (The Hate) directed by 28-year-old Mathieu Kassovitz, is an intense look at racial tensions in a Paris housing project. Although poverty, urban decay, drug dealing, and police brutality have been common themes in films before, rarely have they had a sense of passion and urgency as shown in La Haine. The film shows the underbelly of France, which you will not find on a tourist map. Passion, dedication, and effort were well put forward to La Haine. It slaps you in the face with its stark, raw intensity. La Haine convincingly illustrates the harassment that young people from the banlieue, especially nonwhites face. But it also demonstrates the violent gun culture that suffuses their surroundings, with terrible consequences in the film’s shocking finale.
Get original essayThree friends from different ethnic backgrounds live in the Bluebell housing projects on the outskirts of Paris. A desolate urban landscape, harsh and grim with housing projects, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), is a working-class Jew; Hubert (Hubert Kounde), the intelligent and self-reflective of the three, an African boxer; and Said (Said Taghmaoui), an Arab from North Africa is younger but just as embittered.
Bluntly shot in black and white; La Haine has one of my favorite cinematography works. Kassovitz’s directional style is so eloquent, using Spike Lee like rocketing zooms and smooth swerves to get the full view of the destruction. Popular hip hop music is used and heard throughout the film. While there are so many references to Scorsese that you could almost call it a tribute, including Kassovitz’s take on the famous Taxi Driver scene. This French milestone deals with the disillusioned youth who live in the slums of Paris in such an elegant and honest way. But it’s also a cinematic masterpiece and often hilarious entertainment. Everything works; the musical choices, the brilliant performances by the 3 protagonists, the beautiful cinematography and flawless direction. And, perhaps most of all, the perfect script. The film’s most critical quote is the one it opens and ends with: ‘Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good… so far so good… so far so good. How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land’. This directly reflects the film’s content, structure, and result. It’s a metaphor for the French government and is punctuated by a ticking clock Kassovitz’s metaphor for the banlieue as a social time bomb. Kassovitz’s brilliance is further highlighted through La Haine’s numerous awards including Best Director (1995 Cannes Film Festival) Mathieu Kassovitz, Best Editing (César Awards) – Mathieu Kassovitz, Best Film (César Awards) – Mathieu Kassovitz, Best Producer (César Awards), Best Young Film (European Film Awards) – Mathieu Kassovitz, Best Foreign Language Film (Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards), Best Director (Lumières Award) – Mathieu Kassovitz, Best Film (Lumières Award) – Mathieu Kassovitz.
Kassovitz started writing the script of La Haine in 1993, the day Makome M’Bowole, a young man from Zaire, was shot while in police custody. He wondered in an interview “how a guy could get up in the morning and die the same evening in this way.” M’Bowole’s officially accidental death is one of the many smudges that have plagued the French police in recent decades. For Kassovitz, however, they were no cause for laughter, as one of his friends, a fellow kid from the projects also died in police custody further drawing inspiration for the screenplay. Again, as I previously stated Kassovitz is able to translate this into his film further enriching La Haine’s brutal honesty.
Unrest in the working-class banlieue was a familiar phenomenon before La Haine. The cites concentrate on social problems: run-down housing, a high concentration of young people from immigrant backgrounds, drugs, and rampant unemployment. Their social deprivation and cultural alienation are echoed in their isolation from the city center. As in the film, they are routinely portrayed in the media as violent, dysfunctional spaces. But La Haine had, in the words of one journalist, “the effect of a bomb,” it was also because its effect seemed to continue to reverberate after it came out. On June 8 and 9, shortly after the release, there were violent riots in the Butte-Verte cité, in Noisy-le-Grand, east of Paris, provoked by yet another death of a young minority, Belkacem Belhabib, who crashed his motorbike while being chased by the police. Coming so soon after La Haine, the Noisy-le-Grand riots were undoubtedly seen as “copycat,” sparking a debate about the responsibility of the film in particular and the media in general for the violence engulfing French society. The daily France-Soir neatly entitled its June 9 story “Noisy-la-Haine,” and the far-right Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen exclaimed: “Do these yobs have La Haine? Send them to jail!” François Dubet, a sociologist renowned for his work on the banlieues, wisely cautioned that “one must not overestimate the role of cinema or television; the banlieue kids did not wait for La Haine to express themselves.” Nevertheless, La Haine had its finger on the pulse of the French public. President Jacques Chirac sent an appreciative letter to Kassovitz, Prime Minister Alain Juppé asked for the film to be screened for government officials, teachers from “difficult” suburbs took their pupils to see it further signaling La Haine’s relevance to French culture.
La Haine, I would go so far as to call it the most relevant French film of the last 20 years. And In my opinion, is the greatest film ever made. A cinematic phenomenon so close to my heart. With each viewing being better than the last. One of the greatest films of the 90s and of all-time; if there was one perfect film; it would be La Haine.
The difference between death and dying can often seem minute. The dying are merely those on the way to death. Yet the intrinsic difference between the process of dying and the moment of death is one of great literary obsession, in particular in Dante’s The Inferno. Robert Pinsky’s otherwise transcendent translation makes a provocative error in translating the following line:
Get original essayMy pity
Overwhelmed me, and I felt myself go slack:
Swooning as in death, I fell like a dying body.
When in reality, the original Italian reads “as a dead body." This moment of frailty, realized after the interaction with the doomed lovers Paolo and Francesca, is entirely dependent on the word choice. If Dante falls like a “dead” body, then the lovers have made him realize his own mortality. By changing the word to “dying,” Pinsky implies that Dante is less aware of his own death.
Dante realizes that he is falling like a dead body, meaning that he is not exactly one. One cannot fall like oneself, like one’s state of being. The simile is in fact a state of removal; it suggests that Dante is so unlike a dead body that to compare the two makes for a memorable analogy. Rather, to point out that he falls almost as though he is dead only points out that he is in a similar but different state, living. And what are the living but those in the process of dying? All life is but a forestalling of death, and if death is the inevitable event then dying is the inevitable process leading up to it. To be living (and thus to be dying) is to have a fixed trajectory, to assume that death is waiting in a span of an indeterminate amount of years. Virgil promises the trajectory to Dante early, and his assent is assured, just as his death is assured by his existence as a human being. To realize that he is dying is to assert the trajectory. That he will eventually become one of the dead he meets (even if he will attain eternal providence) is overwhelming to Dante (a poet convinced that his work will outlast so many others), and partly the reason for his fit of swooning.
When Dante falls “like” a dead body, he is forced to realize that he is not dead yet, which means that his death is still oncoming. His human mortality becomes more evident, and the text hammers in this realization. In the original Italian, the repeated words “morisse” and “morto” are so linguistically similar as to merely reinforce the realization that death is approaching, and thus that Dante is dying. By contrast, to say like “dying” implies that Dante is not dying, that his trajectory is still mutable, and that Dante is less aware of his path: be it ascent or near-Biblical fall.
The key difference between death and dying is one of motion, too, and reinforces Dante’s awareness of mortality. To be dead is to be in stasis; even the shades that appear to be moving lack the ability to change their position. Paolo and Francesca are merely blown about in an eternal circle, able only to drift towards the human and Dante, who by contrast follows a fixed path of ascent. Dante chooses to emphasize how their lack of movement, their being dead, only serves to emphasize that he is not dead but dying. Dante “fell,” collapsed in “swooning.” He has the capability to move, but only in one direction: descent, much like the diminishment of dying. Dante must descend into Hell to become whole, much as he must go through the process of dying to achieve death and thus (as he is promised) salvation. The lovers remind Dante that he must fall, but fall like the “dead.” He will later ascend in contrast to these dead, but the importance of his “fall” cannot be ignored. By suggesting that Dante falls like a “dying” body, Pinsky loses this awareness of the descent, because, as previously mentioned, to fall “like” dying to make clear that one is not dying, and thus unable to make the descent that Dante goes through.
We cannot forget that it is the presence of the lovers who bring out this realization, this moment of sublime cognizance of mortality. And the circle where Dante sits is not one of a sin of money or false words, but of the lustful, which ultimately conceptualizes the fact that Dante’s realization of his mortality occurs because of lust, and lovers, and eroticism. In fact, the distinction between death and dying is fundamentally one of eroticism. Death is inherently tinged with erotic overtures, ever since Dante’s beloved Greeks surmised that excessive sexual excretion of bodily fluids was the path to death, and the French invested with the phrase “la petite mort,” meaning “the little death” with symbolism of the orgasm. Dante “felt [himself] go slack,” a phrase that cannot help but conjure up the post-coital fatigue. Death is a societal fetish, in particular in Dante’s time, when the promise of plague and mortality was everywhere. The only response to this was to fetishize, to make death an object of sexual awareness. Medieval and renaissance depictions of death, in particular those connected with a Biblical representation, are often erotic in an almost inadvertent way: from Van Dyck’s 1459 depiction of St. Sebastian to the medieval danse macabre, with its emphasis on the body of death. Dante’s erotic death only further brings out his awareness of mortality, for lust is a sin of the body, which must inevitably be silenced and its urges ceased.
Thus for Dante to fall “like a dead body” he is falling with an erotic connotation. He is falling “like” one after the consummation of passion, which despite (due to the simile) distancing him from the actual process of orgasm, connotes to the reader an eroticism that is not awoken by Pinsky’s translation merely through the use of the word “dead.” This connection binds him to the openly erotic and lust-driven lovers; in fact it is the lovers who give Dante a greater self-realization. But “dying” is a state of being supremely un-eroticized. As Sontag’s observed in On Illness and Metaphor, dying is a state of removal, of descent. Thus it is the antithesis of Dante’s ascent towards heaven and the inevitably eroticized Beatrice. Dying is unerotic because it shows the inevitable and tragic fate of man: his mortality. Dying cannot be eroticized because it is such a process, a lingering and depressing malady. Death, by contrast, is a whole, a completed act. Dante’s shades look complete; they resemble human beings with human bodies, and thus have more erotic qualities. To fetishize death is somehow easier in Western society than to do the same for dying, for death is a momentary act, closer to the consummation of lust than dying. Dying is, in its own way, to death what the pursuit is to the orgasm. The pursuit and dying can easily be idealized but never sexualized, and for Dante it is the latent eroticism of death that emerges in this passage.
Be it a question of Biblical descent or nascent eroticism, one cannot deny the power of the body for Dante. Seeing the lovers awakens in him a realization, a moment of overwhelming mortality in the face of eternity. Ultimately, The Inferno cannot be undermined by this peculiar choice in translation, but rather more questions can only arise.
The purpose of the Wingate Test is to measure anaerobic power and capacity in the lower extremities of the body. The test is performed on a cycle ergometer and requires the subject(s) to cycle at maximum for 30-seconds. The factors of anaerobic power and anaerobic capacity are vital in sports which demand short-duration maximal efforts. Peak power is a measure of muscular strength and speed and is the maximal power output achieved for 5 seconds of the Wingate test, decided by the highest number of revolutions. The anaerobic capacity, or average power, is determined by the quotient of the total number of revolutions averaged over the 30 seconds. The difference in power output, a measure of anaerobic capacity, is recorded as the Fatigue Index (FI). It was hypothesized first that the more active subject, subject 2, would have a higher total number of revolutions, and thus would establish a higher mean anaerobic power (W). Additionally, the subject with the higher peak anaerobic power (W) would have a lower Fatigue Index (FI), as FI is inversely related to peak power.
Get original essayWingate tests are used in the measurement of peak anaerobic power and anaerobic capacity in short, high-intensity exercise. Thus, anaerobic component of exercise in this test can be attributed to the ATP-PC, anaerobic metabolism. ATP-PC stores is the primary source in early exercise, and generally show an almost immediate increase to peak ATP, and therefore its contribution can be seen in the first 5s of the test. Both absolute and relative measurements of peak and mean power were recorded in this lab. Relative measures of peak and mean power are calculated dependent on body weight (kg), whereas absolute measures of peak and mean power do not include individual differences. Relative measures allow for comparison between subjects in regard to individual differences, such as body weight. Peak power measurements are calculated based on the highest performance in a 5 second interval, and mean power measurements are determined via the total number of revolutions, or performance outcome, after the 30 seconds is complete.
Subject 1 had both higher absolute and relative peak and mean powers in comparison to Subject 2. Based on relative peak and mean, Subject 1 classified as “Above Average” for both, however, Subject 2 marked “Average” for relative peak power and “Below Average” for relative mean power. Based on the subjects’ demographics, it can be concluded that the subject with the higher physical activity (FITT) status had better performance outcomes on the Wingate test, which coincides with the hypothesis previously stated. In this lab, Subject 1’s FITT status was higher than Subject 2, and indeed performed significantly better. Many factors, however, can play a role in performance outcome, such as age, height, and weight. Subject 1 is three years older than Subject 2, is slightly taller, and about 8kg heavier. One can suggest that due to experience and overall greater body size, Subject 1 would perform better than Subject 2, exerting more power. Physical differences, though, are not the only factors that these results can be attested to. Fatigue index (FI) was additionally recorded. Physiological differences dominate the differences in high and low fatigue indices in this experiment. For example, the absolute peak anaerobic power can be attributed to a force-velocity relationship. To use this value as an estimation of the muscular properties of a muscle group, the following conditions must be true: (a) motor unit recruitment must be the same for all forces and all velocities; (b) forces and velocities must be calculated at the same time during the movement; (c) the work against gravitational forces must not be neglected. These conditions hold true for this Wingate test, as the force remained constant per subject, velocity was measured through the amount of revolutions per 5 second interval, and gravity was applied in the equations to calculate both peak and mean powers. In previous studies, it’s be shown that subjects with more than 50% fast twitch muscle fibers reach their maximal power at 119rev/min and subjects with less than 50% fast twitch muscle fibers at 104 rev/min. Based on this finding, one could assume that Subject 1 has more fast twitch fibers, as the total number of revolutions after 30 seconds was higher than Subject 2.
A limitation of the cycle ergometer test and the calculations of peak and mean power is that the inertia of the devices is not accounted for. If it were considered, the mean power measured would correspond to the peak power developed by subjects. Another limitation with this study is the time of the lab section in which the test was conducted. Both subjects performed the Wingate test around 8am with minimal warm-up time. If the subjects’ bodies were not physically prepared early that morning for the intensity of the test, then it is possible that the results do not reflect the person’s full performance potential. Also, in the lab setting, there was a lack of extrinsic motivation (i.e., competition, cheering, encouragement) which can often enhance performance.
To delve into the many labor inequalities across the globe we must discover the roots and causes. For first world countries such as the United States, labor inequalities fall under the umbrella of income inequalities as well as a lack of opportunity. Examining the layers of inequality within the global labor force reveals much more oppressive inequalities. These labor inequalities come in many forms such as modern slavery, debt bondage, human trafficking, and forced labor, but it is difficult to point fingers as to why it still exists. Historical inequalities were rampant and aided the development of the slave trade which is of the largest forms of labor inequality. Colonialism's traditional form used to constitute a way for nations to grow their power and influence. During this era, it was accepted that military force could be used to gain resources from foreigners and their land. Human labor wasn’t seen as an asset, but rather a variable that affects production yields. The colonists had no desire or need to fend off human suffering, and its victims were often uneducated and couldn't speak up or write off their issues. With the introduction of globalization, our nations united in markets and in organization to rid of practices such as colonialism and imperialism. The free market expanded to every nation it could reach, leaving room for more inequalities to be perpetrated.
Get original essayCountries no longer invade foreign settlements and acquire their land for economic gain, but their method still reverberates the globe. Instead, multinational corporations and global lenders use their own political and economic control to influence foreigners for their economic growth. Imperialism still exists in its final form called neocolonialism. Some key features of neocolonialism is (1) A trend of economic growth characterized by a heavy reliance on the export of primary products, (2) a system of forced labor for agricultural resources, and (3) a global supply chain governed and regulated by multinational corporations, traders, and intermediaries. Aa nation subjected to neocolonialism has its economic system directed from the outside and therefore, its political policy is controlled by outside sources. The use of this regime is to exploit developing nations rather than develop them.
Economic dependencies formed with these nations giving them no choice but to return for additional aid which adds to their national debt. These corporations take over the land and become a major source of employment thus leaving their economy and its people dependent on the actions of the corporation. When the imperial power has much more capital power they can dictate government policy in the neo-colonized state.
Multinational corporations may often begin operations in another nation, but that doesn’t always mean that they are the source of exploitation. Often they begin operations in the land that don’t necessarily belong to them exploiting the land and the people who abide in it. The modern colonizer decides to add to their supply chain and build factories, manufacturing facilities, and exploit the land and farms to liquidate all of the assets within the land. Now they can only do this of course with permission from the government of the land which is why they prey on underdeveloped nations that are weak and in need of aid. This practice keeps the practice of keeping wealth flowing from impoverished nations to the ruling class of the first world alive.
Neo-colonialism is often the reason many labor inequalities and exploitations exist in a foreign land. On the surface level, neo-colonialism seems to refer to corporations setting up manufacturing facilities that need local workers to operate, but this is often not the case. Often neo-colonialism perpetuates the current inequalities within a foreign land. Their economy is strangled by lenders creating empty promises and one-sided deals that are created solely to drain the nation's resources as quickly as possible. Many point the finger at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. After WW2 they began to offer loans to poor underdeveloped countries in desperate need of aid. This promise would only be made if the suffering nation would agree to privatize their economy and allow corporations to access their materials, and they would reluctantly accept in efforts to develop their economy and basic infrastructure.
The workers themselves are racialized and in a position where they are forced to accept bargains which lead to debt bondage out of desperation. Coincidentally their governments must do the same with these lenders and corporations to keep their economy afloat (Bonacich 2008). As we all know now, the infrastructure of these nations was not developed as they had hoped, and their economy has only faltered. Now they suffer some of the worst income, labor, and environmental inequalities in the world. The omnipresence of slavery in the modern age is entirely motivated by the ability to produce significant profits at almost no real risk while the economy and its participants accept the victims suffering. Fortunately for these companies, when they are caught exploiting the land and its people, there is only a brief outrage, an empty promise is made, and consumers return to purchasing their products.
Ghana’s “gold coast” was once the center of Africa’s slave trade, and in some ways, the practice continues. Their instability began when their government led by Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown by a coup d'etat. There is speculation that this coup was plotted and approved by governments in Britain as well as the United States under Lyndon B. Johnson. Since then the land has been led by instability with records of famine and drought. They had inflation levels in the triple digits and they were in dire need of aid. They went on an effort of economic reform thorough the IMF that has since led to positive structural reforms that also, unfortunately, perpetuate modern slavery. The IMF now has Ghana under control and threatens to stop giving loans unless they continue to abide by what they desire.
One of the biggest companies that keeps slavery alive in Ghana is Nestle with its massive and increasing demand for cocoa. Cocoa harvesting is very labor-intensive and has a high demand for jobs, but requires low skilled work which is why children are often targeted. Around 2 million children are engaged in cocoa farming in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire on farms that are part of Nestle’s supply chain. These two locations alone produce about 60% of the world's cocoa and the labor required to harvest it is dangerous and abolishes children's chances of pursuing education. Children work on cocoa fields for over 8 hours per day swinging machetes, burning fields, spraying pesticides, and lifting bags of cocoa which are over 100 pounds. Workers are not supplied with enough chemical pesticides so they must buy their own from China which has instructions they cannot understand. These chemicals do not have a place to be stored and often find themselves stored in workers' homes. The spraying tanks are even washed in water sources that communities draw drinking water from. With an estimated 30 percent growth in global demand for cocoa in the next 5 years this problem may get worse.
In a study conducted by the Fair Labor Association, they examined Nestle’s cocoa farms along the Ivory Coast in West Africa. Nestle has been promising to rid of child slave labor within their supply chain as far back as 2001, but the study in 2012 proves otherwise. The Ivory Coast is the world's largest producer of cocoa and the largest exporter as well. The problem with Nestle’s supply chain is that it is not entirely transparent. To moderate and regulate the ethical production of cocoa, Nestle created The Nestle Cocoa Plan, but only 20% of their cocoa farming is under this plan. The other 80% corresponds to a standard supply chain that isn’t transparent and as well maintained as it should be. This, unfortunately, leads to about half of their cocoa production being untraceable.
This is not the first of Nestle’s wrongdoings. They are also under fire for forced labor, trafficking, and child labor within their seafood production sites. A case conducted by Verite exposed the inequalities within the seafood industry in Thailand which highlights deceptive recruitment practices (Verite 2015). Workers had been subjected to these recruitment practices in their home countries, then transported to Thailand under inhumane conditions. Some were led into debt bondage and exposed to exploitative working conditions such as no days off and forced overtime. The workers interviewed stated that they make about $10 a day before fees and deductions, while they paid around $400-$500 for the job itself as a recruitment cost. The recruitment process was done without going through the legal immigration and labor procedures defined by Thailand’s Alien Employment Act.
The exploitative nature of slavery has never changed, its face has only changed its mask. In 2016, an estimate of 40.3 million people were victims of modern slavery (Alliance 2017). The Trafficking in Persons Protocol defines trafficking in human beings under three terms. The “act” refers to an act of either recruiting, transporting, harboring or receiving a person. The second term is “purpose” which is the particular reason the act occurs, whether it be for forced labor or exploitation. Finally, the “means” is how the person is convinced to give up their rights, whether it be the use of force, abduction, fraud, coercion, debt bondage, etc.
Traditional slavery was usually entirely forced while modern slavery is often contractual and temporal and categorized as forced labor. Forced labor differs from slavery because it entails coercion under the threat of any penalty which has not been offered voluntarily (Kartha 2017). Most victims suffer numerous forms of coercion to prevent them from ridding of their debts. Around 24 percent of workers had their wages withheld by threats of non-payment, 17 percent encountered threats of physical violence and 16 percent of actual physical violence. Threats also include denial of food, shelter or water, manipulation of debts, and the threat of deportation. In 2016, of the 40.3 million victims of modern slavery, 24.9 million of them were in forced labor. Within these 24.9 million forced laborers, 16 million of them operate within the private economy which generates illegal profits of about $150 billion annually.
Forced labor can be imposed by the state with work enforced by public authorities, military, and even prison labor in some cases. An estimate of 4.1 million people were victims of state-imposed forced labor. This includes the recruitment of citizens to work for economic development, military workers performing work unrelated to the military, and prisoners forced to work against their will.
The most prevalent form of slavery today is debt bondage. In North Korea 1 in 10 people are bound by state-enforced labor after they are recruited against their will. This involved children working in agriculture with the schools receiving payment instead of the children. If they fail to participate they would be punished within the school itself, but this could be avoided through bribes. Adults partake in communal labor where they work for up to 100 days in a row, and if they refuse they have a cut in food rations.
When comparing all forms of slavery, debt bondage confines more victims than all other forms of slavery combined. Debt labor/bondage is a predatory interlinking of labor and credit agreement. The victims often enter loan agreements with parties that are seeking to exploit their labor. When the party who lacks any assets seeks said loan, they often pledge their labor to pay it off. Since there are power imbalances between the two parties, the debtor is often exploited so severely it develops into slavery. Victims find themselves working for extremely low wages, and repaying interest rates of 10 to 20 percent per month. Sometimes up to half of the debtor's wages are taken for debt repayment, and the loaner has the power to make deductions for poor work performance, or whatever they see necessary. When workers can’t afford to live on this measly wage, basic commodities like food and clothes require more loans which adds to the debt. If the debt is not repaid it can last a lifetime and be passed to future generations. Debt bondage frequently entails workers paying recruitment fees to secure a job along with its documents, training, permits, and travel fees.
The topic of slavery and human trafficking is already recognized as extremely unequal, but there exist even deeper inequalities within the system. Most victims of human trafficking happen to be female and children. This is because most victims detected globally are trafficked for sexual exploitation. In a grouping of women, men, girls, and boys, women make up 49% and girls make up 23%, to a total of about 72% of detected victims of trafficking in persons being female (UNODC 2018). About 99% of victims of forced sexual labor are female (ILO). Another form of modern slavery is an unconsented forced marriage that targets women and girls. In 2016, around 15.4 million people were living in marriage they had not consented to. More than a third of these victims are under the age of 18, and among these child victims, 44 percent were forced to marry before they were even 15 years old.
For international business, slavery is extremely profitable. Modern slavery generates an estimated $150 billion in illegal profits annually (ILO 2016). The question often arises if multinational corporations have the capability of dictating labor standards through their supply chains. Even conscious and responsible corporations acknowledge how difficult and ineffective it is to accurately monitor their entire supply chain. When these multinational corporations are required to certify that their suppliers are following code, they cannot entirely rely on the third-party verifiers, but this is a shoddy excuse.
One CEO named Andrew Forrest, who is also the founders of the Walk Free Foundation stated that he sent a letter to 3,000 suppliers of his company Fortescue Metals Group regarding modern slavery. When 50 suppliers failed to respond he launched investigations revealing slavery practices within his supply chain. He said the cost of this investigation was “next to nothing” (Stringer 2018). This goes to show that the economic motives of multinational corporations are a powerful force in driving slavery (Machailova 2018). The study conducted by Verite within Nestle’s seafood supply chain was contracted by Nestle themselves. With this so-called “next to nothing” cost, corporations should follow in Nestle’s path of conducting supply chain investigations wherever they can.
Due to codes like The Modern Slavery Act being enacted, corporations have faced the inequalities within their supply chain, helping to bring more focus to what we are doing as a dominant society. In this act, organizations are required to produce slavery and trafficking statements that detail their efforts to eradicate it within their supply chain. Statements are now required annually and failure to comply could lead to fines, potential prison sentences, supply chain disruption, and reputational harm. In a survey of 46 leading brands and retailers, twice the amount of CEO’s has become more active addressing modern slavery since The Modern Slavery Acts has come into place. Around 58% of companies have increased communications with suppliers addressing modern slavery as an important issue. Since businesses are operating for profits, they are not just doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, addressing modern slavery is becoming a critical issue. Around 97% of companies stated the risk of public exposure to inequalities found within their supply chain. The answer to all this exploitation is not protests and boycotts, but unity. When we all become citizens of the same world and take a stance of respect based on human equality, we can progress towards a better future. This also involves a strong focus on conserving our ecology as it is not expandable. Global labor plays a major role in the introduction of unnatural deforestation, pollution, and degradation of the environment, to nations with weak environmental laws. Our nation can work together with the environmental and business organization to enforce more ethical labor and environmental practice within their global supply chain.
With such a profitable form of labor, it is hard to say slavery will end any time soon.
Slavery still upholds its roots within our world in forced labor, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and debt bondage, but we could work towards eradication through multi-national corporations exposing the evils within their supply chain. Part of the reason these inequalities exist in the first place is because of the high demand for labor within these global markets that spawned when globalization was introduced to the economy. There were once hopes that globalization would expand the economies of poorer less fortunate nations, not cause them to falter further. Corporations could work to launch investigations of their supply chain to increase transparency. There are many forms of exploitation that we cannot combat as a first world country such as forced marriage and sex trafficking, but exposing the home of the inequalities through the supply chain can lead to exposure to all of its forms. Codes like the Modern Slavery Act 2015 should be made in America which requires corporations to release annual assessments on their efforts to eradicate modern slavery from their supply chains. Consumers can rid of consumption habits and protest companies that continue to utilize unethical labor.
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Get custom essayUnfortunately, the rabid consumption borne by our developed countries brings more consequences than just labor inequalities to other nations. There are many victims borne by our consumption globally. Another victim of this final stage of imperialism is the environment. When corporations are facing tough pollution standards, tax laws, and regulations, they can cut costs by moving operations overseas. When we view these corporations as colonizers the ecological destruction becomes much clearer. These corporations have so much power and influence that they are the gatekeeper of these exploitations. They are the ones with the best chance to infiltrate the global labor market and work to eradicate modern slavery. Many forms of policy can keep these corporations in order but if they decide to take the initiative they could accelerate the process towards a more humane world.
Clean water is an integral resource to all ecological aspects of the world. Whether its used domestically, for aquaculture, industrially, for irrigation or livestock, or for power, it is key for sustaining life. In the world, the water used each day in homes, businesses, and public facilities is fresh water, and while seventy-one percent of the Earth is made up of water, only three percent of that water is fresh. Within that sparse three percent, nearly sixty-nine percent of that clean water is nearly inaccessible. This leaves the Earth with a remaining one percent of water that is considered as surface water.
Get original essayThe fresh water that constitutes less than three percent of the Earth is responsible for cycling through the atmosphere and back into the supply of clean water for the world to use for bathing, cooking, and drinking. There are four important characteristics that the state of drinking water can be quantified by: reliability, quantity, and quality, and cost. Various national agencies, such as the World Health Organization, or WHO, have standards for drinking water quality, which specify acceptable characteristics of safe and clean drinking water. Fresh water is so important, yet its sources are often scarce because of irregularly and unevenly distributed water supplies. The quality and quantity of water sources often vary by season, year, and location, leaving some areas of the world with a dry riverbed or an abundance of contaminated water.
Additionally, contaminated water can come from chemicals and human and animal wastes, all of which cause the quality of the drinking water to suffer. “Polluted water isn’t just dirty-- it’s deadly,”. Every year, roughly 1. 8 millions people die due to diarrheal diseases such as cholera. Some additional tens of millions of people are severely sickened by other water-related ailments Over many decades, water has become a commodity, thus allowing for communities with inadequate distribution systems and low income families to lack the ability to attain the vital resource.
In consideration of the inequity of water distribution in the world, the United Nations believes that access to clean water is a basic human right. Should the global community take steps towards creating equal distribution and access to clean water for the water-poor communities, the continuous cycle of poverty can be lifted. India: In India, residents have been facing a freshwater crisis and as of 2016, seventy-six million people were without access to safe, potable water.
A vast twenty-one percent of the diseases that the population suffers from is related to unsafe water, thus having left 329,000 children under the age of five to die due to diarrhea in 2015. While the lack of access to clean water most directly affects the health of the population, it also affects the national economy in that an estimated $160 million USD in income is lost each year due to women missing work days in exchange for fetching and carrying water from faraway water sources.
The population of India as a whole does not suffer from water crises, rather particular pockets of the country are affected. In certain regions of the country there are booming industries and cities filled with capital, whereas other regions embody rural neighborhoods and fields filled with poverty. In particular, Mumbai is the most populous city and holds country’s economic capital, yet nearly half of the population lives in slums and endure the hardships of a looming water crisis.
Many of the residents of Mumbai, city located in the Western state of Maharashtra, are challenged with the lack of access to clean water and sanitation. With more than half of its residents residing in informal settlements, some estimates declare that Mumbai has the largest slum population of any city around the globe. Because the men, women, and children who live in this impoverished state face hardships pertaining to water crises, there are short-term and long-term hardships that they endure as well.
In particular, lack of access to water and sanitation disproportionately affects women and young girls. While men are at work, some women and children must obtain water by fetching it from taps in other community sources. They often face the physical strain of rolling filled water drums for up to two kilometers before reaching home. This water collecting process can sometimes take two to three hours daily, which cuts into the time that children are at school or should be doing schoolwork.
In turn, children don’t receive the education they need because they must suffer the consequences of living without access to clean water. Women often lack enough water to wash their children, dishes, home spaces, and clothes, resulting in water sometimes being saved and reused. Additionally, they also suffer in terms of sanitation and hygiene because men generally receive water priority in order to be properly ready for work.
Work is extremely important for the men to go to because their job brings in the small amount of cash that they can use to spend on food or water. In these slums, there are often informal water distributors who charge exorbitant rates and engage in discriminatory pricing. The household money gets collected by these distributors who occasionally don’t deliver the expected quota of water and abuse residents who have issues paying. The informal water supply system puts an extreme amount of stress of the slum dwellers, particularly when distributors become angry and freely destroy remaining water infrastructure around their community.
During severe water shortages, women often find themselves in a situation where they must choose between spending their last bits of money on food or on water. Some residents stay awake all night in order to prevent missing water flows that can happen in the middle of the night. On occasion, water tankers enter the slums to provide extra water, but this periodical tanker water is perceived to be of very low quality.
Illness and death due to unclean water is particularly prevalent in the child population of slums. These poorer residential areas resort to sourcing their water from informal water distribution systems, where water travels through hoses surrounding trash dumps and are compromised by holes, and possibly increase the risk of water-borne diseases. Poor water quality is a leading global cause of morbidity and mortality and much of its sourcing takes place right in the slums of Mumbai.
Particularly during monsoon season, water sources become overly contaminated and disease and illness skyrocket. Lack of access to sewer lines and inhibited construction of sewer lines become giant challenges to sanitation. The vast majority of children and 14% of adults engage in open defecation, creating a source for much of the illness. These slums regularly experience outbreaks of diarrheal diseases, dengue, malaria, and leptospirosis.
In the city, conflict surrounding the concern of water accessibility hovers around the tension between those who provide water and those who lack water. Across the peri-urban areas of Mumbai, issues surrounding the lack of access to clean water are most often tied to the slums themselves. Without access to a clean, well-structured home or substantial money, slum dwellers must live in large, abandoned buildings or even small handmade structures.
The Maharashtra Slum Areas Act defined a slum as an area that is unsanitary, squalid and overcrowded. It’s an area that poses a danger to health and is deemed unfit for human habitation. In order for a settlement to be determined fit for human-living, it must include a water supply, drainage, and sanitary conveniences, all of which most slums in Mumbai lack. The political issues concerning housing stocks and the lack of resources to build homes created the growing predicament of Mumbai residents living in areas lacking water supply and proper sanitation.
Over a few decades, the Indian government’s responses to slums have undergone several changes. The initial reaction to the overwhelming slum population in the 1950s and 1960s was to demolish slum buildings and clear the dwellers from the streets. However, the government gained a more tolerant attitude and adopted a different approach to handle the matters.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the government enacted and passed various acts and programs with aid from the World Bank, and had sought to improve the slummed areas. Through the 1970 Slum Improvement program, the government planned to provide dwellers with basic services such as small pathways, electricity, primary health care, and education, as well as improved infrastructure with community water taps, latrines, and proper drainage. However, the scale of the programs and the aid provided remained limited and was not able to prevent the proliferation of these living conditions.
The following year, The Maharashtra Slum Areas Act was enacted to create a more firm foot in the battle against the poor slum conditions. While this 1971 act made more political headway for the dwellers concerned primarily with land tenure, it did not provide much relief for resources needed in everyday life. One section of the act addresses the need for provision of water taps, bathing places, drains, and latrines, however, it was an option.
The government suggests “works of improvement” in relation to slum buildings and only implies that one or more of the twelve changes, water and sanitation being two, are necessary. While few water and sanitation access changes were made, the hardships of living with minimal access to such basic amenities remained in the lives of the people for years to come. In the 1980s, government authorities allocated their attention and resources towards the problem of the worsening slums of, then named, Bombay. 1985 brought about yet another goal of slum improvement, this time for Dharavi, a locality holding nearly one million people, making it the largest slum in Mumbai as well as Asia as a whole.
The Prime Minister recognized the growing issue and committed a grand financial pledge to intervention in the slum, showing that slum improvement had indeed become a political priority for Bombay. The initial plans for Dharavi included a forty-percent reduction in population, relocation of residents, residential construction, and the complete rebuilding of its sanitation infrastructure. However, there had been a pattern of efficacy of slum improvement acts and programs for the preceding forty years, and the 1985 Prime Minister’s Grant Project was no different.
The government soon declared that it was incapable of fulfilling the complex plan, particularly because of opposition within the settlement. The National Slum Dwellers Federation, PROUD, and Society for the Preservation of Area Resource Centres successfully limited the transformation of the slum grounds of Dharavi and the 1985 PMGP had only built a few dozen residential buildings by the late 1980s. The failed state interventions into the slums reveal that basic sanitation, water access, and housing provision are a giant, interlocked enigma.
As the acts and programs were enacted during the 1970s and 1980s, legislation did begin to provide minimal amenities in slums. In 1976, a new rule began to spread throughout the city that would determine who would be able to have access to basic necessities such as water and sanitation. After a census of huts on public land was established, “photopasses” were issued to all people whose home met certain criteria and were eligible for some security. Different public agencies enabled engineering departments to recognize these slum dwellers and the dwellers were provided electricity, sanitation, water, and another small amenities.
For the first time, those who lived in slums were not only recognized by the government, but were given what they were promised decades ago. Additionally, the World Bank-funded Bombay Urban Development Project and the Slum Upgrading Programme added leases to the slum buildings in the mid-1980s. New 30-year renewable land leases were handed out to cooperative societies and not only did this secure land, but also civic amenities. While this new rule did consist of a cost-recovery basis and loans to support this upgrade, this was an advancement to the earlier policies and allowed some slum dwellers access to clean water and sanitation. As dwellers in 1976 learned of the photopasses, the population density in particular areas increased because everyone wanted these special accesses.
The government extended the eligibility of these passes to more people, but it appeared as though the slum problem was growing faster than ever. Soon, cut-off policies arose, which restricted eligibility to a time frame. During these decades, slum living policy has been increasingly dominated by “cut-off” policies, which promise free housing, water, electricity, and sanitation to those who have resided in slums prior to a certain date. This policy was enacted after slum dwellers, who constitute a large part of Mumbai’s electorate, placed a multitude of pressure on the government.
After repeatedly stretching the policy to attempt to fit more people, the government began to use electoral rolls insteading of conducting censuses, causing the slum situation to become a politically driven issue. The 1995 cut-off policy, as mentioned in “Protected Occupiers, Their relocation and Rehabilitation” of the amended Slum Areas Act, states that those who reside in a slum prior to 1995 cannot be evicted, will not have their home demolished without being first resettled, and will have access to water and sanitation.
The fortunate slum dwellers soon became “protected occupiers”, which gave them a chance to live with their government subsidy. Slowing down the progress The progress began slowing down once the huge slum population began fighting for equal access to the free housing, water, and sanitation. There had been numerous efforts to extend the cut-off dates.
For the Dharavi Redevelopment Project, the government was in the process of extending the cut-off date to 2000, however a Bombay High Court decision in 2006 prevent this action from going through. There had been many efforts to continue the elongation of cut-off dates, but the government was not entirely set on creating subsidized housing yet. Linking basic services like water and sanitation to hundreds of thousands of home still remained a challenge, so many people were left on the streets.
Evidently, those who did not live in slum housing prior to 1995 were left out of the access to free housing, water, and sanitation. While the 1995 cut-off policy enabled dwellers who meet requirements to have security, it also gave less security to those who do not meet the criteria. For the first time, the government enforced the cut-off date by demolishing 50,000 to 90,000 slum dwellings, causing an outcry in the few months between 2004 and 2005. This was one of the first displays of the inequality in resources that the government was handing out.
In terms of the 1995 cut-off policy, it appears as though the government has been strict on acting upon the given time frame. However, the municipal water regulations known as the Water Charges Rules state that amenity connections can be made eligible to slums that have existed before 1995, “or any other date separately notified by the Government of Maharashtra in this behalf”. This phrase in the act appears to give the government of Maharashtra the opportunity to open the gate of aid to slums that have been created after 1995.
Mumbai, arguably one of the greatest cities in India, now clutches two different dimensions of slums: the “notified” and the “non-notified”. As of now in India, some slums are recognized by the government, or “notified” and they are usually entitled to access basic services, such as the access to clean water and sanitation. Additionally, the previous 1995 cut-off has now been changed to 2000, adding these additional impoverished settlements to the population of those who are granted some access to basic amenities.
However, fifty-nine percent of slum settlements in 2012 were described as “non-notified” or unrecognized by the government. The people who live in these areas inhabit the land owned by the central government and do not gain anything from the cut-off policy, despite the fact that some settlements had been established several decades ago. These non-notified slums receive far less assistance from the government than the notified slums, and they suffer from the lack of access to latrines, clean water, and electricity. Often times, this inaccessibility leads to the illegal piping to city water pipes due to desperation in their dire situation.
Despite the numerous policies that have been enacted over the last eight decades, majority of the residents living in Mumbai’s slums still do not have access to adequate quantities of affordable, accessible, and safe water and sanitation. The current laws and in place prevent these impoverished people from having the access to these water and sanitation services. Back in 1979, India agreed to a document by the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Organization.
By complying with the ICESCR, India as a whole agreed that it would ensure that all recognized rights would be realized progressively and that the government would function in a fashion of nondiscrimination. However, the following acts and policies did not comply with what the ICESCR declared.
In reference to the policy of the 1995 cut-off rule and the ability to “notify” slums that are not located on central government land, these policies provide a prime example of the clear violation of the principle of nondiscrimination. The Slum Areas Act as well as the Municipal Water Regulations can be rewritten and reinterpreted in a manner that could include and extent leniency towards those living in non-notified slums. This change would expand the eligibility of water and sanitation services to the millions of men, women, and children who suffer each day from the lack of water resources.
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Get custom essayIn 2010, India voted to adopt the UN General Assembly Resolution 10967, which “recognizes the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights. ” The Human Rights Council Resolution also later affirmed that “the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation is derived from the right to an adequate standard of living… as well as the right to life and human dignity. ”
India has achieved independence from the British rule nearly 71 years ago. But even today we lack in the field of medical facilities provided to our citizens. In this paper I would be discussing about the lack of medical and health facilities in the educational institutions of India. Though we have many good hospitals and doctors in our nation, we still lag behind in the primary health care of students. A student’s health is of great concern be it a school going small child or a student of graduate college. Just like every other human being even they need the basic medical facilities in times of need. This paper consists of case studies done by various researchers and also some old statistical data.
Get original essayKeywords: School Health, Medical facilities, School ambulance, Medical colleges, Private hospital,
A school or college is a place where a student spends nearly 7-10 hours of the day. Every school must have the basic health care necessities. But it has been observed that most of the schools and colleges do not even have a medical room in their campus which is of great necessity in times of emergency. Along with a medical room the institutions must also have an experienced nurse and a doctor for medical assistance. They are the perfect consultants when it comes to suggest medicines and perform minor stitches.
If we compare the Indian Institutions with those of foreign ones, we can definitely make out the big differences in health and hygiene the different nations have to offer. In the foreign countries it is mandatory to have a medical chamber within the institution’s premises. The bigger the institution, the larger is the reputation. This said, one must not forget that, the bigger the institution more is the expectation. Yes, the saying is correct. In foreign institutions, small medical rooms or chambers are present if the school is a normal one. But in elite or bigger schools, a nursing home or a school hospital is present for the aid of the students.
In India though, this is not the scenario. Here the saying goes on like, “The bigger the institution, the larger is the investment on the infrastructure or more is the investment in corruption”. In India people mostly think about cost cutting. In India, the condition of hospitals is too bad especially when it comes to government hospitals. On June 30, 2016, according to Medical Council of India,“India has a total of 9, 88,922 doctors but sadly only 1 doctor is available for 1,668 patients.” In such a condition the question is how to get the medical facilities in the schools and colleges? With this question I started my research on the medical and health facilities of schools and colleges in India.
The paper is mostly secondary data based. But for the primary data, I have approached the persons whose identities have been kept a secret. Apart from that, the primary data is also based on my personal observation on the topic. The news articles have also been of great help in this paper.
The school and college health services started in 1909, first time in a medical examination of school children carried out in Baroda city. Back in 1946, The Bhore committee reported that school health services were practically non-existent or in under-developed statein India. In 1953, more emphasis was given to the need for medical examination of pupils and school feeding programs by secondary education committee. In1960, Government of India constituted a school health committee to assess the standards of health and nutrition of school children. During the five year plans, many state governments have provided for school health and school feeding programs. In spite of these efforts to improve school health, it must be stated that in India, “As in other developing countries, the school health services provided are hardly more than a token service because of shortage of recourses and insufficient facilities”(Sonawane.N, 2017).
The health facilities and the sanitation measures are the two important aspects for a proper school and college environment. Though there have been many amendments in the school health system, the health system of colleges need special attention even today. The colleges lack the basic medical facilities even today. The basic medicines for health issues are provided in the college first aid but they are not satisfactory. This is what has intrigued me to write a paper.
The health problems of students differ with different age group. The problems of school students may not be the same as that of the college students. According different data collected, the problems faced by the school students are:Common infectious diseases, Skin rashes, Eye and ear problems, Malnutrition, Food poisoning, Mental stress, etc.
While among college students the problems are completely different. Today, most of the colleges are residential and have hostel facilities. The students who board the hostels face the maximum health issues. The students residing in the hostels stay far away from home to get formal education. They are on their own for any problems that come their way, be it, emotional, financial, mental or medical. Although for emotional or financial problems we can contact our close friends and family members whenever needed. But when it comes to mental distress or low health, it becomes very difficult for the students to cope up with the situation.
According to my observation majority of the students in college hostels of various regions face the following problems:
To have a more in-depth knowledge of different health facilities provided in schools I referred the above mentioned paper to get the statistical data of a previously conducted survey of school in South India. According to this data, 30 schools were surveyed by sampling method out of which, 4 were government schools, 12 were aided, and 14 were private schools. Approximately 25 schools had well connected roads and 29 had verandahs attached to classrooms for recreation. This study helped in getting an insight into the situation analysis and priority issuesof these factors in schools in an urban set up in India. This was further shown in statistical data collected about the schools(Joseph, Bhaskaran, Saya, Kotian, &Menezes, 2012). The tables are as follows:
Case 1: “A child with mild mental retardation was playing in her school with friends. The see-saw that she is on is rickety and defective. It gives away, and the child had a nasty fall, injuring her face severely. The school was unaware of how to handle the incident and calls the parents. The child was rushed to a nearby hospital and got admitted for several days. The parents alleged that medical care was not provided on time, and that the school authorities did not visit the hospital or provide any kind of support”(Pawar.D, 2015).
According to the above case, the child suffered serious injuries due to schools ignorance about safety measures and was admitted in the hospital as the school did not have any provisions of first aid or medical care. The school did not even have its own private medical consultant who could have been of some help in such kind of a situation.
Case 2: “As many as 125 children of JawaharNavodayaVidyalaya at Barahiya, Lakhisarai district, 135 km away from Patna, fell ill apparently due to suspected food poisoning in the wee hours of Friday. The students complained of suffering from nausea and vomiting at 2:30 am on Friday, several hours after having dinner at the hostel. A total of 80 students were rushed to the Barahiya Referral Hospital while 45 were rushed to the nearby LakhisaraiSadar Hospital”(India, 2018).
The above case is of school hostel mess where 125 students fell ill due to food poisoning. My question is why is there no proper food inspection in the hostels? This is not only the scenario in Patna but in most of the schools and colleges with hostels. The food is checked neither before preparing nor before serving. This becomes the major reason for food poisoning and diseases like Typhoid. Is this how the nation’s schools maintaining the sanitation measures in schools? Are the schools completely ignorant about the health of small children?
Case 3: Nearly 120 children were taken ill after eating a meal at a school in Thiruvanthapuram and were admitted in a nearby hospital. Though none of them were reported to be serious, they were discharged only after monitoring their health condition(Thiruvananthapuram News - Times of India, 2018).
The schools should understand that the children need to have a proper and healthy diet. Any manipulation with their food can be harmful for their health. In this case, the food items eaten by the student were sent for examination after the children fell ill. Had there been prior precautions, the children would not have been admitted in the hospital.
Case 4: “The death of Akriti Bhatia, a class XII student of Modern School in VasantVihar, after an asthma attack, underlines the urgent need to form guidelines on how schools should handle medical emergencies” (Bhatia.R, 2009).
According to Dr. PannaChoudhury, president of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics, “There are no guidelines for schools on how to deal with Children’s emergency health situation.”
This is what makes the condition of school health worse. It is high time for the nation to wake up and join hands on this issue. The children need utmost care when away from their home. They do not have the knowledge of medicines and health issues. In such cases the schools should be well equipped with the basic emergency kits so that they can come handy when needed. This said we must not forget to mention the words of Dr. SatishBharadwaj, medical emergency transport service, Goodman’s rescue.
According to Dr. Bharadwaj, “Every school should have a first-aid kit, an oxygen cylinder that has been checked and certified and experienced staff members at school stationed at all times”.The above cases are just a few when it comes to the lack of medical facilities in schools.
But, there are a few schools which are well-equipped for emergency situations. The GD Goenka school of Dwarka has a full time nurse and a doctor. It has a medical room with three beds(Bhatia.R, 2009). It also has tie-ups with the local hospital. The school has stretchers, oxygen cylinder and a school ambulance. The school also has a well-managed school medical record of all the students. But only a few schools have such well-equipped facilities. Accordingto minister RenukaChowdhury, “Periodical health checks should be made compulsory in all schools” (Bhatia.R, 2009).
There are many more schools which have made it compulsory to have a medical cabin and basic health amenities within the premises for the students as well the teaching and non-teaching staff. Apart from GD Goenka School, Jain International Residential School of Bangalore, Taurian World School of Ranchi, The Doon School of Dehradun, JawaharNavodayaVidyalaya of Tripura, Doon Global School of Dehradun and Sheyn International Schools are some of the schools having well equipped medical facilities in India.
This study is report has been made out of both primary as well as some secondary data. Colleges are the places where students are believed to have a hectic life. They suffer from over pressure in colleges. In such cases the colleges should follow some health measures to check the health of the students. Following are some of the case studies which shows that lack of proper medication facilities in colleges have taken a toll on the students.
Disclaimer:The name of the character, place and events are subject to change according to situation to maintain the privacy of informant’s identity.
Case 1: A girl named Prabha of a reputed management institute in Ranchi, fainted in the classroom. She was lying unconscious for nearly 10-12 minutes when the college staff entered the room. Her classmates ran all over the institute to see if they could get any ORS or glucose water but in vain. The staff did not take any initiative to provide 4-wheeler transportation for the student rather they asked the students to manage on their own.
This case was the main reason for me to start this paper. The question is being a management institute, how can they not have emergency transportation for the students? What if the student suffered some serious health problem which could have been fatal due to the institute’s negligence? I think it’s high time for Indian institutes take the health of the students seriously. Since management institutes charge a fee structure for every single thing in their course curriculum, they should have the provisions of better health facilities. Since the students are paying fees in lakhs, if needed they can pay for this as well. But, that would be highly unethical if such big institutes could not provide these basic medical facilities without charging from the students. Health is something which can rise and fall unpredictably. The institutes should be ready for any kind of emergency health situation.
Case 2: In Dehradun, the colleges have tie-ups with the local semi-government hospitals. But the irony is, the hospitals are located 10-12 kms away from the colleges. The nearby hospitals are not well equipped but the students duringemergency have no other option but to visit the under-rated hospitals as the good hospitals are situated quiet far away.
Since I have been to Dehradun, I do agree with this case. The good hospitals are not situated near the colleges and schools which becomes a major problem in times of emergency. During fatal cases the situation gets more troublesome as the transportation also gets limited. But the positive part in Dehradun is, the colleges have properly equipped first-aid box and also proper transportation facility.
The following case has been taken from secondary data of medical colleges.
Case 3: Health ministry bans 86 medical colleges from accepting fresh batch of students and the plan to open 68 new colleges also gets shelved ( Firstpost, 2018).
These 86 colleges did not have their own hospital for the students to practice. Out of the 86 colleges, 70 are private while 12 government.
Case 4: Students of 14-year old DY Patil medical college go to Rajwadi Hospital, Ghatkopar, an hour’s ride away to examine patients from second year onwards. Similarly, Students of Terna shuttle between the Civil Hospital in Thane and the Vashi Municipal Hospital for their clinical research (Mumbai News - Times of India, 2003).
Private medical colleges like the ones above are a black spot in the name medical colleges. Despite the fact that a 300-bed on-campus hospital is mandatory to set up a medical college, these colleges did not follow the rules and regulations for the set-up of a medical college. But with time the TernaCollege has developed its infrastructure and has constructed its own 700 bed hospital.
The study helped me explore the different facilities a school or college has to offer. It studies the different health issues faced by the students of schools and colleges. The case studies help in getting a better view of the Indian schooling system and facilities. The case of Akriti Bhatia is quiet painful. It is unimaginable how much the poor soul had to suffer just because of the school’s ignorance. The school and college authorities should introspect and rectify the various loopholes in the management system so that the institution can be ready in case of any emergency or fatality. No comparisons can be drawn between the Indian institutes and the Institutes abroad but then what about the good, well equipped schools of India and the ill-equipped schools of the same nation. Even after so many years of Independence, the conditions of schools have not changed. It is high time that the government as well as the institute administration should work together for the betterment of the nation’s schooling system.
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Get custom essayI would like to thank Dr. Anant Kumar for giving me the opportunity to work on such a wonderful topic. I would also like to thank him for his constant support and guidance on the paper. I am also very grateful to my parents for helping me with their experience. I would also like to thank my fellow mates and friends who have been of greatest help and inspiration for the paper. At last I would like to thank The Almighty for giving me the strength to finish this paper successfully.
Health, as described by the World Health Organization, “is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of any disease or infirmity (WHO, 1999).” It’s been an ongoing trend since a decade and more now, where people tend to not see through all these dimensions of health. It is safe to say that there has always been a discrimination towards physical and mental health. Mental health tends to take a backseat and get ignored when physical health comes into the frame, or even otherwise. Mental health issues like depression, anxiety are least looked up to, not only by the people suffering from it, but also by physicians and the primary care givers. According to the World Health Organisation fact sheet, about 450 million people are mental health sufferers, which makes mental disorders among the leading causes of ill health and disability worldwide (WHO, 2001). It also states that, one in four people in the world will suffer from mental or neurological disorders at some point in their life. There is not just one cause responsible for the state of mind, a person suffering from a mental health disorder would have. However, leaving aside the causes for now, there’s a question, more worrisome, as to why are mental disorders still prevalent? And why are the number of people suffering from them, on an increase? I would not deny the fact that we are trying to do our bit and best, about making people aware of these issues, so that they identify them and act towards it, but we still have a long way to go. Mental health issues are gripping the world today, and are on an upswing due to several factors. There’s a lot of stigma associated to mental health, speaking about these disorders, and sharing it with people. Lack of awareness of these issues, thereby makes it worse. More often than not, people from all around the world have different views, opinions and beliefs about mental health. Differences in the culture, traditions, beliefs form a major cause for the way the whole mental health scenario has been shaped, globally. And lastly, stress experienced due to initial childhood trauma, physical violence and abuse which could lead to drugs and alcohol dependency are one of the leading factors which contributes to the fate of mental health today. That is why the issue of stigma and lack of mental health awareness is discussed in this essay.
Get original essay“There is no country, society or culture where people with mental illness have the same societal value as people without a mental illness” (Rossler, 2016, p.1250). That, right there is stigma. People often refuse to talk, share about their condition, or their feelings because they fear judgement from others. Stigmatizing people who are mentally unhealthy has been a very common practise and is still followed in certain parts of the world. Stigma often can be corelated to stereotyping and prejudices. Mentally unhealthy people are constantly are called out separately for possessing certain characteristics, traits, or feeling a certain way which normally tends to be different from people who are mentally healthy. But that does not mean we subject them to stereotypes. People normally tend to maintain distance from mentally unhealthy people, just because they feel that these people would harm them physically, they do not even trust them and consider them as someone irresponsible. People have certain common notions or opinions towards mentally ill people. For example, a common perception towards schizophrenics by people is describing them as not trustworthy with their actions and dangerous (Rossler, 2016, p.1251). These kind of beliefs about them creates a wrong idea about people suffering from the condition. It tends to have a negative impact on them and also about them in the society eventually leading to discrimination. This makes mental health all the more difficult to deal with. Hence, people suffering from it feel the need to keep quiet rather than sharing what they are going through. They withdraw themselves from each and every activity, situations, social groups, friends, family. They follow a pattern of social isolation and eventually go into social retreat where they would avoid being around people including their near and dear ones. Stigma is not limited to just stereotyping and prejudices, it also differs when it comes to the type of disorder the person is suffering from. People would normally like to maintain a greater social distance from a person suffering from a medical related etiological disorder like schizophrenia than from someone going through depression. A study conducted where 27 countries were part of it indicated that almost 50% of the schizophrenic patients reported of discrimination in their relationships, and about 2/3 of these people feared of it, socially, or in their work environment. For however long stigma would be prevalent in the society regarding these issues, it’ll be difficult for mentally unhealthy people to come out with their condition in the open and also for mentally healthy people to accept them and try and help them out in whatever way they could. It is necessary that people understand and become aware about the difficulties they go through, and encourage them to speak up rather than giving in, in the web of stigma.
All over the world, people have a different perception towards mental health. There are stark differences because each of the places embrace a different culture, a set of beliefs towards any issue, the way things are done there. It is not regarded as negative all over the world, but at places where people hold a different set of values and traits. In many developing countries people choose to speak openly about it whereas, in the other countries they refuse to accept facts about it, consider it evil, or even non relevant at times. Cultural differences tend to crop up here. Asian studies suggest that somatic and organic factors cause these mental health disorders and thus they prefer to go with physical treatment. On the other hand, Chinese people believe that these issues occur due to an imbalance in the cosmic forces, they try to sort these issues by focusing on relationships, watching what they eat and the amount of physical activity they do. Many people even disregard being mentally unhealthy as possession by the evil, controlled by supernatural forces and other superstitious beliefs. All this is a result of lack of awareness of these disorders. There are places where they still do not have enough resources, experienced doctors, care givers who can take responsibility and help people who are suffering from these disorders.
Children or teenagers, as young as 13- 15 yrs. these days, are going through stress and on the brink of developing unhealthy mental behaviour. The underlying factor responsible for this kind of their mental state can be pointed out to developmental stress. Adverse childhood conditions, homelessness, loss of parents, witnessing any kind of violence, going through physical violence, rapes, harassment, physical abuse, fights all these are markers which can cause the person to get depressed or can plant the seeds for eventual mental disorders. These conditions are said to affect the functioning of the brain and create a huge impact which can be carried forward in the person’s life ahead. One thing leads to another and very easily these children who grow up to become teenagers easily seek dependency of drugs and alcohol. Studies show evidence that children who have seen or experienced physical violence, abuse, and fights when they were little are more likely to become drug dependants, substance abusers, and alcoholic dependants. Naturally, when people go through adversities like these, early on in their lives, they tend to develop a help seeking behaviour through unusual means like these. This kind of substance abuse easily lead to anxiety and mood disorders. It can get so severe that the individual would consider his/her basic necessity for survival. It not only harms their mental health but there is deterioration in their physical health as well. It is very important to identify such kind of behaviour so that unnecessary consequences in the future could be avoided. Presence of friends, family and well wishers is of great value when dealing with conditions like these. Seeking professional medical help should be a priority in such cases. If not tackled early, these individuals are bound to resort towards suicide as an option even attempt it. A study done in 1988 says that suicide attempt rates among adolescents who do not have a home or a family, have shot up from 18% to 53%. The thought of committing a suicide not only gets to the homeless, but it tends to grip every individual who has had dark experiences in the past, depending on the severity of affection by these issues.
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Get custom essayMental Health has been an ongoing grave issue since quite sometime now. It has been looked down upon and we have been failing to give it the attention it actually needs. After discussing the factors above, there is a need to eradicate the stigma associated towards it, educate and make people aware about the seriousness of the issue. According to the fact file by World Health Organisation, about 8,00,000 people die every year due to suicide. It also forms the second leading cause of death in the 15-29 year olds. Mental health is as important as physical health, in many cases rather more important than physical health. This essay shows that mental health awareness is the need of the hour, so that necessary steps can be taken towards cutting off mental health issues through better management of them and increasing the number of resources which can help us tackle these issues easily.
In the 19th century, Montreal had become the central hub for economic activity, where businesses settled their factories and their wealthy owners settled their families. Griffintown in particular became a magnet for Irish emigrants escaping troubles in their native country of Ireland. Whether they were escaping the cholera crisis or the famine, Irish newcomers would largely contribute to becoming the growing working-class population of Griffintown. It was not an ideal residential area and instead became a “busy inner-city working-class neighborhood”, where, Irish emigrants worked on the Lachine canal immediately after arriving to Montreal. The newly arrived Irish population were at a significant economic disadvantage, they were not necessarily receiving high wages for the amount of labor they put into the canal. Out of this, a set perception of the Irish in Montreal arose. Middle-class views towards them mostly involved negative connotations, the image of: an impoverished group, of a sickly lot, of a barbarous nature. The noticeable strain between the classes translates itself through the participation in sports. In an era where Griffintown’s working-class were labelled with many preconceptions, perhaps more positive memories like the popularization of sports in Irish industrial working-class neighborhoods, could alleviate such presumptions. Sports such as lacrosse and hockey were utilized by the upper-class to undermine working-class communities, however also served as a tool of empowerment for the latter. This essay will look at the role of sports in enabling working-class Irishmen to display their worth through a strong sense of masculinity, increase their morale while at the same time build a certain level of respectability and social status; all while overcoming negative presumptions about their community.
Get original essayThe Montreal Shamrocks, the first Canadian hockey team, on a grand scale, acts as truly the first leading symbol of Canadian nationalism, but for the Irish community, it was a means of displaying their manly prowess on stage. In the article “Imagining a Canadian Identity through Sport: A Historical Interpretation of Lacrosse and Hockey”, Robidoux explains the reasoning behind the need for a distinct Canadian sport. Canadians are looking to create their own identity and disassociate with Britain, which could explain why Canadian soil has all but forgotten cricket. The sport is a no-contact sport and, it represents “civil expressions of masculinity”. Ironically, a less popularized sport in today’s society followed suit: lacrosse. The Montreal Shamrocks Lacrosse Club was the foundation of the Shamrocks hockey team. It focused on “physical superiority, bodily awareness,” that during colonization, was borrowed by the French because of “their infatuation with First Nations masculinity”. George Beers, a middle-class dentist, took the initiative to promote lacrosse as Canada’s national sport. From promoting in newspapers, writing a whole book in support for its inclusion as Canada’s national sport, he eventually wrote the first set of rules for the game.
This new and improved sport “benefitted both mind and soul.” This clearly eliminates or otherwise limits the originally physical aspects of the sport, coming to the interpretation that violence and roughness was not a part of a middle-class ideal of masculinity. As Robidoux mentions, the Montreal Shamrocks LC were the “social misfits”, and part of the working-class: they were the complete opposite. The Shamrocks lacrosse team created a distinct shift between other teams in the league. The players, originating from the working class, were mostly catholic, and often disagreed with Beers’ “elite anglo values” rules of the games. On the field, they completely disregarded these new standards as a sign of revolt against their social superiors, but this can also be interpreted as a showing of their fearlessness, machismo and an attempt to challenge the undermining of their character. Being more violent, aggressive, and physical is precisely what Beers wanted removed from the sport, because it was seen as a primitive form of play associated with indigenous tribes. In this sense, the working-class Irishmen who were part of the lacrosse team were seen as barbarous and thus this image is relayed to the rest of the working- class Irish population in Montreal.
Griffintown and other Irish neighborhoods were a large part of the supporting factor of the Shamrocks LC. Their fans were “boisterous and verbally offensive” towards the middle-class’ “soft play” per say, again as a show of distaste for their superiors. The type of “manly” behavior that fans were exposed to certainly influenced them as it was not uncommon for scuffles to occur amongst fans in the middle of play. For example, a few “Irish [Shamrocks fans] assaulted fans of the opposite team during a match between the Shamrocks and another Montreal team” in order to distract the opposite team, wanting to win, no matter what means. One could even mention the importance of muscular Christianity to the working-class Irish folk. This notion is meant to exemplify teamwork and perseverance through recreational activities, but also “achieving salvation” while being in good health.11 In this case hockey and lacrosse are used as a tool to grow such traits in men. For example, St-Ann’s parish in Griffintown still “operated sports teams for the boys” in the 1950s, showing just how important sports had become within the religious community on a long-term basis and its connection with a certain ideal of masculinity and manliness throughout. This arguably gave them a sense of pride, and further solidified their Irish identity.
In a diary written by a British traveler named Michael Buckley, he recalls the Irish in Montreal being extremely involved with the game of Lacrosse. He notes their perseverance in practice and their desire for achieving “glory”. Interestingly, this sport did not bring to fruition any monetary reward, yet the working-class Irish men still took time out of their limited hours to the position in which the men are posed. The players aim to show the definition in their muscles and raise their chests. This picture very much exemplifies a strong sense of manliness in their composure participate. As Buckley notes, “they were all artisans and had little time for so laborious an amusement as Lacrosse”. This indicates that sports were more than just physical activity but more so acted as a distraction form their busy daily lives in a way uplifting the morale, that was often quite low. Similarly, it served as a way to entertain their own community as well, as “thousands are to assemble…having paid fifty cents a head”. Lacrosse, and later hockey, became an outlet for entertainment and an amusement among most of the Irish community.
Being involved in sports meant that even if one was part of the Irish working-class, they would still exude high respectability as a man, even if it was respect coming from the lower-classes of the Irish. For Irish lacrosse athletes originating from working-class or poorer backgrounds in Montreal, it was a means for them to gain some sort of respectability and break through the barrier between themselves and the middle-class or the bourgeois. The notion of coming out as the victor, no matter what type of violent, aggressive or physical game is played, was certainly not a quality in the middle-class, gentlemanly play that can be observed in other teams, where most players were economically superior. Chi-Kit Wong is very adamant in stating that, as opposed to hockey, lacrosse very much grew as “a manifestation of working-class culture.” There was an attempt to bring Lacrosse into the mainstream line of “Anglophone culture”, trying to remove the “undesirable”, making it solely available to the elite. In essence, lacrosse certainly is, as Robidoux states, “an identifiable articulation of who they were as men”, but also as a way of making themselves visible to the upper-classes, especially for the Irish Montrealers.17 Following lacrosse, hockey became the main sport that Canada nationalized and made its own. Overtime, the gentlemanly play that was encouraged by the bourgeois and middle-class members of society quickly faded away. The “violent and aggressive style separated itself from other bourgeois pastimes”. Several sport writers were not very receptive of hockey because it “[stood] unfit for gentlemen”. The ideas of roughness and physicality that were looked down upon previously in lacrosse were now glorified and praised, newspapers were very active in reporting for sports, being critical of the roughness, but also praising their abilities. The Montreal Shamrocks hockey club was an organization that not only represented the Irish as a whole but also the values of community. It is clear how both lacrosse and hockey played a role in igniting certain expectations for working class groups but also igniting a certain level of animosity and rivalry between them and the middle-class. This is an example of the type of journalism surrounding sports, this article is titled “Lacrosse: Shamrocks Badly Beaten.” This piece is interesting because of the vocabulary being used, the writer clearly associates the sport of lacrosse, but also the title of the Shamrocks, to the Irish class, showing just how much they have proved themselves worthy of the sport. However, the Torontonian also downgrades the Montreal Shamrocks saying, “it only took the Torontos two minutes to demonstrates their superiority.” One could interpret a sense of class difference and bias between both communities. The rivalry between both teams is clear but more importantly the opposition between the classes is evident.
The power of sports quite evidently intersects in the lives of Irish-Montrealers their social standing began to change. As lacrosse started off as a working-class sport and slowly transitioned to a sport of bourgeoisie, hockey quickly became an institutionalized sport and became quite common in schools of higher education. Naturally, this leads to opportunities for the Irish community, working-class or not, to expand into a more respectable social class and appear reputable to others outside of their circle. In Canada’s library and archives collection, Michelle Vigneault writes about French-Canadian participation in the sport of hockey. In this, he emphasizes how the Irish were responsible for teaching French students within these universities. To put into perspective, the amount of Francophone teams and players increased dramatically, by 1900, there were 148 francophone players when comparing to a measly two players in 1885. It is interesting to note how even through attending separate schools (Loyola was built exclusively for anglophones, currently part of Concordia University), Vigneault notes how both groups still created a bond and cooperated together in the sport of hockey. While the French-Canadians were mostly denied from entering senior hockey teams, the Irish community often supported them. Not only did sports create positive relationships with other groups, but hockey propelled many Irish- Montrealers into the upper class of Montreal. Where for example, members from the 1901 Montreal Shamrocks hockey team quickly became respected members of society, more notably Harry Trihey. Who became quite an established lawyer after leaving the team.
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Get custom essayIn conclusion, the role of sports within the working-class, specifically for the Irish community in Montreal, was impactful. It acted as a morale booster for many of the men and their families, becoming a hobby that would define the very character of their community. It allowed Irish men who were constantly undermined to find a common ground, or at least attempt to create a space for themselves on the playing social field and stand equally amongst the bourgeoisie, even mingling with other groups. Playing lacrosse and hockey provided the Irish working class a sense of manly pride and worth amongst themselves that throughout the late 19th century, could not receive anywhere else. Lacrosse and hockey indeed worked as an overall social and political role in the lives of the Irish working-class.
The Hemingway code hero is almost always a man, but in The Sun Also Rises, the real code hero is lead female Brett Ashley. From her cropped hair to her penchant for partying, Lady Brett Ashley is more code hero-like than any of her fellow expatriates, including male leads Jake Barnes and Robert Cohn.
Get original essayAside from her boyish mannerisms -- from her “man’s hat” to her habit of referring to herself as a “chap” -- Ashley is, as a woman, ironically one of the manliest characters.
Who is Hemingway’s ideal man? He has a Brit’s stiff upper lip, and can handle women, alcohol, and life’s misfortunes equally well. He lives his life to the fullest. Brett is all of these and more. Contrary to her carefree and fun-loving personality, she has not had an easy life. Her first (and perhaps true) love died in the war, and her second husband (Lord Ashley) was an intimidating, paranoid man who slept with a loaded gun under his pillow and forced Brett to sleep on the floor. Yet Brett does not parade these events; instead, when confronted by others, she uses her catchphrase: “Don’t let’s talk about it.”
Another common trait of the code hero -- proving his “manliness” -- is his many romantic affairs. Lady Ashley certainly behaves like a man in this regard. She goes through men quickly and emotionlessly, often having two or even three loose relationships at a time. (At one point, she is engaged to Mike Campbell, travels with Count Mippipopolous as well as Cohn, and teases Barnes. Later, she pursues Pedro Romero while still engaged and fends off a heartbroken and desperate Cohn.) Most importantly, the code hero likes but does not need women, and Lady Ashley can definitely stand on her own. If Brett Ashley were a man, she would be the playboy who leaves a string of love-struck women in his wake.
Like Hemingway, a code hero should have an affinity for and ability to handle his alcohol well. Brett is one of the best drunks, if not the best, in the novel. She, like her friends, is constantly drinking, but there is never a scene in which the spirits loosen her lips or cause her to lose her temper, the way a drunk Cohn often does. In fact, Hemingway writes a drunk Lady Ashley the same way he writes a (rarely) sober Lady Ashley. In keeping with the code hero archetype, Brett is always somewhat reticent, even under the influence of brandy.
Perhaps the one unifying thread in all of the code hero’s characteristics is the desire for an exciting life. Lady Brett Ashley is what we might call today a “jet-setter.” She parties hard, is always drinking, and travels often -- usually surrounded by a gaggle of men (“swine,” as Cohn calls them). Brett has the glamorous life of a 1920s expat, but instead of living it as a woman, she lives it as a man.
Compare Lady Ashley with two of the novel’s other prominent males. Robert Cohn often whines to Jake Barnes about his boredom with Paris. He complains about his fiancée Frances’s tyranny and Brett’s disinterest. Robert is easily provoked (acquaintance Harvey Stone half-jokingly calls him a “moron” and Robert throws a fit) and has almost girlish mood swings. Cohn is the one character who wears his heart on his sleeve -- he is a “romantic.” In this category, Jake Barnes does better. He seems to be a quiet, pensive man. He is a stoic.
However, Barnes fails in the romance category. He shows no hint of desire for a woman other than Brett, besides his short (and indifferent) date with the prostitute Georgina, and we never hear of his past relationships. Even Cohn, seen as the most pathetic member of their Lost Generation, has had a wife and a current fiancée. And Robert Cohn has his own problems. He hangs onto Brett even though their tryst is long over. Neither man can behave like a code hero and let Brett go. Additionally, both are dominated by women -- Cohn is afraid of Frances, and Barnes is basically Brett’s concierge (arranging tickets, dates, and bailouts).
Jake Barnes is not a bad example of a Hemingway man, however. He can hold his alcohol well; we never read a scene in which he loses his cool thanks to his drink. In contrast, Cohn is a lightweight. He doesn’t seem to enjoy alcohol as much as the rest, and drunk, he punches Jake and Mike Campbell, and then goes after Pedro Romero. Neither Jake nor Robert are any match for Brett when it comes to women (or men) and alcohol, or to being Hemingway’s ideal man.
Most of Hemingway’s works have a code hero. In this story, it is Ashley. (A description of the Hemingway man can also be found in Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If.”) Yes, there are other men -- Jake Barnes, Bill Gorton, the Count -- who show code-hero traits. But in The Sun Also Rises, none so fully embody the Hemingway ideal man as Lady Brett Ashley.