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Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. Materiovigilance Programme of India (MvPI)
3. Conclusion

Introduction

The word materiovigilance is a combination of two words – ‘material’ which means ‘a physical substance that things can be made from’ and ‘vigilance’ which means ‘more careful attention, especially in order to notice possible danger’. Hence the term materiovigilance is defined as “close monitoring of any undesirable occurrence resulting from a medical device by means of having a system in place which comprises identifying, collecting, reporting, and estimating undesirable occurrences and reacting to them, or safety corrective actions after their post-marketing phase 1 ”. Any instrument, apparatus, machine, appliance, implant, reagent for in-vitro use, software or other articles to be used for humans for specific medical purposes is termed as medical device. Examples of medical devices include a wide variety of devices, like thermometer which are used very commonly to advanced medical ventilators used in critical care units. Indeed, present medical care is tremendously dependent on medical devices for prevention, diagnosis, treatment and investigation of diseases and injuries.

The use of medical devices may also lead to occurrence of some adverse events, for e.g.- incorrect test results by a glucometer, malfunctioning of an infusion pump leading to injury to the patient, a malfunctioning automated external defibrillator device (AED) leading to electrical burns to a patient or a health service provider etc. Thus, there arises a need for a system to be in place so that such events can be reported and noted by an agency so that it helps in identifying the risks associated with medical devices and to withdraw those medical devices from the market and to eliminate the dangers of such adverse events occurring in future. And that void has been filled by the concept of Materiovigilance.

Materiovigilance Programme of India (MvPI)

The Drugs and Cosmetic Act, 1940 lists rules governing medical devices under Schedule R1. These rules are related to manufacture, distribution, sale, import and export of medical devices in India. The Materiovigilance Programme of India was approved by the Ministry of Health and family Welfare on 10/02/2015 and it was launched on 06/07/2015 by DCGI at Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission in Ghaziabad. It was decided that Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology (SCTIMST), Thiruvananthapuram, will be National Collaborating Centre; National Health System Resource Centre (NHSRC), New Delhi, be Technical support partner, and Central Drugs Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO), New Delhi, will function as regulator. The purpose of this programme is to monitor medical device associated adverse events (MDAE), and to create awareness in health-service providers regarding the value reporting these adverse events and also to keep a check on the risk-benefit ratio of medical devices. The programme also aims at providing independent, evidence-based data and directions on the safety of medical devices and to convey the findings to the stakeholders.

The stakeholders involved are

1. Professional staff at IPC, SCTIMST, NHSRC and all such institutions that would serve as stakeholders of the programme.
2. Representatives of Medical Device Monitoring Centre
3. Staff and consultants in CDSCO
4. Policy makers at all levels of healthcare, particularly those concerned with Medical Device policy
5. Under MvPI clinicians, biomedical engineers, clinical engineers, hospital technology managers, pharmacists, nurses, technicians can report medical device adverse events. Medical device manufactures/CDSCO-notified medical device manufactures/medical devices’ importers-traders can also report adverse events specific to their product to the National Coordinating Centre
6. Medical Technologists and Innovators

The adverse events have been classified according to severity into – 1) Death of a patient, user of the device or other person, 2) Serious injury to a patient, user or other person, and 3) No Death or Serious Injury occurred but the event might lead to death or serious injury of a patient, user or other person, if the event recurs. The reporting of the medical device associated adverse events is to be done through the form prescribed by MvP 3. The reporting can be done by clinicians, biomedical engineers, clinical engineers, hospital technology manager, pharmacists, nurses and technicians. Medical device manufacturers can also report adverse events specific for their product. A toll-free helpline number – 1800-180-3024 has also been made available and can be used to get assistance for reporting the adverse events.

The major utilization of Materiovigilance is

1. Prevention injuries and complications
2. Improvement of design and efficiency of medical devices
3. Reporting and investigation of medical device associated adverse events
4. Implementation of corrective actions to prevent adverse events in future Materiovigilance in other countries

In United States of America, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) has a similar programme known as Medical Device Reporting (MDR). In this programme FDA, has made it mandatory for the manufacturers, device user facilities, and importers to report medical device related adverse events which is called as Mandatory Medical Device Reporting. The second category is of Voluntary Medical Device Reporting which consists of healthcare professionals, patients, caregivers and consumers, who are encouraged by the FDA to submit reports of adverse events voluntarily. In France, there is a national surveillance commission for medical devices (Commission de Matério vigilance). In Australia, there is Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) which functions under the Department of Health of the Australian government. In United Kingdom, there is Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Discussion In a study done in San Francisco, over a period of 35 months, the autopsy findings revealed that out of 517 sudden cardiac deaths that occurred during that period 11 deaths occurred due to malfunction of cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) It has been reported that a company named, Intuitive Devices, which manufactures Robotic surgery devices – da Vinci – has become a target of 52 lawsuits against it since its FDA approval since 2000, due to malfunctions in their robotic surgery devices.

On 28 November 2017, the Therapeutics and Goods Administration (TGA) Australia decided to ban pelvic mesh implants, after repeated reports and studies indicating increased risk of injury and death in women receiving pelvic mesh implants for stress incontinence Recently, it has been reported that the Central Drug Standards Control Organization (CDSCO), has proposed changes in the existing law to introduce a compensation provision for approved drugs and medical devices that have an adverse impact on a patient

Conclusion

Various medical devices are used by physicians to assist them in curing the patients and saving lives. They are in no way supposed to do any harm to the patients. Nowadays it has become a trend to blame the treating doctor in case of any bad outcome while treating a patient. It is very difficult for a common man to understand the complicated subject of medical science, but blaming the doctor has always been easy. It is true that, it is not always the doctor who is at fault, sometimes fault may lie somewhere else for example in the medicine or in the medical device. Hence, to find and to investigate those errors we require Pharmacovigilance along with Materiovigilance. The most important aim is to prevent those errors from reoccurring.

In pregnant woman there are many physiological changes during pregnancy, which are entirely normal, including changes in different trimesters and changes in different systems like cardiovascular, metabolic, renal, hematologic, and respiratory changes. The progesterone and estrogens levels rise continually during pregnancy, and they suppress the hypothalamic axis and therefore also the menstrual cycle.

Endocrine system (non-reproductive) changes:

1. Pituitary hormones The levels of FSH/LH falls due to high levels of estrogen and progesterone, the levels of ACTH and melanocyte stimulating hormone increases, The levels of prolactin also increases, oxytocin also increases and ADH levels are unchanged.
2. Thyroid and parathyroid gland The concentration of Thyroxin-binding globulin increases due to increased estrogen levels. Levels of T4 and T3 increase during first half of pregnancy and then normal ranges are slightly reduced during second and third trimester. After first trimester the production of TSH is stimulated. This rise in TSH indicate iodine deficiency or sub clinical hypothyroidism. During pregnancy women are relatively iodine-deficient, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends an increased intake of iodine during pregnancy.

Adrenal gland and pancreas Levels of cortisol increases during pregnancy, which helps in lipogenesis and fat storage. There is increase in insulin response so blood sugar remain normal or low. After early stages of pregnancy due to increased production of cortisol, progesterone, prolactin, and human placental lactogen the peripheral insulin resistance increases. Gestational diabetes is thought to reflect a pronounced insulin resistance of this sort.

Cardiovascular system changes 5 Peripheral vasodilation is present. There is increase in cardiac output by 20% by week 8, and then further increased up to 40% at week 20-28. There is further increase of cardiac output during labour and immediately after delivery, then it returns to normal within an hour. The increased cardiac output increase the heart rate of 10-20 beats per minute.

Respiratory system changes 9 There is increase in tidal volume by 200ml, there is increase in vital capacity and decrease in residual volume and there is no significant alteration in respiratory rate. Increase in metabolic rate and oxygen consumption due to increased oxygen demand. 1.2e) Alimentary system changes During early pregnancy nausea and vomiting are common. Specific cravings and appetite are usually increased. Constipation is common in pregnancy due to reduced gastrointestinal motility and transit time. Which allows increased nutrient absorption.

Urinary tract changes the increased renal blood flow and glomerular filtration rate up to 50-60% is due to increased blood volume and cardiac output during pregnancy. Which reduce blood levels of urea, urate, bicarbonate, creatinine due to increased excretion. The bladder smooth muscle relaxes increasing capacity which leads to risk of urinary tract infection.

Hematological changes There is increase in plasma volume by 50% during pregnancy. Due to this Dilutional anemia occurs. By the end of second trimester the total red cell mass increased due to elevated erythropoietin levels. Pregnancy needs addition amounts of iron for about 1000mg.

Metabolic changes Increased basal metabolic rate by 15-20% over the course of pregnancy. There is no increase in energy requirements during first or second trimesters, in third trimester there is an increase by 200 kcal. For pregnant women with normal body mass index (BMI) the recommended weight gain in pregnancy is 11.4 to 15.9 kg. The weight gain is due to fetus, membranes, placenta and amniotic fluid the rest is maternal stores of fat and protein.

Diagnosis of Pregnancy

Woman herself can detect the beginning of pregnancy based on symptoms, or by using pregnancy tests. 18 and some non-pregnant women strongly believe that they are pregnant and also have some of the physical changes. This condition is referred as a false pregnancy.19 pregnancy can be diagnosed by physical changes, biomarkers, scanning.

Physical signs There are number of early symptoms that can signify pregnancy. Physical signs associated with pregnancy include:

• Basal body temperature increases for 2 weeks after ovulation.
• The menstrual periods are stopped
• Hegar’s sign – uterus isthmus become soften
• Goodell’s sign – vaginal portion of the cervix become soften
• Chadwick’s sign - cervix, vagina, and vulva becomes darken
• The presence of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) in the blood and urine
• During implantation of the embryo in the uterus implantation bleeding occurs at third or fourth week after last menstrual period
• Increase in hormones levels causes darkening of the nipples and areolas and linea nigra due to hyper pigmentation.20

All human beings spend the first nine months of their lives in their mother's womb. From the moment of birth, we wrestle with the notion of "mother": we love this woman and feel intense connections to her, and yet we inevitably need to separate ourselves from her. At some point we must all cut the proverbial umbilical cord, and this is often an extremely painful process for both ourselves and our mothers. In Tar Baby, Lucy and Brown Girl, Brownstones, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid and Paule Marshall address this issue of the "maternal problematic" the human need to wrench free from the maternal bond and to create a set of values, expectations, and desires for oneself independent of the maternal. Jadine, Lucy and Selina go through very different processes in these novels, but what connects them is their struggle for freedom, and to establish selves beyond the scope of the mother. In this sense then, these are all coming-of-age novels, for they trace the progress of three Black women trying to carve a space for themselves in the world. In the following pages I will discuss how each of these protagonists negotiates this powerful "maternal problematic" their rebellions against it, and the effectiveness of their respective strategies.

Jadine Childs' mother died when she was twelve, but this does not exempt her from the maternal problematic, for Jadine is haunted by images of the maternal. This is established from the start of the book, when Morrison tells us of the "mother/sister/she" whom Jadine encounters in a Parisian supermarket, "with eyes whose force had burnt away their lashes." (Tar Baby p. 46) This woman in yellow is the supreme representation of womanhood and motherhood, with "too much hip, too much bust," and symbolic eggs in hand. Jadine is made intensely uncomfortable by this woman, and yet she also falls in love with her; this tension defines her attitude toward the maternal. Later, we learn that Ondine and Sydney, her aunt and uncle who had become "her people" since the death of her mother, "mattered a lot to her, but what they thought did not." (p. 49) Jadine has conspicuously distanced herself from "her people" and the notion of motherhood, and this alienation will come back to haunt her, quite literally, as the book progresses.

For Jadine, as for many people, the notion of the maternal often manifests itself in forms other than that of a mother per se, such as tradition, history, the notion of home, and feelings of responsibility towards others. Jadine rejects all of these, and in so doing, rejects the maternal and the idea of family. Her professed appreciation of Picasso over Itumba masks and "Ave Maria" over gospel music are examples of her renunciation of her cultural roots. And in Eloe, an all-Black town, Jadine feels intensely alienated from Son's friends and relatives; she is unable to relate to members of her own race. As Therese observes, Jadine "has forgotten her ancient properties." (p. 305) She is uncomfortable with her heritage as a Black woman, and feels alienated from the culture of her mother and her mother's mothers; this is a thus a way of rejecting the maternal. Jadine's relationships with the people in her life are also indicative of this struggle with the notion of the maternal.

While Jadine is affectionate towards Sydney and "Nanadine" her surrogate mother of sorts, she is not very respectful or considerate; her decision to leave L'Arbe de la Croix with Son without informing them illustrates her stance toward her family. Jadine is unappreciative of the hardship that Sydney and Ondine have faced to support her, and her constant reminders to Son that Valerian "put her through school" make it clear that she credits Valerian with her education and opportunities, not her aunt and uncle. Jadine's rejection of any responsibility toward "her people"is itself is a form of rebellion against the maternal. Jadine's relationship with Son is another form in which she deals with ideas of the maternal. Morrison writes that Son "unorphaned her completely" Son became a home for her, and "gave her a brand-new childhood" (p. 229) Yet Son also confronts her with her own failures and weaknesses; at one point in the novel, he tells her "you don't know anything, anything at all about your children, and anything at all about your mama." (p. 265) Jadine cannot accept being so vulnerable to someone, compromising for him or being held accountable to him, and she eventually leaves Son; this, is part of her rejection of the maternal.

In Eloe, Jadine confronts Son's home and eventually rejects it, too. Jadine has never had a home, and she is disquieted by being called "daughter" by an older woman. This discomfort manifests itself in the form of mother ghosts, who haunt her at night. These women, including her own mother and the "mother/sister/she" of the supermarket, expose their breasts and eggs to her, taunting Jadine with their maternal prowess. She exclaims, "I have breasts too," but they don't believe her, and neither does the reader. These women represent the force of the maternal which constantly haunts Jadine, and which she herself can never possess. Interestingly, in this scene we learn that Jadine normally dreams of hats; this is significant because of her tearful disclosure to Son earlier in the novel about the "awful hat" she had worn to her mother's funeral. Thus, while Jadine is constantly absorbed in the maternal problematic, it is only in Eloe that it rises to the level of consciousness. Yet Jadine is still not aware of the meaning of these mother ghosts, for she thinks to herself, "what did they have in common even, besides the breasts". She is unable to recognize the tension within herself with regards to the issue of motherhood.

Jadine flees Eloe, and in so doing flees the maternal apparitions, as well as the idea of home. Eventually, she runs from Son, too, and the vulnerability which she allowed herself to reveal to him. Jadine is entirely unable to give herself to someone, and it is to this that Ondine refers when tells her niece, "a girl has got to be a daughter first. She have to learn that. And if she never learns how to be a daughter, she can???t never learn how to be a woman."(p. 281) Jadine disrespects her aunt and uncle, leaves Son and runs away from the United States, all because she cannot face the issue of the maternal. It is a very fine line between dependence and independence, especially between parents and children, and this is the line which daughters must walk. Jadine is too afraid to walk this line, and this fear ensures that she will be perpetually alone.

Lucy, of Jamaica Kincaid's novel by the same name, deals with many of the same problems as Jadine. She too is constantly running from her mother Annie, and rebelling against all which her mother represents. Annie is a constant presence in Lucy's life, despite the great distance between them, and there is hardly a chapter in the novel in which Lucy's mother is not mentioned. Lucy is aware that she is haunted by her family; she calls them "the millstone around your life's neck," and questions "if ever a day would go by when these people I had left behind, my own family, would not appear before me in one way or another." (Lucy p. 8) Yet like Jadine, Lucy's attempt to escape from the maternal is ineffective, for Annie still dominates her life. The first mention of Lucy's mother is associated with her letter to Lucy about the danger of the subways; even from thousands of miles away, Annie is able to incite fear in her daughter's heart and thereby control her.

Lucy's relationship to her mother is highly complex; she has very ambivalent feelings about her. She is cruel to her, but also loves her deeply; she hates her and admires her at the same time. Although Lucy constantly discusses her anger toward her mother and Annie's inadequacy and failure as a mother, she also peppers the novel with tender stories of their interactions. Lucy describes her mother's large hands, and her love of plants; she tells us of Annie's lessons to Lucy about sex, men, and abortion, and of sitting on Annie's lap as a child and caressing her face. Lucy also proudly shares stories of her mother's life and her various triumphs. Despite Lucy's anger toward her mother, she still feels a deep connection to her and identifies with her in many ways.

Yet for Lucy, what seems more potent is her fury. She is angry with her mother for numerous reasons: her devotion to an unworthy husband, her failure to encourage Lucy as much as she encouraged Lucy's brothers, and the fact that "my mother would never come to see that perhaps my needs were more important than her wishes." (p. 64) Lucy thus flees her home and becomes an au pair, substantiating her past claim that "when I turn nineteen I will be living at home only if I drop dead."(p. 112) Yet what Lucy chooses instead is to live and work in someone else's home, and this creates interesting conflicts for her.

Lucy's relationship to Mariah, her employer, parallels this mother/daughter dynamic, and Lucy states that "Mariah was like a mother to me." (p. 110) Interestingly, Lucy writes, "the times that I loved Mariah it was because she reminded me of my mother. The times that I did not love Mariah it was because she reminded me of my mother." (p. 58) She is thus as ambivalent about Mariah as she is about her mother. And just as Lucy runs away from her mother, she also flees Mariah at the end of the novel.

Lucy's rejection of her mother extends beyond her physical location; she rebels against the maternal in other ways, such as refusing to open her mother's letters, and not going home when she learns of her father's death. Yet this rebellion does not bring Lucy any fulfillment, for like Jadine, in rejecting her mother so categorically, she is also rejecting herself. Even as a child, Lucy tells us that she was "a direct imitation"of her mother, and she says at one point in the novel that she was her mother. Hating her mother is thus a form of self-loathing. And although Lucy seems to hate her mother, she also longs for her, and she sadly recalls being "at the age where I could still touch my mother with ease," (p. 61) and the time "when she loved me without reservation." (p. 155) Of her time with Mariah, she says "his was the sort of time I wish I could have had with my mother, but, for a reason not clear to me, it was not allowed." (p. 60) Lucy is completely dominated by thoughts of her mother; her attempt to reject the maternal has thus backfired.

Lucy's biggest problem is the extremity of her thoughts and actions; she is unable to successfully negotiate the maternal problematic because her reactions are too severe. She states that in her past "I was my mother," (p. 90) while today "I am not like my mother. She and I are not alike" (p. 123) Lucy puts everything in black and white terms; rather than acknowledging the complexity of her relation to her mother, she classifies it strictly. This leaves no room for the give-and-take of successful daughtering.

Unlike Jadine, however, Lucy does not reject her heritage and in this sense is at peace with who she is. She describes her mother as "godlike,"and "something from an ancient book" (p. 151) this creates a striking parallel to Jadine's "ancient properties." Although Lucy struggles with her mother daily, she is embraces her mother's culture and this gives her a measure of fulfillment. Lucy's regret and shame are over her actions rather than her identity, and this is an important distinction. There is thus more hope for Lucy than for Jadine, for while she has perhaps behaved badly, she has not broken ties to her people. Indeed, in a letter to Lucy Annie writes "that she would always love me, she would always be my mother, my home would never be anywhere but with her." (p. 128) Lucy may fight this- she burns this letter- but she cannot deny it.

Lucy leaves the novel crying with shame over her wish to "love someone so much that I would die from it." (p. 164) Lucy does love someone that much, but she has thrown that love away because she could not adequately create a space for herself within it. When her mother tells her "You can run away, but you cannot escape the fact that I am your mother, my blood runs in you, I carried you for nine months inside me," (p. 90) Lucy interprets that as a prison sentence. Yet this is a prison sentence that all human beings must face, and Lucy's way of dealing with it leaves her empty and ashamed at the end of the novel. Indeed, she states, "I was now living a life I had always wanted to live. I was living apart from my family... The feeling of bliss, the feeling of happiness, the feeling of longing fulfilled that I had thought would come with this situation was nowhere to be found inside me." (p. 158)

By contrast, at the end of Brown Girl, Brownstones, Selina Boyce is a confident, mature woman with high hopes, who has accepted her lifelong connection to her mother without allowing it to dominate her life. For this reason, Selina is the most successful of these three characters at negotiating the complex maternal problematic. While Selina struggles violently with her mother, she is able to emerge from this "war" a whole person, with happiness and fulfillment almost visible on the horizon.

Like Annie, Silla is a powerful woman who inspires awe in her daughter. And like Lucy, Selina both hates and adores her mother; she aspires to be like her in some ways, and scorns her in others. Part of Selina's struggle is related to her identity as the child of two very different parents: is she Deighton's Selina, or Silla's Selina? During the first part of the novel, she tries hard to be Deighton"s Selina. But later in her life, after wrestling with these issues for years, she is able to own up to her connection to her mother, and tells Silla "I'm truly your child." Indeed, her name, Selina, derives from the name "Silla," and this is no coincidence. While Selina does resemble Deighton in some ways, for the most part she is Silla's Selina: she is confident, defiant, articulate and determined, and she refuses to capitulate to anyone or anything. She is also hard-working, passionate and strong; these are qualities which she inherited primarily from her mother, and qualities which she embraces within herself.

Like all mothers, Silla imposes her value system on Selina, and tries to make her daughter a close replica of herself. And Selina, like Lucy and Jadine, rebels against this; her behavior with the Association is a major component of this rebellion. Selina refuses to cater to Silla's desire to make money and "buy house;" her values are simply different, and she refuses to compromise.

Part of Selina's success in negotiating this conflict is her openness with her mother. When Silla strikes out at Selina, Selina strikes back; when Silla has Deighton deported, Selina calls her "Hitler" and beats her violently. This is not a covert battle; it is waged in the open, and this makes it easier on both parties. Another factor which contributes to Selina's success is the fact that she does not flee her problems with her mother the way Jadine and Lucy do. Selina leaves her mother when she is ready, after she has already waged and won her struggle for independence. Indicative of this is Silla"s reaction to Selina"s departure: "G'long! You was always too much woman for me anyway, soul." (Brown Girl, p. 307) By giving Selina her blessing, Silla shows that she is at peace with Selina's wresting free from her, and she understands that Selina's journey is necessary and inevitable.

When Selina does leave her mother, she does so on her own terms, and with optimism and hope for the future. Unlike Jadine, Selina has not rejected her heritage; she is going back to Barbados, the birthplace of her parents, and in so doing she is embracing her family's past. And by confronting Silla and telling her of her plans, Selina does not leave any loose ends. Thus, when Selina finally casts off her gold bangles at the conclusion of the novel, she is symbolically casting off the "millstone" around her life's neck. Selina will go to Barbados, but she will go as an individual. She has managed to carve a space for herself within the complicated mother-daughter dynamic, and she leaves the novel a whole person, with a complicated past and bright future.

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Thus, the "maternal problematic" is a vital component of these novels. These three women deal with this dilemma in their own ways, and some are more successful than others. In this sense, Brown Girl, Brownstones seems more complete than the other two novels, for while Selina has successfully completed her struggle for independence, Lucy and Jadine are still rebelling against the powerful force of the maternal. Neither of these women has quite learned how to be a daughter, and for that reason, neither is yet a woman. The reader can only hope that Lucy and Jadine are able to eventually deal with this issue, and create a space for themselves in the world as mature individuals, free of the burdens of guilt, shame and regret. Only when they come to terms with the maternal problematic can they be at peace with themselves and the world around them.

For my SL math exploration, I have chosen to model the carrying capacity of earth. Carrying capacity is a variable which denotes the number of people, other living organisms, or crops that a region can support without environmental degradation. In this exploration, I will be using different mathematical models to explore the growth rate of a population and at what point the population reaches the carrying capacity of earth. Reproduction is proportional to the number of individuals. In exponential growth, the population grows faster and faster, continuing to double in size at regular intervals. Exponential growth may be a good model for early stage populations such as bacteria.

However, exponential cannot continue for long for a population to reach an enormous value. Exponential growth cannot continue for long because the environment in which the population lives cannot support an infinite large population of species. Based on the amount of available food, space, water, and other essentials, an environment will have a carrying capacity. As a result, as the populations reach the environmental limits, the growth rates decrease, and in other cases, even if the population reaches environmental limits, the growth rate will not change.

In any given environment, there is always going to be a constrain on its growth of the species that live in that environment. As mentioned before, these environmental limits may be lack of resources such as food, water, space, etc. These limitations act as a 'ceiling' to the growth of the population. Populations may grow and gradually reach a maximum size, or they will continue to grow without a change in the growth rate. To be more concrete, there are 2 different types of population growth: logistic and exponential. These two functions have been evidently and accurately verified as the only models for population growth of species.

In nature, populations start by growing rapidly and exponentially however, due to environmental restrictions, they are limited. Although the following reasons are only fatal and don't have association with the carrying capacity, a population's growth rate may also slow down due to drop in fertility and birth rates, increase in mortality as a result of lack of health care, violence, disease, and other natural catastrophes. In logistic growth, the growth rate decreases as the population approaches a maximum size determined by the environmental setting, known as the carrying capacity. The variable 'K' represents carrying capacity.

Table of contents

1. Mating
2. Oestrus
3. Parenting
4. Human Behaviour & Wolf Behaviour

The concept of animal behaviour is considered to refer to everything about animals’ actions. These include movement and other activities underlying mental processes. The origins of the scientific study of animal behaviour lies within the works and explorations by European thinkers of the 17th and 19th centuries. British naturalists; John Ray and Charles Darwin and French naturalist Charles LeRoy “appreciated the complexity and apparent purposefulness of the actions of animals,” well knowing that understanding behaviour demanded a long-term observation of animals in their natural settings (Sherman, n.d.). These biologists recognized that behaviours of animals are due to adaptations that exist. Factors within animals’ behaviour can include communication and social living, learning, cognition and memory and mating and parenting. These factors are classified as innate or learned.

A truly outstanding animal; wolf is one of two wild doglike carnivores’ species. The gray wolf (Canis lupus) is also one of the most adaptable of all land mammals, the wolf or the most frequently recognized wolf species. It is the biggest non-domestic dog family member (Canidae) living in the Northern Hemisphere in vast fields of vegetation kinds. The wolf is a highly systematic social structure revolving around a dominant male and dominant female.

In this extended research task, it focuses on the topic mating and parenting by the animal species; wolves. It will later explore and discover how human behaviours and wolf behaviours are similar to each other.

Mating

As humans, it's simple to get lost in the manner we live, particularly in terms of social relations. While many individuals may have numerous romantic relationships in their lifetime, there is a powerful tendency to establish a single, monogamous connection. This is because the whole society is surrounded by moral systems, law and societal norms. But beings are only one species of animal and not all may behave the same.

A mating system was therefore built to portray how an animal community is structured by sexual reproduction and bonding behaviours. There are four main mating systems: monogamy, polyandry, polygyny, and polygynandry. Like beings, the wolves' mating system is monogamy, meaning two animals ' mate with each other. Due to there being a structural mating system, the type of animal behaviour within the wolf is innate; meaning it has been inherited. The other systems generally involve reproducing with different partners. For example, the female gray mouse lemurs benefit from the rare system Polyandry; female mating with multiple males (Welsh, 2011).

The oestrous cycle is the primary reproductive cycle of other female species of non-primate vertebrates. For Polyoestrous animals, seasonally Polyoestrous animals, and Monstrous creatures, there are various types of this process. Monstrous humans are animals with an annual oestrous cycle. The wolves are separated from the monstrous creatures in this situation.

There are three main phases within the Oestrus Cycle; the first stage is the proestrus stage where the alpha pair prepare before oestrus. Followed up by the first stage is oestrus which is the period where the pair mate. Lastly there is the gestation period where metestrus and diestrus occurs.

Anoestrus is not a stage in the cycle however, it is a prolonged period of sexual rest and the reproductive system is inactive and recovers. Wolves begin to breed between two and three years of age; from then on it’s said to mate for life.

Wolf reproductive bonds are easily rival or exceeds the typical human marital bond in their strength of courtship and breeding. With wolves, sexual activity, indicates the intensity of courtship behaviour. It ultimately emphasises the emotional ties and displays how sexual activity is not unique to sexual activity. Due to their strong level of courtship and attachment before oestrus, the levels continue to remain substantial year-round. Their breeding cycle can start as early as November or December the year before; where the alpha pairs, build their courtship. Hormone levels in both sexes start to rise during this period, to prepare for the mating season when the alpha female is in oestrus. This phase before oestrus is called the proestrus. This begins with the onset of bloody discharge from the vulva. Once discharge begins to appear, the female will actively body rub, paw and chin rest on her mate, also known as the alpha male of the pack. She will then stand in front of the male presenting her rear end to be sniffed. The alpha males are always near their alpha female, however, to ensure that no other pack member, or another alpha male ‘takes’ his alpha female, the male will scent her and put his urine all over her. During courtship or in general Proestrus stage, the alpha pair will stay away from other packs or their own pack members to avoid interruption during this preparation. In the animal species, wolves, alpha pairs will always go together as it is almost systematic. Therefore, the phrase “Males are promiscuous, and females are coy,” is a false statement towards wolves. Both genders are equal promiscuous, neither is coy. Alpha pair as stated before are highly sexual specie of animals. The only reason behind these assumptions are based on the differences in size and presumed energy cost of producing sperm versus eggs (Tang-Martinez, 2017).

Oestrus

At this stage, it will be between January and April; where the phase of copulation occurs, and the female is fertile; commonly known as Oestrus. A sign to distinctively announce her change of behaviour from being at proestrus to oestrus is the female will ‘stand’ for the male with her tail averted. If this fails to show, the female will paw, rub, straddle or climb the male. A success mating includes the multiple rapid pelvic thrusts by the male to build up ejaculation before becoming tied with the female. This tie can last up to 30 minutes or longer. During the time of the tie, the male and female remain standing or lie rear to rear with the male dismounted by raising one leg over the female’s back. The total number of copulations by result of the mating can greatly vary between different pairs.

The “pregnancy stage” can also commonly be known as the gestation period. Gestation period for wolves last between 60-63 days. During the gestation period metestrus and diestrus occurs. Metestrus approximately lasts for 4-6 days. This characterizes the activity of the corpus luteum, which produces progesterone. The levels of progesterone that are produces are high and continue to stay high through pregnancy and even if pregnancy does not occur. Afterwards, diestrus occurs this is when the wolf is sexually inactive between the recurrent periods of oestrus.

Near the end of April to middle of May, cubs are born and undergo through 4 major developmental periods; neo-natal stage, Transition stage, socialisation stage and Juvenile stage. After two or more years in the pack, many wolves may leave to search for a mate, discover a new territory or even star their own pack. Those who remain in their original pack might eventually replace a parent to become an alpha.

Parenting

In recognition, gray wolves are excessively social creatures that live in packs. In fact, one of the most socially active animals existing. Each member in the pack are responsible for helping with caring and upbringing the cubs. The pack includes; the alpha pair, the previous year’s offspring and multiple adult wolves that may or may not be related to the alpha breeding pair. This pack, as in many families will gather and supply resources to support a successful development process for the newborn pups.

During the gestation period, if not already established, the den or ‘home’ for their cubs will be chosen and dug out by both females and males. It can be helped out by other members in their pack also. Their site for the den is consisting of a natural hole or a burrow generally near water or sandy buffs. Water near their den site allows the female to have a large supply of water as it is essential for her while she produces milk for her cubs. Sandy buffs are the most favourable sites for the family as it funds tree foots; allowing it to protect the roof from collapsing and the entrance of the site from being dug out. If none of these are available, caves, crevices or holes under tree are also commonly uses. This den provides for females in the pack to stay with pups for the first few weeks to care for them; as they are completely helpless at birth. It also ensure that their own pack marks territory; in addition, it prevents any intrusion from other neighbour or broadly any pack and any predators.

For the first 45 days, the alpha female, the “mother”, will nurse the pups. She will provide them with regurgitated food to eventually learning how to eat meat. Pack members will bring food for the alpha to eat so she can concentrate on caring for her pups without needing to leave them alone to hunt. Other members can also regurgitate food for the pups to continue the social order and maintain the bonding process within the pack. To eat, the pups jump at the adult wolves’ faces and bite at their muzzles to encourage the regurgitation.

The primary component of a developed adult wolf’s diet is meat from various animals. This includes elk, deer, caribou, moose, beavers and rabbits. At about five weeks, the mother weans her pups so they can begin eating meat on their own without regurgitation. After weaning, the alpha female will carry her pups above ground or to “rendezvous” sites for the pups to play together and learn to hunt insects and small rodents. At 4 months old, once their teeth has developed, the pups will begin hunting with the adult wolves.

The alpha female will continue to bring her pups to the regular hunting with the adults. By the time the pups are half a year old they will be able to roam about 2-3 mils away from “rendezvous” sites. They will gradually stop using the sites and begin to follow the adults in the pack. This will require very little care towards the pups and will gradually become less. At age 2 the pups will leave the pack to find their own territory.

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Human Behaviour & Wolf Behaviour

While majority of society see wolves as vicious killers to be feared and hates. Unfortunate for those agree with the ‘stereotypical’ wolf, wolves has many commonalities with humans. Wolves and humans both adapt, eat the same things, communicate and generally survive similarly. Both species are territorial and evolved in families. Members of any healthy family assume specific roles to ensure the family thrives. For example, the mother and father or ‘alphas would make all decisions like mating and control the pack (Lamplugh, 2015). In particular to ‘mating’ and ‘parenting’, the mother (alpha) presents a unique perspective on mothering, especially as it relates massively to a human mother. These animal mothers demonstrate excellent motherhood skills as they prepare for and eventually take of their young. Like human mothers, the wolf mother begins preparing for her young long before the pups are present. “She is the creature of life, the giver of life, and the giver of abundant love, care and protection. Such are the great qualities of a mother.” This quote by archaeologist and scholar; Ama H. Vanniarachchy mentions how these traits of ‘love’, ‘care’ and ‘protection’ creates a great mother. This thoroughly supports the idea of how similar human and wolf mothering are alike. Both specie of mothers, create, nurture, supply and encourage a successful development this is seen by supplying homes, feeding them, taking care of them and more. Lastly, their reproductive cycle are quite similar. Both species naturally fertilizes by sexual activity, the only major difference is the duration of each phases and how many kids they have.

In Antoine de Saint Exupery’s short narrative “The Little Prince”, the division between adults and children is clearly defined through their use of imagination. The typical adult perspective is irrational and close minded. Adults fail to recognize the importance of relationships and imagination because they are obsessed with what they perceive to be “matters of consequence” (Exupery 135) and are incapable of change. As children grow into adults they mature along the way. With maturity typically comes responsibility. “The Little Prince” explores different aspects of responsibility. Exupery does this through the perspectives of the adults and children. Adults believe responsibility to be about overseeing and caring for possessions, whereas children believe responsibility to be about nurturing relationships.

Through the little prince and the narrator, readers learn that we have a responsibility to nurture, and value our relationships with others, and to not lose sight of what is truly important. The narrator of the story is an adult, but he is not categorized with the rest of the grown-ups because he still has an imagination and understands that money and “figures are a matter of indifference” (Exupery 142). To adults, numbers are essential. It is the only way in which they can understand things. As an example of this, the narrator explains that if you were to describe the beauty of a house to an adult, they would not understand you, but if you said to them “‘I saw a house that cost $20,000’” (Exupery 142), they would understand that it is a beautiful house. Numbers are a way of sharing information that is not open to interpretation. Numbers are factual and impersonal. Exupery therefore is suggesting to readers that the reason adults are only interested in figures is because they have no imagination or original thought.

Along with the adults’ interest in figures, Exupery uses the picaresque narrative of the little prince’s journey from his planet to Earth, to reveal to us the other negative traits which adults possess. The first adult that the little prince meets on his journey is the king. The negative personality trait which the king represents is a need for authority. They need to feel as if they are in control, even if this is a false sense of control. The king has no subjects to rule over, yet he claims that he reigns over everything. Adults wish to feel, like the king does, that their “rule [is] not only absolute: it [is] universal” (Exupery 154). Exupery explains to readers that the king is trapped by his own need for control and he does not realize that he has no meaningful relationships with other people.

Following his meeting with the king the little prince visits a second adult, the conceited man. Readers learn from this encounter that “to conceited men, all other men are admirers” (Exupery 157). Exupery explains to us that the irony in being conceited is that it makes a person lonely however, they need other people to confirm that they are “the best dressed, the richest, and most intelligent” (Exupery 158). The only way for a vain person to be sure that they are the best, is for them to have nobody around for them to compare themselves to, yet to confirm that they are the best, they require praise from another person. After this second encounter with an adult, readers begin to notice the contradictions adults live with along with their repulsive character traits.

Readers gain more awareness of the flawed character traits of adults when the little prince meets the tippler. The little prince and readers are confused by this character because of his flawed logic. The prince discovers that the man drinks in order to forget he is “ashamed of drinking” (Exupery 159). This character teaches us that adults are likely to ignore important underlying problems, and instead search for quick solutions. They want a quick fix so that they do not need to think about troublesome things. Due to his lack of imagination, the tippler is not able to realize that there is a deeper underlying problem to his drinking habit. The tippler uses drinking as a way to fill a void in his life, similar to the way in which some adults use work to fill a void.

The adult which the prince encounters on the fourth planet is the businessman. This man represents many adults and has a trait which they all possess; preoccupation with work and matters of consequence. He barely has time for interaction with another human being. The businessman represents a phenomenon of modern society where it is common for an adult’s only concern to be money and work. The businessman explains to the prince that he has only been distracted from his work three times “during the fifty-four years that [he has] inhabited this planet” (Exupery 160). Fifty-four years is over half a lifetime, and during this time the businessman has done nothing useful. He has formed no important human relationships or accomplished anything other than accurately counting all his possessions and writing down that number on to a piece of paper. Although this man believes that his work is important, it truly has no significance and by looking at this situation through the eyes of the little prince, the reader can understand how empty life is without human interaction. On the fifth planet the prince visits, he has a brief interaction with the lamplighter. This is the only adult he meets who thinks “of something else besides himself” (Exupery 164). The lamplighter has a devotion to keeping the planet lit, even though his planet now turns so quickly that he must light the lamp every minute. He blindly follows obsolete orders, which in a way is admirable because of his faithfulness, yet this faithfulness also represents adults’ inability to change.

Another man who exemplifies an inability to change is the geographer, who is the last man the prince meets before traveling to Earth. The prince finally believes he has met a man with a “real profession”, however the geographer appears to follow rules which are equally as obsolete as the rules the other adults adhere to. According to this man, “‘the geographer is much too important to go loafing about’” (Exupery 166). The geographer’s rigid belief that he is too important to explore his planet for himself has led to his lack of knowledge about his planet. The geographer does teach the prince one important lesson however, and that is that the flower which the prince left behind on his home planet is ephemeral. To the geographer this means that the flower is unimportant because it will not be around forever, but to the prince this means that his flower is important, and he needs to nurture and appreciate it while he can. From this encounter readers can understand that the flower is symbolic of human relationships, and it is important to spend time caring for other people. The geographer frustrates readers because he follows insignificant rules and is not willing to change.

The reader’s take-away from the prince’s encounters with these adults is that their beliefs are all absurd, irrational, and contradictory. Their lack of imaginations causes them to become obsessed with arbitrary tasks and they have no time to form meaningful relationships. They believe they only have time for things which are important, yet they do not understand that there is more to life than how many things they own, control, or oversee. Some of the adults such as the lamplighter, or the drunk are somewhat capable of seeing the absurdity in their actions however, they are incapable of change. The adults’ main problem is that they are only capable of attaching value to objects which they deem to be commodifiable. Human relationships, knowledge, and imagination are not important to them because they have no obvious extrinsic value.

Works Cited

Exupery, Antoine de Saint. “The Little Prince”. Rpt. in Eng 191. Comp. Maria Mikolchak. St. Cloud, MN: St. Cloud State University, 2015. P. 132-192.

The Victorian Period of British Literature involved many changes in British culture; one of the defining qualities of Queen Victoria’s reign was a loss of faith in the Church. A number of social changes caused an increasing number of people to question their faith and leave organized religion, resulting in the "crises of faith" that were becoming more common among the population. English poet Matthew Arnold’s “Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse” best exemplifies the many crises of faith experienced by Englishmen during the Victorian Age through Arnold’s use of description and metaphors. “Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse” takes place in a monastery in the French Alps. Arnold’s work describes the crisis of faith he has been experiencing. Arnold does not return to the monastery to recover his lost faith in Christianity; he instead chooses to write about his struggle with any kind of faith. Throughout the poem, he makes it clear that he will not and cannot return to the Christian Church.

Upon entering the monastery, Arnold begins to reminisce about youth and his eventual crisis of faith. He recalls how “rigorous teachers seized [his] youth” (67) and indoctrinated him into the Christian faith. Arnold hears his former teachers speaking to him in the monastery. They ask him, “What dost thou in this living tomb?” (72). The reason for Arnold’s visit to the monastery is called into question. Matthew responds to this question in the lines following the inquery. In his response, Arnold first seeks forgiveness for visiting the monastery; he writes, “Forgive me Masters of the Mind! At whose behest I long ago so much unlearnt, and so much resigned – I come not here to be your foe” (73-76). Arnold seeks forgiveness from the great minds of the Victorian Age. For Arnold, men and women like Charles Lyell, the author of Principles of Geology, have defeated the notion that religion is necessary to explain the world. These writers “persuaded Arnold that faith in Christianity was no longer tenable in the modern world” (Norton 1390). Arnold believes that he is offending these men by being at the monastery. This shows that Arnold holds these intellectuals in higher regard than the Christian God he once believed in. He asserts that he is no longer Christian. Arnold is visitor to the monastery as one would be to “some fallen Runic stones” (83). He is visiting the monastery as a historical place, like an old Nordic monument depicting a now-dead religion (Norton 1390). Speaking of Christianity and Nordic religion, Arnold writes, “For both were faiths, and both are gone” (84). Arnold believes Christianity is reaching its end and will soon be viewed as any other ancient religion, such as the Nordic religion. Arnold later writes that he is with the “last of the people who believe” (112). Arnold makes it clear that this is not a trip to restore his lost faith; he is here to visit a part of history that no longer holds any control over him. In the monastery, Arnold finds himself, “wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born, with nowhere yet to rest his head” (85-87). The old age of Christianity (and similar organized religions) is over, but Arnold is unable to define his faith, or lack thereof, as a particular system of belief. The new age of reason has yet to be defined and named; it is still unborn. Until the new system is born, Arnold finds himself searching to be a part of something. He will not go back to his old Christian ways, so he must “wander” (85) until the new system is born.

Arnold suffers from not being a part of the Christian faith. He describes his suffering as a “holy pain” (92). Many believe the pain “is a passed mode, an outworn theme” (100), but Arnold’s pain is “[restless]” (104). If the pain is not eased, Arnold would rather die with the last of the Christians (109-111). Death is preferable to Arnold’s painful wandering between two worlds. Even after death, this pain continues. Other men have felt such pain and it remains long after their deaths. Arnold writes, “Say, is life lighter now than then? The sufferers died, they left their pain – The pangs which tortured them remain” (130-132). Generations of men have experienced the transition Arnold is going through now, yet they resolved nothing during their lives. Arnold also references the Romantics while he visits the monastery. He specifically refers to Byron (133) and Shelley (139) specifically. Arnold believes that their works, although beautiful, did little to ease this pain felt by many. For Arnold, Byron merely shared his “bleeding heart” (136) and “Europe made his woe her own” (138). Future generations will read Byron’s and Shelley’s work, but Arnold wonders if the “inheritors of [their] distress have restless hearts one throb the less?” (143-144). Romanticism is dead and its writers “slumber in [their] silent grave[s]” (151). Further writing to the Romantics, Arnold claims, “The world, which idle for a day Grace to your mood of sadness gave, Long hath flung her weeds away… But we learnt your lore too well” (149-156). After the death of Romanticism, the world moved on, but many people continued to read the Romantics, trapped in a state of suffering. Byron, Shelley, and the other Romantics share similar feelings with Arnold, but this does not help Arnold escape the pain. The Romantics described suffering, but did little to combat it. Although Arnold finds their works are beautiful and praise worthy, the Romantics did nothing to alleviate the suffering of man. Arnold then describes then describes the waiting process again. He does not know how it will be until the new age begins. He believes that “years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! Than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity” (157-160). Arnold knows the process could be long and he asks the younger generations to bring about change quickly; he writes, “Sons of the world, oh, speed those years; But while we wait, allow our tears!” (161-162). Arnold needs to suffer and seeks permission to cry while he waits for change to come.

Arnold, while he wanders in suffering, admires those who find tranquility in religious beliefs. He does not seek to end Christianity or any other religions, rather he writes, “Allow them! We admire with awe The exulting thunder of your race; You give the universe your law, You triumph over time and space!” (163-166). Arnold admires the religious because they believe they have control over the universe. Arnold wishes he could live that way, but he cannot go back. Arnold says to them, “Your pride of life, your tireless powers, We laud them, but they are not ours” (167-168). He praises those who are strongly religious, but they live a lifestyle he cannot return to. Even though he may not believe, he does not disrespect those who do. Arnold continues his writing with a metaphor. He uses a simile to compare himself to “children reared in shade Beneath some old-world abbey wall” (169-170). Arnold’s situation is similar to that of the children because they are trapped within a certain lifestyle. Arnold cannot go back to the religious life and the children cannot leave the abbey. They are “forgotten in a forest glade, And secret from the eyes of all. Deep, deep the greenwood round them waves, Their abbey, and its close of graves” (171-174). The children live in the abbey and will likely die in the abbey. Arnold live in his state of wandering and he will likely die in that same state of wandering. Further, the children have little to no adventure in their lives. They hear a call to action (192) but they reply, “Action and pleasure, will ye roam Through these secluded dells to cryand call us? – but too late ye come!” (194-196). The abbey children have already had their lives planned out. They cannot accept the call to action because it comes to them too late. They are destined to live and die in the abbey, rarely doing anything exciting. They further respond to the call, saying, “Too late for us your call ye blow, Whose bent was taken long ago (197-198). Their bent, or “natural inclination” (Norton 1393), was taken long ago by the authorities in the abbey. Naturally, they would accept a call to action, but they have been conditioned to reject such a call. They are trapped within the abbey much like Arnold is trapped in his state of wandering and suffering. Arnold, like the children in the abbey, just wants peace in his life. They children are “fenced early in this cloistral round Of reverie, of shade, of prayer” (205-206). They cannot escape their position, in which they have been stuck for a prolonged period of time. They ask that the “banners, pass, and bugles, cease; and leave [their] desert to its peace!” (209-210). The children are tormented by the outside sounds of lives they will never be able to live because they are stuck in the abbey; similarly, Arnold hears the calls of the abbey to return to a religious life. Like the children, Arnold cannot accept the call of the Christian Church because he is trapped in his state of wandering and suffering. Like the children in the abbey who are conditioned to not accept their calls to action, Arnold will not allow himself to accept the Christian faith.

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Through his poetry, Matthew Arnold highlights many of the struggles faced by Victorians who experienced crises of faith. The Victorian Age brought many social changes and one of the areas most greatly affected was religion. Scientific publications, like Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, revolutionized many people’s ways of thinking. God was no longer the answer to everything. Science often conflicted with religious teachings. Because of this, Many people began leaving the Church and organized religion began dying. In response to this growing religious crisis, many Victorians responded with their experiences with their individual struggles with faith. A large number of Victorian authors wrote about their crises of faith, but none better exemplifies the experience than Matthew Arnold. Matthew Arnold’s “Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse” best shows an individual’s crisis of faith because of Arnold’s use of description and metaphors in his writing.

In many respects, T. S. Eliot’s poems “articulated the disillusionment of a younger post-World-War-I generation with the values and conventions—both literary and social—of the Victorian era” (American National). Eliot used The Waste Land and The Hollow Men to illustrate his feelings of a brutal age of war. The Waste Land was “taken over by the postwar generation as a rallying cry for its sense of disillusionment” (American National). These feelings of disillusionment gave way to a more stable religious theme, such as in Journey of the Magi, later in Eliot’s career.

T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot was born September 26, 1888. Until he was eighteen, Eliot lived in St. Louis and then went on to attend Harvard. At twenty-two, after earning both a bachelor’s and master’s degree, Eliot moved to the Sorbonne University in Paris. After spending a year at the Sorbonne, Eliot returned to Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, but in 1914 he moved to England. In 1915, Eliot married his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood, and they moved into a London flat with Bertrand Russell.

Not only did Russell share his flat with the Eliots, but he also shared with them his social connections. With Russell's help Eliot met many of Europe’s elite, including Ezra Pound. Pound helped Eliot to meet many of his contemporary authors, poets, and artists. Eliot and Russell’s relationship soured over Russell’s romantic involvement with Vivienne, which led to Eliot not attending his Ph.D. dissertation defense.

It was during this time that Pound recognized Eliot’s poetic ability, and “in 1917 he received an enormous boost from the publication of his first book, Prufrock and Other Observations, printed by the Egoist with the silent financial support of Ezra and Dorothy Pound” (American National). Prufrock established Eliot as a leading poet of the twentieth century. The years of Eliot’s poetic maturation were accompanied by familial hardship. Eliot’s father died in 1919, at the same time as Vivienne’s mental and physical health started to deteriorate, and the emotional strain on Eliot took its toll. In 1921, Eliot suffered from a nervous collapse, and on his physician’s advice he took a three-month’s restive cure.

Whether it was because of the breakdown or the long-needed rest he received afterwards, Eliot recovered from a severe case of writer’s block. He took the time to finish a poem he had started in 1919, which became The Waste Land. The poem’s intensity stems from a blending of the horrors of Eliot’s life, the recently fought war, and many literary influences from English mythology. Although written during a very trying time in his life, it was the publication of The Waste Land that made “Eliot's reputation grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty years, he was the most dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world” (American National).

The Waste Land reveals itself as aptly titled, especially when the difficult and dream-like verses have yielded their secrets. The melancholy and morose lyrical feast unveils the aridity and impotence of modern civilization in a series of sometimes realistic and sometimes surrealistic mythological episodes, whose perspectives overlap and underline each other with an indescribable total effect. The complete poem cycle consists of a mere 436 lines, but actually it contains more meaning and impact than most novels of as many pages. The Waste Land is now more than eighty years old, but unfortunately it has proved that its catastrophic visions still have undiminished clairvoyance in the shadow of the digital age, and as Eliot stated about his own work: “I don’t see why the prospect of human annihilation should affect the poet differently from men of other vocations. It will affect him as a human being, no doubt in proportion to his sensitiveness” (Hall Interview 221).

The surreal nature of The Waste Land is in itself a means to Eliot’s ends. The poetic juxtapositions he uses allow Eliot to produce a feeling of shock and awe to offset his message of a hopeless new age. The poem’s discontinuity, from this perspective, is a symbolic form of the confusion of awakening from a deep slumber. The poem’s use of allusions to the past as well as its form must be read as a sign of the disruptive power of primal forces reasserting themselves. It is hopeful to a Christian society to believe that it lives in a world where God is not dead, but the poem is not about such a world. The hope that The Waste Land holds is a negative one: “the fact that men have lost the knowledge of good and evil, keeps them from being alive” (Brooks 186). The Waste Land does not merely reflect the passing of the golden age of Victoria, but shows Eliot’s feelings of a society where people walk around morally dead. Beneath Eliot’s scathing criticism there lies a “profound and painful disillusionment, and out of this disillusionment there [grows] forth a feeling of sympathy, and out of that sympathy is born a growing urge to rescue from the ruins of the confusion the fragments from which order and stability might be restored” (Nobel).

The Waste Land was Eliot’s first long poem, and can be read as his philosophy on the need to still destructive human desires. There is little hope found in The Waste Land; its major theme is the inevitable collapse of society through the “Unreal City,” which Eliot seems to use to represent post-war urban areas. This “Unreal City” is always “under the brown fog” (Waste Land ll 61 & 208), which seems to represent the pall of death that hung over much of Europe after World War I. The “Unreal City” is a nightmarish place that parallels the urban decay and disintegration of the majority of Europe’s cities after WWI. The poem's finale is an orgy of elemental and social violence, with “those who were living   now dying” and the “red sullen faces that sneer and snarl from doors of mudcracked houses” (Waste Land ll 329 & 344-45), representing the inevitability of death and the fear of man. What the poem attempts here, by pointing out the slow descent to death and the fear ascribed to that death, is the achievement of an elaborate code of conduct that is indicative of the desires, which Eliot feels should be repressed.

However, Eliot, consumed by the rigors of his domestic life, found it hard to fully appreciate his success. In 1923, Vivienne almost died, which nearly sent Eliot into a second emotional breakdown. Over the next two years, Eliot continued down his path of emotional despair, until a lucky chance allowed him to quit his overly demanding job at Lloyd’s Bank. The infant publishing company of Faber and Gwyer saw the advantage of having a literary editor who was versed both in letters and business and hired Eliot. Eliot had finally found a job for which he was suited.

The seeds of his future faith take root in The Hollow Men, although when published in 1925 the poem reads as the sequel to the philosophical despair of The Waste Land. Although The Hollow Men is not truly a sequel to The Waste Land, it is a thematic appendix to this earlier work. Like The Waste Land, The Hollow Men shows the depths of Eliot’s despair and need for a compass by which to guide himself. By starting the poem with “Mr. Kurtz--he dead,” Eliot taps into Conrad’s theme in Heart of Darkness of the death of the gods of primitive men. The death of Kurtz, the god of Conrad’s African primitives, shadows the death of the primitive elemental forces that govern Eliot’s life, like some ancient thunder god. With the death of his primitive gods, Eliot becomes one of the hollow men and must find something with which to fill himself up again.

The Hollow Men takes place in a twilight world of lost souls and disembodied forces. This world is peopled by “shapes without form, shade[s] without colour, paralysed forces, gestures without motion” (Hollow ll 11-12). These hollow men are walking corpses, soulless individuals who do not know that they have lost their souls. These men live in a “valley of dying stars” (Hollow ll 54), a land that is as hollow as they are themselves. The hollow men avert their eyes not only from each other, but also from the eyes of the divine; they are empty men estranged from God. They are the shadow that isolates men from each other and the divine; these hollow men are the unenlightened masses, devoid of a moral compass. These hollow men share the fate of “inhabiting ‘death’s dream kingdom,’ not remembered, to be sure, as ‘lost violent souls,’ but, not on the other hand, even memorable” (Kenner 161).

Although there is little hope for the hollow men in their “twilight kingdom” (Hollow ll 38), there is life outside in “death’s other kingdom” (Hollow ll 46). This other kingdom, God’s kingdom, is peopled by the stuffed men: those who found their souls and are no longer hollow. Eliot’s hollow men seem to believe, at least to some degree, that if they withstand “the twilight kingdom” they may find some rebirth in “death’s other kingdom.” Through Eliot’s use of the snippets of the Lord’s Prayer in the poem’s conclusion, he implies that the hollow men’s adverted eyes may once again turn to the divine and they may become members of the stuffed men.

The Hollow Men seems to be Eliot’s final exorcism of the demons of his troubled youth. Merely two years after the publishing of the poem, Eliot’s life began to head in a slightly more stable direction. In 1927 two important things happened in Eliot’s life: he found God in the Church of England and he became a British citizen. Although Eliot’s marriage and personal life continued to disintegrate, he began to find solace in his new relationship with God. Therefore, Eliot’s emotional turmoil of his youth gave way to a religious maturation both in his person and his poetry. With his latter religious poems such as Journey of the Magi, Eliot tries to capture God’s calming influence on his life and share it with others.

Journey of the Magi is the monologue of one of the three wise men, come to see the nativity. Although he believes in the importance of the birth he comes to witness, proven by his willingness to travel to Bethlehem, the magi is not jubilant but melancholy. He has been “led all that way for Birth or Death” (Magi ll 35-36), but does not comprehend that which he has truly come to see: the child’s birth or his own death. It is not until he witnesses the scene that the magi truly knows the answer.

Upon his journey home the magi realizes the real reason for his journey: “It is not that the Birth that is also Death has brought him hope of a new life, but that it has revealed to him the hopelessness of the previous life” (Smith 122). This realization has not filled him with the fervor or elation of those touched by God, but the morose emptiness of one whose life has been exposed for the fallacy that it is. The magi must now return home to face the “alien people clutching their gods” (Magi ll 42). His transformation is so complete that he can no longer relate to his own people, the magi now knows the true God, and the gods of his people become as alien to him as his people now seem.

Eliot uses the magi to represent his own sacrifice; “he has reached essentially, on a symbolic level true to his emotional, if not to his intellectual, life, the humble, negative stage that in a mystical progress would be prerequisite to union” (Smith 123). In other words, Eliot has reached the very limit of personal tribulation, and through his acceptance of God, and the sacrifice of his old emotional turmoil he has been reborn into a new version of himself. “Uncertainty leaves the magi mystified and unaroused to the full splendor of the strange epiphany” (Smith 124), and Eliot seems to view his own sacrifice with some melancholy, as if his uncertainty matches the magi’s. Even though there is uncertainty in Eliot’s transformation, he has matured enough to realize the calmness of his faith is probably better in the long run than the “old gods” of his tumultuous heathenism.

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Through the reading of his work it is easy to see why, in 1948, Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry” (Nobel). Just in examining these three poems alone, they can be seen as definitions of poetry itself: they masterfully show the emotions and experiences of the poet in a way that elicits a similar reaction from the reader. If these poems are considered among the complete body of his work, they retain the same meaning as well. Eliot spent his career cataloguing his life through its translation into poetry. This kind of expansive self improvement and refinement is a mark of achievement for anyone, but his ability to turn his life into verse to which anyone can experience sets Eliot apart as a truly great poet.

Works Cited

1. Brooks, Cleanth Jr. “The Waste Land: An Analysis”. A Norton Critical Edition: T.S. Eliot The Waste Land. Ed. Michael North. New York: Norton & Company, 2001. pp. 185-210.
2. Cooper, John Xiros. T.S. Eliot and the Politics of Voice: The Argument of "The Waste Land”. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987.
3. Eliot, T.S. The Hollow Men. Collected Poems: 1909-1962. London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1991.
4. Eliot, T.S. Journey of the Magi. Collected Poems: 1909-1962. London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1991.
5. Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land. Collected Poems: 1909-1962. London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1991.
6. Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T.S. Eliot. London: W.H. Allen, 1960. pp. 161-164.
7. “T.S. Eliot”. American National Biography. Ed. John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. <www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/life.htm>.
8. “T.S. Eliot and Donald Hall”. Remembering Poets: Reminiscences and Opinions. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. pp. 203-221.
9. “T.S. Eliot Presentation Speech”. Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967. Editor Horst Frenz. Amesterdam: Elsevier Publishing Company, 1969.
10. Smith, Grover. T.S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956. pp.122-124.

Works Cited

Blackmore, Tim. “Ender’s Game.” Novels for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale, 1999. 115-118. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.

Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1994. Print.

“Ender’s Game.” Novels for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale, 1999. 99-121. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.

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Kelly, David J. “Ender’s Game.” Novels for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale, 1999. 112-115. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.

Works Cited

1. Card, O. S. (1994). Ender's Game. New York: Tom Doherty Associates.
2. Blackmore, T. (1999). Ender's Game. In M. R. Napierkowski (Ed.), Novels for Students (Vol. 5, pp. 115-118). Detroit: Gale. Retrieved from Gale Virtual Reference Library.
3. "Ender's Game." (1999). In M. R. Napierkowski (Ed.), Novels for Students (Vol. 5, pp. 99-121). Detroit: Gale. Retrieved from Gale Virtual Reference Library.
4. Kelly, D. J. (1999). Ender's Game. In M. R. Napierkowski (Ed.), Novels for Students (Vol. 5, pp. 112-115). Detroit: Gale. Retrieved from Gale Virtual Reference Library.

For centuries, countries have fought with one another over power. Whether squabbling over who has control of their nation or who really owns a territory, struggles over domination have been commonplace throughout history, featuring not only countries as a whole, but their individual settlers. Power can be defined as the amount of control one has over one’s own life or the lives of others. Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird revolves around the trial of Tom Robinson, a young, African American man living in the south during the Great Depression. Tom is accused of the sexual and physical assault of a young white woman, Mayella Ewell, who claims he has both beaten and raped her. While all evidence against him can be refuted and points to her father, Bob Ewell, as the perpetrator, Tom is convicted anyway and sentenced to death because he is African American. Although Mayella’s race gives her power in the courtroom, overall, she is powerless in the eyes of society because she lives in poverty and her father controls her through constant abuse.

Poverty in the Ewell residence is just one of the reasons that they are seen as lower class in society and a reason why Mayella is powerless. The Ewell family is poor, uneducated, and filthy. They live off of welfare, and whatever money they have is used to purchase alcohol for Bob Ewell, who is a drunk. Mayella tries desperately to escape the low class her family fits into, as her socioeconomic status keeps her from fitting in with the white people of Maycomb, but her race keeps her from fitting in with the African American community. One attempt to escape her class is Mayella’s garden, which contains “six chipped-enamel slop jars holding brilliant red geraniums, cared for as tenderly as if they belonged to Miss Maudie,” a stark contrast to the otherwise disgusting and dilapidated Ewell lawn and residence (143). Finding pleasure in beautiful, material things, Mayella’s desire for a better, more beautiful life is revealed. She wants to see something besides what she has seen around her all her life; she wants an escape. Her failure in doing so successfully is what allows her to be typified as powerless, as she has no control over where she lies in the social hierarchy of Maycomb, Alabama. Similarly, Mayella tries to escape her class by “look[ing] as if she trie[s] to keep clean” (151). Lee indirectly characterizes her as somebody who actually cares about their appearance, a stark contrast to the rest of the Ewell family, who don’t care about anything. This sets her apart from her family as she tries to be seen as something more than a Ewell. These attempts to rise above her family and their low-class, no-good reputation are ultimately failures, as when the court case is adjourned, despite her “victory”, Mayella’s existence is dismissed as nothing more than it was before the trial, proving that she has no control over herself and deeming her powerless as she continues to live with and be abused by her father.

Another reason why Mayella Ewell is powerless is because her father controls her through abuse. It is alluded to throughout the trial, and even expressly stated in certain instances, that Mayella is a victim of physical, verbal, and sexual abuse at the hands of her father, Bob. According to Tom Robinson’s testimony, Mayella claimed that she was inexperienced with men, stating that “she says what her father do to her don’t count,” insinuating that Bob Ewell forces himself upon her sexually (164). Mr. Ewell takes control of Mayella’s body, doing what he wishes with it, and her dismissal of these actions “counting” reflect an obvious lack of reciprocation on her end as well as a lack of power over herself and her body. Also, when Mr. Ewell sees Mayella kiss Tom Robinson, he demeans her, saying “you goddamn whore, I’ll kill ya!” alerting readers to both verbal and emotional abuse, as he said this while company was present, leading one to conclude that the abuse may be worse when doors are closed (164). Significantly, verbal and emotional abuse can create a situation in the victim’s mind of “learned helplessness”, which is when an abuse victim starts to believe that there is no solution or escape from their problems, so they don’t try to do anything about them, allowing their maltreater to exert full control over them and surrendering their power over themselves. In addition, Atticus proves that Mayella was beaten by a left handed person, which describes Bob Ewell and not Tom, who’s left hand is “useless” and “rubber-like” (161). Coupled with his threat to kill his daughter, a strong likelihood is created that Mr. Ewell is beating and otherwise physically abusing her, once again proving that Mayella has no control over herself and her body. Atticus asks her during the trial if her father is good to her, to which Bob Ewell “s[its] up straight and wait[s] for her answer” (155). When Mayella looks over at him, she gets uncomfortable and denies that he is ever intolerable in his behaviors towards her. Previous evidence paints a picture of Mr. Ewell’s abuse of his daughter and the environment she must have grown up in. Victims of abuse tend to see their abusers as all-powerful and allow themselves to be controlled by them, as there seems no other way to avoid harm. Such is the case with Mayella Ewell. Mr. Ewell relaxes when she denies these allegations, but it becomes clear to the reader that her father is controlling what is being said on the stand, and allows one to conclude that Mayella is both a victim and pawn of her father with no control over herself, proving that she is powerless.

Because she is white, Mayella won her court case, unfairly condemning Tom Robinson to execution. However, she has no overall power because she has no control over herself, an idea stemming from her family’s unescapable poverty and the control Bob Ewell asserts over her. While the idea of Mayella symbolizing a mockingbird is not a popular one with Tom Robinson sympathizers, it can be justified, because she is an innocent girl driven to committing a societal crime by her desire to feel loved and receive positive attention from somebody. The return of Mr. Ewell and her subsequent beating can be considered the shooting of the mockingbird and the ending of her innocence as she is then prompted by her father to file criminal charges against Tom for an alleged rape and beating that never occurred. Mayella Ewell is truly a victim of her circumstances.

Works Cited

1. Lee, H. (1960). To Kill a Mockingbird. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
2. Johnson, C. (2015). Power and Powerlessness in To Kill a Mockingbird. The Mississippi Quarterly, 68(1-2), 107-130.
3. Ostrom, H. (2013). Reading Power and Powerlessness: The Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird. The Journal of General Education, 62(3-4), 259-274.
4. Schuder, R. (2014). The Powerful Voice of Powerlessness: A Study of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Education and Culture, 30(1), 9-23.
5. Flowers, D. M. (2018). Powerlessness and its effects on the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird. Journal of Social and Political Sciences, 1(2), 84-96.
6. Shields, J. (2015). Power, Authority, and Influence in To Kill a Mockingbird. College Literature, 42(3), 477-499.
7. Lamonica, M. (2016). Poverty and Powerlessness: An Analysis of Mayella Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird. McNair Scholars Journal, 20(1), 99-107.
8. McLendon, J. (2017). Poverty and Power in Maycomb: Social Class and Race in To Kill a Mockingbird. Journal of Popular Culture, 50(4), 812-830.
9. Guimarães, L. (2015). Power, Poverty, and Race Relations in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Oceánide, 7(1), 55-68.
10. Ross, S. (2014). The Illusion of Power: Exploring Race, Gender, and Class in To Kill a Mockingbird. Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, 1900 to Present, 13(1).