The Life and Writings of Edgar Allan Poe Essay -- Authors

Edgar Allan Poe is a famous poet from the 1800. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809. His parents were David and Elizabeth Poe. David was born in Baltimore on July 18, 1784. Elizabeth Arnold came to the U.S. from England in 1796 and married David Poe after her first husband died in 1805. They had three children, Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie. Elizabeth Poe died in 1811, when Edgar was two years old. Giordeno also mentioned, â€Å"She had separated from her husband and had taken her three kids with her. Henry went to live with his grandparents while Edgar was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan and Rosalie was taken in by another family. John Allan was a successful merchant, so Edgar grew up in good surroundings and went to good schools† (Giordeno). Before Poe became a writer he was enrolled in the army at eight teen years old, but he did not stay long her was soon dismissed. Poe was very poor while he was living and did not become famous until after his death in 1849. He is most famous for writing border line horror stories and poems. Some of his most famous poems are The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Pit and the Pendulum. In The Raven Poe discusses many different literary terms. The three that stand out the most is symbolism, tragedy, and beauty. In The Raven Poe uses symbolism. One way he demonstrates symbolism is the bust of Pallas. Poe explains about the bust of Pallas when he says, â€Å"Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -Perched, and sat, and nothing more† (Poe l41-l42). Courson thinks that the bust of Pallas symbolizes intellect, â€Å"Then Remorse enters, and fixes itself firmly on his mind, ‘the bust of Pallas,’ the emblem of intellect.† (Courson) However, Za... ...emy of American Poets, 2012. Web. 12 Jan 2012. Smith, Dave. "Edgar Allan Poe and the Nightmare Ode." Southern Humanities Review 29.1 (Winter 1995): 4-10. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Lynn M. Zott. Vol. 117. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 12 Jan. 2012. Wardrop, Daneen. "Quoting the Signifier 'Nevermore': Fort! Da!, Pallas, and Desire in Language." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 44.4 (1998): 274-299. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Ed. Timothy J. Sisler. Vol. 54. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 12 Jan. 2012. Zayed, Georges. "The Symbolism of the Poems." The Genius of Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing, 1985. 127-136. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Lynn M. Zott. Vol. 117. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 12 Jan. 2012.

A New Kind of Dreaming – Summary

Anthony Eaton’s a new Kind of Dreaming helps the reader to recognise the various challenges and conflicts that cause the characters to change and grow. Anthony Eaton best expresses Jamie as an outsider that is trying to find his place in the world, while uncovering the secrets of Port Barren’s shady past. This changes Jamie from an adolescent delinquent to a responsible and admirable person. Jaime develops friendships that lead him to trusting and sympathetic qualities that are unusual for him in his past of crime. Jamie faces a challenge to build a stronger relationship with Cameron, but this is an obstacle for Cameron as he tries to understand Jamie and tries to push the stereotypes of him away. Early in Jamie’s arrival in Port Barren, he evolves different relationships and forms a close bond with Cameron that challenges him to trust and care. His mentor and guide in this story is Archie, who challenges Jamie with a dreamtime story called ‘The Wanderers and the Lost Ones’ which makes him really think about where he lays. While Jamie was traveling through the desert with Cameron, he is challenged to take on new qualities and discover a new person. The challenges and conflicts that Jamie faces, turns him into a new and more preferable individual. Body Paragraph 1: As Jamie begins to strengthen his relationship with Cameron he becomes a different and greater character. Jamie discovers more admirable qualities from Cameron such as trust and loyalty. Cameron was the one person that didn’t judge Jamie by his reputation or personality and stood by him the whole entire journey, this was the beginning of their long lasting relationship. This experience was new to Jamie as he spent of lot of his life changing foster homes. He valued Cameron for his down to earth character. This example is shown to the reader from the novel when Cameron says, â€Å"I was out for my morning run when I noticed you lying here, you sure you’re okay? † [Page 53] this shows that Cameron really cares about Jamie and for his welfare even through everyone were judging him for his criminal records and stereotypes of him were soon spreading across the community. Having Cameron in his life changed Jamie and challenged him to become a more preferable person. Body Paragraph 2: A challenge that Jamie has to face and overcome is when he tries to have some sense of belonging to the community of Port Barren. Archie, his guardian throughout the novel, tells him his version of a dreamtime story called ‘The wanderers and the lost ones’. This story challenges Jamie to think whether he is lost or a wanderer. This makes him feel responsible for finding out who is disturbing the balance and it is up to him to try and restore it. This is shown to the reader when Jamie thinks, â€Å"It was weird, no beginning, no middle, no end, no plot. And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something important behind the strange words. He pondered it but couldn’t make anything of it† [page 126]. The story makes Jamie wonder who he is and how he belongs in the community. This challenges him to think more about himself and what he needs to do to change and become a better person. This also made him change the way he thought about himself, it made him to thrive to do the best he can. Conclusion: Jamie faces many conflicts and challenges throughout the novel and they all have an effect that makes him change in character. Jamie’s close relationship with Cameron helps him to thrive to be more confident about himself. This also gives him the good qualities to trust people and give them respect that they deserve. Archie’s story ‘The wonderers and the Lost ones’ challenges Jamie to look for the answer and made him change the way he though about himself, the story left him wanting him to have some sense of belonging in his life. Trekking through the desert has changed Jamie as a person and the way he looks at life. Jamie experiences countless challenges and conflicts through the novel, a new kind of dreaming, and all lead him to growth and change in the way he lives.

Literary arguement

Good writers write about life and someone living it, while great writers write about living itself and a living out a struggle that not only captures one person, but it also captures the soul of having a struggle in general. Although story of The World According to Garp has received its fair share rant and rave reviews by the judging public, what makes this book a great read is that it gives us something to talk about. It’s so powerful, that you only either hate it or love it. The storyline is so compelling, that it will you’re your eyes into looking more in the problems not only in the characters of the story, but also the struggle that we face in general. May it be in struggles of classes, or gender and most importantly, fighting for your rights. In the story of the The World According to Garp, from the very opening of this novel, it was pretty evident that the story was not for the weak of heart. It was obvious that the novel was to be dealing with the harsh realities of life that will really grip your attention, not only because of the drama but more importantly; because the story depicts something that we see in the streets and sometimes even our lives itself. What can we read in the novel that is so gripping that it has caused a craze in its time of release? The answer is struggle. From the very beginning â€Å"This was shortly after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and the people were being tolerant of soldiers, because suddenly everyone was a soldier, but Jenny Fields was quite firm in her intolerance of the behavior of men in general an soldiers in particular. (Iriving 1976, page1)† The story revolves around exactly this; how men, in general was a threat to women like Jenny. Unfortunately, in the harsh reality presented in the book, very few women were empowered to fight against abuses of men. Predictably, like most novels, women were once again depicted as victims and the men were the antagonists whom inflicted pain and suffering to women roles in this novel. What sets this story of story apart though is the level of stress the author took in the brutalization of sex as one of the major sources of oppression for women. Irving has been known to write about this topic not only in this novel, but also in his other works like the â€Å"The Hotel New Hamshire†. Irving has been notorious about putting stress in this issue that a number of book reviews coming from columnists like Doane and Hodges notices that Irving views a great strength in male power and he not only sees it as a day to day occurrence, but more importantly, that he found it as one of the things that are inevitable in the present day scenario. In the perfect words, he explained how he viewed brutalization of sex in The World According to Garp: â€Å"We are all terminal cases. Imagining something is better than remembering something. In this dirty-minded world, you are either somebody's wife or somebody's whore — or fast on your way to becoming one or the other. Between men and women, only death is shared equally. Lust makes the best men behave out of character.† In this statement, Irving caught perfectly in words how the scenario is with women and their battle against any abuse coming from the opposite sex. He capture the scenario its utmost reality to the core of why it was considered as one of the inevitable battles known to women. He dared say what was lying right under our noses but refuse to talk about, human nature at its utmost real and brutal sense. I guess to a certain extent, he had to do it to stress a point, someone had to point a finger to that problem for people to start facing the possibility of finding a solution to how men generally treat women. Even though some feminists responded to his novel with great retaliation to how he depicted women in his novel, what most feminists failed to notice was that his intentions in painting color to brutalization in sex into his novels was intended not to put down women to accept such roles, but rather to fight it. Unlike most authors who make women roles the typical traditional roles that box up women to be submissive and weak, Irving’s intention of writing about women in that light was to point out a problem that women face to come up with the end result of inspiring readers to do something about it. He took a man’s role and a woman’s role and torn all its clothes out to the point where in it was completely naked for us to pick on what was wrong with the picture that we have always been presented to but never really had a chance to look at. If you ask me, I think no author has ever done that simply for the reason of having people get the wrong impression of what he was trying to say. It’s a pity that very few try this tactic, coz you know if you have a great novel in your hand if your only allowed to have two of the varying reactions to reading it; you either hate it or love it. Why is this so? Because in the two varying ends of the pole, the book achieved what it’s author’s intention was to begin with; stir your emotions and strike a chord. As for Irving’s Goal in stressing a point in exposing brutalization in sex in his novel, I think he pretty much achieved it by simply stirring an outburst of public opinion in the feminist movement. Even though the general reaction to the context of his novel may initially be bad for women in the feminist movement, eventually true colors came up to float and women now realize the real point of Irving’s writing about how painful it is to be a woman. On the contrary, by showing women’s weaknesses in his novel, he achieved the exact opposite by illustrating how strong women are by coping with it, this is pretty evident in the story and characters of the women in the novel, especially Jenny References: Irving, J., Mc Caferrey, L. 1982, ‘An interview with John Irving’, Contemporary Literature 23, no. 1, winter, pp.1-18. Irving J., The World according to Garp [online] 1996, Available: http://cqu.edu.Au/arts/humanities/listud/naff/naff7irving.html[2007, October 17] Larson J., ‘The World According to Garp’ and ‘The Hotel Hampshire’ [online] 2005, available: http://epubl.ltu.se/1402-1773/2005/090/LTU-CUPP-05090-SE.pdf [2007, October 17]

Farewell My Concubine: Self-Identification in Context

Directed by Chen Kaige, a highly acclaimed fifth-generation Chinese film director, Farewell My Concubine has received many international film awards and nominations; among them are the Best Foreign Film and the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993. In the film, Cheng Dieyi, a Peking Opera actor playing the leading female characters, becomes obsessed with his role as the concubine of the King of Chu and blurs his stage role with the real life he leads. The circumstances in which one grows up in are critical factors in shaping his or her sense of self-identity.This paper attempts to explore the gender identity troubles that Cheng Dieyi has undergone in his self-identification and sexuality in the context of the environment of his upbringing. The story begins when Cheng’s mother takes her son to Master Guan and begs him to take Dieyi (whose nickname was Douzi at the time) into his opera troupe. In order to be a performer in the Peking opera, one must not have any features that are abnormal or that may frighten the audience. Unfortunately, Douzi fails this test because he was born with a sixth finger on one of his hands.His mother was desperate to sell him off and thus cuts off her son’s finger with a cleaver. At this point, Master Guan agrees to accept Douzi as a disciple in his opera troupe. Master Guan notices that Douzi’s â€Å"features were surprisingly delicate; he was almost pretty† , which are perfect for playing female roles. Thus, Douzi is chosen as a dan , or the female lead of the opera troupe. He will play the female roles alongside his best friend, Xiaolou who was chosen to be his sheng, or male lead. Starting from even the earliest scenes of the film, Dieyi’s self-identity has been slowly ripped away from him.Dieyi’s abrupt transition from living in a brothel as a prostitute’s son to becoming a well-disciplined opera singer in the troupe is marked by his mother’s brutal amputati on of his sixth finger. This symbolic castration implies that one must abandon his inherited past in order to seek a new social identity. â€Å"The root of biological determinism has been severed and the subject freed to pursue a place in a symbolic world of gender fluidity† Dieyi’s finger is not the only thing that has been emasculated, but his self-identity has been castrated as well. The film hints at this in the beginning by including the character of Master Ni, a unuch who was physically castrated, losing his male reproductive organs. While Master Ni was physically castrated of his male reproductive organs, Dieyi becomes mentally and emotionally castrated through his harsh upbringing in the opera troupe. Whereas the symbolic castration signifies the possibility of Dieyi’s transition from a biological male to a stereotypical female, the harsh corporal punishment he receives during his training in the opera troupe enforces that transition. Corporal punishment is often used in schools to reinforce the relation between master and student.It instills in students a sense of the power of the social hierarchy and their place within it. Dieyi’s designated â€Å"place† on that hierarchy, sadly, requires that he learns to abandon his male identity. While corporal punishment remakes Dieyi mentally, costume and make up remakes Dieyi physically. As he performs in the long dresses and fancy headdresses, he sees himself capable of reflecting signs of beauty and femininity. He is forced to sing â€Å"I am by nature a girl, not a boy† , and his full transition to femininity went into full motion the moment he mastered this line and accepted it as the truth, that he is by nature a girl, not a boy.Like most of the male dans in the Peking Opera theatre, Cheng Dieyi must be able to create the illusion of a real female that appeals to the male audience, but Cheng’s femininity is apparent not only on stage, but off stage as well. Clearly, Cheng has fully adapted his female roles into his life off stage. He speaks in a low soft voice, his movements are graceful, maintains the delicate hand pose of the Lan huazhi (the artificial feminine hand pose of the male dan), and wears a seductive look that would often be considered a feminine gaze.Most male dans merely imitate these feminine acts on stage, but Cheng Dieyi gradually transforms these â€Å"acts† into an unconscious habit of his. â€Å"The repetition of the stylized female acts embedded in female impersonation and the rigid and violent regulation of these acts eventually bring about Cheng Dieyi’s unconscious identification with Yuji, concubine of the Chu King, constructing in him a feminine sexuality and identity. † Opera performers at the time were expected to play their stage roles for ife. Dieyi’s most notable performance is an epic opera named Farewell My Concubine; it tells the story of the King of Chu (Xiang Yu) and his fa ithful concubine Yuji. Xiang Yu knows that he has lost to his enemy and drinks with Yuji on the last night. Yuji performs a sword dance for him and then cuts her own throat with his sword to express her faithfulness to him. As Dieyi continues to play the role of Yuji into this professional career, he begins to blur the life of Yuji’s character and his own.This becomes very obvious when Dieyi begins to show signs of affection towards his stage partner, Xiaolou, who plays the King of Chu. In multiple times throughout the movie, Dieyi can be seen looking at Xiaolou with a tender, almost romantic gaze and is especially gentle when he helps Xiaolou apply makeup and dress in costume. His romantic feelings for his â€Å"stage brother† are translucent to the audience as he is overcome by jealousy at the news that Xiaolou was getting married to Juxian. He believes that Juxian is robbing him of what was rightfully his.As in the opera when Yu Ji and Xiang Yu swear their love to e ach other, what Dieyi sees is actually he and his stage brother declaring their loyalty to one another. While Cheng Dieyi wholly embodies the female roles he impersonates, the Peking opera stage is essentially the world in which he bases his identity on. As he enters his professional career and makes a name for himself, he thinks that he will always be able to hide behind his feminine charms, and that art will always transcend any situation.For a while, he is proven right. On one occasion, he sings for a Japanese official to help Xiaolou out of jail; in another, he sings for a Chinese official to bail himself out of jail. Duan Xiaolou reminds Dieyi again and again that life is not the stage and he must learn to adjust to the values of the changing times. The film covers a story that spans across 50 years of Chinese history: the rise and fall of the Nationalist Party, the Sino-Japanese War, the rise of the Communist Party, and the Cultural Revolution.As the nation goes through a turb ulent historical period, Cheng simply views it as a backdrop that would never affect his performances. He was never concerned about any of the political upheavals that occurred or the change in regimes. He felt that as long as his art is being appreciated, it does not matter who the political leaders are. When he was put on trial for being a traitor when the Communist Party was in power, he exclaims, â€Å"If the Japanese were still here, Peking Opera would have spread into Japan already,† with no regard to the consequences.The art of Peking opera has always been Cheng’s way of escaping reality, and it is this illusion that he identifies with. However, when the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, the identity he has found for himself has been robbed from him once again. The Cultural Revolution is one that advocates extreme reality, and thus traditional art becomes a target of exploitation for distracting people from reality. When Dieyi and Xiaolou are taken out onto t he streets to be reprimanded, his previous illusion that he and Xiaolou would never betray one another, just as Yu Ji and Xiang Yu would never do so, is shattered.Under the humiliation and physical abuse of the Red Guards, Xiaolou calls Dieyi a traitor to the Chinese and a homosexual. Cheng and Duan then turn on each other and expose incriminating details about each other’s past to the Red Guards. This political movement is in a sense, a rude awakening for Cheng. For the first time, it forces him to abandon the identity that he forged for himself on the opera stage, and accept that he lives in a world where loyalty is not always indestructible. It is because of this revolution that causes Dieyi’s blurred lines between opera and reality to slowly reappear.These lines, however, did not have a lasting effect. When Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou reunite on the stage many years after the Cultural Revolution, they make their final Farewell My Concubine performance. At the last scene, Dieyi, playing Yuji, takes the sword and slits his throat. Dieyi wanted so desperately to be Yuji his entire life, and he finally fulfilled that wish, or so he thinks, by boldly committing suicide just as Yuji has done so: for his love, and in a dramatic manner, like a stage opera should be.Cheng Dieyi had grown up with violence and abuse, in a society with constant political turmoil and turbulent changes. As a boy who was already an introvert to begin with, the unsettling changes that revolved around him became too overwhelming. He had no choice but to retreat into a world that he knows best: the opera stage. Though the opera stage is but a fictional world, it is the only place in which he is always the hero(ine).Works Cited Cui, Shuqin. â€Å"Engendering Identity: Female Impersonation in Farewell My Concubine . From Poetic Realm to Fictional World: Chinese Theory of Fictional Ontology (1999) Farewell My Concubine. Dir. Chen Kaige. 1993. DVD. Miramax Films, 1999. Goldstein , Joshua (1999). â€Å"Mei Lanfang and the Nationalization of Peking Opera, 1912–1930† East Asian Cultures Critique 7 (2): 377–420. He, Chengzhou. â€Å"Gaze, Performativity and Gender Trouble in Farewell My Concubine. † Nanjing University (2004): n. pag. Web. Poquette, Ryan D. , Critical Essay on Farewell My Concubine, in Novels for Students, Gale, 2004.

Centered Play Therapy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Centered Play Therapy - Essay Example By playing out feelings, it brings them to the surface. The child must face them and learn to recognize and control them. The goal is to help the child realize their own power within in him/her self. They then realize they have the right to be their own person and they have the power to make a decision about how they will behave. In making such decision the child becomes psychologically more mature and capable of selfhood and self control. The realization of selfhood, via ones own map, is the primary goal of child-centered play therapy. When this is established, more directive play allows the child to discover his/her power to make appropriate choices, use self control and problem solve. The Key concept of child-centered play therapy is that the therapist must accept is that the child is a unique person and worthy of respect, children are resilient. They have an inherent tendency toward growth and maturity and they are capable of positive self-direction. The therapist must develop a warn and comfortable relationship with the child. It is important to establish this rapport as early as possible in the therapeutic process. Part of this rapport is that the therapist accepts the child exactly as he/she is. The therapist must establish a feeling of permissiveness in the relationship to allow the child to express his/her own feelings. It is also important that the therapist stay alert to recognizing the feeling the child is expressing in the plan and they the therapist reflects those feelings back to the child to enable the child to grain insight into their own behavior. The therapist must not attempt to direct the child’s play or conversation in anyway. The child is the leader and the therapist follows. There should be not attempt on the therapist’s part to hurry the therapy along. This is a gradual process and the therapist must respect that. The only

Southeast Asia in the US Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Southeast Asia in the US - Essay Example For Ricky, the sea journey was difficult as explained by Hai, one gang member who gave their account while on a sea travel with pirates said that he was only ten years old and his mother was beaten up and thrown into the vast seawaters an experience he will never forget. Most of the Vietnamese had other painful stories to tell about their experience during the war. For instance, they state that on their way to U.S.A, pirates attacked them.. For a period of two years, the South East of Asia became the home for many ‘boat people’ refugees before they were taken to United States. In the camps, there were many crimes and they engaged in survival tactics.In our close association with Ricky, we felt that there were unfamiliar faces either from the gang or from the others who lived in the house at one time. He also informed us that many of their recruits were coming down from Minneapolis. He did not explain the condition they were in at that time. Johnny, a friend of his was a victim who was on the run. His foster father had beaten him and he adapted slowly to the conditions. He seemed to very cautious and afraid of the group members. His friends were cool with him and allowed him to adapt slowly. Though their experience varies, they had similar themes. Most of the members gave their experience as school dropouts, they had language barrier between them, and they could not assimilate it successfully. After two years, they were two years adrift and their parents were forced to adjust their birth dates. In similar life experience, Tam a victim focuses on the family unity that existed in Vietnam that was dismantled by the war. The split families found it difficult to adjust with the transitional life in United States. This has caused a change in the gender roles of most

Discussion Questions and Participation Questions Essay

Discussion Questions and Participation Questions - Essay Example Opportunities to expand your services 7. Better flexibility 8. Increased risk assessment 9. Improve quality 10. Increases in quantity (Brighthub, 2011). In the past I have used project management as a guide to help me complete projects. I have used project management to develop schedules, in order to optimize time, and to become more efficient at tasks. Project management skills can be improved by participation in continued education seminars on the subject, by reading peer review journal articles, and through practice among other methods. Brighthub.com (2011). The Top Ten Benefits of Project Management. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/2350.aspx Chase, R. B., Jacobs, F.R., & Aquilano, N.J. (2006) Operations management for competitive advantage (11th ed). New York: McGraw Hill/Irwin. 2. Safety stock is additional inventory that is held in order to mitigate the risk of a stockout. The safety stock is a considered a buffer mana gement uses to create a comfort level in which to operate. The safety stock should only be used after regular inventory runs out and if the company is unable to replenish its inventory. The safety stock should be used as a last resort in order to keep the operations going. A few years ago I worked a part-time in a warehouse for a company that manufactured paper. There were different rolls of paper that would be used as raw material for the different paper products sold by the company. The buffer or safety stock was managed by the warehouse crew. We would deliver the safety stock to the manufacturing line whenever the company ran out of its regular inventory of paper. 3. Out of the factors you mentioned about project management which I believe people can work on in order to improve their utilization of the factor is time. Time is a crucial element in project management. Projects involve the use of different deadlines for the delivery of project deliverables. In a project when one per son is late with their part of the project it creates a chain reaction which affects the work of the other members. The project manager has to provide follow up on the work of team members in order to ensure everyone is on the same page. 4. One of the first project management teams I was involved in occurred a few years back. I was a freshman in college back them and I had been assigned to my first team project as a college student. It was an intimidating experience for me because I did not know what to expect. I was very lucky to have worked with a great team of players. One of the guys was a senior business student; he served the role of project leader. He was a very outgoing person that knew how to lead others. I learn from this first experience that interpersonal relationships are a critical success factor for project management teams. 5. Engineers are very talented professionals that can add a lot of value to a project. Due to their ability to apply innovation engineers are oft en involved in project management. It would be a wise career move for an engineer to purse an MBA degree. The knowledge gained through a master’s degree program in business can be extremely beneficial for an engineer among other professionals. Professionals with a background in business are better suited to handle the pressures associated with the work of a project manager. 6. Sometimes people utilized project management skills without even knowing they are using them. No project is too small for