King Lear Assignment Essays (1858 words) - King Lear, Goneril

King lear Assignment King lear Assignment Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear is a detailed description of the consequences of one man's decisions. This fictitious man is Lear, King of England, who's decisions greatly alter his life and the lives of those around him. As Lear bears the status of King he is, as one expects, a man of great power but sinfully he surrenders all of this power to his daughters as a reward for their demonstration of love towards him. This untimely abdication of his throne results in a chain reaction of events that send him through a journey of hell. King Lear is a metaphorical description of one man's journey through hell in order to expiate his sin. As the play opens one can almost immediately see that Lear begins to make mistakes that will eventually result in his downfall. The very first words that he speaks in the play are :- "...Give me the map there. Know that we have divided In three our kingdom, and'tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths while we Unburdened crawl to death..." (Act I, Sc i, Ln 38-41) This gives the reader the first indication of Lear's intent to abdicate his throne. He goes on further to offer pieces of his kingdom to his daughters as a form of reward to his test of love. "Great rivals in our youngest daughter's love, Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn, And here are to be answered. Tell me, my daughters (Since now we will divest us both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of state), Which of you shall we say doth love us most? That we our largest bounty may extend where nature doth with merit challenge." (Act I, Sc i, Ln 47-53) This is the first and most significant of the many sins that he makes in this play. By abdicating his throne to fuel his ego he is disrupts the great chain of being which states that the King must not challenge the position that God has given him. This undermining of God's authority results in chaos that tears apart Lear's world. Leaving him, in the end, with nothing. Following this Lear begins to banish those around him that genuinely care for him as at this stage he cannot see beyond the mask that the evil wear. He banishes Kent, a loyal servant to Lear, and his youngest and previously most loved daughter Cordelia. This results in Lear surrounding himself with people who only wish to use him which leaves him very vulnerable attack. This is precisely what happens and it is through this that he discovers his wrongs and amends them. Following the committing of his sins, Lear becomes abandoned and estranged from his kingdom which causes him to loose insanity. While lost in his grief and self-pity the fool is introduced to guide Lear back to the sane world and to help find the lear that was ounce lost behind a hundred Knights but now is out in the open and scared like a little child. The fact that Lear has now been pushed out from behind his Knights is dramatically represented by him actually being out on the lawns of his castle. The terrified little child that is now unsheltered is dramatically portrayed by Lear's sudden insanity and his rage and anger is seen through the thunderous weather that is being experienced. All of this contributes to the suffering of Lear due to the gross sins that he has committed. The pinnacle of this hell that is experienced be Lear in order to repay his sins is at the end of the play when Cordelia is killed. Lear says this before he himself dies as he cannot live without his daughter. "Howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones. Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever! I know when one is dead, and when one lives. She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking glass. If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, Why, then she lives." (Act V, Sc iii, Ln 306-312) All of this pain that Lear suffered is traced back to the single most important error that he made. The choice to give up his throne. This one sin has proven to have massive repercussions upon Lear and the lives of those around him eventually killing almost all of those who were involved. And one is left to ask one's self if

Slavery After Emancipation Essays - Reconstruction Era, Free Essays

Slavery After Emancipation Essays - Reconstruction Era, Free Essays Slavery After Emancipation contact me to receive the sources used After President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, former slaves took on a new role in American society. This role was one of more significance and self worth than in slavery, but this class of freedmen was anything but appreciated. Without the manpower of the slaves, the south's agricultural society would fail, and without the agriculture there would be little money or food in the south. The passing of the Louisiana Black Code in 1865, confirmed that whites felt as if blacks could not handle the responsibility or the rights of true citizens. Whites thought they did not deserve these rights because they were inferior to themselves and simply less than human. These restrictions were so harsh; it is, as slavery had never ended. The blacks were free, however many of the negroes everyday rights were abolished. Section 3, of the Louisiana Black Code states No negro shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within said parish. Section 9 declares that No negro shall sell, barter, or exchange any articles of merchandise or traffic within said parish. And one of the worst of these codes is in Section 4 of the Louisiana Black Code. Every negro is required to be in the regular service of some white person, or former owner, who shall be held responsible for the conductor of said negro. (Doc 1) This was basically returning payed-slavery. Many blacks remained on these farms and pl antations because they did not know what else they could do after emancipation. However, now they were being forced into staying because few knew anything other than farming. In December of 1865, Congress voted to stamp out these codes. Testimony to the southern white sentiment showed what would have happened if states were allowed to employ their own laws in regards to slavery. (Boyer, 503) Blacks soon develop a sense of freedom and want to create lives for themselves. They do not want to remain in a place and continue to be employed by those who previously treated them as animals. Mr. Lewis, a former slave, tells a planters wife, Mrs. Henry, I want to move away and feel ontirely free and see what I cen do by myself. Even kind masters, like the Henrys, lost many slave due to the want and need of freedom. (Doc 2) Charles Davenport stated Freedom meant us could leave where usd been born and bred, but it meant, too, dat us had to scratch for our ownselves. (Doc 5) Outsiders made independence nearly impossible though. The sharecropping system, in which most had worked before, was still the only employment available and certainly the only work blacks knew as familiar. Rural merchants tried to give blacks a chance for employment, but often forced them into a position where they would sharecrop. (Boyer, 520) The Ku Klux Klan was also had a devastating effect on both the black mind and body. The Klan greatly influenced the black freedom. Klan members would harass, beat, and even kill those blacks that did not take the clans advice, usually telling them to vote democratic. One man was taken out by the Klan, beaten, and was told to promise he would vote the democratic ticket. He responded by saying I dont know how I will vote; it looks hard when a body thinks this way and that way to take a beating. (Doc, 5) Enforcement Acts attempted to reduce the Ku Klux Klans activities. These Enforcement Acts first goal was to protect black voters themselves. The elections would also be federally supervised. These Acts went another step forward by limiting the rights of those whom disadvantaged or impeded blacks voting. The president was also given the power and authority to position federal troops in an area declared to be under rebellion of these laws. Unfortunately, Grant withdrew many federal troops positioned throughout the south and disabled an effective way of enforcing the Acts. (Boyer, 515) Black family and social life began to steadily improve. Family dynamics were turning toward more traditional ways with the man was at the head of the household completing most of the manual labor. the negro women are not disposed to field work,

14th Amendment

Examines history of civil rights in Constitutional context, major Court rulings (Slaughter House cases, Plessy vs. Ferguson, Brown vs. Board of Education). The Constitution guarantees individual rights and liberties to every American. What most people probably do not know is that, while the Constitution is more than 200 years old, most individual civil rights date back only a little more than 50 years. Not until the 1950s did black Americans win the rights enjoyed by most all other citizens. Most of the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the constitution are included in the Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments to the Constitution). The first 10 amendments were ratified in 1791. However, the Bill of Rights protected citizens against abuses by only the federal government. State governments could decide what limits they would place on free speech, trial by jury, or racial equality. This began to change after the Civil War. In 1865, Congress drafted constitutional amendments that Southern states would have

Low Back Pain Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Low Back Pain - Essay Example LBP has been shown to impair an individual's quality of life and his/her functioning. The magnitude of the burden of this problem in the society can be gauged from the fact that the point prevalence of LBP in the general population has been reported to be 15-30% while its lifetime prevalence can be as high as 60-80% (MTABC, 2004). However, the duration of symptoms of this disorder can be reduced viz appropriate and timely management and a study conducted by Waddell et al. elucidated that almost 67% of patients who had taken time off from work due to LBP has returned to work within 1 week and within 2 months almost 90% of the patients became symptom free (MTABC 2004). The etiology of LBP is diverse and it can be attributed to a multitude of causes including the degeneration of the lumbar intervertebral discs, spondylosis deformans (Luoma, et al., 2000 cited in Hangai et al., 2006), osteoarthritis, spinal stenosis, disc disease, dysfunction of the sacoroiliac joint, cancers, infection, organ-related pain, inflammatory arthritis (MTABC 2004), spondylolisthesis and compression fractures which commonly occur due to osteoporosis (Shirakihara, et al., 2001 cited in Hangai et al., 2006). Moreover, several studies have also reported factors such as weakness of the abdominal and back musculature (Van Tulder, et al., 2002), physical loading of the lumbar spine (Bahr, et al., 2004 cited in Hangai et al., 2006) and arteriosclerosis of the abdominal and lumbosacral arteries (Kauppila, et al., 2004 cited in Hangai et al., 2006). Interestingly, the role of psychological factors has also been implicated in the etiology of low back pain by some studies (Takeyachi , et al., 2003 cited in Hangai et al., 2006). The diversity of pathologies which can manifest as back pain often leads to difficulties in determining the underlying pathology and thus makes diagnosis challenging. Similarly, knee pain has also been known to be triggered by a variety of factors such as obesity, increasing age and trauma. Moreover, female gender has been proven to be a definite risk factor for knee pain. Other factors such as ethnicity, smoking, osteoporosis, knee-periarticular muscle strength and exercise have also been implicated in the aggravation of pre-existing knee pain by certain studies (Fukuda and Nakamura, 2002; Burger et al., 1996; Cheng, et al., 2000 cited in Hangai et al, 2006) but these findings have not been replicated by further studies and a causal relationship between these factors and knee pain is yet to be proven. LBP can produce a varying range of symptoms depending on the specific causes. The location and radiation of LBP varies with the pathology and some diseases may cause more back pain than leg pain while others

Project Team Building Strategies Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Project Team Building Strategies - Assignment Example A project team is a group of people that comprised of a manageable number of people. The people have complementary skills, share a common goal, purpose and a working approach (Petrick, 2002). The selection of the project team members can be from within or from outside an organization as situations may demand. Team members selected from within an organization have the advantage of knowing the other team members. This will help in molding a unified project team. The team members will also be familiar with the policies, work culture and work procedure of the organization. Project team members sourced from outside an organization lack familiarity with the organization culture. However, it is necessary for an organization to recruit team members from outside if the project requires certain skills, which are not available among the existing members of an organization (Nagarajan, 2005). Project team members are selected from the coordination between the project manager and the functional management. Team building refers to assisting a group of individuals. This group is bound by a common purpose. The members of the group work interdependently. The members include the leader, external stakeholders and the organization in general. Team building can also be perceived as the process of influencing members of a group to work together effectively for better results from a project. There are six strategies that leading organizations adopt so as to create outstanding performance among its team members. These strategies are the formation of the project team early, having a strong matrix organization structure, consensus on goals, sharing of work, and collocation of a team and lastly, the rewarding of the project team members to motivate them (Levin, 2010).

Louis Tanner Of Destroying Angel And Rick Deckard Of Do Androids Dream :: essays research papers

Louis Tanner of Destroying Angel and Rick Deckard of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: Importance to the Thematic Development of "moral men in immortal worlds" and Body Mind Invasion How would you feel if you found out you where making love to any android? Shocked I hope. In this essay l will discuss how Louis Tanner of Destroying Angel and Rick Deckard of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep are important to the thematic development of "moral men in immoral worlds" and body mind invasion. Is Tanner a moral man in an immoral world? What is considered moral or immoral? We know from reading Destroying Angel that Tanner is a good person. Tanner is the type of person whom we say would "do the right thing" in certain situations. He's honest and honorable. If Tanner makes a promise, he keeps it. He made an agreement with Rattan, where Rattan would be shipped to New Hong Kong illegally in return for the name of the chain killer. Rattan is a drug dealer with a lot of money to waste. He's also the only person with the information to catch the chain killer. To get justice the moral must cooperate with the immoral. We also know that Tanner is not a womanizer. He had his chance with Hannah but did not take advantage of the situation: "No Hannah"(136). Tanner had more worrisome thoughts than making love to a good friend. He wanted the murderer of all murderers, the chain killer. As a cop he never captured the chain killer. This person fused chains to people's bodies and then threw them into the water. For Tanner who was now a retired cop, it was as if a spark lit up in him. All the old memories fled back into his mind. The nightmare of his partner getting shot on a "drug bust gone"(13) wrong began to replay in his mind. He had a conscience; therefore, he could never forget what was done to his partner nor the victims of the chain killer. One of the many other themes found in this book was body mind invasion. When Tanner was still a cop, slugs worked at the police station whose job was to "solve almost any problem" (16). These people were constantly injected with reason enhancers to help them solve investigations. Now that Tanner was retired, the slugs working at the police station probably looked "Distended and distorted"(16) after all these years of taken drugs. Although they took the enhancers, they did not help in finding the chain killer. The only person that

The Struggle Between Tradition and Change

October 17, 2012 In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the reader is taken on a literary journey to a Nigerian tribe, the Umuofia, to experience first-hand the struggles of a warrior named Okonkwo. At first glance, the novel appears to be written for a very specific audience: scholars familiar with Nigerian history, traditions, and culture. However, upon further examination the novel reveals itself to be a striking chronicle of human experiences, universal themes, and timeless struggles that appeal to every human, regardless of familiarity with Nigerian culture.Taken as a whole, the novel appears to be much more than the sum of its parts: syntax, diction, figurative language, imagery, repetition, and symbols. Things Fall Apart is definitely a novel with literary worth. As a story about a culture on the verge of change, Things Fall Apart deals with how the viewpoint and reality of change affect a number of characters. The tension about whether change should be privileged over traditi on often contains questions of personal status.Okonkwo, for example, resists the new political and religious orders because he feels that they are not manly and that he himself will not be manly if his agreements to join or even tolerate them. To some extent, Okonkwo’s resistance of cultural change is also due to his fear of being like his father, or in other words, loss his societal status. His sense of self-worth is dependent upon the traditional standards by which society judges him. This system of evaluating the self inspires many of the clan’s outcasts to embrace Christianity.Long scorned, these outcasts find in the Christian value system a refuge from the Igbo cultural values that place them below everyone else. In their new community, these converts enjoy a more elevated status. The villagers in general are caught between resisting and embracing change and they face the dilemma of trying to determine how best to adapt to the reality of change. Many of the villag ers are excited about the new opportunities and techniques that the missionaries bring.This European influence, however, threatens to extinguish the need for the mastery of traditional methods of farming, harvesting, building, and cooking. These traditional methods, once crucial for survival, are now to a degree, dispensable. Throughout the novel, Achebe shows how dependent such traditions are upon storytelling and language and thus how quickly the abandonment of the Igbo language for English could lead to the extinction of these traditions. In addition to cultural clash, Achebe explores the theme of masculinity versus femininity, and reveals Okonkwo’s fatal character flaw: hyper-masculinity.Okonkwo is motivated by a desire to prove himself superior to his father, who was cowardly and careless and died a poor man with many unpaid debts. He viewed his father as overly pensive, slow to act and womanly. For this reason, he frequently beats his wives, even threatening to kill the m from time to time. Therefore, Okonkwo adopts opposite traits; Okonkwo is rash, quick to act, and excessively violent. Okonkwo always associated violence with masculinity. Achebe uses figurative language like metaphors and similes to compare Okonkwo to a fire. during this time Okonkwo's fame had grown like a bush-fire in the harmattan† (1). Okonkwo gained power and importance in Umuofian society by burning lesser people as fuel. Just like a brush-fire, Okonkwo’s fame, importance, and prestige grew stronger the longer he burned. He continued to burn strong into adulthood. â€Å"[The drums] filled him with fire as it had always done from his youth. He trembled with the desire to conquer and subdue† (42). Okonkwo’s inner fire is what allowed him to conquer Umuofian society and rise above the disgrace of his father.As his fame and popularity increased, Okonkwo pursued his ideal of masculinity. Okonkwo constantly distanced himself from anything even remotely f eminine. He constantly reminded himself of his masculinity and strove to make sure all his clansmen knew of it as well. â€Å"Okonkwo was popularly called the ‘Roaring Flame. ’ As he looked into the log fire he recalled the name. He was a flaming fire† (153). The metaphor of fire is perfect to describe Okonkwo’s character, and yields a deep analysis of human feelings and personality. Like a fire, Okonkwo is violent, and burns whatever he touches.In many cases, he â€Å"burns† his own family. Throughout the novel, Okonkwo harasses on his wives and son, beats his family, and kills three innocent people not including him. In many cases, he hurts his family for trivial reasons. For instance, Okonkwo chastised and beat his son, Nwoye, for merely listening to his mother’s stories. He beat Nwoye again when he discovered him helping women with their household tasks. Okonkwo saw within Nwoye the same â€Å"effeminate† essence of his the father whom he hates so much. Ultimately, the success of Things FallApart as a novel of literary merit is due to Achebe’s use of universal literary themes like self-exploration, change, tradition, cultural clash, and masculinity versus femininity. No matter what language is spoken by the reader or what time period they come from, Achebe’s writing about the human experience is relevant and significant. Mankind has many different faces. Although fear and anger are reactions that all men have, if left unchecked, they will consume all one has worked for and eventually destroy everything that one holds dear.Because of that, before actions are taken, much consideration should be taken to make sure that personal flaws as well as flaws in society do not interfere with one's judgment. Of course, not all scholars agree with the assertion that Things Fall Apart has literary worth. Achebe’s skillful use of literary devices like metaphor, simile, imagery, and repetition demonstrate the quality of writing. Achebe’s understanding of the â€Å"human experience† demonstrates the relevance of theme. And the number of copies of the novel sold, over two million worldwide, demonstrates the universality of the story. It is safe to say that Things Fall Apart has earned widespread acceptance as a quality piece of literature.Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor, 1994. Print. â€Å"Things Fall Apart. † Enotes. com. Enotes. com, n. d. Web. 29 Oct. 2012. <http://www. enotes. com/things-fall-apart>. â€Å"Things Fall Apart Summary. † Study Guides & Essay Editing. N. p. , n. d. Web. 29 Oct. 2012. <http://www. gradesaver. com/things-fall-apart/study-guide/short-summary/>.