Marketing Mix of Nesquik Essay

I choose the product Nestle Nesquik because I am constantly buying Nestle Nesquik powdered milk drink. I get the chocolate and the strawberry flavors. My son will not drink milk at all, but if I put the strawberry or chocolate powder in it, he drinks it all day long. Marketing mix is the four ps. The four P’s are product, price, place, and promotion. Product can be described as any kind of service or good created by a company. It also includes the guarantees, branding, creation, packaging, and design of a product (Editorial Board, 2012). Pricing can be defined by how much money people will pay for the product. It is also about the discounts that are for the product. Place is how the product is transported and stored and how it is distributed, so that it can make it to the buyers hands. Promotion has to deal with how the company gets their product exposed to the people. They use media, sales and commercial advertising (Editorial Board, 2012). Nestle Nesquik product is powder flavoring that you add to milk to make it strawberry, or chocolate milk. Its brand logo is a Nestle Nesquik bunny. They created it so that kids will drink milk and it will be healthier than the other syrups out there. It is packaged in an oval shaped yellow container. It has the Nestle Nesquik bunny on it and has Nestle Nesquik written on it. They guarantee that it has 25% less sugar then the leading brand and that it has no artificial sweeteners. Nestle Nesquik isn’t just good tasting and good for my son, it also is cheap in price. It is only $4. 98 for a 21. 8 oz. container. They also have coupons that you can use that if you buy two Nestle Nesquik products you get a dollar off. I know other moms who get this product because it’s the only way they get their child to drink milk and it’s so inexpensive. Nestle Nesquik never changes their price, and it’s because they don’t need to, because so many people buy it. Nestle Nesquik has their products at Wal-Mart because that is where so many people do their grocery shopping at so it is the perfect place to have it at. You can also order it online too and because it is a powder it doesn’t go bad when it’s getting mailed to you. Nestle Nesquik has a commercial where a mom is talking to you telling you how it’s important for kids to drink milk but she just can’t get her kid to drink it. Then another mom comes in and shows her Nestle Nesquik chocolate powder mix, and says I put Nestle Nesquik in my kids drink and she drinks it nonstop! Then the other mom says wow that’s great thanks Nestle Nesquik! Then before it’s over its shows a bunch of kids with chocolate milk saying I love milk now thanks to Nesquik! They also advertise on their container the Disney cartoon Phineas and Ferb. It says â€Å"where’s the bunny? It says the Nesquik bunny is missing and you have to be a hero like Agent P and find the bunny. Doing this gets kids to see it, especially because it is on the bottom shelf, and they beg their parents for the Agent P stuff. Each of the four p’s, price, product, place, and promotion, are very important when marketing Nestle Nesquik because you have to figure out your price that people will pay because if it’s too much no one will buy it and if it’s too low you won’t make any profits. You have to figure out the place that is the best to have it so that people will buy it when they shop. If you put it at, say a gas station, then people probably won’t buy it. If you put it at Wal-Mart though then it will get bought. When it comes to promotion, you have to do something that will grab their attention. Doing commercials get the parents to see the product, and then they get it to try it for their kids. Doing the Phineas and Ferb advertising gets the kids to see it and then they want it so the parents get it for their kids. As for the product part of the four P’s, it is important because you have to have a product in order to sell a product.

Football Madness

Our team were in the away changing room and my ears were hurting as the manager's voice went straight through me whilst he shouted at us for the dreadful performance we just gave. Then he threw a bottle towards Marcel the goalkeeper who safely caught it. † Oh now you stop it fool!† he shouted sarcastically at him. The room was stuffy because of all the sweat and heat coming off the players. We just got beat two nil by the Newcastle United under twenty ones and our main striker Carlton Wallace the team captain was under pressure. His last season performance was superb, he got top scorer with twenty-one goals and most of them goals were from his heading ability as he was very tall so he had a lot depending on him this season by Leeds United Football Club, because he is on the brink of entering the senior squad. So far during the season he hasn't scored for the first five games and the team are worried about him. The next day he turned up late for training and the Manager Tony Forbes went over to Carlton as he stepped out of his brand new Mercedes Benz SLK and he started shouting and being intolerant at him, Carlton then got straight back in the car and drove off in a rush. As Tony came back the players just pretended that it never happened and carried on with training, except one, that was Andrew Moyes who was the joker amongst the group and he thought he knew what had happened. He asked Tony in a bigheaded way â€Å"what was that all about then gaffer?† Tony replied, â€Å"Just forget it its nothing to do with you.† And Andrew put his hands up towards his chin as if he were holding a handbag and went â€Å"oooooo†. But Tony reacted badly and shouted at him â€Å"you're dropped from the team on Saturday for that remark, you sicken me!† then some players started to smirk, but lucky for them Tony didn't notice. As we were going in Andrew stated, â€Å"I think Carlton's got problems.† So I replied, † what makes you think that?† I asked and Andrew replied, † his behaviour just lately is weird, don't you think?† † He has been a bit strange but nothing too serious I hope.† I stated. But we thought nothing of it and carried on getting towards the changing rooms with the rest of the team. We were entering the changing rooms as the assistant was writing Saturday's team out for the match against Middlesbrough, so everyone was gathered around the board to see their name on it and Carlton was dropped for Alan Smith and everyone was amazed because last season they beat Middlesborough four nil and Carlton got three goals, so I went to see the gaffer but he had left early. As I was getting changed Jamie our key defender asked me, â€Å"Do you want to come for a drink with us?† I replied â€Å"No I've got to shoot off sorry.† So I went to the secretary and asked her where Tony had gone and she said he'd gone to Carlton's to sort something out, immediately I rushed out to the car park and dodged all the journalists who were bombarding me with questions about Carlton's future, so I could get into my car and go. Luckily no police seen me speeding on my way to Carlton's but as I slowly approached his house I saw Tony getting out of his car on the driveway, he stepped up to the door, knocked on it and looked around to see if anyone was watching. Carlton opened the door and poked his head around to see who it was, then he looked around outside for people, but luckily he didn't see me. Then he invited Tony in to his house. Seeing this I got out the car and went round the side of his house making sure I wasn't seen and the window was open so I tried and listen in on the conversation. I heard Carlton talking about when he went to the doctors and got told that if he continues to head a football it will affect his brain because of all the pressure be exerted on to the skull, but last year nearly every goal was a header so that might explain why he hasn't been on form this season. After hearing that I ran back to the car and drove straight to The Bottle of Sack, our local pub where the lads were and darted inside to break the news. As soon as I entered they kept offering drinks and asking things so I couldn't a word in. But then I seen Jamie going to the toilet so I followed him in and Explained to him the situation and he went straight back out and gathered the team round. After he told them they and started to think of what to do and Andrew said â€Å"let's help him through it.† â€Å"You don't say, † Marcel replied sarcastically â€Å"But how?† asked Jamie and Andrew bellowed â€Å"let's sign a new player to replace him.† And everyone gave him a dirty look, then Martin his striking partner said, † well instead of him heading the ball he could bicycle kick then his goals would be spectacular.† So Jamie replied, † it's stupid but it might just work.† â€Å"But that's a difficult skill to perform day in day out.† I added, so Marcel our goalkeeper announced above all the noise of the players in his French accent â€Å"lets train him to do it then, its what teamwork's all about isn't it?† so everybody started planning out what to do in Thursday's training session. It was Thursday and we all waited in the changing room for Tony to enter to tell him Martin's idea. So as he entered Jamie called him over and asked, â€Å"can I have a word outside gaffer?† â€Å"No† he replied â€Å"but it's important gaffer† Jamie added, they both went out. A minute later we heard Tony shout out â€Å"brilliant.† Then he burst back in and said â€Å"Lads Jamie here has just come up with a solution to Carlton's problem.† And Jamie butted in and said, â€Å"Well actually it was Martin's idea gaffer.† â€Å"Who cares?† he exclaimed, so he carried on telling us â€Å"we shall make him do over head or bicycle kicks instead of heading the ball. But you will have to put in effort to help him, agreed?† â€Å"Yes gaffer.† We all replied simultaneously. He then queried, â€Å"How did you know about this problem?† Then suddenly Carlton the changing room so everyone greeted him and luckily for me Tony never found out how we knew. After he got changed Tony told us to go on to field and he would meet us down there except Carlton, because he wanted to talk to Carlton about Martin's idea. I was last out of the changing room and I decided to stay outside the door and listen in on the conversation. At first Tony said â€Å"well Carlton you know about yesterdays talk at yours?† â€Å"Yes.† He replied, â€Å"well I was thinking about your problem and why don't you bicycle kick the ball instead?† asked Tony and Carlton replied † well it's a bit hard to do that gaffer, because I'm not that good at it you see. Also it's quite difficult to perform unless every cross is perfect† â€Å"But we'll do training on it every session starting today, the lads will help and have to do it as well.† Said Tony, so Carlton agreed â€Å"yes†. I quickly dashed on to field so they did not see me as they came out. As I got near Andrew said â€Å"were have you been?† but I was out of breath because I had to run so Tony didn't know I was listening. When Tony arrived with Carlton Tony shouted out â€Å"come on do the warm up procedure.† So all the players did stretching and jogging on the spot and the usual things, but Carlton and the Tony were talking about something and then Tony called the Marcel over and me. He explained to us â€Å"well Marcel get in goal and Mark put some crosses in for Carlton so he can practice those overhead kicks. So I went over and crossed a ball in but Carlton could not reach so Tony shouted â€Å"a bit lower.† So I tried again and he just missed it. We tried again and again but he couldn't do it. Tony shouted over to me † a few more† so I crossed it in and he connected to it perfectly and Tony shouted â€Å"superb lads!† keep it up we did it another two times and he just kept on doing it. The Tony told us to stop and told us † don't get too carried away, save it for the weekend† On the way to the changing room I asked Tony â€Å"why don't you put Carlton into the first team instead of Alan?† but he just said, â€Å"I might, I don't know yet.† After I got changed I went to the car park and got in my car and drove off home so I could rest for tomorrow's game against Middlesbrough. The next morning on the way to Ellend road, which was our home ground, I was all ready for the game today. I pulled into the ground and parked the car. I then got out with my kit bag and went through reception and into changing room and noticed Carlton sitting there all changed ready for the game, and I asked, â€Å"Are you all right?† and he replied, â€Å"yes I'm ecstatic.† â€Å"Why?† I asked he said â€Å"the gaffer has put me in the squad for today because he was amazed by training yesterday with them over head kicks.† â€Å"Brilliant Carlton, well done.† I greeted. â€Å"But I couldn't of done it with out you mate.† He replied Then the gaffer came in and said, â€Å"I don't want any scrappy football today lads last week was dreadful, so come on show me what you've got.† As the bell went to go out all the players shouted â€Å"come on!† stood up clapped, the room was vibrating from the players passion. We then we made our way on to the pitch. It was midway through the first half and the crowd was roaring with excitement, I got the ball passed through to me down the right hand side; I skipped past one defender and crossed the ball in towards Carlton who was waiting in the area. He jumped up and to do a bicycle kick, the time slowed dramatically as if it were a movie. Then Carlton went to kick it, he missed the ball and there was a big gasp from the crowd of over thirty thousand fans. He landed on his back with a massive cry of pain and everyone froze. It didn't look good. Every team gathered round even some Middlesbrough players to look at him then the physio dashed onto the pitch to see what the problem was he shouted â€Å"move away give him room† then he called for a stretcher. He was taken off on the stretcher and was immediately to on his way to hospital in an ambulance. Tony told Chris to get ready so he could replace Carlton. The crowd went silent and we heard the siren of the ambulance as it hurried off to hospital. There was no enthusiasm for the rest of the half and the match was boring now The half time whistle blew and everyone went back to changing room. Tony didn't say anything; he was in shock after the incident with Carlton. The bell rang for us to go out again but this time there was no roar of passion from the players as they strolled out towards the field. The second half was boring because Carlton wasn't playing and the players had no strategy anymore. The game just dragged on back and forth until eventually Tony used his last substitute, which was Alan, he came on for Jamie who had a quiet game. There was only two minutes left on the clock and our goalie had just made a fantastic save to keep us level, he kicked the ball out to Andrew who controlled it brilliantly and then slotted a through ball up to Alan who chased it with all the strength he had, their goalkeeper rushed towards the ball to try and smother it, it was one on one and Alan got there first and skipped around the goalie and passed it into the net. The crowd were roaring with delight as there was only one minute left, but you couldn't hear anything because of the noise from the fans, it was deafening. Tony was running up and down the touchline jumping for joy. The team were cheering as well, running up the pitch to congratulate Alan. The ground felt like it would collapse from the noise and excitement. Then we heard the final whistle blow as the game concluded, and the fans were going wild due to Alan's goal, but everyone forgot about Carlton, except me. So I quickly ran into the dressing room and got changed and dashed to the hospital to check how he was. When I got there I asked the receptionist â€Å"were is Carlton Wallace please?† She replied, â€Å"Ward seven room two.† I walked quickly towards it, eventually finding him lying in a bed in pain. The doctor was standing next to his bed and asked me â€Å"excuse me are do know this person?† I replied, â€Å"Yes we play for the same football club, will he be able to play again?† â€Å"He's damaged ligaments in his lower back, so it doesn't look very promising† he replied. I just stood there and stared at Carlton with hope. â€Å"I'm afraid your going to have to leave now because visiting times are over, also we need to plan the operation for tomorrow.† The doctor told me â€Å"What operation!† I exclaimed â€Å"We need to operate on his lower back quickly or he may never play again† he replied Then I asked â€Å"is it risky?† â€Å"Of course it is, every operation is risky,† he told me. You'd better go now he needs his rest for tomorrow. So I left with a bad feeling that this operation may go wrong, but how was I going to explain it to the lads, that will be even harder. I got to my car in the car park and whilst I was opening the door I told myself that I wasn't going to the lads and let them find out for themselves, so I carried on home to spend the night and have a think. The next day I was tired because I hadn't had much sleep because I was up all night thinking about Carlton's back operation. I had to get over it and go and see him at hospital. When I arrived at hospital I went to ward seven to see him and his parents were there crying, the doctor was there again so I went up to him and asked how he was he explained â€Å"the operation was successful we repaired the ligaments but he will have to give up football for a while† â€Å"Whys that† I asked â€Å"His back isn't capable of all that running and exercise that footballers do day in day out.† I ran out of the hospital got in my car and sped off home because I realised that he won't recover from this and will have to retire. I had a lot of different feelings inside me like anger, disappointment, confusion of why this happened. I then remembered it was Martins idea to make him do overhead kicks and I knew he lived across the road, so I went over and started banging on the door until he opened it. As I seen him open the door I burst in with rage and started beating him up shouting out â€Å"this is for Carlton† â€Å"its your fault he's having to retire†. I realised I got a carried away as I stopped hitting him because he'd stopped breathing and was just lying there on the floor, I didn't know what to do. I got up and ran over to my house then just crumbled down to the floor and started crying.

Caring For Those Left Behind

The Ignited States of America is a nation that has been fighting two wars on two fronts for thirteen years. With an all-volunteer force, our nations military is made up of brave men and women from all walks of life, brought together for one common goal; the safety of our nation. However, with this desire for safety also comes sacrifice, and not in the way that most people think of when they think Of our military members.I am referring to those who are left behind when a service member packs a bag and heads for a foreign land. The spouses, children, parents, and other dependents of these men and women. A life like no other Being a dependent of a service member is a task that the majority of the American population will never take on. The stress that these family members go though can be both physical and psychological, due to factors including deployment cycles, long and unpredictable duty hours, relocations, and living in a foreign country (Padded Poses, 2013). Frequent moves that military families go through can lead to a loss of a support network.The process of having to start over every few years and find a new job, make new friends while leaving old ones and leaving everything familiar behind can take a huge toll on a person. In addition, family separations, even short ones, can leave a military spouse to report feelings of loneliness. If there is a child at home, this spouse is now effectively a single parent. Deployments to war zones can bring a whole new dimension of stress to the family left behind, s their loved one now faces the risk of serious injury or death (Padded Poses, 2013).How are medical professionals, who may or may not have first- hand experience with this unique lifestyle, to adjust the care that is given this portion of the population? Care Enough to Ask While most spouses and family members of service members receive on- base medical services, there are those that are seen in civilian facilities. Families of members of reserve units more often than not live too far from a military facility, so they will seek care in the local community.As healthcare providers, it is important to ask about military affiliation and where in the deployment cycle (past, current or future) a family may be. In addition, it is important to ask questions about the service member themselves. Asking these questions can give a provider insight into stress levels, sleep quality and self-care. If symptoms Of anxiety or depression are present, further screening can be recommended. This line of questioning lets the patient know that you care enough to ask. From here, additional support can be offered when deed. Assessing the mental status of the patient can be crucial to providing proper care. In a study of National Guard spouses, 34% met the criteria for one or more mental health problems including depression, suicide ideation, and hazardous alcohol use. (Padded Poses, 2013). This means that more than one out of 4 spouses of the 1. 1 million military spouses have had what could be considered a mental health emergency. Another area of concern is the coping mechanisms the spouse is currently using to deal with the stress and separation.Everything from financial situation, level of communication, level of familial dysfunction and age of the spouse can give indication of the level of coping skills said spouse possesses. Taking a full history and asking questions pertaining to these areas of concern can assist a provider in making proper recommendations. Once all necessary information has been collected, the provider can then assist the spouse with support groups, coping skills, and stress management. Recommendations can be made with regards to self-care.Getting enough leap can be an all important factor in self-care, as a lack Of sleep can worsen any mental state. This combined with poor nutrition, a lack of exercise and a consumption of alcohol or other mind altering substances can have disastrous results, especially to one already suffering from stress. Every encounter with a military spouse is a chance for education on how to maintain proper self-care, health and well-being. Reflection Many good points are made in this article on how to help the families of military members. As this may be a situation that have not all dealt with, it s good to have a guideline to go by. Eel that more light needs to be brought to this unique situation. In addition, more guidance needs to be given to providers on how to deal with family members of service members who have returned with mental injuries, as well as physical ones. Dealing with a spouse with mental health issues can be just as challenging, if not more so, than caring for one with visible wounds. Conclusion Any family separation can bring about anxiety, but a separation due to a deployment of a loved one to a war zone can present multifaceted healthcare deeds by those left behind.

Man and Soceity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Man and Soceity - Essay Example The role of society with relation to a human being has been thus described in this paper because this is the aspect of a human being’s life that helps him to achieve greater heights in his personal life. Society is the main factor that influences a person and formulates his characteristics and actions towards other people. Keywords: human being, society. Man and Society Man has been surviving within society since times immemorial. As discussed in the abstract of this paper, society is a very wide concept, meaning the collective environment within which a group of people come together and live in a way that their actions influence the habits of each other. Whatever a person does is an influence of the kind of societal environment he has been brought up in. Most people condemn society by making it sound like a bad thing, or an aspect through which people only learn how to ‘gossip’ or talk behind other’s backs. However this is not true entirely because society is also a measure through which people can understand others, learn new things from each other, as well as utilise their potential of the greater benefit of everyone else. The concept of nurturing a person is a very widely used concept; it is according to this that a human being grows with respect to other people around him. Society consists of a vast number of different kinds of people that have grown into beings in their own ways. Each of these people, influence others in some or the manner and help him thus inculcate habits that they possess. A person is attracted to anything that seems mostly impossible for him to achieve; thus, this is how a human being picks up different kinds of habits from his surroundings, or from society, and thus affects his own life. Every group that persists in society must also show a willingness to accept a human being into their group. According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, â€Å"The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gaunt let of the mobs.† He wrote this in his famous piece of writing, ‘Eloquence’. Emerson means to say that the factors that persist in a human being’s environment are enough to help him grow as a person; this is because there are enough tests that a man faces in his external surroundings in the form of experiences that arise by being with other people. However, Emerson, even by writing about a man’s surroundings and society, was afraid of being a part of the same. This can be seen through Holmes’ writing, where he stated that â€Å"Emerson is afraid to trust himself in society much, on account of the failure of his memory and the great difficulty he finds in getting the words he wants. It is painful to witness his embarrassment at times.† By taking this example, one can understand the psychological pressure that a human being is faced with by being with his peers, in society. If we look at this from a wider aspect or point of view, it can b e explained as thus; when a person is young, during the course of his childhood or infancy, he is very carefree and does not care much about the people around him. A child is not prone to comprehending how he becomes a part of society, or the kind of proper behaviour that he must emit in order to be accepted as part of the same. At the same time, other people in society also do not pay much heed to the bad habits of a child and pardon hi for not being aware of the ways of the world or societal behaviour and etiquette. However, when the same child grows up into an

Oedipus Rex Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Oedipus Rex - Assignment Example At the opening of the play, while the proximate event in the prophecy that Oedipus will murder his father being made known to Laius proceeds to the king’s action of casting out his son, the occurrence of the plague in Thebes makes the long-term event. Because of the plague itself, Oedipus necessitates to carry out a thorough investigation in determining the principal cause of the plague. The plague which the Thebes is stricken by is due to the unresolved case of the murdered Laius, king of Thebes and Creon figures out through the oracle that the plague’s precipitating dramatic event will dissolve the moment that the murderer is exiled from Thebes. Jocasta’s brother Creon expresses abnegation of kingship after the death of Laius for the sole reason that he finds no interest in ruling and the responsibility of freeing the city from the Sphinx. He feels less able to drive the plague away from Thebes so he proposes to offer the crown as well as his sister to anyone who bears the potential of answering the Sphinx’s riddle for he appears short of competence in this area. In the end, however, Creon becomes king on the ground that the sons of Oedipus Eteocles and Polynices contending for the throne die of slaying each

Movie Application with Interpersonal Communication Essay

Movie Application with Interpersonal Communication - Essay Example The story takes a turn when someone shoots the store clerk to death. Police officials come to the store in order to collect evidence. The murderers’ descriptions given by the witnesses accidentally match with the appearance of Bill and Stan. The police officials arrest both friends for the court prosecution. Bill’s mother sends an attorney, Vinny, to handle Bill’s case. Vinny, who has been shown as the cousin of Bill, takes the case and becomes the lawyer of Bill and Stan. â€Å"He has no courtroom experience, and indeed no experience at all except with a few personal injury cases† (Ebert, 1992). Vinny tries to deceive the judge by saying that he is a well-experienced lawyer whereas the judge doubts his qualification and experience. With all this drama and confusion, the story continues and ends with the dismissal of all charges against Bill and Stan. Interpersonal Conflicts Concepts Having described the plot of the movie, let us now discuss some interpers onal communication concepts in relationship with some specific behaviors found in the movie. The interpersonal communication concepts, which will be included in discussion, are legitimate power, harmful conflicts, and beneficial conflicts. Legitimate power is a form of power, which a person can exercise where needed. This power can be exercised in situations where communication leads to conflicts between people and the conflict does not seem to be resolving by any other means. Use of legitimate power is a successful way to resolve any kind of conflict. Having power is an ability to achieve some objectives whereas having legitimate power is the ability to influence others using some specific laws and regulations. Legitimate power is used in such cases where interpersonal communication is not able to resolve issues successfully because of some law related complexities (Floyd, 2008). In such cases, a person with legitimate power plays his/her role by providing a better solution towards the problem based on proper laws. We can also take example from the movie selected for discussion in this regard. In the movie, Vinny used his legitimate power to fight the case of his cousin who was not involved in the murder and was taken into custody based on wrong proofs. Had Vinny not exercised his legitimate power to call the local sheriff for testifying the allegation, the judge would have made a wrong judgment regarding Bill and Stan. Therefore, we can say that use of legitimate powers is very beneficial to resolve all sorts of conflicts. Another interpersonal communication concept described in the book is that conflicts can be harmful if not treated properly. Interpersonal communication conflicts can produce adverse effects on the involved parties if no proper actions are taken for the resolution of conflicts. In personal relationships, conflicts can put a very negative impact on the strength of relationships. Therefore, interpersonal communication conflicts and personal r elationship conflicts need to be managed very carefully because if conflicts persist for a long time, they can be very dangerous for the relationships. In the movie, which was selected for review, Vinny puts his frustration out on his fiancee, Lisa, by taunting her. This attitude of Vinny upsets Lisa and she gets out of the courtroom. This situation makes Vinny alone and he feels that he has not shown a good behavior towards Lisa. Therefore, he gets out of the room for a while and makes Lisa come into the room to

The Odyssey is an epic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Odyssey is an epic - Essay Example The advancement in pragmatic and sociolinguistic regulations, in language utilization, is imperative to language learners to assists in the development of the pragmatic concept in their communication at societal, academic and professional levels (Horn & Ward 2004). These developments are essential in the comprehension and creation of language that is apposite to the presented situations or contexts. Pragmatics aims at portraying the attributes of the speech context that assists, in the determination of the right propositions, to utilize within a certain sentence. Pragmatic feature of presented meaning entails the interactions between the contexts of a phrase and the elucidation of the elements within these terms. In social context, pragmatics can be utilized with or without vagueness depending on the existing situations. In performatives, certain speech acts have to be put in place, where certain words ought to be utilized by the appropriate persons and in the appropriate context. In certain circumstances, the choice of proposition utilized within a sentence ought to go along with ceremonial or ritual deeds. However, certain situations within the social context bear different pragmatic requirements where propositions used cannot be applied in any other context due to its vagueness or ambiguity (Horn & Ward 2004). Individuals have the capability of choosing the appropriate speech acts and applying them in the social context.

Article critique Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Article critique - Assignment Example The paper lacks a step by step flow of research write-up. It has also left out certain critical elements found in an abstract such as relevance of the study as well as research methodology and conclusion. However, its inclusion of keywords is remarkable as those words are relevant to the study. The study is inspired by the observations made concerning the emotional turmoil that the working members of the society go through whenever certain change that would require a transition from one regular habit to another is introduced. The economic sectors have witnessed a lot of psychological problems caused when upheavals are experienced in the society. Transformative learning has been therefore identified to be one of the ways that can best go about this problem. It is this problem that the research seeks to explore. The paper begins by exploring the status quo of the problem at hand. It describes several studies have been done in trying to understand the essence and relationship between critical transformative learning and the welfare of workers. This is explored in reference to previous studies that had been conducted to understand the same. From this discussion, a knowledge gap is created which demonstrates that not so much has been done to determine exactly the effectiveness of transformative learning as opposed to together modes/forms of learning in shielding the workers from the shock of rapid social changes. This revelation renders the research relevant for that particular study as there is a wide lacuna that needs to be studied. However, it becomes ambiguous when it states that it seeks to broaden the knowledge and understanding of transformative learning ‘through describing restorative leaning’. This purpose is not easily understood as one may be left wondering what variables influences what or how does the variables correlate in case they actually are. A precise and clear purpose of the study

To what extent can global geopolitics in the period since 1989 be Essay

To what extent can global geopolitics in the period since 1989 be described as a 'clash of civilisations' - Essay Example Between the 1940s and 1989, global citizens were held hostage to recurring conflict between the world’s two largest superpowers which never reached a full militaristic situation as a result of both superpower’s capability to impose mass destruction against the other (Gaddis 56). However, since 1989, many states have developed more technological capacity and economic strength, making powers other than the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc more influential in geopolitics. Since 1989, more geopolitical power spread throughout emerging militaristic and economically-sound states has changed the dynamics of political relationships throughout the world. This essay explores the Gulf War, theory regarding global capitalism and U.S. unipolarity to describe how geopolitics, today, has led to a clash of civilisations. Between 1980 and 1988, Iraq had been engaged in a lengthy war against Iran, sparked by unsettled border disputes between the two nations. Iraq, a once-wealthy and prosperous nation, was witnessing its economic strength diminishing as a result of continuously funding a costly military effort against its rival. During this war, Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s largest oil producers, began to fear that if Iran won this conflict, it would create an Iran hegemony that would ultimately threaten national security of Saudi Arabia and its oil-related revenues. Saudi Arabia had loans $26 billion USD to Iraq as a dual effort to ensure that the Shia in Iran would not gain substantial political power. Kuwait, another oil rich nation, had also loaned Iraq $14 billion USD to assist Iraq in its military objectives against Iran. By 1990, Kuwait refused to simply forgive this $14 billion dollar loan even though Iraq was convinced that the eight year-long war had achieved an oppression of Iran’s growing strength (Watson, George, Tsouras and Cyr 61). The Saudis, additionally, placed considerable pressure on Iraq to begin loan

Crichton Smith Critical Evaluation Essay Example for Free

Crichton Smith Critical Evaluation Essay Home by Iain Crichton Smith is a short story which creates a sense of time and place. This essay will examine how the sense of place is shown in setting and will comment on the message the writer has. Jackson is a man returning to his hometown in Glasgow from South Africa. It becomes apparent to the reader that the setting, in both time and place, is a very important aspect in conveying the meaning of the text. In the short story it becomes apparent that the place has changed since Jackson was last here as the city of Glasgow has undergone a period of decline and decay. This is shown in different ways such as characterisation, descriptive language and the use of imagery. Smith shows firstly how very unpleasant Jacksons hometown has become at the start of the story. He describes how things are poorly maintained like his old tenement has become drab and the walls are described as:  Brown above and dirty blue below, pitted with scars  Brown shows how unpleasant the setting is through the use of negative colour imagery. The colour brown very often has negative connotations. This gives the reader an immediate negative image of the tenement. Also Smith uses the colour blue which should give a positive image, however he uses it with the word dirty which also gives the reader an image of the unpleasant environment around the tenement. Also to give the reader a bit more of a negative image of the area, Smith writes pitted with scars, which has two meanings in the story one of which is suppose to mean the area is literally scarred because the area has been very poorly maintained and is very unpleasant. The second meaning is that it is metaphorically scarred because it has had an emotional impact on everyone in the neighbourhood. This is also used to highlight the horrendous living conditions in Glasgow. While Jackson remains regretful about the hardships of the living conditions in Glasgow and in his tenement, Jacksons wife has a more realistic idea that times have changed in Glasgow when she says to Jackson, Lock the car dear, This shows the reality of this area and shows Jacksons ignorance and that his wife is very wary about that particular area. Jackson shows how naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve he really is and that he does not realise that the place has changed dramatically and protests: They dont do things like that here  The image of the unpleasantness of the area is again highlighted.  as the town had changed a lot since they had left it, that much was clear  The story continues by focusing strongly on the negative changes such as, the loss of the community spirit, the local shops and the loss of friends to featureless estates. Smith is clearly commenting of how the social conditions of Glasgow have changed dramatically through time. Jackson visits his old office, a place of happy memories of. However, upon entering the office his memories are shattered and he begins to realise how uninteresting and unpleasant the office actually is. Jackson stood cringing in that rotting office. This shows that Jacksons view is beginning to change as he draws back and he does not enjoy being back at his old office. Both cringing and rotting have negative connotations and this highlights how uncomfortable he is beginning to feel in an office that appears to be decaying in his eyes. At this point the reader is also meant to see that Jacksons nostalgia destroys the strikingly expressive memory immediately after arguing with the factor of the building. Jackson shows and immediate change of attitude and character when he now sees Africa as home by suddenly saying;  I wish to God we were home  This speech shows the dramatic change in his character. The reader sees how the nostalgia that Jackson had has been completely destroyed. Also he sees people who live in the tenements as punks when Smith writes;  By God, they knew how to deal with punks where he came from  Iain Smith uses very effective word choice. Punks shows how Jackson sees people who live in the tenements in a very bad way. The reader is made aware of the ignorance of Jackson and he appears to have learned nothing from his visit and he would have still have acted aggressively.  Overall, Home by Iain Crichton Smith is a short story which has been shown throughout. The character of Jackson has changed dramatically because of the setting in place. This short story shows that people can be naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve when they are talking about where they come from but when they leave and come back again and see a massive difference which changes the character of the person.

Recycling And Reuse Of Construction And Demolition Wastes Construction Essay

Recycling And Reuse Of Construction And Demolition Wastes Construction Essay What is waste? In fact, we do not have a definitive list of what is and is not waste. In construction field, the waste can be generated from building a structure (under construction) and those created during the wrecking of a building (demolition debris). There are many buildings built in whole of the world. At the same time, there are also many building going to be demolished. Hence, the construction and demolition works will bring out a lot of debris waste or waste. Thus, construction and demolition works is the largest contributor of waste in the world. Recycling and reuse are the essential components of environmentally-responsible of everyone. Some of the waste can be recycling and reuse and some are not. Recycling is the collection of used materials that would or else be waste to be broken down and reproduce for others purpose. Similarly, reuse is use again the recycling waste in the proper way. In the construction field, suitable method will be applied to recycling the CD waste and reuse it in others way. Recently, the environmental impact is the pressing issue in the world. With the improper ways to deal with the waste, it will lead to environment harms. Most of the CD wastes are recyclable; some of the examples of the recyclable waste are bricks, concrete, timber, asphalt, steel and block. Indeed, most of the CD wastes are recyclable. Therefore, recycling and reuse of CD waste is one of the most important aspects in the construction field. If the construction field from all around the world implement the recycling and reuse method to the CD works, it will minimizing the waste problems and negative impact to the environment concurrently. Hence this is a good practice to minimize the CD waste with proper method. Aim: To study the reuse and recycling of construction waste in construction and demolition works for Bricks and Concrete. Objectives: To identify the two types of construction waste in bricks and concrete. To determine the ways of recycling and reuse the construction waste. To determine whether there is any limitation in reuse and recycling the construction waste in Malaysia Problem Statement: Building construction is fast moving around the world. The demolition works will bring out a lot of debris or waste. Construction and demolition wastes are one of the largest waste streams in the world. With the improper ways to deal with the waste, it will lead to environment harms. Recycling and reuse of building materials waste is one of the most important aspect in the construction field. I would like to carry out the studies of 2R of CD waste which are bricks and concrete. Reuse and recycling of building materials waste is a good practice in construction field. From the research, almost all the job site wastes are recyclable. This research will come out the positive and negative outcome of recycling and reuse of CD waste. Indeed, 2R of building materials waste will save the costs than to throw them away. In my research, I will try to explore is there any limitations or improvements for the reuse and recycling practice in Malaysia. This is because compare to others country, Malaysia is still improving in this aspect in the construction field. Scope of Study: What is covered in my study: What are the construction waste which can reuse and recycling in construction field? Positive and negative outcomes of 2R of construction waste. How the construction waste recycling and reuse. Any limitation and improvement of 2R of CD waste. Methodology: Stage 1: Initial Proposal Stage 2: Literature Review A comprehensive of review of the relevant literature including a computer-assisted search will be undertaken in order to develop an understanding of two types of the construction waste which can be recycling and reuse. The Literature Review will be followed by a questionnaire with the relevant people. Stage 3: Questionnaires This stage will be implemented by carry out the questionnaire to the relevant people such as manufacturer or contractor in the construction industry. Besides, information from internet search, newspaper, journals and magazine will also be part of my data collection. Stage 4: Writing up This stage involves writing up the content of the dissertation should cover the chapters proposed in the following section: Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2- Literature Review Identifying two types of the construction waste for bricks and concrete. The ways of reuse and recycling of the construction waste Determine whether there is any limitations in reuse and recycling of construction waste in Malaysia. Chapter 3 Case Study Chapter 4 Data analysis Chapter 5 Conclusion and Recommendations References Some of the example of questionnaires: Which types of materials would you think that is highly produced in the Construction and demolition works? Steel b) Timber c) Bricks d) Concrete Do you think that there is any limitation or improvement of reuse and recycling of CD waste in Malaysia? Cost b) Techniques c) Lack of professional workforce/experience Do you think that 2R of CD waste important? What are the factors that you think that 2R of CD waste important? Environmental issues Save cost Government pressure Project Plan and Schedule: Task to be completed Month 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Initial Proposal Introduction Literature Review Chapter 1: Types of waste Chapter 2: ways of 2R Chapter 3: improvement/limitation Research Methodology Interview Data analysis Conclusion and recommendation Overall References

Hindu Wedding Ceremony Essay -- Descriptive Wedding Hindu Culture Essa

Hindu Wedding Ceremony Introduction The tradition Vedic wedding ceremony is about four thousand years old. The ceremony is a religious occasion solemnized in accordance with the Vedas, the sacred scriptures of the Hindus. It is a collection of rituals performed by the bride’s parents. Each steps in the ceremony has symbolic philosophical and spiritual meaning. The Maharaj (priest) conducts the ceremony by chanting Mantras (bridal altar). The ceremony is performed in Sanskrit, the most ancient surviving language.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Lagna, the marriage, is performed to unite two souls so firmly that after marriage although their bodied remain separate, their souls merge and become harmonious. They become spiritually one. Swagatam (Welcoming the Groom) Jay arrives amid much celebration with his family and friends at the doorsteps. Hiral’s mother welcomes Jay and asks him if is prepared to make the life long commitment and is ready to deal with the bittersweet experience that marriage will present in the future. He is then asked to brake a clay pot filled with curd, honey, ghee (clarified butter) and cottonseeds. The clay pot represent the world and the materials symbolize the different experience he will encounter in the journey of life ahead. Hiral’s mother then leads him to the Mandap (bridal altar) where the wedding ceremony will take place. Ganesh Puja, Kalash and Navagraha (Invocation to Lord Ganesh)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The wedding ceremony begins with the worship of lord ganesh, the remover of all obstacles. Hiral’s parents attend the ceremony with jay, and the Maharaj (Priest) guides the rituals. The kalash (pot) contains sacred waters with coconut and flowers symbolizing the universe. Prayers are rendered to the kalash. This portion of the ceremony represents the worship of five basic elements; earth, air, fire, water and sky. The Navagraha (the nine planets of the solar system) are involved for their blessing. Kanyagaman And Manglashtak   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Hiral is brought to the Mandap by her maternal uncle(kanyagaman).A white curtain, antarpata ( a symbol of traditional barriers) is held between the couple. The bride’s relative (Mangalashtak) chant blessings. The curtain is then removed and Hiral and Jay exchange garlands. Madhuparka, Kanyadaan, and Hastamelap (Giving Away of the bride and joining of the Hands)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Hiral’s father offers jay ghee and curd... ...a necklace made of sacred black beads (Mangal Sutra), signifying his abiding love, integrity and devotion. Then he places sindoor, a reddish powder in her hair. The priest then blesses the wedding ring and the couple exchanges them. These acts represent Hiral and Jay’s new status as a married woman and man. Kansar Bhojan (Nourishing the relationship)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Jay and Hiral feed each other four times with sweets, signifying their pledge to love and care for each other, and accept the blessing to have a harmonious marriage. Khand Saubhagyavati (Blessing from the married women)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Hiral and Jay now seek the blessing of their parents and their elderly relatives by bowing to their feet (ashirvaad). Married women form the bride’s side bless the couple by whispering â€Å"saubhagyavati Bhav†(blessing for abiding martial happiness)into the bride’s right ear. Then seek blessing from relatives and friends. Vidaai (Farewell)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The last ritual of the ceremony is a touching and emotional farewell to the daughter. Hiral now begins her new role as a wife and as a member of the Warner family. She throws a fistful of rice, so that the house of her children remains prosperous and happy.

Essay --

Corporate level strategy is about creating value by coordinating resources across business units and finding new ways to develop and capitalise on the organisation’s capabilities over a long-term horizon. GE’s corporate strategy between 1981 and 2001 was all about performance and efficiency (Bucifal, 2009). Grand strategies adopted and implemented during the period are restructuring, retrenchment, divestment, acquisitions and mergers. Through his organisational restructure CEO Welch eliminated several layers of management and shed a large number of jobs. He led a sustained attack on bureaucratic processes and in its place he sought to instill a culture of candidness, confidence, direction and imaginative thinking at every level of the organisation. He implemented an important restructure of the GE business portfolio, spotlighting on a restricted number of sectors with promising performance and growth potential, whilst retaining a fairly diversified portfolio of business es. This was achieved through the sale of GE’s less profitable businesses and retention or acquisition of businesses identified as number one or number two in their industry (Grant 2008, p.304). The strategy led to several huge divestments and the shifting of emphasis towards GE’s technology-based businesses and service businesses (Bock 2001). A series of acquisitions that followed led to the phenomenal growth of GE Capital, which became one of the world’s leading diversified financial services companies (Grant 2008, p.304). He continuously stretched performance targets through planning strategically, controlling finance, and the management of human resource. Welch introduced periodic corporate initiatives which became known as GE’s Operating System. The major initi... ...eir strategy can yet still be improved, however. Currently, MobileMe - a service Apple offers on its iPhones to that keeps contacts, calendar, and email in sync across multiple devices over the air - is a premium service that costs $99 per year. This is the wrong approach. MobileMe should be free and integrated into Apple’s platforms rather than a premium service. MobileMe should act like the fastener that integrates the platforms and as an attraction for users. Apple’s objective should be to get maximum MobileMe clients. Users, who are happy using MobileMe across their various devices, are less likely to switch to a competitor’s product. This is what Google has done so well with the Android OS on smartphones and tablets. The iBook Store, too, which at the moment is like a book store, should instead become a print media platform for books, newspapers and magazines.

John Donne: A Poet Out of His Time Essay -- Biography Biographies Essa

John Donne: A Poet Out of His Time      Ã‚   "The first poet in the world in some things," applauded Ben Jonson of his friend, John Donne (Donne, John Donne: A Selection of His Poetry 11). In the midst of the stylized and often frivolous verses of the Elizabethan and cavalier poets, John Donne's work emerges as startling, intellectual, and honest to human nature and emotion- classifying him as the first of the modern poets. Through an exploration of Donne's "The Sun Rising" and "The Flea", we shall reveal Donne's innovative style and technique, and how this repels him from the poetic orthodoxy of the seventeenth century and towards the style of the modern age.    0 "Busy old fool, unruly sun,/ Why dost thou thus?" Donne audaciously denounces the sun itself, a heavenly body worshipped through the ages, in his poem, "The Sun Rising". Moreover, Donne employs an interesting conceit: he uses the routine, everyday phenomena of the rising sun as the basis for a love poem, love being extraordinary, new, and often once-in-a-lifetime. Donne goes on dramatically and arrogantly to thre... John Donne: A Poet Out of His Time Essay -- Biography Biographies Essa John Donne: A Poet Out of His Time      Ã‚   "The first poet in the world in some things," applauded Ben Jonson of his friend, John Donne (Donne, John Donne: A Selection of His Poetry 11). In the midst of the stylized and often frivolous verses of the Elizabethan and cavalier poets, John Donne's work emerges as startling, intellectual, and honest to human nature and emotion- classifying him as the first of the modern poets. Through an exploration of Donne's "The Sun Rising" and "The Flea", we shall reveal Donne's innovative style and technique, and how this repels him from the poetic orthodoxy of the seventeenth century and towards the style of the modern age.    0 "Busy old fool, unruly sun,/ Why dost thou thus?" Donne audaciously denounces the sun itself, a heavenly body worshipped through the ages, in his poem, "The Sun Rising". Moreover, Donne employs an interesting conceit: he uses the routine, everyday phenomena of the rising sun as the basis for a love poem, love being extraordinary, new, and often once-in-a-lifetime. Donne goes on dramatically and arrogantly to thre...

Smartie Lab Research

Smartie Lab Analysis: The total area of my ecosystem was six feet, but the area we sampled was four feet. We had six types of each smartie: 4 green, 5 orange, 10 purple, 7 red, 5 white, and 14 yellow. In our sampled area we had 3 green, 0 orange, 5 purple, 2 red, 0 white, and 7 yellow. We had 4. 25 organisms per total area that was the density. Our relative density was 8. 88% green, 11. 11% orange, 22. 22% purple, 15. 55% red, 11. 11% white, and 3. 45% yellow. The frequency of each organism was 75% green, 0% orange, 50% purple, 25% red, 0% white, and 75% yellow.The relative frequency of each organism was 33% green, 0% orange, 22% purple, 11% red, 0% white, and 33% green. The coverage of each type of organism was 18. 83%. The importance value of each organism was 34. 24 for green, 9. 98 for orange, 30. 35 for purple, 19. 79 for red, 9. 98 for white, and 32. 43 for yellow. The rank of my organism’s importance from highest to lowest is: green, yellow, purple, red, then white and orange. My population estimate for part II is 11. 66 yellow smarties. My % error for population estimate is 16. 71%.We used a line transect for this lab, and I think most of these calculations could be more applied to plants, since they are stationary and do not move, like smarties, which do not move. This is more difficult to compare to animals since animals move, and may react to being captured and recaptured. Conclusion: The results of my simulation show that around 12 yellow smarties belong to my population of smarties. However, we actually had 14. The results were pretty close, and this demonstrates that the capture and recapture system is a pretty decent system in obtaining population estimates.However it is important to keep in mind that smarties are not stationary and cannot react to being captured in ways that animals and some plants can. The importance values between my transect and my actual data are pretty close, however in actuality yellow was the most important, not gr een. A quadrat would be more advantageous over a transect in situations where there are more types of organisms, or the organism can move. I think there can be issues with marking organisms after capture, since the organism may react to being capture and seriously make a difference on the population estimate, leading observers to obtaining incorrect data.Suggestions for further investigations: I would change this lab to including more exact numbers for smarties, so that percentages could come out more clean and would be easier to add and divide and such. I would also use multiple trials, with different bags of smarties, and with different transects to have more broad data. I would use different kinds of transects, as well as a quadrat to see what kinds of results those give me too. Finally, I would compare all the results from each kind of trial and average them out.

The Glass Menagerie (Critical Article #1)

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association http://apa. sagepub. com Tennessee Williams: The Uses of Declarative Memory in the Glass Menagerie Daniel Jacobs J Am Psychoanal Assoc 2001; 50; 1259 DOI: 10. 1177/00030651020500040901 The online version of this article can be found at: http://apa. sagepub. com/cgi/content/abstract/50/4/1259 Published by: http://www. sagepublications. com On behalf of: American Psychoanalytic Association Additional services and information for Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association can be found at: Email Alerts: http://apa. agepub. com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://apa. sagepub. com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsReprints. nav Permissions: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. nav Citations http://apa. sagepub. com/cgi/content/refs/50/4/1259 Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 jap a Daniel Jacobs 50/4 TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: THE USES OF DECLARATIVE ME MORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE Tennessee Williams called his first great work, The Glass Menagerie, his â€Å"memory play. The situation in which Williams found himself when he began writing the play is explored, as are the ways in which he used the declarative memory of his protagonist, Tom Wingfield, to express and deal with his own painful conflicts. Williams’s use of stage directions, lighting, and music to evoke memory and render it three-dimensional is described. Through a close study of The Glass Menagerie, the many uses of memory for the purposes of wish fulfillment, conflict resolution, and resilience are examined. T he place: St. Louis, Missouri.The year: 1943. Thomas Lanier Williams, age thirty-two, known as Tennessee, has returned to his parents’ home. He has had a few minor successes. Several of his shorter plays have been produced by the Mummers in St. Louis. For another, staged by the Webster Grove Theater Guild, he was awarded an engraved silver cake plat e. He has retained Audrey Wood as his literary agent and with her help had several years earlier won a Rockefeller fellowship to support his writing. But Williams’s Fallen Angels bombed in Boston the previous summer.Its sponsor, the Theater Guild, decided not to bring the play to New York. Since obtaining a B. A. from the University of Iowa in l938, Williams has been broke more often than not. He has no home of his own. He’s led an itinerant existence, living in New Orleans, New York, Provincetown, and Mexico, as well as Macon, Georgia, and Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; faculty, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis; Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.Submitted for publication October 12, 2001. Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 Daniel Jacobs 1260 Culver City, California. He has subsisted on menial jobs—waiting tables, op erating an elevator, ushering at movie theaters—tasks for which he is not f itted and from which he is often f ired. His vision in one eye is compromised by a cataract that has already necessitated surgery. And just before moving back home from New York, he was beaten up by sailors he took to the Claridge Hotel for a sexual liaison.Arriving home in 1943, Tennessee f inds many things unchanged: his parents, Cornelius and Edwina, remain unhappily married and their bitter quarrels f ill the house. Williams must again deal with the father he despises. Tennessee is pressured by Cornelius, who opposed his return home, to f ind a job. If Tennessee will not return to work at the International Shoe Company, as Cornelius advises, then he must earn his keep by performing endless domestic chores. But it is the changes in the family that are even more troubling. Williams’s younger brother Dacon is in the army and may be sent into combat after basic training.His maternal grandparent s have moved in because Grandma Rose, now conf ined to an upstairs bedroom, is slowly dying. Most important of all, Tennessee’s beloved sister, also named Rose and two years older than he, is no longer at home. She has in fact been at the State Asylum in Farmington since l937. Diagnosed schizophrenic, she has recently undergone a bilateral prefrontal lobotomy to control her aggressive behavior and overtly sexual preoccupations. During this stay at home, Williams visits Rose for the f irst time since her surgery.He f inds her behavior more ladylike, but she remains clearly delusional. The lobotomy, Williams realizes, was â€Å"a tragically mistaken procedure† that deprived her of any possibility of returning to â€Å"normal life† (Williams 1972, p. 251). â€Å"The poor children,† he will write of his St. Louis childhood, â€Å"used to run all over town, but my sister and I played in our own back yard. . . . We were so close to each other, we had no need o f others† (Nelson 1961. p. 4). Now, for Tennessee, Rose is irretrievably lost except as a memory, alternately recalled in pain and shut out in self-defense.Williams cannot abide his situation, thrown amid his parents’ bitter quarrels, the slow death of his grandmother, and the terrible absence of his sister. His only escape: the hours of writing he does every day in the basement of the family home. Here, between washing garage windows and repairing the gutters on the back porch, he writes the â€Å"memory play† that he f irst calls The Gentlemen Caller and then Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE The Glass Menagerie.The play is a brilliant, profound, and intricate study of declarative memory and its psychological uses. DECLARATIVE MEMORY Declarative memory is the system that provides the basis for conscious recollection of facts and events. But this system, we know, is not just a warehouse of information, of veridical memories of actual happenings that can be retrieved at will. Rather, like an autobiographical play, declarative memory is a creative construction forged from past events and from the fears, wishes, and conf licts of the one who is remembering.As Schacter (1995) notes, â€Å"The way you remember depends on the purposes and goals at the time you attempt to recall it. You help paint the picture during the act of recalling† (p. 23). It was just this complex and creative aspect of memory formation that led Freud (l899) to write that â€Å"our childhood memories show us our earliest years but as they appeared in later periods when memory was aroused† (p. 322). The stories we tell of our lives are as much about meanings as they are about facts. In the subjective and selective telling of the past, our histories are not just recalled, but reconstructed.History is not recounted, but remade. Williams understood this when he wro te, in the stage directions of The Glass Menagerie, that â€Å"memory takes a lot of license, it omits some details, others are exaggerated to the emotional value of the article it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart† (p. 21). Williams has Tom Wingf ield, the play’s protagonist, tell us this. In his opening speech, Tom is both creative artist and unreliable rememberer: â€Å"I have tricks in my pockets. I have things up my sleeve. . . . I give you truth in the pleasant guise of illusion† (p. 2). In this way, Williams warns us from the play’s beginning that memory is a tricky business—f ickle, changeable, susceptible to distortion and embellishment, but always true to the current emotional needs of the rememberer. This paper is an exploration of the emotional needs of the rememberer—of Tom Wingfield, the rememberer in the play, and Tom Williams, the rememberer as writer. Williams could have chosen any f irst name for his protagonist. He chose his own to emphasize the loosening of boundaries between fact and f iction.It is as though he is telling us that autobiography—which is, after all, organized declarative memory—is Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 1261 Daniel Jacobs 1262 an elaborate f iction based on facts. And that f iction (the creative use of memory) is at its heart emotional autobiography. Both Tom Wingf ield and Tom Williams carry a burden of guilt for leaving the family, especially a disabled sister, and have a need to justify their behavior through the use of recollection.Both Toms live with deep sorrow alongside a wish to retaliate against loved ones who have disappointed them. Remembering is for both Toms, as for all of us, a coat of many colors, worn to set us apart from others as well as link us to them, to justify our choices, to take revenge on others, to compete with them, to kill them once again, or to resur rect them from the grave. The distortions and selective uses of memory are as manifold as the needs of the rememberer. Williams endows each character in his play with his or her own dynamic uses of memory.Amanda can escape the harshness of her current situation by evoking memories of a triumphant past. She is like a patient Kris (l956b) describes who â€Å"while the tensions of the present were threatening . . . was master of those conjured up in recollection† (p. 305). Amanda’s use of memories is aggressive as well, used as a weapon against her husband and children. In constantly contrasting the memories of a happy youth with the unhappiness of her marriage and the bleakness of her children’s lives, her anger and competitiveness take a brutal form. Unlike Amanda, her daughter Laura, who is crippled, has relatively few memories.But the memory of Jim, the gentleman caller, provides her a modicum of comfort. In a pale and pathetic imitation of her mother’s recollections of a house f illed with jonquils, she recalls that Jim gives her a single bouquet of sorts, the sobriquet â€Å"blue roses. † It is a nickname derived from his psychologically intuitive misunderstanding of the illness â€Å"pleurosis,† which had kept Laura out of school. She cannot compete with her mother in the fond memory department and retreats to the concrete but fragile satisfactions of her glass menagerie, where memory and imagination are safely stored—until Jim arrives.The gentleman caller is a man who lives in the present and seems to have little use for the past. It is the future to which he looks. In fact, one feels that memory of his high school greatness are both a satisfaction and a threat to him. For he, like John Updike’s Harry Angstrom (1960) will never experience the glory days of the past. He says as much to Laura: â€Å"But just look around you and you will see lots of people disappointed as you are. For instance, I had h oped when I was going to high school that I would be further along at this time, six years later, Downloaded from http://apa. agepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE than I am now. You remember that wonderful write-up I had in ‘The Torch’ † (p. 94). While Amanda revels in her triumphant past as a way of dealing with the present, Jim runs from his into the future. Seeing in the crippled Laura some aspect of his own feared limitations, he tries to help her overcome hers through encouragement and f inally a kiss. His inability to help her in the end may be a harbinger of his own failures.MEMORY AND LOSS Williams was aware also that declarative memory is paradoxical in that it resurrects and keeps alive in the present what is dead and gone forever. Referring to this paradoxical aspect of memory, he wrote that â€Å"when Wordsworth speaks of daffodils or Shelley of the skylark or Hart Crane of the delica te and inspiring structure of the Brooklyn Bridge, the screen imagism is not so opaque that one cannot surmise behind it the ineluctable form of Ophelia† (Leverich 1995, p. 536). The very presence of memory implies loss.Memory, if you will, is the exquisite lifelike corpse that both denies and acknowledges what has passed away. There is for all of us that double vision that memory imparts, one that at once has the capacity to help and to hurt. Declarative memory provides coherence and direction to our lives, but also reminds us that our path inevitably leads to disintegration and death. The daffodils recollected in tranquility are, at the same time, Ophelia’s garland. Amanda Wingf ield’s recollection of her past social triumphs only reminds us of how much time has passed and how many hopes have been dashed.Laura’s attachment to the happy memories of childhood innocence represented by her glass menagerie only makes harsher the realities of her adult life an d the bleakness of her future. Laura and Amanda are represented as having a choice between the infantile omnipotence of their past or a feeling of victimization in the present. When Amanda stirs up old memories as a hedge against the painful present and uncertain future, they are only partially effective. For the contrast between past and present, and the knowledge that what is past will never come again, lead only to further depression and anxiety (Schneiderman 1986).Similarly, behind Tom the protagonist’s memory of Laura at home lies, for Tom the author, the real Rose in a current state of institutionalized madness. Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 1263 Daniel Jacobs MEMORY AND RESILIENCE 1264 Davis (2001) points out the contribution declarative memory can make to resilience â€Å"through soothing af fects that are evoked in recalling a declarative memory of a loving relationship with a parent or other important pe rson† (p. 459).Such memories can grow directly out of warm relationships or â€Å"they can be achieved through retrieving and modifying memory of more problematic attachments† (p. 466). Davis illustrates his point with the example of Mr. Byrne, a subject in a longitudinal study of adult development. Davis focuses on the fact that in interviews at different times in adult life, Mr. Byrne’s memories of his father changed. At age forty-six, surrounded by a supportive community and family, Mr. Byrne had no memories of his alcoholic and neglectful father and did not think his father’s being a f ireman had inf luenced his own decision to become one.At sixty-six, retired and with his children grown, Mr. Byrne â€Å"had succeeded in ‘f inding’ his father inside as a sustaining inner object in declarative memory (p. 465). He did so through creating or retrieving warm memories of their times together in the f irehouse and by ‘misrememberingâ€⠄¢ the humiliating events of his father’s death so as to have a more positive image of him. Mr. Byrne’s father had committed suicide, alone and away from the family. But late in life, Mr. Byrne spoke frequently of his father’s having taken him to the f ire station when he was a youngster.He was now sure these happy times with his father had inf luenced his decision to become a f ireman himself. He placed his father’s death in a family setting and claimed to have been the one who found him. Davis points out that we often create the memories we need in order to maintain psychological resilience and mental health. Whatever good experiences Mr. Byrne did have with a diff icult and neglectful father seem to have been magnif ied through the lens of memory aided by imagination in the service of wish fulf illment.It is an example of what Kris (1956a) meant by describing autobiographical memory as telescopic, dynamic, and lacking in autonomy: â€Å"our autobiogra phical memory is in a constant state of f lux, is constantly being reorganized, and is constantly being subject to the changes which the tensions of the present tend to impose† (p. 299). In a way, Williams does the same thing by creating a memory play. Lonely, guilty over his sister’s fate, f inding St. Louis and his family unbearable, Williams begins writing a play that both ref lects his current Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. om at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE suffering and at the same time assuages it. In writing The Glass Menagerie, he creates for himself one of those delicate glass animals— a small tender bit of illusion that relieves him of the austere pattern of life as it is lived in the present and makes it more bearable. He does so not by setting his play in the harsh realities of the present, too painful to write about, but in creatively altered memory. Sitting at his writing table, Wil liams reclaims his sister (Laura in the play) from the State Asylum and places her at home again.She is not frankly delusional and lobotomized. She is not even in Rose’s presurgical state of illness—a state of aggressiveness and talkativeness made worse by utter and unending vulgarity. Instead, she is portrayed as painfully shy, weak, and schizoid. And Cornelius, the real-life father he must face daily, is gone. Gone from the play for dramatic purposes to be sure: the play would lose a certain edge were there another breadwinner in the house. But in the play, Williams expresses his wish to reconstruct reality and, in this play of memory and desire, rid himself of the old man.Yet he is not entirely gone, for the father’s picture hangs on the wall, like Hamlet’s ghost, reminding us of a son’s ambivalent longing for a father. For in 1943 and throughout his life, Williams longed for some man to comfort and help him. In the play, his own wish for a supp ortive, loving father is transformed into the wish for the gentleman caller—someone who, unlike his father, will help Laura, satisfy Amanda, and, by his assuring presence, bless Tom’s own departure. He is not only the person Williams longs for, but also the one he longs to be, though he knows it is a role he can never play.It is no accident then that Jim, the gentleman caller, conveys an uncomfortable uncertainty about his future. He is, in a sense, the failed high school â€Å"hero,† with perhaps unrealizable dreams for the future. Jim already hints that the realities of life may not meet his expectations. He expresses resentment at having to work at two jobs: his work and his marriage, in which he has to â€Å"punch the clock† every night with Betty. He is f lirtatious with Laura, even going so far as to kiss her, showing a clear sympathy and attraction to women other than his f iancee.Tennessee’s father, a bitter man from a prominent Southern fa mily, a heavy drinker and a womanizer, while banned from the play, haunts it through his portrait and is resurrected in the f lesh in Jim, who is likewise disappointing and cannot be counted on and who, in the future, may come to resemble Cornelius. In his own life, Williams found and lost gentlemen callers hundreds of times over. And when he was Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 1265 Daniel Jacobs ot looking for the gentleman caller, he was being one, abandoning and disappointing those who loved him. The only one he was truly faithful to was Rose. Memories are like dreams or fantasies in that all the characters remembered at a particular moment may represent aspects of the rememberer’s own personality. Amanda’s steely will to survive is ref lected in Tom’s stubborn insistence on leaving. Laura’s fragility and submissiveness are what he must try to get away from in himself. Jim is the artist manque , the average joe Tom fears he will become if he doesn’t leave. THE STAGING OF MEMORY 1266Through the very structure of his play and the physical placement of its characters, Williams shows us that we cannot have a past without a present or a present uninf luenced by the past. He takes us back and forth in time as Tom Wingf ield literally steps in and out of the railroad f lat of his memory. He both ref lects on his past and participates in it, as his memories come alive. All the play’s characters slip in and out of memory, from present to past and back again, as they interact with one another, forging their current identity and present relationship in the anvil of a past they selectively remember.The stage set that Williams proposed concretizes the alternating forward and backward movement of time that takes place in the characters’ and in all of our minds. Tom’s opening soliloquy is stage front in the present and is often played outside the apartment. T he scene that follows is from the past, set in a dining room at the back of the stage, as if to emphasize the remoteness of memory. The f igures move backward and forward on stage, like memories themselves, coming into consciousness and then receding. Lighting is used in a similar way: to emphasize through spotlighting the highly selective and highly cathected aspects of memory.Lightness and darkness, dimness and clarity, play an important role in the ambience of the play, heightening the shifting play of memory. Williams is specif ic about the use of lighting in his production notes for The Glass Menagerie: â€Å"The lighting in the play is not realistic. In keeping with the atmosphere of memory, the stage is dim. Shafts of light are focused on selected areas or actors, sometimes in contradistinction to what is the apparent center. . . . A free and imaginative use Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. om at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE G LASS MENAGERIE of light can be of enormous value in giving mobile, plastic quality to plays of more or less static nature† (Williams 1945, p. 10). By commissioning an original musical score, Williams makes a deliberate attempt to evoke memory in members of the audience— memories of their own youthful stirrings, with all the fears and pleasures that attend them. Schacter (1996) notes that it is the memories of adolescence and early adulthood that are most often retained as we grow older.In asking Paul Bowles to write a new piece of music for his play, Williams, I think, is playing with the notion that memory is a new creation, similar to Bowles’s new music, Williams counts on the fact that while the score has never been heard before by the audience, it nevertheless feels familiar and seems a part of one’s previous experience. While the music may stimulate declarative memories of young adulthood in the audience, by its wordlessness it is designed to evoke no ndeclarative memory experienced as a feeling state (Davis 2001).By using a new score rather than relying on familiar tunes, Williams insists that memory is an invention of the present rather than a reproduction of the past. CONCLUSION 1267 So we have Tom Williams in his basement room writing about Tom Wingf ield. His protagonist is thrust both forward and backward in time: Tom Wingf ield in 1945 is ref lecting on a time before World War II began. Tom Wingf ield is Tennessee and not him at the same time. The memories Williams calls forth from his own experiences are transformed in ways that are not only dramatically but psychologically necessary for the author.Rendering the truth through selective and transformed memory, Williams creates his own glass menagerie to which he could each day retreat from the harsh realities of his life in St. Louis in l943. He creates fragile f igures he can control, moving them around the imagined setting of creative memory. In creating the play, he can always be near Rose. On the page and on the stage, the two are bound forever, like f igures on a Grecian urn. At the same time, the play is a justif ication for Tennessee’s departure from the family, a plea for understanding as to why he must leave the altered Rose (his castrated self) behind and pursue his own path.Freud (1908) pointed out how both in creative writing and fantasy â€Å"past, present, and future are strung together, as it were, on the thread of the wish that runs through Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 Daniel Jacobs 1268 them† (p. 141). In the process of writing The Glass Menagerie, the infantile wish to reunite with Rose, to rid himself of a hateful father, and to overcome the threats of castration that Rose’s situation and his own imply, f inds a solution to his torments.He does what Tom Wingf ield does in the play. He leaves. By May of l943, Tennessee is on his way to Hollywood to b ecome, for a short time, a screenwriter. But like Tom Wingf ield, Tennessee cannot leave his past behind. He will be as faithful to Rose as Tom Wingf ield is to Laura when at the play’s end he says, â€Å"I tried to leave you behind me, but I am much more faithful than I intended to be† (p. 115). Of their relationship, Rasky (l986) wrote, â€Å"Just as Siamese twins may be joined at the hip or breastbone, Tennessee was joined to his sister, Rose, by the heart. . . In the history of love, there has seldom been such devotion as that which Tennessee showed his lobotomized sister† (p. 51). Peter Altman, former director of Boston’s Huntington Theater, points out how with the writing of The Glass Menagerie Williams blows out the candles on an overtly autobiographical form of writing and moves on to create full-length plays less obviously reliant on the concrete details of his own history (private communication, 1997). While he could never psychologically free h imself from the traumatic events of his upbringing, artistically he was able to move ahead.By creating within and through the play his own glass menagerie, where the characters are f ixed and can live forever in troubled togetherness, he grants himself permission to leave St. Louis once again. Such a creation is akin to Kris’s description of the personal myth (1956a): â€Å"A coherent set of autobiographical memories, a picture of one’s course of life as part of the self-representation [that] has attracted a particular investment, it is defensive inasmuch as it prevents certain experiences and groups of impulses from reaching consciousness. At the same time, the autobiographical self-image has taken the place of a repressed fantasy . . † (p. 294). But in the patients Kris described, sections of personal history had been repressed and the autobiographical myth created to maintain that repression. In Williams’s case, he is quite conscious of the distortions in his â€Å"memory play,† but creativity serves a function for the artist similar to that served by personal myth in Kris’s patients. Williams is able to separate further from his family by keeping himself, through his memory play, attached to them forever, selectively remembered and frozen in time in a way painful, yet acceptable, to him.By writing the play, a visual representation of memory and Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE wish, Williams creates a permanent wish-fulf illing hallucination providing gratif ication and psychic survival (see Freud 1908). Of his sister Rose’s collection of glass animals, which was transformed into Laura’s glass menagerie, Williams wrote that â€Å"they stood for all the small tender things (including, I think, happy memories) that relieve the austere pattern of life and make it endurable to the sensitive.The areaway [t he alley behind his family’s f lat in St. Louis, where cats were torn to pieces by dogs] was one thing—my sister’s white curtains and tiny menagerie of glass were another. Somewhere between them was the world we lived in† (Nelson 1961, p. 8). What enables Williams to survive psychically and adds to his resilience in St. Louis in l943 is, I believe, his ability to create a space between the bitter realities of family life and his impulse to f lee and forget it all—to blow out the candles of memory.That space was his memory play, a space he inhabited daily through his writing, a space of some resilience where psychologically needed memories are created amid the pain and sorrow of the present. And in so doing, he reminds us all of the role memory plays in our survival. Our memories are like glass menageries, precious, delicate, and chameleonlike. We can become trapped by them like Laura and Amanda. Or, as in the case of Tennessee and Mr. Byrne, we can gain resilience from their plasticity that allows us to move forward psychologically.Williams wrote, in his essay â€Å"The Catastrophe of Success† (1975), that â€Å"the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition† (p. 17). Tennessee felt that for him the heart’s opposition could best be expressed through writing. He felt that the artist, his adventures, travels, loves, and humiliations are resolved in the creative product that becomes his indestructible life. (Leverich 1995, p. 268) I think he might have agreed that while creative work plays that role for the artist, memory and fantasy are its equivalent for all of us.Williams knew that it is through the creative transformation of experience, sometimes in verse, sometimes in memory, that we draw nearer to that â€Å"long delayed but always expected something we live for† (1945, p. 23). REFERENCES 1269 DAVIS, J. (2001). Gone but not forgotten: Declarative and non-declarative memory processes and their contribution to resilience. Bulletin of the Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009 Daniel Jacobs 1270 Menninger Clinic 65:451–470. FREUD, S. (1899). Screen memories. Standard Edition 3:301–322. ——— (1908). Creative writers and day-dreaming.Standard Edition 9:143–153. K RIS , E. (1956a). The personal myth. In The Selected Papers of Ernst Kris. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975, pp. 272–300. ——— (1956b). The recovery of childhood memories in psychoanalysis. In The Selected Papers of Ernst Kris. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975, pp. 301–340. LEVERICH, L. (1995). Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams. New York: Norton. NELSON, B. (1961). Tennessee Williams: The Man and His Work. New York: Obolensky. RASKY, H. (1986). Tennessee Williams: A Portrait in Laughter and Lamentation. Niagara Falls: Mosaic Press . SCHACTER, D. (1995).In Search of Memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. SCHNEIDERMAN, L. (1986). Tennessee Williams: The incest motif and f ictional love relationships. Psychoanalytic Review 73:97–110. UPDIKE, J. (l960). Rabbit, Run. New York: Knopf. WILLIAMS, T. (1945). The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Direc-tions, l975. ——— (l972). Memoirs. New York: Doubleday. ——— (l975). The catastrophe of success. In The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Directions, 1975, pp. 11–17. 64 Williston Road Brookline, MA 02146 E-mail: [email  protected] com Downloaded from http://apa. sagepub. com at CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY on September 9, 2009

Plato, Descartes, and The Matrix Essay

Consider this, Is what we believe to be real and true real and true? In the movie The Matrix, Neo is a computer programer by day and hacker by night. He senses that something is wrong with the world but insists what he know he feels. When he dreams, he isn’t sure if it was real or just a dream just as Descartes believes he cannot trust his senses to tell him whether or not he is still dreaming. Neo meets with Morpheus and Morpheus gives Neo the option of knowing the truth. According to Morpheus the world isn’t real, it is an illusion and offers Neo a life altering choice. To take a pill that will give him the truth. The truth Morpheus refers to is that the world Neo believes in is just an illusion. What Neo perceives as real by his senses is nothing more than a computer generating ideas in his head without any real experiences. Morpheus gives Neo the option of continuing to live his life in the shadows and the way he perceives it or to see the light and the truth. This closely resembles the allegory of the cave by Pluto. Plato invites us to imagine humans being held prisoners, with no freedom to move or see except what is directly in front of them in the form of shadows. This is the prisoners reality. This is what they come to believe is real. When in-fact there is another world just beyond their reality. It is only after one prisoner escapes the shackles and chains and finds that the actual world is not just shadows but a world with the light of the sun. The prisoner has difficulty adjusting his eyes to the brightness, but eventually does. This experience parallels to what Neo experiences. Descartes poses the questions in his work Meditations of First Philosophy, 1961, of how we cannot for certain that the world he experiences isn’t not the product of an illusion forced upon him by an evil demon. He questions what he believes is real because of what he sees and feels while dreaming and therefore can’t trust his senses to tell him if 2he is still dreaming. When Neo accepts the â€Å"red pill† and his perception of his life slips away when he realizes that the human race is held in containers, unconscious, with a computer generating their thoughts and experiences. Humans invented Artificial Intelligence and in turn the AI took over mankind and enslaved them using them for the energy they required to stay ‘alive’. Neo realizes what Descartes proposed, that Neo’s life was just controlled by an evil demon, the Matrix. But Descartes went on to argue the existence of God, saying a Good God would not let an evil demon control us. Neo struggles with this new truth because he didn’t believe in fate because he didn’t like the idea he wasn’t in control of life. Neo life as he knew it is gone, and he is faced with the new reality and he struggles with the different emotions first of shock, fear and disbelief and then acceptance. He joins the group of dissidents to help others see the truth and reality of life. Knowing the truth doesn’t necessarily ‘set you free’ as we find out. A fellow dissident Cypher discovers the truth is hard and decides that ‘ignorance is bliss’. He negotiates a deal to deliver Morpheus in turn for his previous ‘life’. For Cypher, the truth was too much to handle, he liked the illusion of his previous life. Once Neo gains knowledge of he Matrix, he is able to discern between the truth and illusion and ascends to a higher level of understanding. He realizes that he can no longer blindly accept information received through his senses, but must requires answers to his questions. He like Descartes comes to the conclusion â€Å"I think, therefore I am†. The difference between the Matrix and Plato and Descartes is the movie gives Neo a way back to the physical real world whereas Plato and Descartes only suggest there is another reality and we are dreaming but doesn’t give us a way back. None of the notables address God within the realm of truth. God states he is the way of the light and the truth. We are challenged in our daily lives to live a real life.

Media Influence on Stereotypes

What you see is not always what you get In a society highly influenced by the media, stereotypes are used sometimes in a comedic way. In Harold and Kumar go to White Castle one of the main themes the movie is poking fun at is how stereotypes affect the lives of the two main characters one being of Korean decent and the other Indian. The movie opens introducing the first character Harold. The audience sees that he is an Asian male working in a cubicle for a banking company.The scene turns to Harold’s co-workers who are both white in an office that is nicer and bigger to that of Harold, discussing how they are going to have fun and party for the weekend when one of them has much work to do, so one of them suggests having someone else do it. The scene gives the impression that the two white co-workers are the main characters of the movie as the introductory scene shows primarily the two co-workers and have the most dialogue in the brief intro; however, later the audience will not ice that they are not seen again until the end of the movie.What this scene is shown to do is to make humor out of a normalized stereotype of the Asian American group. As this scene will be analyzed, the normalized stereotypes of Asians in society is highly recognizable in American culture and media, as it negatively privileges the Asian group while obscuring Americans insecurity of their own part in society. In today’s world most people are born with an identity already established for them. Generalized perceptions or a stereotype of a single group has instigated prejudice.With cultural representations already determined by the outside world, many strive to break such representations in order to form their own identity and not what was given to them. It has increasingly more difficult for one to break such representation due to factors in society normalizing these representations with the use of the media. The media has become a powerful tool in promoting such representation of groups. Stereotypes surround the whole world we live in and are unavoidable.No matter what we do, depending on our personality, attire, or even our hairstyle everyone fits into some sort of stereotype even by a little. The definition of a stereotype is a standardized conception or idea of a group of people (Hurst). Even though most stereotypes aren’t true there is a reason why they exist and continue to thrive. Stereotypes have flourished continually as the world has become more and more globalized. Especially in the United States one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world.As stereotypes exist they have consequently affected the way that a particular individual or group lives in society. One particular representation that will be analyzed is the stereotypes of Asians in popular media, the movie Harold and Kumar go to White Castle and along with my own personal experiences being in the group within Asian Stereotypes will be used to assess the topic. Back at the beginning of this paper an introductory scene was described of the film Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Even though the scene is only about a few minutes many representations can be noted.The scene implements key normalized stereotypes seen in the public eye. The particular stereotype of Asian group has been connected to the term â€Å"Model Minority† which applies positive traits as a stereotype. The traits include qualities such as being hardworking, intelligent, studious, productive, and also inoffensive people. Also known to increase their social status through merit. The biggest opposition to the view is that it exaggerates the success of Asians. This false empowerment given by the stereotype covers up true problems that are faced by the Asian community.The belief that Asians are harder workers and thus leading to higher earning jobs has led to a more difficult level of climbing the work ladder into higher wage jobs, otherwise known as the glass ceiling phenomen a: The definition â€Å"The Glass Ceiling† refers to an invisible barrier that limits the level to which a woman or another member of a demographic minority can advance within the hierarchy in an organization. It often is a barrier that confronts Ethnic Americans in addition to women when trying to reach upper management levels in many companies (Hester, 2007)Corresponding to the glass ceiling phenomena, the model minority stereotype has been believed to been the cause that Asians must acquire more education and work more hours than their white counterparts to earn the same amount of money. We will go back to the same scene mentioned at the beginning and continue. The scene described before shows Harold the Korean descendent character working tenaciously in his cubicle filling out forms and papers and he is then approached by the two co-workers mentioned earlier that were contemplating how they are going to party over the weekend when they have work to do.Afterwards it shows the two co-workers giving Harold a pile of their papers and folders then persuading Harold to do the work for them with Harold then unenthusiastically accepting the task. Afterwards the scene shows the two co-workers in this short dialogue Co-worker 1: â€Å"Wow! That was amazing; I can’t believe how easy that was† Co-worker 2: â€Å"Dude, how do you think I get all my shit done? Those Asian guys just love crunching numbers. You probably just made his weekend. (Both leave laughing)Then the camera pans over to Harold as he shouts â€Å"Fuck! † The co-workers connect the traits of the stereotype to what they just did and sarcastically believe they did Harold a favor. What can be shown here in relation to the model minority stereotype is that Harold now has to do more work than is required of him for his white counterparts. However doing this extra work will not earn him more money or any merit while his white counterpart will be doing less work and receiving the same credit as Harold is.The dialogue shows that the co-workers jokingly believe they are doing Harold a favor due to his traits which allows him to do such tasks; however, the ending of the scene shows Harold shouting â€Å"Fuck! † which can be seen as epitomizing reaction of Asians frustrations towards how this stereotype has affected them. The scene shows rebellion towards the label of the model minority. This shows that even though the model minority label credits Asians with strong qualities in the end negatively affects them.What does the scene show about the white co-workers? The scene shows the co-workers of Harold irresponsibly passing off their work for someone else to do. This characteristic shows laziness in the white co-workers. This part of the scene was a way to laugh at both Harold and also the two white co-workers. Why was this funny? The thing is that it’s sometimes true that these kinds of situations occur that is where the audience connects the humo r in the situation. The scene reveals an abnormal of how Americans are usually viewed.Americans have been known to be hard workers through fighting for freedom through the revolution to rising to one of the most powerful countries of the 20th century. Time goes on being on top, strong qualities can be seen to be fading away. The polarity is seen as Harold the Korean is hard working while the white co-workers are not. In the scene the white co-workers are laughing away semi-sadistically as they leave the building after taking advantage of their Asian co-worker. The significance of this is that the laughing disguises the white co-workers insecurity of their own work ethic is not as strong.Using the model minority stereotype has in a way been used to exploit as shown in the scene with the white co-workers using the stereotype to use Harold as a work horse. Even though the two white co-workers can’t represent Americans it can represent a whole different stereotype to be uncovered America has had a history in dealing with Asians in the past. Around the 19th century a term known as the â€Å"Yellow Peril† developed as a fear to the increasing number of Asians would immigrate to the United States and would fill the country with foreign culture, speech, and even take away jobs from Americans.The fear that the hard working Asians would take away American’s position in the working world, a satire to the response of that fear is shown in the scene as it shows Harold has been used as a crutch to hold up the co-workers in power. In Amitava Kumar’s Language, a violent example is seen when Kumar describes the murder of Vincent Chin who was murdered by two white autoworkers in Detroit. During so he was called a â€Å"Jap† and told â€Å"It’s because of you motherfuckers that we’re out of work. †(p. 05, Critical Encounters With Text). Chin was murdered due to his ethnic identity which in some correlation was believed to p ut those auto workers out of work. Chin was murdered because in the view of the autoworkers was that he was somehow associated with the ethnic group that had replaced them. It could be that the people who replaced them were more efficient, harder working, or demanded lower wages. Whatever it was, they did not confront the face they themselves had anything to do with the fact they were out of work.Which is something that has become a problem in society is that people blame each other and do not choose to confront how they could have caused a certain event. The model minority stereotype has also affected my life personally being of Korean decent. Being part of the model minority stereotypes has caused to build expectations since we are expected to live up to our peers which fall into that category. In elementary school, I remember asking my teachers for help and noticed some reluctance in doing so. Then I saw my teachers helping other students seeming more inclined to help.This situat ion made it seem to me that I had to work a little harder than my peers in school. In high school, some teachers took personal offence if it seemed as I underperformed on an assignment believing I wasn’t trying or was being lazy. Even though if I tried hard and didn’t do well it was disappointing to see teachers lose faith due to a misinterpretation. All of these things were built upon the general assumptions brought on by the model minority stereotype, has made it so it was abnormal to not follow the trend of such a view.Assumptions are natural impulses that most cannot avoid to do. As human beings no matter what we see, there is some sort of impression that most of us come towards even without knowing the person. Some of these assumptions are guided from varying reasons including friends, family, face, hair, ethnicity, attire, gender, and the media. We analyzed how a particular scene in the film Harold and Kumar go to White Castle exemplifies a generalized assumption . Also a brief personal account on how the stereotype has affected me.Stereotypes create unfairness as it classifies groups based on assumptions. Awareness of the consequences of stereotypes will help the problems associated with it. Stereotypes will continue to die down as long as the world is becoming more and more globalized. So therefore groups and cultures in America will become more connected with each other as time goes on causing familiarity, bringing down assumptions on a group and with this the concept, true equal opportunity will continue to become stronger.Works Cited Jon Hurwitz, Danny Leiner, Hayden Schlossberg . Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. (2001) †¢ Amitava Kumar. â€Å"Language,† by, reprinted from Passport Photos by permission of University of California Press. (2000) †¢ Hurst, Charles E. Social Inequality: Forms, Causes, and Consequences. 6. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc, 2007 †¢ Ruth Hester, published May 21, 2007 http://www. associ atedcontent. com/article/248276/the_glass_ceiling_and_its_effect_on. html? cat=3 †¢ Amy Kashiwabara, 1996 http://www. lib. berkeley. edu/MRC/Amydoc. html