Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Conflict In Death Of A Salesman English Literature Essay
Conflict In Death Of A Salesman English Literature Essay Conflict is an essential element in all pieces of literature. In Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman, every character in the play deals with conflict at one point or another. However, Willy Loman is confronted with a large amount of conflicts throughout the play. None of Willys conflicts, Willy versus Biff, Willy versus himself, and Willy versus society, are resolved by the end of the play. Willy faces a father-son conflict with Biff throughout the play. When Biff returns home, Willy senses it as a failure. He returns home to find out who he is. Willy desperately wants Biff to succeed in every way possible. However, Willy and Biff have conflicting views of what the American Dream is. Willy believes that selling is the greatest job a man can have. On the contrary, Biff feels that the best job a man can have is working outdoors with his hands. When these two dreams collide, Willy becomes frustrated because he believes he is correct and his way is the only way. This contrast between their beliefs builds up throughout the play up to their final argument near the close of Act II. Biff is the only Loman that is able to see past Willys illusions about life. Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens? (133) He is the only one able to see reality. Willy is in a dream world where he believes he is on the verge of success whereas Biff is able to see the ha rsh reality and recognizes that both he and his father are failures. Young Biff had the same beliefs and views as his father, but after discovering his fathers infidelity, these beliefs changed. He realized he didnt want to become like his father and changed his beliefs. By the end of the play, Willys conflict is not resolved. He had all the wrong dreams. (138) Willy and Biffs beliefs are still opposite of each others. Although Biff has found out who he is, it is not the person his father had hoped for. He is not the leader of men and successful salesman his father wanted him to be, he is an ordinary man who plans to go out West. As Willy faced continuing conflict with his son, he also endured conflicts with himself. Willy faces conflicts with his inner self throughout the play. Willy refuses to accept who he is and his self pride is too important to him. Willy Loman refuses to admit that he is an ordinary man. He must be the successful American businessman that is a leader among men. He is in a dream world where he is on the verge of success. Throughout the play, he is at odds with who he perceives himself to be and who he is in reality. He seems to ignore the talent and appreciation he has for carpentry. He believes that if he purses carpentry, he would be beneath himself. Willy struggles with the fact that he will never be able to achieve his perception of who he wants to be. This conflict goes on until his death. He continues to believe he can be on top of the world, but in reality, he is a normal human being. Willy has a strong sense of self pride in him, one that may be too strong. He is afraid to show a lack of it to Charley or his family. When Willy meets Charley at his office in Act II, he offers him a job to help him. However, Willy is too proud of himself and will not work for Charley. He still believes he can survive without Charleys job offer. He doesnt understand that reality that he is a failure. He also considers himself superior to Charley. He believes Charley is not well-liked and is not the ideal character one should be. He knows that accepting a job offer from someone below him would be an insult to his self pride. Willy is also afraid to admit he is done and can not survive anymore to his family. I cant throw myself on my sons. (84) He is also afraid to show any weakness to his sons. Willy dies a man extremely proud of himself. However, he still has not faced the reality of who he truly is. He did not admit he needed help like an ordinary man would, a man just like him. As Willys conflict with himself grew, so did his conflict with his society. Willy is in conflict with society like the majority of American men in the last century. Willy struggles with his selling as he ages. The young Willy was able to make sales easily, but now he is older, and has more difficulty selling. Willy is constantly trying to find the key to success in selling. He constantly worries about other peoples perception of him and blames his lack of success on his physical traits such as his weight and clothing. Willy believes these are the reasons why he has difficulty selling, while in reality, it is the fact that he does not see himself and the world as they really are. When he first started selling, buyers may have been interested in charismatic salesman. However, as time changed, the business world looked for knowledgeable salesman to promote products. Willy is always worried about his appearance up to his death and still has difficulty understanding why he is never accepted as a talented businessman. When Willy talks to Howard about possibly stay ing in New York to sell, Willy feels like he is being thrown away by society. A man is not a piece of fruit! (82) Willy claims a man is not an orange where you eat the orange and throw away the peal. He is referring to himself when he says this. Willy has worked for this business for 34 years and after all his work for the company, he is worth nothing to it. In society, a man is often measured by his income and skills that can be used in society. However, Willy lacks both of these and society deems him as useless. Therefore, Howard fires him from a business standpoint. Willys conflict with society is not resolved. At his funeral, no one comes except for his family and Charley and Bernard. Society found him useless and threw him away. None of Willy Lomans conflicts with Biff, himself, and society are resolved by the end of the play. In his conflict with Biff, he is never able to nurture Biff into the man he wanted him to become. In his conflict with himself, he is never able to see the reality. Finally, in his conflict with society, he is a victim of Americas capitalistic and materialistic environment. However, the main cause of all his conflicts is his inability to see the reality in life. Perhaps that is why he was unable to solve any of his conflicts. However, Willy Loman was a troubled man from the beginning of the play to his death. He was much more than a man who had plenty of conflicts, he was a man who attempted to live the American Dream, but ultimately, his conflicts stopped him.
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Child Abuse and Neglect :: Violence Against Children
                                             The safety and security of home are comforts we all wish for no matter what age we are. Though some of us get our wish roughly six million children don’t(United States Department of Health). Children who are battered and bruised, beaten, and in some causes sexually assaulted are constantly looking for an escape from the torture brought upon them by their own parents. These children average in age only four years old (Jones, Smothers F8 ) endure more pain at their young age than most of us face in a life time. The crime hurts children physically, emotionally and in most cases the pain goes on for a life time. The memories of climbing into bed with your parents are replaced with memories such as your father’s hand lashing your back for absolutely nothing because he is not in the right mind caused by all the alcohol. Making matters worse is that these children are too afraid to tell the world of the anguish and continue a life of hiding bruises and making excuses. As for t he children who are brave enough to tell, they get it no better if not worse. They are recklessly thrown into foster home after foster home. They face such hard ships as limited space with an enormous amount of children. Throughout all this, they never learn the true meaning of family. Why is there a lack of effort put into this crime? One is left to guess for the reasons are far too hard to comprehend. With so much drama and war around the world, Americans would like to convey an image of security and safety, once doing so we tend to black out the horrible acts of abuse occurring against our own children, causing child abuse to be a very neglected crime. â€Å"Having children makes you no more a parent, than having a piano makes you a pianist.†(Levin, www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/michael_levine.html) With that being said the United States continues to give parental right to drunks and abusers without realizing the ripple affect it has on all of us. These children whose minds are being wasted not by lack of effort but by lack of parenting and lack of care from the government, have the ability to grow and become future leaders, heroes, and peace makers of our world. Why not take the extra effort in making sure that our future is being looked out for in our present? Child Abuse and Neglect :: Violence Against Children                                              The safety and security of home are comforts we all wish for no matter what age we are. Though some of us get our wish roughly six million children don’t(United States Department of Health). Children who are battered and bruised, beaten, and in some causes sexually assaulted are constantly looking for an escape from the torture brought upon them by their own parents. These children average in age only four years old (Jones, Smothers F8 ) endure more pain at their young age than most of us face in a life time. The crime hurts children physically, emotionally and in most cases the pain goes on for a life time. The memories of climbing into bed with your parents are replaced with memories such as your father’s hand lashing your back for absolutely nothing because he is not in the right mind caused by all the alcohol. Making matters worse is that these children are too afraid to tell the world of the anguish and continue a life of hiding bruises and making excuses. As for t he children who are brave enough to tell, they get it no better if not worse. They are recklessly thrown into foster home after foster home. They face such hard ships as limited space with an enormous amount of children. Throughout all this, they never learn the true meaning of family. Why is there a lack of effort put into this crime? One is left to guess for the reasons are far too hard to comprehend. With so much drama and war around the world, Americans would like to convey an image of security and safety, once doing so we tend to black out the horrible acts of abuse occurring against our own children, causing child abuse to be a very neglected crime. â€Å"Having children makes you no more a parent, than having a piano makes you a pianist.†(Levin, www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/michael_levine.html) With that being said the United States continues to give parental right to drunks and abusers without realizing the ripple affect it has on all of us. These children whose minds are being wasted not by lack of effort but by lack of parenting and lack of care from the government, have the ability to grow and become future leaders, heroes, and peace makers of our world. Why not take the extra effort in making sure that our future is being looked out for in our present?
Saturday, January 11, 2020
The Character of Cities
In this course we have learned that a city’s character is â€Å"a legacy for seeing, interpreting, exploiting, and transforming its social, cultural and political opportunities as a physical community. †How is it possible for a city like Boston to have character? Well, the institutional and cultural continuity along with the resistance and reconstruction of culture has allowed the character of Boston to be defined simply by the underlying idea of conflict. Through J Anthony Lukas’ Common Ground and Richard Broadman’s Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston, we can see that the catalyst for this sense of conflict has been social dissentions between classes and races. These dissentions are clearly detailed through both the Urban Renewal plans of Mission Hill in the 1960s and 1970s and the school busing case of 1974. When looking at the character of Boston one must understand the amount of controversy our city has encountered as well as the way they have identified and resolved these crisis’s. Through this deduction along with my own personal experience of living in Boston a step towards finding a distinct character of Boston may be possible. When analyzing conflict as the character of Boston, you will find that conflict is triadic not dyadic. This means that there are three parties involved instead of just two parties. This is important when looking at the two issues of urban renewal and busing. The concept of conflict includes established insiders with many options, struggling insiders with some options and ascendant outsiders with few or no options. When comparing this information to both urban renewal cases and the busing you will see that Boston does in fact have three parties for each of its conflicts. The politicians play the role of the established insiders; the white race plays the role as the struggling insiders and the minorities especially the African-Americans play the role of the ascendant outsiders. An alliance between the established insiders and the ascendant outsiders caused the isolation of the struggling insiders and this provides us with the busing case of 1974. When these groups form alliances or make certain deals the health of the city especially Boston may be disturbed. Boston has always been an ambivalent city when it comes to looking at new issues. This ambivalence has caused much friction and has brought much confusion and anger to the citizens of the city of Boston. For example, In Richard Broadman’s Mission Hill Miracle of Boston, you see a detailed look at the urban renewal plans for Mission Hill in the 1970s. Could it be possible that Mission Hill would end up like the West End? There was no chance that Mission Hill would end up like the West End because of the interaction and care the citizens of the Hill had for its neighborhood. Many of the people of Boston especially the Irish-Catholics had been oppressed for so long, for example the slogan, â€Å"Irish need not apply! †However when James Michael Curley came to office as mayor of Boston he gave the citizens of Boston a new hope. The conflict during his reign existed between the Yankees and the Irish. The Yankees owned the city while the Irish ran the city politically. The variance of the Yankee world of Harvard University, the Back Bay and Beacon Hill from the lives of a typical Irish Mission Hill citizen was pretty substantial. With the reign of Curley a sense of confidence in the Irish-Catholic community existed long after his term in office. Even though Curley was not reelected the atmosphere that he created in Boston lingered on and trickled down throughout the next two decades. From Mission Hill once being â€Å"an industrial neighborhood part of thriving industrial city,†is now today â€Å"an area torn by racial conflict with many burned and abandoned houses and factories with large open spaces where homes once stood. †From this 1974 quote you can get a sense of the aftermath of the urban renewal and flight of the African-American population into the projects. When the Urban Renewal Act was first presented, the citizens of the Hill were adamant about their disdain for the Act. There is â€Å"no way are they gonna take any property on Mission Hill because if they take one street then it was the beginning of the end; Mission Hill would no longer be. †The sense of community in Mission Hill was fantastic. The sense of togetherness and fight was combined and created into a massive force of angered citizens. The Urban Renewal Act was halted when the families of Mission Hill marched on the State House coming in droves of people. But the conflict between the citizens and the politicians would take a new turn when Harvard University and the hospitals would enter into the battle. New conflict, new problems. The idea of â€Å"who cares about the people only the land is important†was very evident. Before in 1941 when the first small projects were built, an affordable, easy cost of living was accessible. The difference between these projects and the ones built later in the 1950s was that you had voters and political pull actually living in these projects. So the projects were kept safe, new and beautiful. However, when the political pull was lost and the projects lost its importance blacks were forced to live there. Whites felt that Blacks were forced on them because of the Urban Renewal plan. Before this the Blacks and the Whites never really crossed paths and never had much conflict. And Harvard’s involvement had been trying to buy out the Mission Hill area since 1960. They have tried to buy it out piece by piece like a puzzle. The citizens of the Hill feel that â€Å"they are letting the neighborhood go to the dogs. †This conflict has been such a problem that some people believed in the 1970s that Mission Hill might one day not exist because of the growth of the hospitals. Boston according to J Anthony Lukas is the â€Å"cradle of liberty, no city in the nation can boast so many revolutionary events. †(Lukas, 315) When talking about conflict and the city of Boston the most recent case would be the school busing case of 1974. There is no bigger case concerning the desegregation of schools in the city of Boston. The reaction from the citizens of the city especially the citizens of South Boston and Charlestown have made Boston famous for its volatile reaction. In June of 1974 Judge Arthur Garrity found the city of Boston guilty of de facto segregation of the public school system. In that, he tried to get the school committee to adopt a plan for integration but they refused. He was forced along with the state Department of Education to devise a plan that would integrate the Boston public schools. This plan entailed busing black students to nearby white schools in order for the black students to receive an equal opportunity of education. When these black students arrived to class on September 12, 1974 they were greeted with stoned buses, people shouting racial profanities at them, and people hurling eggs and rotten tomatoes. A typical day according to Phyllis Ellison, a black student who attended South Boston High School, included â€Å"between 10 to 15 fights! †â€Å"Teachers were almost afraid to say the wrong thing, because they knew that it would excite the whole class. †On December 11, 1974 tension ran high and escalated further. A black student at South Boston High stabbed a white classmate. This created such problems that black students had to hide in the principle’s office in order to stay free from any violent behavior towards them. Parents were forced to come pick their children up; some even carried their children out. The scene in the schools was out of control. J Anthony Lukas explains how school would be canceled at least once or twice a week because tension was too high. Lisa McGoff Collins explains, â€Å"I missed so many days of my junior year from walkouts and sit-ins and boycotts, I’m surprised I got promoted. †In Common Ground, we are introduced to three very different families. Through Lukas’ extensive interviews with the black family, the Twymons, the white middle class family, the Divers and the working Irish class family, the McGoffs we are invited into the world of the desegregation case of 1974. Lukas is able to present the ideas of the city of Boston (the school committee and the politicians) as well as the ideas of the three families from three very different lenses. Lukas’ book provides us with a valuable insight into the American urban experience, as it makes clear that urban communities stem from the perceptions and fears of every type of urban resident. It is evident that the residents of South Boston fall into this category. Many students as well as their parents spent that first day of school out on the street pelting the buses with whatever objects they could find. A boycott of the schools led to a 20 percent attendance record throughout that fall. South Boston residents were angered by the way this was being forced onto them. South Boston was a safe, industrious neighborhood that was being used to bear the brunt of the busing problems. â€Å"Why should a kid from across town be forced to wear another school’s colors on the gridiron? †This sense of competition and loyalty to your hometown was ever present and strong. People felt that Garrity being a WASP was getting his ultimate revenge on the Irish of Boston, â€Å"busing would fix them. To understand what busing did to South Boston one must look at the numbers. In the decade before busing only 3 black students had been enrolled in South Boston High School. By 1986, South Boston High still had the highest percentage of white students but it was down to about 30 percent. This is a great variance from the early 1970s. South Boston was changing and the city of Boston was changing. What has busing done to the city of Boston? It has given the city a better understanding of how to live with various ethnic races. Also, it has woken the city up and gotten rid of the fright that many people lived with in Boston. The fright of the other races and the possibilities of what these â€Å"races†could do to us. As the population grew and the sense of loyalty to your hometown outgrew busing became more accepted. In a way the people of Boston have learned from this social experiment. I believe that in trying to desegregate the schools and using busing as a tool, that we have brought education in Boston to an ultimate low. However, the diversity and experiences kids are introduced to may someday help in their own personal lives. Personally, coming from a prestigious school which is now addressing its own racial quota problems; I am glad I was introduced to many ethnic people. It was not only the minorities that enriched my life but it was the other white kids from Southie and Charlestown that I became intrigued by. I was interested in how a kid like me (that looked like me and had the same interests) acted even though he or she was from a different part of Boston. In some instances I had more in common with the black kid from Mattapan than the white kid from South Boston. The issue of what type of education you want your child to be exposed to the central theme here. Do you want the prestigious scholastic education of a Boston Latin or do you want the diversity of a Snowden or South Boston High. Boston has done a pretty good job at identifying important issues for the city to deal with but the decisions they have made concerning the urban renewal and bussing have left many people wondering what is going on with the city. Maybe these instances where city officials and politicians mess up help build the â€Å"character†of the city. What type of a city is Boston? That is a question that has many answers. Is it the Athens of America or the home of Yankee conservatives who want to stamp out diversity? In an overview one can see that Boston has built its reputation through the conflict that it has encountered. Whether the city has addressed these issues with the right answers or not it has made Boston a better place to be because it has already experienced so many things. From early revolutionary leaders to the fairly recent quota case at Boston Latin, Boston had seen its share of social dissention. Boston has resolved conflicts between different groups very professionally and orderly. In the past thirty years since the busing case not many cases of racial problems have surfaced. I think Boston provides the country with a very detailed and specific look at its issues. It seems that all sides of the issue are looked at very carefully before a decision is made. Through the urban renewal case and the busing case of 1974 one can see that when finding a distinct characteristic one would find conflict to be it. This sense of conflict surrounds every issue and blankets the ideas expressed in the movie, Mission Hill Miracle of Boston and the book Common Ground.
Friday, January 3, 2020
What Is a Star and How Does It Work
The stars have always intrigued people, probably from the moment our earliest ancestor stepped outside and looked up at the night sky. We still go out at night, when we can, and look up, wondering about those twinkly objects. Scientifically, they are the basis of the science of astronomy, which is the study of stars (and their galaxies). Stars play prominent roles in science fiction movies and TV shows and video games as backdrops for adventure tales. So, what are these twinkling points of light that seem to be arranged in patterns across the night sky?  Stars are more than simply objects in the sky. They teach us about the workings of the universe, from the earliest stars to the current ones. People have long used star charts like this one to find their way around the sky at night. Stars are also useful navigational aids for sailors as well as stargazers. Carolyn Collins Petersen Stars in the Galaxy There are thousands of stars visible to us from Earth, particularly if we do our observing in a really dark sky viewing area). However, in the Milky Way alone, there are hundreds of millions of them, not all visible to people on Earth. The Millky Way is not only home to all those stars, it contains stellar nurseries where newborn stars are being hatched in clouds of gas and dust. All stars are very, very far away, except for the Sun. The rest are outside of our solar system. The closest one to us is called Proxima Centauri, and it lies 4.2 light-years away. A Hubble Space Telescope view of Proxima Centauri. NASA/ESA/STScI Most stargazers who have observed for a while start to notice that some stars are brighter than others. Many also seem to have a faint color. Some look blue, others white, and still others faint yellow or reddish hues. There are many different types of stars in the universe. Notice the two slightly different colors of the stars that make up Albireo, the double star in the nose of Cygnus the Swan. They can be easily seen through binoculars or a small telescope.  Courtesy N.B., via Wikimedia Commons, Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 license. The Sun is a Star We bask in the light of a star  the Sun. Its different from the planets, which are very small in comparison to the Sun, and are usually made of rock (such as Earth and Mars) or cool gases (such as Jupiter and Saturn). By understanding how the Sun works, astronomers can gain a deeper insight into how all stars work. Conversely, if they study many other stars throughout their lives, its possible to figure out the future of our own star, too. The layered structure of the Sun and its outer surface and atmosphere gives astronomers insights into how other stars are structured. NASA How Stars Work Like all other stars in the universe, the Sun is a huge, bright sphere of hot, glowing gas held together by its own gravity. It lives in the Milky Way Galaxy, along with approximately 400 billion other stars. They all work by the same basic principle: they fuse atoms in their cores to make heat and light. Its how a star works. A cutaway of the interior of the Sun. Most stars have similar types of zones, including the cores where nuclear fusion takes place. NASA/MSFC For the Sun, this means that atoms of hydrogen are slammed together under high heat and pressure. The result is a helium atom. That process of fusion releases heat and light. This process is called stellar nucleosynthesis, and is the source of many of the elements in the universe heavier than hydrogen and helium. So, from stars like the Sun, the future universe will get such elements as carbon, which it will make as it ages. Very heavy elements, such as gold or iron, are made in more massive stars when they die, or even the catastrophic collisions of neutron stars. How does a star do this stellar nucleosynthesis and not blow itself apart in the process? The answer: hydrostatic equilibrium. That means gravity of the stars mass (which pulls the gases inward) is balanced by the outward pressure of the heat and lightâ€â€the radiation pressureâ€â€created by the nuclear fusion taking place in the core. This fusion is a natural process and takes a tremendous amount of energy to initiate enough fusion reactions to balance the force of gravity in a star. A stars core needs to reach temperatures in excess of about 10 million Kelvin to start fusing hydrogen. Our Sun, for instance, has a core temperature of around 15 million Kelvin. A star that consumes hydrogen to form helium is called a main-sequence star for all the time it is a hydrogen-fusing object. When it uses up all its fuel, the core contracts because the outward radiation pressure is no longer enough to balance the gravitational force. The core temperature rises (because its being compressed) and that gives it enough oomph to start fusing helium atoms begin into carbon. At that point, the star becomes a red giant. Later, as it runs out of fuel and energy, the star contracts in on itself, and becomes a white dwarf. How Stars Die The next phase in the stars evolution depends on its mass because that dictates how it will end. A low-mass star, like our Sun, has a different fate from stars with higher masses. It will blow off its outer layers, creating a planetary nebula with a white dwarf in the middle. Astronomers have studied many other stars that have undergone this process, which gives them greater insight into how the Sun will end its life a few billion years from now. Could our Sun end its life looking like the planetary nebula NGC 678? Astronomers suspect that it may well do so. ESO High-mass stars, however, are different from the Sun in many ways. They live short lives and leave behind gorgeous remains. When they will explode as supernovae, they blast their elements to space. The best example of a supernova is the Crab Nebula, in Taurus. The core of the original star is left behind as the rest of its material is blasted to space. Eventually, the core could compress to become a neutron star or a black hole. Hubble Space Telescopes view of the Crab Nebula supernova remnant. NASA/ESA/STScI Stars Connect Us with the Cosmos Stars exist in billions of galaxies across the universe. They are an important part of the evolution of the cosmos. They were the first objects to form more than 13 billion years ago, and they comprised the earliest galaxies. When they died, they transformed the early cosmos. Thats because all those elements they form in their cores get returned to space when stars die. And, those elements ultimately combine to form new stars, planets, and even life! Thats why astronomers often say that we are made of star stuff. Edited by Carolyn Collins Petersen.
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