Quantitative Methods Individual work1 Assignment

Quantitative Methods Individual work1 - Assignment Example The fixed cost of manuscript preparation, textbook design, and production setup is estimated to be $160,000. Variable production and material costs are estimated to be $6 per book. Demand over the life of the book is estimated to be 4000 copies. The publisher plans to sell the text to college and university bookstores for $46 each. 15. Preliminary plans are underway for construction of a new stadium for a major league baseball team. City officials question the number and profitability of the luxury corporate boxes planned for the upper deck of the stadium. Corporations and selected individuals may purchase a box for $300,000. The fixed construction cost for the upper-deck area is estimated to be $4,500,000, with a variable cost of $150,000 for each box constructed. of up to 50 luxury boxes. Promoters indicate that buyers are available and that all 50 could be sold if constructed. What is your recommendation concerning the construction of luxury boxes? What profit is

Sylvia Plaths Psychic Landscapes Essay Example for Free

Sylvia Plaths Psychic Landscapes Essay In the following essay, I will examine the development of Plaths poetry through analysis of major themes and imagery found in her description of landscapes, seascapes, and the natural world. Following the lead of Ted Hughes, critics today tend to read Sylvia Plaths poetry as a unity. Individual poems are best read in the context of the whole oeuvre: motifs, themes and images link poems together and these linkages illuminate their meaning and heighten their power. It is certainly easy to see that through almost obsessive repetition some elements put their unforgettable mark on the poetry: themes such as the contradictory desires for life and death and the quests for selfhood and truth; images like those of color, with red, black and white dominating the palette; and symbols of haunting ambiguity, for example, the moon and the sea. But equally obvious is the striking development that Plaths work underwent in the course of her brief career as a professional poet. This is perhaps most readily seen in the prosody: from exerting her equilibristic skill at handling demanding verse forms, such as the terza rima and the villanelle, she broke free of the demands of such literary conventions and created a personal verse form which still retained some of the basic elements of her earlier academic style. She turned the three-line stanza of the villanelle into a highly flexible medium. Freed from the prosodic strictness of poems like Medallion, written in 1959, this verse form reappeared in poems composed in the last year of her life in a superbly liberated yet controlled form. Some of her finest and most personal poems are written in this medium, for example, Fever 103 °, Ariel, Nick and the Candlestick, Lady Lazarus, Marys Song, and the late Sheep in Fog, Child and Contusion. More important, though, is the development one can observe in Plaths handling of images and themes, of settings and scenes. My concern in this essay is Plaths use of landscapes as settings. There are indoor settings in her poetry, such as kitchens and bedrooms, hospitals and museums, but the outdoor ones are in overwhelming majority. Plaths use of landscapes and seascapes is indeed one of the most characteristic features of her poetry. They put their mark on a considerable part of the work and appear throughout her career, linked as they are to her experiences as a woman and a poet. The seascapes with their crucial relevance for themes like the daughter-father relationship, loss and death, deserve a special and thorough treatment of their own and will have to fall outside the scope of this essay. No reader can fail to note the many items of nature that Plath makes use of as setting and image. Three scholars have paid special attention to this aspect. In her pioneering work, The Poetry of Sylvia Plath: A Study of Themes (1972), Ingrid Melander includes analyses of poems set in different landscapes and seascapes that Plath knew; in addition to discussing a group of poems connected to the sea, she deals with the following landscape poems: two poems on the moorland (Hardcastle Crags and Wuthering Heights); two idylls (Watercolor of Grantchester Meadows and In Midas Country); and three landscapes as experienced by the traveller (Sleep in the Mojave Desert, Stars over the Dordogne and Two Campers in Cloud Country). Melanders approach is thematic and she makes no attempt to suggest development or continuity concerning this aspect of the poetry. In Jon Rosenblatts Sylvia Plath: The Poetry of Initiation (1979), in my view still the most useful book-length critical study, the idea of development is a main concern. He devotes one chapter to Plaths use of landscapes and seascapes, focusing on the transition from early to late poetry as part of his overriding argument: that Plaths poetry enacts a ritual of initiation from symbolic death to rebirth. He programmatically refrains from placing her poems in extraliterary contexts, such as her biography. Edward Butscher, on the other hand, goes to the other extreme in his critical biography, Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (1976), where he makes no essential difference between the life and the poetry. While he offers many imaginative and perceptive comments on Plaths anthropomorphizing of nature, they naturally become subsumed in the telling of the story of the poets life and also, frequently, slightly distorted by Butschers  psychoanalytically loaded thesis about the emergence of Sylvia Plath the bitch goddess. Since the appearance of these three studies Sylvia Plaths Collected Poems has been published (1981) with a securer and more precise dating of the poems than before, and we are now in a better position to deal with the poems chronologically. The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982) also add to our knowledge of the composition of the poems. Linda W. Wagner-Martins recent biography (1987) has given us a firm platform to build our critical studies on, by confirming or correcting information provided by previous biographies and memoirs. With the premise that Plaths poetry should be read as a unity I wish to study the development of her use of landscapes throughout her career, paying special attention to the role the landscape plays in the individual poemquantitatively and qualitativelyand to the way the poet creates psychic landscapes out of concrete places, scenes and objects. I tie this discussion firmly and consistently to actual landscapes Sylvia Plath had seen. With a poetry like Plaths, which is highly subjective and concrete, it is surely a disadvantage to disconnect the poems from the poets life. My use of biography aims at illuminating the poetic process, and my main interest is in the subtle and gradual shift in the poets technique: the process by which her landscapes become increasingly psychic and at the end fragmented. Sylvia Plath evidently looked upon herself as a city person (in spite of her documented love of the sea). Amidst the beautiful scenery at an artists colony in upstate New York she complained: I do rather miss Boston and dont think I could ever settle for living far from a big city full of museums and theaters. Nevertheless she seldom used the cities and towns where she lived, more or less permanently, as settings in poems. Cambridge, England; Northampton, Massachusetts; Boston and London, these places made little impact on the poetry as cityscapes. When she draws on such settings, she usually lets her persona move from the streets and buildings to parks or gardens or surrounding fields. When she remembers Cambridge, she sees meadows and fields outside the town, as in Watercolor of Grantchester Meadows (1959). Of Northampton she commemorates above all a park with frog pond, fountain, shrubbery and flowers, as in Frog Autumn and Childs Park Stones, both written in 1958. Where the town of Northampton itself does figure, in Owl (1958), it is as a frivolous contrast to harshly elemental nature. Commenting on an actual experience in the summer of 1958 such as described in this poem, she noted: Visions of violence. The animal world seems to me more and more intriguing. One of the rare poems with a London setting is Parliament Hill Fields (1961), but typically the scene has a rural touch. (It is set on Hampstead Heath). Inspiredand sometimes proddedby her husband who was versed in country things, Sylvia Plath the city person turned to nature for topics and scenery. Shortly after having met Ted Hughes in the spring of 1956 she confided to her mother: I cannot stop writing poems! . . . They come from the vocabulary of woods and animals and earth that Ted is teaching me. Prodded or inspired, Plath drew on her personal experiences of different places and landscapes as raw material for many of the poems. One might actually plot locations and stages of her life on the map of her work. Among the poems that open her career as a professional poether debut can conveniently be set to 1956we can find scenes from her stay in England and her travels on the Continent. Later there will be scenes from New England and other parts of the United States and Canada. After her return to England in 1959 she set many of the poems in Devon and a few in London. Ones immediate reaction to Plaths outdoor scenery is that the per sona never seems to be quite at home in nature. Descriptions of nature will most often register feelings of estrangement, fear and the like. This is true even of poems commemorating travel experiences in happy moods, such as camping in a California desert (Sleep in the Mojave Desert) or by a Canadian lake (Two Campers in Cloud Country), poems written in 1960. Plaths depictions of places and landscapes reveal her interest in pictorial art. She said that she had a visual imagination and that her inspiration was painting, not music, when I go to some other art form. We know of this interest in art, American and European, and the inspiration she derived from specific paintings resulting in, for example, the poems Snakecharmer (1957) and Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies (1958), both modelled on paintings by Henri Rousseau, and Sculptor (1958), dedicated to her friend Leonard Baskin. Her own efforts as a draftswoman establish a link between her verbal gifts and her graphic talents. Some of her drawings have been reproduced; The Christian Science Monitor (November 5 and 6, 1956) illustrated her reports about a summer visit to Benidorm in Spain with a couple of strictly realistic sketches by her hand: sardine boats pulled up on a beach; a corner of a peasant market; and trees and houses clinging on to steep sea cliffs. In his collection of essays on Plaths poetry, editor Charles Newman included three drawings of scenery that we can recognize in the poems; strong pen strokes show an old cottage in Yorkshire (Wuthering Heights); an irregular row of houses in Benidorm; and small fishing boats left for the winter on the bank of a river nea r its outlet into the ocean at Cape Cod. She evidently did not give up the habit of drawing. As late as October 1962, in a letter to her mother, she rejoices over the gift of pastels that she will surely find time to use. By and large Plaths early poems betray the same sort of literary artificiality that marked most of her Juvenilia; they strain too noticeably toward effect and cleverness. But there are some whose subjects and settings introduce thoughts and moods which reverberate in the rest of the oeuvre. Winter Landscape, with Rooks is one such poem. The very title tells us that this scene is rendered by a painterly poet. It describes a pond where a solitary swan floats chaste as snow. To the observer-speaker it is a landscape of chagrin scorn[ed] by the setting sun. The speakers mind is as dark as the pond: walking about like an imaginary rookthe only creature fit to match the wintry landscapeshe finds no solace from her sorrow at the absence of a cherished person. In a journal entry for February 20, 1956 Plath outlined the scene that inspired some of the realistic details of this poem. On her way to a literature class which was to be held at some distance from her Cambridge college, she noticed rooks squatting black in snow-white fen, gray skies, black trees, mallard-green water. The real rooks are missing from the  poem; there is only a metaphorical one. We find features that will characterize a great deal of the poetry to come: the color scheme of black, white and red; the theme of loss and frozenness; and the parallel between landscape and human observer. Plath referred to the poem as a psychic landscape. From now on her poetic landscapes will embody association between scene and mood. What marks Winter Landscape, with Rooks as an early poem is the lack of proportion between the loss suggested and the mood resulting from the contemplation of a calm winter scene. The poem ends with a sigh of self-pity: Whod walk in this bleak place? The punning title of another poem written in 1956, Prospect, suggests comparison with a painting, calling to mind, for example, the Italian veduta of landscape or city. We find in it some of the same elements as in Winter Landscape, with Rooks: the fen, here with its gray fog enveloping rooftops and chimneys, and this time not with a metaphorical rook but two real ones sitting in a tree, with absinthe-colored eyes cocked on a lone, late, / passer-by. As in an impressionist painting much is made of colororange, gray, black, greenat the expense of line and composition, but here too there is suggested a psychic element: the solitary human being neither seeks nor derives protection or comfort from nature. Alicante Lullaby, one of several poems inspired by Plaths stay in Spain in the summer of 1956, attempts to record the actual sounds of a busy little Spanish town. The poet uses onomatopoeia to recreate realistic sounds. (Evidently Sylvia Plath regretted that she did not have an ear for music.) In another poem, Departure, the speaker, taking leave of her temporary Spanish refuge sketched in bright colors, is able to note, with self-irony, that nature does not grieve at all at the parting. The reason why she leaves is decidedly unromantic: The moneys run out. The last glimpse of the scene is unromantic in another way and may suggest a parallel between the speakers mood and nature: what she sees is a stone hut Gull-fouled and exposed to corroding weathers, and morose and rank-haired goats. It may all be in the viewers eyes. Returning to the favored rook in Black Rook in Rainy Weather the poet again  musters up self-irony to face her urge to commune with nature. She might wish to see some design among the fallen leaves and receive some backtalk / From the mute sky, but this, she knows, would be to expect a miracle. Still, she leaves herself open to any minute gesture on the part of nature lending largesse, honor, / One might say love even to the dullest landscape and the most ignorant viewer; this could be achieved, for instance, by letting a black rook arrange its feathers in such a way as to captivate the viewers senses and so grant // A brief respite from fear / Of total neutrality. The miracle has not happened yet, but the hope of such a moment of transcendent beauty and communion is worth the wait. She knows that it might in fact be only a trick of light which the viewer interprets as that rare, random descent of an angel. The next set of landscape poems, chronologically, are located in the West Yorkshire moorland which Sylvia Plath knew from visits with her husbands family. November Graveyard introducing this group describes a setting where naturetrees, grass, flowersstubbornly resists mourning over death. But it does not deny death; the visitor notes the honest rot which reveals natures unsentimental presentation of death and decay. And the poet concludes that this essential landscape may teach us the truth about death. Coming at the end of Plaths first year as a professional poet this poem may be seen to exemplify a minor change in her depiction of landscapes; elements of nature are discreetly anthropomorphized: skinflint trees refuse to mourn or wear sackcloth, the dour grass is not willing to put on richer colors to solemnize the place, and the flowers do not pretend to give voice to the dead. Two other Yorkshire poems, The Snowman on the Moor and Two Views of Withens, written the following year, offer realistic glimpses of the moorland as backdrop for descriptions of relationships between people and of attitudes to nature. In the first poem, a condensed narrative relates a husband-and-wife quarrel with the woman being brought down from her pride by a vision of indomitable male power in the guise of a giant snowman; and in the second, we have in capsule form a definition of two very different  attitudes to natureperhaps also to lifeepitomized in two persons differing responses to a bare landscape and a dilapidated farmhouse with literary and romantic associations. (The scenery is associated with Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights.) The speaker of the poem regrets that she cannot respond the way the you does. To her, landscape and sky are bleak and the House of Eros is no palace. Hardcastle Crags gives a harsher view of a human being alone and defenseless in an unresponsive, absolute landscape. The poem derives its power from a very detailed, realistic picture of fields and animals, stones and hills. The last Yorkshire poem written in 1957, however, with the title The Great Carbuncle, brings in an element of wonder performed by nature: a certain strange light with magical powerits source remains unknowncreates a moment of transfiguration for the wanderers. The Great Carbuncle may allude to a drop of blood in the Holy Grail. But it is a painfully brief moment: afterwards the body weighs like stone. In a poem written in September 1961, Wuthering Heights, Plath returned to the ambiguous fascination this moor landscape held for her. The mood, though, has now become unequivocally sinister. The descriptive details have lost much of their realistic significance. The solitary wanderer bravely step[s] forward, but nature is her enemy: the alluring horizons dissolve at her advance, wind and heather try to undo her. Images of landscape and animals are consistently turned into metaphors for the human intruders feeling of being insignificant and exposed. A seemingly harmless thing such as the half-closed eyes of the grandmotherly-looking sheep makes the speaker lose her sense of identity and worth: it is as if she were being mailed into space, / A thin, silly message. This landscape is indeed psychic to an extent that Winter Landscape, with Rooks was not. This is most certainly a result of Plaths greater ability to transform realistic, concrete objects and scenes into consistent sets of me taphors for her thoughts and emotions. New Year on Dartmoor is a somewhat later poem, inspired by a walk Sylvia Plath took with her small daughter on Dartmoor some distance from the Hugheses home in Devon; the poem may have been written in late December 1961. NEW YEAR ON DARTMOOR This is newness: every little tawdry Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar, Glinting and clinking in a saints falsetto. Only you Dont know what to make of the sudden slippiness, The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant. Theres no getting up it by the words you know. No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe. We have only come to look. You are too new To want the world in a glass hat. The poem shows how Plaths technique of using landscape scenes has changed even more. Here there is very little realistic description; the setting becomes completely metaphorized and gives rise to the speakers inner words, both sad and humorous, addressing her child who is accompanying her. The year is new and to the child the newness is exciting but baffling. Only the mother is aware of a rawer reality beneath the glinting and the clinking, and she knows what newness entails of challenge and hardships. In the fall of 1959 Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes spent several weeks at Yaddo, the artists colony in upstate New York. Although she was at first charmed by the old-fashioned beauty of the estate, she soon tired of it, and on the whole the Yaddo poems do not express any genuine pleasure in nature. Some of  the poems she set in the grounds of the estate evidence a certain strain of finding something to write about and of getting the most out of the scenery. She was pleased with Medallion, a poem she defined as an imagist piece on a dead snake. Nature is here in a somewhat macabre fashion used to aestheticize death. The speaker is only a cool observer. In another Yaddo poem featuring animals, Blue Moles, with its unequivocal message that strife and violence are the modes of nature, nature is anthropomorphized; the speaker empathizes with the moles (Down there one is alone) while the sky above is sane and clear. The anthropomorphizing tendency is strong in the Yaddo poems; it does not serve to explain nature, rather to express the human protagonists feelings and moods. Thus in Private Ground the grasses / Unload their griefs in the protagonists shoes, and in The Manor Garden items from nature are used to parallel and explain the growth of a foetus in a human body. It is not enough for Plath in these poems to call forth a human mood or attitude from a fairly detailed, more or less realistic picture of objects and scenes in nature; now she will more readily metaphorize natural processes, and detailed pictures become rarer. Often key words or phrases will suffice to hint at a parallel or an origin in nature. Early in 1959 Plath had made clear what she wished to achieve in her nature poems. After finishing Watercolor of Grantchester Meadowsa memory of the Cambridge surroundingsshe noted: Wrote a Grantchester [sic] poem of pure description. I must get philosophy in. As every reader knows, Plath was wrong about this poem: in her picture of a seemingly idyllic landscape, cruelty and violence are lurking beneath the smooth appearance. The realistic scenery is distorted, not in the direction of the ugly and the grotesque, but in the direction of nursery-plate prettiness. The philosophy is apparent: terror and violence in the shape of an owl swooping down on an inoffensive water rat are at the heart of creation. Melville had said the same thing in Moby Dick when he let Ishmael reflect on the tiger heart that pants beneath the oceans skin. Plaths most ambitious piece of writing done at the artists colony was the  sequence Poem for a Birthday. Making notes for it she acknowledged the influence of Theodore Roethke. The greenhouse on the estate must have been a special link to him; it was a mine of subjects. Her tentative plans for the poem were these: To be a dwelling on madhouse, nature: meanings of tools, greenhouses, florists shops, tunnels, vivid and disjointed. An adventure. Never over. Developing, Rebirth, Despair. Old women. Block it out. Her ambition was to be true to [her] own weirdnesses. Starting as an end-of-autumn poem it immediately turns into a seemingly random search for the origins and processes of the self; the landscape disappears, and forays into the past take over. The poem comes full circle by ending with a hope of birth into a new life. Poem for a Birthday is an indication of the direction Plaths poetry was to take from now on: toward greater use of free associations and juxtaposition of fragment s of scenes and objects, experiences lived and imagined, feelings and thoughts harbored. Sylvia Plaths life and surroundings in Devon, where she lived from September 1961 to December the following year, provided rich material for poetry. Court Green, the thatch-roofed house the Hugheses had bought, sat in a two-acre plot with a great lawn, in spring overflowing with daffodils, with an apple orchard and other trees that found their way into the poems. The settings of the poems she wrote in Devon are very varied. Several are set indoors, for instance, in a hospital (The Surgeon at 2 a.m., Three Women), a kitchen (An Appearance, The Detective, Lesbos, Cut, Marys Song), an office (The Applicant), or an unspecified interior (The Other, Words heard, by accident, over the phone, Kindness). These interiors are never described; they are often to be inferred by a situation dramatized or an action going on, such as cooking a Sunday dinner or being served tea. Action and character play the greater role. The trees and flowers of the Court Green garden appear in several poems, such as Among the Narcissi, Poppies in July and Poppies in October, all from 1962. But in these poems too there is much more story or incident than description. The Moon and the Yew Tree offers a good example of how Plath used nature as material for poetry at this transitional stage in her career. Written in October 1961 this was the first poem for which she drew on her immediate  Devon surroundings. As we see from Ted Hughess comments, she still needed an occasional prodding to find a topic: The yew tree stands in a churchyard to the west of the house in Devon, and visible from SPs bedroom window. On this occasion, the full moon, just before dawn, was setting behind this yew tree and her husband assigned her to write a verse exercise about it. This nature poem is marked by the metaphorical mode already in the opening line: This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. Using a phrase from an earlier poem (Private Ground) the poet creates a transition to the garden landscape by anthropomorphizing nature: The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God. The light of the mind does not help. The speaker complains: I simply cannot see where there is to get to. Following the upright lines of the yew tree, the speakers eyes seek the mother moon. Yew tree and church, one planted in the earth but striving toward heaven, the other bringing the message of heaven to earth, have nothing to give the speaker. She faces her real self: it is not the Church with its mixture of far reaching authority (the booming bells), its holiness stiffened by convention (the sculptured or painted saints floating above the heads of the churchgoers) and its somewhat sentimentalized sweetness (the mild Virgin), it is not these she can identi fy with: she is the daughter of the wild female moon with her dark and dangerous power. Plath herself evidently read this poem slightly differently. Introducing it in a BBC program she said that a yew tree she had once put into a poem began, with astounding egotism, to manage and order the whole affair. It was not a yew tree by a church on a road past a house in a town where a certain woman lived . . . and so on, as it might have been in a novel. Oh no. It stood squarely in the middle of my poem, manipulating its dark shades, the voices in the churchyard, the clouds, the birds, the tender melancholy with which I contemplated iteverything! I couldnt subdue it. And, in the end, my poem was a poem about a yew tree. The yew tree was just too proud to be a passing black mark in a novel. As I have indicated, another reading of the poem highlights the moon as the one who is taking over the scene. The yew tree appears again in Little Fugue, written in 1962, but only as an introductory image bringing in a contrast through its blackness counterpointed with whiteness in the concrete form of a cloud (The yews black fingers wag; / Cold clouds go over). Black and white do not merge, just as the blind do not receive the message of the deaf and dumb. These counterpointing absences prefigure the main theme of the fugue: the speaker-daughters despair at not being able to reach her dead father: Gothic and barbarous he was a yew hedge of orders. Now he sees nothing, and the speaker is lame in the memory. The fugue ends by finally joining the two items from naturethe black yew tree and the pale cloudas images of a marriage between death and death-in-life. The Devon milieu is the scene also for Among the Narcissi. Here an ailing old neighbor is the main subject, the flowers attending upon him like a flock of children. Another poem with a Devon setting is Pheasant. It is a scene in the drama of tensions in a marriage, of suspicions, hurt, jealousy and anger, which was begun in Zoo Keepers Wife and continued in Elm, The Rabbit Catcher, Event, Poppies in July and Poppies in October. Two poems written in the last month Sylvia Plath spent in Devon, Letter in November and Winter Trees, testify to the almost uncanny equilibristics she was capable of by now in realizing highly different topics, scenes, moods, as it would seem from one moment to the next. Anger at deception (The Couriers), longing for spiritual rebirth (Getting There), tender anguish at a childs future (The Night Dances), revulsion at death (Death Co.) and fascination with the dynamics of motion and life (Years), naked hatred and contempt (The Fearful), these are some of the emotions embodied in the November poems. Letter in November is set in the Court Green garden. It is unusual for Plath at this stage in her career in that it contains a fairly detailed picture of the scenery. The letter is addressed to an unspecified receiver (perhaps a child) apostrophized as love. It describes, in a relaxed tone, details of a well-known garden which in this moment of seasonal transition is shifting color and form as if by some kind of magic that a child would  understand. The speakers boots squelch realistically in the wet masses of fallen leaves. The old corpses buried under the death-soup she is walking in prefigure the despair at total defeat revealed in the final allusion to the destruction of a heroic army at Thermopylae (The irreplaceable / Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae). Was the lovingly detailed description of her garden an incantation for a moments relief from pain? Winter Trees is also set in the garden. WINTER TREES The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve. On their blotter of fog the trees Seem a botanical drawing Memories growing, ring on ring, A series of weddings. Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery, Truer than women, They seed so effortlessly! Tasting the winds, that are footless, Waist-deep in history Full of wings, otherworldliness. In this, they are Ledas. O mother of leaves and sweetness Who are these pietas? The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but easing nothing. The opening image, of trees barely visible in the early morning fog, might have led us to expect a landscape of the kind Plath wrote in her earlier years, that is, a fairly realistic description with a mood attached or a philosophy as the outcome of pictures turned into metaphors. In this poem, however, trees are immediately turned into an aesthetic product: a drawing presenting themselves (On their blotter of fog the trees / Seem a botanical drawing)! This idea is at once dropped and without the modulating help of language we are brought into the human domain of memories, relationships between people, values and morality. Memories, rings, weddings, abortions, bitcherythese words hint at a miniature narrative of past love and union, contrasted with ugly losses and failures. The speakers muted despair has turned into disgust at the very idea of human femaleness. The trees have become symbols of ideal humanity: at the same time as they partake of the solidity and security of elemental earthliness, they achieve spirituality. Visited by a god, these Ledas share in the sacred, but being Ledas they also know suffering. In a last transformation, the trees take on the appearance of the grieving mother of another god. The final lines of the poem express the speakers anguished cry lamenting her inability to partake of the perfection and pity of nature. Being a woman she appeals to a Mother Goddess for a clue, but no sounds or sights in nature bring her relief. This superb poem is an example of the skill and power Plath had reached in her thirtieth year. Within the span of a few short lines she manages to create a complex of sight and sound, history and myth, Christian and pagan, ugliness and beauty, hope and despair. As has been argued by a recent critic, this is a fine example of Plaths ability to raise her poetry above the level of the private and the confessional to a level of universality. The poems Sylvia Plath wrote in the last few weeks of her life maintain  continuity with her earlier work in subject matter and style. She still favors the two- or three-line stanza, and essential also in these poems are emotions and attitudes such as love for childrenwhat Helen Vendler so succinctly refers to as the small constructiveness of motherhoodhatred of deception, and conflicting urges toward stasis and motion. But as a whole they are more concise and more referentialeven to the point of obscuritythan earlier poems. They do not offer easy readings, for one thing because images from strikingly different spheres of life are juxtaposed, with no apparent associations to join them. By establishing links to the earlier poetry as reference and source material we may be in a better position to read these difficult texts. Plaths use of landscapes is one such line to pursue. In these late poems recognizable, actual landscapes do not occur; here the poet uses only fragments from her experiences of various kinds of scenery, fragments that often suggest moods and attitudes similar to those that the more fully described landscapes had once signified. The first poem dated 1963, Sheep in Fog, was begun in December 1962 and completed the following January, and it works as a transitional poem. It is the last poem Plath wrote in which we can recognize the outlines of an actual landscape. It keeps some of the elements of poems set in an English landscape, with touches of the moorland, perhaps Dartmoor where Plath took riding lessons. She introduced the poem for a BBC program with these words: In this poem, the speakers horse is proceeding at a slow, cold walk down a hill of macadam to the stable at the bottom. It is December. It is foggy. In the fog there are sheep. This is of course only the bare skeleton around which the poem itself has been fashioned. The title suggests a realistic landscape with figures, and we find several such items: hills, horse and fields. No sheep are visible in the poem; the dolorous bells indicate their presence. There is a watercolor aspect to the hills dimly seen in the fog, the faint line of smoke from a passing train and the touch of color provided by the horse. Human references, which are counterpointed with the touches of nature scenery, take over in the latter part of the poem. The speaker interprets the scene as an expression of her own situation. Resignedly registering her own inadequacy (People or stars / Regard me sadly, I disappoint them) she  perceives her situation as darker and darker. Against the normal order in nature All morning the / Morning has been blackening. She fears that she has to accept nothingness as her lot, even after death; this is expressed in the image of the distant fields which thr eaten / To let me through to a heaven / Starless and fatherless, a dark water. This is no longer a psychic landscape of the kind exemplified by Winter Landscape, with Rooks; in Sheep in Fog the landscape as reality almost ceases to exist. Items from Sheep in Fog reappear in even more fragmentary form in Totem, a poem written on the same day as the former one was completed. Here we find a train on a useless journey, darkened fields, and mountains letting us glimpse an unchanging sky. These fragments of a landscape are only small signs in a composition overwhelming in its rich confusion, of images which all spell the greed of inevitable death. Plath spoke of this poem as a pile of interconnected images, like a totem pole. Other late poems have a similar quality of interconnected images like a totem pole in which fragments of landscapes may reappear in a weak or distorted form. In The Munich Mannequins the yew tree from beside the Devon church has been transformed into a part of a womb (the womb // Where the yew trees blow like hydras); an unhappy memory of Sylvia Plaths own visit to Germany in 1956 in search of roots identifies the city of Munich as a place of death and sterility. In Child, expressing a mothers wish to create a happy world for her child, there are remnants of the Devon garden in bloom as a contrast to the mothers worried Wringing of hands. Gigolo recalls a Mediterranean setting with crooked streets, cul-de-sacs and fruits-de-mer, alluring and disgusting as the professional seducer himself. In Mystic there may be traces of a summery Atlantic coastmemories of smells of pines, sun-heated cabins and salty windsas well as references to the harsh London winter Sylvia Plath was facing while she was composing these poems (The chimneys of the city breathe, the window sweats). These fragments accompany a more important religious imagery. The poem has been interpreted in several ways; one interpretation sees it as the mystics dark night of the soul, but the last line, The heart has not stopped, indicates hope of an end to this night. And in Edge, one of the two last poems Plath  wrote a few days before her death, she may have drawn on visual memories of the Yaddo estate. The perfected body of the woman whose epitaph the poem is and her children make up a sculptured group of death. In addition to other allusions, such as the Laocoon group, here inverted from struggle against death to fulfilled death, this group may vaguely recall the marble statuary at Yaddo. In the preceding pages we have seen how Sylvia Plath sought inspiration and raw material for her poetry in different settings and how she very early saw the potential for psychic qualities or parallels in realistic word paintings. In depicting external reality she is not concerned with representing, as faithfully as possible, shapes and lines, color and light, objects and figures. She hardly ever devotes an entire poem to something that looks like mere description of a scene in nature. There is always a metaphorical touch or dimension to the realistic composition. At times there is a narrative hinted at or rendered in some detail. Her landscape poems do not give the impression of a spontaneous pleasure in nature, nor of a wish to understand the processes of nature. They seem rather to serve as mirrors for a self in search of identity and truth. Plaths career as a poet was brief, but even so it is possible to see a development in her use of landscapes, toward more metaphorizing, more anthropomorphizing of nature, and in the late poems, more fragmentation of scenes in nature. In the early poetry she includes more documentable detail, sometimes established already in the titles of poems, such as Hardcastle Crags and Two Views of Withens. She may have coerced herselfor been proddedto broaden her palette by consciously turning to now one, now another landscape that she had experienced, but at the end she no longer had to look for settings as inspiration. Elements of landscapes came to her when she needed them as pieces in a mosaic more fraught with meaning than the early psychic landscapes. She had at her command an extraordinary set of highly diverse materials which she juxtaposed into poems of striking originalitysometimes with less than complete success. Even though we may not be able to reach into the obscurest crevices of her imagery and thought, the poems Sylvia Plath wrote in the last few weeks of  her life haunt us with their cries and whispers. Recognizing fragments of earlier landscapes may not be the most important clue to these and other poems, but it may help us clear the ground for entering deeper into her poetic world. Source: Brita Lindberg-Seyersted, Sylvia Plaths Psychic Landscapes, in English Studies, Vol. 71, No. 6, December, 1990, pp. 509-22.

Im Not Alone :: Personal Narrative Writing

I'm Not Alone The path to solitude at Charlie's Corner Bar. Along the way, I pass the party store where I'll find the beer and cigarettes I've been instructed to purchase. It can wait. As I approach the bar, blaring neon beer slogans light up the darkened windows. A couple leaves the bar, and through the open door seeps the sound of laughter meant to impress. As I walk into the bar I see the laughter stems from the mass of hairy chests, tight dresses and bleached hair surrounding the jukebox in the corner. I make my way to a seat at the end of the bar and raise my hand slightly to get Charlie's attention. "What'll it be tonight?" I lay my money down, "Ah, the usual Charlie" -- double Vodka on the rocks (harder to trace on the breath). Taking a sip, I briefly scan for an interesting life among a room scattered with rhinestone diamond earrings, quaffed brunette curls over Mayboline eyes, and fermented grain vapors pushed past lipstick and chapstick. I have an almost psychotic habit of staring at strangers and wondering if they could be anything like me. Occasionally, I spot what I think could be a kindred spirit and find some comfort in the fact I'm not alone. I skim over the tight dresses in the corner, "Nothing like me," and catch sight of an interesting specimen, partially hidden by shadows, sitting adjacent to the pool table in the back of the room -- "Huh, he's new." There's an obviously intoxicated man playing pool, and while aiming for a phantom ball on the table, a swift and drunken move of his cue stick causes his beer, sitting on the table behind him, to fall in to the lap of the stranger. The debouchered fool attempts an apology as the man slowly rises from his seat. "Looks like the beginnings of a brawl," I tell Charlie, pointing towards the table. "Huh, brawl. I always wanted to say that at a bar, but I never actually wanted to witness one." The stranger blots himself dry with the towel Charlie has brought to him, and he turns to the drunk in an effort to accept the apology. Other than minor frustration, the man seems unaffected by the act. I wonder if his dry-cleaning bill will be received with the same response. His composure intrigues me. Most of the men I've known would have pounded the drunk for his carelessness, but the expensive suit he adorns is my first clue that this guy is definitely not like most men I've known.

User Generated Content

User-generated content Brianna Hughes Northeaster State University User generated content is on the verge in the media industry and becoming a world wide system used on the internet and in commercials. The growth of new media has increased communication between many people all over the world. People are able to speak their mind through websites, blogs, pictures, and other user-generated media. User-generated content is another way for people to access things at a quicker pace with fast feedback.Facebook is a great example because it is real time and people are able to communicate with people all around the nation. Many commercials are based on how the media is transforming according to the needs of the people. The major part of the user-generated media is that it is widely globalized. The design of new media will continue to innovate because it will not always be new because the media industry is always changing and improving. User-generated commercials add value because it benefits the world from using the service or watching the commercial.The social has changed rapidly in the past few years. The commercials have been used for companies, schools, and much more. The commercials are activity between the user and information channels. Companies have to decide if the exchange of information is profitable to them (Marshall, Solomon, Stuart 2009). This gives the company a choice on whether or not to do a user-generated commercial. A company is able to gain value from competitve advantage either through distinctive competency or differential benefit. They both have to do with what the strong points are in the company.The user-generated information determines if the consumers are satisfied with the information or product being advertised. Most companies try to build a strong relationship between the customers because they want a long term buying relationship and if the user-generated commercials show that most customers are satisfied with the products then they will gear more towards buying the product. â€Å"We’re seeing everyday people actually generating value instead of just buying it- consume3rs are turning into advertising director, retailers, and new –product –development consultants† (Marshall, Solomon, Stuart pg. 3). The commercials add value because when users log on to Facebook or MySpace they usually get to view ads on other products in which they did not have to go out of their way because they were already going on their page. It is a form of multitasking that people take much advantage from. The creativity is a major benefit because user-generated content encourages creativity. The products strategic plan is being advanced because it improves the number of users that view the sites or products. The company might be charged according to how many people view the site after seeing the ad.It is a version-free and everlasting beta which is updated constantly in real time. The sites depend on users and not s ystems. A major marketing strategy that companies take into account is that there is wisdom in crowds. Masses of people have been tested to know more than the smartest people. There are ethical issues in the user-generated commercials because obviously consumers expect companies to sell them products that are safe and usefull but there are dishonest products on the market. The dishonesty could rise from the pressure to succeed (Marshall, Solomon, Stuart 2009).The content could result in illegal activities, terrorism, addictive consumption, or even exploiting people. Business are in business to satisfy their stakeholders and when they make a decision that is not satisfying them they have to face the issue of being unethical in their decision. The issues could range from illegal accounting practices, bankruptcy, bribery, extortion, or poor self-policing of the industry. They could all cause a major uproar in the company causing the consumers and stakeholders to lose trust, money or ev en have to use worthless items.Ethical issues are a daily issue for company which shows that the company must understand its environment and how to stay on top of the issues. During the Christmas season many companies were advertising their gifts and what nots on facebook because they knew the season of gift giving was approaching. Walmart was one of the companies advertising on Facebook encouraging people to purchase products from their store online or in-store. There were special offers for ordering online through the ad on Facebook. This was a major marketing strategy for them because of the amount of viewers on Facebook.

Moral Quandary of Race Essay

In his book, â€Å"I am not a Racist, But†¦The Moral Quandary of Race,† Lawrence A. Blum, a professor of Philosophy and Liberal Arts, ventures into unrecognized and little known aspects of racism. His definition and analysis of racism and its implications, projects the vastness of the subject, which had generally been regarded as just a white attitude. Blum describes racism as antipathy towards individuals of a racialized group, stemming from â€Å"inferiorization† or the idea that the group is inferior in relation to other groups. Blum considers a person to be a racist only when he intentionally makes racist comments or jokes, driven by racial antipathy. He feels that the moral significance of the term ‘racism’ seems to be losing its value, as it is being overused or too commonly used. Today, in practical life, any direct or indirect references which affect feelings of racial groups are considered racist. This not only dilutes the very meaning of racism but also weakens its power of ethical condemnation. The word ‘racism’ and its related terminology needs to be more clear, due to its relevance in personal racism, racist, racist beliefs at various levels. The author feels the term ‘racism’ is being more used out of context, like black students intending to sit with other black students for lunch or white teacher being uncomfortable talking with the black parents, which are all regarded as racism. The book also emphasizes the need to report race-based statistical data with greater care and concern as they influence individual perceptions. The statistical differences among the views of racial groups must be projected without any overracialization (p35). Overstating the differences of such views would only reinforce A book review 3 an individual’s racist opinion and close them to persuading arguments or rational conversation. Opposing the general notion that racial groups have a common agenda with regard to their group, Blum emphasizes the need to recognize the existence of internal diversity within social groups. Racial groups with a sizable population cannot have a single opinion or viewpoint. Several factors including age, gender, religion, culture etc. influence the formation of a viewpoint of an individual (p55). Blum therefore attributes it to misrecognition or inadequate recognition rising from ignorance, when any single viewpoint is attributed to an entire race. Although Blum feels that whites should not forget their relevance and association with racism, he adds that racism is not confined only to the whites. For instance Chinese, Japanese, and blacks too exhibit racist attitude to other colored people and whites. The belief of their racial superiority is developed by colored people, which makes them regard other groups inferior (p33). In this book, Blum indicates our hypersensitivity to the word ‘racism’ and suggests that racist insensitivity and subconscious racial intolerance are indeed acts, which need to be eliminated, but need not be tagged as ‘racist’. Blum is of the opinion that racial prejudice is an unavoidable consequence of cultural diversity. Our view and way of life today is associated with racist ideologies, which we have inherited. The concept of race had developed from the sixteenth century, A book view 4 reaching its peak in the late nineteenth century. History holds the key for our present interpretation on human diversity in terms of similarity, differences and superiority among races (p109). Blum explores the idea of doing away with the concept of race, but warns that it should be only after all associated wrongdoings are fully addressed. The book covers all vital aspects of racism including its history and, what we actually mean and think of race. It incorporates much useful information on the topic, carefully thought and reasoned, illustrated by suitable examples. â€Å"I am not a Racist, But†¦The Moral Quandary of Race† is indeed an important book not only to scholars but also to the common man in quest of understanding racism.

Pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye

Pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye Famed Egyptologist Zahi Hawass considers the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III, one of the final rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty, as the greatest monarch ever reign over the Two Lands. Dubbed the Magnificent, this fourteenth-century B.C. pharaoh brought in unprecedented amounts of gold to his kingdom, built tons of epic structures, including the famed Colossi of Memnon and lots of religious buildings, and depicted his wife, Queen Tiye, in an unprecedentedly egalitarian fashion. Lets dive into the revolutionary era of Amenhotep and Tiye. Amenhotep was born to Pharaoh Thutmose IV and his wife Mutemwia. Aside from his alleged role in re-establishing the Great Sphinx as a big tourist spot, Thutmose IV wasnt that notable of a pharaoh. He did, however, do a bit of building, especially at Amuns temple in Karnak, where he explicitly identified himself with the sun god Re. More on that later!   Sadly for young Prince Amenhotep, his dad didnt live very long, dying when his kid was about twelve. Amenhotep ascended the throne as a boy king, exercising his only dated military campaign when he was about seventeen in Kush. By his mid-teens, though, Amenhotep wasnt focusing on the army, but his one true love, a woman named Tiye. Shes mentioned as the Great Royal Wife Tiye in his second regnal year - meaning they got married when he was just a kid! Tip of  the Hat to Queen Tiye Tiye was a truly remarkable woman. Her parents, Yuya and Tjuya, were non-royal officials; Daddy was a charioteer and priest called the Gods Father, while Mom was a priestess of Min. Yuya and Tjuyas fabulous tomb was uncovered in 1905, and archaeologists found lots of riches there; DNA testing performed on their mummies in recent years has proved key in identifying unidentified bodies. One of Tiyes brothers was a prominent priest named Anen, and many have suggested that the famous Eighteenth Dynasty official Ay, alleged father of Queen Nefertiti and eventual pharaoh after King Tut, was another of her siblings.   So Tiye married her husband when they were both quite young, but the most interesting item about her is the way in which she was portrayed in statuary. Amenhotep deliberately commissioned statues showing himself, the king, and Tiye as the same size, showing her importance in the royal court, which was on par with that of the   pharaoh! In a culture in which visual size was everything, bigger was better, so a big king and an equally big queen showed them as equals.   This egalitarian portrayal is pretty much unprecedented, showing Amenhoteps devotion to his wife, allowing her to wield influence comparable to his own. Tiye even takes on masculine, regal poses, showing up on her own throne as a Sphinx who crushes her enemies  and getting her own Sphinx colossus; now, shes not only equal to a king in the way shes portrayed, but shes taking on his roles! But Tiye wasnt Amenhoteps only wife - far from it! Like many pharaohs before and after him, the king took brides from foreign countries in order to form alliances. A commemorative scarab was commissioned for the marriage between the pharaoh and Kilu-Hepa, daughter of the king of Mitanni. He also wed his own daughters, as other pharaohs did, once they came of age; whether or not those marriages were consummated is up for debate. Divine Dilemmas In addition to Amenhoteps marital program, he also pursued massive construction projects throughout Egypt, which burnished his own reputation - and that of his wife! They also helped people think of him as semi-divine and created money-making opportunities for his officials. Perhaps more importantly for his son and successor, the Heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten, Amenhotep III followed in his fathers sandalprints and identified himself with the biggest gods of the Egyptian pantheon on the monuments he built.   In particular, Amenhotep placed great emphasis on sun gods in his construction, statuary, and portraiture, displaying what  Arielle Kozloff aptly called a solar bent in every aspect of his realm. He showed himself as the god of the sun at Karnak and contributed extensively to Amun-Res temple there; later in life, Amenhotep even went to far as to consider himself as a living manifestation of  all  deity, with an emphasis on the sun god Ra-Horakhty, according to W. Raymond Johnson. Although historians dubbed him the Magnificent, Amenhotep went by the moniker of the Dazzling Sun Disk. Given his fathers obsession with his connection to the solar gods, its not too far of a stretch to get to the aforementioned Akhenaten, his son by Tiye and successor, who declared that the sun disk, Aten, should be the sole deity worshipped in the Two Lands. And of course Akhenaten (who started his reign as Amenhotep IV, but later changed his name) stressed that  he, the king,  was the sole intermediary between the divine and the mortal realms. So it looks like Amenhoteps emphasis on the   godly powers of the king went to an extreme in his sons reign. But Tiye may have also set a precedent for her Nefertiti, her daughter-in-law (and possible niece, if the queen was the daughter of Tiyes putative brother Ay). In the reign of Akhenaten, Nefertiti was depicted as occupying roles of great prominence in her husbands court and in his new religious order. Perhaps Tiyes legacy of carving out a great role for the Great Royal Wife as partner to the pharaoh, rather than mere spouse, carried on to her successor. Interestingly, Nefertiti also assumed some kingly positions in art, as her mother-in-law did (she was shown smiting enemies in a typical pharaonic pose).

Why George W. Bush Should Not Be Reelected essays

Why George W. Bush Should Not Be Reelected essays The decision of any electorate to reelect the current presidential incumbent is usually contingent on his or her performance on important issues such as economic development, social justice, and foreign policy. Though the domestic economy has been the deciding factor in most U.S. presidential races, the Republican Party elevated September 11th and Homeland Security to the top of its political agenda in 2002 congressional campaign, based on which it won the Senate. Given its previous success and the recent increase in poll ratings post Saddam's capture, it is likely to feature prominently in the 2004 elections as well. While one more, unfortunate terrorist incident may well swing public opinion overwhelmingly in favor of Bush and the Republicans, the American public would do well to remember the democratic values it stands for and the fact that the Iraq war has not only undermined those values but taken a heavy toll of American As things stand, it does appear that the American electorate is divided in its opinion. A recent CBS News poll, in fact, shows that the president's overall job approval rating of 50% ties with the lowest ratings he has received since assuming office, and his disapproval rating (45%) is at its highest. Significantly, ratings on his ability to handle an international crisis, and perceptions of the respect he receives from international leaders has fallen back to pre-9/11 levels, after have risen sharply in the wake of the terrorist attacks and the capture of Saddam Hussein. The fall in ratings is attributed to continuing attacks on American troops in Iraq, and the costs of the war (CBS News Polls, Jan. 17, These ratings match similar findings by other polls. The Los Angeles Times poll, for instance, reveals that Americans remained split along lines of gender, race, and cultural values on the issue of Bush's reelection, with 42% stating that Bush...

What Are the Score Choice Policies at Ivy Leagues

What Are the Score Choice Policies at Ivy Leagues SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Many students assume colleges will see every score they've earned on the SAT and ACT when they apply. However, while some top-tier schools do require your full testing histories, many don't. Some even allow score choice for the SAT, which allows you to send only the scores you want them to see, or they allow you to pick your best ACT test date. If you're aiming for a top-tier school like an Ivy League, Stanford, or MIT, read this guide to learn how they evaluate standardized tests to help you best prepare. What's in This Guide We're dividing this list of prestigious schools into two categories: colleges that require you to send all scores, and colleges that do not. We are including quotations from their admissions websites about not just their policies on multiple scores, but how they evaluate multiple test scores in general. We will also link to each school's admissions website so you can read more in-depth about their policies. We will also highlight colleges that specifically allow for College Board's Score Choice (or the ACT's similar option). Plus, we will include application tips for the two categories to help you create a smart test-taking strategy. Colleges in Guide Brown University Columbia University Cornell University Dartmouth College Duke University Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Princeton University Stanford University University of California System University of Chicago University of Pennsylvania Vanderbilt University Yale University Colleges That Require You to Send All Scores As companies that make standardized tests have made it easier to pick and choose which scores you want to send to colleges, fewer schools have required you to send all your test scores. Currently, only one of the Ivy Leagues (Yale) does. In these cases, the colleges require you to send your full testing history (sometimes called "testing record"), either for the ACT or SAT. In the past, some colleges have even required your testing history from both tests. Even though colleges often say they will "focus" on the highest score, colleges that require all scores will take each score they receive into consideration. Yale University "Applicants who have taken the SAT or ACT exam multiple times should report all scores from whichever test they choose to report. Applicants who choose to report scores from both the SAT and ACT should report all scores received on both tests....When assessing SAT results, admissions officers will focus on the highest individual section scores from all test dates. For example, if an applicant took the SAT twice, the highest Evidence-Based Reading and Writing and Math scores will be considered individually. When assessing ACT results, admissions officers focus on the highest ACT Composite from all test dates while also considering individual ACT subscores." If you take both the SAT or ACT, you can choose which test to send. But whichever test you pick, you have to send all of your scores. They will also superscore the results of whichever exam you decide to submit; however, remember that they will see all your scores, even if "officially" they only use the highest score from each section. Want to learn more about the SAT but tired of reading blog articles? Then you'll love our free, SAT prep livestreams. Designed and led by PrepScholar SAT experts, these live video events are a great resource for students and parents looking to learn more about the SAT and SAT prep. Click on the button below to register for one of our livestreams today! Strategy for "All Scores" Schools While we never recommend taking the ACT or SAT until you are confident you will get your target score- either for the first time or on a retake- you need to be especially careful about retakes if any of the above schools are top choices for you. In particular, do not take the ACT or SAT once "for practice" before studying for a higher score on a retake. These colleges will see that lower "practice score" and take it into consideration. Instead, make full-length, strictly-timed practice tests an important part of your study regimen, so you have a more confident idea of what your score will turn out to be before you take the ACT/SAT for the first time. Also, be careful about retaking the SAT/ACT with the goal of improving one of the sections. For example, if you got a low Critical Reading score the first time around on the SAT, don't exclusively study for CR before your retake. If your other scores (Math and Writing) go down by a lot, that could make for a lower composite score the second time, which doesn't look great. You should also be careful of retaking the SAT or ACT more than three times, since again, they will see every score date and it won't look good if your scores don't improve markedly. Some final bits of advice: if you're taking the SAT, take the PSAT during your sophomore year so you can get real, scored SAT practice before you take the SAT. And if you're taking the ACT, keep in mind you have the option of deleting records from a particular test date. You can't send scores that no longer exist! Colleges That Don't Require All Scores Colleges that don't require all scores to be sent often have admission policies in place in which they only consider the highest scores, either from a single test date or by superscoring. This is why they don't require all scores- because they won't consider the lowest ones anyway. Many of these colleges also accept College Board's Score Choice feature, which allows you to pick and choose which scores to send. (Read more about Score Choice here.) ACT doesn't have Score Choice, but it does allow you to pick which test date to send. You can put your best scores forward at "score choice" schools. By the way, "superscoring" means combining the best section results from different test dates to create your highest possible composite score. Many of the schools on this list superscore for the SAT, however, for the ACT, it's more common to just look at the highest composite score. Brown University "We accept Score Choice. We will super score within both current and redesigned SAT, but will not super score using results from both versions of the test. For the ACT, we consider the highest scores submitted for each section; however, we do not calculate a super scored ACT Composite score." If you take the SAT more than once, Brown will automatically consider your highest section scores (provided all scores are from either the old or the redesigned SAT), but you may also use Score Choice to decide which scores to submit. For the ACT, they will focus on the highest score for each section, but won't calculate a "superscored" composite. You can choose your best ACT test date(s) to send with that in mind. Columbia University "Applicants may select the Score Choice option for the SAT or choose to submit specific ACT composite scores....When evaluating applicants, we consider only the highest testing results reported from individual sections of the SAT or the highest composite score on the ACT." Columbia's policy is very similar to Brown's. You can use Score Choice for the SAT or pick your best ACT composite to submit. Cornell University "Note that Cornell participates in the College Board Score Choice program. For the SAT, Cornell considers the highest section scores across test dates. For the ACT, Cornell considers the highest composite score across all ACT test dates. As a reminder, ACT does not create new records by combining scores from different test dates." Cornell doesn't require you to send all scores, and it'll combine section scores of different SAT exam dates, but only composite scores from different ACT test dates, not section scores. Dartmouth College "Dartmouth does permit the use of Score Choice....We consider the highest component scores from the SAT, even if these results are from different dates. For the ACT, the committee considers the highest composite score and does not combine sub-scores from multiple test dates. We don't recommend excessive testing." Like fellow Ivies Brown and Columbia, they will look at the highest SAT sections from different dates but only the highest ACT composite. Duke University "Students who have taken multiple tests may choose which scores to send to Duke. For students who elect to send multiple test scores Duke will use whichever score is highest." For Duke, you have total control over what scores to send! And if you do send multiple scores, they will use whichever score is best. This is actually a recent change to their policy- they used to require all scores. Harvard College "You are free to use the College Board's Score Choice option or the similar option offered by ACT when applying to Harvard." Harvard doesn't say they automatically focus on the highest scores if they get more than one SAT score or ACT score. However, they do say "we do not admit by the numbers" and "we take into account your educational background when reviewing scores." This is part of holistic application review, trying to take into account the whole applicant. Still, Harvard is one of the most competitive schools in the country, so we suggest putting your best scores forward either with Score Choice or by sending your best ACT test date. MIT "Students are free to use the College Board's Score Choice option and the ACT's option to submit the scores of your choice." MIT does say that they superscore test results, so Score Choice can be a bit redundant. They even superscores across the old and new SAT, which is unusual. They superscore the ACT as well, saying that they "consider the highest score achieved in each section" for both the SAT and ACT. This means if you have taken the ACT more than once, and your best section scores are spread out between test dates, it might be more advantageous to send all your ACT dates so MIT will superscore them. Princeton University "We allow applicants to use the score choice feature of the SAT and accept only the highest composite score of the ACT, but we encourage the submission of all test scores." Like the other Ivies in this section, Princeton is fine with College Board's Score Choice and its ACT equivalent. Stanford University "We recommend that you simply self-report your highest scores in the testing section of the application. You can also have official scores sent to Stanford, but this is not required for us to review your application. If you are offered admission and choose to enroll, official scores that match your self-reported scores will be required. In order for test scores to be considered official, they must be sent directly from the College Board or the ACT." Stanford allows for Score Choice, and it also superscores for both the SAT and the ACT. University of California System "In the College Board's Score Choice module, we encourage you to send all official scores to UC. We will use the highest scores from a single administration. There is no disadvantage to submitting all scores....For the ACT with Writing test, we will focus on the highest combined score from the same test administration...For the SAT with Essay, we will focus on the highest total score from a single test date." They stop short of explicitly requiring all scores, but they make it clear they'd prefer to see all your scores. This means if you're applying to any schools in the UC system (these include Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Davis), you're encouraged to send all your scores, since lower scores won't hurt your admission chances. University of Chicago "If you have chosen to submit SAT or ACT test scores, we recommend you send us all of your test scores. Only your best testing results- your highest sub-scores and the best result of the two testing options, if you've taken both the SAT and ACT- will be considered in the review of your application. Lower test scores submitted will not be used in the review of your application." UChicago doesn't forbid Score Choice, but they do recommend you send all of your scores, since they only look at the highest ones. University of Pennsylvania "Although we permit Score Choice, we do encourage students to submit their entire testing history on both ACT and SAT exams." Much like Dartmouth and Princeton, UPenn allows you to send whichever scores you like, but prefers you send them all. It's also worth noting that they superscore for both the SAT and ACT, so you will often benefit from sending multiple scores. Vanderbilt University "Only your highest [SAT] section scores will be considered as part of the final admissions decision...We will treat ACT scores in the way as what we're describing here with the SAT Reasoning (i.e., considering only the highest composite ACT score in our final admissions decisions). The only difference between the two is that we do not "super-score" the ACT, whereas we do with the SAT Reasoning." So for the SAT, even though Vanderbilt encourages you to send all scores, they don't require it. For the ACT, they're more flexible. Since they will only look at the highest composite score, you can just submit your highest ACT composite. Strategy for Score Choice Schools Unlike the "all scores" schools, you are free to send scores from one test date for the ACT or use score choice to combine scores from multiple dates for the SAT. This means there is less pressure to get a super high composite each time you take the SAT- so if you need to, you could go into a retake aiming for a better math score and not worry too much about Critical Reading and Writing. You also don't need to stress out about only testing two or three times because you won't have to send each test date (though still, if you're studying carefully, you shouldn't have to retake the SAT or ACT more than two or three times). Basically, for the SAT, your goal should be to create the single highest composite you can, and not worry as much about some of your lower scores. However, for the ACT, it's important to note that while some schools (MIT and UChicago) will superscore the ACT, most schools are just looking at the highest overall composite. So you don't have to worry about retaking the ACT, since you only have to send your highest composite to these schools. However, it does mean each time you take the ACT, you need to study all sections to maximize your final composite (the ACT's composite is averaged, so a lower section could drag down your composite). What's Next? So how high should your SAT/ACT scores be for the Ivy League, anyway? See our guide to which scores will get you in- and which ones are too low. We also have a guide to SAT Subject Test scores for the Ivy League. Don't consider these an afterthought! Need help preparing for your retakes? Check out the best SAT and ACT prep websites you should be using. Disappointed with your scores? Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? We've written a guide about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

The Real Estate Closing Process and RESPA Research Paper

The Real Estate Closing Process and RESPA - Research Paper Example When a property is transferred from the seller to the buyer as per the sales contract, the buyer becomes the rightful owner of the property and the seller gets the money. Closing deal of a property carries some costs other than the cost of the property. These costs incur from the sales contract, as per the customs and local, state, and federal laws (Real Estate Closing, 2011). Pre-closing Procedure Pre-closing Procedures are followed exactly before the closing to ensure that all documents are in order for the buyer to have a look. As per sales contracts, general practice of checking the premises for any violation of the sales contract is carried out by the buyer along with the broker. An updated survey of the property is conducted to satisfy the lender or the title company and payment for the survey is decided in the sales contract, identifying the entity. Pre-closing procedure provides assurance to the seller also that the buyer has the ready funds to finalize the transaction (Real Estate Closing, 2011). Any mortgage or other liens on the property needs to be cleared by the seller by providing a pay-off statement as of the date of closing. Such a statement normally shows not only the remaining principal and interest but also any pre-payment penalties and certificate-issuance fee. The seller gets acknowledged for any funds in escrow to pay for taxes and insurance (Real Estate Closing, 2011). ... The buyer may also deposit funds in an escrow account to pay for insurance and taxes for the property, to secure its collateral, as and if asked by the lender (Real Estate Closing, 2011). Title Procedures Title procedures are followed by the buyer and the lender to ensure that the title is free from any debts. The seller provides either a latest abstract of title, detailing any charge or an assurance from a title insurance company, the payment for which is made by the seller. The buyer’s advocate checks all charges to give an opinion of the title, as shown in the title record but this opinion is not a promise of good title. A second search on the title is recommended to the buyer in case the first search has been conducted months before the closing to ensure that no new charges have been leveled. Normally, the seller signs an oath, the affidavit that the title is clean from any encumbrances so that if anything wrong done is found, the buyer or the title insurance company could file a case against the seller in the court of law (Real Estate Closing, 2011). Closing Procedures Closing is the final settlement and transfer of the property. Closing procedures happen either face-to-face or through the third-party, a escrow agent who is not a stakeholder in the transaction of the property. Mostly, property closing details are registered with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by using Form 1099-S, detailing the seller’s social security number, the sales price, and any compensations to the seller in case of prepaid property taxes. Generally, the IRS or sometimes the lender is reported to by the closing agent on the closing (Real Estate Closing, 2011).

Quality Management and SMS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Quality Management and SMS - Essay Example development of technologies capable of identifying microbial organisms, modernization in packaging of foods and increased awareness on microbiology education to the general public. In conjunction with principles of quality control, these issues should be addressed (Besterfield, 2004). Food poisoning is a result of poor handling of food stuffs by either the customers or employees in an organization. With the rise in food poisoning in the world, food processing organizations have stipulated mechanisms to curb this menace and ensure customer safety. Suppliers are graded and assessed to determine the quality of products they deliver to the plant for processing. This is a supplier manufacturer principle, which depicts that suppliers must be trustworthy and able to deliver quality and cost effective products (Hutter, 2011). Principle of customer focus; this relates to the customer needs and wants. A customer will basically want to consume safe and healthy food. As a manager, there should be concentration on ensuring that the customer is always safe from infections. Packaging of the food is very important since it is what depicts and demonstrates how important and secure the customers feel. Consumer protection authorities also play an important role in the company; often times they come at intervals and check on the processing plants this tends to cement on the work of the operation controller (Besterfield, 2004). Process approach; a serine and performing company will opt to efficiency and effectiveness. The wastes in the company should be properly deposited to avoid breeding grounds for micro-organisms which may in turn be harmful and infectious. Take a case of a cake bakery, the bakery has to ensure that it maintains cleanliness by ensuring that any wastes that may be experienced is dumped in the right place (Hutter, 2011). Continual improvement techniques will help see the company operate in an efficient and clean environment. Machines in a food processing plant

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC'S). Economic Indicators Article

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC'S). Economic Indicators - Article Example The countries that are member of this council are as follows: †¢ Saudi Arabia †¢ Kuwait †¢ Bahrain †¢ Qatar †¢ United Arab Emirates †¢ Sultanate of Oman (Sheikh Mohammed, 2012) GCC being an oil-based region is provided with several opportunities to enhance its profit ratio and to play an essential and pivotal role in providing the world with oil. With the largest crude oil reserves in GCC (486.6 billion barrels), the member countries play the leading role in the world. In addition, GCC is the largest producer and exporter of petroleum due to which the region enjoyed fascinating and spectacular economic boom from the year 2002 to 2008 (The Economist Intelligence, 2011). The dominant role of the GCC countries in the world provided the region with an opportunity to increase the economy to $1.1 trillion (triple in size) during the same years. GCC region is the largest producer and exporter of oil and petroleum due to which the GCC countries account for almost 52 percent of the total OPEC oil reserves. 3. GDP GROWTH RATE The growth rate of the GCC region relies highly on the production and export of oil and petroleum to countries across the globe. The GDP growth rate of the GCC has been fascinating and outstanding from 2002-2008 and even after 2012 (IMF, 2012). Throughout 2002 to 2008 the region was provided with an opportunity to increase its economy threefold (Fox, 2011). The GCC countries enhanced its GDP from 400,000 (Mn US$) in the year 2003 to more than 1,100,000 (Mn US$) in the year 2008. ... Meanwhile, the region witnessed a growth rate of 14.2 percent in the year 2007 (Fox, 2011). Such an increase in the growth rate in the year 2002-2008 was highly dependent on the strongly increasing oil demand in the world (Fox, 2011). Some of the factors that contributed to such an extensive performance include better geo-political environment, boost in privatization of activities, increase in the Central Bank’s assets along with the strengthening of the GCC’s corporate sector. On the other hand, the GCC region has witnessed a decline in the growth rate due to the rising financial and economic crisis (Bachellerie, 2012). As a result, the oil market in the countries across the globe turned from cash cow to dog. The financial and economic crisis led to the decline in nominal GDP by -19.3 percent. Meanwhile, the real GDP declined from 6.4 percent to 0.5 percent in the years 2008 and 2009 respectively. With the global recovery of the oil market, the GCC region once again wi tnessed promising growth rate. The forecasted nominal GDP of the GCC was 380.5 (USD bn) in the year 2012 whereas the Real GDP (forecasted) for the same year was 5.3 (% y/y). Figure 1: GDP of GCC Countries Source: Gulf Investment Corporation, 2011) Figure 2: GCC’s GDP Growth Source: Haque, 2012 4. Inflation Rate The inflation rate in the GCC was quite low from 2002 to 2003 due to the prudent monetary and fiscal policies. Moreover, the access and availability of the goods and services in the region ensured low inflation rate. This could be witnessed by the 0.2 percent inflation rate which increased to 2.1 percent during 2001-2004. The inflation rate was 6.7 percent in the year 2007 which reached 10.7 percent in the year 2008 (IMF, 2011). The increase in inflation rate was a

US Economic History-Commanding Heights Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

US Economic History-Commanding Heights - Essay Example Keynes ideas were that the economy should be controlled by the government. Later years saw the departure from Keynes ideas to the adoption of economies that did not support government regulations. Many reforms were made and globalization set in. This was around the year 1991 after the Soviet Union collapsed. The authors say that free markets prevail in comparison to the centrally planned markets. There are worries however that, globalization may be only for a short while. This will happen if measures are not taken to end inequality and if the third world countries are not given opportunities to better themselves. The UK had a lot of resources and power and thus its capital city London was the center of globalization. This was in the first period of globalization. This period occurred before the First World War (Yergin et al pg 15). The First World War however affected Britain badly leading to a high level of unemployment. As much as the UK triumphed in the Second World War, the empire had to break. The then ruler, Winston Churchill, did not like the idea of government involvement and he thus discouraged it. In the year 1945, Clement Attlee who headed the Labor Party, was elected and he encouraged government regulations so as to avoid potential economic crisis. The government of UK nationalized almost all its major industries. In addition to this, the government controlled the earnings of the employees. These wages of the employees were regulated by the government or subjected to the union rules (Kay, pg 23). This idea of government interference became a common factor in the UK in such a way that subsequent governments adopted it. The elected government officials did nothing to change this and it became part of the UK. In the 1970s, the UK saw immense strikes of the unions including other problems such as the oil shock that was experienced in the year 1973 (Yergin et al pg 16). These problems almost crumbled Britain. That

Alan Greenspan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Alan Greenspan - Essay Example Both had different ideologies as Greenspan advocated for the deregulation of the financial markets and born propagated for the government regulation. The main source of conflict arose as a result of the Over the counter OTC derivatives that were private contracts between major players on the Wall Street on particular bets. Born cited a high likelihood of fraud taking place. But based on Greenspan he believed that the market would identify the frauds and corrects itself. These sentiments were in line with his core principles of a free market. The assumptions of a free market commonly no government intervention, free flow of information of information, the actions of an individual have no effect on the market and finally, there are no barriers to entry and exit the market. This was the principles that Greenspan stood by up to his retirement but later confessed that the philosophy had major drawbacks. The hedge fund long-term capital management was characterized by large banks secretly investing large amounts of money on the over the counter derivatives at the Wall Street. The hedge fund was additionally invested by a majority of the in the know investors. These dealings were shrouded in secrecy and the government didn’t have any clue about them. They were as a result of the wall stock brokers setting complex mathematical formula that guaranteed the investors of a significant return on their investment. Finally, there was a meltdown as the Wall Street brokers were unable to handle the situation causing a collapse.

Discuss and Evaluate how to Improving Prenatal nutrition in the UK Literature review

Discuss and Evaluate how to Improving Prenatal nutrition in the UK - Literature review Example other’s prenatal nutrition and birth outcome as the knowledge provide a basis for understanding and design of nutritional interventions for the improvement of positive birth results, long term maternal life quality, reduced mortality rates and health care expenses† (Alexander & Cornely, 1987). This review seeks to provide a broad overview on the ways through which prenatal nutrition can be improved in the United Kingdom. The overview of the literature reviews status of maternal nutrition and birth results in the United Kingdom. â€Å"Nutrition of an expectant mother is a crucial issue owing to the fact that the kind of diet intake during pregnancy may likely have a positive or a negative impact on the mother’s health as well as the newborn baby† (Duggan, Watkins, & Walker, 2008). These effects manifest in the child’s life early or late in life including adulthood. It is for this reason that the Food Standards Agency in the United Kingdom deems necessary to offer dietary advice for mothers during their gravidity period. The advices offered range from appropriate diet to the undesirable ones. â€Å"A number of studies conducted in the United Kingdom show evidence that expectant mothers take insufficient major nutrients† (Langley-Evans, 2009). The studies further reveal that the current state can be improved through various dietary interventions. This review seeks to bring out dietary interventions that can be provided to expectant mothers with a purpose of improving prenatal care and the general improvement of the birth outcomes. Improved access to quality nutrition among expectant mothers in the United Kingdom has for the last 10 years the government’s headache. The United Kingdom’s department of health has been formulating various prenatal care policies geared at quality nutrition and care for pregnant women that would see reduced risks among the high risk groups. This paper uses numerous literature review works conducted by earlier researchers to

Alan Greenspan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Alan Greenspan - Essay Example Both had different ideologies as Greenspan advocated for the deregulation of the financial markets and born propagated for the government regulation. The main source of conflict arose as a result of the Over the counter OTC derivatives that were private contracts between major players on the Wall Street on particular bets. Born cited a high likelihood of fraud taking place. But based on Greenspan he believed that the market would identify the frauds and corrects itself. These sentiments were in line with his core principles of a free market. The assumptions of a free market commonly no government intervention, free flow of information of information, the actions of an individual have no effect on the market and finally, there are no barriers to entry and exit the market. This was the principles that Greenspan stood by up to his retirement but later confessed that the philosophy had major drawbacks. The hedge fund long-term capital management was characterized by large banks secretly investing large amounts of money on the over the counter derivatives at the Wall Street. The hedge fund was additionally invested by a majority of the in the know investors. These dealings were shrouded in secrecy and the government didn’t have any clue about them. They were as a result of the wall stock brokers setting complex mathematical formula that guaranteed the investors of a significant return on their investment. Finally, there was a meltdown as the Wall Street brokers were unable to handle the situation causing a collapse.

FedEx The Success Story Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

FedEx The Success Story - Essay Example This paper looks at these aspects in detail. The enduring success of FedEx has been in part due to the wisdom, knowledge and information imparted towards the employees in helping them gain a better understanding and applying a number of company principles and policies. The philosophy at FedEx has always been People, Service, Profit. People always come first. A deep understanding of what makes people tick, their inner psychology, motivations, desires and aspirations are key factors that the company strives to take into account when dealing with them. As people everywhere are varied, FedEx accepts their diversity and understands that each individual must be handled differently. The company attempts to find a common ground between itself and the customer where both mutually agree on terms and conditions and are satisfied with the business goals. The second point is service. To maintain long term customer relationship, the company makes sure that its own philosophy, work practices are sound and credible. When its own employees and leaders are comfortable with the system and have understood it fully, they are able to serve the customer better. The service side of the business is always scrutinized and made adaptable to a changing economic environment. FedEx maintains quality control at every level from the handlers to the customer service representatives. The third aspect is profit. Without the first two factors in place and functioning properly, profits may be affected. FedEx uses cutting edge technology and analytical systems to ensure that the company is on the right course. Variations in profit margins are evaluated and set against the backdrop of the bigger competitive economic picture and also internal company practices. If need be, a revision of policies are made. The company might also look into the process of innovation and how it can be improved upon. The underlying pattern in FedEx is constant change and adaptation. FedEx recognizes the changing world and business environment and in order to be a part of the evolution process, they have continually evaluated business models and strategies. The company regularly studies market trends and the competition and attempts to stay one step ahead. As their customer base expands and a diverse range of people have varied number of requirements, customer satisfaction is very important and FedEx has addressed the expectations and desires of its customers. FedEx has also recognized that the present global economy is extremely competitive and preserving a status quo would not suffice. In order to grow, the company strives to change constantly. This means being flexible in organizational procedures. Rather than sticking rigidly to company policies, an open more adaptable policy towards change has taken place at FedEx. FedEx's growth depends on successfully meeting and anticipating varying customer's requirements in a competitively differentiated manner. Competitive differentiation works on planning and providing customer value offers that are of better-quality that those offered by the competition and which are considered to be a better investment. In designing customer value propositions, each department and employee is directly or indirectly participates in the development. As people are involved in the innovation process, FedEx employees are expected to believe that

Evilness beyond comprehension Essay Example for Free

Evilness beyond comprehension Essay This story depicts how a certain innocent person was condemned and was sentenced to death for a crime he did but with an innocent motive. The story goes on around a certain person’s life in a ship where he was said to be one of the crew. Billy as a character depicted in the story is a person whose innocence can not be changed into hatred for other people. Though his surrounding is full of people with evil motives, he is still into trusting them with full innocence. Evilness beyond comprehension Such evilness is beyond the main character’s understanding, and his being weak causes him to lose his sense of defending himself. With this state of the character’s condition, some people around him tend to abuse his weakness, such as the character which is depicted as an evil person in the story who’s Claggart. Claggart as an evil influence in the story caused Billy to use a brutal way to express Billy’s madness because he is speechless; Billy was then susceptible in making an attack due to the evil atmosphere on the ship. By Billy’s innocence, he was dragged to the wilderness of violence. It is beyond his comprehention that it is indeed the evil’s intention to ruin the goodness in his heart. Indeed the evilness had him offguard that had caused him to be condemned. The writer depicted his main character’s innocence as something to be really loved and liked by other people but also a personality which is something to be pitied about. Billy depicting Jesus Christ In simple but complex ways, the main character was said to be somehow depicting Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for the betterment of everyone. He was, as Jesus was condemned to death though they are both innocent. It is showed in the story that the main character’s innocence is really a great lost of its essence in the humankind; though it is said to be wrong depicting Christ’s figure in an ordinary man such as Billy who is said to be an unsound person. The distinction between the divine characters of Christ with that of Billy is that; Billy will not intentionally give up his life or sacrifice himself for other people’s good. On the contrary, Christ accepted being condemned to death for people in the world’s salvation. Another way in which the story of Billy could depict the story of Christ is the story when Pontius Pilate tends to wash his hand to show that he is not responsible for Christ condemnation. On the other hand in Billy’s story, Captain Vere pushed through the military view of law and condemned Billy because he was thinking about what his mates would think of him if he will not punish Billy with what they think would suit the latter for his crime. Both of the character who’s Pontius and Vere, are playing innocent for an unjust case. Between innocence and evil, the author depicted Claggart as the evil one, and goodness was depicted by Billy. The character of Billy in the story is paralleled to many of the bibbles characters and some of those are Adam which is said to be the first man who is born innocent in the world and was also presented as having the same figure of Christ. On the contrary, Claggart was depicted as characterized by evil wher he was paralleled to Satan’s characteristics and figures who motivated and/or influenced Billy to do evil. Billy died simply because he could not defend himself from the evilness that’s in this world, he could not understand the role of evil, and mostly he could not do any defense from evil because he don’t understand what is meant by being evil. Conflict after Billy’s death After Billy had been condemned, there had been a lot of conflicts that had happened after his execution; such as the Bellipotent engaging in a ship war where captain Vere died. The continuous spread of Billy’s story which had became a chronicle for the others, and mysteriously there were a continuous condemnation that happened to different ports in the manner that Billy was condemned. Themes There were themes considered in the story such as a certain Conscience Versus Law this was shown when captain Vere had a confusion of how to decide for Billy’s case. Captain Vere as a friend, he had difficulty on deciding what to do with Billy’s case because Billy was a dear friend to him but then Captain Vere’s responsibility as an authority caused him to sentence Billy for condemnation. After that, the captain was chased by the thoughts of Billy and was bothered by his own conscience because he know that he did not consider Billy’s reasons until he died and repeatedly uttered his friend’s name. Another one is a person’s Vulnerability of Innocence; the story was all about the main character’s innocence versus the evilness around him. It is said that innocence versus evilness is different from goodness versus evilness. Billy was a person who is innocent about almost everything which caused his weakness to do evil. He was a person who is morally weak and so naive about evilness because it is shown that evilness is beyond his comprehension. The story showed how Billy’s heart was corrupted and changed into evilness because he was unable to distinguish which is evil when he encountered it. The result is that he let alone violence to come out of him that caused him to kill Claggart unintentionally. Individual Versus Society is also considered as a theme of the story. In the story, the author tried to depict how the society pushed its forces for a certain person to be individually oppressed, that the society limits a certain person of his/her being as an individual. It is shown in the story when Captain Vere encountered difficulty dealing with Billy’s case; he had difficulty in considering what the society wants according to his obligation and what he feels. In deciding for the main characters condemnation, Captain Vere considered his obligation and followed what the law implies; hence he knows and feels that Billy is an innocent person by nature. He then as a leader by profession, pushed through to the jurors about Billy’s execution. It is depicted in the story how society dictates a certain person of how to decide, that their view is more important than that of a persons own view. Considered law The law is made by a constitution for all the people to follow in order to maintain a peacefull world to live in hence a law can still be bend or altered by the people who work on it such as jury and society. They can change law according to their own views and consideration thus it can also be altered through the views of others. One example of a circumstance in the story is when Captain Vere sentenced Billy to death though he knew to himself that Billy is innocent. He decided to condemn billy because hye was afraid of what other people would think if he considered Billy and gave him a simple punishment. The law which Billy’s case was considered was in a military law where the people who are considered as enemies are brutally punished. And that the law was very different from the law in which Billy was supposed to be considered; in a civilian law, where considerations to human were given. There are a lot of strategies and different views when it comes to law, but the best way in viewing law in which it is not considered in Billy’s case was seeking for a principle that would lead them into a just result to both sides. On the contrary, the law which is depicted in the story is really unjust. The loss of correct judgment of the law in the story was shown when Billy was condemned even without hearing his side of the story or considering his motive why he had done such crime. Billy’s justice was also deprived when the ship’s captain did not tell the true story about what had really happened, instead, he pushed the case through until poor Billy was sentenced death. In the context of the story, mercy came in when Billy’s death was given justice. It happened when the ship, Bellipotent, lost from a ship war and captain Vere was wounded and eventually did not survived. In the captain’s last minutes of his life, he was continuously murmuring Billy’s name. This only depicts that â€Å"evil ones who do not give justice are also not given justice in the end†. â€Å"Those who deprive other’s life are also deprived in life in the end†. What the story meant for the readers We can learn a lot of moral values in the story. We can learn in the story that innocence is indeed an admirable character hence it should not cover a person’s knowledge about evilness because it could cause a person to be easily influenced in doing evil. We can also learn from the story that innocence could cause a certain person weakness and vulnerability that could be the main cause for him/her to be deprived by others by his own life. Thesis This story only tends to show the readers how difficult it is to live in this world full of evil forcess thus a person like Billy is innocent about such thing. It depicts how a human would only suffer of his innocence in this kind of world. And that innocence is vulnerable to evilness and deprivation to life. as the character was deprived of his life due to his innocence and lack of comprehention about evilness. Also that the law which is supopsed to give justice; it is the one that deprives people by not considering a certain accused persons statement or side. The kind of law in the story is the one that manipulates a person to view the case in a right manner according to the true essence of justice (Melville, 1924). Works Cited Melville, H. (1924). Billy Budd [Electronic Version] from http://www. sparknotes. com/lit/billybudd/canalysis. html.