Achievement goal theory: ‘An athlete’s motivation should always be to aim to be the best’ Essay

â€Å"Success and failure are not concrete events. They are psychological states consequent on the perception of reaching or not reaching goals† (Maehr & Nicholls, 1980. p. 228). The quality of an athlete’s sporting experience is shaped by the way in which success is defined, and by how capabilities are judged (Duda, 1993). Achievement Goal Theory (AGT) (Nicholls, 1984; 1989) outlines that people are motivated by the desire to fell competent. People can define competence and success in different ways, the main ones being ego and task orientations. Research is consistent in showing the motivational benefits of a task-orientation, either singly or in combination with an ego-orientation. In order to keep athletes involved in sport, success must mean being the best as well as task mastery and personal improvement (Duda, 1993). Drawing from past research, I will construct an essay to support the statement: ‘An athlete’s motivation should always be to aim to be the best’. I will firstly outline important tenants of AGT, in particular ego and task orientations, approach and avoidance goals, motivational climates, and TARGET guidelines. Secondly, I will use this information to provide a brief analysis of the motivational style that a coach of the Varsity rugby league team; Brent, performs, and the effects this style has on a particular 18-year-old athlete; Justin. Finally, I will describe specific theoretically based strategies that can be used by Brent, to adapt a more correct motivational atmosphere for Justin and his team. Coaches play an important role in determining the types of motivational orientations athletes perceive (Ames, 1992). Part 1: Theoretical Understanding. According to AGT (Nicholls, 1984, 1989), in achievement situations the goal of participants is to demonstrate competence or avoid demonstrating incompetence. AGT recognises at least two approaches athletes may adopt to judge their ability within a sporting context. A focus on comparing oneself to others (ego-orientated) or a focus on one’s own effort and improvement (task-orientated) Athletes, who are ego-orientated, perceive ability as limiting the effects of effort on performance (Nicholls, 1989). Here athletes show their high capacity of ability often at the expense of effort. Nicholls (1989) states that ego-orientated individuals judge their ability  relative to others, and try to demonstrate superior ability or outperform others to be satisfied. Those who are highly task-orientated use cues such as levels of effort and task completion to assess their competence, in a self-reflective manner. Here the athlete is satisfied if they perform to a level that reflects how they have mastered a task or made personal improvements (Ames, 1992). Much research points to the advantage of being task-involved when participating in sport and other achievement-related activities (Ames, 1992; Duda, 1993, 2001). Positive outcomes include health, well-being, and social and performance-related factors. When athletes report being task-oriented, they persist longer at sporting tasks, they are more engaged with their trainings, and they use more effective cognitive processing strategies (tennis). In comparison, ego-oriented goals may lead to negative outcomes, such as the tendency to drop out of sport (Duda & Balaguer, 2007). Adaptive cognitive, affective, and behavioral patterns are characteristics of task-orientated athletes as well as for those who are ego-oriented but who have high perceived competence or ability. Maladaptive patters are predicted for ego-oriented individuals who have low perceived ability (Nicholls, 1989). Athletes become predisposed to task and ego orientations because of social factors in their sport (i.e. the coach), and these orientations will subsequently influence what goal preference an athlete will adopt in a specific situation (Duda & Balaguer, 2007). Elliot (1999) & Pintrich (2000) state that task and ego goals are each divided into approach and avoidance goals. In terms of task goals, task-approach oriented athletes are interested in achieving mastery of a task; in contrast, task-avoidance oriented athletes are interested in avoiding misunderstanding the task. In terms of ego goals, ego-approach oriented athletes are interested in demonstrating that they are more competent than other athletes (i.e., have more ability than others); in contrast, performance-avoidance oriented students are interested in avoiding appearing incompetent or stupid. It is important to note that athletes can hold multiple goals simultaneously; thus, it is possible for an athlete to be both task-approach oriented and ego-approach oriented; here, this athlete  truly wants to learn and master the material but is also concerned with appearing more competent than others. The nature of the goal state (levels of task and ego-orientation) that is activated in a specific sport situation will be determined by individual preference (goal orientation) as well as situational cues (motivational climate). According to Roberts (2001) conceptions of competence are determined by both dispositional and situational factors. Research acknowledges that both students’ individual characteristics and contextual influences affect the types of goals that students adopt in various learning environments. Studies indicate that the environments in which athletes learn influence their goal orientations in important ways (Dweck, 1986; Cury, Biddle, Famose, Goudas, & Sarrazin, 1996; Spray, 2000). Whether an athlete is more task- or ego-orientated in sport depends partly on the motivational climate created by coaches. This can also be of two types: a mastery or task-oriented motivational climate, and a competitive or ego-oriented motivational climate (Ames, 1992). In this regard, athletes who have stronger ego-goal orientations are more likely to perceive an ego-oriented sport climate, whereas those with a dominant task-orientation are more likely to perceive a task-oriented motivational climate. The instructional practices that are used in trainings have an impact on the types of goal orientations that athletes adopt (Ntoumanis & Biddle, 1999) In a task-oriented motivational climate, the coach emphasises cooperation, rewards players’ effort, and ensures that everyone feels that they have clear and important roles to play on the team. When mistakes are made, the coach responds with information on how to correct the error. Here, coaches are more likely to produce athletes who are confident, coachable, willing to work hard for commonly agreed upon goals, and who enjoy their sport. In an Ego-orietated motivational climate, the coach emphasises rivalry between players, has a low tolerance for mistakes, and has favourites amongst the players. This environment has been related to athletes having greater performance anxiety and self-doubt and other behaviors which are counterproductive (Duda, & Balaguer, 2007; Ntoumanis & Biddle, 1999). In a task-orientated climate athletes experience greater enjoyment and  self-esteem, and reported less anxiety than in ego-involving climates. Athletes also report greater intrinsic motivation to play their sport when their coaches promote task involvement (Duda, & Balaguer, 2007; Ntoumanis & Biddle, 1999). Another critical area that defines the predominant motivational climate is the type of feedback given to athletes. The task-orientated climate will have responses that emphasize effort, improvement and skill mastery. The ego-involving climate will focus on the win-loss record and the athlete’s ability. In a given context, if a coach talks about and truly focuses on mastery, improvement, and self-comparisons, then athletes are likely to adopt mastery goals, and to perceive a task goal structure during training. In contrast, if a coach constantly talks about skill levels, game scores, and who is doing the best (or the worst), then athletes are likely to adopt performance goals, and perceive a performance goal structure at training. An athlete’s motivation should be to strive to be the best, but it is the perception of what is meant by ‘being the best’ that the athlete must be concerned with. Coaches can play an important role in determining what athletes perceive as being the best It is therefore important to provide the right types of goals, in the right type of motivation climate. Epstein (1989) identified that the task, authority, recognition, grouping, evaluation, and time (TARGET) structures as influential factors that can determine the motivation climate. Epstein (1989) developed a taxonomy as a way of summarising and providing order to the various dimensions. Later, Ames (1992) adopted the TARGET acronym to summarise the structures that foster a mastery motivational climate in achievement situations, and consequently, display positive patterns of behaviours in athletes. The Task (T) dimension outlines the design of the learning activities. The Authority (A) dimension refers to the type and frequency of participation in the decision-making process. The dimension of Recognition (R) concerns the use of rewards to recognise progress and achievement. The Grouping (G) dimension regards the way in which athletes are divided into groups. The  Evaluation (E) dimension involves the methods, standards, and criteria used to assess learning. The Time (T) dimension concerns the appropriateness of the time demands, the pace of instruction, and the time designated to complete tasks. This model can be used to identify and design a learning environment to help develop athletes perceived competence, enjoyment and intentions to participate. Conversely, Ego-orientated climates are created when athletes are not given varied tasks, the coach maintains authority, athletes are recoginised for their ability relative to others, homogeneous ability groups are used, evaluation is based on normative practices, and time for task’s completion is inflexible (Duda & Balaguer, 2007). The mastery TARGET structures of task, grouping, and time have shown to have the greatest positive effect on peoples activity levels (Bowler, 2009). I will now use the discussed theoretical assumptions to provide a brief analysis of the motivational style that a coach Brent employs, and the effects this style has on an athlete; Justin. Part 2: Case Study; a Brief Analysis. Justin, an athlete in Brent’s team, is not enjoying league as much as he has in the past. Justin believes it is the coaching style and team environment, which has caused this change in motivation. Brent, a rookie coach, feels that his experience he has had as a player and from having been coached himself by a number of different coaches, will lead him to be a successful coach. It is evident from the case study and from the literature that Brent’s motivational style is negatively affecting Justin’s motivation, to the point that he seems certain to drop out of the sport completely. It would advantage Brent to be more task-orientated during his coaching; he currently employs an ego-orientated motivational style. His ego-orientated motivational climate can be categorised into the six dimensions of the TARGET taxonomy (Epstein, 1989). As a dimension of (T) Task: Brent does not emphasise individual challenge or active involvement during his fitness training and he dominates conversations by explaining what he thought went wrong. As a dimension of (A) Authority: Brent does not ask for input from the team regarding training drills and he does not give the players much of a chance to give their opinions. As a dimension of (R) Recognition: Athletes are recognised for their ability relative to others during fitness sessions rather than on effort as a perceived indicator of achievement. As a dimension of Grouping (G): homogeneous groups are evident when comparing new and existing team members; there is a sense of an ‘us and them’ atmosphere. As a dimension of Evaluation (E): the coach bases evaluation on fitness levels rather than effort, with no tools to develop the progression towards individual goals. and finally as a dimension of Time (T): the time the team has for task completion is inflexible, he expects quick progression of skills and fitness, as well as this, his sessions are all planned out in advance not allowing appropriate time demands. These ego-orientated practices that Brent employs, has created a motivational climate that is of a highly ego-orientated nature. This will influence the types of goal orientations that Justin adopts. The nature of the goal state will be determined by individual preference as well as the motivational climate. Justin’s motivational preference seems also to be highly ego-orientated. There is a high chance that this is a function of Brent’s ego-orientated instructional practices (motivational climate). Justin believes that in order to be successful he has to focus comparing himself with others either during fitness training or in higher recognition situations (i.e. aiming to make national representative squads). Justin displays performance anxiety and self-doubt. He does not feel like he has been given the opportunity to improve his league skills, and is worried about losing his place on the NZ rep team. Rather than striving for task-orientated goals, he is displaying an ego-goal orientation. Another effect of having an ego-goal orientation in sport is that Justin may perceive his ability by limiting the effects of effort during trainings. This lack of effort may be the reason for his lack of game time. Justin also displays an ego-avoidance orientation; here Justin is interested in avoiding appearing incompetent. He feels the only reason he is still playing is that he would feel guilty if he did not see the season through to the end. It is still early on in the season and although things do not seem to be going well for Justin, there is still hope yet. I will know describe specific strategies that i would encourage Brent to use to structure a more  adaptive ‘motivational’ sport environment for Justin Part 2: Case Study; Strategies for a more adaptive ‘motivational’ sport environment. I believe Brent needs to reflect of the current coaching style and make changes to certain aspects, and if possible up-skill (i.e. a coaching course). In order to structure a more adaptive ‘motivational’ sport environment for Justin and his team I would encourage Brent to design strategies to enhance task-involvement. Brent could employ the TARGET (Epstein, 1989) conceptualization, which represents the six structures of the achievement context to influence his athlete’s motivation. These situational structures are assumed to be interdependent; one dimension can have direct implications on another dimension within the structure. I will now explain how Brent can structure a more adaptive motivational climate using the principals of the TARGET guidelines. As a dimension of task, Brent could provide the athletes with tools to help set self-referenced process and performance goals. For example, Brent may want to record the athletes initial and post fitness tests scores (i.e. Time it takes to run 3km) to provide athletes with individual times. Here the demand of the task is to emphasise individual challenge. This also recognises that individual ability can be a perceived indicator of achievement. As a dimension of authority, Brent could encourage input from his team by directing questions to athletes during review sessions (e.g. â€Å"how do you think we could improve on our performance from Saturday’s game†) or getting individual athletes to call out the tackle count for a set of six tackles during defensive drills. This would be a great opportunity to nominate athletes like Justin, because it provides active involvement, while also building confidence and leadership skills. As a dimension of recognition, Brent could approach each player during the training session to talk through individual strategies, progress, and evaluation. This gives individual feedback that can advantage athletes like Justin. As a dimension of grouping, Brent could use differing grouping arrangements. For example arranging groups by which state of origin team they support, what province they are from, or which position they play (i.e. a forward). By sub-dividing groups under similar characteristics can support cooperative grouping  arrangements. As a dimension of evaluation, Brent could encourage athletes to bring a notebook to training as a way of recording their own personal improvements. Brent should also acknowledge mastery of tasks and congratulate good effort rather than comparing athletes’ skill levels against each other. As a dimension of timing, Brent needs to recognise that athlete’s progress through skills and fitness at different levels, a good coach must cater for all athletes by providing optimal timing constraints. This may involve being open to training drills progressing longer or shorter than what he had planned for. By employing Epstein (1989) conceptualization of the TARGET guidelines to foster a task-involving motivational climate, athletes will experience greater confidence, enjoyment and self-esteem. Athletes will also be more intrinsically motivation to play league. An athlete’s motivation should always be to aim to be the best. It important that Brent can change his own perception of what he defines as the best from his current ego-involved definition to a more task-orientated definition. Creating this type of climate will hopefully help develop his own athletes’ perceptions of competence and enhance their sporting experience. In conclusion, this essay has outlined some specific theoretical assumptions of the achievement goal theory, and how these can be used to understand athletes’ behavioral patterns in sport. The coach-created motivational climate can play an important role in influencing athletes’ interpretation of their involvement in sport. Whether this influence is more positive or negative appears to depend on the degree to which the motivational atmosphere the coach establishes is more or less task-involving and ego-involving. I was able to assess Brent’s current motivational style using the TARGET taxonomy and its effects this style has on a athlete; Justin. Finally, I was also able to point out specific strategies of the TARGET taxonomy to help Brent create a more task-orientated motivational coaching climate. In doing so I have been able to support the statement that ‘an athlete’s motivation should always be to aim to be the best’, by acknowledging that ‘best’ can be defined from task-orientated goals. References Ames, C. (1992). Achievement goals and the classroom motivational climate. In J. L. Meece & D. H. Schunck (Eds.). Student perceptions in the classroom (pp. 327-348). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Bowler, M. 2009. The influence of the TARGET motivational climate structures on pupil physical activity levels during year 9 athletics lessons. Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Manchester, 2-5 September, 2009. Cury, F., Biddle, S., Famose, J., Goudas, M., Sarrazin, P. & Durand, M. (1996). Personal and situational factors influencing intrinsic motivatiuon of adolescent girls in school physical education: A structural modeling analysis, Educational Psychology, 16: 305-315. Duda, J. L. (1993) Goals: A social cognitive approach to the study of achievement motivation in sport. In R. N. Singer,M.Murphey and L. K. Tennant (eds.), Handbook of Research on Sport Psychology, pp. 421–436, New York: Macmillan. Duda, J. L. (2001). Achievement goal research in sport: Pushing the boundaries and clarifying some misunderstandings. In G. C. Roberts (Ed.), Advances in motivation in sport and exercise (pp. 129-182). Leeds: Human Kinetics. Duda, J. L., & Balaguer, I. (2007). The coach-created motivational climate. In S. Jowett & D. Lavalee (Eds.), Social psychology of sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Dweck, C.M. (2000). Predicting participation in non-compulsory physical education: Do goal perspectives matter?. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 90: 1201-1215. Elliot, A. J. (1999). Approach and avoidance motivation and achievement goals. Educational Psychologist, 34, 169-189. Epstein, J. (1989). Family structures and student motivation: A developmental perspective. In C. Ames & R. Ames (Eds.). Research on motivation in Education, Vol. 3. New York, Academic Press. Maehr, M. L. and Nicholls, J. G. (1980) ‘Culture and achievement motivation: A second look’. In N.Warren (ed.), Studies in Cross-cultural Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 221–267, New York: Academic Press. Nicholls, J. G. (1989). The competitive ethos and democratic education. London: Harvard University Press. Nicholls, J. G. (1984). Achievement motivation: Conceptions of ability, subjective experience, task choice, and performance. Psychological Review, 97, 328-346. Ntoumanis, N., & Biddle, S. J. H. (1999). A review of motivational climate in physical activity. Journal of Sports Sciences, 17(8), 643-665. Pintrich, P. R. (2000). The role of goal orientation in self-regulated learning. In M.  Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, and Zeidner, M. (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 451–502). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Roberts, G. C. (2001). Understanding the dynamics of motivation in physical activity: the influence of achievement goals on motivational process. In G. C. Roberts (Ed.), Advances in motivation in sport and exercise (pp. 1-50). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Spray, C.M. (2000). Predicting participation in non-compulsory physical education: Do goal perspectives matter? Perceptual and Motor Skills, 90: 1207-1215.

Chapter 34 Priori Incantatem

Wormtail approached Harry, who scrambled to find his feet, to support his own weight before the ropes were untied. Wormtail raised his new silver hand, pulled out the wad of material gagging Harry, and then, with one swipe, cut through the bonds tying Harry to the gravestone. There was a split second, perhaps, when Harry might have considered running for it, but his injured leg shook under him as he stood on the overgrown grave, as the Death Eaters closed ranks, forming a tighter circle around him and Voldemort, so that the gaps where the missing Death Eaters should have stood were filled. Wormtail walked out of the circle to the place where Cedric's body lay and returned with Harry's wand, which he thrust roughly into Harry's hand without looking at him. Then Wormtail resumed his place in the circle of watching Death Eaters. â€Å"You have been taught how to duel. Harry Potter?† said Voldemort softly, his red eyes glinting through the darkness. At these words Harry remembered, as though from a former life, the dueling club at Hogwarts he had attended briefly two years ago†¦.All he had learned there was the Disarming Spell, â€Å"Expelliarmus†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦and what use would it be to deprive Voldemort of his wand, even if he could, when he was surrounded by Death Eaters, outnumbered by at least thirty to one? He had never learned anything that could possibly fit him for this. He knew he was facing the thing against which Moody had always warned†¦the unblockable Avada Kedavra curse – and Voldemort was right – his mother was not here to die for him this time†¦.He was quite unprotected†¦. â€Å"We bow to each other. Harry,† said Voldemort, bending a little, but keeping his snakelike face upturned to Harry. â€Å"Come, the niceties must be observed†¦.Dumbledore would like you to show manners†¦.Bow to death, Harry†¦.† The Death Eaters were laughing again. Voldemort's lipless mouth was smiling. Harry did not bow. He was not going to let Voldemort play with him before killing him†¦he was not going to give him that satisfaction†¦. â€Å"I said, bow,† Voldemort said, raising his wand – and Harry felt his spine curve as though a huge, invisible hand were bending him ruthlessly forward, and the Death Eaters laughed harder than ever. â€Å"Very good,† said Voldemort softly, and as he raised his wand the pressure bearing down upon Harry lifted too. â€Å"And now you face me, like a man†¦straight-backed and proud, the way your father died†¦. â€Å"And now – we duel.† Voldemort raised his wand, and before Harry could do anything to defend himself, before he could even move, he had been hit again by the Cruciatus Curse. The pain was so intense, so all-consuming, that he no longer knew where he was†¦.White-hot knives were piercing every inch of his skin, his head was surely going to burst with pain, he was screaming more loudly than he'd ever screamed in his life – And then it stopped. Harry rolled over and scrambled to his feet; he was shaking as uncontrollably as Wormtail had done when his hand had been cut off; he staggered sideways into the wall of watching Death Eaters, and they pushed him away, back toward Voldemort. â€Å"A little break,† said Voldemort, the slit-like nostrils dilating with excitement, â€Å"a little pause†¦That hurt, didn't it. Harry? You don't want me to do that again, do you?† Harry didn't answer. He was going to die like Cedric, those pitiless red eyes were telling him so†¦he was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it†¦but he wasn't going to play along. He wasn't going to obey Voldemort†¦he wasn't going to beg†¦. â€Å"I asked you whether you want me to do that again,† said Voldemort softly. â€Å"Answer me! Imperio!† And Harry felt, for the third time in his life, the sensation that his mind had been wiped of all thought†¦.Ah, it was bliss, not to think, it was as though he were floating, dreaming†¦just answer no†¦say no†¦just answer no†¦. I will not, said a stronger voice, in the back of his head, I won't answer†¦. Just answer no†¦. I won't do it, I won't say it†¦. Just answer no†¦. â€Å"I WON'T!† And these words burst from Harry's mouth; they echoed through the graveyard, and the dream state was lifted as suddenly as though cold water had been thrown over him – back rushed the aches that the Cruciatus Curse had left all over his body – back rushed the realization of where he was, and what he was facing†¦. â€Å"You won't?† said Voldemort quietly, and the Death Eaters were not laughing now. â€Å"You won't say no? Harry, obedience is a virtue I need to teach you before you die†¦.Perhaps another little dose of pain?† Voldemort raised his wand, but this time Harry was ready; with the reflexes born of his Quidditch training, he flung himself sideways onto the ground; he rolled behind the marble headstone of Voldemort's father, and he heard it crack as the curse missed him. â€Å"We are not playing hide-and-seek, Harry,† said Voldemort's soft, cold voice, drawing nearer, as the Death Eaters laughed. â€Å"You cannot hide from me. Does this mean you are tired of our duel? Does this mean that you would prefer me to finish it now, Harry? Come out, Harry†¦come out and play, then†¦it will be quick†¦it might even be painless†¦I would not know†¦I have never died†¦.† Harry crouched behind the headstone and knew the end had come. There was no hope†¦no help to be had. And as he heard Voldemort draw nearer still, he knew one thing only, and it was beyond fear or reason: He was not going to die crouching here like a child playing hide-and-seek; he was not going to die kneeling at Voldemort's feet†¦he was going to die upright like his father, and he was going to die trying to defend himself, even if no defense was possible†¦. Before Voldemort could stick his snakelike face around the headstone. Harry stood up†¦he gripped his wand tightly in his hand, thrust it out in front of him, and threw himself around the headstone, facing Voldemort. Voldemort was ready. As Harry shouted, â€Å"Expelliarmus!† Voldemort cried, â€Å"Avada Kedavra!† A jet of green light issued from Voldemort's wand just as a jet of red light blasted from Harry's – they met in midair – and suddenly Harry's wand was vibrating as though an electric charge were surging through it; his hand seized up around it; he couldn't have released it if he'd wanted to – and a narrow beam of light connected the two wands, neither red nor green, but bright, deep gold. Harry, following the beam with his astonished gaze, saw that Voldemort's long white fingers too were gripping a wand that was shaking and vibrating. And then – nothing could have prepared Harry for this – he felt his feet lift from the ground. He and Voldemort were both being raised into the air, their wands still connected by that thread of shimmering golden light. They glided away from the tombstone of Voldemort's father and then came to rest on a patch of ground that was clear and free of graves†¦.The Death Eaters were shouting; they were asking Voldemort for instructions; they were closing in, reforming the circle around Harry and Voldemort, the snake slithering at their heels, some of them drawing their wands – The golden thread connecting Harry and Voldemort splintered; though the wands remained connected, a thousand more beams arced high over Harry and Voldemort, crisscrossing all around them, until they were enclosed in a golden, dome-shaped web, a cage of light, beyond which the Death Eaters circled like jackals, their cries strangely muffled now†¦. â€Å"Do nothing!† Voldemort shrieked to the Death Eaters, and Harry saw his red eyes wide with astonishment at what was happening, saw him fighting to break the thread of light still connecting his wand with Harry's; Harry held onto his wand more tightly, with both hands, and the golden thread remained unbroken. â€Å"Do nothing unless I command you!† Voldemort shouted to the Death Eaters. And then an unearthly and beautiful sound filled the air†¦.It was coming from every thread of the light-spun web vibrating around Harry and Voldemort. It was a sound Harry recognized, though he had heard it only once before in his life: phoenix song. It was the sound of hope to Harry†¦the most beautiful and welcome thing he had ever heard in his life†¦.He felt as though the song were inside him instead of just around him†¦.It was the sound he connected with Dumbledore, and it was almost as though a friend were speaking in his ear†¦. Don't break the connection. I know. Harry told the music, I know I mustn't†¦but no sooner had he thought it, than the thing became much harder to do. His wand began to vibrate more powerfully than ever†¦and now the beam between him and Voldemort changed too†¦it was as though large beads of light were sliding up and down the thread connecting the wands – Harry felt his wand give a shudder under his hand as the light beads began to slide slowly and steadily his way†¦.The direction of the beams movement was now toward him, from Voldemort, and he felt his wand shudder angrily†¦. As the closest bead of light moved nearer to Harry's wand tip, the wood beneath his fingers grew so hot he feared it would burst into flame. The closer that bead moved, the harder Harry's wand vibrated; he was sure his wand would not survive contact with it; it felt as though it was about to shatter under his fingers – He concentrated every last particle of his mind upon forcing the bead back toward Voldemort, his ears full of phoenix song, his eyes furious, fixed†¦and slowly, very slowly, the beads quivered to a halt, and then, just as slowly, they began to move the other way†¦and it was Voldemort's wand that was vibrating extra-hard now†¦Voldemort who looked astonished, and almost fearful†¦. One of the beads of light was quivering, inches from the tip of Voldemort's wand. Harry didn't understand why he was doing it, didn't know what it might achieve†¦but he now concentrated as he had never done in his life on forcing that bead of light right back into Voldemort's wand†¦and slowly†¦very slowly†¦it moved along the golden thread†¦it trembled for a moment†¦and then it connected†¦. At once, Voldemort's wand began to emit echoing screams of pain†¦then – Voldemort's red eyes widened with shock – a dense, smoky hand flew out of the tip of it and vanished†¦the ghost of the hand he had made Wormtail†¦more shouts of pain†¦and then something much larger began to blossom from Voldemort's wand tip, a great, grayish something, that looked as though it were made of the solidest, densest smoke†¦.It was a head†¦now a chest and arms†¦the torso of Cedric Diggory. If ever Harry might have released his wand from shock, it would have been then, but instinct kept him clutching his wand tightly, so that the thread of golden light remained unbroken, even though the thick gray ghost of Cedric Diggory (was it a ghost? it looked so solid) emerged in its entirety from the end of Voldemort's wand, as though it were squeezing itself out of a very narrow tunnel†¦and this shade of Cedric stood up, and looked up and down the golden thread of light, and spoke. â€Å"Hold on. Harry,† it said. Its voice was distant and echoing. Harry looked at Voldemort†¦his wide red eyes were still shocked†¦he had no more expected this than Harry had†¦and, very dimly. Harry heard the frightened yells of the Death Eaters, prowling around the edges of the golden dome. More screams of pain from the wand†¦and then something else emerged from its tip†¦the dense shadow of a second head, quickly followed by arms and torso†¦an old man Harry had seen only in a dream was now pushing himself out of the end of the wand just as Cedric had done†¦and his ghost, or his shadow, or whatever it was, fell next to Cedric's, and surveyed Harry and Voldemort, and the golden web, and the connected wands, with mild surprise, leaning on his walking stick†¦. â€Å"He was a real wizard, then?† the old man said, his eyes on Voldemort. â€Å"Killed me, that one did†¦.You fight him, boy†¦.† But already, yet another head was emerging†¦and this head, gray as a smoky statue, was a woman's†¦.Harry, both arms shaking now as he fought to keep his wand still, saw her drop to the ground and straighten up like the others, staring†¦. The shadow of Bertha Jorkins surveyed the battle before her with wide eyes. â€Å"Don't let go, now!† she cried, and her voice echoed like Cedric's as though from very far away. â€Å"Don't let him get you, Harry – don't let go!† She and the other two shadowy figures began to pace around the inner walls of the golden web, while the Death Eaters flitted around the outside of it†¦and Voldemort's dead victims whispered as they circled the duelers, whispered words of encouragement to Harry, and hissed words Harry couldn't hear to Voldemort. And now another head was emerging from the tip of Voldemort's wand†¦and Harry knew when he saw it who it would be†¦he knew, as though he had expected it from the moment when Cedric had appeared from the wand†¦knew, because the man appearing was the one he'd thought of more than any other tonight†¦. The smoky shadow of a tall man with untidy hair fell to the ground as Bertha had done, straightened up, and looked at him†¦and Harry, his arms shaking madly now, looked back into the ghostly face of his father. â€Å"Your mother's coming†¦Ã¢â‚¬  he said quietly. â€Å"She wants to see you†¦it will be all right†¦hold on†¦.† And she came†¦first her head, then her body†¦a young woman with long hair, the smoky, shadowy form of Lily Potter blossomed from the end of Voldemort's wand, fell to the ground, and straightened like her husband. She walked close to Harry, looking down at him, and she spoke in the same distant, echoing voice as the others, but quietly, so that Voldemort, his face now livid with fear as his victims prowled around him, could not hear†¦. â€Å"When the connection is broken, we will linger for only moments†¦but we will give you time†¦you must get to the Portkey, it will return you to Hogwarts†¦do you understand, Harry?† â€Å"Yes,† Harry gasped, fighting now to keep a hold on his wand, which was slipping and sliding beneath his fingers. â€Å"Harry†¦Ã¢â‚¬  whispered the figure of Cedric, â€Å"take my body back, will you? Take my body back to my parents,†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"I will,† said Harry, his face screwed up with the effort of holding the wand. â€Å"Do it now,† whispered his father's voice, â€Å"be ready to run†¦do it now†¦.† â€Å"NOW!† Harry yelled; he didn't think he could have held on for another moment anyway – he pulled his wand upward with an almighty wrench, and the golden thread broke; the cage of light vanished, the phoenix song died – but the shadowy figures of Voldemort's victims did not disappear – they were closing in upon Voldemort, shielding Harry from his gaze – And Harry ran as he had never run in his life, knocking two stunned Death Eaters aside as he passed; he zigzagged behind headstones, feeling their curses following him, hearing them hit the headstones – he was dodging curses and graves, pelting toward Cedric's body, no longer aware of the pain in his leg, his whole being concentrated on what he had to do – â€Å"Stun him!† he heard Voldemort scream. Ten feet from Cedric, Harry dived behind a marble angel to avoid the jets of red light and saw the tip of its wing shatter as the spells hit it. Gripping his wand more tightly, he dashed out from behind the angel – â€Å"Impedimenta!† he bellowed, pointing his wand wildly over his shoulder at the Death Eaters running at him. From a muffled yell, he thought he had stopped at least one of them, but there was no time to stop and look; he jumped over the cup and dived as he heard more wand blasts behind him; more jets of light flew over his head as he fell, stretching out his hand to grab Cedric's arm†¦ â€Å"Stand aside! I will kill him! He is mine!† shrieked Voldemort. Harry's hand had closed on Cedric's wrist; one tombstone stood between him and Voldemort, but Cedric was too heavy to carry, and the cup was out of reach – Voldemort's red eyes flamed in the darkness. Harry saw his mouth curl into a smile, saw him raise his wand. â€Å"Accio!† Harry yelled, pointing his wand at the Triwizard Cup. It flew into the air and soared toward him. Harry caught it by the handle – He heard Voldemort's scream of fury at the same moment that he felt the jerk behind his navel that meant the Portkey had worked – it was speeding him away in a whirl of wind and color, and Cedric along with him†¦.They were going back.

Public Policy & Globalization and Outsourcing Essay

Public Policy & Globalization and Outsourcing - Essay Example The various steps are problem identification, policy formulation, policy adoption, policy implementation and policy evaluation (This Nation, n.d.). The problems that lead to the formulation of public policy are generally identified by spotting the causes and the factors contributing to the problem. This is the first step involved in the process of formulating public policy. This stage looks after various aspects of the problem. It identifies the degree of awareness among the commoners about the problem. This step also considers the various alternatives to reach to the solution of the problem in question (RCIP, 2002) A public policy may be adopted by certain group of people. These groups are the government players such as the courts, the executive branch and the legislative branch. There are various private players also like the citizens of the country and the interest groups (Pearson Education, 2010). The public policies are adopted for the welfare purpose of the citizens. There are various levels where the public policies enact differently. For example, at federal level such policies are levied to control the business units and the industries in a country. Moreover, for the protection of citizens staying in the country and abroad both the public policies are at times enacted distinctly. It also provides an aid to the central government as well as the state governments and the poor people by raising funds through various programs. These kinds of activities are covered by the public policies. They mainly aim at realizing the social goals (Pearson Education, 2010). The American President Barack Obama takes on bringing a change in the situation of benefitting significantly from the outsourcing Indian IT companies, has brought up a new policy. The policy developed has brought into existence a new tax code. According to this new tax code the companies that create employments in

Questions-600-6 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Questions-600-6 - Essay Example Also, both standards differ on the criteria used in derecognizing receivables in that US standard uses loss of control while the international standard combines loss of control and risk and rewards criteria’s. Recovery losses on prior impairments may be recorded by Walton under iGAAP (Barden et al, 2009). On the other hand, under US GAAP, impairment reversals are not allowed. However, the loan balance after impairment is used as the new basis for the loan. Major differences occur in the methods of valuing inventories. US GAAP allows use of LIFO (last in, First out) inventory valuation method while the international standard does not permit LIFO (Barden et al, 2009). Also, US GAAP allows the costs of spoilage and idle capacity in inventory while iGAAP does not. Lastly, iGAAP allows reversal of write downs, if any, in inventories while UA GAAP does not. 10% profit and loss test- The absolute value of the segments reportable profit loss is 10% or more of the greater of the overall reported profit of all segments reporting profits, or the absolute value of the combined reported losses of all segments reporting losses. To examine whether the reported segments are enough we will test the operating segment revenue without the intersegment sales. The threshold here is 75%. Therefore enough segments are reportable segment revenues ≠¥ 75% consolidated revenues. b) Products costs should be matched with its associated product and revenues just as it is the case of annual reporting (Barden et al, 2009). Period costs are charged to earnings when incurred among interim periods. c) Income tax in interim financial statements should be based on the effective tax rate for the entire year for ordinary earnings (Barden et al, 2009). The effective tax rate combines states and federal income tax rates such as capital gains, foreign tax rates

Insure your life Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Insure your life - Essay Example In this paper, importance of education will be discussed by comparing the lifestyle of two guys one of whom studies and the other runs away from studies. Two guys grew up together in the same neighborhood. One of them had a fight in school and he went to jail because of it. He completed studying his middle school in the jail. After two years, he came out of the jail. He tried to continue his high school but was not given admission because of his certificate from the jail. He got a job as a car cleaner for a while. Later, he got a better job as a driver. He worked hard and was improving. Now he has contract as a Director in Government’s Relations department in one of the biggest contract companies and is getting a very good salary. He got married and had children, but the children feel guilty because their father lacks good skills. Now his life is in risk since he has no certificate and the contract will expire one day. The other guy finished his high school in Saudi Arabia and went to the United States to complete his university. He had a hard time at the beginning because of the new culture. He faced troubles like Ashley Wagner who was also fearing because of studying in unfamiliar school (Wagner 317). He also had to learn a new language. He spent his time at the library and asked other students for help if he did not understand anything. He studied hard and got good grades in school. He went back to Saudi Arabia with full happiness. He made his family proud of him. He wasn’t happy that he left his friends in the United States. He got a job for the Saudi government with special offers like free house, car, gas, health insurance, best salary. He got married to a beautiful woman and got kids. Every vacation, he goes back to the U.S to show his kids his university and tells them that he will send them to study there so that they become like him. He has the best job. He is working. In the start, the first guy ran away from studies and spent time play ing with friends and wasting time in video games but the second guy studied hard and used all his time in studies. The way they spent time before is now affecting their lifestyles. â€Å"Years from now, when all the junk [first guy] got is broken and long forgotten, [second guy will] still have your stars† (Walls 41). The difference between them is that who has degree has comfortable lifestyle but the other one is nervous, stressed and has put himself and his family in the risk. In my personal opinion, the second guy bought insurance for his complete life by working hard in his childhood. He not only kept his parents, teachers, brothers and sisters happy when he was little, he is also keeping his wife, sons and daughters happy now. All the time, he kept people happy by studying but the first guy always teased his parents. His parents did not like him because he wasted time and went to jail. Then, he was not given admission because of his jail certificate. This was big failure and very embarrassing. After that, he was looking for jobs and everybody was saying no to him. Now he has a job but the contract will expire. What will he do after that? Maybe he will ask his parents for money again like a child. After comparing the life of both guys, I conclude that to live a happy good life always, you have to work hard, get a degree and do the job. It is good to go outside your country to study because of good university. After studying, one can get a very good job, get married and live a very good life

Heart of Darkness Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Heart of Darkness - Essay Example In Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, the concept of imperialism and the effects it has on all who are involved with it are fully explored. It is important to understand this in order to appreciate the closing dialogue of the story, when Marlowe discusses Kurtz’s death with Kurtz’s once Intended. Looking at this final dialogue with this tortured woman reveals a great deal of information about the story itself, serving to help characterize not only the speaker, Marlow, but the man spoken of as well. Although the woman is only an incidental character in the novel, her words further help to bring depth to both of these characters that might not have been understood previously as the two men are revealed through her relationship to them. Through various stylistic mechanisms, this dialogue also serves to explain the significance of Marlow’s journey into Africa and presents the reader with a great deal of helpful hints as to how to interpret the story just read. Even with just a basic understanding of the plot of the story just told, this small two-page interaction between Marlow and Kurtz’s Intended brings the story into sharp focus, piercingly defining the character of Marlow himself while also shedding light on the true nature of Kurtz through the use of various stylistic tools and the employment of dramatic irony when set against the backdrop of the previous pages.

Literacy Narrative Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 3

Literacy Narrative - Essay Example Writing is almost totally based on practice and research. Writing good texts is impossible without concentration, analysis and some basic sense of self-critique. But it is better to stop on each of my discoveries. With my first paper I faced the fact that having a topic and sitting with a laptop and a cup of coffee does not mean writing. It is then I understood that writing requires efforts and concentration. A good writer must create his work word by word stringing the beads. Distraction can cause loss of thought and that is why a person must make efforts to write. Only later much later writing becomes natural and the words start flowing. But I have to say that this principle is applicable to any sphere of human life: on the first stages you only try, fail, develop some skills and only then the process becomes easier and brings pleasure. Analytical thinking is another thing that is a must in writing. The pleasant bonus is that it is extremely useful in real life and writing helps to improve it. When creating my first texts I had to choose and assess arguments, ideas, and concepts from different sides and decide if they are relevant to my work or not. It was very difficult often to consider some theories and concepts that are both right but still are opposite. So it is challenging sometimes to have one stable opinion regarding something. So it is a writer who decides which facts are more important and more persuasive and which are irrelevant with the help of critical analysis. Analytical thinking is the ability to analyze information critically, to define relevant from irrelevant, to structure information in your own words. Several discoveries were not as pleasant as I wanted them to be. Speaking about structure it turned out that it can be another serious ordeal to clear perception of the text. I did not realize it for a long time and paid little attention to making text coherent and logical. Sometimes it was much easier to write everything

Financial Reporting and Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Financial Reporting and Analysis - Essay Example NBA franchise and other intangible assets have a value of $164,703 $164702 and $165 035 in years 1996, 1997, and 1998 respectively. This shows that the method of amortisation reflect the pattern of the usage of assets in generation of income. NBA intangible assets are defined in cost less amortisation that has accumulated. Straight line method spread over the useful estimated lives of the intangible assets which is generally 3-7 years provides the amortisation. b) Discontinued operations are referred to as parts of an entity that has been sold or has been put into held for sale grouping. While evaluating the future success prospects of an organization, an investor who has existed or a potential investor who will invest in future would remove the discontinued operations from consideration because these items have no bearing or effects on the future. The concern of the management is that some operations are discontinued to improve the results of the continuing operations. The operation s and cash flows of the part has been removed from the ongoing operations and the entity will not have a significant involvement in the operations of the discontinued part after the transaction of disposal is made. c) Team costs and expenses increased between 1996 and 1997 from $27,891,264 to $40,941,156. This is because of after discontinuing some operations, it would require a major effort to re-establish the operation and requires significant effort and budget to continue the operations as before. This may need extra marketing, extra staffing. There can be a possibility of increase in the cost of living between the two years which would subsequently raise the amount of team costs and expenses. d) Net income was $420,306 and $12,267,317 in year 1997 and 1998 respectively. This was a hefty rise in the value of income. This is because of higher revenue that was gained. Higher revenue resulted from ticket sales and also from Television and radio broadcasting fees in 2008. By constant winning of games, heavy promotion and advertisement through the television and broadcast and also through reaching a wide fan base by selling many tickets resulted to the higher income. Through maintaining lower expenses such as team costs and expenses, selling and promotion, general and administrative in the year 1998 resulted to an increase in net income. e) Noting that net income was higher in 1996, distributions declared were higher in 1998 than in 1996, with $0.50 per unit. Distributions are that portion of corporate profits that is made by a corporation to its shareholders. Net income can either be re-invested in the business or distributed to stockholders. In 1996, the main source of the net income was from the discontinued operations income. This income was better invested back to the business instead of distributing it to the shareholders. This would help avoid double taxation and be realised as capital gains. Case 10-7 Cash movements and Periodic Income Determination a) I ncome determination is not an exact science. It is the best estimate of determination of what will be the base of individuals’ income on the evidence the individual presents. The base period can be the month for which revenue verification and identification of an individual is a requirement. Month’s income is used for the projection of income. Income averaged and a conversion factor can be used to reach at a quantifiable monthly income. b) Cash flow estimation is the prediction whose main purpose is the anticipation of the disbursements and receipts of cash. It is a fixed amount of time that it covers. Cash sensitivity and aggressiveness determines the penetration

Diabetes and Obesity (Biology) Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Diabetes and Obesity (Biology) - Assignment Example It occurs as a result of absolute insulin deficiency insulin, due to rampant destruction of cells producing insulin, the beta cells of pancreas. There is a strong genetic predisposition to this type of diabetes. On the other hand type-2 diabetes mainly occurs in late adulthood and the main predisposing factors are lifestyle factors and obesity. Lifestyle factors in this regard include sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy eatimg habits like irregular meals, binge eating and fast foods. Even in this type of diabetes genetic factors play a role. The main cause for diabetes type-2 are a combination of decreased secretion of insulin from the beta cells and also increased resistance of the receptors of the insulin in the peripheral tissue (Votey, 2005), which means that whatever insulin is secreted is not effective. The most common form of diabetes is type-2 diabetes and it has significant relevance to obesity. Thus, diet and exercise play a major role in prevention and also treatment of the disease. In this article, the role of obesity in the development of diabetes will be discussed. The main defect in diabetes type-2 is the inability of the tissues to respond to insulin. There is also decreased production of insulin by pancreas. Both these amount to increased glucose levels in the blood, known as hyperglycemia. An important causative factor is obesity. This is more so when obesity is more around the waist, known as central obesity (Votey, 2005). Obesity leads to decreased resistance of tissues to insulin. The fatty acid and triglyceride levels are high and these further interfere with insulin signaling. Another important aspect in obesity which influences the development of diabetes is dysregulation of the secretion of adipokine which is a hormone that causes peripheral resistance to insulin and contributes to the development of diabetes. Thus, obesity has a major role to play in the development of the most common form of diabetes, type-2 diabetes. Figure.1: Causes o f diabetes type-2 (Source: www.diabeticretinopathy.org.uk) Diabetes is a silent killer and can lead to both acute and chronic problems that are potentially fatal or debilitating. Acute problems include, unconsciousness and coma either due to high or low blood glucose levels, confusion, anxiety and tremors. Chronic problems include development of retinal problems, grouped under retinopathy, kidney problems, known as nephropathy and problems related to nerves, known as neuropathy. Other than these long term problems, diabetes also leads to cardiac problems (Votey, 2008). Infact, any organ in the body can be damaged by diabetes. That is why it is very important to prevent diabetes and also keep it in control when contracted by this disease. The main aim of treatment of the disease are prevention of complications (DOH, 2008). This can be done by receiving appropriate medical care a physician-coordinated team which includes physicians, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, and mental health professionals with expertise and a special interest in diabetes. The most important aspect of prevention and also management of diabetes is lifestyle modification. This includes active physical life through exercise and physical activity, cutting down on excessive eating, following health eating habits like balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables and regular meals, cutting down on excessive alcohol indulgence and avoiding stress (DOH, 2008). Regular exercise is essential

Evaluating a Company’s Budget Procedures Essay Example for Free

Evaluating a Company’s Budget Procedures Essay Springfield Corporation operates on a calendar-year basis. It begins the annual budgeting process in late August, when the president establishes targets for the total dollar sales and the net income before taxes for the next year. The sales target is given to the Marketing Department, where the marketing manager formulates a sales budget by product line in both units and dollars. From this budget, sales quotas by product line in units and dollars are established for each of the corporation’s sales districts. The marketing manager also estimates the cost of the marketing activities required to support the target sales volume and prepares a tentative marketing expense budget. The executive vice president uses the sales and profit targets, the sales budget by product line, and the tentative marketing expense budget to determine the dollar amount that can be devoted to manufacturing and corporate expenses, and then forwards to the Production Department the product-line sales budget in units and the total dollar amount that can be devoted to manufacturing. The production manager meets with the factory managers to develop a manufacturing plan that will produce the required units when needed within the cost constraints set by the executive vice president. The budgeting process usually comes to a halt at this point because the Production Department does not consider the financial resources allocated to be adequate. When this standstill occurs, the vice president of finance, the executive vice president, the marketing manager, and the production manager meet to determine the final budgets for each of the areas. This normally results in a modest increase in the total amount available for manufacturing costs, while the marketing expense and corporate office expense budgets are cut. The total sales and net income figures proposed by the president are seldom changed. Although the participants are seldom pleased with the compromise, these budgets are final. Each executive then develops a new detailed budget for the operations in his or her area. None of the areas has achieved its budget in recent years. Sales often run below the target. When budgeted sales are not achieved, each area is expected to cut costs so that the president’s profit target can still be met. However, the profit target is seldom met because costs are not cut enough. In fact, costs often run above the original budget in all functional areas. The president is disturbed that Springfield has not been able to meet the sales and profit targets. He hired a consultant with considerable experience with companies in Springfield’s industry. The consultant reviewed the budgets for the past four years. He concluded that the product-line sales budgets were reasonable and that the cost and expense budgets were adequate for the budgeted sales and production levels.

The History Of The Blues Harmonica Music Essay

The History Of The Blues Harmonica Music Essay The harmonica is a free reed instrument; this means that sound is generated as air flows past a thin strip of material and makes it vibrate producing sound. Air pressure is usually generated by breathing or blowing into a hole, cane or pipe. The air flows over one side of the reed, creating an area of low pressure and causing the reed to flex towards the opposite side. The frame enclosing the reed is built so that when it flexes it blocks the air flow, reducing the low pressure area and allowing the reed to bend back. The harmonica is known to have different names like the Gob Iron, the Tin Sandwich, the Mouth Organ but most commonly the harp, probably because of its mechanism being so similar to the Jews harp, which consists of a single reed mounted on a frame that is plucked to create a note that resonates in the players mouth. The first free reed instruments were invented in the Ancient Far East and were not known in the West until quite recently. Among these ancient instruments there is the khaen of Laos; which consists of various pipes bound together in a set of rows, very much like a pan pipe, or the shÄâ€Å"ng of China and the shÃ…Â  of Japan, which are more of a group of tubes, traditionally inserted into a hollow dried fruit like a gourd, which nowadays is made of steel. (see Illustration x) These traditional instruments have survived to modern times and are currently used in social music and courtship rituals, and the sheng is still one of the instruments used in Chinese opera. The metal free reeds system used in the khaen and sheng is thought to be the ancestor of the reeds used in harmonicas in the present. The shÄâ€Å"ng was brought to Russia at the end of the 18th century. It seems it inspired a lot of devices in the early 19th century, which was the foundation for the development of the more modern free reeds. A Czech organ builder named Franz Kirschnek fashioned a new kind of free reed to be used in organ pipes. He might have just adapted an earlier model of free reed or he actually come up with the idea completely independently. Harmonicas, as we know them today When we talk about the harmonica as we know it today, it is hard to determine exactly who the inventor was. There were no factories at the time, and it was a case of individual artisans who were trying out new ideas. At the time, many people tried to construct instruments with free reeds in Vienna, Paris, London, and America, so its not clear who might have been the first but credit does go to a young German by the name of Friedrich Buschmann, who later on was also known to invent the concertina. He was a clockmaker, and around 1816 he devised an object used as a piano tuner and called it mundaeoline, which is German means mouth harp. What can be determined is that one of the oldest artisans to make harmonicas was Christian Messner. Around the late 1820s he got one of these little harmonicas from Vienna, thought it was an interesting instrument, repaired it and awoke an interest in his colleagues, who asked him to make them one too. He saw it could become a lucrative business and became the first harmonica maker in South-West Germany. At this point it was only possible to blow into harmonicas; it was later, around 1847 when Johannes Richter added a secondary draw reed plate under the blow plate. From 1840, Messners nephew Christian Weiss decided to set up his own small company and began to work on his own designs. In 1857, another young clockmaker named Matthias Hohner bought and managed to copy one of Buschmanns creations. With this and a bit of espionage from the Weiss Harmonica Company he managed to introduce his own design. He gave the instrument a nicer look, ornamenting its cover plates and displaying his brand name. He was a talented salesman and businessman. He improved production and bought out his competitors. By the 1870s, mass production began at the Hohner Company and they started an aggressive overseas marketing campaign; the harmonica now looked very much like the ones we know today. The American civil war made the harmonica very popular in the USA. Hohner had already sent harmonicas over and the soldiers found it easy to play and carry. Within a comparatively short space of time, the Hohner Company was shipping millions of Richter Marine Band harmonicas to America every year. Around the 1900s, half of the harmonicas made in Germany were sold to the United States. In the 1920s, Hohner was making over 50 million harmonicas every year, and distributing them all over the world. From then on they have been the leading harmonica company. Up until then, harmonicas could only be played in a major scale (or natural minor), so by blowing naturally, you could not get any half steps or sharps and flats. For example, a C Major scale would be: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C and that would be the C Diatonic harmonica. It would be like only playing the white keys on a piano. Hohner then decided to develop a chromatic harmonica that could play all 12 notes of a scale, making it a very versatile instrument which is used for music which requires a great variety of notes. It is specially used in jazz, pop and of course classical music. Although it allows the possibility to play any scale, in any key, it cant bend notes very well so the player cant really achieve a bluesy kind of sound as well as on the diatonic (bluesy sound explained further). In the Seydel Factory in Saxony, they still use the original machines that were used 130 years ago to make their harmonicas and although the parts are mass produced they must still be assembled by hand, someone at some point in the line of production must check and fine tune the harmonica manually. Special small plates and files are used to make precise adjustments to the reeds and it is a task that cannot be undertaken mechanically; every reed must be tuned by hand. The harmonica is one of the most portable instruments; it fits in any pocket or bag and is easy to carry around. There are endless stories about how harmonicas saved lives; from stopping bullets by being in the soldiers uniform in the right place at the right time, to other stories of many musicians that made a living out of playing it. It is a close and intimate instrument, and very personal as players wouldnt let other people play their harmonica (especially for hygienic reasons). Companion of isolated men, from prisoners, soldiers and shepherds to astronauts, as it was the first musical instrument in outer space. On a Gemini space flight in December 1965, astronaut Wally Schirra reported an unidentified flying object in a polar orbit, We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, probably in polar orbit. Looks like he might be going to re-enter soon. You just might let me pick up that thing. I see a command module and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit and then played Jingle Bells on a four hole, eight-note Little Lady Hohner harmonica that he had managed to smuggle on board. It is an extraordinary little device, invented as a toy, considered a beautiful instrument and that has now been with us for over 150 years and will still go on for many more. How do harmonicas work? Parts and Mechanisms The harmonica was initially designed to be able to play various notes at the same time in combinations that were harmonic and made intuitive sense because they could automatically support melodious notes. By blowing and sucking the player can easily get the notes sounding right, without the need to work on getting the notes to sound clearly like on the guitar, it is a bit more like playing keys on the piano. Anyone can buy a good functional harmonica without having to spend a lot of money, and that is something you cant say about guitars or keyboards. Although usually out of the box harmonicas need a lot of fine tuning and customizing for advanced and professional playing. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦they are raw materials waiting to be formed in to a real instrument. Then again that also happens with most professional instruments. The basic mechanism is as explained in the previous section about free reed instruments. For the purpose of this analysis from now on when the harmonica is mentioned, it will be referring to the ten hole diatonic, the most commonly used harmonica for folk, rock and of course blues music. The diatonic harmonica consists of two cover plates, two reed plates and a comb (see illustration x). Cover plates cover the reed-plates and are usually made of metal. There are two types of cover plates: traditional stamped metal open designs like the Hohner Marine Band, and enclosed designs such as the Suzuki Promaster. The first are usually lighter and smaller than the enclosed ones which often are heavier but give out a louder tonal quality. The comb is the main body of the instrument. Its the central part of the harmonica and its what everything is bolted or nailed to. Its called a comb because it looks very much like a hair comb. As air goes though the harmonica, it usually carries saliva, so this inner structure must be made out of a type of material that can resist exposure to moisture and that way avoid expanding or smelling. Traditionally they are made from pear wood, although they can also be found made out of plastic or metal. There are two brass reed plates on a diatonic harmonica, each with 10 to 12 reeds riveted on to it. The reeds are shorter for the higher pitch, so the lower the note is, the longer the reed. The top plate is for the blow notes and the bottom is for the draw notes, so the reeds are facing the opposite direction. After a while reeds do go out of tune, and some notes might lose their brightness, they start to sound flat and inconsistent. That indicates the harmonica needs re-tuning. Although every hole in the harmonica can easily produce one note as the player blows air in to it, and one as he draws air, there are many more hidden notes that can be found by bending (a term used by guitarists, who actually bend the strings up or down to create a subtle change in the pitch) or overblowing. (see illustration Bendable Notes Chart) If while doing a draw note, the airflow is increased, the draw reed over-flexes and the air pressure causes the blow reed from the same hole to vibrate too, making a new note pop out, so basically you are drawing air through the blow reed. The best way to understand how air pressure is changed is by whistling and trying to change the pitch of the initial note. The changes your mouth, tongue and throat make are similar to the ones a harmonica player makes when he bends a note. Bending notes is a tough technique for beginner harmonica players and it is where the secret to getting a bluesy sound lies, because its the way to get the flat third, fifth and seventh; the blue notes. The Bluesy Sound The term the blues usually refers to melancholy and sadness and is constantly heard in lyrics to describe a depressed mood. Blues is a form of expression and a feeling that is brought to a musical form. In very technical words, the blues form is characterized by specific chord progressions also found in other genres like folk, jazz, and rock and roll. The twelve-bar blues chord progression is one of the most common, although there are others like the eight-bar, used in songs like Key to the highway, originally by Big Bill Broonzy, or the sixteen-bar as in Ray Charles Sweet 16 Bars or in Herby Hancocks Watermelon Man. The basic twelve-bar framework blues progression has a distinctive form in phrase and chord structure and duration. The structure is based on the Tonic, Subdominant and Dominant chords of the key. For example: A blues song in the key of C would have the following structure: Take the Tonic Subdominant Dominant chords and play them in the following order: T T T T | S S T T | D S T T So the chords for a blues tune in the key of C would be C, F and G and they would be played in the following order: C C C C | F F C C | G F C C Fitting the lyrics in this structure makes them sing very much like poetry sound when it is read out loud. The structure consists on an AAB pattern, consisting of a line being sung over the first four bars, in repetitions over the next four bars, and a longer finishing line over the last four bars. Using Robert Johnsons Sweet Home Chicago as a standard twelve bar Blues example for analysis, we find the following pattern: Bar 1 Bar 2 Bar 3 Bar 4 A Come on, Baby dont you want to go Bar 5 Bar 6 Bar 7 Bar 8 A I said, come on, Baby dont you want to go Bar 9 Bar 10 Bar 11 Bar 12 B To that same old place Sweet home Chicago This progression of chords is the basis of thousands other rock and pop songs that often have a blue sound even without using the traditional twelve-bar arrangement. The harmonica player has to be very aware of what key and chord the song is in, because he has to fit in that progression or the notes he plays would not sound right. He then also has to know very well when and where to fit in the blue notes that, for expressive reasons are played flattened or gradually bent (minor 3rd to major 3rd, explained further along) in relation to the pitch of the major scale. After all, the blues is a feeling and although it can be analysed technically as any other musical genre, to play it right it has to be felt. Like Muddy Watters puts it when youve got no bread and your love sick youve got the blues. And although people cant even begin to imagine slavery, working in the cotton fields, or being racially discriminated like it was in those days, they can still feel the romanticism of that feeling in a sense of a Im with them! support. The blues is not all just about playing the twelve-bar, like Mick Abrahams from Fleetwood Mac says in the documentary Blues Britannia Can Blue Men Sing the Whites, If you can play one note in the twelve-bar solo and make somebody cry or laugh, or all the lovely emotions that are associated with music, thats truly to me the blues its almost a prayer Nonetheless some blues artists also used the blues as a base for more comical, raunchy lyrics, such as Big Joe Turners Rebecca (Rebecca, Rebecca, get you big legs off me, Rebecca, Rebecca, get you big legs off me. It may be sending you baby, but its worrying the hell out of me) or Tampa Reds Tight Like That (There was a little black rooster met a little brown hen, made a date at the barn about a half past ten). What got the Harmonica in to blues? The main thing that got the harmonica into the blues was its inexpensivenessà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ which now is a thing of the past as Paul Jones lead singer and harmonica player for Manfred Mann, says in the documentary Tin Sandwich Anyone?, and it is because at the time they were an affordable instrument that the African Americans managed to popularise by introducing it to the blues. Little Walter was quoted saying When I started to play harmonicas, they were a dime! Now theyre a dollar and a half! Those people ought to remember who popularised them that way! The first harmonica recordings made around 1924 by many unknown musicians totally revolutionised the way the instrument was played, and gave way to the blues harmonica as we know it. The harmonica allowed for some very visceral, meaningful sounds that almost felt like wails of pain and sorrow. They almost felt like an extension from the voice and were definitely very expressive and profound close intimate instruments. It was amazing how such a small simple instrument was able to communicate so many things and create so many different effects. Harmonica players at the time discovered that it was possible to lower the pitch of some of the notes by changing the shape of the air space inside his mouth whilst playing: Bending. They also found that drawing instead of blowing, and not playing in the key of the harmonica, but in the key of the dominant 7th chord, they could create sounds that had nothing to do with the major-key folk for which the harmonica was originally intended: the Cross Harp. Train imitations and fox-chases, or many of the typical blues licks, would have been unimaginable without these two features. Bending is probably the first way the player starts hearing a bluesy sound coming from this little instrument. Bends are essential for blues and rock harmonica sound, due to the sad and soulful sound the instrument can draw out. That wailing and howling of the blues harmonica is achieved by bending. Playing the harmonica in the same key as the song is in would mean the player is in the first position or strait. He would be mostly using blow notes and it is the way he would get a melody, or more of a folk sound. The cross harp, or second position, consists on taking the harmonica in a different key from the song (being in the circle of fifths) and mostly playing draw notes. For example: Accompanying a guitarist playing a song in A, the harmonica player could play an A harmonica in first position, or a D harmonica in the second position. Both would fit in but the D harmonica would make it sound more bluesy than the A harmonica. The way the cross harp works is that there are only so many scales one can do on each harmonica. On a piano or a guitar all scales can be played from all keys on the same instrument, but on the harmonica the player has to change keys. This way draw notes can be played easier and so can the blue notes. Usually beginner harmonicas come with a cross harp chart in the box (see illustration. x), where you can see what key you have to be on to sound bluesy or melodic. Many other techniques can be also used in combination. Vibrato, commonly used with other instruments, can also be done on the harmonica. Vibrato, as the name indicates, gives the notes a vibrating sound. Usually it is made by contracting the muscles on the throat and varying the airflow. Another typical way to do it is by opening a closing your hands around the instrument freeing more or less air. Vibrato is a very common effect used by singers and other instruments. Thanks to the way the harmonica is constructed, it also allows the player to play chords. A chord is a set of two or more notes played together harmonically. By stretching the mouth over two, three or four holes and playing them together as one melodic note you can get chords on the harmonica. By playing chords the player can also get a vamping effect, which is achieved by alternating chords and single notes to accompany himself while playing a song. The idea of vamping is to fill in the silences in the melody with chords in the right beat. By keeping that beat going, the player can make it sound like two harmonicas are playing; one doing the chords and another one doing the melody. Little Walter and Sonny Terry were both known for great vamping in their tunes. Usually their sound was very rich and full and the harmonica sounded more powerful. The Blues Harmonica Blues Origins and Background The blues goes back to the 17th century, in the United States. Blues is defined as the folk genre for the African-American population, mainly the Deep South, which originated from their spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. At the time united states were a British colony that brought slaves from Africa who populated most of the south of the country. They worked on the tobacco, cotton and rice plantations and were not allowed to practice their cultures and religions. The first bluesmen were people that used to sing about how their life was to try and relieve the pain. In a way they were trying to send messages that travelled from plantation to plantation, to show what being a slave was. Blues became, for the African-Americans, a form of expression and a way to tell their stories. It was emotionally deep, straight to the point and full of meaning. John Mayall, from the Blues Breakers says the main charm about the blues is that it has such an authenticity about in the fact that when you listen to it you hear these stories, and visualize that these are real stories. And often they were, as narrative of the lyrics was usually about the cruelty of police offices, oppression at the hands of white people and hard times. For example, in Blind Lemon Jeffersons Rising High Water Blues, he tells the story of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 where he lost his girlfriend: Black water rising, Southern people cant make no time, Black water rising, Southern people cant make no time, And I cant get no hearing from that Memphis girl of mine After the war, lyrics became simpler and focused almost entirely on relationship despairs or sexual worries. Themes that recurrently appeared in pre-war blues such as economic depression, farming, gambling, magic, the devil, fires and floods were less common in post-war blues. Other lyrics by artist like Skip James, Reverend Gary Davis or Blind Willie Johnson were also artist recognized by more religious or spiritual performances, highly influenced by the Christian conversions. 1920s, First Harmonica Recordings As for the harmonica, Pete Hampton was probably the first African-American harmonica player to be recorded. Despite a productive recording career in the early 1900s with songs like Nigger Blues, he only seemed to have used the harmonica for one particular song titled Mouth Organ Coon, where the harmonica probably adopted the term Mouth Organ. He already used many effects including vocalising through the harmonica, the use of fox chase and train-like rhythm arrangements and simultaneous whistling. Hampton used an F diatonic harmonica and he played it in first position. Soon after that, Henry Whitter was the first to record in the cross harp position. Even though he was a white musician, he had adopted a remarkable African-American influence on his harmonica playing. He claimed to have made test recordings in March 1923 and recorded the final tracks around December 1923 in New York City, recording the first three harmonica solos. The tunes appear to be in the key of A, and Whitter played in the second position on a D harmonica. He also had a train imitation, this one played in first position in what looked like a key of B although it might have originally been played on a C harp, an slowed down at some point. Another early country music star was DeFord Bailey who became the first African American performer on the Grand Ole Opry, which was a weekly country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee that presented different artists from the genre from 1925. Bailey could play various instruments but he was best known for playing the harmonica and he played every Saturday night for 15 years, after he had to leave because of a dispute with management. He developed the fox-hunt and train techniques and he used a custom made megaphone to amplify the sound from his harmonica. At the time, music was totally acoustic and the harmonica could be played comfortably and heard perfectly while accompanying a guitar and a singer. Some players used a class or a jug to funnel the sound and gain a bit more amplification like DeFord Baileys custom megaphone. (See Pic XfunnelX) By then, the harmonica had proved to be an interesting new instrument full of different sounds and effects, radically departing from the manufactures intentions of a toy. 1930s, Lomax and the re-discovery The Emancipation Act of 1863, between 1870 and 1900, which freed the Black communities from slavery and had permitted them to build up the so called juke joints as places where Blacks could go to listen to some music, dance or have a gamble after a days work. Performances where held in places like the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York or many bars along the famous Beale Street in Memphis. This style was known as the Delta Blues, which consisted on traditional, rural country blues performed acoustically in more of a polished city urban style, also introducing new sounds like the bottle neck slide guitar and the floorboard stomping. By the end of the twenties, Vaudeville and tent-show singers, circus artists, boogie-woogie pianists, jug and jazz bands were to be heard at some point playing some form of the blues. Blues was becoming a vehicle for some people to earn a living by playing and entertaining the audiences. It was exclusively race music and the majority of white people didnt really know what it was or nor have the interest to listen to it. Outside the phonograph stores, black people would stand in line anxious to obtain the latest blues disc and by now there was already a reasonably large archive of blues music given by artists like Lead Belly, Henry Thomas and Big Walter Horton. Many harmonica players were recording in duos with guitarists like Hammie Nixon and Sleepy John Estes, or trios like Sonny Terry, Blind Boy Fuller and Bull City Red. Around the 1930s, John Lomax, pioneering musicologist and folklorist, together with his son Alan Lomax made a great number of non-commercial recordings for the Archive of American Folk songs. They went around the south of the United States with a mobile recording device, capturing many root songs, field hollers and ring shouts. This contributed in a great way to the blues because they managed to capture, catalogue and generate an archive of traditional and rural sounds. The instruments flexibility also captured the attention of classical music during this decade. Although some conservative musicians didnt approve of it and degraded it by considering it a toy, young Larry Adler managed to perform a minuet by Beethoven and later on had works written for the instrument by the composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams, Darius Milhaud, Malcolm Arnold and Arthur Benjamin. 1940s, Pre-war and Post-war Blues During the war, the United States experienced a shortage of harmonicas mainly because materials like wood and metal that were used to make harmonicas were in short supply due to military demand. Another problem was that Germany and Japan were the primary manufacturers of harmonicas and of course where the Axis powers opposed to the United States and the allied forces. Companies like Finn Harkon Magnus, developed a molded plastic harmonica that used plastic combs and far fewer pieces than traditional metal or wood harmonicas, which in a way made the harmonica more hygienic and far more efficient to mass produce. The sound from these harmonicas was inferior to the traditional ones but their inexpensiveness made them become a common toy among children. Between the late 30s and the 40s, many African-Americans were starting to migrate to other states further north in hope to find more acceptable working conditions. Many musicians based in Memphis moved to big cities like Chicago and New York encouraged by their music and the idea of making a living from entertainment. It was the beginning of what would later be called the Chicago Electric Blues. 1950s Chess Records and the Chicago Blues The 50s were the beginning of an era of high quality harmonica players. For instance Sonny Boy Williamson II, is one of the most important harmonica players of this era. The blues gradually began to use more electric amplification for the guitar, double bass, and vocals. Using a full blues band, as he usually played backed by a piano or a guitar, a bass and a drummer, Sonny Boy became a popular act in the South with his daily broadcasts when he was hired to play the King Biscuit Time show, advertising the King Biscuit brand of baking flour on the radio. Sonny Boy Williamson II also helped popularize the cross-harp technique and his way of playing which was very expressive, very sensual and very technical. Another key factor to this new era of blues harmonica was the Chess brothers. Leonard and Philip Chess were two Jewish immigrants from Poland who came to Chicago in 1928. They owned some bars on the south side of Chicago, their largest establishment being a nightclub called the Macomba. The Macomba had live performances and many of those were blues entertainers that had migrated to Chicago from the Mississippi delta during the late 30s and 40s. The Chess brothers realized that these artists were not being properly represented or recorded, so they decided to start recording them themselves. They entered into a partnership with Charles and Evelyn Aron in Aristocrat Records who had just opened Aristocrat Records to record blues, jazz and rhythm blues. The most important artist they recorded was McKinley Morganfield, who went by the name of Muddy Waters. He had come from Mississippi to Chicago a few years before and had been working on his own until he met the Chess brothers. His first records where of himself accompanied by a guitar or a piano. His deep raw singing style reflected the spirit of the blues and was quite unique. The Chess brothers were able to build Muddy Waters into Chicagos leading blues singer through their connections with radio stations and local clubs. In late 1949, Leonard and Phil Chess became the sole owners of Aristocrat Records and reorganized the company changing its name to Chess Records. Historically, the music business had always been dominated by a few major record labels which were Columbia, Victor, Decca, Capitol, Mercury, and MGM. These major labels had paid some attention to the blues and other root genres but had always placed the artists on secondary labels that were focused toward the race audience. Chess Records grew in those early days of both rhythm and blues and along with other independent record companies like Atlantic, Aladdin, Specialty, Imperial, Modern and King were giving the public music that they could not get from the established major record companies. Other young Mississippi bluesmen that were drawn to Chicago joined Muddy Waters band. One of the most brilliant musicians to play with Muddy was Little Walter Jacobs, whose outstanding harmonica made the band even better. The young harmonicist revolutionized the instrument by playing the harmonica through a microphone, typically a Bullet microphone sold for use by radio taxi dispatchers. He cupped in his hands around it with the harmonica, and tightened the air around the harp. It gave the instrument a punchy, mid-range, powerful, distorted sound that could be heard as loud as an electric guitar. MUCH MORE ABOUT LITTE WALTER His style, is amps and effects, his solo career. In 1952, Chess formed a subsidiary label called Checker where Little Walter recorded some of his own work. His first release was an instrumental piece called Juke which topped the Rhythm and Blues charts for eight weeks. He was able to top the charts again in 1955 with the song My Babe. A young record producer in Memphis Tennessee named Sam Phillips was recording a 300 pound farm worker named Chester Burnette, who became known as the Howlin Wolf. At the time, Phillips, who later established Sun Re

Ethics - Virtue of Patience Essay -- essays research papers

Virtue and Patience In order to survive these days, there need to be at least some standards and goals of morality in a person's life. Moral excellence is definitely hard to achieve, but is something worth while to attempt. Personally, there are many distractions and obstructions the present day provides, creating a difficulty of direction in my own life. I need to overcome obstacles such as peer pressure in order to become a confident, successful person. The present day provides impediments which I believe I can overcome by way of morality and virtue. I have chosen to work on more patience in my life. According to Aristotle, for every virtue there are two vices. One is in excess and the other being deficit. Patience is a deficiency in my life. In having barely any patience, I am often stressed out and make more of simple situations. Aristotle would call this vice impatience. On the other end of the spectrum, the excess of patience is being passive. Aristotle and Plato, it was all about having balance in your life. I believe this theory is still in tact today. What I am striving for is not passivity, it is a moderate amount of patience, not too much and not too little, but just enough to make me more of a moral individual. The hard part about being virtuous is not practicing virtue sometimes but mastering it and doing it consistently. I have always been impatient and it would be extremely difficult for me to master being patient. One of Aristotle’s points about being a virtuous person is not doing everything well but doing what you do well and doing it consistently. Patience is defined as â€Å"good natured tolerance of delay or incompetence.† (www.dictionary.com) for me, this definition does the word a world of just... ...s outside and we ended up waiting for and hour for him to come back. I was going to flip out and tell my mom I wasn’t going to do this and that we should just leave and come back tomorrow but I remembered this essay and my goal of becoming more patient. So I put on my headphones and I went for a walk to find my cat, when I finally found him I was so excited for myself, I really felt like I accomplished something. For me this was a gratifying process and I actually enjoyed the journaling and paper. I think I could have put a little more effort into the specific instances. But over all it was alright for me. Before this I would have never noticed what lack of patience I had and how annoying it must be for the people around me. I’m excited to continue being a more virtuous person and improving my character through practicing more patience.

Lorraine Hansberrys A Raisin In The Sun - Dreams Essay -- English L

A Raisin in the Sun - Dreams Dreams The play A Raisin in the Sun demonstrates the hardships and successes of the members of a black family living in the south side of Chicago during the 50’s. For the Youngers, dreams are life. They are what bring the family together and pull it apart throughout the play. Each member of the family has a particular dream, and each of those dreams is like a wall being built between its owner and various other members of the family. Everyone’s dream straddles the line between selfishness and goodness for the family; however, some, like Walter’s, seem to be pulled more by the gravity of selfishness. Both Mama and Ruth share the same dream, but each has a slightly different reason for her preference. Walter’s dream is the most apparent from the beginning of the play, and he presses his family and himself until he accomplishes his goal. Walter focuses so much on his dream, however, that he leaves no room for his family. One may ask, why is he so intent on his dream? Walter is out to prove something to himself, to his family, and to the world. He needs to show people that he is a man and is responsible. No one ever trusted Walter with anything important as can be seen when he says, â€Å"Ain’t nobody with me! Not even my own mother!† (Hansberry, 85). In all of his life, Walter was not allowed to grow into a man and bear the responsibility of his life and the lives of his family. Mama has always been the head of the family, and Walter never got the chance in his childhood to take responsibility with less important matters; therefore, when he is handed a check for $6500, Walter does what he never had the chance to do before. Walter’s father was a proud man who wanted his family t... ...s possessions in the minds of many people. They can tear apart a family like the Youngers, or they can grasp and control a mind like that of Walter. However, dreams are items not easily left behind, and if they were, what would become of the people who owned them? Dreams make up a part of the life of humans that without, who can say where life may lead a person. Probably nowhere. For without dreams, a human has no ambitions and no desire to make any impact upon the world. Without dreams the human race would be one of idle creatures that desire nothing more than to be like the cockroaches in this play, searching only for the necessities of life between periods of sleep. Maybe that would be better, though, for someone like Walter; after all, what has he done but be a burden upon society? Or will he someday succeed because of a dream, if only through his son?

Ian van Eyck Essay -- essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Jan van Eyck was a master in style and symbolism, establishing a firm superiority in glaze technique and delicately and elaborately applying subtle, yet powerful religious references to what at first glance may seem simple portraits.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Van Eyck’s drawing, Saint Barbara, completed in 1437, is an example of the artist’s use of fictional exotic or Romanesque style structures, suggestive of those from the Old Testament. (p.99 textbook) Other symbolism includes the walled city that resembles a ziggurat, and on the church, the three windows on the second level, feature the Trinity, the symbolism of their octagonal structure, and baptism.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Use of religious symbolism can be traced in other Van Eyck works. Madonna in the Church, a panel dating to around 1437-38, uses light to represent Mary’s purity and purpose. â€Å"She is the brightness of eternal light and the unspotted mirror of God’s majesty.† This was a passage from the Book of Wisdom and can be found inscribed on Mary’s red dress. (p. 100) Additionally, due to the unusual size of Madonna in her setting, Van Eyck has represented Mary as the church, not simply in the church.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Since Madonna and the Christ child in an â€Å"ecclesiastical or domestic setting† was a favorite theme of Van Eyck, it is possible to note a trend in his work. (p.102 textbook) Madonna and Child with Saints Michael and Catherine, a 1437 panel, depicts...

Suicide in the Trenches Analysis

Suicide in the Trenches – an analysis What is the meaning of war? What is war like? How do soldiers feel in a war? Glorious? Depressed? This poem accurately shows the harsh but sadly true reality of war – death, suicide and depression. Indeed, as quoted by Sir Williams Henry – â€Å"Nobody in his right mind would enjoy war†. The point of view is third person. This is effective in showing one case of suicide, in third person observation, representing the depression and desire to quickly die in everyone else. Life is really worse than death – and this is shown through the eye-catching title â€Å"Suicide in the Trenches†.The word â€Å"trenches† further emphasized that not only is this depression possessed by one young soldier boy, but also by many others in war. The setting is in depressing, smelly, and stuffy trenches as the title has blatantly stated. The story is about a young soldier boy’s transformation from a happy and inno cent person into a depressed soldier who desires to kill himself, because life is really worse than death. The poet deliberately uses the small boy as an example to gain the reader’s sympathy. The structure of the poem is three stanzas with four lines in each. The rhyme scheme is A-A-B-B in each stanza.This seems to be a rigid structure, but it really does bring out how one’s initial carefree innocence and freedom is being lost once he enters the cruel and depressing battlefield, or in this case, trenches. The tone in the poem is obviously a bitter and sarcastic one as we can see from the last stanza – â€Å"You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye†¦ †. Sassoon strongly feels the general public is unable to empathize with soldiers because there is no way to understand what war is like. Through this bitter and sad poem, the poet tries to bring out the theme of the poem – nobody can understand what war is like without personal experience.The lang uage the poet uses is clever in conveying the theme – a balance of symbolism, diction and alliteration is put to effective use in this poem. Something we cannot miss is the alliteration in the first stanza â€Å"slept soundly†. The repetition of the letter ‘s’ produces a harsh hissing sound, and this contributes to the bitter tone throughout the poem. Also, it puts emphasis on the phrase â€Å"slept soundly†. As we all know, people who can sleep soundly are those who have no worries and nagging troubles before going to bed. This highlights how the boy was so innocent, without any worries at all, at the start of his xperience in war. This is also brought out in â€Å"whistling†, an action done only when one is happy and carefree. The trenches symbolize the rotting function of war in the case of the poem. Throughout the year till winter, the trenches had apparently transformed a carefree, innocent and happy boy into a depressed, boy who â€Å" put a bullet through his brain†. The alliteration of the letter ‘b’ here also further creates a harsh, brute and bitter sound that adds on to the bitter mood, especially at the climax of the story told – the suicide.The clever rhyme of â€Å"brain† with â€Å"again† at line 8 tries to strike a connection that although a young innocent boy was dragged into war and fought violently for his country and himself, in the end, when he is being pushed to his limit, still â€Å"nobody spoke of him again†. This shows how cruel and selfish war is. It forces you to help – at such a young age – but yet does not remember or appreciate what you have done and sacrificed. In this case, the boy sacrificed his childhood fun, laughter, innocence and carefree life in return for nothing at all – not even a memory of him.How is war cruel? This is the perfect example. The diction used in the poem is especially strong. In the last stanza, t he word â€Å"kindling† is being used to describe the â€Å"eye(s)† of the â€Å"smug-faced crowd†. One must notice that this line is only devoted to facial description, and the â€Å"kindling† seems to be also a superficial countenance feature only. However, Siegfried tries to show with a sarcastic tone that they think that war is a glorious thing, they feel proud of these children, and seem to understand and appreciate what they are doing.But in reality, they can never imagine what these children are going through, and in reality, they don’t care or feel appreciative of what the children did. Therefore, the word kindling reveals the hypocrisy behind people who support war. In my personal opinion, the last stanza is the strongest and most impactful stanza. While the previous two stanza show the transformation of a single boy when he enters war, the last stanza directly attacks people who support war itself, at the thought of its glory and honor, b ut not give a thought about the â€Å"pawns† dying and suffering in war. Sneak home and pray you’ll never know† shows that while the hypocrites support war, under the glorious facade, they are not willing or are too afraid to think of the consequences, sacrifice and price of this meaningless war – a big price that separates thousands of families and destroy tens of thousands of children. The poet is just trying to use an extreme and most serious example to illustrate his point. Indeed, war is just so cruel – it takes away, but does not return – not even a single memory for dead people.It totally transform people from their happy and carefree state, into murderers constantly depressed and worried for their lives, yet guilty they killed their own kind. In war where humans are just pawns for a game of chess, nobody will understand how a soldier feels – constantly killing his own kind to defend himself, lacking in sleep, separated, maybe f orever, from their families and friends – unless they undergo war itself. I would like to end off with this quote from the U. S. Military force – â€Å"Nobody would understand a soldier, except for the soldier himself†.Contrastingly the Second Stanza curtails the mood of happiness and innocence, abruptly introducing the horrors of war, using descriptive language such as describing the trenches to be, â€Å"Winter trenches. † It is Sassoon's Juxtaposition in the swing of mood and ultimately the contrast between the characters love of life to his sudden hatred of life, resulting in suicide†¦ â€Å"He put a bullet through his brain† that shows the audience both the thematic idea and Sassoon's criticism of War's destruction of Innocence.