Evil and Suffering

Evil and Suffering In this essay I will discuss the issues of evil and suffering, speak about their origins and try to prove that they have serious reasons for existing. In my opinion people sometimes misunderstand their nature, so I will also try to familiarize you with my understanding of that issue.Before we start analyzing the issues of suffering and evil let us answer several questions. What is evil? Can it be understood? Can it be forgiven? What are the differences between good and evil? Bible teaches not to do any harm neither to self, nor to others, not to commit any evil deeds. So we can say that evil is all those things, which God doesn't want to happen, but which are happening, so in that sense evil is very close to sin, and God hates sin, therefore he hates evil. But why then he allows evil happen? Let put this question off for a while and answer another one.God the Father 16Do we know what is suffering? Is that punishment for our sins? No. "Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, and sha res the nature of infinity" William Wordsworth wrote. Let me underline this phrase "shares the nature of infinity". God is infinity and infinity is God. Thus, suffering comes not from God, but from something that shares his nature. Lucifer. Evil. When we are ill body temperature is rising, we are feeling weakness and pain, immunity tries to fight illness and illness fights back. Sin is a sort of illness; it overfills our environment and tries to corrupt us. But a part of God, the Holy Spirit in our bodies fights it and evil strikes back. That's why Jewish people were suffering, that's why thousands of believers were suffering and that's why Jesus was suffering."They spit on him, and took the...

Definition and Examples of Crots in Composition

Definition and Examples of Crots in Composition In composition, a crot is a verbal bit or fragment used as an autonomous unit to create an effect of abruptness and rapid transition. Also called a blip. In  An Alternate Style: Options in Composition  (1980), Winston Weathers described crot  as an archaic word for bit or fragment. The term, he said, was revived by  American essayist and novelist  Tom Wolfe in his introduction to  The Secret Life of Our Times  (Doubleday, 1973). This is one of the few great ways that a fragment sentence can be used effectively - they are often used in poetry but can be used in other forms of literature as well. Examples and Observations in Literature New Years Eve on Broadway. 1931. The poets dream. The bootleggers heaven. The hat check girls julep of joy. Lights. Love. Laughter. Tickets. Taxis. Tears. Bad booze putting hics into hicks and bills into tills. Sadness. Gladness. Madness. New Years Eve on Broadway.(Mark Hellinger, New Years Eve on Broadway. Moon Over Broadway, 1931)The Crots of Mr. JingleAh! fine place, said the stranger, glorious pile - frowning walls - tottering arches - dark nooks - crumbling staircases - Old cathedral too - earthy smell - pilgrims feet worn away the old steps - little Saxon doors - confessionals like money-takers boxes at theatres - queer customers those monks - Popes, and Lord Treasurers, and all sorts of old fellows, with great red faces, and broken noses, turning up every day - buff jerkins too - matchlocks - Sarcophagus - fine place - old legends too - strange stories: capital and the stranger continued to soliloquize until they reached the Bull Inn, in the High Street, where the coach stopped.(Alfred Jingle in Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837) Coetzees CrotsWhat absorbs them is power and the stupor of power. Eating and talking, munching lives, belching. Slow, heavy-bellied talk. Sitting in a circle, debating ponderously, issuing degrees like hammer blows: death, death, death. Untroubled by the stench. Heavy eyelids, piggish eyes, shrewd with the shrewdness of generations of peasants. Plotting against each other too: slow peasant plots that take decades to mature. The new Africans, pot-bellied, heavy-jowled men on their stools of office: Cetshwayo, Dingane in white skins. Pressing downward: their power in their weight.(J.M. Coetzee, The Age of Iron, 1990)Crots in PoetryAh to be aliveon a mid-September mornfording a streambarefoot, pants rolled up,holding boots, pack on,sunshine, ice in the shallows,northern rockies.(Gary Snyder, For All)Crots in AdvertisingTell England. Tell the world. Eat more Oats.  Take Care of your Complexion. No More War. Shine your Shoes with Shino. Ask your Grocer. Children love Laxamalt.  Prepar e to meet thy God. Bungs Beer is Better. Try Dogsbodys Sausages. Whoosh the Dust Away. Give them Crunchlets. Snagsburys Soups are Best for the Troops.  Morning Star, best Paper by Far. Vote for Punkin and Protect your Profits. Stop that Sneeze with Snuffo. Flush your Kidneys with Fizzlets. Flush your Drains with Sanfect. Wear Wool-fleece next the Skin. Popps Pills Pep you Up. Whiffle your Way to Fortune. . . .Advertise, or go under.(Dorothy Sayers, Murder Must Advertise, 1933) Menckens CrotsTwenty million voters with IQs below 60 have their ears glued to the radio; it takes four days hard work to concoct a speech without a sensible word in it. Next day a dam must be opened somewhere. Four senators get drunk and try to neck a lady politician built like an overloaded tramp steamer. The Presidential automobile runs over a dog. It rains.(H.L. Mencken, Imperial Purple)Updikes CrotsFootprints around a KEEP OFF sign.Two pigeons feeding each other.Two showgirls, whose faces had not yet thawed the frost of their makeup, treading indignantly through the slush.A plump old man saying Chick, chick and feeding peanuts to squirrels.Many solitary men throwing snowballs at tree trunks.Many birds calling to each other about how little the Ramble has changed.One red mitten lying lost under a poplar tree.An airplane, very bright and distant, slowly moving through the branches of a sycamore.(John Updike, Central Park)Winston Weathers and Tom Wolfe on Crots- In its most intense form, the crot is characterized by a certain abruptness in its termination. As each crot breaks off, Tom Wolfe says, it tends to make ones mind search for some point that must have just been made- presque vu!- almost seen! In the hands of a writer who really understands the device, it will have you making crazy leaps of logic, leaps you never dreamed of before.The provenance of the crot may well be in the writers note itselfin the research note, in the sentence or two one jots down to record a moment or an idea or to describe a person or place. The crot is essentially the note left free of verbal ties with other surrounding notes. . . .The general idea of unrelatedness present in crot writing suggests correspondence- for those who seek it- with the fragmentation and even egalitarianism of contemporary experience, wherein the events personalities, places of life have no particular superior or inferior status to dictate priorities of presentation.(Winston Weathers, An Alternate Style : Options in Composition. Boynton/Cook, 1980) Bangs manes bouffants beehives Beatle caps butter faces brush-on lashes decal eyes puffy sweaters French thrust bras flailing leather blue jeans stretch pants stretch jeans honeydew bottoms eclair shanks elf boots ballerina Knight slippers.(Tom Wolfe, The Girl of the Year. The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 1965)MontagePart of the power of moving images comes from the technique [Sergei] Eisenstein championed: montage. Here the tables turn in the contest between the novel and moving images, for in switching rapidly between perspectives, it is those who share their imaginations with us by writing who are at a disadvantage.Because writers must work to make each view they present believable, it is very difficult for them to present a rapid series of such views. Dickens, with his marvelous alertness, succeeds as well as any writer has: the whistling of drovers, the barking of dogs, the bellowing and plunging of oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squealing of pig s; the cries of the hawkers, the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides [Oliver Twist]. But when attempting to capture the energy and chaos of this stunning and bewildering market-morning scene, Dickens is often reduced to lists: Countrymen, drovers, butchers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and vagabonds of every low grade or crowding, pushing, driving, beating, whooping and yelling.(Mitchell Stephens, The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word. Oxford University Press, 1998) See also: Collage EssayIn Defense of Fragments,  Crots, and Verbless SentencesListMinor SentenceSentence FragmentSuite Amà ©ricaine, by H.L. MenckenUsing Sentence Fragments EffectivelyVerbless SentenceWhat Is a Sentence?

Week 10 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Week 10 - Essay Example Generally, the higher the proportion of operations financed by intergovernmental revenues, the greater is the risk borne by the government. Local government can keep low the risks connected with intergovernmental revenues by ensuring sound budgeting traditions. Establishing local sources of finance can reduce the relative impact of any fall in federal revenues. The ratio will determine whether the government is able to meet its obligations and supply the services that the public demand. Nonfinancial information that may be used to evaluate the performance of a college or university include: college or university governance, students satisfaction level, the level of satisfaction of employees, workers turnover, policies and objectives of the college or university. The information that provides the most insight to financial performance is turnover of employees because it points at dissatisfaction of workers, which may also indicate poor management, consequently leading to poor financial performance. The identified nonfinacial information can be said to be playing a crucial role in enhancing conventional financial reporting. They enhance the capability of the users of financial statement to appraise and forecast financial performance. Nonfinancial information is crucial predictors of financial performance. However, nonfinancial information about organizations is not usually available like financial information (Mohammadi, yusoff & Arumugam, 2011). I prefer IFRS tax approach to GAAP. Under IFRS, deferred tax allowance (DTA) is recorded at net if only it is anticipated to be realized while GAAP demands valuation if part or entire DTA will not be realized and the valuation is recorded at gross with corresponding allowance. Under IFR, the substantially enacted tax rate is applicable whereas under GAAP tax rate used for estimating deferred taxes is the prevailing tax

Exam paper---read the requirement I send you carefully Essay

Exam paper---read the requirement I send you carefully - Essay Example This writing will focus on markets that are perfectly competitive in nature. This writing will focus on various characteristics of perfectly competitive markets and how buyers and sellers behave in such markets. The first section of the assignment will focus on the reaction of sellers to changes in demand for their goods and services. The second section of the writing will compare and contrast the characteristics of a perfectly competitive market with the characteristics of New York Stock exchange (NYSE). Body According to the law of demand when the demand for a product increases, the price of the product even elevates and vice-verse. Due to these changes in demand the marginal revenue that is being earned by a particular industry even alters. In order to analyze the changes that organizations in a perfectly competitive market experience as a result of changes in demand for a product, let us assume that the product being sold is bread. Let’s assume that according to research, eating brown bread helps individuals in preventing diabetes. Such revelations positively impact the demand for particular product. Let’s assume that the bread industry is a perfectly competitive industry and is currently experiencing long-run equilibrium at a price of $1.7 per loaf of bread and the value of the economic profit is equivalent to zero. Figure 1 Figure 1 is a depiction of short as well as long run adjustment experienced by a firm as well as market under perfect competition. The figure shows that in case of market the price of a loaf of bread is $1.7 when the quantity demanded for the product is at Q1 and in case of an organization that sells loaf of bread the market price of $1.7 is the organization’s marginal revenue which is at MR1. The figure shows that currently there is only one organization in the market. Since the new research suggests that there is health benefit of brown bread, the demand for brown bread increases which is depicted in figure 1 thr ough a shift in the demand curve from D1 to D2. Due to this increase in demand, there is an increase in the price of the product and the price of the product elevates from p1 ($1.7) to P2 ($2.3) and this leads to an increase in the marginal revenue of a single firm operating in a market from MR1 to MR2. Due to this increase in price, the organization even increases its output from q1 to q2 in order to meet consumer demand in the short run (Douglas, 2011, p.615). Notice that the shaded region represents the economic profit that is experienced by the organization in the short run and similar profit will be experienced by other firms in the market in the short run. Since the market is perfectly competitive in nature and there are no barriers to entry or exit, the high stream of economic profit will attract more organizations to enter the market so they can even earn the profits being offered by the recent increase in demand. New organization s will enter the market and this would lead to an increase in the quantity supplied by the entire industry as more and more organizations will enter the market, more and more supply will elevate. New entrants will continue to enter the market as long as their entrance is resulting in an economic profit. Figure one depicts a shift in the supply curve from S1 to S2 which is a reflection of more firms entering the market. Due to this increase in supply, the price of the loaf of bread will start declining in the longer run

Conception and Ethics of Attire in Puritans of Elizabeth and Jacob Era Essay Example for Free

Conception and Ethics of Attire in Puritans of Elizabeth and Jacob Era Essay In English literature, importance of religion can not be denied at any cost. Two thoughts had emerged up since yet in Elizabeth England therefore their believes, faith and conviction became solid in nature. A thing is mandatory in distinct dimensions initial in esteem of nature for the safeguarding of being healthy. Next would be honor for place, calling and clause for the repairs and maintenance therefore human literature talks about ethics and tradition which normally is being prevailed inside particular place. [ ] Catholic and puritan is two distinctive segment of religion in England. England’s Golden Age The mainly fabulous era of English literature, called the Elizabethan Age. It was started in the later years of Elizabeths mortality. Francis Bacon wrote on ‘The Faerie Queene in her honor. Shakes came before her but at the time of her casualty he had not yet written most of his great tragedies. Elizabeth enjoyed plays, but there is no verification that she appraised Shakespeare’s genius in Golden age, catholic were more in number than puritans [ ] In 1500, transformational phase was being proceeded as believes, thoughts and faith had been getting shape therefore official religion was that one which king or queen personally liked and brought it into limelight by teaching this particular religion. But some people had to adhere the fact if they fell in wrong religion therefore they treated like bull shit. They had remained risk of losing their wealth and property in any case of mishap. Puritans were basically invention of martin Luther who made this particular segment for the sake of abstaining comment from outside. Like in transformational period, people started to question on the Roman Catholic practitioner and followers. Generically term puritan narrates to protestant infect people who accused to protest against the set pattern of catholic terms. The major code of Puritanism was Gods supreme power on human contact therefore inside the church and particularly as spoken in the Bible. This view put them to request jointly to person and shared conformance to the training of the Bibl, and it put them to pursue both ethical clarity down to the nominal feature as well as church transparency to the maximum level. Puritan community really gave prestigious value both man and woman as if defined their roles in society. puritan had many conflicting points with catholic as portents didn’t believe in hierarchical relation of religious servers in church but this side of people like father who used to deliver indispensable services to people but catholic after passage of time replaced this idea therefore conflicts in believe a raised which made distribution among people. Eventually two groups of people arise. The basic of social classification exerted authority of husband on wife, parents over children and owner on servants in social context. Puritan wedding preferences were prejudiced by juvenile people’s leaning, by parents by the social ranks [ ]. Which have cavernous touch to puritan method of bandage because family setup talks about personal liking and disliking that’s why this key influencing factor always have some imposed thinking in the mind of individual who is usually pertaining entitlement of that community.

Classical vs. Operant Conditioning :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Classical Vs. Study done at home showing the effects of operant and classical conditioning. Operant Conditioning   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  For my first experiment I tried to induce a startled response in my roommate by using Classical Conditioning. Since we have a lot of traffic in and out of our apartment I decided that every time someone opened or closed the front door I would clap loudly in his ear and he would startle. After a couple of times I discontinued this behavior to see if he would still startle when someone opened the door. The unconditioned stimulus is the loud clapping noise. The unconditioned response is the startled response. The door opening or closing starts out as the neutral stimulus, but becomes the conditioned stimulus capable of producing the conditioned â€Å"startled† response. The experiment was partly successful. Instead of being startled my roommate seemed more upset by me clapping in his ear. When I stopped the behavior and the door opened he would just look at me to see if I was going to perform the clapping action. I could say the actual response he gave of bein g angry would be the conditioned and unconditioned response rather than being startled.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  For the next part of the experiment I conditioned behavior using operant conditioning. The behavior I conditioned was for one of my roommates to clean the apartment. I offered to go to the store and buy some groceries if one of my roommates would clean the house. When I got back from the store the house was clean.

The Role of Activist Agences in Shaping the course of Women’s History

There is no doubt that activists and activist agencies have played a role in shaping the history of women, and a large amount of the historiography of women's history has given excessive attention to the role of activists. Popular history tends to take a Rankeian view of events, focussing instead on the role of the individual, rather than the deeper underlying social, political and economic causes of history. The traditional Liberal view of the struggle to obtain the franchise is that the suffragettes, via their militant tactics and under the leadership of the Pankhursts ensured that women were granted the vote, and that this solved all the injustices between the sexes. This simplistic view of events however ignores the wider changes that were taking place in the economy and society, as well as placing a larger emphasis on certain activists, rather than looking at the broader picture. The militant activities of the suffragettes were never sufficient enough to frighten the government or the wider public into extending the franchise to women, their acts of violence towards property were often small scale and petty. It also ignores the role of the suffragists led by Millicent Fawcett, who were far more significant in obtaining the vote for women, for they were the ones who reasoned rather than fought with men and showed that women could deal with political matters. Activists continued to use similar tactics in the 1970s to demand changes in the law, such as free nursery places (as removed from local councils responsibilities under the 1980 Education Act) and better maternity benefits. The real changes came about however, not due to the prominent high profile activists, but to the grass roots campaign where women won seats on town and city councils. Historians can often look for the big story to write about, sometimes however the big story is made up of lots of little ones. Women's position in the economy changed prior to the war as well. Industrialisation brought about the end of small scale family run workshops and there has been a transition to large workshops. The sexual division of labour in mills and factories was seen as a natural occurrence and women did not object to being paid less and exploited more than male workers. Trade unions did not favour equal roles in industry for women out of the fear that it would take men's jobs from them. The benefits in industry that women gained during WWI were temporary, and as soon as men returned from the war women were forced back out of their jobs. One view of the effects of WWI is that giving the vote to women was a reward for their hard work during the war, in the munitions and armaments factories. At the same period as activists had allegedly gained a better position for women via the vote, laws such as the Restoration of Pre-war Practices Act (1919) which enacted the agreements between the government and trade unions that women's war work was only temporary. Various activist agencies organised resistance to this, however they proved futile. The changing role of women economically in the latter part of the c20 was not due to activists but due to the wider structural changes the war effected on the country by World War 2. Following the Second World War the changing nature of commerce in the UK made it uneconomical to prevent women from working and by 1947 there were more women workers than in 1939 (Bruley). The deindustrialisation of the UK between 1979-1990 saw a large increase in the numbers of women in employment. Margaret Thatcher's economic reforms created huge unemployment, although when employment levels started to recede, women were back into employment quicker than men. This was due to skilled secondary industry jobs being replaced with low skilled tertiary jobs which could get away with paying women less and reducing employees rights due to the reforms Thatcher introduced. In 1990 60% of low paid full time workers were women and Carole Buswell found that in the same year large proportions of women were earning less than the EU recommended minimum wage in tertiary industries, even in jobs such as banking and insurance 40% of the workers fitted this category. This is because even in well paid jobs, such as banking and insuarance, women were restricted from progressing high up the career ladder by having to take maternity leave to bring up children, if they were even considered for promotion in the first place as many of these companies were strongly male dominated. The Women's self image has changed a great deal since the beginning of the c20, when women saw themselves primarily as mothers and wives, though in working class environments this attitude persisted for a lot longer than in wealthier and better educated social groups. Sue Sharpe found in her 1976 book â€Å"Just like a girl† that working class girls in Ealing in the 70's still expected to marry a husband who would take care of them financially and that they would be responsible for childrearing. Women's level of deference has decreased greatly from the beginning of the century when they were almost voiceless, to the present day where girls have become at least as vocal as men, if not more. Deep running social trends such as this cannot be changed over night by activists and this lack of change in the working classes could be interpreted as evidence that women's liberation movements have largely been for and by the white middle classes Many women in the 1970s though who had started to redefine their own roles started to live in new ways, such as communally with other women. A large amount of feminist activists adopted Marxist ideology and blamed the oppression of women on the capitalist exploitation of women as a labour force as well as for the unpaid labour they do domestically. In the 1980s, with its ethos of the individual, women started to appear slowly in positions of power, however their high profile was due to their unusualness. However many women were shocked and against this attitude and the 80s saw many women reject the materialist society and take up campaigns against issues like nuclear disarmament such as the women at Greenham Common. Activists continued to play a role through the 70's and 80s although as in previous times they were often the central figureheads of larger movements based on mass upheavals. As the UK became an increasingly egalitarian society into the 1960s due to the increasing levels of education and the secularisation of society, women started to realise that the restrictions on career options were chiefly the traditional roles of women and a lack of education. Large amounts of feminists were students and so they had the opportunities to study the past and see the oppression that women had faced and also how little women appeared in history. The Crowther Report (1959) released middle class grammar school girls from the â€Å"domestic† curriculum, opening the door to many more job opportunities. However women were still restricted in the workplace by having to be responsible for rearing children as well as attempting to have a career. Viola Klien argued in â€Å"Women's two roles† (1956) that modern societies were unable to afford to not have women working, this capitalised on fears that the UK would fall economically behind the USSR where nearly all women worked. Although activists led the women's liberation movement and campaigned against articles such as Miss World and unequal pay, mainly the reforms came from elsewhere. Equal pay was finally made a reality when the Fawcett Society (a group of feminists) took the government to the EU court to enforce the Equal Value Amendment. How much has changed for women in the last 100 years is debateable. Certainly there have been many legal improvements and women are no longer the second class citizens they were at the beginning of the century. However according to some feminists, women are still oppressed by society as whole, being expected to take care of children and do housework as well as to have a job. Opponents to this argue that women are the natural carers of children and that there are no real obstacles in the way for women to have both a job and family if the women works hard enough and balances her time. This group of opponents is not exclusively male. Both Thatcher and Queen Victoria were against women's rights, Thatcher's attitude being that â€Å"well I made it so why can't they? † and latter believing in the traditional division of the sexes based upon religion and tradition. Men still continue to run the top jobs, with Angela Coyle finding in 1988 that at the very top of companies women made up only 5%. Until 1997 the maximum proportion of women MPs had been approximately 10%. This number was only increased in the 1997 election when Tony Blair supported positive discrimination by adopting an â€Å"Emily's List† policy. This meant that in safe seats women be put forward as candidates, the result was >100 women MPs, however this policy was later declared illegal. As women are still expected to take care of children, maternity leave and career breaks for the bringing up of children harm their promotion prospects, resulting in a â€Å"glass ceiling† that often needs the sacrifice of family life in order to break through. Although women appeared to become visible in the media, this is often because the ones who did make it to the top were so unusual that they were worthy of media interest. Solutions to the problem are hard, some feminists argue that the only way the position of women will change is if men think differently too, however this is idealistic to say the least. Bruley reaches the conclusion that women are still disadvantaged because although women now have the franchise and careers, they still have to bear the brunt of childbearing, caring and networking.

Mass Media Corporations

Assess the view that the owners of mass media corporations control media output and serve mainly ruling-class interests. (33 marks) AO1: Knowledge and Understanding (15 marks) Lower in the band 1. students will present an answer based on very limited knowledge and understanding of the mass media and ownership issues rather than based on sociological arguments or evidence. There will be only a peripheral link to the question. At this level there will be little evidence that the student has understood either the question or the material in response to it.At this level answers might include: †¢ isolated or disjointed statements about ownership of different aspects of the media or †¢ some flawed material from theories of the mass media. Higher in the band, students will present knowledge on the mass media, ownership and control that is incomplete or flawed. However, students’ understanding of both the set question and the material presented as an answer will be marginall y more explicit and more sociological than those lower in the band. At this level answers might include: a very brief list of evidence relating to ownership of different aspects of the media or †¢ incomplete or flawed accounts from theories of the mass media. 6 – 11 Answers in this band will show reasonable sociological knowledge and understanding. Lower in the band, students will present an adequate but possibly generalised or essentially descriptive and narrowly focused account of sociological knowledge on the question. There will be a fairly limited understanding of the demands of the question set.At this level answers might include: †¢ a brief list of factors related to ownership and/or control of different aspects of the media or †¢ brief, descriptive and accurate accounts of one or two studies of ownership and control of the mass media or †¢ outlines of one or two theories of the mass media, with relevance to the question left largely implicit. Highe r in the band, students will present a fuller though possibly still unbalanced response to the question.Answers may still be somewhat descriptive or narrowly focused, for instance dealing predominantly with only one perspective or one study of the media and ownership and control. At this level answers might include: †¢ a more developed list of factors related to ownership and/or control of different aspects of the media, but with a limited theoretical structure or Sources may include: Bagdikian; Miliband; Marx; Gramsci; Doyle; Curran; Whale; Tunstall and Palmer.

Free Essays on Comparing Romantic Relationships

Love and Romance Throughout Word Count: 1,293 Most of the novels that we have read have a theme of love. Different kinds of love are shown throughout the stories, but one type of love interests me the most, romantic love. The romantic relationships are so different from each other in all the books. Some are true love, while others seem to be convience love. I wish to explore the feelings of two particular women who have very different ideas on love and marriage. Elizabeth and Janie are two independently minded women, living in times when such independence is not widely accepted. â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† focuses mostly on Elizabeth and her changing feelings of Mr. Darcy. â€Å"Their Eyes Were Watching God† is all about Janie and her three very different relationships throughout the novel. Elizabeth was unlike her sisters is many ways. One way that she thought completely different was on the subject of love and marriage. Elizabeth’s siblings were all about searching for husbands. Their only goal in life was to get married to wealthy men. Jane, the eldest sister seemed to be the only Benedict sister besides Elizabeth who did not necessarily want to marry for money, but for love. Getting married was extremely important to Jane but not for all the wrong reasons like her sisters. Elizabeth, however, did not seem to be in any hurry to get married. She refused two men before finally accepting a marriage proposal from Mr. Darcy. The difference between the men was that Elizabeth was truly in love with Mr. Darcy, while she did not even like the other two men who were chasing her. We could see from the beginning that Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth were meant to be together. They may have shown dislike and Elizabeth expressed much hatred, but there is a thin line between love an d hate. I don’t believe a person can have one without the other. When Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth finally express their feelings for one another and get engaged, we can feel... Free Essays on Comparing Romantic Relationships Free Essays on Comparing Romantic Relationships Love and Romance Throughout Word Count: 1,293 Most of the novels that we have read have a theme of love. Different kinds of love are shown throughout the stories, but one type of love interests me the most, romantic love. The romantic relationships are so different from each other in all the books. Some are true love, while others seem to be convience love. I wish to explore the feelings of two particular women who have very different ideas on love and marriage. Elizabeth and Janie are two independently minded women, living in times when such independence is not widely accepted. â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† focuses mostly on Elizabeth and her changing feelings of Mr. Darcy. â€Å"Their Eyes Were Watching God† is all about Janie and her three very different relationships throughout the novel. Elizabeth was unlike her sisters is many ways. One way that she thought completely different was on the subject of love and marriage. Elizabeth’s siblings were all about searching for husbands. Their only goal in life was to get married to wealthy men. Jane, the eldest sister seemed to be the only Benedict sister besides Elizabeth who did not necessarily want to marry for money, but for love. Getting married was extremely important to Jane but not for all the wrong reasons like her sisters. Elizabeth, however, did not seem to be in any hurry to get married. She refused two men before finally accepting a marriage proposal from Mr. Darcy. The difference between the men was that Elizabeth was truly in love with Mr. Darcy, while she did not even like the other two men who were chasing her. We could see from the beginning that Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth were meant to be together. They may have shown dislike and Elizabeth expressed much hatred, but there is a thin line between love an d hate. I don’t believe a person can have one without the other. When Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth finally express their feelings for one another and get engaged, we can feel...

Abba Kovner and Resistance in the Vilna Ghetto

Abba Kovner and Resistance in the Vilna Ghetto In the Vilna Ghetto and in the Rudninkai Forest (both in Lithuania), Abba Kovner, only 25 years old, led resistance fighters against the murderous Nazi enemy during the  Holocaust. Who Was Abba Kovner? Abba Kovner was born in 1918 in Sevastopol, Russia, but later moved to Vilna (now in Lithuania), where he attended a Hebrew secondary school. During these early years, Kovner became an active member in the Zionist youth movement, Ha-Shomer ha-Tsair. In September 1939, World War II began. Only two weeks later, on September 19, the Red Army entered Vilna and soon incorporated it into the Soviet Union. Kovner became active during this time, 1940 to 1941, with the underground. But life changed drastically for Kovner once the Germans invaded. The Germans Invade Vilna On June 24, 1941, two days after Germany launched its surprise attack against the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), the Germans occupied Vilna. As the Germans were sweeping east toward Moscow, they instigated their ruthless oppression and murderous Aktionen in the communities they occupied. Vilna, with a Jewish population of approximately 55,000, was known as the Jerusalem of Lithuania for its flourishing Jewish culture and history. The Nazis soon changed that. As Kovner and 16 other members of the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsair hid in a convent of Dominican nuns a few miles outside of Vilna, the Nazis began to rid Vilna of its Jewish problem. The Killing Begins at Ponary Less than a month after the Germans occupied Vilna, they conducted their first Aktionen. Einsatzkommando 9 rounded up 5,000 Jewish men of Vilna and took them to Ponary (a location approximately six miles from Vilna that had pre-dug large pits, which the Nazis used as a mass extermination area for Jews from the Vilna area). The Nazis made the pretense that the men were to be sent to labor camps when they were really sent to Ponary and shot. The next major Aktion took place from August 31 to September 3. This Aktion was in pretense a retaliation for an attack against the Germans. Kovner, watching through a window, saw a woman dragged by the hair by two soldiers, a woman who was holding something in her arms. One of them directed a beam of light into her face, the other one dragged her by her hair and threw her on the pavement. Then the infant fell out of her arms. One of the two, the one with the flashlight, I believe, took the infant, raised him into the air, grabbed him by the leg. The woman crawled on the earth, took hold of his boot and pleaded for mercy. But the soldier took the boy and hit him with his head against the wall, once, twice, smashed him against the wall.1 Such scenes occurred frequently during this four-day Aktion - ending with 8,000 men and women taken to Ponary and shot. Life did not get better for the Jews of Vilna. From September 3 to 5, immediately following the last Aktion, the remaining Jews were forced into a small area of the city and fenced in. Kovner remembers, And when the troops herded the whole suffering, tortured, weeping mass of people into the narrow streets of the ghetto, into those seven narrow stinking streets, and locked the walls that had been built, behind them, everyone suddenly sighed with relief. They left behind them days of fear and horror; and ahead of them were deprivation, hunger and suffering - but now they felt more secure, less afraid. Almost no one believed that it would be possible to kill off all of them, all those thousands and tens of thousands, the Jews of Vilna, Kovno, Bialystok, and Warsaw - the millions, with their women and children.2 Though they had experienced terror and destruction, the Jews of Vilna were still not ready to believe the truth about Ponary. Even when a survivor of Ponary, a woman named Sonia, came back to Vilna and told of her experiences, no one wanted to believe. Well, a few did. And these few decided to resist. The Call to Resist In December 1941, there were several meetings between the activists in the ghetto. Once the activists had decided to resist, they needed to decide, and agree, on the best way to resist. One of the most urgent problems was whether they should stay in the ghetto, go to Bialystok or Warsaw (some thought there would be a better chance at successful resistance in these ghettos), or move to the forests. Coming to an agreement on this issue was not easy. Kovner, known by his nom de guerre of Uri, offered some of the main arguments for staying in Vilna and fighting. In the end, most decided to stay, but a few decided to leave. These activists wanted to instil a passion for fighting within the ghetto. To do this, the activists wanted to have a mass meeting with many different youth groups in attendance. But the Nazis were always watching, especially noticeable would be a large group. So, in order to disguise their mass meeting, they arranged it on December 31, New Years Eve, a day of many, many social gatherings. Kovner was responsible for writing a call to revolt. In front of the 150 attendees gathered together at 2 Straszuna Street in a public soup kitchen, Kovner read aloud: Jewish youth!Do not trust those who are trying to deceive you. Out of the eighty thousand Jews in the Jerusalem of Lithuania only twenty thousand are left. . . . Ponar [Ponary] is not a concentration camp. They have all been shot there. Hitler plans to destroy all the Jews of Europe, and the Jews of Lithuania have been chosen as the first in line.We will not be led like sheep to the slaughter!True, we are weak and defenseless, but the only reply to the murderer is revolt!Brothers! Better to fall as free fighters than to live by the mercy of the murderers.Arise! Arise with your last breath!3 At first, there was silence. Then the group broke out in spirited song.4 The Creation of the F.P.O. Now that the youth in the ghetto were enthused, the next problem was how to organize the resistance. A meeting was scheduled for three weeks later, January 21, 1942. At the home of Joseph Glazman, representatives from the major youth groups met together: Abba Kovner of Ha-Shomer ha-ZairJoseph Glazman of BetarYitzhak Wittenberg of the CommunistsChyena Borowska of the CommunistsNissan Reznik of Ha-Noar ha-Ziyyoni At this meeting something important happened - these groups agreed to work together. In other ghettos, this was a major stumbling block for many would-be resisters. Yitzhak Arad, in Ghetto in Flames, attributes the parleys by Kovner to the ability to hold a meeting with representatives of the four youth movements.5 It was at this meeting that these representatives decided to form a united fighting group called the Fareinikte Partisaner Organizatzie - F.P.O. (United Partisans Organization). The organization was formed to unite all the groups in the ghetto, prepare for mass armed resistance, perform acts of sabotage, fight with partisans, and try to get other ghettos to also fight. It was agreed at this meeting that the F.P.O. would be lead by a staff command made up of Kovner, Glazman, and Wittenberg with the chief commander being Wittenberg. Later, two more members were added to staff command - Abraham Chwojnik of the Bund and Nissan Reznik of the Ha-Noar ha-Ziyyoni - expanding the leadership to five. Now that they were organized it was time to prepare for the fight. The Preparation Having the idea to fight is one thing, but being prepared to fight is quite another. Shovels and hammers are no match to machine guns. Weapons needed to be found. Weapons were an extremely hard item to attain in the ghetto. Even harder to acquire was ammunition. There were two main sources from which the ghetto inhabitants could obtain guns and ammunition - partisans and the Germans. Neither wanted the Jews to be armed. Slowly collecting by buying or stealing, risking their lives every day for carrying or hiding, the members of the F.P.O. were able to collect a small stash of weapons. They were hidden all over the ghetto - in walls, underground, even under a false bottom of a water bucket. The resistance fighters were preparing to fight during the final liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto. No one knew when that was going to happen - it could be days, weeks, perhaps even months. So every day, the members of the F.P.O. practiced. One knock on a door - then two - then another single knock. That was the F.P.O.s secret password.6  They would take out the hidden weapons and learn how to hold it, how to shoot it, and how not to waste the precious ammunition. Everyone was to fight - no one was to head for the forest until all was lost. Preparation was ongoing. The ghetto had been peaceful - no Aktionen  since December 1941. But then, in July 1943, disaster struck the F.P.O. Resistance! At a meeting with the head of Vilnas Jewish council, Jacob Gens, on the night of July 15, 1943, Wittenberg was arrested. As he was taken out of the meeting, other F.P.O. members were alerted, attacked the policemen, and freed Wittenberg. Wittenberg then went into hiding. By the next morning, it was announced that if Wittenberg were not apprehended, the Germans would liquidate the entire ghetto - consisting of approximately 20,000 people. The ghetto residents were angry and began attacking F.P.O. members with stones. Wittenberg, knowing he was going to sure torture and death, turned himself in. Before he left, he appointed Kovner  as his successor. A month and a half later, the Germans decided to liquidate the ghetto. The F.P.O. tried to persuade the ghetto residents not to go for the deportation because they were being sent to their deaths. Jews! Defend yourselves with arms! The German and Lithuanian hangmen have arrived at the gates of the ghetto. They have come to murder us! . . . But we shall not go! We shall not stretch our necks like sheep for the slaughter! Jews! Defend yourself with arms!7 But the ghetto residents did not believe this, they believed they were being sent to work camps - and in this case, they were right. Most of these transports were being sent to labor camps in Estonia. On September 1, the first clash broke out between the F.P.O. and the Germans. As the F.P.O. fighters shot at the Germans, the Germans blew up their buildings. The Germans retreated at nightfall and let the Jewish police round up the remaining ghetto residents for the transports, at the insistence of Gens. The F.P.O. came to the realization that they would be alone in this fight. The ghetto population was not willing to rise up; instead, they were willing to try their chances at a labor camp rather than certain death in revolt. Thus, the F.P.O. decided to escape to the forests and become partisans. The Forest Since the Germans had the ghetto surrounded, the only way out was through the sewers. Once in the forests, the fighters created a partisan division and performed many acts of sabotage. They destroyed the power and water infrastructures, freed groups of prisoners from the Kalais labor camp, and even blew up some German military trains. I remember the first time I blew up a train. I went out with a small group, with Rachel Markevitch as our guest. It was New Years Eve; we were bringing the Germans a festival gift. The train appeared on the raised railway; a line of large, heavy-laden trucks rolled on toward Vilna. My heart suddenly stopped beating for joy and fear. I pulled the string with all my strength, and in that moment, before the thunder of the explosion echoed through the air, and twenty-one trucks full of troops hurtled down into the abyss, I heard Rachel cry: For Ponar! [Ponary]8 The End of the War Kovner survived to the end of the war. Though he had been instrumental in establishing a resistance group in Vilna and led a partisan group in the forests, Kovner did not stop his activities at the wars end. Kovner was one of the founders of the underground organization to smuggle Jews out of Europe called Beriha. Kovner was caught by the British near the end of 1945 and was jailed for a short time. Upon his release, he joined Kibbutz Ein ha-Horesh in Israel, with his wife, Vitka Kempner, who had also been a fighter in the F.P.O. Kovner kept his fighting spirit and was active in Israels War for Independence. After his fighting days, Kovner wrote two volumes of poetry for which he won the 1970 Israel Prize in Literature. Kovner died at age 69 in September 1987. Notes 1. Abba Kovner as quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985) 192.2. Abba Kovner, The Mission of the Survivors, The Catastrophe of European Jewry, Ed. Yisrael Gutman (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1977) 675.3. Proclamation of the F.P.O as quoted in Michael Berenbaum, Witness to the Holocaust (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1997) 154.4. Abba Kovner, A First Attempt to Tell, The Holocaust as Historical Experience: Essays and a Discussion, Ed. Yehuda Bauer (New York: Holmes Meier Publishers, Inc., 1981) 81-82.5. Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Ahva Cooperative Printing Press, 1980) 236.6. Kovner, First Attempt 84.7. F.P.O. Manifesto as quoted in Arad, Ghetto 411-412.8. Kovner, First Attempt 90. Bibliography Arad, Yitzhak. Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust. Jerusalem: Ahva Cooperative Printing Press, 1980. Berenbaum, Michael, ed. Witness to the Holocaust. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1997. Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985. Gutman, Israel, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan Library Reference U.S.A., 1990. Kovner, Abba. A First Attempt to Tell. The Holocaust as Historical Experience: Essays and a Discussion. Ed. Yehuda Bauer. New York: Holmes Meier Publishers, Inc., 1981. Kovner, Abba. The Mission of the Survivors. The Catastrophe of European Jewry. Ed. Yisrael Gutman. New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1977.

Why the father and son relationship in the plays Hamlet Oedipus and Essay

Why the father and son relationship in the plays Hamlet Oedipus and the King and Death of a Salesman were important to the tragedy of each play - Essay Example The most important scene in the play is the supernatural confrontation of Hamlet with the ghost of his dead father. It is this scene that erupts a volcano of tragic and deepest feelings and emotions in Hamlet. We are enlightened on the character Hamlet and the relationship he shared with his beloved father. In the conversation that takes place between the father and son, the deep and intense admiration that Hamlet has for his father is clearly exposed, in addition to the differences they encountered between them. These experiences accounted for Hamlets inability to neither act in a decisive manner nor find real or concrete moral truths in his world. In ‘Oedipus and the King’ Oedipus was cursed due to the sin of his father and from birth it was prophesized that he would kill his father and would marry his mother. The Oracle had said – Lord of Thebes, do not sow a furrow of children against the will of the gods; for if you beget a son, that child will kill you, and all your house shall wade through blood." (The Oracle of Delphi to Laius  1. Euripides, Phoenician Women 20).To avoid such a catastrophe Oedipus leaves Corinth never to return again. But unfortunately, Oedipus had accidently killed his father after he confronted him on a narrow road and refused to let him pass, and following the solving of the riddle of the Sphinx was crowned the king of Thebes and unwittingly got married to his mother. In ‘Death of a Salesman’ by Arthur Miller, the author brings out the agony and angst of the middle-class in America who were trapped in a world of illusion. Everyone dreamed of the American Dream and wished to achieve it at any cost. The protagonist of Miller’s story is Willy Loman, a man in his sixties who seemed to be chasing the American Dream. Though he worked hard, he gradually understood that the dream was nothing but an illusion which he had been breathlessly pursuing all along. The