Leader that Influence Me Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Leader that Influence Me - Essay Example In short, without the presence of these role models, the lives of many people would totally be different. Â   My social studies teacher, Mrs. Catalina Mors, had a massive impact on my life. In my opinion, she is one of the friendliest people I have met in my entire life. I met her in my first year in high school, a time when my life was almost split into microscopic pieces. Having come from a broken family, I felt that being in high school was a way that my mother had invented to do away with me. I felt that no one cared if I existed or not and thought that I had no role to play in the world rang in my mind every second of my existence. Mrs. Catalina, I have learnt to call her Mrs. Memento, for her reminding me of good things in life, has been of great assistance to me. From her comforting words that gave me hope in life, I managed to come out of my depression and learn to accept sever situations in life. I relate my high self esteem from her counseling sessions that I went unconsciously every afternoon. At times, I would find my self in her company for over two hours with no complaints that her working day was over. Apart from being polite and well refined, Mrs. Catalina acted as a role model to many. Her code of conduct had no traces of ‘stains’ that some her age mate colleagues had. Being 23 years old and a teacher of boys, it is thought that younger teachers- beautiful like her- face numerous challenges in their careers. Some are even forced to jeopardize their careers, for failure to handle challenging situations in their job. Mrs. Catalina gained first-rate praise from all students, majority of whom, wanted to have a mature and reasonable life like hers. In my case, Mrs. Catalina has assisted me in making tangible decisions in life and focus on the future regardless of the situation at hand. I am able to deal with parents’ divorce with the

Kite Runner Essay Example for Free

Kite Runner Essay Hassan Amirs best childhood friend. He was often bullied by Assef and his followers Kamal and Wali. He was Alis son even though later in the novel, it is revealed that he is truly the son of Baba and Amirs brother. Late in the book, they allow us to know by saying that there is a special closeness that people who fed from the same breasts share. He was poorly educated and stood up for what he believed in, even if it meant dying for it. He always stood up for Amir no matter what the consequence, even if its him being raped. In the end of the novel, he does get shot for not giving up Amirs property after he had moved to America. Amir The main character who is the son of Baba. His mother died during childbirth. He always holds himself responsible and wonders what things would be like if his mother had not died. He has always looked up to Baba and wondered why Baba is so distant with his emotions. He befriended Hassan as a child and they became inseparable. He was educated and read to Hassan often but every so often he did become a victim of peer pressure and bullied Hassan even though Hassan would always stand up for him. Assef The bully in Amir and Hassans childhood story. He thought he was better than them both and always referred to Hassan as a Hazara, and wonders why Amir hangs out with him. Amir is a Pashtun which are referred to as the Real Afghans He later grew up to be a part of the extremist group called the Taliban and tried to control the people of Afghanistan. He ruled a trafficking system that Amir later saved a child from. Baba Amirs father who only wanted a better life for his son. Baba always tried to make Amir stand up for himself and tried to make his son be more like him. Baba is a very noble and well respected man, is not able to connect, nor understand his twelve year old son, Amir. This lack of understanding, leads to Baba not being able to satisfy the needs of Amir, as a father should. Baba is very renowned for being a rich but generous man in Kabul. With his wealth he does great things, he built an orphanage and often gives money to the poor, for this most people respect him. Baba is definitely an admirable man in most of his actions but he has some flaws just like everyone else does. One of Babas faults is his fathering skills, which he has little of, if any. As a single parent Baba tries to connect with Amir, but struggles deeply to find any common interests as they are very different people. He treated Ali as a brother and Hassan as a son (even though Hassan was his other son). He was intelligent and supported Amir. Amir and Baba were very close as father and son and had a strong bond that even in later life did not break. Rahim Khan He is Babas close friend and partner in business. He is also a mentor to Amir as he is growing up. Rahim Khan is constantly being a good listener for Amir and always asks to read Amirs stories. Rahim is a good man, and is always the voice of reason. After Amir leaves for America, he still wants Amir to be the man that Baba dreamed of him being. Soraya- is Amirs wife and because she is a woman in an Afghan society, her social status is significantly lower than a mans. She has a rather scandalous past that is talked about as gossip, but she points out that it would be different if she were a man in the same society. She stays the obedient daughter to her father for most of the novel even though their opinions clash sometimes. For example, she reads Amirs story even though her father forbids it. She wants to stand up to her father at the end of the novel when he worrys about what people will think when they find out she is living with a Hazara child. Instead of letting her stand up to her father, Amir stands up for his nephew and does it himself. Soraya is a character to represent the status of woman in a normal Afghan society which is a very low social status. Summary Amir is a young traditional Afghanistan boy that lives in Kabul. As child he is a kite runner with his friend Hassan who is also his servant. His father Baba dreams of a bigger and better life outside of Kabul. They soon leave for America and after leaving, Amit meets his bride to be Soraya (who was also from Afghanistan). They marry and live happily but Baba passes away. Amir gets an unexpected call from Rahim Khan telling him to come back and he is told that Hassan was shot by the Taliban and that he was Amirs brother and he had a son named Sohrab. Amir then goes to find his nephew but realized the Taliban has taken him into a trafficking system. Amir goes to save him and discovers that Assef is the one who had taken him. He then rescues Sohrab and takes him back to America to live without fear.

English Literature Essay Example for Free

English Literature Essay Any debate of the English novel through the Romantic era essentially begins and ends in inconsistency, particularly when one also thinks curricular, instructive and canonical matters as they are mirrored in undergraduate and graduate course assistance at colleges and universities. First, the main remarkably canonised era of mid-era, Jane Austen, is usually observed more as a modern eighteenth-century era than as a definitively Romantic one. Next, possibly the most productive of the era, Sir Walter Scott rarely appears in any but the most comprehensive or sequentially constrained reviews of the English novel. Third, the occurrence of Mary Shelleys permanently well-liked Frankenstein in the educational prospectus often replicates on one hand the longing to take in women more obviously in the standard, and on the other the desire amid numerous teacher/scholars to leave their subjects in Romantic poetry with an available work of writing style fiction whose resemblances with that poetry are equally clear and convincing. Ultimately, Gothic novels, whose flourish of fame peaked through the Romantic era, are normally demoted to the fringe of the fiction sight, their existence recognized by the fictional-significant equal of the addition at family vacation meals of the poor family members who have to eat in the back room. In brief, the Romantic novel has regularly appeared to be a non-body devoid evenly of noticeably thriving practitioners and of any definable keen readership, either two hundred years ago or nowadays. When Frances Burney in 1778, published her first novel, Evelina, her foreword believes a male voice, and, though it admits that eras are usually contempt, inquires that this novel should be read in view of Rousseau, Johnson, Marivaux, Fielding, Richardson and Smollett, a pantheon which unites knowledge expressiveness pitiable powers humour and hilarity (and, certainly, personifies these virtues within an completely masculine authority) (Burney, 1970). Merely 23 years afterwards in 1801, Maria Edgeworths alike foreword to her early novel Belinda results a civilizing sea-change. Similar to Burney, Edgeworth is apprehensive concerning maintaining the eminence of an era, calling the scripture but a moral Tale. Not like Burney, though, Edgeworth writes unmistakably as a woman, and permits her name to show on the title page. Like Burney, she commands up in her own hold up a pantheon of precursors, but as Burney refuges at the back of affectionate power, Edgeworths pantheon is comprised of â€Å"Dr Moore ,Madame de Crousaz, Mrs Inchbald, Miss Burney, and Mrs Inchbald. An innovative representation of female authorship and certainly authority has appeared: and the author who most assisted this new representation was Burney herself. The publication of Evelina and its two descendants, Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796), established Burneys status as an epoch whose effort was not only enjoyable but also, significantly, ethically sound. La Belle Assemblà ©e in 1806 admires her as equally a pragmatist and a moralist, presenting an accurate picture of life in a realistic form. These identical assertions are constantly heard in talks of Burney. The 13 year old Elizabeth Benger in The Female Geniad admires Burney for a novel art which [e]ngages curiosity, and affects the heart, and for humour, wit and satire, but most significantly, Throughout the whole, morality presides, / Fair purity, the pen of Burney guides (Benger: 51). Robert Bissets anti-Jacobin Douglas: or, the Highlander dedicates a complete chapter to an appraisal of Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Smith and Burney. Burney suggested initially just for not being a democrat (Bisset: III, 304), but is afterwards more generously admired for deep insight into human nature (Bisset: III, 311), and most momentous lessons of the best ethics and morals, tending to make the reader wiser, stronger and better (Bisset: III, 312). Bisset ends that where Radcliffe was mainly renowned by liveliness of fancy and Smith by softness of feeling, Burneys unique characters are depth, strength, and completeness of perceptive (Bisset: III, 315). Eighteenth-century England was a mans world. Englishmen did not pretend otherwise, would it have not happened as such. They accepted their authority as result of the natural order. Men governed the nation, made and dispensed its laws, and controlled its purse strings. They wholeheartedly embraced as their national symbol the figure of John Bull, a lusty, blunt and gruff, beef-eating yeoman whose very name suggests the stereotypical ideal of male power. More than a sheer picture to be employed for polemical purposes on the international scene, this dominating national self-image revealed the values and principles that motivated the British nation. According to the historian Linda Colley: There was a sensein which the British envisioned themselves as a basically masculine society-pretend, up-front, logical, and realistic to the degree of becoming philistine bogged down in an everlasting opposition with an basically effeminate France delicate, rationally deceitful, overwhelmed with high style, fine cooking and manners, and so fanatical towards sex that boudoir politics was made to guide it. (Colley, 1992, p. 252) Such attitudes assured the marginalisation of women in public life. Exclusion, perhaps, might be a more suitable phrase. In the arts, excluding literature, women were virtually nonexistent; few names, indeed, have made their way into the histories of painting, sculpture, music, or architecture for the period. Even in literature their contributions were and lasted to be for a long time either denigrated or ignored. Until near the closing of the century, women writers drew scornful comments from male contemporaries. The writing misses of Gothic legends at the ending of the century remained targets for scathing comments that rated their work on a par with that of printers devils. The very character of a feminine author was the object of suspicion. All but ostracised from the arts, women were no more present in the judiciary, politics, science, industry, or business. They simply had no vacancy in the common world of eighteenth-century men whose very retreats from their laboursclubs, taverns, and coffeehouses-were sanctuaries free of the presence of the feminine gender. If ones self-image helps determine success in life, eighteenth-century women were clearly doomed to failure. Wherever they turned in their society, they were found to be shown as weak and defenceless creatures, occupied mainly with the most frivolous activities, and dependent, like pets or children, upon men for support and guidance. Their silliness called for gentle chiding; their extravagance demanded sterner reproaches; and their emotional excesses, particularly suggestive of sexual feelings, called forth the severest rebukes. Periodicals and conduct books especially present a clear and no doubt dependable view of the image of women, an image created by men but generally shared by both genders in the society. As early as Joseph Addison and Richard Steele Spectator, periodical writers portray the feminine gender as attractive but essentially weak-minded, victims of foolishness, fashion, and vanity, the perfect targets for the new consumerism that Englishmen saw as a danger to the national character. Lord Chesterfield would keep women from business affairs since he regarded them as children of a larger growth. Jonathan Swift dismissed the sex as mindless, while Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, with obvious frustration, plainly enunciates the general assessment of her sisterhood: Folly is reckoned our proper sphere. So it must have been. Even those who were friendly to the gender and concerned with their welfare thought that feminine gender was an inferior species in need of male protection, defence even, from male predators since they lacked the qualities to thrive in a masculine world. John Duntons Athenian Mercury, particularly appreciative of the talents of feminine writers, nevertheless in more worldly matters saw women in conventional social and religious terms. In the Connoisseur George Colman and Bonnell Thornton, writers concerned with championing women authors, repeatedly take the gender to task for behaviour best described as immature and childish. Ridiculing womens use of cosmetics, the Connoisseur focuses on feminine vanity, the dangers of their emotionalism, and their petty concerns for gambling and party-going. The effect of this paternalistic image might be observed in the work of, among the strongest and most daring women writers of the period, Eliza Haywood, whose Female Spectator proves no less patronizing toward women than the works of the male writers already cited. Indeed, it is difficult to distinguish between Haywoods treatment of her gender and the suggestion given in a conduct book, The Ladies Calling that admonished a woman to live in a submissive selflessness consonant with her congenital incapacities. Although written seventy years after the conduct book, the interests in Haywoods courtesy periodical do not vary basically from those of her male predecessor. Her topics are love and marriage, parent-child relationships, feminine education, moral and social decorum; her views, despite her reputation as a scandalous writer, prove as conventional as those in The Ladies Calling, and, indeed, differ little from those of the host of male courtesy writers who preceded her. If someone like Haywood could be influenced by the pervasive male view of women in the prints, the evidence suggests that she was not alone even among the strongest in her gender. Elizabeth Brophy has demonstrated how the conduct books shaped womens own view of themselves whether in terms of their natural abilities, their emotional and intellectual weaknesses, or the dangers of their being overeducated. Looking at womens writing about themselves and their gender, it is not simple to distinguish how much of the portrait plays up to male expectations, how much in various subtle ways attempts to undermine the masculine view, or how much represents an acceptance of male definitions of womanhood (Todd, 1989, 9-10). Even the many fine women novelists of the century, rediscovered by feminist critics and publishers, indicate the enormous pressures on them to conform personally and professionally to male and indeed feminine expectations of women and their subject matter. Whatever may be traced to genuine gender differences, social conventions, and marketplace demands, these women were constantly made aware of their gender and limitations on it (Rogers, 1977, 64-65, 78). For example, whatever her considerable abilities as a translator, Elizabeth Carter could be comically but nonetheless seriously praised by Samuel Johnson on her equally fine ability to make a pudding. For all her intellectual talents, Carter, and many others like her had to know that in the male-dominant world they had a limited and very well-defined sphere. Given this paternalistic view of womens characterwhose very virtues appear designed to serve mens needsthe sphere for feminine activity would have to be very restricted in its boundaries. Women, after all, had inherent weaknesses, limited powers of reasoning, and emotions too easily stirred by the vapours from the womb. Men seriously regarded women as incompetent to perform the important tasks of society, too frivolous and whimsical to be trusted in serious endeavour: on the huge stage of the world, men were intended to be performers, while women were intended to remain silently and respectfully behind the curtain until called upon by men. From this point of view, women appear not simply inferior to men but creatures of a different order on natures chain of being. (Perry, 1992, 190) Yet the very things that men sensed kept women obviously out of the larger political and social prospect made them unusual in another sphere of life, one important for mens comfort, security, fortunes, and progeny. Those qualities of charitableness, compassion, submissiveness, and piety were icons of the household. Women in the domestic setting served a masculine society as totems of family values, of stability, of purity, of concern, and of loyalty. Affectionate marriages replacing the traditional contract alliances suggest mens recognition that they had to satisfy their emotional needs through matrimony. Certainly there was greater gratification in the romantic relationship than in the bleak ties of a loveless arrangement (Stone, 1977, pp. 4, 5, 7, 119; Hagstrum, 1980, pp. 1-2). Superficially, at least, it would feel like there was some type of triumph for womanhood in this new companionate marriage and its implications for greater authority at least in the household. It would seem not a bad trade-off for women who generally conceded their intellectual inferiority to men. It did, after all, give women sway in household matters more than they ever. It allowed them to act with enough guile to reignby insinuating ways so long as they maintained their customary mildness and cheerfulness.† For a lot of women the progress of the affectionate marriage, the regal control over the household, and the idealisation of womanhood that accompanied it must surely have been satisfying whatsoever the cost in having to deny the full intellect and sexuality of ones nature. For such women, words like William Alexanders in 1779 would have sounded comforting rather than annoying: As women are, in polished society, weak and incapable of self-defence, the laws of this country have supplied this defect, and formed a kind of barrier around them, by rendering their per  sons so sacred and inviolable, that even death is, in several cases, the consequence of taking improper advantage of that weakness. As the eighteenth century advanced, whatever their feelings, more and more the sphere of women became clearly the domestic workplace (LeGates, 1976, 21), and woman was idealised by man unless vanished all truly human qualities are vanished except those required to serve mens needs. Surely, however, there were women who would have recognised what Janet Todd labels as belittling idealisation in Alexanders words. Sheryl ODonnell describes such views as patriarchal notions of women as highly venerated inferior beings. Companionate marriage itself, Ruth Perry suggests, may be understandable as a more systematic psychological requisition of women to fulfil the emotional needs of men, a harsh judgment but not altogether untrue. Not all eighteenth-century women could have found pleasure in the notion that marriage was the be-all and end-all of their existence. As far back as Millamant in William Congreve Way of the World, the drawbacks of the marital state provided material for a womans lament; Charlotte Lennox Arabella in The Female Quixote most assuredly recognised the consequence of marriage on women, a good example of the anger that bubble below womens forced surface complacency. Domestic idealism could have had little appeal to the unmarried woman without prospects or to the intellectual female expected to hide her learning from an easily affronted male ego. Information that domestic responsibilities rated higher than intellectual interests could hardly have pleased the Bluestockings, however well they learned to play the game of self-effacement in a male society. Still, in the beginning and ending years in the time period from 1660 to 1800, female voices of protest were limited in a patriarchal society, and no great chorus joined such soloists as Mary Astell, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Mary Wollstonecraft. If the companionate marriage undoubtedly brought greater passion to the marital state itself, it did nothing to enlarge the sense and possibility of female sexuality in the general society. In fact, in some ways the marriage of affection demanded new or increased insistence on female chastity before and after the wedding. To be sure, the dual criterion in sexual matters willingly acknowledged that men bring sexual knowledge to the marriage bed. With the view of the womans superior morality, her idealisation as a symbol of maternal tenderness, and her embodiment of Christian virtues, however, came a demand for purity, both physical and mental. Idealisation merely brought the upper-and middle-class woman to a point where she was expected to deny her genuine emotionseither to suppress her passions or, at least, pretends that they did not exist. None of this, of course, applied to women of the lower orders. They were regarded as morally and socially inferior, not in control of their passions, and natural game for the male sex-hunter, particularly of the established classes. No better example of the double standard exists than the marital relationship of Samuel Johnsons friends, the Thrales. Henry Thrale, the brewer, carried on illicit relationships throughout his marriage to Hester Thrale. As a consequence of his behaviour, he suffered repeated venereal ailments, the treatment of which became, in part, his wifes responsibility even during a pregnancy. Still, no one in their society, and even Hester Thrales twentieth-century male biographer, found Henry Thrales conduct appalling. Indeed, like other males in their circle (Boswell, of course, is a good example); Henry Thrale, certainly, have his suffering as a sign of the nobility of his virility. His friends looked upon such manhood, if not the consequence, as admirable. Yet, when her husband died and Mrs. Thrale married Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian musician, she scandalised her circle of friendsincluding the novelist Fanny Burneynot simply because Piozzi was an Italian Catholic and a musician, but because in choosing him despite these drawbacks she had displayed a passion unbecoming to a woman of her times. She had placed her romantic feelings, her sexual desires, above the common sense expected of the now desexualised respectable woman. In every way society had made women citizens of another country. The double standard allowed men to cheat freely on their wives while demanding impeccable fidelity from them. For upper-class men to foist bastards on lower-class women, including their own household servants, brought neither shame nor embarrassment to them. If they chose to pay for the upkeep of these children, that was evidence of their generosity. If idealisation had made married women beings devoid of normal human emotions, the very laws of their country turned them into chattel, the property of their husbands. Let a woman fall from grace, and it required a miracle or at least a generous-hearted novelist to rescue her from utter destruction. Once having yielded to her passions, she was regarded as appropriate victim for all other males in her society. Even at the lower levels of society, the disparity of the sexes is evident, for example, in such a thing as the notorious practice of wife-selling in the period. Despite a recent attempt to apologise for it as a poor mans system of divorce and to show that women frequently found satisfaction in it (Thompson, 1991), the fact remains that it was the selling of wives and not husbands that characterised the procedure. Like the very system that excluded women from the public sphere, the terms of more personal relationships removed women from intimate relationships with men. Given the circumstances of women in eighteenth century society, it is not remarkable that they cut such poor figures in the novels of the period. One way or another, they were perceived by male writers as stereotypes: idealised heroines, fallen figures, comic and grotesque old maids, bluestockings, sexy servants, and the like. It would require the talents and sensitivity of the most unusual male writeror, indeed, femaleto get beyond the facade and thus create as well-rounded female characters as the believable heroes of eighteenth-century fiction. Very much a part of that male-dominant society of eighteenth-century England, Tobias Smollett could be likely considering women from that limited perspective. Indeed, it would be hard to identify a writer in the period more likely to display an example of the masculine sensibility. Even more than Henry Fielding, the contemporary novelist that he is most similar to, Smollett wrote novel that has, from his era to the present, appealed largely to male readers. Whether in his personal life, his attitude toward women in the real world, his generic literary interests, or the interrelationships among them, the forces shaping Smolletts novels led naturally to the small roles acted by caricatured women in his writing. Clearly, from whatever stance it has been written, critical opinion has consistently denied Smolletts ability to deal with women and their emotions. Feminist critics find his work insignificant for their purposes, contrast his blindness to female sensitivities with Samuel Richardsons awareness of womens feelings, and charge him with a misunderstanding and respect for the opposite sex. More traditional evaluations of Smolletts treatment, from early on and regardless of the gender of the writers, prove equally dismissive of his talent for dealing with women, their feelings, or their relationships with men. When Smolletts female characters are not being ignored, they are discussed for their eccentricities, their absence of reality, or their evidence of the authors paternalistic attitudes. Their very presence in Smolletts work and their treatment are attributed to the writers need to satisfy public taste rather than to any genuine personal interest in them. Whether as stereotypical idealised heroines or comic grotesques, Smolletts women are perceived only in relation to the roles they serve to satisfy his heroes needs. Certainly, neither Smollett’s life nor fiction displays the kind of sensitivity to womens emotions that would permit him to create heroines that go much beyond the idealisation that makes their sexual passions anything more than a convenience to gratify their husbands desires. If he achieves a sense of sympathy for the situation of fallen women in a character like Miss Williams in Roderick Random, her tale and its emotions are largely written to formulaic stereotypes. The distance between the fictional conventions in her story and the more revealing inset of Memoirs of a Lady of Quality in Peregrine Pickle reveals the contrast between masculine assumptions and genuine feminine sensitivities. Smollett feels most secure in his comic or grotesque female characters because they dependdespite his superior skillson conventional stereotypes that protect him from having to go too deeply into their emotions. After all, affectionate awareness toward women should barely be expected from a novelist capable of repeatedly harsh treatment of Jews (with the exception of Joshua in Ferdinand Count Fathom) and of blacks in both Roderick Random and Humphry Clinker. The wonder of it is that Smollettfor all his limitationsmanaged to generate so much diversity in his female characters of all types. That fact suggests the importance of talent and the effects of function in fiction. Smolletts limitations begin with his personal experience. Some sense of what can be expected in Smolletts female characters, especially his heroines, becomes evident in an inspection of his real relationships and associations with women. Although the much time has passed when simple biographical criticism could be freely used to explain works of literature that does not mean that an authors life is so distinct from his or her writing that biographical material cannot contribute to a better understanding of how and why the writers fiction takes the shape that it does. The authors interests, values, and experiences, after all, account for choice in subject matter, methods of presentation, and objects of focus. If, for example, a writer regards women in a particular way, that attitude is expected to influence his or her treatment of female characters. If a writer concentrates on a hero rather than a heroines activities and interests, then it is likely to be the hero who dominates the work while women play minor or subsidiary roles. For Smollett especially, since he depended too much on his own experiences and sought to bring to his fiction a genuine sense of the actual world as he perceived it, the facts of his biography as they bear upon his relationships to women seem appropriate. (Beasley, 1982, pp. 74ff. 82-83) Given Smolletts dependence on experience and his associations with women, it is not astonishing that he opts for the picaresque mode for his novels, that he emphasizes the adventures of a single male character, and that he utilizes his imagined women chiefly as adjuncts to the interests of his heroes. Smolletts biography, particularly his personal and emotional relationships with women, discloses a strongly male personality, even for an eighteenth-century man that forecasts the manner in which female characters appear in his novels-novels, after all, entitled Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle rather than Pamela or Clarissa. Judged by what we know of Smolletts relationship with his spouse, he was a man who, if he had romantic passion, managed very well to control any expression of it. At a time when a new order of familial connections had become well established and affection between marital partners was the norm, Smolletts biography and work reflect no real tendency to an open expression of romantic feelings toward Nancy (Anne) Lassells, the West Indian heiress whom he married in about 1743. That very doubt about their wedding date suggests the manner in which Smollett chose to expose his personal feelings to the world. The same vagueness marks the place of their marriage, and Smolletts earliest biographersthose, after all, closest to the evidence and one a good friendcould provide no help on the matter and had to resort to creating imaginary details about it and about Anne herself. Like the idealised heroines of romance, Smolletts wife, as presented by him, seems little more than a fictional construction existing for the role she played in the life of the hero. Smolletts taciturnity about his most intimate relationship with a woman seems to mask what strongly appears to have been a good marriage. No evidence of other womenbefore or during their marriageexists anywhere in Smolletts biography, an absence that perhaps helps account for the lack of any concreteness in his portrayal of the emotional lives of most of his heroines. Certainly Smollett never indicates any dissatisfaction with their relationship. The one statement in a letter to Robert Barclay in 1744 that enigmatically expresses Smolletts uncertain state at the time may refer, as Lewis Knapp suggests, to Smolletts financial insecurity. Characteristically, Smollett holds back on the details. Smollett himself, years later in his Will, gives an apparent portrait of his considerations of Anne. Although Knapp says of the document, Through the legal terminology of [it] there burns the flame ofhis true affection for his wife, its formality speaks more to her generosity than to any strong emotion on his part. The novelist who could readily give vent to passions of anger and revenge in both life and fiction could not easily find words to describe the romantic emotions of love. Unlike Henry Mackenzie, his fellow Scots novelist, Smollett could not employ the vocabulary of a man of feeling. Even in his Will he can come up with no stronger language than my dear Wife Anne Smollett. When Dr. Giovanni Gentili, after Smolletts death, summarised the life of the Smolletts as one of perfect harmony, he appears to be seeing the relationship through Smolletts own stoical sensibility. That same stoicism did not characterize Anne. The few documents of hers we have reveal not only an intelligent and informed woman but also physically powerful touching association in their matrimony in spite of her husbands incapability forever to find suitable words to explain it. Certainly, for all that is recognized of Smolletts touching eruption of annoyance with others, it seems that he knew reasonably well not to vent his ill temper in opposition to his spouse, or, at any rate, she knew well as to how to deal with him in a matrimony that provides no proof that he ever mislaid her warmth. Like Smollett, she could explode when circumstances called for it, but unlike him she could find a tender phrase to express her feelings of love and did not falter in doing so. In a letter to Archibald Hamilton in 1773, she displays a fairly close familiarity with her husbands work and a good understanding of literature. Protective of her husbands reputation, she pushes, ultimately successfully, for a monument to his memory. She enquires that his volumes be transferred to her. She bemoans how much that Dear Man Suffered while he wrote Humphry Clinker during his terminal illness and how miss-used he was by his publisher. For her he was my dear Smollett, and, as their friend Robert Graham wrote in a prologue to a play for her benefit, she was capable of weeping for the loss of Smollet [sic] [who] once was mine! Only once does Smollett himself provide a picture of their blissful marriage. In an undated fragment of a letter, he writes: Many a time do I stop my task and betake me to a game of romps with Betty [Elizabeth, his daughter), while my wife looks on smiling and longing in her heart to join in the sport; then back to the cursed round of duty. The round of duty is Smolletts, not Annes, and she remains, like women of her time, an appendage to her husband. In Smolletts letters, poetry, and Travels Through France and Italy, the same picture emerges. Perhaps it is unfair to use his letters as evidence. Smollett’s routine was too hectic to apprehend himself with writing letters, and generally they are perfunctory and business-like, hardly the place to expect much emotional expression, let alone romantic effusions. If any were ever written to Anne herself, they no longer exist. References to her are few: regards to a family member and friends, a comment about selling part of her estate, the puzzling remark to Barclay perhaps about his trepidations about marriage, and a comment on her health. In a letter to Richard Smith, an American admirer, in 1763, however, Smollett summarizes his life and describes his marriage. To be sure, it would be remarkable if Smollett displayed his emotions in a letter to a stranger. Nevertheless, his comment illustrates again his characteristic coldness in his references to Anne: I married, very young, Jamaican, a young Lady famous and respected across the world, under the name of Miss Nancy Lassells; and by her I enjoy a relaxing though modest area in that Island. The coldness of Smolletts language and what he chooses to say are a remarkable foreshadowing of the descriptive terms in his Will. Even in a letter to his friend Alexander Reid after the Smolletts had lost their only child, Smollett, while speaking of his grief in a half a sentence, ignores altogether the impact on Anne and only later speaks of his wife as enjoy[ing] pretty good Health. Not even in poetry apparently concentrated on Anne does Smollett manage to convey romantic emotion. His novels show him to be passionateabout injustice, personal grievance, stupidity, and the like. In the poem Tears of Scotland on the outrageous treatment of the Scots after the Battle of Culloden, he does not hold back on his feelings, and in Ode to Leven-Water in Humphry Clinker he explode forward into over-romantic reminiscence. And yet neither A Declaration in Love: Ode to Blue-Eyd Ann nor his Pastoral Ballad (both published in his British Magazine in 1760) rises above the variety of part conservative in his era or proffers everything close to profound feeling. The ode, probably a relic of his courtship, seems rescued from a pile of old papers to serve as filler in his new magazine. The ballad, a stock part, has no value save for the detail that it is almost certainly Smolletts. Neither has the strength or passion that suggests genuine emotion. Nor was it likely that Smolletts poems would be open declarations of his deepest romantic feelings. When Lord George Lyttelton published his openly sentimental monody on the death of his wife, Smollett responded with a savage parody in Peregrine Pickle. Smollett was no Lyttelton, nor was he like the later Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who cast the inscribed poems into the grave of his wife, Elizabeth Siddall. If Roderick Randoms two poems to the heroine of his novel (225-27) or the poet Melopoyns, in which Roderick substitutes her name for the characters, were inspired by Smolletts feelings for Anne (and the novel was, after all, written only a few years after their marriage), it would be a sign of his sentiments, romantic feelings that he otherwise managed to keep well hidden. For Smollett, womeneven the woman to whom he was closestwere attendant upon men just as the heroines of his novels served to fill out mens stories and adventures. They were observed, when they were observed, from the outside. Consider the character that Anne has in Travels Through France and Italy. Although she was present throughout the journey, she seems barely to exist. According to Knapp, the references to Anne in the Travels signified that the author was affectionately dedicated to his Ann. In a paternalistic way that is factual, but it is even more to the note to point that the minute part that she participates in the work hands out the reasons of the performer, the male explorer who is the focal point of the books concentration. Smolletts strong masculine sensibility so evident in his marital relationship was bound to affect his treatment of female characters in his novels. That same sensibility apparently influenced his relationship with women in the society outside his home, and that, too, would help account for his fictional approach to members of the other sex, especially limiting his ability to go below the surface of his female characters to develop their emotions and to understand their sensibilities. No other major male writer in the period seems so restricted in his association with women, particularly in social situations. References Beasley, Jerry C. (1982) â€Å"Novels of the 1740s† Athens: University of Georgia Press, pp. 74ff. 82-83 Burney, Frances. (1970) â€Å"Evelina; or, a Young Ladys Entrance into the World†, ed. Edward A. Bloom. London: Oxford University Press: 7, 9. Colley, Linda (1992), Britons Forging the Nation 1707-1837, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 252 Hagstrum, Jean H. (1980), Sex and Sensibility: Ideal and Erotic Love from Milton to Mozart, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-2. LeGates, Marlene (Fall 1976) The Cult of Womanhood in Eighteenth-Century Thought, Eighteenth-Century Studies 10: 21 Perry, Ruth (Feb. 1992) Colonizing the Breast: Sexuality and Maternity in Eighteenth Century England, Eighteenth-Century Life 16, n.s. 1: 190. Rogers, Katharine M. (Fall 1977) Inhibitions in Eighteenth-Century Women Novelists: Elizabeth Inch bald and Charlotte Smith, Eighteenth-Century Studies 11: 64-65, 78. Stone, Lawrence (1977), The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, New York: Harper and Row, pp. 4, 5, 7, 119 Thompson, E. P.   (1991), Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New York: The New Press, Ch. 7. Todd, Janet The Sign of Angellica: Women; Writing, and Fiction, 1660-1800 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), pp. 9-10.

The Use Of Ict In The Airline Industry Tourism Essay

The Use Of Ict In The Airline Industry Tourism Essay Abstract This essay throws light on the use of ICT in the airline industry and what impacts developments in ICT have made on the said industry. The essay highlights the role of ICTs in enhancing airlines capability to interact with customers, reducing the operational costs, increasing the convenience for making reservations, managing air traffic, administering the crew and airport staff, improving the passengers in-flight experience, maximizing airlines revenue by variable fares, improving security standards, promoting partnerships and alliances among airlines, integrating value added services. It has been argued that automation increases efficiency but human factor is yet very important in personifying the customer experience. Introduction to the Airline Industry An airline provides air transport services for passengers and/or freight. Commercial operations of airlines date back to early 1900s, however, evidence of increase in operations is found after World War I. Over the years, airline as an industry has grown tremendously. It has facilitated economic growth, world trade, foreign investment, tourism and has played a significant role in globalization of industries. Full-service airlines have a high level of fixed and operating costs in order to establish and maintain air services: labor, fuel, airplanes, engines, spares and parts, IT services and networks, airport equipment, airport handling services, sales distribution, catering, training,  aviation insurance etc. Keeping in view such high costs and complex nature of operations, it is essential for airline companies to take advantage of ICTs to carry out operations smoothly and optimize expenses. Use of ICT in the Airline Industry Technology is dramatically and profoundly changing the nature of services. Technology is also profoundly changing how services are delivered, and it is enabling both customers and employees to get and provide better, more efficient, customized services. These changes have significant implications for managing service operations as well as for predicting and managing consumer behavior. Impact of Developments of ICT on Operations of Airline Industry In the text below, major operations of the airline and airports have been discussed. It has been analyzed that how the developments in the ICT have impacted the processes of the said industry. The developments in the ICT have significantly influenced the way Airlines interact with customer, develop loyalty programmes and implement customer retention strategies. Few developments to enhance the passengers in-flight experience have also been made. Interaction with Customers The proliferation of internet and World Wide Web has made it enormously convenient for the organizations to interact with their customers. Internet has provided a very economical way of interacting with customers, has reduced distribution costs, and has increased the profit margin by direct selling. Internet has also served as a purveyor of information about travel. Carriers everywhere have embraced online ticket sales as a means of reducing distribution costs. Travelers now have the opportunity and convenience to compare price and service offerings of all airlines quickly and efficiently, and to act on those comparisons instantly with only a few keystrokes. McIvor et al. (2003), present analysis of four airline companies and their use of internet to provide innovative interaction and transactional mechanisms with customers. They state that internet has increased the expectations of customers for the services and service delivery. In fact, the internet has become essential to the strategic development of the airline companies. They further argue that the scope and boundaries of the airline industry have become less clear as a result of the adoption of internet technologies at the customer interface. The offering of a range of products and services is creating industry convergence. Exploitation of the internet at the customer interface has become a key catalyst in the transformation of the airline industry. In the past, airlines have been selling their product (i.e. an airline seat) through travel agents. The travel agents competitive position was based on exploiting the information insufficiency at the customer end. However, nowadays, the website of the Airline makes customer autonomous to decide on the fares, routes and various services associated. The internet enables airlines to build a direct and superior relationship with customers. In this era, the airlines site support complete automation of the booking process and limits the need for human intervention. Airlines are extensively investing and utilizing the Internet to further undermine the travel agents which has also resulted in improved process efficiency. Furthermore, removal of the travel agent layer has reduced transaction costs and has enhanced the relationship with customer through the provision of more detailed and up-to-date information. Customer Retention and Airline Loyalty Programmes The cost of developing a new customer is several times higher than the cost of keeping an existing customer. With the increasingly fierce market competition, companies would like to retain their existing customers as much as possible. Fan (2007), state that competition has changed gradually from price of products and services to grasping customers. Only those companies that can more precisely understand customers demands, more quickly respond to the changing needs and can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty can win the competition. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become particularly important in this age. Data mining technology, as the founding base of CRM, can help the airlines to effectively capture valuable information about passengers from extensive information available in their databases, which is essential for making strategic marketing decisions. McIvor (2003), state that through sophisticated Information Systems available now, it has become possible to automatically inform staff about customer preferences such as aisle seats or in-flight entertainment. Previously, such information may have been collected but not used to enhance the needs of their most profitable customers. CRM and Data Mining allow companies to target groups effectively, and allocate marketing resources to best effect. As is shown in 80/20 rule, 80% of sales of a company come from 20% of its clients, it is essential to conduct customer segmentation and find those 20% of high-value customers. Zhang and Chen (2009), state that in order to better ensure continued profitability it is necessary to keep customer satisfied. Through a lot of accumulation of data on passenger satisfaction surveys, using data mining technology such as principal component analysis, factor analysis to identify the main influencing factors of passenger satisfaction, as well as the relative importance of various factors can help airlines make improvements, enhance the overall customer service levels and the competitiveness of companies. McIvor et al. (2003), further state that Airline loyalty programmes have been the major means of keeping customers to a particular airline. Airline loyalty programmes provide significant value to customers. Airlines are now associating their Loyalty Programmes with the complementary products and services such as car rentals and hotel accommodations. In fact, the airlines are attempting to create a one-stop shopping experience for the customer with all the required travel products and services available on-line. With the provision of these complementary services, airlines have enhanced value of the core service. It is, therefore, very important to take full advantage of the data mining and other modern information technology to identify the valuable information about the customers buying pattern and choices and address them in timely fashion to provide more personalized service which will ultimately improve passenger satisfaction and loyalty. Operations and Business Intelligence Negash and Gray (2008), discuss the case of Continental Airlines. They state it as the seventh largest airline in the world with 2300 daily flights to over 200 destinations. An airline, as big as this, and requiring decisions about each take-off and landing, each passengers fare, ground operations, detecting fraud, security and customer relations, need for a ICT based intelligent business model was indispensable. In 1998 they implemented a real-time data warehouse and began their climb to being a top airline. For example, they integrated customer information, finance, flight information, seat inventory, and security to improve revenue. The warehouse data also allowed them to spot travel agent fraud. They moved forward from there to real-time applications. For example, they began using optimization techniques to design fares based on current demand; they gave their gate agents and flight attendants details on customer experiences on previous flight segments and flights; if a connecting flight was late, they used dashboard displays so their high-value customers would be helped in making connections for themselves and for their baggage. To make all this work, Continental built an 8 terabyte real-time data warehouse (called an operational data store or ODS) that coordinated 25 internal and two external operational systems. These systems include both Web and desktop BI. In-flight Entertainment The advancement in technology has enabled Airlines to enhance the passengers travelling experience. Back in early 1920s, Aeromarine Airways pioneered in the digital entertainment of passengers by showing a movie during the flight. Since then, digital technologies have evolved from single shared screen to individual screens offering variety of infotainment stuff such as movies, games, news, flight information, weather information etc. Furthermore, as reported by Nelson (2010), in-flight WiFi internet access was made available to passenger in 2008 by American Airlines after the test in 2005. The capability of providing internet facility during the flight has phenomenal impacts and lets the passenger stay in touch with the world even on the go. Security Future As discussed in essay, opportunity for in-flight WiFi access still exists. Few major airlines, like American Airlines, have already provided this facility on certain airlines. Provision of the internet and staying in touch during the longer hours travel will have considerable implications and will be great source of providing competitive edge. Furthermore, reported by HotHardware, BlueBox Avionics is aiming to integrate iPad into their next in-flight entertainment solution. Whether or not they integrate the iPad to the back of the passengers seat, distributing the iPad among the passengers during a long flight will certainly enhance the passengers experience. iPad certainly provides a much richer entertainment as compared to currently installed display screens. Conclusion The evidence presented in this article has illustrated how the Internet represents a powerful technology for commerce and communication between customers and airline companies. The Internet clearly enables the customer to move from being a passive participant to that of being proactive and more sophisticated in their relationship with airlines.

the gathering Essay examples -- essays research papers

Ernest J. Gaines was born on January 15, 1933, in Oscar, Louisiana. Many of his stories and characters are set in the swamplands of Louisiana. His target audience is Black southern youth; his goal is to give them a sense of pride in their heritage. Recently, Gaines participated in the conference "Black and White Perspectives on the American South," which intended to examine how the two races view themselves and the relations to one another. In the book A Gathering of old men, there was lots of symbolism throughout the scenes. Tthe book describes the transaction from the old south to the new south, a south that depends on the the co-existence of blacks and whites. In order for this too take place some old black men are going to have to stand up for themselves when a white cajun farmer by the name of Beau is murdered. The old black men in the story will have to face up to a racist sherriff by the name of Mapes.Beau Boutans brother Gil, who plays fullback for Louisiana State University, and depends on a black running back, is getting tired of his family violent name. He comes home to confront his dad Fix Boutan. By doing this Gil represents a new southern way. The man who murdered Beau, Charlie, was a very large man. He had been running away from his fears since he was a kid, but on this fateful day all that would change. It was finally time for Charlie to become a man after so many years. In one of the scenes from the book A Gathering of Old Men, the old men gathered around the Sheriff Mapes who symbolized white power with his gigantic size and his authority . Mapes was trying to figure out who had killed Beau Boutan. Their stories all came down to the same conclusion as the next mans story. They were fed up with verbal and physical abuse of from the Boutans. Mapes in all his years never seen such a sight or better yet a boldness in the eyes and mouths of the old black men. Even though he cursed them and hit them to get the truth, the old black men kept their stories, that they were all guilty of the murder of Beau Boutan. Before Mat left his house, one of the old black men, he and his wife got into an argument. She did not want him to be involved in what was going on. With tears of past hurt coming down his face he told her how for many years he has helped the white man get richer and the black man get poorer. He told her he was going down there f... ...ted to have written some short stories. He was criticized in his stories because he felt that poor white people will except the new south, which is built on the interracial cooperation, with some or none violent rejection (Summers 93). William faulkner, a black author, said Gaines fails to see the lingering tradition of the old south, that he does not see that white people will always be white people (Vinson 93). But I fell that faulkner fails too see the character Candy was. Even though she was on the side of the old black men, when they wanted to meet without her. She did not respect there request on the basis she thought she was still the leader or the head. Also Mapes character did respect Mathu and Charlie, but at the same time he referred to them at one points as â€Å"niggers†.Gaines story depicts the coming of a south that will tolerate the co-existence of blacks and white, but he was a little to far ahead the timeline in this book, in those days there would have been a lynching without a doubt(Wertheim123). In conclusion, Gaines touched up well on all the attitudes and stereotypes of the southern way of life, and on its objection of the co-existing between whites and blacks.

austrailia foreign policy :: essays research papers

Australian Foreign Policy What is Foreign Policy? Foreign Policy is a nations’ attitude, actions (ie economic sanctions, peacekeeping, military activity) as well as our dealings with other countries (ie trade, immigration, aid, defence) and anything that is directed towards preserving and furthering certain national interests. Foreign Policy seeks to maintain national security, promote economic and trade interests, expand regional and global links, and promote the nation as a good global citizen. Why is FP unique in terms of FP making? Indeed, FP is unique in terms of policy making, largely because it requires little legislation. In essence, governments do not have to face a review of their policy enshrined in legislation in the Senate. Arguably FP may be made with little reference to Parliament as it usually obtains bi-partisan support as recently exemplified by the outstanding Labor Party support for an additional Medicare levy to cover the costs of Australian peacekeeping forces in East Timor. Consequentially, FP is seldom a topic for elections as it does not directly affect the electorate, nor does it gather the same level of community participation or interest as many other policies. Key features†¦ A 1997 White Paper on Foreign and Trade Policy called ‘In the National Interest’ is the most important single statement on FP in recent years. It set the guideline for FP according to the National Interest. Implicit in the National Interest is to maintain national security through international diplomacy and readiness to defend the continent and territories against possible armed attack or other aggression, to protect and promote the nation’s economic welfare and living standards, which increasingly depend on global economic growth, free international trade and the confidence of global international markets, and to keep our democratic way of life, and our civil and political liberties. A more recent foreign policy priority is the promotion of the nation as an active and responsible global citizen. Success in this area is measured by our response to human rights, terrorism, third world debt, and drug issues. Australia already has a well deserved international reputation because of the work of previous foreign ministers, e.g Bill Hayden and Gareth Evans on human rights. Key players and their roles†¦ Decisions about FP are made by the executive and the bureaucracy making it incompatible with the democracy that Australia is. The government can dominate foreign policy in a way that it cannot dominate domestic policy.

Essay on Literacy in Song of Solomon -- Song Solomon essays

Literacy in Song of Solomon    Through literacy will come emancipation. But emancipation comes in many forms, as does literacy. The various aspects of academic literacy are rather obvious in relation to emancipation, especially when one is confronted with exclusion from membership in the dominant culture. Most, but not all, of Toni Morrison's characters in Song of Solomon appear to have attained at least a modicum of literacy. But what part does literacy play in the advancement of the individual, and to what lengths will one go to achieve it?    "But if the future did not arrive, the present did extend itself, and the uncomfortable little boy in the Packard went to school and at twelve met the boy who [...] could liberate him [...]" (Song of Solomon 35-36). So says Toni Morrison of Milkman Dead, the boy in the Packard, in Song of Solomon. The other boy of whom she speaks is Guitar Bains, Milkman's mentor-of-the-street. Morrison tells us little more of Milkman's formal education, but we can assume that he goes on to high school because Guitar is in high school when she introduces him. We do learn that Milkman's sisters attend and graduate from college, but their education isolates them from the rest of the community. In fact, at age forty-four, Corinthians eventually goes to work as a maid and enters into a relationship with Porter, one of her father's tenants, much to her father's dismay. Within the class structure of "haves" and "have-nots," Corinthians finds the "haves" side abhorrent, the "have-nots" side attractive, but she can not cross the socioeconomic line that her father has drawn. She must remain within the paradigm that separates her from the lower, uneducated portion of their society.    Milkman's mor... ...ith the earth and at the conclusion of the novel when he finds he is able to fly. Is the state of super-metacognition he enters during these episodes a metaphor for an inherent attachment to the past? something akin to a shared history? something ingrained and transferred with roots deeply embedded in African traditions? Morrison leaves the answers to these questions (and many others) up to her readers, but it is obvious that Milkman finds more in historical literacy than he ever received from his formal education.    Milkman sees hope for the future through a connection with the past. In a certain sense, he finds emancipation through his relationships with literacy.    Works Cited Middleton, David. Toni Morrison's Fiction: Contemporary Criticism. New York: Garland, 1997. Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1987.