The Tell

Table of Contents Introduction Character analysis Plot summary Themes Internal versus external forces Conclusion Works Cited Introduction The introductory part will present the The Tell- Tale heart (1843), by Alan Edgar Poe, introducing the main characters viz. the narrator and the old man. The story opens with the unknown narrator confessing he is restless but not harebrained or insane, as some would want to think.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Tell- Tale heart (1843) specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More He narrates his story by defending his sound mind although he has murdered an innocent old man. The narrator lives with the old man; however, he claims that his supposedly housemate has an evil blue eye that evokes fear in him (the narrator). At this point, the narrator is not trustworthy because he does not even understand himself; he does not know whether he is psychologically sick or he is just another murderer. Character analysis This section tackles the main characters of the story and as aforementioned, the narrator and the old man are the only central characters in the story. The narrator is untrustworthy, self-righteous and a rigid person who leaves no space for learning. He believes he is sane despite the fact that he kills the old man for no apparent reason. His sanctimonious overtones infringe is trustworthiness. On the other hand, the old man is just a victim of malice or covered insanity. Plot summary The plot summary will outline the flow of the story where once more the narrator plays the central role. As the story opens, the narrator insinuates he is insane by declaring he has a story to tell; however, the story is a defense to guard his sanity. Therefore, the events of this section will focus on the narrator as he puts forward his claims of sanity. However, to understand where all the sanity ‘noises’ are coming from, this section will flashback to the on e event that seems to infringe the narrator’s insanity; the murder of the old man. Again, the narrator’s trustworthiness is compromised for by defending his actions, he unknowingly exposes his unreliability. Themes The overriding theme in this story is the theme of paranoia. As the story opens, the narrator acknowledges that he is nervous for reasons he does not know. The thin, almost confusing, or blurred line between paranoia and madness comes out clearly. People think paranoia is synonymous to madness and perhaps this explains why the narrator is vehement in defending his sanity.Advertising Looking for essay on american literature? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Paranoia in this context also underscores the blurred line between hate and love according to Benfey (78). Ironically, many a time individuals hurt the closest people in their lives. In this section, the narrator is trustworthy; he loves and needs the old man, yet he kills him. Internal versus external forces Ironically, the presence of police officers who come to investigate the murder of the old man does not evoke any uneasiness in the narrator. However, the deafening sounds of fear and guilt that haunt the narrator seem to take away his peace. The narrator does not confess the murder because the offices push him; no, he confesses because of guilt and self-conviction. At this point, the story tries to emphasize that internal forces are stronger than external forces. One can defy and deny external forces like rule of law; however, defying self-conviction is tantamount to committing suicide and the narrator comes out as a trustworthy source of this scenario. Conclusion The concluding part of the essay will try to piece together the ideas raised in the story. Running from introduction, though plot summary to themes; this section will give a concise recap of the whole story. Works Cited Benfey, Christopher. â€Å"Poe and the Unre adable: ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.† New Essays on Poe’s Major Tales. United States: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Poe, Allan. â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart.† Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library, 1992. Web. This essay on The Tell- Tale heart (1843) was written and submitted by user Lindsey J. to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here. The Tell

Free Essays on Family Life Cycle

The family life cycle consists of six stages, which for the basis of a person’s life. It begins with The Young Adult in which parents learn to accept separation from their children, the development of intimate peer relationships and becoming independent financially. I will be entering this stage soon enough to the point where my parents have told me about their struggles and what I should do when entering this stage. I have learned to become dependant on myself financially and how to separate from them in the future. The second stage involves The Newly Wed Couple in which a couple commits to a new relationship. They learn to adjust to each other, set up a joint home and interact with both families. Both of my parents found the separation from their families hard to do because once they had their arranged marriage they would move from India to Canada. They would be leaving a familiar environment and living with a complete stranger. My parents had to start from the beginning and learn how to accumulate their finances within a joint account. This taught me how to become prepared for a similar situation I will face in the future and how to become responsible for my significant other and myself. The family life cycle continues with The Couple with Young Children, and how they learn to accept new members into the family unit. â€Å"This includes adjusting the marital relationship to accept children, taking on the roles of being parents, and realigning relationships with families of orientation to include grandparent roles.† – Text Book.... Free Essays on Family Life Cycle Free Essays on Family Life Cycle The family life cycle consists of six stages, which for the basis of a person’s life. It begins with The Young Adult in which parents learn to accept separation from their children, the development of intimate peer relationships and becoming independent financially. I will be entering this stage soon enough to the point where my parents have told me about their struggles and what I should do when entering this stage. I have learned to become dependant on myself financially and how to separate from them in the future. The second stage involves The Newly Wed Couple in which a couple commits to a new relationship. They learn to adjust to each other, set up a joint home and interact with both families. Both of my parents found the separation from their families hard to do because once they had their arranged marriage they would move from India to Canada. They would be leaving a familiar environment and living with a complete stranger. My parents had to start from the beginning and learn how to accumulate their finances within a joint account. This taught me how to become prepared for a similar situation I will face in the future and how to become responsible for my significant other and myself. The family life cycle continues with The Couple with Young Children, and how they learn to accept new members into the family unit. â€Å"This includes adjusting the marital relationship to accept children, taking on the roles of being parents, and realigning relationships with families of orientation to include grandparent roles.† – Text Book....

Bayeux Tapestry Experience Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Bayeux Tapestry Experience - Assignment Example I must admit that I was intimidated by the amount of bloodshed I witnessed but had to carry on with the battle in support of our leader, Duke William. Before the battle, Duke William learned that Harold had accidentally landed in Count Guy of Ponthieu’s territory and taken prisoner, he sent messages for his release. On a noble gesture, the Duke sent messages for Harold’s release to Count Guy. After the release, Count Guy brought Harold to William, who made him take an oath and join us in campaigning against the Bretons. Both our team and Harold’s staged a brave fight that led Duke William to honoring Harold with armor. William then released Harold, who returned to England and met King Edward. Harold was then crowned King following the death of King Edward. However, I know the comet that was sighted during Harold’s coronation was a bad omen, and it meant the throne did not belong to him (Foys, 2009). All of us under the leadership of Duke Williams believe t he throne rightfully belongs to him (William), so we planned to invade the Normans with the help of Bayeux’s Bishop Odo, who is also the Duke’s half brother. We loaded our ships with food, drinks and armor, and dressed in battle gear. The Duke led us across the channel, carrying wooden castles and horses on the ships. When we landed in England at Sussex near Hastings, we prepared a feast and Bishop Odo said grace. We burnt a house in the village after the feast to demonstrate our purpose on invasion, then put up a motte and bailey to secure our position at Hastings (Hicks, 2006). I delivered a message of war from the Duke to the Harold’s camp, and he took up the challenge. I was only a messenger then, so I was not taken hostage by Harold’s soldiers. Our Duke then gave us a speech preparing us for war against Harold. On the 14th October, we began the long Battle of Hastings. I and my fellow soldiers fought on horseback the whole day, while the English, mos t of whom were Saxons and fought on foot, shielded themselves behind a wall. I saw a lot of blood on the ground, but was encouraged by Bishop Odo who gave encouragement by continuously waving us on with a baton. As a cleric, he is not permitted to shed blood (Bernau & Bildhauer, 2007). He, therefore, could not carry a sword like the rest of us. I soon saw the bodies of two knights, Gyrth and Leofwine, who are also Harold’s brothers, lying lifeless on the ground. The number of dismembered bodies and horses littering the battlefield grew, and our Duke occasionally raised his helmet to reassure us of his safety by showing his face. I saw both English and Norman army uniforms on the ground, which meant that some of our soldiers were also injured and killed. Our troops finally managed to surround Harold. I saw him lying on the ground with an arrow through his right eye before he was hacked to death using swords. At the sight of their dead king, most of his army fled as we disarmed the ones we had captured. We eventually gained victory at the Battle of Hastings. As we celebrate our victory and explore the English land, I would like you to understand that Duke William deserves to be king because his father, Robert the Magnificent, was also a Duke of Normandy. William himself has been Duke since he was seven years old, and by the time he was 19 years old, he was already in charge of Normandy. Further, King Edward does not have any

Art history research paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Art history - Research Paper Example Various artworks came up as a result of colonization, particularly right about the time when Europe took interest in colonization. One particular artwork that peaked my interest is that of ‘The Women of Algiers in their Apartment’ by a French artist called Eugene Delacroix. Laurel Ma wrote an article about this painting. Eugene Delacroix was a popular French artist whose artwork was hailed all over Europe. Therefore it didn’t come as a surprise when the state of France decided to tag him along on a diplomatic mission to North Africa just two years since Algiers was invaded. This was around the time Delacroix drew the painting of The Women of Algiers in their Apartment in 1834. The timing that the painting came out, which is also the time the French went to Algiers, is suspicious and rightfully so. It tends to shed some light on the imperialist intentions that the French had towards Algiers. Most paintings by the Orientalists were prejudiced against the Orients in such a way as to incite the Westerners to colonize them in the name of doing them a favor. Most of it revolved around sex in particular. The Orientalists would draw paintings with naked women in them as if waiting for the European men to come and save them from the supposed tyranny of their husbands. Of course, a great deal of this work was more of imagination than reality. All the more reason why Delacroix’s work received major applause as it was seen to be more authentic and the fact that it contains aspects that make it seem both imaginative and real caught a lot of people’s attention. The Women of Algiers in their Apartment clearly shows the lifestyle of the people of North Africa. The women often stayed in their harem, which is a sacred place restricted only to the women and their husband. No other person other than the servants was allowed in the harem. Delacroix draws a harem with three women in it along with one black servant woman holding the curtain. Contrary to popular belief as depicted by the works of other Orientalists, the women in this painting do not in any way suggest any sexual intentions. This came as a confusion to many as people were used to paintings with naked women obviously arousing and inviting the sexual desires off those who saw it. In other words, the regular paintings were demeaning to the cultures and values of the people in the East. In Delacroix’s painting the women are fully clothed, almost in a way to suggest that they are overdressed. This could be seen as the painter’s way of proving a point, trying to atone for the mistakes off his fellow artists by clearly stating that the women in the Orients were respectable and were not to e objectified sexually. The painting doesn’t show women yearning or the presence of a man, rather they are comfortable and content with the current situation where they have time to themselves. The room in the painting is lavished with oriental objects such as glas s vases and various patterns on the furniture that relate to the style associated with Orients. There is a servant drawing a curtain. This is to depict the dramatic way in which the harem is unveiled for the authorized Muslim male but now in the painting, the colonizer gets a glance of what he shouldn’t see. The women in the painting are covered in blankets to confirm the stereotype that suggests

Time Traveling, Art Historian Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Time Traveling, Art Historian - Essay Example I was able to ask a Chinese local worker, among hundreds of thousands of them, what the purpose of building such a large army is for. They told me it is to protect the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first and current emperor of China when he passes away and so he would have subjects to reign over in the afterlife. This emperor has done great things for China indeed. He first unified China more than a decade from the time I have currently travelled to, which is around 210 BC. Indeed, â€Å"the craftsmanship attested by each of the statues is as stupendous as the scale of the project.† (â€Å"The Terracotta Warriors: Forbidding Sentinels of a Death Defying Emperor†) What I notice most is how these sculpted bands of warriors are matchless. They are life-size figures that are individually being shaped in clay by apparently about 700,000 men who come from all over China and Eastern Asia. â€Å"Interestingly, seven individuals came from southern China, and a smaller number came from northern China.† (Anne, 2008) The details on the sculptures are extremely dumbfounding. Present approximations are that in the depths enclosing the army, there are right now about six thousand warriors, fifty chariots with more than four hundred horses, and they plan on making a few more. Along with the military figures also include officials, entertainers, and performers. From this great monument, I certainly can see how important the afterlife is for them and that they believe that one can bring possessions and even people with him/her when they pass away. After about a month, I then time travel to a nation just beside China, in the time of the 1820s. This nation’s culture, in reality, has actually been shaped by Chinese culture itself. This country is the great nation of Japan. This time, as I have found out, is during the Tokugawa Shogunate. During my first few days of staying in this beautiful and seemingly serene country, I was able to befriend a few Japanese locals. I asked them

The Impact Of Advertising On The Mass Media Media Essay

The Impact Of Advertising On The Mass Media Media Essay With the social and economic development and frequent international cultural exchange, the traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television are going through a increasingly stable development in recent years. With the rapid development of high technology, Internet media is emerging as the fourth. These resulted in more frequent exchange of social information, and now advertisers have more convenient channels for their goods and services promotion. Mass media has become a major promotional platform for advertising; both news and advertising are interdependent and mutually compete for the TV broadcast time and newspaper pages published. Advertising development is bound to have increasingly important influence on the development of mass media. Firstly, this paper will outline the research background and rationale. Following this, it will explain the intention and the importance of the research. Then, it will explain the aim and the objectives of the research. Next, the paper will review previous literatures which are related to this study. This is followed by the methodology of the research. The paper will explain the resource, sampling and ethical considerations of the study orderly. Finally, it will make out the conclusion of the study. Background and research rationale Advertising is a particular need, since the production and exchange of goods, advertising had began to be used in the life. The worlds first ad is conducted by voice, also known as oral advertising, which is the most primitive sell advertising, which is characterized by simple forms of advertising in particular. Back in the early slave society of ancient Greece, people do the slave and livestock trade by public advocacy and yelling out the rhythmic ads. The invention of the printing press created a new era of advertising. In 1473, Britains first publisher, William à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Kanke Si printed a lot of publicity religious content of the print ads and posted them in the many streets in London; this is the first Western print advertising. In 1622, Nicholas Brown and Thomas à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Ke Qieer, who were both from the UK, founded the first English newspaper ¼Ã…’which was named Weekly News and was published in London. Since then, newspaper has become a main carrier of advertising. To the end of 1830, America has had about l200 pieces of newspapers, and 65 species of them are daily newspapers. Most or first full-page edition of many newspapers is advertising. 1830 -1850 is the penny press era, because the price is a penny foe each piece of newspaper. Due to the low price, the sales had increased, and the effectiveness of advertising had also been increased. While popular in the newspaper ads, magazine ads are increasing, and a large amount of advertising agencies and advertising companies showed up since then. With the development and popularization of radio and television, they became a major carrier of advertising, because they have benefits of quick spread, vivid images and a wide range covering, which are more easily to attract the attention of consumers. After the 1980s, with the rapid development and popular of electronic media, computer began to be used for advertising design and planning. With high-tech, advertising has become part of the information dissemination activities in our lives. Inevitably, the development of advertising caused a lot of impact on mass media, both positive and negative. Aim and Objectives The aim of this study is to find the impact of advertising on the development trends of mass media, there must be a very complicated relationship between advertising and news in the mass media, and as all known, news provide real and quick information to people, but the function of advertising is totally different, which will lead different impact on the mass media. This research is aimed to find out all the elements which cause these differences and the result in the final. This study will firstly introduce the original and historic development of advertising which takes the mass media as the major carrier, and then analyze the relationship between news and advertising on the aspects of their differences and common points, and find out how they influence mass media in different ways. In the following this study will explain the impact of advertising on the development trends of mass media, from both positive and negative aspects. Following suggestions which aim at improving the development of mass media will be given in the end of this study. Literature Review In the study The impact of Advertising on media bias, Esther Gal-or, Tansev Geylani and Tubapinar Yildirim (2010) investigated how and in what extent the advertising affected the extent of bias in the media. They believed that, when making choices on which media to do the advertising and how much they would like to pay for it, advertisers would evaluate both the size as well as the composition of the readership of the different medias, in this way, when the total ad spending to a fixed advertising costs, it can be used as a reference value, according to advertisers strengths and weaknesses to make the final choice. They stated that, Reasons for the existence of media bias range from journalists desire to enhance their career opportunities to medias incentive to increase audience ratings. In a recent paper by Mullainathan and Shleifer, a link is established between subscription fees and media bias. There are some people doubts the objectivity of the mass media when they are purchasing economic benefit. Serge Kasper (2008) pointed out in his weblog The Impact of Advertising on Society that, Critics has accused advertising companies of falsely using the power of sound and visual to convince unsuspecting buyers to purchase products that dont offer what they promise. John Harms from Southwest Missouri State University and Douglas Kellner (1990) from the University of Texas at Austin had cooperated a study Toward A Critical Theory of Advertising, in which that pointed out that The studies such as what stated before have explore how the mass media influenced by advertisers and business, which is reflected in news and cultural differences.. According to these previous studies, this point is almost inevitable. Chuck, Blore (2000), who is one of the partners of the advertising firm Chuck Blore Don Ruchman said that Advertising is the art of arresting the human intelligence just long enough to get money from it. And this determined that the advertising is totally different from news in the function and purpose when they are televised or published. Shah (2008) stated that, Since the emergence of mass media, business is very natural to take them as channels and platforms to the promotion of products and services, there is nothing wrong in this point, because it makes the share of information and innovation come true and influence peoples daily life. Methodology Data Collection This paper studies the impact of advertising on the development trends of mass media, which requires doing some analysis on a common phenomenon for many advertising sector of media, and drawing basic conclusions. If only concrete on individual cases, apparently, the conclusion can not be representative of all media in common. In this article, I will collect enough detailed information, and the questionnaire will help the final conclusion to a large extent. All the previous studies about advertising and media, as well as their relationship will be taken as useful data, and they will be collected and analyzed in a scientific way. Questionnaire Interview In order to collect quantitative data for this study, this paper will use structured, close ended and five-point method to design questionnaire according to previous literatures. Before carrying on the questionnaire, this paper will try to summarize as more as possible previous study on the relevant topic, and analyze the information from different angles. A set of questions will be distributed to 10 people whose jobs are relevant to media or advertising and to another 10 who are common audiences and readers. Also there would be 2 open-ended questions and some interviews to those recipients. Through the questionnaire and interview, those aims are expected to be realized: 1. Is the advertising also an important information resource in the daily life? 2. Do people believe what the advertising tells about? 3. When the mass media provide time and space for the advertising, are they only pursuing economic benefit? 4. Will the advertising have negative influence on the reliability of mass media? 5. Is it reasonable to separate news and advertising in the media? All these questions above will be put into the questionnaires in detail, and the feedback will be gathered after the interviewees answering them, then the data will be summarized and the analysis will be make out, which will be helpful to the research of this topic. Timescale This study will be carried on from XXX. The total term approximately will be XXX weeks. The following will the various stages schedule of the work which is going to be done in the future. It will design the questionnaire of this study according to previous related literature from XXX to XXX. Moreover, this dissertation will implement pre-investigation to research the questions brought out in the above. It will implement converting data according to questionnaire, analyzing data, describing the results of analysis in XXX. It will gather all data together and write the draft of this study by the end of XXX. It will implement rectifying the dissertation and editing it according to standard format from XXX to XXX. Following this, it will make the final amendments and print the dissertation from XXX to XXX. This dissertation will be finished on XXX, 2010. The schedule arrangement will be carried on critically according to timescale.

Healthcare and Drugs in America Essay -- Research Papers Health Medici

Healthcare and Drugs in America It is no secret that the cost of American healthcare is on the rise. Already the nation is spending about $1.65 trillion a year on healthcare. That represents 15 percent of gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services. It consumes one-fourth of the federal budget, more than defense. (Allan Rubin) This is due to the factors of expensive technology, less stringent HMO cost management, and more specifically to this paper, rapidly rising drug costs. Surveying nearly 3,000 employers, Mercer Human Resource Consulting finds that their health-benefit costs rose 10.1 percent this year, while inflation hovered around 2 percent. And as the research and development of these drugs continue to outpace inflation, most Americans will continue to pay for this trend. How so? There are two main reasons for this phenomenon. First of all the U.S has highly favorable patent laws toward these drug companies, prohibiting normal market competition for long periods of time. These monopolies allow manufacturers to charge several hundred percent above (world) market prices. (Dean Baker and Noriko Chatani) Some pharmaceutical companies have even been accused of delaying generic drug patents through litigation, even bribery in order to keep their drug prices high. It encourages a behavior of rent seekers. And these tactics prove highly lucrative. For example the drug Cardizem, used for blood pressure and hypertension reduction, had $700 million in sales in the 11 months the generic drug was kept off the market. This also causes generic brands to rise in cost. According to IMS Health, pharmaceutical information companies, the price for generic drugs are increasing almost twice as fast as prices f... ...Noriko (2002) Promoting Good Ideas on Drugs: The Relative Efficiency of Patent and Public Support for Bio-Medical Research October 11, 2002, http://www.cepr.net/promoting_good_ideas_on_drugs.htm â€Å"Buying prescription Medicines Online: A Consumer Safety Guide,† available online at http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/consumer/buyonline/guide.htm Francis, David R. (2003) Healthcare costs are up. Here are the culprits. http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1215/p21s01-coop.html Haislmaier, Edmund F. (2004) Compromising Quality: The High Cost of Government Drug Purchasing. The Heritage Foundation. May 25, 2004 Meadows, Michelle (2002) Imported Drugs Raise Safety Concerns. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA Consumer magazine, September-October 2002 Rubin, Allan and Rubin, Harold (2004) Patents and Prescription Drugs-Part I. http://www.therubins.com/legal/patext.htm

Race as a Social Construct

Race as a Social Construct Omi and Winant’s discussion from â€Å"Racial Formations† are generally about race being a social construct and is also demonstrated in the viewing of Race – The power of an illusion. Omi and Winant have both agreed that race is socially constructed in society. Ultimately this means that race is seen differently in different societies and different cultures. Media, politics, school, economy and family helps alter society’s structure of race. In the viewing , also media as well as history seemed to create race by showing how social norms have evolved in different racial groups.For example, â€Å"Rules shaped by our perception of race in a comprehensively racial society determine the presentation of self, distinction of status, and appropriate modes of conduct† (Omi and Winant 20). In other words, people tend to make their own rules for categorizing racial groups. We humans (usually more powerful ones) have set these arbitra ry divisions and then call them real. Race is defined differently within each culture. For example, as explained in the viewing, people in Africa see a person that is white in the United States as black.This because they define their races by socioeconomic status not the color of ones skin. Race is a social construction. And as a social construction, race functions as a source of management that sustains the importance of certain groups and the maintenance of other groups. This concept only becomes reality when people behave in ways that perpetuate subordination. Race should be expressed as a concept but unfortunately people misuse race. Race has now replaced the older concept of culture.As a concept race came to be defined by superficial attributes like hair type and skin color. â€Å"Film and television, for example, have been notorious in disseminating images of racial minorities which establish for audiences what people from these groups look like, how they behave and who they are†(Omi and Winant 23). Race is just an idea and or a biological myth. According to the viewing , humans don’t differ much genetically. Actually humans are genetically the most similar species. Why are humans so genetically alike?Humans have not existed long enough and have yet to evolve into various subspecies. â€Å"Race is indeed a pre-eminently socio-historical concept† (Omi and Winant 21). So race is historically made and not biologically. There is nothing real about race, a social construct, unlike a river which is absolute. A river will escist regardless of people thinking, agreeing or accepting that it does exist. Race requires people to collectively agree that it does exist , unlike a river. Although race does not exist in the world in an objective way, it still is relevant in today’s society.It is obvious that race is real in society and it affects the way we view others as well as ourselves. Race is a social construct that is produced by the su perior race and their power to regulate. â€Å"The category of ‘white’ was subject to challenges brought about by the influx of diverse groups who were not of the same Anglo-Saxonstock as the founding immigrants† (Omi and Winant 24). Frankly, ‘white’ was the norm, the others were considered an outcast. The dominant group in society are the one whom created restriction for group membership by defining race as a biological factor. White is seen as a ‘pure’ category†, as stated in the reading (Omi and Winant 21). Those who were ‘black’ were biologically inferior to a ‘white’ person. This is how the color line became about. Because of the color line , race was used to justify the captivity of the vastly growing free ‘black’ population early in United States society. â€Å"Differences in skin color and other obvious physical characteristics supposedly provide visible clues to differences lurking u nderneath† (Omi and Winant 23).The existence of racial ideology helps create racial sterotypes and myths. For example, in the viewing it was pointed out that American Jews reportedly dominated basketball during the first half of the 1900s. However , now it seems as if African Americans dominate the NBA. Concepts like ‘Black athletic superiority’ is the belief ‘black’ people have traits that have been acquired through genetic or een environmental factors. These factors help them excel over all other races in athletic competitions.The theories of racial differences and their possible effect on athletic ability have been noticed since the nineteenth century. More interests were attracted to the subject soon after the 1935 Track Championships, were Jesse Owen’s record breaking performance had shocked white Americans. â€Å"Temperament, sexuality, intelligence, athletic ability, aesthetic preferences and so on are presumed to be fixed and discernib le from the palpable mark of race† (Omi and Winant 23). The dominant group in society has always defined race which sets every other race inferior.Race creates many differences in social status. Status is indicated by race. This can either include or exclude people from more social constructs. This can also prevent or allow certain powers or privileges. Race is a social construct fueled by agreement and acceptance. Throughout history race has been the core of our society. It is vital that people begin to realize that race is and will always be â€Å"an unstable and ‘de centered’ complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle† (Omi and Winant 26).

Italian Culture

The Clash of Languages in the Italian-Canadian Novel By Licia Canton In recent years, ethnic minority writing has played a major Pole in shedding light on the complexity of the Canadian identity. Italian-Canadians figure among the numerous communities active on the Canadian literary scene. In the last decade in particular the Italian-Canadian literary corpus, which traces its development alongside the growing Italian-Canadian community, has seen numerous publications, especially novels.This paper discusses language, specifically the tension arising from the Italian word invading the Canadian text, as a representation of hyphenated identity in the following Italian-Canadian novels: Frank Paci’s The Italians (1978), Black Madonna (1982) and The Father (1984), Caterina Edwards’ The Lion’s Mouth (1982), Mary Melfi’s Infertility Rites (1991), Nino Ricci’s In a Glass House (1993) and Antonio D’Alfonso’s Fabrizio’s Passion (1995).The n ovels trace the process towards defining an identity which is torn between two conflicting cultures, the Italian and the Canadian. The analysis of these narratives shows that the tension and the negotiation between the Italian and the Canadian components of the bicultural identity represented at the level of the events narrated are also at work in the texture of the writing. Language causes friction between the two cultures presented in the narratives: the question of identity is played out in the weaving of the words.In the Italian-Canadian novel, Italian elements are an impediment in the quest towards Canadianness. Although the new generation embraces Canadianness through education, friends and lifestyle, the presence of the old country remains through the influence of parents, customs and language. Otherness as represented by the old country can never be completely erased even in the second generation. The Italian component, therefore, is something of a weed which keeps resurfaci ng. The same occurs at the level of the writing.The novels discussed are written in English—Canadian English as opposed to American, British or Australian English—in a Canadian context and for a Canadian audience. The Italian word surfaces now and then thereby breaking the flow of the English-Canadian text. The presence of the heritage language in the English text is what Francesco Loriggio calls â€Å"the device of the stone† (39) or, to use Enoch Padolsky’s words, the â€Å"linguistic stone† (56). The Italian word within the English text is like a stone or a stumbling block.The presence of the â€Å"heritage† language within the â€Å"ethnic text† is a device used by the writer to illustrate the tension and negotiation at work in a bicultural identity. Italian may take up as little space as a word or as much as a sentence, but in each case there is a noticeable effect on the narrative. Italian surfaces in different forms to break th e flow of the English text: as a translated or untranslated word; as a literal translation of a phrase or sentence given in English; and as an English sentence having a latinate structure.There are two major reasons for the Italian word â€Å"contaminating† the English text: the first is purely to give the text an Italian flavour—to mark l’italianita of the writing; the second, which I focus on in this paper, serves a specific function in illustrating the duality inherent in the Italian-Canadian identity. The Italian word is present when there is no appropriate English equivalent: this points to the difference and, in extreme cases, to the incompatibility between the two cultures expressed within Italian-Canadian reality.And, the Italian presence, either as a word on the page or in the nuances of the sentence structure, points to the fact that within an Italian-Canadian reality there exists a constant process of translation. The tension existing between elements of the Italian culture and the Canadian society in which the characters must constantly negotiate a space for their identity is especially evident in what I call â€Å"the irreplaceable Italian word. † In such instances the English translation would not do justice to the Italian original.Examples include the following discussion of polpi in Frank Paci’s The Father, polenta in Paci’s The Italians, calle and vaporetto in Caterina Edwards’ The Lion’s Mouth, and Ia busta in Antonio D’Alfonso’s Fabrizio’s Passion. In Paci’s The Father, Oreste Mancuso who represents Italy, wants to instill a strong sense of the Italian heritage in his sons, whereas his wife Maddalena upholds Canadianness or the Canadian way. The tension between these two characters, and therefore between the two cultures, is illustrated in the following passage:He [Oreste] brought up a bowl of dark grapes and set them on the table beside the polpi, a dish of fish stewed in large quantities of oil and red peppers†¦ The dish was so strong that no-one else in the family could eat it. A fresh loaf from the bakery rested beside his favourite dish. (63-64) In this passage, the word polpi breaks both the English language and the Canadian culture by highlighting the Italian one. The word polpi refers to Oreste’s favourite dish, something from the old country that he will not give up, like making his own bread and wine.In this scene the bread was made by Oreste in his bakery, and he has just finished making wine. The word polpi also emphasizes the tension between the members of the family: Oreste who represents the ways of the old country, and Maddalena and Stefano who want to become Canadianized. It is significant, then, that no one besides Oreste can eat the polpi because they are too strong, signifying â€Å"too old country. † The rejection of the polpi by the rest of the family is symbolically a rejection of Oreste and of the old country.In The Italians, the narrator (speaking from Alberto’s perspective) comments on Giulia’s tendency to prepare too much food: â€Å"To judge from the meal’s size, she still hadn’t got over the years in the old country when they had been forced to eat polenta almost every day. They had scarcely seen meat then†¦ †(74). The word polenta disrupts the English passage in two ways. First, the mere presence of the Italian word causes tension within the first sentence. Second, the word polenta causes a shift in setting, from the overabundant Christmas meal that Giulia has prepared in the present to the poverty experienced in the Italy of the past.The presence of the Italian word results in the juxtaposition of the Italian setting and the Canadian one, thereby pointing to the fact that the Italian past (the poverty which caused a diet of cornmeal and bread) is an undeniable component of Italian-Canadian identity. In other words, the Italia n past is responsible for the behaviour of the present, in this case Giulia’s fear of regression. The inclusion of specific Italian words in Caterina Edwards’ The Lion’s Mouth also takes the reader back to the Italian setting.In the subordinate narrative (Marco’s story), the author uses nouns such as vaporetto and calle that are specific to the Venetian setting: Seeing the floating station for the vaporetto before him, Marco realized he had been going in the wrong direction†¦ (21) Stopping at the top of a bridge and gazing down at the twisting calle, he saw the last of the evening crowd†¦ He began running, pushing his way down the calle, then turning off down a narrow, empty fondamento (30). He broke into a slight run. Calle. Bridge. One more—the last narrow street was blocked off. (37)In this passage the Italian words which describe Marco’s Venice cause the reader to experience the Italian component of the novel. The vaporetto is a common means of transportation in the water city. An English equivalent such as â€Å"boat† or â€Å"little steamer† could have been included, but no English word could do justice to the image created by the word vaporetto. Similarly, the word calle could be replaced by â€Å"narrow street,† as in the last sentence quoted above. The calle, however, is one of Venice’s specific attributes. In fact, The Collins Concise Italian-English Dictionary gives the meaning for calle as â€Å"narrow street (in Venice). The fondamento refers to the platform or quay at the edge of the water—where manmade construction meets one of the natural elements, water. The fondamento represents stability, a product of man’s rationality, whereas water represents nature’s uncontrollability and unpredictability—as in the recurring Venetian floods, one of which is described in Edwards’ novel. The presence of Italian words in the above passage, as i n the novel itself, which are very specific to the city of Venice, creates an image of the setting inhabited by Marco, a setting which is at the root of Bianca’s (the Italian-Canadian protagonist) quest for identity.Venice—the calle, the vaporetto, the water—is an ineffaceable component of Bianca’s identity as well as Marco’s. The passage quoted above reflects Marco’s unstable and precarious situation: his lack of direction, psychological and physical (given that â€Å"he had been going in the wrong direction†), and his sense of panic are indications of his impending nervous breakdown. The words italicized in the above passage are simultaneously associated with motion—the constant motion, therefore instability—and the maze which qualifies Marco’s psychological state.The author has chosen these specific Italian words to create a detailed image of the Italian water city and to illustrate the vulnerability of an indi vidual’s identity. In the last chapter of Fabrizio’s Passion, the narrator takes the time to explain the connotations of the busta (the envelope) which is an integral part of Lucia Notte’s wedding as of many Italian-Canadian weddings: Peter is tripping over Lucia, their hands encumbered by white envelopes handed to them by the guests after the handshakes. Those famous Italian envelopes†¦ La busta.How to describe this seemingly simple object intrinsically linked to Italian-American weddings? This tiny white envelope seals what consideration or dislike one family holds for another†¦ Each envelope is a potential time bomb. It can celebrate a friendship or insinuate a subtle disenchantment. All confessed, yet nothing ever openly spelled out—one family’s unbreakable loyalty to you as well as another’s hypocrisy. (226-7) The busta holds nuances and connotations that the â€Å"envelope† does not. What the narrator does not spell ou t is that the busta is the carrier of a monetary amount given to the newlyweds as a gift.It is the specific amount of money contained in the envelope which â€Å"can celebrate a friendship or insinuate a subtle disenchantment. † The word busta in the above passage is more than a simple envelope; it is a symbol of the traditional Italian wedding in Canada. It brings together the friends and relatives from the old country in the setting of the new country. The word paesano, or paesani in the plural, which appears in several instances in the novels has several connotations. In Italian a paesano is a person who is from the same town, or nearby town, in Italy.For instance, in commenting on his first weeks in Mersea the narrator of In a Glass House points to â€Å"the strange half-familiar faces of the paesani who came to visit† (3). Here, the word paesani refers to people originally from Valle del Sole, Vittorio’s hometown, or from neighbouring towns. For the Italian living abroad, such as the Italian-Canadian, the word paesano has taken on a broader meaning to refer to Italians of the same region. And, in regions outside of Italy inhabited by few Italians, paesano refers to Italians in general.This meaning of paesano has also been adopted by non-Italians to show kinship or goodwill, be it sincere or not. It is sometimes used to make fun of the Italian as well. Mario Innocente (In a Glass House) comments on the non-Italian’s use of the word paesano in the passage below: â€Å"Mario,† he [the German] said. â€Å"Mario, Mario, como stai, paesano? †Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ â€Å"That was the guy I bought the farm from,† he [Mario] said. â€Å"Those Germans —paesano this, paesano that, everyone’s a paesano. But the old bastard just wanted to make sure I don’t forget to pay him. † (31)The passage shows the Italian’s mistrust of non-Italians who try to ingratiate themselves by relying on the inherent frie ndship implied in the word paesano. Although Mario Innocente is not fooled by this, his young son Vittorio is lured into a false sense of friendship by the bullies on the school bus: â€Å"Italiano,† I [Vittorio] said, clutching at the familiar word. â€Å"Ah, Italiano! † He thumped a hand on his chest. â€Å"Me speak Italiano mucho mucho. Me paesano. † When the other boys got on the bus and came to the back, the black-haired boy said they were paesani as well, and each in turn smiled broadly at me and shook my hand. (49)Vittorio soon discovers that the pretense of friendship is simply a way of making fun of him. The word paesano, then, brings together the Italian and the non-Italian, be it positive or negative, sincere or not. For the Italian-Canadian, the word creates a link between the new country and Italy by defining and uniting those of the same origin; at the same time the word allows the non-Italian, or the Canadian, to enter into the Italian culture alb eit under false pretense. The word paesano brings together the two components of Italian-Canadian identity in uniting the true sense of the word with the meaning adopted by non-Italians.In each of the examples quoted above, the presence of the Italian word highlights something specifically Italian within Italian-Canadian reality and emphasizes the fact that this component cannot be erased or replaced within a Canadian context. The author’s choice to include the translation of an Italian word or sentence renders the text accessible to the reader who does not read Italian. It therefore establishes a certain openness—the will to reach beyond a minority audience. On the other hand, the absence of the translation renders inaccessible certain sections of the novel to readers who do not read Italian.In this case, it can be argued that the author risks alienating the non-Italian speaking reader, thereby establishing a certain degree of elitism for the novel. Arun Mukherjee dis tinguishes between the two by labelling the reader a â€Å"cultural insider† or a â€Å"cultural outsider† (44). Of course, in certain instances in which the Italian word appears without the translation the meaning is not lost for the reader. In other cases, the translation is necessary to understand the allusion made and the nuances of the action.In The Italians, for instance, it is necessary for the reader to know the meaning of the words â€Å"ero ubriaco† (20; â€Å"I was drunk†) in order to understand the reason Lorenzo gives for raping his wife. Another such instance occurs in The Lion’s Mouth: Stasera mi butto is the title of â€Å"the silly pop song† Marco and his bride-to-be had danced to the summer before their wedding (30). The reference to the pop song has a number of implications that the reader who does not read Italian will miss. The English equivalent of Stasera mi butto is â€Å"Tonight I throw myself† or â€Å"I aba ndon myself tonight. The meaning is very important because it refers to Marco’s status in his marriage: by marrying Paola—a wealthy but overly demanding and domineering wife, whom he does not love—Marco abandons â€Å"his† self, losing his own identity in order to improve his social status. At the same time, the reference to the song foreshadows Marco’s one night stand with Elena, the woman he has loved since childhood: Marco abandons himself to Elena that same night (stasera), thereby unknowingly entangling himself in a terrorist plot and jeopardizing his marriage and his reputation.The process of translating is an undeniable step in writing for the Italian-Canadian author. Joseph Pivato makes this point in Echo: Essays on Other Literatures: â€Å"Independently of the language or languages the Italian writer uses, he or she is always translating. It often seems that the translating process becomes more important than the distant Italian reality t hat it may be evoking† (125). Translation is a way of bringing together the two worlds which make up the Italian-Canadian reality.Bianca, the narrator in The Lion’s Mouth, is very conscious of the activity of translating inherent in the process of narration and in her Italian-Canadian reality. Edwards’ novel highlights the complexity of the presence of Italian words, and their English equivalents: Bianca simultaneously reads her aunt’s letter written in Italian and translates it into English for herself: â€Å"Bianca, se sapessi, Se sapessi,† if you knew, if you knew, â€Å"Que [sic, Chel disgrazia di Dio. † God’s disgrace? I must be translating incorrectly, a disgrace from God. â€Å"Barbara scossa. † Barbara has been shocked? it? shaken?†¦ Worse, Marco (you, you) suffered a nervous breakdown. † Esaurimento nervoso, the words translated literally as an exhaustion of the nerves. (9-10) This passage illustrates the int erplay between levels of the text and the complications resulting from the presence of Italian as well as the negotiation involved between â€Å"the Italian† and â€Å"the Canadian† components of the narrator’s Italian-Canadian reality. The narrator translates for her own benefit: to ascertain that she understands the written Italian word, she feels compelled to find the English equivalent.This illustrates the constant need to bring together the two components of her reality in an attempt to better understand herself. The narrator points to the importance of the translation process necessary when the Italian word, in this case her aunt’s letter, enters her own Canadian context. The narrator takes her role as translator very seriously in finding the appropriate word, which testifies to the notion that the Italian-Canadian lives in a state of constant translation. Fabrizio, the narrator in Fabrizio’s Passion, shares the same attention to detail in th e act of translating: â€Å"When I finish the pasta, faccio la scarpetta. Literally, this translates as ‘to wet one’s shoe,’ that is, to soak a piece of bread in the tomato sauce, and wipe clean one’s plate! )† (65). In the two examples mentioned, the act of translating is an attempt to unite the two worlds which comprise the narrator’s reality, that of the Italian-Canadian. This is done in two simultaneous ways: first, by stating in Italian that which has its origin in the Italian world (the aunt’s letter; the way one cleans the plate with bread); and second, by giving the English equivalent so that the non-Italian reader, rather than feel alienated, feels connected to that Italian world being described.The tension existing between the Italian and the Canadian is rooted as deeply as the structure of the sentence, virtually beneath the texture of the writing. The stilted sentence is an English sentence which sounds Italian—a sen tence which has a latinate structure as opposed to an anglo-saxon or germanic structure. It is important to stress that the stilted sentence is different from the literal translation. In Infertility Rites, for instance, Nina is asked â€Å"When are you going to buy your baby? † (11) which is a direct translation from the Italian idiom meaning â€Å"when will you have a baby. This is a literal translation purposely used to maintain the Italian flavour and to indicate that the words were spoken in Italian. The same is true of the following: â€Å"I pour myself another cup of American coffee—what mother calls ‘coloured water†(137). The expression â€Å"coloured water† is a direct translation for the Italian cliche on American coffee. In The Lion’s Mouth, Bianca reads in her aunt’s letter that her cousin Marco has had â€Å"an exhaustion of the nerves†Ã¢â‚¬â€the literal translation of esaurimento newoso meaning a nervous breakdown (10).In these examples, the objective is not to sound English but to transmit the Italian idiom into English words without remaining faithful to the nuances of each language. This is usually done to indicate that the words are originally spoken in Italian. In the stilted sentence, on the other hand, Italian is not present as words but at the level of the sentence structure, a characteristic which has been criticized as badly written English, or simply bad writing.I would suggest, instead, that the presence of latinate structures within the Italian-Canadian novel represents, to use Pasquale Verdicchio’s words, â€Å"the utterances of immigrant culture† (214) and mirrors the reality of the Italian-Canadian experience. The following passage from Black Madonna illustrates the latinate structure present in a conversation between Assunta and Marie, who represent polar opposites of the Italian-Canadian duality: â€Å"Ma, I’m going to Toronto,† Marie said abrupt ly. â€Å"They. . She couldn’t find the Italian word for â€Å"accepted. † [sic] â€Å"They took me. â€Å"Ma, I have to go. More times I go to school, better job. † â€Å"You tell to your father†¦ These things, I don’t understand†¦ You go to school—good. You smart—good. But you crazy. Your head in the clouds. The older you get, the crazier you get. I don’t understand you. To Toronto you want to go? † (70-1) In order to communicate with her mother, Marie is forced to speak like her. Although Marie’s â€Å"More times I go to school, better job† is not correct English, the structure is correct in Italian. Likewise, Assunta’s â€Å"These things, I don’t understand. † and â€Å"To Toronto you want to go? (where the (in)direct object precedes the verb) have an Italian structure. The sentence â€Å"You tell to your father,† on the other hand, is a direct translation of the Italia n. Moreover, the subject of their conversation consists of the â€Å"push and pull† characteristic of the old way versus the new way: the traditional Italian mother does not want her daughter to leave home, whereas Marie wants to experience the freedom of Canadian society. In Fabrizio’s Passion, Fabrizio uses an Italian sentence structure when he says â€Å"I am fourteen years old but am thirty in my head† (72).This does not work grammatically in English but is often used in Italian. Likewise, in The Lion’s Mouth: â€Å"But where have you been?†¦ We waited an hour, but since you didn’t have the courtesy to even phone†¦ † (37-38) and â€Å"So loud you have to have that record? † (42) have an Italian sentence structure. Such a structure is appropriate here given that the sentences are spoken by an Italian, Marco’s mother. Bianca, too, is guilty of using the latinate sentence structure: â€Å"Her bedroom, that evening I visited, was sparse, cell-like† (116).The following passage appears at the end of The Lion’s Mouth, in the Epilogue: This week, Barbara arrived and I must play the wise aunt with a trunkful of distractions. Poor child—as I write she is standing in the living room, staring out the window at the still leafless trees and mud-filled garden, wondering what place is this. . . So I begin again my life in this city, this land. (my italics, 178) Even though narrating her tale has given Bianca a clear focus on both components of her cultural makeup, the stiltedness of the italicized words emphasize the influence of Bianca’s Italian heritage.It is also significant that the first phrase, â€Å"wondering what place is this,† refers to Barbara, the Italian girl visiting from Venice, taking in the novelty and difference of western Canada. The presence of the heritage language within the â€Å"ethnic text† has led to accusations of bad writing, and the use of the stilted sentence may be perceived as the writer’s inability to master the English language. On the contrary, these â€Å"ethnic markers† or â€Å"linguistic stones† are devices purposely used by the writer to illustrate the tension and negotiation at work in a bicultural identity. As Pasquale Verdicchio argues:By stressing latinate vocabulary, by the insertion of Italian syntactical forms, and by the inclusion of linguistic elements that represent the utterances of immigrant culture, these [Italian-Canadian] writers have altered the semantic field of English, thereby denying expected meaning. (214) The fact that the Italian word interrupts the flow of the English text is a way of illustrating the symptoms of otherness which are an undeniable characteristic of Italian-Canadian reality. The presence of the Italian word within the English text should not be interpreted as a barrier between the two (Italian and Canadian) cultures.Rather, the meshing of Italia n words with English words should be seen as the negotiation necessary in order to bring the two cultures together. Arun Mukherjee writes that â€Å"Ethnic minority texts inform their readers, through the presence of other languages†¦ about the multi-cultural and multilingual nature of Canadian society† (46). Through their fiction Italian-Canadian writers suggest that in order to come to terms with the element of â€Å"schizophrenia† inherent in a bicultural identity, the individual must undertake the process of reevaluating the heritage culture.By using the â€Å"device of the stone,† the Italian-Canadian writer attempts to illustrate the continuous transfer from one culture/language to the other experienced by bicultural individuals. Canton , Licia. (2004). â€Å"The Clash of Languages in the Italian-Canadian Novel. † Adjacencies: Minority Writing in Canada . Ed. Lianne Moyes et al. Toronto : Guernica. Works Cited D’Alfonso, Antonio. Fabrizi o’s Passion. Toronto: Guernica, 1995. Edwards, Caterina. The Lion’s Mouth. Edmonton: NeWest, 1982. Loriggio, Francesco. History, Literary History, and Ethnic Literature. † Literatures ofLesserDiffusion. Eds. Joseph Pivato et al. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1990. Melfi, Mary. Infertility Rites. Montreal: Guernica, 1991. Mukherjee, Arun. â€Å"Teaching Ethnic Minority Writing: A Report from the Classroom. † Journal of Canadian Studies 31. 3 (1996): 3 8-47. Paci, Frank. Black Madonna. Ottawa: Oberon, 1982. The Father. Ottawa: Oberon, 1984. The Italians. Ottawa: Oberon, 1978. Padolsky, Enoch. â€Å"Canadian Minority Writing and Acculturation Options. Literatures of Lesser Diffusion. Eds. Joseph Pivato et al. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1990. Pivato, Joseph. Echo: Essays on Other Literatures. Toronto: Guernica, 1994. Ricci, Nino. In a Glass House. Toronto: McCleltand and Stewart, 1993. Verdicchio, Pasquale. â€Å"Subalterns Abroad: Writi ng Between Nations and Cultures. † Social Pluralism and Literary History. Ed. Francesco Loriggio. Toronto: Guernica, 1996. 206-226. Getting Weird and Ugly with Nino Ricci By Brian Gorman â€Å"Are you saying my book is wholesome? † Nino Ricci demands.His mock indignation is a response to a question, couched in diplomacy, about many Canadian storytellers' affinity for subjects that some people might consider weird and unwholesome. In the case of his latest book, the Giller Prize-nominated Where She Has Gone, the â€Å"weird and unwholesome† subject is incest, between the narrator and his half-sister. It occurs to one that this would not be out of place in a Canadian movie, as beguiled as our film-makers are with the weird and the unwholesome. He quotes Freud, about taboos being the foundation of civilization. You could argue that civilization began when this taboo was created, that the guilt that created led to civilization. And there's something formative about t he incest taboo. Anthropologists have found that it was one of the first taboos. â€Å"But there's a lot of it going on in our society. Incest occurs a lot more often than we care to acknowledge—usually as part of an abusive relationship. One person is always unwilling. â€Å"Obviously, since there's such a strong taboo against it, people want to do it. † The incestuous relationship in question comes at the end of a trilogy—Lives of the Saints, In a Glass House and now WhereShe Has Gone—that constitutes a sprawling, ambitious immigrant saga drawing equally from Ricci's Italian heritage (his parents were immigrants) and his Ontario â€Å"Calvinist† upbringing. â€Å"I didn't start out to write an immigrant saga,† he says. â€Å"I started out to write anything but an immigrant saga. My original idea was to explore an intense relationship between a brother and a sister. â€Å"It started out as a piece of erotica. A friend told me that you co uld write erotica and sell it for $200 a pop in New York. â€Å"I didn't want to talk about ethnicity.I was primarily influenced by British literature. Fortunately, I had older siblings who did well in school and interested me in reading. I didn't get it from my parents. They encouraged education, but in a more general sense. † Which brings us around to Canadianness, film and the weird and unwholesome. He says maybe it's a reaction against the reserve imposed on us by â€Å"our strict Calvinist heritage. † This is a very strange irony—Ricci, a Catholic, talking to another Catholic about â€Å"our strict Calvinist heritage†Ã¢â‚¬â€and it doesn't go unnoticed.The distant, unemotional and introspective nature of much of our storytelling, then, â€Å"may just be the result of our living in a cold climate,† he shrugs. â€Å"Maybe it's much more banal than we think. † Brian Gorman. â€Å"Getting Weird and Ugly With Nino Ricci. †. www. canoe . ca/JamBooksFeatures/ricci_nino. html. Magical Complexity By Naomi Guttman Nina Ricci has already received much deserved acclaim from writers across the country and abroad for this book, and I can only concur. Lives of the Saints, a book which any writer would be glad to have accomplished at any time, is all the more praiseworthy for being a first novel.The year is 1960, but in Valle del Salle, the poor Appenine village in which the novel is set, you would not know it: there is no electric power, grain is still cut with a scythe, and a snake bite is a sign that the evil eye has paid one a visit. Vittorio Innocente is the adult narrator telling the story of his boyhood: when the action begins Vittorio is turning seven. His father has left to seek his fortune in â€Å"America† several years before and Vittorio and his mother, Cristina, live with her father, Valle del Salle’s old mayor, in relative comfort.But Vittorio’s parents are estranged by more than an ocean and though Vittorio, with his innocent eyes, provides the filter through which all is told, it is really Cristina who is the central figure of the novel. It is she who is bitten by a green snake during a rendezvous in the barn with her nameless blue-eyed lover; she who wages a battle f pride with the village in which she was born; and she who eight months into the pregnancy which has become a symbol of her scorn and thus the source of this battle, engineers an escape to Canada, taking her son with her.As always with a first-person narrative, there is a delicate balance between what can be told and how. Vittorio is an expert listener, and because he is a child during the action of the tale, he gives very little in the way of interpretation. And so, as with all well-made things, the novel has the effect of appearing to be simple, which it is not, for it is terribly difficult to maintain that balance between the point of view of an adult regarding his childhood with adult insight, and that of the intuitive knowledge and fantastic distortions of the child he was at the time.Yet Ricci has been able to negotiate the distance between those voices with grace. The novel’s tension is cunningly built, the language is beautiful, and the symbolism plainly in view without coyness or flag-waving. Through Vittorio’s eyes we learn about the village, its characters, its colour, its superstitions and the envy, â€Å"invidia,† that distances villager from villager. The life of the village and the drama that is unfolding in Vittorio’s home is told with precision, care, a wonderful eye for detail rendered through the child’s experience, as well as a perfect ear for dialogue.In fact with his gift for translating the specific idiom of the people of Valle del Solle—the true-sounding syntax, the well-chosen Italian word of phrase—I felt as though I were reading in Italian and translating for myself, an experience much like watching a wo nderful foreign film with sub-titles and feeling that one has actually understood the words as they were spoken. And it may be said that this novel is filmic.In its use of colour, place and time, its ability to tell the story not only of Vittorio and his family but of an entire village, it conveys the magical wisdom of childhood and the complexity of what are supposed to be simple lives in such a compelling narrative that, in the right hands, Lives of the Saints could be as grand and sublime a spectacle as Fanny and Alexander or My Life as a Dog. Of course no film could capture the lyricism of Ricci’s descriptions: the image of the sun rising â€Å"round and scarlet, sucking in the dawn’s darkness like God’s forgiveness, the mountain slopes slowly changing from a colourless grey to rich green and gold. And then there is silence: †¦ the silence of the house would wash over me, filling my head like a scream, crowding out my private thoughts. The silence seem ed to issue from every nook and cranny of the house, to dissolve furnishings and leave me suspended in a pure, electric emptiness, so volatile that the crunch of my mother’s hoe threatened to shatter the house to its foundations. Without giving away the ending, I will say that my only qualms about the book came in the very last chapters where, though I understand its fictional necessity, as a feminist I question the implications it engenders.Early in the novel â€Å"la maestra† tells Vittorio and his classmates that a saint can be found anywhere at all, even among their ranks. Ricci reminds us in this novel that all lives, no matter how common they appear, are the locus for turmoil, the stuff, if not of sainthood, of drama, and can be fashioned into that category of novel to which Lives of the Saints certainly belongs: the novel one wishes will not end. Fortunately for us, it is the first of a trilogy and so the end will not come so soon. Guttman, Naomi. (1990).  "Magical Complexity; Review of Lives of the Saints†.Matrix 32: 74-5. The Hyperbolical Project of Cristina: A Derridean Analysis of Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints By Roberta Imboden Jacques Derrida’s â€Å"Cogito and the History of Madness,† catapulted him into the centre of the French intellectual world. This essay, a commentary )n Michel Foucault’s book, The History of Madness, is seen as an excellent example of the deconstructionist method at work in relation to metaphysics. What Derrida examines from this rather large tome is a few passages that Foucault writes about Descartes.Foucault’s thesis is that Descartes, in his analysis of the Cogito, was the first philosopher to separate reason from non reason, from madness, and that this split was either a cause of, or at least, was representative of, the attitude which resulted in the first internment of mad persons within institutions in human history. That Descartes is responsible for all s orts of divisions, of separations, in the modem Western human psyche, such as that between pint and matter, between reason and the emotions, is common in philosophical analysis, but Foucault’s thesis is unusual in his emphasis upon the reason/madness split.If one then applies Derrida’s subsequent insights to Nino Ricci ‘s prize winning novel, Lives of the Saints, an understanding of the novel will appear that should not only further illuminate the power of this first novel, and the talents of its author, but iso explain to students of literature what I was not able to explain to my own students, not until now, why Cristina, the heroine, had to die in the rime of life when a world of love and of freedom beckoned to her for he first time.Derrida, who prefaces his remarks with a special tribute to his teacher and mentor, Foucault, claims that in the Cogito of Descartes, in its pure moment before it attempts to reflect, to articulate, this bipolar split never took pl ace, and that the Cogito is valid for both the mad and the sane person. What this Cogito is about is â€Å"the hyperbolical project† (52) which is â€Å"an unprecedented excess† (52) that â€Å"overflows the totality of that which can be thought†¦ in the direction of the non-determined, Nothingness or infinity† (57), toward non-meaning or toward meaning.This project takes one beyond all limits, all barriers, all contradictions, all opposing opposites. It is the element of excess that causes Derrida to claim that the Cogito involves madness, derangement (57), since the hyperbolical project seeks to move beyond what the world would refer to as that which reason, logos, can itself attain, but it is not clinical madness, that is, what psychiatrists would consider to be a chemical disorder of the brain. It is the madness of the Cogito which simply refuses the limitations that the world of common sense says are necessary in order to be sane.It is madness in which doubt is a central element, since it is a state of mind in which all things are possible, in which, in a sense, the figure of Ivan Karamazov looms, shouting his now famous, â€Å"everything is permitted. † But, for the distraught Ivan, this phrase refers only to the world of morality. For the Cartesian Cogito of Derrida this phrase is more far-reaching, since it is primarily epistemological: all visions of reality, and of one’s response to that reality, are possible. Such a state of mind is madness in the most fundamental sense.Not surprising is the fact that this state of the Cogito, when reason and madness have not been separated, is also an intense moment; consequently, this is simultaneously a state of mind in which reason is at its apex of intensity, as is madness. It is the moment of the full power of reason, and therefore the moment of a mad reason, an ancient, all powerful reason that is very different from the reason of which Foucault speaks in relation to De scartes. The reason of which Derrida speaks is not a truncated, chained and bound reason, but rather, a reason of â€Å"mad audacity† (55).That this project is a movement toward the non-determined means that it cannot be â€Å"enclosed in a factual and determined historical structure† (60), cannot be captured within a concrete world that demands clear delineations, separations, within a history that must move from the past, through the present, toward the future, â€Å"for it is the project of exceeding every finite and determined totality† (60), the project of exceeding â€Å"all that is real, factual and existent† (56).Consequently, Derrida refers to this project as demonic, probably because it violates the ancient codes of both the Judaeo-Christian and the classical Greek worlds. Both the warnings of eating the apple of the tree of knowledge and that of succumbing to hubris are warnings not to follow the hyperbolical project, not to attempt to grasp wi th one’s mind all that is and all that could be. But the excessive moment of the hyperbolical project ends when one reflects upon and communicates the Cogito to oneself and then to others.One cannot be mad if one is to communicate this meaning in discourse. It is at this moment, when one breaks the silence, in reflection and in speech, that one safeguards oneself against the epistemological madness of non-distinction among infinite visions of reality, of beyond reality, and of the infinite possibilities of responses to these visions. Now is the basic, fundamental moment of separation of reason from madness, the moment of difference. Speech violently liberates, differs itself from madness and simultaneously imprisons it (60).Only then can finite thought and history reign (61), for finite thought is dependent upon a process that must involve exclusion, as is history, which is dependent upon concrete events, and the exclusive choosing of events in order to make up the story that is history. This articulation of the hyperbolical project, the â€Å"attempt-to-say-the-demonic-hyperbole†¦ is the original profundity of the will in general†¦ is a first passion and keeps within itself a trace of violence† (61). That is. he attempt to communicate the intense moment of the hyperbolical project is the human will’s passionate attempt to make concrete this project of excess. This moment of intense passion is doomed forever to failure, but its titanic, gargantuan effort founds the world and history (57). No wonder that it carries traces of violence. The actual creation of the physical universe, according to the big bang theory, was certainly violent. Speech, language, is that which regulates the â€Å"relationship between that which exceeds and the exceeded totality† (62).Speech separates the world of the hyperbolical project, the world that exceeds, the world of excess, from the world in which we live, the world that is exceeded by the h yperbolical project. Speech emerges from the silence and separates us from the pure Cogito, makes a difference between us and its project, and forces us to make choices, to decide. Since we can no longer have the possibility of grasping all possibilities, we must decide what finite possibilities we must choose. We no longer can live in a world of hyperbolical doubt whose condition is that all is possible.We now are thrown into a world of dazzling light where certainty emerges as a safeguard against madness, for communication functions in such a manner that it â€Å"inspect(s), master(s), limit(s) hyperbole† (59), since reason knows that the total derangement of the hyperbolical moment â€Å"will bring subversion to pure thought† (53). It is most probably because of the implied suffering in the action of speech that Derrida says that speech operates within a â€Å"caesura† (54), a â€Å"wound† (54). that â€Å"opens up life as historicity† (54). Fur thermore, the moment of communication, of speech, is one of crisis for two reasons.Firstly, reason is in grave danger, since in moving from its origin, the pure Cogito of the hyperbolical project, it is in danger of forgetting its origins, of â€Å"blanketing them by the rationalist and transcendent. il unveiling (of) itself† (62). It is then, ironically, that reason is â€Å"madder than madness† (62), for reason moves toward oblivion of this origin, ard therefore toward non-meaning. Madness is at this moment closer to â€Å"the wellspring of sense† (62), and, subsequently. is closer to the rational, however silent it is. Reason is now â€Å"separated from itself as adness, is exiled from itself’ (62). Thus, the communication of the Cogito is the choosing of reason, an act which divides the reason of meaning from the labyrinth of non-meaning; but the price is the loss of dentity with itself and the loss of the possibility of infinite possibility. Secondl y, in ths moment of crisis, hubris is born of articulation, and although hubris S coincident with creation, its major quality is in excess that must operate within finitude, a quality that the concrete world of history is likely to punish severely.My thesis is that reading Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints in the light of this particular Derridean essay is essential for the understanding of the main character, Cristina, the woman whose presence. through the narration of her young son, Vittorio, dominates the entire novel. She lives in a hill-town in the Italian Appennines with her son and her father, the mayor of the town, who is accused of having sold out to the fascists.Her husband, absent for four years since he emigrated to Canada, supposedly to create a new life for Cristina and Vittorio, writes monthly letters of wild scribble, but, for Cristina, he is simply absent and for Vittorio, he is simply a shadowy, violent memory. The tension of the novel revolves around a scene , from Vittorio’s perspective, which is composed of a stable, a muffled shout (1), followed by a green snake escaping from the stable and a pair of blue eyes that run away toward a car.The combination of these events results in the pregnancy of Cristina, and in the very traditional and superstitious people of the village shunning her. To establish Cristina as the Cartesian-Derridean Cogito, it is best to begin by analyzing her silence, as it is observed by the narrator, Vittorio. From the perspective of the reader she tells us nothing of what she truly thinks or feels. What happened in the stable? We can only guess, but that is exactly what we must do.Her only comment is to Luciano, one of her friends in Rocca Secca, â€Å"Anyway I have my own trouble to worry about. I hope he didn’t leave me a little gift—he got very excited when he saw that snake† (66). After this incident, â€Å"a deep silence†¦ descended on the house the very walls, the floor, t he splintered table, seemed to have grown strangely distant and mute, as if guarding some secret themselves† (57). Cristina â€Å"withdrew into shadowy silence† (74), broken mainly by her â€Å"quiet sobbing at night mingling with the sigh of the wind, like something inhuman† (77). The silence seemed to issue from every nook and cranny of the house† (77). Of his mother’s relationship to himself, in particular, Vittorio says, there are â€Å"no words now to bridge the silence† (74). There are only â€Å"silent meals† (74) and the silence between Cristina and the grandfather, her father, more or less extends until the end of the novel. A second characteristic that marks Cristina as the embodiment of the Derridean Cogito is the strange non-delineation between reason and madness that surrounds her.In relation to the element of reason, she is one of the best educated women in the village. But most outstanding is her absolute contempt for the superstition of the villagers who seem to have inherited an ancient pagan superstition that intermingles with Catholicism and erupts every year in the procession of the Virgin Mary whose statue is carried throughout the town. All the doors and windows of the houses of the village are open except for those of Cristina. Their being steadfastly shut makes her a living testimony to rationality itself.But this rationality is strangely interwoven with madness in the snakebite incident. First, at the very beginning of the book, when she is bitten by the snake in the stable, she waits quietly in front of her house for the ride to the hospital. DiLucci, who gives Cristina the ride says to her, â€Å"You’d think you were just going to the market† (16). He seems disconcerted by her â€Å"unexpected calm† (16). Then, Vittorio says that the tourniquet â€Å"sank into her leg†¦ but my mother did not wince or grimace† (17).Finally, she slowly succumbs to a trancel ike, rigid state which sends her into the deepest possible form of physical silence. She is literally outside of what one would normally refer to as a rational state, but, she never rants, raves or rambles. Instead, she is inhumanly calm. She seems to transcend both fear and pain. Before the onset of the results of the venom she is â€Å"rationally silent,† telling her father again and again that what she was doing in the barn was feeding the pigs, and when she overcomes the venom and fully returns to her conscious state. he is â€Å"bright and alert† (18), again â€Å"rational,† but silent. It is almosi as if the brief period of the rigid trancelike state is simply a deepening of the rational/mad silence that will surround her throughout most of the novel. The non-delineation of madness/reason on this rather basic level, when examined in the light of other non-delineations, leads to an extremely important aspect of the Derridean hyperbolical project, that of ep istemological madness.But the major point at the moment is to look at these other non-delineations in relation to Cristina’s being the Derridean Cogito, and to her subsequently being involved with the hyperbolical project. The relationship between Cristina and Vittorio, the most important relationship in the novel, is a good example of Cristina’s sense of lack of division, of boundary, and threatens the villager’s view of what they perceive as the most fundamental of relationships, that of mother and son.The implication of the villagers who hurl accusations at her in her role as mother is that she behaves toward him more like a sister or friend than a mother since she refuses to send the seven-year-old Vittorio into the fields to do agricultural work at 4:00 a. m. , as the other mothers do. The extreme case is Vittorio’s only friend, Fabrizio, whose father forces him to remain in the fields so long that he cannot go to school. Instead, Cristina and Vittor io are accused of playing together like children all the time.But this relationship of mother/sister/friend also is, simultaneously, a mother/ lover relationship. At the age of seven an upset Vittorio is told that he can no longer share his mother’s bed. His grandfather says, â€Å"Next month you’ll be seven. That’s no age to be sleeping with your mother† (34). Then, when Cristina takes Vittorio to the cave of the underground pool, Vittorio discovers a pair of tinted glasses in the straw, similar to the shattered pair that he found when the man with the eyes of the blue flame ran from the stable.The relationship of mother/lover emerges when Vittorio suddenly sees his naked mother standing above him as she is about to dive into the pool. No sensuous touch ever occurs; the entire scene has a preternatural quality about it. At this moment, through Vittorio’s eyes, we see a truly beautiful woman, one, whom he says, bears no resemblance to the other vil lage women, a â€Å"smooth and sleek† (33) woman who takes on the qualities of some ancient Greek goddess, such as Calypso or Circe. Like them, she has beauty and power for good and for evil.If Calypso, she has the power to grant men immortality and eternal youth (Homer 58), although she may also deter them from their lawful, faithful wives. If Circe, she has the power to turn men into swine (118-119)—therefore, Cristina’s reference to feeding the pigs when she was in the stable—and has the subsequent power to return them to their human form with an unearthly beauty that heretofore they had not possessed. Thus, Cristina is eternal beauty, love, and eternal faithful relationship, as well as ugliness, treachery and unfaithfulness.This non-delineation, non-difference, non-choice, non-separation is evident also in her relationships with mature men. In being unfaithful to her long absent husband in Canada, she is faithful to her blue-eyed lover, for, in the im agination of the careful reader, the hints and fragmented pieces of Vittorio’s memory draw a picture of a youthful love of Cristina for a young German soldier, a love that preceded her marriage to Mario of her own village. The German was her first, and in a sense, her only lover.The dim memory of Mario given to us by Vittorio is anything but that of a lover. He is seen as a violent figure who hurled an object against his mother’s face, a memory that is questionable, but, nevertheless, Cristina does have a small scar on her face in the shape of a â€Å"disjointed cross† (Lives 37). But two other passages give foundation to Vittorio’s memory. Cristina says of Mario to Alfredo, â€Å"The only way he knows how to talk is with the back of his hand† (95).Then, when Vittorio sees the letter with the â€Å"small neat script of bright blue† (158), he says that this writing is not that of his â€Å"father’s violent hand† (158). Thus, her infidelity is true faithfulness. Furthermore, if the reader is tempted to see the blue-eyed soldier as a fascist, a member of a military machine ruled by fascist ideology, careful reading indicates that this young man was probably a communist who, somehow, in a way never explained, deserted the army and most likely was involved in some sort of dangerous, heroic undercover, or partisan action against the Nazis.And Cristina, in her silent way, lives for years with secret rendezvous, probably in Rocca Secca, with this lover, while simultaneously living in harmony with her fascist father who is just as traditional in his attitudes as the rest of the villagers. She does not choose. She does not have to because she does not speak. One can continue to multiply this non-delineation, non-difference way of living by adding that no line exists between desire/love and duty or Cristina, nor between meaning and non-meaning.She lives desire, her love for her lover, for Vittorio, for her father, b ut she also is a dutiful daughter and mother, and no duty exists for her vis-a-vis her husband since she appears to feel that she has been abandoned. Some men in her family had gone to the New World and returned, but some, like Cristina’s paternal grandfather, have disappeared. Her feeling of abandonment is exhibited when she hurls at her father the accusation that her husband i-as probably been sleeping with every whore in America (154). Furthermore, she appears to live in some beyond world of meaning/non-meaning.The literal reading of the text sees a talented, vibrant woman living the daily life of deathly isolation and suppression of all that she is. This text is that of a meaningless life. But Cristina wishes to grasp the totality, no matter what it means, and it is here that the text of a meaningful life lies. Derrida actually claims that this action is the origin of meaning (Writing 57. ). What she most passionately desires in this project is to grasp the totality of fr eedom, a freedom that cannot really be thought.It is a freedom that â€Å"wants it all†: to be a dutiful daughter of a traditional, fascist father, to be a passionate lover of a blue-eyed fugitive communist, to be a respected educated, highly rational citizen of a traditional, uneducated superstition-haunted village, to be a loving, playful mother, yet a mother who never tells her son anything. it is a mad project of excess that can be implied by these few words. but not completely thought, for Cristina is grasping for that which goes beyond words and thoughts. This mad project, best labelled epistemological madness, is the major mark of the hyperbolical project of the Derridean Cogito.The villagers unconsciously understand this quality in Cristina, for they, too have an epistemology, since everyone does, and her behavior and silence are seen by the villagers as a derangement, a displacement, a subversion of their â€Å"rationality,† their â€Å"raison d’etre,à ¢â‚¬  for her very existence threatens all their beliefs, their epistemology. Cristina’s existence not only threatens their view of reality in relation to Catholicism as they live it, but also their ancient superstitions, especially their complex view of the ability of one person to curse another, that is, the power of a person to exercise effectively â€Å"the evil eye. But, most important, her existence threatens the villagers’ understanding of human relationships, especially of those between men and women, of family relationships in general, of the place of women in society, and of the consequent possibility of their freedom. Thus, Cristina upsets the foundation of meaning for the villagers; her existence threatens the clear certainty of their lives with doubt. That Cristina’s threat is as powerful as it is, is derived from its being rooted in the intensity of an ancient mad rationality. She grapples toward all possibilities, the villagers toward none.Not s urprising, because Cristina’s very existence is perceived by the villagers to be a threat, the unspoken accusation against her is that she is mad in the sense of the supposed madness of witchcraft. Since they dimly perceive that she attempts to grasp the totality of reality, and that somehow she lives within a forbidden space, she surely must be in touch with the demonic and suffers from a subsequent dangerous madness. One could object to this analysis, saying that the witch-craze existed a few centuries ago, but it must be remembered that these villagers appear to have a completely pre-scientific mentality.In the days of the witch craze, at the centre of all the lore surrounding witchcraft, was the belief that the Devil would assume human form and it is then that the woman witch would have sexual intercourse with him (Malleus Maleficarium 27). In the earliest days of the witch craze, a phenomenon that some historians believe grew out of the attack upon heretics (Russell 229) , many men were accused of witchcraft (279), but many women, especially women from the upper classes, were attracted to these heretical sects because it was only there that they could enjoy something that resembled equality (282).This factor, plus many other social factors, finally made women the sole victims of the witch craze, and as this phenomenon centred more and more upon women, the accusations moved from those of heresy, toward those of sexual intercourse with the Devil. The link between Cristina’s Father’s accusatory â€Å"communista† and Alfredo’s dire, oblique prediction that Cristina’s unborn child will have a serpentine head is reminiscent of the historical link between sexual relations with the devil and heresy, for to the religious, fascist father, the term â€Å"communista† implies the worst kind of heresy of his time.That Vittorio describes the eyes that he saw at the stable as turning magically a luminous blue as they caught the sunlight†¦ (and that they were) â€Å"bright flames that held me† (Lives 12) is net surprising. To him, obviously, the Devil, who must take male human form in order to have sexual relations with a woman, really had ‘visited’ Christina in the stable. Once again, Cristina lives the logos/madness non-delineation, for although the witch lore follows her everywhere, her reaction to it is that of scoffing rationality.She laughs while saying, â€Å"Stupidaggini† (57). Although the rational reader, too, scoffs at the link that the villagers see between the Devil and Cristina, there are indications in the text that in a profound mythical sense, there is a link between Cristina and the demonic. This point is strengthened by the underground cave scene. The hot spring sulphuric waters of this underground place where Cristina obviously feels very safe and at home have reverberations, as does the river that she and Vittorio must cross, of Hades, and of the riv er Styx.A this point, let us not forget that Derrida refers to the hyperbolical project as demonic, for it symbolizes the pursuit of excess, of forbidden knowledge. Furthermore, of course, for the pure Cogito which Cristina at this moment, personifies, there is no division, no boundary, between reason and the labyrinth, between meaning and non-meaning, between God and the Devil. Cristina is usually so self-contained, so stoical, so powerful in her seeming control of herself.But on two occasions before the climactic leave-taking of the village, she concretely, actively, displays the hyperbolical project’s element of mad excess, once in a violent physical fight with one of the village women, and once in the dance at the end of the festival. One day after school some of the schoolmates of Vittorio beat him. When Cristina hears of the event, surmising that one of the mothers of these boys had provoked the incident because of the rumors of the snake and of her pregnancy, Cristina races through the town and into the woman’s house and attacks her.Cristina attempts to strangle her, but the frightened, amazed woman pulls away in time. Later, at the end of the festival, Cristina grabs Vittorio’s arm and takes him to the centre of the dancing and begins to dance, to whirl very quickly. Vittorio finds the entire situation mad, wild, dizzying. Dancing/strangling: a strange dual manifestation of this project. Finally, as she and Vittorio leave the village forever, Cristina articulates what she thinks and feels to the villagers.In a driving rain, standing beside the truck that is going to drive them to the dock in Naples, she stops, and at all the villagers who are watching her from balconies and windows, she hurls these words. Fools†¦ You tried to kill me but you see I’m still alive. And now you came to watch me hang, but I won’t he hanged, not by your stupid rules and superstitions. You are the ones who are dead, not me, because not one of you know what it means to be free and to make a choice, and I pray to God that he wipes this town and all its stupidities off the face of the earth! 184) This is the moment of articulation, of speech, of separation of reason from madness, of her declaring a difference between herself and madness. It is the moment that she publicly articulates decision, her decision to leave her fascist father and his village of narrow superstitious tradition, to cease being a dutiful daughter and village citizen, and to choose to go to her lover, a man who is not her husband, according to law, and to go to a world that is radically different from that in which she has always lived.She no longer attempts to grasp the totality. She knows that definite decisions, choices, must be made, that she must declare that differences exist that cannot be lived simultaneously. The nightly sighs, and sobs of hyperbolical doubt are over, and her taunting, proud shouts at the staring villagers are the shouts of a sudden manifestation of certainty, of a rational certainty that separates her from their superstition.

Four Functions of Management Essays

Four Functions of Management Essays Four Functions of Management Paper Four Functions of Management Paper In the process of collaborating people and resources to execute company objectives, management strategies these four elements to make the superlative use of materials, time, money, and skills. Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling are interdependent core elements of successful management. Planning Planning delivers a strategic value through the specification of goals and the outlining of pertinent actions for achievement. Value is understood as the monetary gain associated with how well the supply (goods and services) meets the demand (user needs) in terms of efficiency, speed, and quality. Planning can be derived from arioso user sources such as customers, business owners, suppliers, employees, stakeholders, communities, and even whole nations. The objective of planning is to seize opportunities develop, fortify, and uphold competitive advantage. Planning sets the stage for project management (Bateman Snell, 2009). Planning includes duties such as: 1 . Analyzing current arrangement 2. Projecting future situations 3. Establishing objectives 4. Activity engagement 5. Corporate strategies 6. Resource management Recently, my company decided to merge with a sister company to blanket more Mounties for health insurance coverage. My company is currently in the planning phase. The company has decided to merge one department at a time and reassess the scenario for further decision-making. The six step process listed above for planning must be revisited multiple times for the total plan to merge. Organizing Organizing supports the dynamic of an organization through the coordination of informational data, employees, financial accord, physical structure, and company resources. A company needs to remain flexible and adaptable to competition and customer needs. : Human resource organization strives to attract and retain the most diverse population needed for success (Bateman Snell, 2009). Organizing management castles entail 2. Job duty specification 3. Departmental grouping 4. Allocating capital company attractiveness 5. Cultivate conditions for maximum success My company uses organization strategies through the human resources department. The human resource department is responsible for departmental divisions and the physical organization of the departments location in the companys building. The unman resources department determines Job duties and coordinating salary according to an alphabetical scale the company has developed. One can tell the weight of Job responsibilities and a general salary range through the A through Z grade of a position. Leading Leading is a motivational position in management that involves close contact with people. Leading is predicated on communication with groups and individuals. Leading takes place in the smallest of teams to the largest of executive staff within an organization. Leading functions of a manager give employees motivation to come to ark, while the motivation of executives gives managers inspiration to do their Jobs. Leading gets others to contribute their ideas. Leading is to mobile people towards company objectives through guidance and inspiration (Bateman Snell, 2009). Delegation is a major portion of leading. Effective delegation frees the manager to focus on managerial tasks such as planning and control (Lorena, 2008, 1 2). My company effectively cultivates leading through regular meetings that encourage the thoughts of employees. Discussions are focused on in each meeting to give mattes the opportunity for commentary on process improvement. Controlling Controlling is a learning process that monitors tasks, encourages quality performance, and challenges change. In essence, controlling is quality assurance that organizational goals are being meet, safety guidelines are being followed, and company resources are being used effectively and efficiently. Controlling is ultimately about monitoring performance (Bateman Snell, 2009). In an article titled Pass It On! , the author states, We tend to have the mind-set that says, If you want it done right, do it yourself. After all, how else can we control quality? (Whitman, 2007, 1 2). Controlling is ultimately about quality assurance of execution. An effective manager must be able to entrust employees with the workload duties. My current employer has a quality assurance department which is solely dedicated to monitoring the work of employees through recorded telephone lines and regular paperwork audits. Conclusion Management using the following core elements to use employees and company resources to achieve organizational goals: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.