They’re all wasted! Essay Example for Free

They’re all wasted! Essay â€Å"They’re all wasted! † proclaims The Who’s Roger Daltrey in 1971’s â€Å"Baba O’Riley,† a song widely and mistakenly believed to be titled â€Å"Teenage Wasteland† because of the refrain. Putting an emphasis on â€Å"all,† this is a sweeping indictment: the youth are all wasted, not just one group or in one way, but everywhere and in every faculty. Every potentialfor rebellion, discipline, pleasure, beliefhas been squandered. But The Who were far from the first to imagine this modern wasteland. T. S. Eliot’s poem, â€Å"The Wasteland,† provides a wide-ranging critique of modernity, while also modeling the aesthetics of the new epoch, that makes statements like The Who’s intelligible while building on established literary and social conventions. The historical context for Eliot’s poem can be divided into three major components. First, there is the literary tradition writ large, the collected textual productions of the world over the last several millennia. â€Å"The Wasteland† makes reference to the Bible (20-3), Buddhism (173), Dante (62-5), Shakespeare (172), Greek tragedy (218), and many more sources: the Norton Anthology’s cup runneth over with footnotes. Second, there is English literature. It is more likely that Eliot’s peers would measure him against the immediate backdrop of national history, not least because education in excellence in English literature is also education of the excellence of English literature. Thus Eliot must be able to demonstrate knowledge of Shakespeare and Marvell at the minimum, but also make an original contribution to the English literary tradition coming out of the nineteenth century. As in â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock† Eliot addresses nineteenth century British Romanticism with modern inversions of the celebration of unadulterated nature. In the opening paragraph we have a modernized parallel of Wordsworth’s â€Å"A Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free†: Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. (8-11) The natural world is pleasing and comforting to humanity in this miniature. The surprise of rain does not seem to dampen the spirits of the characters but rather, through the stop in the colonnade, causes them to pause and so appreciate the reappearance of the sunlight. The construction â€Å"Summer surprised us† gives the natural world and its seasons a kind of playful agency, as in the Romantic tradition. However, we cannot think of Eliot as remaining within the Romantic tradition despite his utilization of it as a literary option. The third vital context is the recently concluded World War I. Hence the agency of the natural world, insomuch as Eliot images such agency for literary purposes, is as ambivalent as human nature. The opening lines, also drawing on literary precedent in Chaucer’s â€Å"Canterbury Tales,† depict a less loving nature. April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. (1-4) The April showers that bring May flowers, to paraphrase Chaucer, bring a conflation of life and death instead of pilgrims. April is personified, as in Romanticism, but here it is so that it can be labelled cruel. Life is not an abstractly generative force: since at least Sidney’s â€Å"Astrophel and Stella† and Shakespeare’s â€Å"Sonnets,† English literature has had a rich tradition of sexual metaphorics, using phrases like â€Å"Dull roots† for phallic impotence and â€Å"spring rain† for ejaculatory procreation. But Eliot cannot simply celebrate this cycle of rebirth in the shadow of the muddy graves of World War I. The â€Å"mixing / memory and desire† recasts the common literary relationship between sex and death in a perverse light, since â€Å"memory† transgresses the partition between the living and the dead, the present and the past. Memory exhumes what is past, does not allow it to die and rest in peace. This corpse is now also the object of â€Å"desire. † The cycle of death and rebirth has been stalled in modernity and in the vision of â€Å"The Waste Land. † Eliot’s poem both represents and partakes of this modern problem; in fact, the necessity of participating in the forces of social infertility to represent it might be one of the most distinctively modern aspects that Eliot represents here. The broad scope of historical literature that he can draw on is the result of the British empire contacting and importing cultural products from around the globe. His knowledge of languages and availability of translations when necessary further speak to world literature as a thoroughly modern phenomenon. The need to reject or critique prior traditions is also part of the modern awareness of the dialectical nature of history. Of course, this also marks (ironically) a point of continuity with Victorians like Baudelaire (67). The fragmented form of â€Å"The Waste Land† is part of this modern rejection of tradition, but to depict this fragmentation Eliot must also gather together multiple traditions. They are juxtaposed with each other but without a master narrative to organize them. To further drive the point home Eliot also uses non-standard grammar or spelling, or seemingly nonsense words and sounds: â€Å"O O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag† (128). This ambiguity then contrasts with the grim and undecorated conversation circling, like Hemingway’s â€Å"Hills Like White Elephants,† around an abortion: â€Å"I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face, / It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said† (158-60). Stylistic innovation and rejection of stifling â€Å"rules† of art allow Eliot to create a radically new expression of the human experience, but in doing so he simultaneously duplicates the rootlessness and anomie he is seeking to overcome. â€Å"The Waste Land† articulates combatting notions of history, progress, and form that do not reach any conclusive resolution in the poem or in its subsequent readings. With the aid of hindsight the critic can understand Eliot’s growing religious conservatism in subsequent works like â€Å"Journey of the Magi. † By trying to include every literary and theological mode, he winds up putting them all at a discount; even if one’s chosen credo is somewhat arbitrary it at least allows entrance into the myth of rebirth. The forces in tension in â€Å"The Waste Land† chart two continuing political alignments. The will or willingness to subscribe to any belief is most darkly visible in the rise of the Third Reich; the willingness to subscribe to none is most visible in our inability to decisively commit to the prevention of subsequent atrocities. Eliot’s poem provides a space for considering these questions without prejudicing the question through contemporary political affiliations. The political question can be momentarily set aside if we imagine, for the time being, that this is merely art for art’s sake. Works Cited Eliot, T. S. â€Å"The Wasteland. † The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. , 2000. 236

Siddhartha and Hinduism/Buddhism Essay -- Religion Spirituality Essays

Siddhartha and Hinduism/Buddhism Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse discusses the many paths of teaching that relate to Hinduism that Siddhartha followed on his journey through life and how each path helped him realize what he wanted with his life. Siddhartha follows many teachings or paths in which to reach his spiritual destination, which at the beginning was to reach Nirvana. The four stages of life choices, which favor both renunciation and world upholding, are 1) student 2) householder 3) forest hermit and 4) wandering ascetic (Ghose, 1/18/01). In the book, Siddhartha participated in each of these lifestyles for a significant amount of time. Unlike his father, Siddhartha did not want to be a Brahmin. He thought his calling was to be a samana, which is very similar, if not an interchangeable term for wandering ascetic. Siddhartha and his beloved friend Govinda were at heart destined to be samanas. Siddhartha bid farewell to his family renouncing material wealth and sensual pleasure as in two of the four aims of life. They wander into the woods to concentrate and try to reach the heightened sensation that is to come with being closer to realizing Nirvana. During his journey with the samanas, he learned to follow many paths that took him away from his self-centered ego. By following and voluntarily suffering through, and eventually overcoming things such as pain, hunger, thirst and fatigue, he was getting closer to what the samanas thought was pure and good. Although he would leave his ego, behind when enduring those scenarios he always came back to his ego, what he and Govinda were working for had only been a lesson in the many teachings and sets of goals they must accomplish to reach the ultimate goal they wanted; redemption (Hesse 14-17). Their journey as samanas and students in the stages of life leads them to questioning the path that they were following, where these teaching helping them were they leading them on the right path? â€Å"There is, I believe, no such thing as what we call ‘learning.’ O my friend, only one knowledge: it is everywhere, it is Atman, it is in me and in you and in every being. And I am starting to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the wish to know, than learning (Hesse 18).† Siddhartha and Govinda spend three years, as samanas in which Siddhartha’s soul feels not fulfilled. After these three ye... ... youth. Vesudeva waited for Siddhartha to realize the revolutionary thought that everything in the world was together as one. The wholeness and the oneness of the river communicated him to show him serenity and understanding. The river also provoked a thought that gave him the understanding that of why as a child he had to leave the teachings of the teachers â€Å"wisdom cannot be communicated. Wisdom that a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish. Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. We can find it, we can live it, we can be carried by it, we can work wonders with it, but we cannot utter it or teach it (Hesse 123-4).† Siddhartha’s followed many paths in his life. Each of his paths led him to another lesson or teaching that furthered his quest for his spiritual destination. He experienced all aspects of life, from rich to poor, lonely to companionship, stranger to lover and from guest to friend. By going through those path changes, his emotions and mind were put to the test and succeeded. The paths and four different types of living made his spiritual journey a successful one and that is why he reached the highest of ‘wholeness and oneness’ feeling he did.

Impact of the American Culture

Impact of the Popular American Culture Melinda A. Valdez Soc. 105 March 17, 2010 Impact of the American Culture There are many advertisements being held by the media and television commercials that affect the American culture. They do not just affect the adults but the children as well for instants, this week my children and I were watching the Disney channel and we saw a commercial of Chucky Cheese and right away my children say they want to go there, so to satisfy my children now I want to take them there so they could enjoy themselves and now I am going to have to spend money that I was not planning on and it might not even be that exciting to them as it was shown on TV. In the past three days not only was I coming across kid commercials but make up products, red lobster, and movies that are just coming out, and when you see these they encourage you to go out and get them. These advertisements are not things that I have to have in life to survive; they are stuff to pleasure me and to entertain me as well. Personally I know that the media has impacted my lifestyle in many ways even though I am aware of the influence it has on my decision making. For example, the makeup commercials, do I need the makeup more likely no but I see the commercial and see what it might make your skin look like and even though I know that they are doing it to sale there product it just looks so good that I have to try it. I honestly think I have more luxury in my house than what I really do need. Such as my television it is a sixty two inch do I really need a TV that big, no but it looks nice. Overall I do think that the media and advertising has a big impact on our American culture and yes we can say no to advertisements but we are more likely not to.

A Comparative Essay Between 1984 and Brave New World Essay

It is interesting to note, before anything, the similarities between Brave New World and 1984. Firstly and rather obviously, they are both prophetic novels, they were both written in turbulent times, both suffering changes that could revert the future of the world. When 1984 was written, the world had just gotten out of a second war and the surprising rise of communism and their totalitarian government was frightening most of the western world. In George Orwell’s novel, the main concern seems to be the overtaking of a supreme, socialist totalitarian government/dictatorship. On the other hand, when Brave New World was written, the world had just been swept by a wave of mass production and consumerism, and that too is reflected in Aldous Huxley’s ultra-modern, test-tube baby, sleep-taught society. That is exactly what makes the two novels so alike and so different at the same time. To begin with both authors forecast a society of obedience and compliance, but on one hand, the Brave New World is also driven by consumerism and high advanced technology and drug abuse (soma, to ensure the happiness of the masses), † ‘Now- such is progress- the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think- or even by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time should yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always some, delicious soma half a gramme for half a holiday [†¦] returning when they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour and distraction†¦'†. Whilst 1984 is a bare, war stricken place with food rations and the like, â€Å"Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn papers into spirals, and though the sun was shinning and the sky was blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except in the posters that were plastered everywhere.† Both novels also similar in the aspect that most inhabitants do not seem to see a problem with the world they live in, most comply and obey, in Brave New World, most consume, but in both novels, there are the odd sheep. In Brave New World Bernard Marx, † ‘But he’s so ugly!’ [†¦] ‘And then so  small.’ Fanny rebels because he does not fit in made a grimace; smallness was so horribly and typically low-caste.† In 1984, Winston Smith rebels because he does not accept, â€Å"to the future or the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone- to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone. From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, form the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink-â€Å". says Winston. Both novel seem to portray societies divided into castes, in 1984 there are three of them the ‘proles’, the ‘outer Party’ and the ‘inner Party’, the ‘proles’ are the uneducated masses, the ‘outer party’ are the medium working class, and the ‘inner party’ are the controllers. In Brave New World, the castes are a bit more literal, four in total, Alphas, intelligent and beautiful, have the high positions, Betas, not quite as ‘perfect’ as the Alphas, Gammas, part of the uneducated masses and finally Epsilons, similar in IQ to oysters, the workers and cleaners. Both novels can be regarded as ‘novels that changed history’, that is, when they were written it seemed that things were headed in the direction that both novels pointed out, and some people considered that it was the novels that ‘opened people’s eyes’ and showed them the way. However, many other people seemed to think that both were equally extreme to have actually concretized themselves.

Four Little Girls Essays - Counterculture Of The 1960s, Free Essays

Four Little Girls Essays - Counterculture Of The 1960s, Free Essays Four Little Girls When documentaries are filmed, produced, and then viewed, the audience is left with more knowledge and awareness than before having watched it. When I watch a National Geographic documentary on exploitation of indigenous peoples, I become aware of their situation and further understand the cruel world around me. Also, my emotions are stirred up. With the awareness that documentaries bring, also comes the waves of emotional buildup. This is why documentaries are most effective in grabbing an audiences attention on a subject matter having to do with exploitation, injustice, and racism; they show the cruelty and disrespect the victims are faced with. Four Little Girls, a documentary directed by Spike Lee, is an example of this. He interviews those that were involved or held knowledge of the bombing at 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. He speaks with officials and professionals, preachers, family members and childhood friends of the four girls killed at this incident. At the same time that these interviews are going on, there are clips from the 50s and 60s of black protesters, marches, and beatings relevant to the political and social crisis of the day. Also included are picture shots of the girls, including their gravestones. Lee incorporates the ongoing Civil Rights Movement with the story of the bombing incident and the four girls that died as a result. The Civil Rights Movement becomes more real to us when the protagonists are also made real. The victims parents tell the audience through their words, stories, and pictures, of who the girls were and how they lived. They also display the girls badges, awards, certificates, and Bible that one had in her pocketbook the day she was in the church basement attending Sunday school. The white officials, who were more or less viewed as the antagonists, spoke of that same era from their point of view. Through intercutting photos of lynched black men wearing a sign that read This Nigger Voted, white men made common yet hypocritical remarks of how Birmingham was a pleasant place to raise a family. The films goes through a series of events and attempts by black leaders to build an effective civil rights coalition between local leaders like Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and national leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel. But the forces of the older black population slowly digressed as white leaders, like Bull Connor, Police Commissioner, strode around through black neighborhoods in his white army tank. The struggle moved on to the younger generation. Police men were even arresting them and placing them in jail cells. The quick inclusion of students into the movement allowed for a massive amount of young people to come together and protest full strength. It began first with the high school students, then junior high, and finally grade school students. When a younger child had been asked by her mother where she had been that day, the child proudly said, In jail. In jail? What were you doin in jail?, asked her astonished mother. The child answered, For freedom. Testimonies from the black citizens of Birmingham were intertwined coherently. Hope as well as fear spoke from their words as they invested courage into the populaces young people who proudly marched to jail. Subtle encouragement of the young was the way the black community supported their role in the movement. One teacher had said that when she told her class about the protests and demonstrations that were attracting students to the streets, she told them, I hope that when I turn my back to write on the blackboard that I dont turn around and find all you gone. The whole class was gone when she turned back around. There is a scent of pride in her voice when she remarks about the empty classroom. Birmingham had history of bombs being used to make political points. The existence of the steel mills, industry, and foundries, made accessibility to dynamite quite efficient and easy. When black families began to build substantial homes on a hill, the homes were destroyed by honkies that felt that they did not deserve to live too well. Dynamite Hill as the area was called, prepared for the events at 16th St. Baptist Church in 1963. The 16th St. Church had become a meeting place for all people involved in the civil rights struggle. It was an immediate target for the Klu Klux Klan to slow the momentum of the movement. The

5 Clues That Its Time to Quit

5 Clues That Its Time to Quit Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic of the Harvard Business Review has compiled 5 tell-tale warning signs that may indicate it’s time for you to start job hunting. You’re Not LearningYour mind- and your career- thrive when you are constantly encountering new information, developing new skills, or following your natural curiosity into continuous learning. If your job offers you no pathway to move forward and continue growing, why are you there? The invigorating stress of a job search might even spill over into your current job- try it and see.You Are UnderperformingI wish I had researched this article in the spring of 2010; I was underutilized at my job, had a micromanaging boss, and coasted through each day with no motivation, excitement, or incentive to work any harder. If this is you, GET OUT! Find a job where you are engaged, or stressed, or challenged- anything but zoned out. If you need motivation, try to imagine the resume blurb for your current underwhelming job. â€Å"Sat at desk and tried not to nod off in front of boss. Filed company paperwork. Thought fondly of death.† Yeah, it’s time to move on.You Feel UndervaluedAppreciation can come in many forms, but if you don’t feel like your supervisors or colleagues understand your value, you may be experiencing burnout and counterproductive self-sabotage that lowers the productivity of more than just yourself. Maybe you can speak up for what you need- or maybe there’s another organization out there that can appreciate you for what you bring to the table.You’re Just In It For the MoneyWith the obvious caveat that lots of us do lots of things because we have bills that need paying, if literally the only reason you show up each day is the promise of an eventual paycheck, you are in the wrong job. Many studies have shown that compensation can make up for the lack of intrinsic rewards like enjoyment, curiosity, or personal fulfillment, but it won’t be rewarding and you certainly won’t be motivated to do your best work.You Hate Your BossThis is the biggest red flag because everything else- responsibilities, supervisees, assessment, even compensation- can be altered or adjusted. But in order to complain about your boss you have to invoke HR or go over their head (or, just wait for them to implode, if they are incompetent).Chamorro-Premuzic’s research found that 75% of working adults cite their immediate supervisors as the most stressful part of their job. This may mean your company has failed to identify and cultivate good leadership, or it might just be a personality mismatch. Either way, you may need to move on to break free.What do you think- do any of these apply, and if so, make sure to sign up and get matched with the latest job opportunity!

Book- Corrections The Essentials, author - Mary k. Stohr, Anthony Essay

Book- Corrections The Essentials, author - Mary k. Stohr, Anthony Walsh - Essay Example However, deterrence holds that the level of punishment depends on the gravity of the crime. Given the ability to calculate the possible gains and pain, the potential of the preventive effect expected from this form of punishment might not be applicable when the criminal looks forwards to achieving more gain than pain. Rehabilitation involves the reintegration of a convicted person back to society using treatment programs essential for stopping offenders from continuing with their criminal behavior. The assumption is that criminal behavior emanates from factors such as an individual’s psychological development, social surrounding and his or her biological makeup. For this reason, the justification behind it is that it is vital for improving compliance since the programs used empower the criminal to learn suitable behavioral skills. Incapacitation involves making it legally impossible for criminals to victimize people by locking them up in prison. Since the criminals are not in a position to harm those outside the prison walls, it is a good strategy for defending possible victims. In this case, the criminal incapacitation forcefully prevents a criminal from exercising criminal tendencies, which is vital for ensuring the safety to innocent