English Composition 1 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 6

English Composition 1 - Essay Example One hour of active physical activity like walking, swimming or other exercising per day is now recommended by the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine. It is a half an hour per day more that the previous recommendation advised (half an hour five days a week). However, even that old goal is hardly reached by many Americans. This fact is related mostly to using cars and labor-saving devices that free people from long walks and physical activity they had, for example, a century ago. In the modern highly technological and busy world most people spend their days sitting at work, in from of computers or TV sets, and find no time for exercising. Focus, an ability concentrate, is one of the most important skills of a student. It is so because a concentrated person can complete a piece of work, such as homework or test, faster and more effectively since one’s mind is not disturbed by external irritants. Though different people have different abilities to concentrate, this valuable skill can be learned and improved by means of constant practice. One of the methods to reinforce the skill is establishing a rule of having the same time and place to study every day. This, soon, will become a habit to help one in the studying process. Afterwards one can use an established timer to make oneself concentrate on one particular task for, for instance, fifteen minutes. And, of course, one should reward oneself for each small achievement – even the fifteen minutes of focusing on one thing. Finally, with time concentrating becomes a habit, and benefits its owner by the ability to be more attentive during the class or on the t est. Therefore, thought the ability to concentrate is extremely important for achieving success in any process, the good thing is that it can be learned and

Complex Love In A Rose For Emily English Literature Essay

Complex Love In A Rose For Emily English Literature Essay This paper will investigate the complex love relationship between the southern belladonna Emily Grierson and the northern street worker Homer Barron in William Faulkners A Rose for Emily. In order to analyse this issue, I will divide my research in two parts. I will first focus on the female protagonist who seems to have a great desire for companionship and love. To verify this idea I will outline the main features of her life and try to enter in the world of her psyche. Moreover, I will define and interpret possible reasons for her actions. The second part will concentrate on the important male figure of the short story: Homer Barron. Here, I will focus mainly on his role in this sophisticated love-scenario and on the questions, why he gets murdered and which reasons led Emily to commit such a crime. I will then compare these findings to the title of the short story and concentrate my thoughts on the meaning of the symbol of the rose in A Rose for Emily. 2. A Rose for Emily: A Portrait of Emily Grierson. An absent-minded Southern belladonna named Emily Grierson represents the protagonist of William Faulkners short story A Rose for Emily. Interpretations about this character can lead to numerous directions due to her life which is seen as extremely bizarre and macabre: The daughter of an aristocratic and a good standing family has difficulties with growing-up due to her stern father who never accepts one of her suitors. After Mr Grierson passed away, a young street worker from the North, named Homer Barron, appears in the small town of Jefferson, to whom she loses her heart. Suddenly, he vanishes and he never turns up again, while Emily is caught in the act of buying arsenic. Until then, Ms Grierson stays in her house for good but her black servant leaves sometimes. All of a sudden, Emily dies and as the curious townspeople enter the house at her burial, they come across a bedroom made up as a bridal room where they find a grey strain of hair next to the tracks of a skeleton. Schizophrenia as a Scapegoat for her Actions. Although Emilys behaviour is outrageous, she never had a reputation for being insane. The townspeople did not say she was crazy (A Rose for Emily  [1]  124), but her actions and her character would lead one to assume that she has gone barking mad. If not, why would someone stay in a house for a lifetime and sleep next to a corpse? A possible explanation for this might be a mental illness, as e.g. schizophrenia (Smith). Its causes can be easily lead back to Emilys childhood: As a result of the high values of an aristocratic family, she grew up with ever-lasting expectations that the inhabitants of Jefferson had of a daughter of such an ancestry: Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town (RfE 119). The citizens demanded the maintenance of those traditions set up by her ancestors but already as a child she was not probably able to handle these demanding conditions (Smith). Another culprit for Emilys mental state is definitely Mr Grierson. The family values were of a particular importance for him, even if his daughter would have to suffer: [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] her father which had thwarted her womans life so many times [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] (RfE 127). Therefore Emily never had a love relationship with a man because Mr Grierson thinking none of those suitors were good enough for her was always shooing them away. [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] she got to be thirty and was still single [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦]. (RfE 123) 2.2 Death of her Father as the Last Straw. After Mr Grierson passed away, the reader is able to observe an acceleration of Emilys mental decadence (Smith). This process might seem peculiar but it is easy explainable: Emily was always burdened with external stress, which her father has to be partly blamed for. Now, much of this pressure disappears suddenly owing to the death of Mr Grierson and of all his expectations and orders, whereby the previous hidden symptoms surface (Smith). Therefore, Emily is not able anymore to convey her true feelings at the burial, i.e. she is not affected by her own fathers exitus and has no trace of grief on her face (RfE 123). Hence, the former Southern belle is leaving more and more reality and enters an imaginary world, as e.g. by saying to the townspeople that her father was not dead (RfE 123) or by totally withdrawing herself from society. Another classic symptom for schizophrenia can be detected in her inability of interacting socially with others and in the later lack of hygiene and of sel f-awareness on her physical appearance (Smith): When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man. (RfE 127-28) Besides all these examples, the best argument for a supposable mental illness on the part of Emily Grierson establishes her attraction to corpses. 2.3 Transcending Death of Emilys Love. The fact that Ms Grierson spends time with a dead human body states Faulkner in the last sentences of his short story: The man himself lay in the bed. For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair (RfE 130). This paragraph demonstrates well the height of her mental illness and explains frankly what Emily did in the last years of her life: She murdered her suitor Homer Barron and passed the nights next to his cadaver. Such attractions to dead bodies are termed as necrophilia which is a combination of the two Greek words nekros (dead person) and philia (affection). This mental disorder includes sexual intercourse with a corpse which is in fact illegal in Europe. Whether Emily slept with Homers corpse can only be interpreted because it is not mentioned directly (Grabher). 3. A Rose for Homer: A Portrait of Homer Barron. Homer Barron displays an essential figure in A Rose for Emily because he can be presented as a symbol for hope and for companionship, i.e. Emily Grierson sees in this Northern street worker a ghost of a chance of getting away from all the expectations laid upon her and from solitude. Her whole life has been marked by the feeling of loneliness but through Homer she tries to break this mould. [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jewelers and ordered a mans toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of mens clothing, including a nightshirt [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] (RfE 127). The townspeoples description of Emilys activities reveals her seriousness about her relationship with her beloved foreman but does not convey the reason for her subsequent tasks. 3.1 Revelation of Homers Homosexual Proclivities. A possible reason for the murder of Homer Barron could be seen in Emilys fear of being alone again. Indeed, she falls in love with her follow and insists on marrying him but that differs with Homers intentions. As a labourer from the North, he is just looking for a place to stay during the working weeks and not for a future wife. In addition to that, it seems that Homer is not interested in any woman but in men, because he himself had remarked-he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks Club-that he was not a marrying man (RfE 126). A closer analysis of his first and last name can be used to strengthen this theory. Homer leads us back to Ancient Greece (8th century BC-146 BC) and to Homeros who wrote Iliad and the Odyssey. Anyway, the Greek society of this time is largely known for its acceptance of homosexuality. Barron could be interpreted in various ways, e.g. as a pun  [2]  due to barren which has a similar sound. However, barren displays a tight connection with the character, if we look at its synonyms: fruitless, sterile, meagre or infertile. This particular meaning of that term ties in with the inability of a homosexual couple to reproduce and therefore with the figure of Homer Barron (Grabher). Moreover, Faulkner integrates little hints to get to know Homers sexual preferences, as e.g. through the use of colours: [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] (RfE 126). The colour yellow could be here a clear reference to the Yellow Book which was the most popular British magazine in the 1980s  [3]  . It was associated with aestheticism, a 19th century movement which attached more importance to aesthetic values than to moral ones, and indirectly with homosexuality (Roth). 3.2 Emilys Response to her Discovery. The most interesting issue about this complicate love-scenario between a forlorn Southern lady and a gay Northern industrial worker is how her discovery of Homers truly sexual proclivities affected Emily. After discovering his secret, she tries to adapt her physical appearance to the conceptions of beauty of her beloved: she cuts her hair which then looks like the hair of an active man (RfE 128). The motive for doing that can be lead back to the desire of pleasing him in order to keep their relationship alive. This whole aspect reminds me of the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi (1571-1610), better known as Caravaggio, whose sexual identity was also surrounded by numerous rumours, e.g. it is said that he went for male androgynous younglings. Many of his paintings show such infantile boys, like e.g. Bacchus (1595) or Amor Vincit Omnia (1602). Even more striking is that women were unusual objects in his canvases and if he depicted them, they mostly have a short, boyish hairstyle, as Faulkners Emily and as the angel in Caravaggios Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1597) have (Harten 30-34). Fig. 1. Caravaggio, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome; rpt. in Andrew Graham-Dixon, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (London: Allen Lane, 2010; print; 162). 3.3 Homer as a Rose for Emily. Emily realises soon that Homer and she do not have the same feelings for each other and that he will not be in her town for a long time anymore. Therefore, she takes to more extreme measures: she buys arsenic in order to kill Homer. I want some poison she said to the druggist. [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] I want the best you have. I dont care what kind. The druggist named several. Theyll kill anything up to an elephant.' (RfE 125) The reason for the murder lies clearly in her great desire of avoiding a probable recurring solitude and of keeping Homer as close as possible. This leads directly to a possible interpretation concerning the title of the short story which can be irritating due to the absence of the image of a rose in Faulkners work. Although the flower is not stated at all, the term rose arises four times bearing two different meanings. On the one hand the author uses this word as the past form of the verb rise and on the other hand as the colour rose: A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose colo[u]r, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦]. (RfE 129-30) That is why it is not evident who or what symbolises the rose in the title. A plausible conclusion could be that Homer personalises the rose because Emily does not endure letting him go, not even after his decease. On the contrary, she uses death to be even closer to her beloved street worker. Her greatest wish of keeping Homers body resembles to the action of bending a rose and pressing it then between some pages of a book in order to keep its beauty forever (VCCS Litonline). 4. Conclusion The leading idea of this paper has been to analyse the complex love relationship between Emily Grierson and Homer Barron in William Faulkners A Rose for Emily. As we have seen, the female protagonist of this short story had a difficult life due to a probable mental health illness developed from her personal problems with her aristocratic background and the expectations laid upon her. Her only wish was to find companionship and love which she thought having found in the figure of Homer Barron. After having discovered his real sexual orientation, she was gutted and did not want to accept that she has to let him go too. Thusly, she murdered him in order to keep him for good a pressed rose between some pages of a book.

The Changing Family Revealed in Grapes of Wrath Essay -- Grapes Wrath

The Changing Family Revealed in Grapes of Wrath  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚   The emphasis on family in America is decreasing. Divorce rates, single-parent households, and children born out of wedlock are all increasing. Furthermore, instead of the network of aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and other relatives that was prevalent in early America, Americans today are more distant from their extended family. As sociologist David Elkind said in a 1996 interview with Educational Leadership, "Instead of togetherness, we have a new focus on autonomy. The individual becomes more important than the family" (4). This means that one of the basic needs of humanity, belongingness and love, is very likely going unfilled in many people.    The changing family isn't a new issue.   John Steinbeck began to explore the changes taking place in the family during the Great Depression in The Grapes of Wrath. Though the book has many layers and themes, one of the major one's is the changing family. In 1933, six years before publishing the Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck wrote a letter to George Albee saying, "[Man] also arranges himself into larger units, which I have called the phalanx" (Life in Letters, 79). He cites religion, the MOB, and various war-time armies as examples of a phalanx, but surely the family unit falls into the category of larger, interconnected groups of people. In the Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck explores the need for family and the changing family structure through the lens of a Great Depression era family, the Joads.    That the Joad family mutates due to their trials is undoubtable. What the Joads were like originally can only be imagined. By the beginning of the novel, the family has already lost its home and had to move in wi... ...ace in the World. New York: New York University Press, 1993. * Morrow, Jeff. Personal Interview. April 23, 1998. * Noble, Donald R. ed. The Steinbeck Question: New Essays in Criticism. Troy, New York, 1993. * Pipher, Mary. Reviving Ophelia. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994. * Steinbeck, John. A Life in Letters. New York: Penguin Books, 1969. * Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin Books, 1930. * Swerdlow, Amy, et al. Families in Flux. New York: The Feminist Press,1989. * Timmerman, John H. John Steinbeck's Fiction: The Aesthetics of the Road Taken. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. * Weiten, Wayne. Psychology: Themes and Variations, Third Edition. Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1997. * Wyatt, David ed. New Essays on The Grapes of Wrath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Alcoholic abuse Essay

The cause of alcohol abuse occurs when one becomes stressed, depressed, or peer pressured. Alcohol abuse is very common in today’s society. Most abusers are blinded to the fact that they are abusing. Abusers take a big risk with their lives when addicted to alcohol. Stress can lead to being an alcohol abuser; when people become stress, they tend to want an addiction to help them. Most people think alcohol is the key for relieving stress. One will want alcohol when being stress over work, family issues, and life. Work is a very stressful environment; one will feel overwhelmed, when dealing with co-workers. People need to settle their differences aside when working together. One will also become stress, when over worked to many hours. The economy today is very low; people now work more than one job, which can be very stressful. Family issues in today’s society have become a struggle in life. Everyone has family issues some have it worse, which can lead to drinking. One will become stress when arguing with a family member. One may also have a genetic gene in alcoholism. One may have grown up with an alcohol abuser. Life in general is stressful, which can lead to alcohol addiction. Most alcohol abusers start drinking little amount each day, which will lead to becoming an alcoholic. One will be stress with school, while holding a job. That will make some people very stress, and vulnerable in drinking alcohol. Depression is a very strong cause of becoming an alcoholic. People become depressed when dealing with relationships, bullying, and financial problems. Relationships will make one very depress. When one cheats on their spouse will lead people to alcohol. When one gets a divorce or splits up that will cause alcohol abusers. Bullying in today’s society has become very brutal. Most teens are being bullied, which will cause depression. Most teens being depress will cause drugs, and alcohol abuse. Being bullied can also lead to death. Financial problems are another common cause to become depress. People in today’s society have become broke, due to the economy. One may become depress by spending money on alcohol, and then one will have no money for other things. Alcohol abusers will become depress, when they have no money for more alcohol. One may become an alcohol abuser, by being peered pressured. In today’s society young teens will get addicted to alcohol. One will get peered pressure at school, parties, and wrong crowd. One may be peered pressure at school to drink alcohol. Teens today are bringing alcohol to school and skipping class and getting drunk. One may also skip school to go and drink alcohol. One may be peered pressure at parties. Most teens go to parties every weekend, and get drunk, which will make one become an alcohol abuser. Students in college in today’s society are looked as a party school. College students have phrat parties and one may become addicted to alcohol, or even worse dead. One may be hanging with the wrong crowds, which can make one have an addiction. People get influence by peers to make bad decisions. One will feel peered pressure by their friends thinking it is ok to drink. Most young teens don’t understand that drinking is dangerous. Alcohol abuse is really bad when a pregnant woman is addicted to alcohol. One may kill their unborn child, or the child can come out with medical problems. Studies have also showed that most people with ADHD will become alcohol abusers. Alcohol is a very serious addiction; one may feel like alcohol is helping them to recover. Alcohol abusers need help, before it gets too late. One needs to realize that there are better ways of coping stress, depression, peered pressure, etc. Alcohol abusers will need support with their family and friends, to overcome their addiction.

Online Enrollment Related Study

I was able to use the student enrollment system of University of Ulster for the first time and it was a WEB based enrollment system/application. A web application or web app is an application that is accessed via the Internet or an Intranet. Web applications are popular due to ubiquity of the client. The ability to update and maintain web applications without distributing and installing software on potentially thousands of client computers are key reasons for their popularity. A significant advantage of building web applications to support a standard browser feature is the ability to perform as specified, regardless of the operating system installed on a given client and it enables the students, faculty, and administrators of the institution to gain 24-hour access and use to the proposed system via a client computer without any needs of installing or distributing any software.The Automated Enrollment System of University of Ulster aims for an accurate, user friendly, efficient system that can help both the student and personnel for fast data processing of enrollment. And now we are going to talk whether we have achieved that aim or not. I was able to use the student enrollment system of University of Ulster for the first time and it was a WEB based enrollment system/application. A web application or web app is an application that is accessed via the Internet or an Intranet. Web applications are popular due to ubiquity of the client.The ability to update and maintain web applications without distributing and installing software on potentially thousands of client computers are key reasons for their popularity. A significant advantage of building web applications to support a standard browser feature is the ability to perform as specified, regardless of the operating system installed on a given client and it enables the students, faculty, and administrators of the institution to gain 24-hour access and use to the proposed system via a client computer without any n eeds of installing or distributing any software.