Engineering Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Engineering - Essay Example The design goals included; employment of a set of special green concrete mixes that set forth at most seventy percent cement substituting materials while meeting the recommendable requirements. At the same time, the concrete’s delaying set-time is not compromised. It was thus necessary for the associated carbon emissions from the concrete per cubic yard to be reduced, a requirement the concrete supplier had to fulfill. The building’s uniqueness is also drawn from the test to which the mix designs for the concrete were put at commencement of the construction. Concrete, estimated at five thousand cubic yards was utilized in placing the mat foundation, employing a mix in which seventy percent is cement substituted material with the recommended strength being eight thousand psi. These specifications were the same requirements adopted for the columns of the building as well as shear walls. The experts came up with a unique mix design for elevated slabs in order to meet certain light reflectance capacity. It is imperative to note that, also uniqueness is achieved by the reduced height of the concrete floor-to-floor which allowed for the addition of an extra floor to the initial set twelve floors. The sun blocking beams were as well eliminated by the structure. The latter designs culminated in half of carbon dioxide reductions. In conclusion, it is noteworthy to say that adoption of the flexible reinforcing concrete design for the structure achieved cost, environmental and structural advantages. The cost was tremendously cut down and the carbon footprint significantly reduced making the structure a high-performance green solutions

Leadership and Management Styles Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Leadership and Management Styles - Essay Example The three approaches to effective leadership are autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire. Under autocratic leadership, the â€Å"I tell† philosophy is employed. The managers using autocratic leadership instruct the staff about the necessary actions. The management either instructs or persuades the staff to do whatever is expected by the company. The autocratic approach works best when there is a crisis or emergency and the company is required to act immediately so as to come up with a solution. Under democratic leadership, managers allow subordinates to take part in decisions but reserve the power to withdraw and repossess the same power (Businesscasestudies.co.uk, 2015). The managers seek the opinions of all relevant subordinates before making the final decisions. Democratic leadership is a collegial and open style of conducting a team. Ideas circulate freely within the group and are openly discussed. The style functions best in environments where not much is taken as a cons tant. In Laissez-faire, the employees are trusted to make personal decisions without the interference of the management. The subordinates enjoy an almost unlimited degree of freedom.In my opinion, the best approach when managing the work of subordinates is the democratic approach. The theory behind this approach asserts that the implementer uses an â€Å"I consult† philosophy (Businesscasestudies.co.uk, 2015). The approach has a number of advantages which include increased motivation and creativity on the side of the employees.

Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation

Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation Introduction Jack Kerouac was responsible for spawning the literary movement that became known as the Beat Generation, a movement not only significant to literature, but one which incorporated music and visual art to chart a personal progression. Kerouac â€Å"was the leader of a literary movement and a way of life he thought was a passing fad.† The basic characteristics of â€Å"Beat† are defined in Kerouacs 1957 novel On the Road, a text which was to become a virtual gospel for the Beat Generation. As the author of this commandment, Kerouac became known as the â€Å"King of the Beats.† His reaction to this title is documented in an article printed in Playboy, â€Å"The Origins of the Beat Generation† (â€Å"Journal of Beat Poet Holmes recalls friendship, death of Jack Kerouac†). The term â€Å"beat† has a range of meanings, affording critics of â€Å"Beat† writing a rich array of ambiguities for their textual analyses. As an adjective, it was most famously defined by Allen Ginsberg, a member of Kerouacs close knit group, as â€Å"exhausted, at the bottom of the world, looking up or out, sleepless, wide-eyed, perceptive, rejected by society, on your own, streetwise,† while the word beat was originally used as a musical term by post-World War II musicians in reference to an individual or tune that was exhausted or downbeat. At the time, America herself was â€Å"beat†- the country had emerged from the 1930s disaster of economic depression only to find itself entangled in World War II, and having to deal with threats from the â€Å"reds† and the ominous propositions of McCarthyism. In one striking blow to Kerouac and other Bohemians, a definite link between smoking and lung cancer was confirmed in 1953. Kerouacs audience was a disenchanted, self righteous population, an unguided generation with no clear direction or idea of what they wanted form life and too powerless and world-weary to go out in search of the meaning of their existence. Such readers found refreshment and salvation in Kerouacs self-declared confusion, embodied most apparently in his definitive novel- On the Road. Kerouacs style, like all of the Beat writers, is defined simply and very easy to recognize. The Beat Generation â€Å"saw themselves on a quest for beauty and truth, allying themselves with mysticism. The works themselves were to be streams of consciousness written down spontaneously and not to be altered or edited† Kerouac himself simply stated, â€Å"if you change it†¦ the gig is shot.† Poets and novelists of the Beat Generation labelled Kerouac the embodiment of Beat and hailed him as leader of the movement, the â€Å"King† term is perhaps more carefully chosen than it appears, patriarchally loaded as it is. Other well-known authors of the Beat Generation include Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William S. Burroughs, and Ken Kesey. 1. Kerouacs â€Å"Spontaneity† and the Beats. While the title implies supreme spontaneity, Kerouac was never quite as deliberately spontaneous as his legend has insisted. His plan was to create a â€Å"giant epic in the tradition of Balzac and Proust†, but he never managed to determine a literary technique capable of welding the separate books of his Duluoz chronology into a coherent whole, â€Å"even if he tried†. Ann Charters is the voice behind much of the critical discussion of Kerouacs overwhelming legend-making aspiration, â€Å"He couldnt come up with any literary technique to help him fit all the volumes of the Duluoz Legend into one continuous tale. All he could think of was to change the names in the various books back to their original forms, hoping that this single stroke would give sufficient unity to the disparate books, magically making them fit more smoothly into their larger context as the Duluoz (Kerouac the Louse) Legend†¦[H]e wanted the books reissued in a uniform edition to make the larger design unmistakeable.† To claim that each individual novel is insufficient without integration into the larger context of the legend assumes a very conventional definition of legend. Not only is it linear and coherently chronological, it is also bound by the rules of time that govern reality. Of course there is no real reason why this should be so. Kerouacs â€Å"beats† create permanent and timeless impressions, and unending rhythms like Nature herself- the beat will go on if it is not bound by temporality or rationality, but, like a true legend, circulates and permeates the universal consciousness all the time, for all time. A legend can, after all, be many things: an unauthenticated story from ancient times; an allegorical tale of obvious exaggeration or fallacy; simple fame; an explanation accompanying an image or map- and, in music, a composition capable of relating a story- even without words. Charters criticisms fall away rapidly. Kerouacs work easily adheres to each of these versions of the term â€Å"legend†, as if he is unconsciously sensitive to the subtle multiplicity of the word, and feels obliged to fulfil the words promise. His work is carefully designed, indeed, he was preoccupied by the notion of design- the pre-styling of the free-styling- and perhaps not, then, the carefree and careless King of Beats. The assumption of wild abandon seems to arise from misunderstandings of the term â€Å"free prose.† The â€Å"free† to which Kerouac refers does not, in any way, signify a relinquishing of control. It is, however, rather like Wordsworths â€Å"spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,† which creates an impression of experimentation but really represents a highly contrived artifice to contain the exuberance of â€Å"natural† speech. Associating Kerouacs particular diction with what he has called, â€Å"the unfulfilled linguistic intentions of the British Lake poets,† Tytell asserts that Kerouac sought a diction compatible with the natural and irrepressible flow of any â€Å"uncontrollable involuntary thoughts† that he had to release. While Kerouac clearly hoped that his â€Å"Spontaneous bop prosody† would â€Å"revolutionize American literature†, just as Joyce had revolutionized English prose, â€Å"spontaneous bop† has musical implications far more than literary ones. Kerouac and the other Beat writers listened to music as they worked, and â€Å"bop† surely applies to the jazz which accompanied their writing, more than anything; the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonius Monk. In many ways Kerouacs literary technique is structured on a model of Jazz riffs- the impulse for both being to perfect a deliberate style that does not look deliberate, something which systematically generates an impression of spontaneity. Albert Murray has defined a jazz riff as, â€Å"a brief musical phrase that is repeated, sometimes with very subtle variations, over the length of a stanza as a chordal pattern follows its normal progression†¦Riffs always seem spontaneous as if they were improvised in the heat of the performance. So much so that riffing is sometimes seen as synonymous with improvisation†¦not only are riffs as much a part of the same arrangements and orchestrations as the lead melody, but many consist of nothing more than stock phrases, quotations from the same familiar melody, or even clichà ©s that just happen to be popular at the moment.† Such is the technical â€Å"improvisation† of Kerouacs prose. Despite his declared disinterest in music, Kerouacs writing evidences a profound identification of the creation of music with that of literary works. As he states in his Paris Review interview: â€Å"As for my regular English verse, I knocked it off fast†¦ just as a musician has to get out, a jazz musician, his statement within a certain number of bars,† and later likens the writers craft to that of the hornplayer, â€Å"I formulated the theory of breath as measure, in prose and in verse, never mind what Olson, Charles Olson says, I formulated that theory in 1953 at the request of Burroughs and Ginsberg. Then theres the raciness and freedom and humour of jazz.† In Kerouacs own terms, then, the beat follows the phrasing of the jazz model. In his theory of â€Å"breath as measure† he reveals his acute attention to the sentence- elsewhere denounced- and even acknowledges the control of cadence. His contemporary critics occasionally saw musical rhythm in Kerouac: Tallman found a version of sentimental thirties music in â€Å"The Town and the City†, where melody rather than a storyline, controls the work. â€Å"On the Road,† however, demonstrates a departure into bebop, â€Å"Where the sounds become BIFF, BOFF, BLIP, BLEEP, BOP, BEEP, CLINCK, ZOWIE! Sounds break up. And are replaced by other sounds. The journey is NOW. The narrative is a humpty dumpty heap. Such is the condition of NOW.† Its impossible to avoid the philosophical and religious implications of this kind of anti-chronology. Just as music appears endless, repeatable, circular and circuitous, such is the freedom of writing unshackled to narrative. In Kerouacs novel, Big Sur, the message appears to be that since Nature is a part of the self, and to fear it is to fear oneself. The two meanings of Nature become one: â€Å"human nature† is animalistic, and this novel is cautionary to the extent that it shows the dangers of failing to acknowledge this. Kerouacs nature/Nature synthesis represents the essence of his Buddhist sympathies, and this in turn relates to the literary theme of tracing a path. It is hard not to read this author without conflating the mystical with post-modern work on impasses, such as Derridas aporia, and the sense that however far we go we can never escape our selves. It recalls the Buddhist expression, â€Å"Wherever you go, there you are.† â€Å"I am beginning to see a vast Divine Comedy of my own based on Buddha-on a dream I had that people are racing up and the Buddha mountain, is all, and inside the Cave of Reality.† The immediacy of his writing adds to the sense of guru-like mysticism in Kerouacs work: his work spills out like revelations, if not beats, we certainly get the sensation that he is â€Å"King† of something. The work responds to deconstructive literary theory because of its very currency- it has almost completely evaded the conventional segregation and hierarchy of speech and writing. â€Å"My work comprises one vast book like Prousts except that my remembrances are written on the run instead of afterwards in a sick bed.† â€Å"Criticism is forced to be perpetually lagging behind the designs and dictates of the author, whilst the works language is seen as a simple means towards a referential end. Language is thereby devalued to the status of an instrument.† Barthess statement, â€Å"it is only through the function of the author as the possessor of meaning that textual reality is made obeisant to extra textual reality† is almost the antithesis of Kerouac. Kerouacs restoration program also depends on the authors willingness to disappear slightly and conduct meaning, but uniquely, Kerouac demands that the hierarchy of the â€Å"textual and extra-textual† be flattened. Not only this, but that the direction of realist discourse be inverted. As Barthes describes it, â€Å"the author is always supposed to go from signified to signifier, from passion to expression†¦the critic goes in the other direction†¦the master of meaning†¦is a divine attribute†¦from the signified towards the signifier.† Clearly Kerouac does not begin with the apparent and source its cause. He is the archetypal author, travelling from a source within himself a â€Å"passion†- towards a grand confection of layered expressive analogies. This critic is not working as an unseen evangelist of truth-in-nature, but uses nature as a space to unveil meaning, that is, to work from the â€Å"signifier† of the word, to the â€Å"signified† of the writing, like a painter signing his own name on the canvas. In fact, Kerouac is suspended between the conditions of observer and recorder. The recorders self is neither ejected nor declared in his writings, but rather encrypted- both in and as the writing. This partly explains the fascination that encrypted and marginalized author figures hold for Kerouac. His own experience of suspension and estrangement from easy linguistic categorisation, and from the body of conventional society, is unconsciously articulated in all Kerouacs writings. The very potent agency of unconscious in itself is of course another â€Å"natural† tie, binding this writer to the natural world. When, in Big Sur, he talks of the meandering river/path leading into/out of the picture, he is describing the same path into and out of meaning which he himself treads. As a fugitive of consciousness, he travels from work to signifier -in the sense of both meaning, and of the artist, the maker of meaning, and his conclusions merge meaning and its maker into a single signifier. As an author, Kerouac functions as a human conduit to bring external reality to â€Å"textual reality†- and is guided in this venture by the original source, the world outside. All this is reinforced, and microcosmically present, in Kerouacs easy fluctuation into and out of the page, int o and out of the rythm- all of which implies a certain arbitrariness of the page. This is not carelessness, but merely the flip-side of significance. It simply doesnt matter to Kerouac whether a symbol works in one direction or another, the importance is the motion- the action- itself. This is particularly evident in the repeated jazz references in â€Å"On the Road†. The musical analogy for temporal progression is made explicit as Kerouacs fundamental modus operandi. When he describes his unique philosophy of composition, â€Å"blow as deep as you want to blow,† it seems he imagines the writer as a kind of horn-player. He attaches his methodology to a rationale for his bizarre habits of punctuation, â€Å" Method. No periods separating sentence-structures already arbitrarily riddled with false colons and timid usually needless commas- but the vigorous space dash separating rhetorical breathing (as jazz musicians drawing breath between outblown phrases)† The words occurring between dashes resemble linguistic entities unaligned with the conventional subject-verb arrangement of English sentences. These linguistic configurations appear to obey a different notion of time to the â€Å"real† world, with its â€Å"real† language. Traditionally, a sentence fixes time by acting as a frame for the past-present-future sequence. The conventional sentence does not allow the motion, flash, and fluctuation of Kerouacs writing ambition. In this way, the musical analogy enables Kerouac to construct a notion of time outside of the temporal constriction of conventional literature. His work is less poetic, non-linear, and dislocated. A phrase need not refer to the outside world, for it can now begin and end with reference only to its own rhythm- a truly poetic quality, â€Å" measured pauses which are the essentials of our speech-divisions of the sounds we hear-time and how to note it down (William Carlos Williams).† So Kerouacs prose is measured with breath, and timing holds the key to its rendition. As he describes the process, â€Å"Time being of the essence in the purity of speech, sketching language is undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea-wrds, blowing (as per jazz musician) on subject of image† On the Road is an attempt to solve the time/space problems Kerouac is troubled by, but his success is always qualified by what we might term psychoanalytic obstacles. However much he attempts to overrule the order of cause and effect, past and present, this author must remain subject to the government of his own past. His repeated attempts to perfect the form contradict the effort itself, of course- and this is Kerouacs paradox. The more he writes, the more he develops, and the more evident the writers evolution, the more it relates to a chronological dynamic. In the same way that labouring spontaneity foregrounds the labour, and consequently the authors hand, aspiring to defeat timeliness through constructing a series of books over years only betrays his inescapable mortality, tying him inextricably to the outside world in spite of himself. The writing brings to mind the words of art critic, Michael Fried, whose anxiety around the visually present world is everywhere present in his work, â€Å"†¦a means of evoking an experience of journeying corporeally through space as opposed to merely viewing a world present to eyesight but fundamentally out of reach.† It is clear that Kerouacs work is a melancholic writing of history i the most literal sense: his books create chimeras of invisible historical figures, and in so doing evoke their absence- an absence which inevitably feeds his unfalsifiable claims, and, unfortunately for Kerouac, the claims of unfalsifiability made against him. 2. The Beat and the Origin The life of every Beat Writer is characterized by a prolonged psychic crisis that is finally resolved by means of a sudden vision or insight James T. Jones, in his book Jack Kerouacs Dulouz Legend: The Mythic Form of an Autobiographical Fiction, argues forcefully for an Oedipal analysis of Kerouacs work. Grouping the Kerouac texts in the Freudian context, particularly the Oedipus myth, Jones reflects on ways in which Kerouacs depiction of family relationships and by extension, relationships in his personal life and as fictionalized in his prose may be explained through Freud. His look extends to the enduring relationship between Kerouac and his mother, the residual rivalry with his father, sibling rivalry with his older deceased brother Gerard, and eventually a succession of male colleagues. Big Surs alcohol-induced nervous breakdown is perceived as being induced by or symptomatic of his catastrophic attachment to his mother and obsession with the psychic tensions induced by the Oedipal family struggle. As Jones writes, Jack Dulouz , suffering from the effects of chronic alcoholism and sensing an impending nervous breakdown, seeks refuge at the oceanside cabinunfortunately, like the grove of the Eumenides in Oedipus at Colonus, it is full of reminders of both the cause of his misery and the fate that awaits him, The oedipal signifier works in two directions, then, standing outside of time. The â€Å"Origin† supplied by the grove recalls the past and anticipates the future. A visit to the canyon in which the breakdown took place, its rumbling surf and endless brook which babbles with vital noise, and the yawning canyon recall Kerouacs hometown of Lowell. We are reminded of the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, and the bridge across the Merrimack River there. Since Kerouac was introduced to it by his brother Gerard, the site, with its awesome mystical potency, is described with passion. The sounds seem to express, yet barely contain, the power of the place: as the river water cascades over the long weir, traffic roars in the background. All this combined with the anthropomorphically cragged vista of the grotto itself creates a sense of almost unbearably powerful otherness, an origin in nature now frighteningly alien to the human soul. Kerouacs realism in Big Sur may be summarised as the doomed ambition to structure impossible desire. The labour of the carefully constructed â€Å"Beat† pattern is present in the background, as a sort of displaced metaphor for the mental and physical effort of writing. Thus Kerouacs â€Å"Beat† takes the anti-mimetic definition of realism one step further- since writing does not have to relate to what it depicts, it will resist immediacy, but relate in specific and indirect ways to the authors private life. In many ways, Kerouacs enterprise resembles that of a visual artist at least as much as an aural or literary construction. Courbets paintings, for example, operate in a very similar way to Kerouacs works. They share this meta-symbolism, with particular interest in representing origins as water, or indeed as female genitalia- and also aspire to an impossible merging with lost roots. In Courbets art the impossible merger is one of body and work; for Kerouac it is the a rtifice of language and the unruly inevitability of the natural- taking him as close as anything ever can to his father. An erotics of the word and image is then inevitable, and Kerouac finds one fully-formulated and ready to use, in Freudian psychoanalysis. While studies on Courbet resituate sexual difference within the (male) painter-beholder, rather than between him and his representations, Jack Kerouac does something subtly different. Through its emphasis on the writing/experiencing incommensurability, Kerouac resituates sexual difference within the (male) writer/reader rather than between the artist and their work. The authorial voice is only ostensibly the source of psychoanalytic narrative- in fact the same narrative can be sourced through theoretical channels (backwards â€Å"into the page†) to the writer, and, if we believe him, to the reader too. â€Å" It grew exceedingly hot and strange†¦We were going though swamps and alongside the road at ragged intervals strange Mexicans in tattered rags walked along with machetes hanging from their rope belts, and some of them cut at the bushes. They all stopped to watch us without expression. Through the tangled bush we occasionally saw thatched huts with African-like bamboo walls, just stick huts. Strange young girls, dark as the moon, stared from mysterious verdant doorways,† Psychoanalysis corroborates Kerouacs general preoccupation with the fantasy of origination, in the case of Big Sur, the origination as personified in the figure of the father. In this imagery from On the Road, the dark girls are linked to the moon, loaded words like â€Å"thatch† and â€Å"bush† are always used alongside â€Å"machetes† and eery expressionlessness. Reading Kerouac like a goya painting or a poem, we can easily recognise the guilty violence involved. Kerouacs unedited unconsciousness reveals his sense of alienation, as the girls who are so strange are like the moon- nature is female- irresistible, unfathomable, untouchable. The horizontal â€Å"thatch† or â€Å"low bush† of the women is disrupted by the weapons and interference of the vertical agent of the male machetes. The interference in the body of water is the same- or at least, linguistically symmetrical- to the interference on reality that the act of writing always engenders. I f female bodies and contrived spontaneity are references to the origin and the unconscious ambition to merge with the origin; then any discreet writing surface is fetishised as an oedipal object of impossible desire, always disrupted, interfered with and disfigured by the very desire that defines it. Kerouacs Freudian desire to merge with the source must disturb the way he perceives himself. In fact, it illustrates and literally reflects the way in which we, as readers, percieve ourselves in so far as we are reflections of our origins- how it is only through disturbance that we can become aware of the source. If any reflection were perfect, with no material interference, we would have no way of knowing that it was a reflection. Kerouacs tireless autobiography project is not only a non-narcissistic event, but an entirely natural one. In Hegels Aesthetics such self-portraiture is established as a primal impulse of self-identification. According to Hegel, for man to become self-conscious he must first â€Å"represent himself to himself†, and second, â€Å"man brings himself before himself by practical activity†¦this aim he achieves by altering external things whereon he impresses the seal of his inner being and in which he now finds again his own characteristics. Man does this†¦to strip the external world of its inflexible foreignness and to enjoy the shape of things only an external realization of himself.† Hegel goes on to describe a childs impulse to throw stones into a river: there is no reflection involved, none of the self-annihilating narcissism of â€Å"passive desiring seeing†, but a declared primacy of action over seeing. Kerouac is invoked by Hegels wording, â€Å"the continuity between ordinary action and the action of producing works of art is already implied by the image of the drawing of circles in the surface of the water.† These circles are inscriptions of objects on flat planes that require a certain maturity of consciousness to interpret as the effects of a (manual) cause. Here, Kerouacs dormant reference to, and defence of, his own ideal situation as a realist author is very evident. In a later paragraph from Fried the message that the self is best quietly discovered through displaced descriptive action is completely inescapable, â€Å" the effacement of the very conditions of resemblance (the breaking of the mirror-surface of the river) also means that the boys relation to the spreading circles in the water might be described in Flaubertian language as present everywhere but visible nowhere.† A sentiment repeated in Kerouacs poetry, which â€Å"breaks† the reflective power of water by introducing the contrasting element of heat and dryness, â€Å"Describe fires in riverbottom sand, and the cooking; the cooking of hot dogs spitted in whittled sticks over flames of woodfire with grease dropping in smoke to brown and blacken the salty hotdogs, and the wine, and the work on the railroad.† The desire to identify with the origin, whether through disturbing the water, impersonating the father, or labouring to represent oneself to oneself, may always end in action, but it is only ever the action of wrenching open the facture of desire. The impulse to create will always be driven by a lack, and Kerouac is most conventionally â€Å"Realist† when he recognises this. Kerouac, after all, is aiming to reorganise an imbalance of power, and to characterise a sense of the monadic â€Å"other†. Philosophically, Kerouacs work is incredibly resistant to the Other, to the point that he scarcely needs the anterior of an audience. In spite of his evident veneration of the â€Å"Natural†, the world beyond that of writing/reading is so unbearable that Fried has trouble imagining it, levelling the differences between interiors and exteriors and converting all mimetic imagery into narratives of action or narratives of material: surfaces to be read. To the extent that it is a self-sufficient sign-system (and I am arguing it is far more than this) Kerouacs work evacuates the reader and effectively â€Å"reads itself†. It fits Derridas conception of autobiography, â€Å"My written communication must†¦remain legible despite the absolute disappearance of every determined addressee†¦for it to function as writing†¦to be legible. It must be repeatable, iterable, in the absolute absence of the addressee† Again, this supported by the assertions of one anonymous online Kerouac archivist, â€Å"Almost everything he wrote was autobiographical. Like Thomas Wolfe, he saw writing as identical with introspection. The word fiction does not really describe his work. It was more like self-directed psychoanalysis, except that his outlook was more religous and tragic than psychological. His books are crowded with his friends, lightly disguised behind new names. Allen Ginsberg, for instance, appears variously as Carlo Marx, Adam Moorad, Irwin Garden, Leon Levinsky and Alvah Goldbrook. Late in his life, Kerouac even considered publishing a unified edition of all his works, with all the characters representing himself appearing under a single name, Jack Duluoz (French for Jack the Louse).† This homogenising impulse, the need to resist difference and integrate everything, drives the rhetorical case which Kerouac makes in an attempt to show that outdoor scenes are actually the same as indoor ones. It is affected spontaneity of language which Fried cites as the connection between the inner and the outer. Indoor and outdoor scenes are treated as having the same character and affect, to the extent that they have a rhythm and no inherent narrative. Kerouacs holistic ambition repeats itself on every level- here the very scene of representation is moulded by the realist theory. The internal and external scenes, like the internal and external levels of a psyche, become one, as they are united in common, necessary pain, of the disfiguring theoretical intervention. Applying psychoanalysis to Kerouac, this does look like an attempt at integrating the repressed inner and outer of the psyche, where the first might be characterised as darkness, depth, recession, primordial instinct, and the past, and the second as light, shallowness, presence, and surface agency. Farewell Sur- Didja ever tell him about water meeting water-? O go back to otter- Term-Term-Klerm Kerm-Kurn-Cow-Kow- Cash-Cach-Cluck- Clock-Gomeat sea need be deep I see you Enoch soon anarf in Old Britanny Say yes. Say yes to the sea. Say yes to chaos. Say yes to eternity. Say yes and let it all go. Go, go to the sea. To the waiting open arms of the sea. You and me you and me the sea. Yes. Let us be. There is light.† Reflections are also the assertion of the horizontal. In spite of the violence metaphorically wrought, and acknowledged by his writing, Kerouacs work is concerned with empowering the natural within the man. The vigorous negation of comfortable feminine origination in his poetry refuses to allow the implied horizontality of the original sheet of paper to be wholly superseded, and in effect suppressed, by the verticality of the outside world. Psychoanalysis works through poetry subliminally, appealing to the subconscious by encoding itself in visual puns like reflections. 3. Missed Beats – Misunderstandings and misnomers It has been claimed that, for at least one definition of the word, Kerouac was not a â€Å"Beat† at all. Mayer writes, â€Å"A â€Å"keen observer rather than a confident insider,† Kerouac never really was a member of the Beats though he was among them from the beginning and as a chronicler cast their emergence into prose. When Daniel Belgrad remarks that Kerouac â€Å"would attend parties only to sit silently in a corner, listening intently to the multiple conversations and noting them down in his memory,† he is in line with a comment by Ginsberg, â€Å"I guess [Kerouac] felt more like a private solitary Melvillean minnesinger or something.† â€Å"Subterranean Kerouac†, a biography by Ellis Amburn, develops the oedipal theme in his work, referring notably to his â€Å"dream-fear of homosexuality.† Claiming that Kerouac became a â€Å"homophobic homoerotic† by the early nineteen forties, Amburn insists that in the fifties, while an increasing misogyny came to pervade writings like Some of the Dharma, â€Å"his homophobia was increasing in direct proportion to his homoerotic activity. , † a development which might have been facilitated at least partially by Kerouacs worsening dependency on alcohol. Kerouac is known as the king or the speaker of the beat generation and his writings are probably the most widely read works for anyone studding the beat culture, but there is real evidence that he resisted the title of â€Å"King†, particularly the patriarchal overtones. Even in 1952, John Clellon Holmess book â€Å"Go† presents Kerouac as Gene Pasternak, railing against â€Å"all that free-love stuff, that liberal bohemianism, between friends.† Kerouacs 1958 novel â€Å"The Subterraneans† features a narrator whose sexual hang-ups are barely known to him. Ben Giamo has termed the narrators stance in the novel as â€Å"a curious form of approach/avoidance.† The authors avatar in â€Å"The Subterraneans†, is French Canadian. His name is â€Å"Leo Percepied† and it has been appropriated for psychoanalysis. Kurt Mayer claims that as his first name is that of Kerouacs father, and his last, literally translates asâ€Å"pierced foot,† the characters name is an obvious Oedipal reference. The characters destiny echoes Jacks, as he abandons pretentions to being middle class, and ultimately returns to his mothers house. Jack, of course, always returned to â€Å"Memà ©re†- Gabrielle Kerouac, what Mayer refers to as the â€Å"only consistent relati

Broken Angel :: essays research papers

Broken Angel by Francine Pascal Broken Angel by Francine Pascal is a story about Angel Desmond who is at the racetrack and has gambled away all of his money. His girlfriend Tia Ramirez and her friend Conner McDermott are looking for him. They find him at the racetrack and Tia gets very angry with Angel when she finds out he has lost all of his money. Angel dreads telling his parents, because he lost his whole savings account which was for college. He graduated form El Carro is supposed to go to Stanford in the spring. His parents are really excited about it.Angel stayed up late that night thinking about what happened. The next morning his mom offers to take him to get a small refrigerator for his dorm room at Stanford. He cannot take the pressure anymore so he tells his parents he does not have any money. Then he tells them what happened and they are very disappointed in him. His father fires him from his job at the garage that his father owns. Tia and Conner meet ant the cafà © and try to think of ways to help Angel. Finally when everything seems hopeless Conner thinks of a good idea. Conner’s mom is in all kinds of charities that give out scholarships at the end of school. Conner said he would ask his mom to put in some good words for Angel. Conner goes to ask his mom to help Angel. He is very nervous because she is usually drunk. She is an alcoholic. He finally gets his nerve up and knocks on her bedroom door. He walks in and she is cleaned up and sober. It was a big shock to Conner. His mom calls a few people for Angel and makes a few dinner dates.Tia goes to Angel’s house to tell him the good news. He comes to the door smiling from ear to ear. He said he has got good news for her. She tells him the news about Conner’s mom trying to get him a scholarship. He tells her tell Conner to just forget it. He is not going to college. He tells Tia he is going to stay with her. She tells him he cannot because he has worked so hard to go to Stanf ord. He then tells Tia she does not love him because she is pushing him away.

Chinese VS American Parenting

In recent years it has been said that China is far surpassing the United States in terms of education. This raises the problem of Americans falling behind in global competitiveness which encompasses in all aspects of a society’s success. There is said to be a major correlation between parenting styles and the overall country’s competiveness considering education, values, and work ethic is implemented in the home through parenting styles before a child ever reaches institutionalized schooling.Many persons believe American parenting lacks discipline and structure and believe Americans should adapt a more Chinese style parenting, while many other persons believe that Americans should stay with their parenting style to increase global competitiveness. The problem of Americans falling global competiveness can be addressed in several ways however looking specifically at parenting styles affects, it boils down to a solution either of keeping the same parenting style, or transf erring to a more Chinese parenting style. However an understanding of what a competitive society is, is crucial to objectively find the solution to the problem.A competitive society is based off of 12 pillars according to the 2012- 2013 Global Competitiveness Report conducted by the World Economic forum. The first nine pillars of the Global Competitiveness Report consist of institutions, infrastructure, the macro-economic environment, market size, business sophistication, good market efficiency, labor market efficiency, financial market development and technological readiness. These first 9 pillars are all primarily focused on the government regulations and productivity of business.The last three pillars, although still affecting productivity, stems from education. They include health and primary education, higher education and training, and Innovation. The health and primary education pillar is self-explanatory. Stressing the need for healthy and competent workers, it explains that even basic education increases each individual worker’s efficiency. Workers, who have received minimal primary education, are limited to simple manual tasks and find it more difficult to adapt to the advanced production processes. Higher education and training correlates with the previous pillar.Also advocating for higher education in the work place, it dictates that a society cannot remain competitive without the ability of workers to perform more complex tasks determined by the evolving needs of the economy. The twelfth pillar, is innovation. Innovation is so important because unlike the other factors affecting the economy, technological innovations will continue to raise living standards and positively affect the global economy over time. Innovations open a wider range of possibilities and approach the frontier of knowledge which in turn greatly advances an economy.American parenting can best be classified into the category of Authoritative Parenting. Finding a balance be tween support and control, parents of the authoritarian method believe the best way to parent is to support their children in their goals in a positive manner; while still maintaining boundaries and rules. Authoritative parents are said to have found the â€Å"happy median†. Authoritative Parents execute their method by being very responsive, affectionate, stern, and understanding. These parents express their love for their children unconditionally, and do not take away their love as a punishment.Instead, punishments are implemented with mutual understanding of the wrong doing and the appropriate consequence. Authoritative Parents believe parenting is a two way street, and therefore attempt to consider their child’s perspective equally to their own. American parent’s objectives for their children generally do not lie solely within Academics. Wishing the best for their children overall, they stress the needs of other factors including, sociability, individuality, self-reliance, happiness, and self-motivation. This information on Authoritative Parenting is derived from an article by Gwen Dewar.Despite a slight biased towards Authoritative noted, it is reliable. It considers other factors in parenting, and asses its own argument, and also presents the same information on parenting as other trustworthy sources. The first graph to the right shows the GDP per captia, compared to the scale of Global Innovation index determined by the organization itself. The sizes of the bubbles are based off of population. As you can see, China lags far behind the USA in terms of the innovation spectrum. The second graph to the left shows this again.The United States are rated 57.7 in their innovation performance, while China isn’t even on the map. However it should be noted, that to the side of the diagram is a box where it shows who is innovating most effectively, and the gold of this category belongs to China. There is an overwhelming amount of scienti fic support for the American Parenting style in the United States; however, it should be considered that the majority of studies that support this method primarily focus on white American students, and not the effect of this method on other cultures.Also, it should be noted that the majority of sources supporting this method are either American or European, which are areas that Authoritative Parenting styles dominate. Looking from an American perspective therefore it would be the overall consensus that American parenting style is superior and that American parents shouldn’t drastically change their methods in order to raise the overall competiveness of the nation. Chinese Parenting can be considered as authoritarian parenting. These parents believe by showing very low support, but also being highly demanding and restrictive, they will best rear their children.Authoritarian parents execute their method by setting high expectations for their children. These expectations lie sol ely with academics and the parent’s wishes for the child. Expectations in this style of parenting, that are set, are undisputable. Communication between the parent and the child are one way, with the parent in control. Authoritative Parents of this method have been heard to degrade their children, threaten them, and lie to them, in order to motivate them. Parents also might withdrawal of their love and affection as a punishment to their children not living up to these set expectations.And while this might seem harsh to an American mother, it is to other cultures, devotion. By pushing their children to the best they can be, they are thought to be doing what is best for the child. Chinese parent’s objectives for their children revolve around complete perfection. They wish for their children to excel at academics, be extremely obedient, and possibly even master the violin. These expectations are extremely high, but their intense method makes it possible. An example of a s tereo typical Chinese household would be Amy Chua’s.In â€Å"The Hymn of the Tiger Mother† she explained her method of restrictions, and her expectations of raising her two daughters. Amy Chua’s children were forbidden from attending a sleepover; having a play date, be in a school play, complain about not being in a school play, watch TV or play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities or get any grade less than an A. These standards were high and some could say harsh, but Amy Chua produced success American parents all over the country were appalled by the intensity of Mrs. Chua’s parenting style; however not many parents can produce Yale students such as Amy Chua’s has.In Amy Chua’s household success was produced, and looking overall at Chinese parents, many other parents have produced success also. The following graph shows the number of PhDs the U. S. earned compared to the number of PhDs China has earned in the 2002 to 2010 span. As you can see China has had a drastic increasing in the amount of PhDs earned, while the US has had a much more modest growth. This can be attributed to the stress of education in Chinese households. In 2010, China surpassed the US in terms of PhDs. Also it has been proven that China is ahead of the United States when it comes to the OECD reading school score.Standardized testing is important when it comes to a competitive society because these tests measure education, and education is crucial to any work force. When considering whether or not the Chinese method is superior, it must be noted that the lack of warmth and affection can harm a child’s social functions, and lead to a dependence on one’s family. It also should be recognized that sources used were primarily written by American authors and researches in a negative light, therefore it was my responsibility to arrange the information in a way that supported the Chinese method of parenting.American p arenting raises stable, academically well rounded, and creative students who contribute effectively to the nation, and as seen, in terms of global competitiveness, the U. S. and China are neck and neck. The U. S. is superior in creativity, while China is superior in standardized testing. Both these factors are crucial to a global economy considering they translate into the innovation pillar and the educated work force pillar. Therefore the US might lag behind in terms of standardized tests but they nation makes up for it in the Innovation index.Chinese and American styles of parenting promote different values and therefore produce children who excel at different aspects. I also believe that the more successful parenting style depends on the culture. Culture determines which method is more effective because parenting styles are embedded and formed by each individual culture. Implanting a foreign parenting style that doesn’t correlate with local beliefs would be detrimental for a child due to social pressures, the conflicts of beliefs, and the collision of school and the home.For example, an American child would not respond well to authoritarian parenting because of America’s â€Å"modern, expressive† culture, as a Chinese child would not respond well to authoritative parenting because of China’s â€Å"traditional, conformed† culture. The conflict between society and parenting styles would lead the child astray, and away from success. Therefore the United States Authoritative parenting style is most effective because another parenting style wouldn’t flow with parent’s beliefs or objectives and would actually decrease America’s global competiveness.The problem of America falling behind in global competiveness can not be solved by adapting to a more Chinese style parenting. As previously mentioned, the U. S. parenting style creates children that excel at other aspects than simply just standardized testing. Al so another parenting style would clash with belief systems and cause detrimental harm to a child’s development, and eventual success. Therefore the solution is to stay with the original parenting styles. This might appear as a rudimentary solution to a very complex issue however when specifically looking at parenting styles, it is the best way to achieve high global competiveness,

World Religions Paper

World Religion Paper (Rough Draft) By: Allison Workman The religion that I have chosen for my report is Wicca. Wicca is the religion of Witchcraft also referred to as the Craft. There are many myths that are associated with the Wiccan religion. Witches do not perform ride brooms and they are not â€Å"bad or scary† people. In fact most witches are normal people we come in contact with every day. I have learned many interesting facts in my weeks researching this religion. At this time my site visit and interview have not been completed due to family medical problems with my source. However, the interview and site visit are both scheduled for April 3, 2011 I will attempt to submit a summary of those by mid week next week for review. Compare and Contrast Wicca and Christianity are actually quite similar in many ways. However, there are vast differences in the beliefs of the parties as well. Both Christianity and Wicca have a symbol that is prominent within the religion. Christians have the cross that represents the death of Jesus to wash away the sins of mankind. Wicca’s symbol is the pentagram. Despite the reports to the contrary the pentagram is not the symbol of a Satanist; in fact Satan does not even exist in the Wiccan culture. The pentagram is the symbol of the four elements (water, air, fire, earth) and the sprit which draws them all together. Both religions have groups that worship together. Christians call these congregations and they usually meet in a Church. When a group of witches gather to worship the group is referred to as a Coven and they generally practice outdoors though not always. Some Covens will gather at the home of the High Priestess to worship. Meeting places will differ from Coven to Coven. Many of the Ethical and Social views of these religions are similar as well. The Wiccan Rede is â€Å"If it harms none, do what you will†. Christians generally try to live by the Golden Rule. â€Å"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you†. These two phrases have a similar meaning. Both religions believe that women and men are equal in value as human beings. Both religions also accept women in secular leadership roles. All Wiccan religious groups believe that women should hold religious leadership roles as well; some denominations of the Christian faiths are accepting of this, but others still believe that men should be the religious leader of the family/church. The number of differences between these two groups is much larger that the similarities. One of the most notable is that Christianity is a monotheistic religion and Wicca is a polytheistic religion. While Christians worship God. The Wiccans worship the God and Goddess simultaneously. The Wiccan religion is all about balabance so the worship of the God and the Goddess signifies the balance, though the primary focus to a witch is the goddess. Witches accept homosexuality completely where Christians believe that homosexuality is a sin. Christians worship every Sunday and Witches worship on the 13 full moons of the years and also perform rituals on the Sabbats.