Moods of Poetry Essay Example for Free

Moods of Poetry Essay Poetry is a way of expression a speaker’s feelings and emotions into a literary work. All poems have unique tones and moods which show what the speaker feels when writing the poem, and what the reader feels when reading it. For example, â€Å"The Rhodora† by Ralph Waldo Emerson, â€Å"Sonnet XVII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?† by William Shakespeare, and â€Å"Song of Myself† by Walt Whitman, all have the similar mood of happiness and vitality. In â€Å"The Rhodora† by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the speaker finds a flower that is unique in beauty compared to the rest of nature. This poem is written loosely in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of aabbcdcdeeffghgh. In line twelve the speaker states â€Å"Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;† meaning that the purpose of the flower is to show beauty, and nothing more. â€Å"The Rhodora† provides the reader with a mood that is happy and uplifting and gives the reader a more respectful view of nature. â€Å"Sonnet XVII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?† by William Shakespeare, is a sonnet which consists of 14 lines and is in one stanza. In line two the speaker writes â€Å"Thou art more lovely and more temperate†. The speaker is saying that she is more beautiful and gentle than anything he has ever seen. The speaker states that he loves her more than a summers day. The mood of this poem is uplifting and loving, making the reader happier.

Social Cultural Trends Essay Example for Free

Social Cultural Trends Essay The four current sociocultural trends that I’d like to focus on are increasing environmental awareness, changing pace and location of life, changing household composition and increasing diversity of workforce and markets. Here at Tobyhanna Army Depot, a green vegetative roof was funded with Research and Development money meant to test easily transferable technologies and verify their impacts. Team Tobyhanna funded three other roofs because of the benefits and to reduce the heat loading from the black roofs in an effort to avoid an expensive air conditioning project. This past summer here was the first one on record as having no complaints about the heat in those areas and it was an unusually warm summer here. Our data indicates 25% reduction in heating costs and we expect cooling cost savings to be even greater. Additionally, we also experienced about 40% reduction in storm water runoff as result of our efforts to improve environmental measures across the entire workforce. Secondly, lots of information and technology forms of communication application are too complicated or hardly worth the trouble for some users especially when people allow these devices to cause undue stressors or pressure. Some reactions to the typology characterize Americans as uninterested in information and communication technology or collectively hostile to cyberspace. Here at Tobyhanna Army Depot, approximately 32% of those with either cell phones or internet say that they need help from someone else to set up or use new electronic gadgets.

Medea Euripides Analysis

Medea Euripides Analysis So long as the immense passion of the tragic heroine of the play is considered, Euripidess Medea is a work of pathetic tragedy from Aristotles point of view. It opens up with a major conflict between the heroine and her husband; the anger of a woman hero for her dishonest husband. Throughout the play, we see the culmination of anger and hatred rising to a point where everything dissolves and an anticlimactic end is attained through the accumulation of revenge in Medea. This is actually a shortcoming for a piece of tragedy because it does not reach to the highest possible quality and complexity from a plot as Aristotle would term it. The most important integral aspect in tragedy is its plot, the imitation of action. Because of the faulty treatment of the subject in hand, Euripides fails to achieve a complex plot in Medea. When Aristotle plunges into the components of a plot that make it complex, he cites three necessary elements successively; reversal of intention, recognition, and catastrophe. Accordingly, both reversal of intention and recognition must go hand  in hand in a cause-and-effect chain that ultimately in turn creates the catastrophe in the play for the best effect. However in Medea, we can observe no real reversal of intention as Medea is well de termined to take revenge from Jason in some way or the other right from the very start. Although there is an event where Medea directs her anger over her own children, this occurs in such an unexpected manner that it is difficult to consider it as a reversal of intention because there is no reasonable explanation or recognition for it to come afterwards. This unquestionably results in Medea lacking a recognition as there is no reversal of intention that precedes it. Medea already knows about the marriage of Jason to Creons daughter, and there is no other slight recognition that can be said to change the fortune of the tragic heroine. One could say that Aegeuss assurance of security in Athens for Medea is a discovery that allowed Medea to further proceed with her plans, but this is somewhat questionable as we can clearly see that she is determined to execute her planned scenario whether or not Aegeuss sudden appearance was included. The only surprising event that we can find remarkab le is when Medea slays her own children. This action is the one and only tragic incident that Aristotle would see as tragic. If this one and only tragic element did not exist, we could hardly say that Euripidess Medea was a tragedy even with a simple plot. But again, a surprising event can be favored only when it has relevance and a cause-and-effect relationship with the plot. That is however not exactly the case for Medeas decision to kill her children. Nevertheless, the intended action is executed in the end by the heroin, an act that is better than intending and not doing. When Aristotle comes to the skill of a tragedian to create a perfect unified play, he emphasizes the importance of firstly the complication, and secondly, the unraveling of the plot. To him, the best tragedian is one who can succeed in making these two parts equally well. But as long as in Medea there is no reversal of intention and recognition except for a simple catastrophe, the unraveling lacks the magnitude of the complication where Medea strategically makes plans, prepares for revenge, and tries to survive the pain. Moreover, the denouement of the play by a Deus ex Machina, a God interfering and allowing Medea to escape with a chariot, is very irrational for Aristotle as it does not arise out of the plot naturally. The Deus ex Machina used in Medea can be seen as faulty from another point which attributes to Aristotles moral understanding. Medeas escape or somewhat survival is morally not acceptable as she commits a cruel deed in killing her own children. We know that she is a descendent of a god and is the daughter of a king. But other than such circumstances she is in, she is in fact no better than us. Her tragic flaws such as extreme passion and anger all surpass being small frailties but they are rather vices. Though we see Medeas feelings of suffering through the visible evils of Jason, it is not easy for the audience to sympathize with a child murderess. Additionally, the past life of Medea is also full of blood and sin which are reminded to us from time to time either by the Chorus and ev en Medea herself. This ultimately results in the significant problem of Medea as a tragedy, as it fails in invoking catharsis towards the audience as little emotions of pity or fear can be aroused by the downfall of an utter villain. In Medea there is only one major plot which gives it a credit as a tragedy in Aristotelian terms. The struggle between a dishonest male and a sorceress female is the one and only simple basis of this plot. We dont see the level of complexity and perfection that Aristotle would seek, but our attention is not lost as Euripides does succeed us to be focused on the passionate angers and emotions of Medea throughout the whole play. Thus, the effect of tragedy is to a somewhat certain extent achieved in Medea but still fails in the main and most important purpose; the emotional cleansing that the audience is supposed to feel towards Medea. Statement of Intent Euripidess Medea revolves around the central passion of revenge towards her adversaries by the main protagonist, Medea as a result of her husband, Jasons betrayal towards her by an engagement to the daughter of Creon, King of Corinth. I decided to write a critical review of Medea through an Aristotelian perspective as to how Aristotle would criticize it if he had the chance. As Medea was different to the Aristotelian tragedies of the time, I expected that the Athenian audience would have responded in confusion and disfavor. I took Aristotles works of the Poetics as a backbone to my criticism. I tried to make the review critical in the sense that it not just only explains as to how the elements in Medea differ from Aristotles theory of tragedy, but attempts in exploring as to what effects were lost and why it mattered. In the early stages of my review, I criticize how Euripidess failure in creating a complex plot of one that Aristotle would expect results in how Medeas character is portrayed in a very limited and monotone manner in which her fate is seemingly doomed to lead to the final catastrophe from the very start. By breaking up the structure and examining its lack of Aristotelian concepts of tragedy in Medea, it allows one to lead to the discovery that the common understanding of Medea as a tragedy is actually an oversimplification and that one could even come to the conclusion that it barely qualifies to be even a tragedy by Aristotelian understanding. The criticisms towards the structural component of plot in Medea link into the characteristic flaws of Medea throug h my criticisms towards Euripidess use of the Deus ex Machina to resolve the plot in the final moments of the play. This sudden denouement in the play would strongly matter to Aristotle as its irrational manner would lack a unity where the action of each event leads inevitably to the next in a structurally self-contained manner that is connected by internal necessity, not by external interventions such as the one used by Euripides. Moreover, the Deus ex Machina has the strongest effect on the audience in which it ultimately fails to invoke the tragic emotions of pity and sympathy in the form of a catharsis towards the protagonist despite Euripidess attempts at doing so through the easily visible exposures of Jasons atrocities. This failure is not only just simply due to the immoral nature in which Medea kills her children, but from the fact that her life is full of atrocities which she does not seem to feel guilty as she confesses in her quarrel with Jason, I lit the way for your es cape I betrayed my father and my home I killed King PeliasAll this I did for you. And you, foulest of men, have betrayed me. (P33, Lines 460-468) Despite all the criticism that I have given to Euripides in my review, I do give credit to Euripides as to how he still manages to grasp hold of the audiences attention and involvement in the play. Nevertheless however, I still conclude with the Aristotelian perspective that the play still lacks the magnitude and perfection that Aristotle would have expected, which ultimately result in my greatest criticism that Euripides fails in creating the effect of convincement towards his audience to sympathize with Medeas emotions through catharsis.

Hazard Mitigation Planning Essay -- Natural Disasters

Executive summary Hazard mitigation planning is an approach aimed at ascertaining ways to reduce the effects, deaths and damage to property that might result in the occurrence of a natural of man-made hazard. Hurricanes are among the costliest and the most destructive of natural disasters. Since 1995, the United States has witnessed more intense activities by hurricanes with Mobile County in Alabama experiencing hurricane Ivan and hurricane Dennis in 2004 and 2005 (Link, 2010). In 2005, Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes to have hit the United States and was rated category three in Mobile County (Marchi, 2007). The response to the disaster was poor owing to the lack of proper disaster preparedness as well as hazard mitigation planning. The very possibility of a hurricane hitting Alabama in the near future-within which the County of Mobile is located- appears as a near certainty going by past occurrences. The authorities as well as the community in Mobile County need to be more prepared for disasters by instituting hazard mitigation measures. These measures should be actualized through an effort by the County authorities in conjunction with the major s takeholders to put together a team that will comprehensively analyze hurricane Katrina and other past hurricanes affecting Mobile County. The Hurricane mitigation plan for the city of Mobile sets out the available resources and important information that would assist the community in reducingthe effects of a hurricane that might occur in future. The plan concentrates on measures and actions that can be put in place to reduce the effects of a hurricane. It covers an assessment of risk, sets out a strategy for minimizing the effects, and present... ... Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans. Ocean Engineering, 37(1), 4-12. Marchi, B. D. (2007). Not Just a matter of Knowledge: The Katrina Debacle. Environmental Hazards, 7(2), 141-149. Rodiek J. (2007). Landscape Planning in Hazardous Zones, Lessons from Hurricane Katrina, August 2005. Landscape and Urban Planning, 79(1), 1-4. Sadowski N. & Sutter D. (2008). Mitigation Motivated by Past Experience: Prior Hurricanes and Damages. Ocean and Coastal Management, 51(4), 303-313. Waugh, W. (2006). Shelter from the Storm: Repairing the National Emergency Management System after Hurricane Katrina. Michigan City: SAGE Publications. Yarnal B. (2007). Vulnerability and all that Jazz: Addressing Vulnerability in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Technology in Society, 29(2), 249-255. Forren J. (2005). Hurricane Katrina. Journal of Peri Anesthesia Nursing, 20(5), 303-304.

Wakefield Essay -- Literary Analysis, Hawthorne

What Was He Thinking? What would you think of a man who left his family, moved over to the next street to watch their lives unfold, and then returned after twenty years as if nothing had happened? What could drive a man to such bizarre behavior? These are the issues that Nathaniel Hawthorne deals with in the story of Mr. Wakefield. The very idea that a man could possibly do such a thing makes the audience want to understand his intentions. It is hard for a modern audience to make sense of such a story because television shows and movies have made today’s society focus so much on easily apparent themes or morals. Hawthorne used this story to examine society’s motivations. In his short story â€Å"Wakefield,† it is necessary that Hawthorne uses the narrator as a tool to shed light on Mr. Wakefield’s motives as well as to emphasize the story’s theme, that an individual can only appreciate and understand his life by looking in on it from the outside. In Hawthorne’s â€Å"Wakefield† the narrator’s thoughts and comments bring insight into the motivations of the character of the story. The story includes a long introduction in which the narrator, Hawthorne, describes how he heard the curious story of Mr. Wakefield. Hawthorne supplies his audience with a condensed version of the entire plot of the story. With this introduction, Hawthorne has already informed the audience of the story’s intriguing plot and this intensifies the audience’s desire to find out Mr. Wakefield’s motivations because they cannot comprehend why he would do such a thing. The audience will try to make sense of Mr. Wakefield’s actions, but they will not find a logical explanation. The story may seem unreal but the reader must take the story as it is and focus on the charact... ..., would argue that Hawthorne was showing his modernism by writing about the strange habits of human nature. Others, such as Morsberger would argue that the story of Wakefield simply mirrors many of Hawthorne’s other works. I do not disagree with either viewpoint, but I feel that Hawthorne simply wanted to create an intriguing story that dealt with people’s motivations. I would argue that he wrote this story to examine a side of human nature that is often forgotten or intentionally left out of a large portion of literature. Hawthorne is able to place the reader within the mind of Mr. Wakefield through his unique approach to story-telling. The result is a fascinating look into the mind of a very interesting character. Hawthorne has done such a wonderful job of luring in the reader that it takes only a few minutes to read â€Å"Wakefield,† but you will never forget it.

Allen Pinkerton Essay -- essays research papers

Allan Pinkerton , born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1819, emigrated to Chicago. He was America’s first â€Å"private eye.† A man of many contradictions, he was a conservative who strongly opposed slavery, a very cautious man who risked his life capturing criminals, a militant labor organizer who suppressed the labor movement, and fought for women’s rights to be detectives. During his twenty-eight year career as a private detective, Allan Pinkerton and his agency investigated over a thousand crimes. Pinkerton was involved in many dramas of the nineteenth century. Work and the Underground Railroad became his life. The Pinkerton’s fed and sheltered fugitives in their own home. Pinkerton was a very moral man and despised slavery. The crisis over slavery brought the nation to the brink of the Civil War. The South demanded a guarantee that slavery would continue in the states where it was already established and permitted to spread to the Midwest and West. The South also wanted the North to return any slaves who fled there via the Underground Railroad. The North wanted to stop the spread of slavery. In 1850 the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, which made it a federal crime for slaves to run away and a crime for anyone to assist them. Allan Pinkerton could be arrested and imprisoned for his involvement in assisting the slaves. When the war began, Allan Pinkerton would finally combine his detective skills with his abolitionist beliefs. Allan Pinkerton protected Abraham Lincoln against southern radicals, who demanded the Union be dissolved and the Southern states form an independent government. They hated Lincoln because they feared he would abolish slavery. In 1861, Pinkerton uncovered a plot to assassinate President Lincoln. Pinkerton , with his top agents, posed as Southern sympathizers and found themselves within the conspirators. As a spy in the their midst, the plot was uncovered. As President Lincoln changed trains in Maryland on February 22, he would be shot. Some of the guards protecting the President were also Southern radicals. At the same time there was another plot to blow up the train carrying Lincoln. Once the train was destroyed, they would cut the telegraph wires and blow up bridges and train tracks to prevent Northern troops entry into Baltimore. If President Lincoln was killed, there would definitely be a civil war. Pinkerton acte... ... he still worked for the government by investigating merchants who were cheating them by selling faulty military supplies. When the war ended, Allan Pinkerton returned to Chicago to build up his private investigation business. On April 14,1865, President Lincoln was assassinated. Allan Pinkerton was not there to protect him. The end of the Civil War did not bring peace to America. There were continuous outbursts and gangs were formed to rob trains. Pinkerton and his agents pursued the outlaws with vengeance, the most famous being the James brothers. In 1869, Allan Pinkerton suffered a stroke, but fought the paralysis. A new battlefield emerged in the 1870’s in the coal mines, steel mills, and factories. The workers were treated like slaves, and fought back. Pinkerton was employed to end these organizations, to infiltrate, gather evidence, and convict them. A strike broke out in a steel plant, ending in fatalities. Pinkerton’s reputation was seriously damaged. Allan Pinkerton died in 1884. He was a legend, gaining an international reputation for crime solving and protection. When the F.B.I. was founded, it was modeled after the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency.

Islams Early Interactions with Judaism and Christianity

Chantel Hunt MNE 347 Palestinian Studies Bashir Bashir ISLAMS EARLY INTERACTIONS WITH JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY Because of its harsh desert environment, the Arabian Peninsula was left relatively unmolested by the several competing empires that swept through the Fertile Crescent just north of it in the early centuries before Islam. At the beginning of the 7th Century, the Byzantine and Sassanid empires were embroiled in a 26-year war for supremacy, which had a lasting cultural impact on the Arabs of the Peninsula eventually leading to the emergence and subsequent explosion of Islam into the monotheistic sphere.The interaction Islam had with existing religions led to a unique monotheism better suited to the Arabs, yet still maintained traditional elements with Judaism and Christianity, even enabling it to fall under the Abrahamic title. Monotheism was initially introduced through trade. According to Jonathon Berkey, â€Å"†¦the exchange of people and ideas between Arabs of the int erior and predominantly Aramaic-speaking inhabitants of Syria was, and had been for centuries, a routine element of life. That exchange touched on religious matters†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (64). Elements of these religions competed and intermingled with existing Arab paganism and traditions, creating a unique take on â€Å"the one God† that was much better suited to the Arabs than the politically-charged imperial baggage of the former traditions. Islam holds many similarities with the religions it sprung from besides its monotheism and devotion to the idea of a â€Å"true God,† yet even these similarities come with a unique Arabian flavor. These include a prophet-messenger, a holy book of scripture, and an ancestral link to the Abrahamic line.The idea of a special kind of person able to transcend mortal boundaries to commune with deity and transmit knowledge or specific messages to mankind has been an integral part of the Judeo-Christian experience. There are many prophets throu ghout Torah and Old Testament including Noah, Samuel, and Isaiah. The New Testament continues this tradition with the addition of new messengers from God (though not by the term prophets) such as John the Baptist, Jesus Christ the declared Son of God, and his disciples, the apostles.Islam adds one more prophet to the scene—Muhammad. Muslims view Muhammad as the greatest and last messenger of God. Muhammad's message was similar to the previously accepted prophets: to turn aside from false devotions and to worship the only true God in the right way. Like other Biblical prophets, Muhammad’s message was initially unpopular towards the masses, necessitating his flight to what became Medina (Esposito History of Islam 8).Despite initial troubles, however, Muhammad gained a considerable following and was able to later turn the tide against his former oppressors, and subdue them in a way no prophet of the earlier traditions was able to do: as a political conqueror (Esposito, Hi story of Islam 8-11). Unifying several Arabian tribes created the beginning of an empire that would bring the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires to their knees and open up the spread of Islam to the whole world. Also significant to each Abrahamic denomination was the creation of a holy book.Each consists of compilations of sacred texts, considered to be the words of God or of his prophets, though the original texts from which our modern ones are comprised of are non-existent today. It is generally assumed by many scholars that each text has likely been through apocryphal revisions and retellings before getting to us in their current state, but many adherents to Jewish and Christian faiths still view their books as the pure transmitted words of God.The holy book of Islam, the Qur’an, is also a compilation of revelations regarded as divine, though unlike the other sacred texts, it is only credited to one â€Å"receiver. † According to Muslim tradition, the Qur’an was preserved in both oral and written formats by Muhammad and his secretaries exactly as he had been given them from Allah, and were compiled in precise order of revelation and in their entirety (Esposito, Islam: the Straight Path 137). Yet like its contemporaries, it was not completed in written form while the receiver writer of the revelations lived. The Qur’an was compiled during the reign of Muhammad’s third successor, Uthman, leaving a window (admittedly a much smaller one than of the Jewish and Christian texts) where possible changes or mistakes in oral or written transmission may have occurred. In addition to a prophet and a holy book, Islam created a third link with the previous traditions giving it a higher sense of legitimacy and authority.Islam claims a direct ancestral link to Abraham—the great prophet to whom God promised nations of posterity, the land of Canaan and religious stewardship. Judaic and Christian traditions trace their spiritual ancestry t o Abraham through Isaac, Abraham’s son born to his legitimate wife, Sara. Islam instead, connects their heritage to Abraham through his first son Ishmael, born to Sara’s Egyptian handmaid, Hagar. Each separate tradition maintains that their particular son of Abraham was the favored son and heir to both the temporal and divine.There are many other similarities Islam has with its older brother religions, but it is by no means a copy or mere synthesis of them either. While drawn to many aspects of the new religions that had sifted to them from the north, the Arabs had a substantially different religious, political, and economic environment than origins of Judaism and Christianity, making many doctrines and practices of the religions completely foreign and ill-suited to Arab sensibilities.Islam has many similar components with the other two religions making its association with the other religions under Abraham a commonly accepted one. However, the unique political and spi ritual environment of Arabia created unique elements in Islam not to be found anywhere else, and is possibly responsible for its exponential rate it acquired followers. Works Cited Berkey, Jonathan Porter. The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 00-1800. New York: Cambridge UP, 2003. Esposito, John L. Islam: the Straight Path. New York: Oxford UP, 1998 Esposito, John L. The Oxford History of Islam. New York: Oxford UP, 1999 *As I could not find the original books to get exact page numbers, I used the page numbers given in our packet of materials instead for those ideas that came from them. ——————————————– [ 1 ]. Qur’an 47:19. See also Exodus 20:3 in the Bible