The Crucible Essays (643 words) - Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible

The Crucible In Arthur Miller's The Crucible, the main character Abigail Williams is to blame for the 1692 witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Abigail is a mean and vindictive person who always wants her way, no matter who she hurts. Through out the play her accusations and lies cause many people pain and suffering, but she seemed to never care for any of them except John Proctor, whom she had an affair with seven months prior to the beginning of the play. John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth used to employ Abigail, until Elizabeth found out the affair and threw Abigail out. Although John told Abigail that the affair was over and he would never touch her again, she tried desperately to rekindle their romance. Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time. But I will cut off my hand before I'll ever reach for you again. (Page 23) She claimed that she loved John and that he loved her. Before the play began, Abigail tried to kill Elizabeth with a curse. She thought that if Elizabeth were dead John would marry her. Further into the play, Abigail accused Elizabeth of witchcraft. She saw Marry Warren, the Proctor's servant, making a poppet. Mary put a needle into the doll, and Abigail used that for her accusation. She stabbed herself with a needle and claimed that Elizabeth's soul had done it. Although Abigail claimed she loved John, she may have just loved the care and attention he gave her. John cared for her like no one else had. In a way he could be described as somewhat of a father figure to her. When Abigail was just a child, she witnessed her parents' brutal murders. I saw Indians smash my dear parent's heads on the pillow next to mine... (page 20) After her traumatic experience, she was raised by her uncle, Reverend Parris, who is somewhat of a villain. In the play it was written, He (Parris) was a widower with no interest in children, or talent with them. (Page 3) Parris regarded children as young adults who should be thankful for being permitted to walk straight, eyes slightly lowered, arms at the sides, and mouths shut until bidden to speak. (Page 4) Therefore, it is obvious to see that Abigail grew up without any love or nurturing. She also was without any real mother or father figures. Abigail grew up to be deceitful and treacherous, lacking trustworthiness. On account of the fear for her life, Abigail began to accuse the townspeople of witchcraft. After she and the other girls were discovered in the forest dancing, she knew that they would be whipped and possibly hung. Abigail claimed that they were bewitched, and began to name names of those who were 'with the devil'. Nothing would stop her from protecting herself. When John forced Mary Warren to tell the truth about the lies that she, Abigail, and the rest of the girls were telling, Abigail proclaimed her innocence and then began to accuse Mary of being a witch. She claimed she saw Mary's spirit in the form of a bird. But God made my face; you cannot want to tear my face. Envy is a deadly sin, Mary. (Page 115) Abigail feared for her life so much that she protected it even when John was accused of witchcraft and was sentenced to be hung. Although she loved him, she would not sacrifice herself for him. In conclusion, the cause of the witch trials was Abigail Williams. Considering the facts about her love for John, traumatic childhood, and fear for her life it is easy to see that it was Abigail's fault that the tragedy occurred. As the horrible person that she was, Abigail fought to get her way no matter whom she hurt, and unfortunately in the end she did. English Essays

Do you think the Homecoming is a realistic play

Do you think the Homecoming is a realistic play? The Homecoming is a play whose emphasis is too much on trying to be realistic thus creating a wholly unrealistic outlook on life. The Homecomings sparse realism evolves from there being no guarantee that a visitor will possess a visitors card detailing all his personal information. The desire for verification is often satisfied in a dramatically conventional play but in The Homecoming it is not. There is no hard distinction between what is real and what is unreal nor between what is true or false. The more acute the experience, the less articulate its expression thus convincing the audience of The Homecoming being a series of individuals caught in the tangled web of life. When Teddy enters the audience knows nothing about him and there are virtually no clues. Neither Teddy nor Ruth brings up their relation with the family until an indirect force causes Teddy to tell Ruth, Thats my fathers chair. However, the lack of clarity makes the play seems unrealistically ambiguous. Throughout the play we are looking for clarification of what we suspect about Mac and Jessie. There is none, just as we are forbidden the comfort of an obvious meaning to the play. He was very fond of your mother, Mac was. Very fond. He always had a good word for her. Mind you, she wasnt such a bad woman. Even though it made me sick just to look at her rotten stinking face, she wasnt such a bad bitch. I gave her the best bleeding years of my life anyway. The pauses, as shown above, emphasise Pinters naturalistic ability to hint something and provoke the audience to recognise the complications of each character, making the language in the play often seem superficial. In this extract the pause is Maxs train of thought. The only way to link the two parts of speech are by realising that Jessie must have done something terrible...

REASONING AND ANALYSIS Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

REASONING AND ANALYSIS - Research Paper Example The income transfer does not necessary need to be worked for but is issued on free terms regardless of merit. Consumption can be depicted by what a person eats, what person dresses, the house he or she lives in and the luxuries in which that person can afford. The price of a good can be considered the cost of buying a set good; on the other hand, value can be described as the satisfaction one derives from consuming a particular commodity. Therefore, value is the most important aspect to a consumer. The main argument that constitutes the claim is that income affects inherent consumption. It is guaranteed that as income increases, consumption also increases. Thus, the two are directly proportional. However, it can be noted that income affects consumption but not the other way round. Consumption cannot affect income since it is consumption that is dependent on income. In another perspective, it is noted that income also affects a person’s relations. As income increases, the relationship of a person with other people tends to be directed to people of the same caliber. A person who is rich can be noted to have more friends who are related to his or her status. Also, it is noted that rich people are less superstitious and noted to be les s religious. Therefore, income affects relations of the individual (Miller, 1998). In life, as someone increases his wealth, his surroundings tend to change. An instance is the theory put forward by Keynes. The theory is justified by different research papers. The Keynesian theory, the consumption of a person is directly affected by the income. The income tends to trigger other tastes and preferences that were not significant to a person in a former status. Therefore, a person tends to develop a taste for luxurious commodities depending on the level of income. In addition, as the price of luxurious goods increases, the value of the good also increases. Income also affects the consumption of alcohol

What do Happiness Studies Study Does Happiness Change After Major Life Essay

What do Happiness Studies Study Does Happiness Change After Major Life Events - Essay Example He also went furhter in dissecting the etymology of the word â€Å"happiness† by tracing to its root word â€Å"hap†, meaning chance and luck whether it is good and bad in his effort to find the true meaning of happiness. The other study of Lucas that our set point of well being or our normal selves is predominantly biologically determined and our response and how we adapt to happiness life changing events in life fluctuates around that levels but will ultimately settle back to this normal state of well being. Griffin in his study about happines begun by assigning a value at the beginning of his argument particularly when Griffin cited eudaimonia† referring to â€Å"having a good guardian spirit† because that defined the trajectory of his argument. He begun associating martyrdom with happiness and formulating imaginary mathematical equation that being â€Å"happy now† and â€Å"more happy instances† vis-a-vis lesser unhappy instances would net to a happy life that made the paper problematic. The analysis was quite simplistic particularly when Griffin added Hume’s standard of taste because it required putting standard to happiness that can be likened to the concept of right and wrong in being happy. Any modern student of philosophy can refute this argument because we already know that there is no universal formula or standard of happiness. What makes one elated with happiness may be a casual circumstance to another. The bottomline is, what makes one happy will not necessarily make another happy. This test can easily be applied to refute the paper’s argument by also using one of Griffin’s example which is the woman from India who is â€Å"badly oppressed and what from the outside looks like a miserable existence† (2007:141) and might be content with small improvement of which such contentment, Griffin argued, would not necessarily mean she has a â€Å"happy life†. The trouble with Griffin ’s line of argument in this example is he already put a qualifier in the his hypothesis by framing it as â€Å"pathetically content with a small improvement in what from the outside looks like a miserable existence† (141). There was already a value judgment in the hypothesis which was supposed to be in the conditional because it is yet to be argued. Such, the conclusion is certain to arrive that she will not be happy because the line of reasoning did not provide room for refutation. It can be contended however that the woman, as opposed to the paper’s contention, is happy to the slightest improvement that will come in her life and not necessarily pathetic as what Griffin has framed. With how Griffin framed his words, it seem that he has not experienced poverty because it became an automatic reaction to him to say that a poor woman despite being content of having little will still be unhappy. It is like refuting his own argument because in his words, Griffin also mentioned that â€Å"one’s life is happy if one is content that life has brought one much of what one regards as important† (2007:140). Perhaps in his value system, slight improvement is not significant to be considered important but for those who were already exasperated with poverty, a moment of relief and the slightest of improvement is already bliss. Griffin is arguing from the point of view of a rich man who has not sufferred deprivation of his basic need such that, the provision of basic material

Action research project (for non-experienced teacher on English Essay

Action research project (for non-experienced teacher on English Language Teaching (ELT) setting) - Essay Example However, this experience of learning is made more significant and poignant when one is the teacher. This is claimed on the premise that in the context of being the teacher, one is no longer just responsible for the things that one learns for oneself but one becomes responsible for the things that one will share with the class, of how to share it with the class and of engaging the class in the process of learning. And all of these are geared towards the hope that in the end, the aims and goals of the discussion are attained. In acknowledging the multidimensionality of the responsibilities of the teacher plus the personal context and condition from where the teacher is coming from, creates the feeling of nervousness in the teacher. Now it is known. Teachers, too, feel nervous in class (Fives & Buehl, 2010). And addressing this feeling is of primordial importance since teacher anxiety or nervousness affects the learning process both for the teacher and the students (Kaufman, 2003; Fives & Buehl, 2010; Coates & Thoresen, 1976; Mintz, 2007). Being such, looking into this concern is vital if an authentic and holistic learning is to be attained. In recognising the reality of teacher nervousness or anxiety and its effect in the learning process, this paper will be addressing the question: ‘how can teachers overcome nervousness or anxiety in the classroom?’ In order to address the question raised by this paper, the mixed method was utilised. A literature review regarding the subject matter and a qualitative interview were undertaken. For the literature review, the electronic databases Academic Source Complete, Jstor, ERIC, and Primary Research were searched using the combination of the following key terms: teacher anxiety, teacher nervousness, English as a second language, classroom environment, classroom management, learning and language. Articles written only in English and published in

The Singer Solution To World Poverty

The Singer Solution To World Poverty Poverty is the state of people who do not have a certain amount of income to achieve the basic needs. Peoples buying power is not enough to pay their basic need from food. In the article Peter Singers to ground the conclusion that it is morally wrong not to donate time and money to aid agencies. In Singers analogy it is stated that not saving a child who is drowning in a shallow pond, given that the sacrifice one has to give is relatively small, is morally analogous to not donating time and money to aid agencies that save the lives of the global poor. Because most people have the intuition that not saving the child is wrong then not donating time and money to aid agencies is also wrong. An important consequence of this restatement of the argument is that we avoid the discussion of the validity of the life-saving analogy: The discussion of whether we can actually liken the two cases in the analogy together. Much of the writings on the analogy have revolved around the question how analogous and disanalogous the two cases are. One of my aims in the paper is to show that we do not need to answer that question in order to reach the conclusion that it is morally wrong not to donate time and money to aid agencies: We do not need the analogy at all. If we show that we can annul the analogy then we are free from the problems and the vagueness which are a consequence of the use of analogical reasoning. If the universal moral principle in the deductive argument above is reasonable then we owe it to the global poor, who are dying by the millions every year, to state the argument which grounds our duties to them as simply, directly and convincingly as possible. The hope is that by redesigning the argument for this conclusion then the citizens of the affluent world will rather be convinced to act according to the conclusion of such an argument than to the conclusion of the argument which contains the lifesaving analogy. All of which raises a question: In the end, what is the ethical distinction between a Brazilian who sells a homeless child to organ peddlers and an American who already has a TV and upgrades to a better one knowing that the money could be donated to an organization that would use it to save the lives of kids in need? Bobs situation resembles that of people able but unwilling to donate to overseas aid and differs from Doras situation. The author Singer is like his name conveying beautiful and kind ideas and theories to people in this world. However, maybe he forgot to realize that Sirens song also pertains to singing. As there are different kinds of human beings in this planet, each with a unique personality and growth environment, we thus could not judge everyone in a same standard and could not ask everyone to perform the ways you want them to act. Let alone, the so-called standards and the principals are all created and manipulated by men. Singers conclusion is unprecedented and encouraging but is lack of cogency. His conclusion was obtained under an ideal situation where human beings could evolve themselves of their own accord. According to what he said, under the ideal situation, we people care others first (to some extent equals to selfless and generous); keep abstinent, especially be moderate in eating; and sacrifice ourselves in order to help others, all of which in my point of view could be treated as virtue of Sage. Singer holds that if we value the life of a child more than going to fancy restaurants, the next time we dine out we will know that we could have done something better with our money. For this statement, I have got two points to contend. Firstly, how come would people be aware of donation? It is because those who would like to contribute their money are the ones who do not need to care too much about their food, their shelter, their cars and their spiritual world. Those people are always the main force in charity industry. But what is the motivation of these kind acts? Some of them are because of redemption, like there are churches setting up service wholly for rich men: if they could donate a big sum of money, they would be logically forgiven by the God. Some of them are due to faces, since the public always criticize the rich for not being so generous to the poor. The rest are unfeignedly on account of kindness because those wealthy men all bear a heart that cares the whole world. But no matter from which starting point, the essence of their donation is because that they are rich and that they donate is because that all of them could still keep their living standard. Yes, living standard. Singer also referred to this phrase when he mentioned how much money one should give away in their donation. Here comes the second point of my judgment. So how much on earth should we donate? Is it the percentage that a person should save for donation matters? Or is it the number $20,000 really matters? Indeed, they are just all simple numbers. Provided we abandoned the prejudice and expected the most ideal state that everyone attempts to share some of his income with the poor, the base increased, then we really dont need to worry about the number exactly cause we have got much more people and their money is in anyway sufficient. In this way, with a large number of people joining the base, the problem is solved. Thus, we could draw the conclusion that it is whether people would do that matters but how much money they would like to give away decides. People are not sage. To err is human. People are born in distinct ways. People in different levels (here levels means the amount money different people own) have imbalanced desire. We are all familiar with Maslows hierarchy of needs. Maslow used the terms Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, Self-Actualization and Self-Transcendence needs to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through. (Wikipedia) thus, before we are about to plan, there is also a process, which happens to be the pyramid of Maslows hierarchy of needs, for people to go through. Thus, we can tell that people always firstly meet their physical requirements such as cloth, eating, shelter, sex and so on. As for donation it pertains to the highest level-self-actualization. From the first level to the highest level, there is a long distance and area to cover. People must conquer all the difficulties in order to actualize themselves. So it then becomes easy for us to understand those rich people The more sweet he or she has already tasted, the less money he or she would donate. This is because $20,000 is nothing to rich people compared to that of the same money in a middle-level family. Especially for rich people, their living habits have been developed and are hard to change. Plus, seldom rich people would change their current habits in order to save more children. As for those relative poor people but rich than those Slum kids, their problems are always concentrated on roles. The most common mental state of those people is collective guilt. People in that level would always argue that I am poor myself and those donation things are for the rich. Rich people are obliged to give away more. Collective guilt is a very dangerous behavior in every society throughout the history. Not only German but Japanese as well, the good thing is that the former confessed crime in public. We have seen some horrible news everyday via different media about people commit crime as a group, such as rape by turns, Amway returning of goods and so on. In The Singer Solution to World Poverty, Singer didnt employ the same word collective guilt but showed us another less severe phrase-crowd ethics. Since we couldnt judge those people who dont donate as collective guilt, but to some extent it is about crowd ethics. In recent years China, we have seen many cases referred to c rowd ethics. We have seen people passing by a dying kid hit by a car; we have seen people turning a blind eye to thieves and we have seen officials being irresponsible. All these people are not guilt but all lack of sympathy. Donation is alike. We have talked much about the groundless of Singers conclusion to the poor. But it is still undeniable that Singer is a great man. He is few in number person whose actions always follow their words. He contributes a great deal to morality research and paves ways for animal protection as well as promotes the worlds ethic levels. Although it is hard to build up a world as Singer has described in the article: If that makes living a morally decent life extremely arduous, well, then that is the way things are. If we dont do it, then we should at least know that we are failing to live a morally decent life not because it is good to wallow in guilt but because knowing where we should be going is the first step toward heading in that direction. But in every era, Sage would eventually appear. There are people even in a few numbers who themselves live under poverty but still donates their limited money day and night and there are people who help each other when confronted with catastrophe. Human beings are strange Higher Beings, but are educable. Only under the leadership of great people like Singer and educating human beings in a correct way, can we eventually live a morally decent life. Work cited Singer, Peter. The Singer Solution to World Poverty. 1999. Wikipedia writer. Maslows hierarchy of needs.

Archimedes :: essays research papers

Archimedes is considered one of the three greatest mathematicians of all time along with Newton and Gauss. In his own time, he was known as "the wise one," "the master" and "the great geometer" and his works and inventions brought him fame that lasts to this very day. He was one of the last great Greek mathematicians. Born in 287 B.C., in Syracuse, a Greek seaport colony in Sicily, Archimedes was the son of Phidias, an astronomer. Except for his studies at Euclid's school in Alexandria, he spent his entire life in his birthplace. Archimedes proved to be a master at mathematics and spent most of his time contemplating new problems to solve, becoming at times so involved in his work that he forgot to eat. Lacking the blackboards and paper of modern times, he used any available surface, from the dust on the ground to ashes from an extinguished fire, to draw his geometric figures. Never giving up an opportunity to ponder his work, after bathing and anointing himself with olive oil, he would trace figures in the oil on his own skin. Much of Archimedes fame comes from his relationship with Hiero, the king of Syracuse, and Gelon, Hiero's son. The great geometer had a close friendship with and may have been related to the monarch. In any case, he seemed to make a hobby out of solving the king's most complicated problems to the utter amazement of the sovereign. At one time, the king ordered a gold crown and gave the goldsmith the exact amount of metal to make it. When Hiero received it, the crown had the correct weight but the monarch suspected that some silver had been used instead of the gold. Since he could not prove it, he brought the problem to Archimedes. One day while considering the question, "the wise one" entered his bathtub and recognized that the amount of water that overflowed the tub was proportional the amount of his body that was submerged. This observation is now known as Archimedes' Principle and gave him the means to solve the problem. He was so excited that he ran naked through the stre ets of Syracuse shouting "Eureka! eureka!" (I have found it!). The fraudulent goldsmith was brought to justice. Another time, Archimedes stated "Give me a place to stand on and I will move the earth." King Hiero, who was absolutely astonished by the statement, asked him to prove it.