Callenges Of Life :: essays research papers

Challenges of Life   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Jerry is a young boy in, the story of â€Å"Through the Tunnel.† He has a very big challenge which is swimming through a tunnel. By swimming through the tunnel he will be able to prove to the older boys and especially to himself that he can reach his goal if he sets his mind to it. Jing-mei and her mother from the story â€Å"Two Kinds,† also have a couple of challenges they must face. In this story, the mother is so eager for her daughter to excel, that she pushes and pushes until the daughter finally pushes back.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Jerry wants to do something very challenging. He wants to swim through a long tunnel, but must hold his breath some throughout his journey. When he sees boys (older boys) diving into the water, lasting a long time under water, and coming out a couple of meters away, he tries to so the same thing. It seems to be very easy for them. Jerry tries to do this a couple of times, but he is not successful. After his unsuccessful attempts he decides to practice holding his breath for a long time before trying it again. â€Å"A controlled impatience makes him wait.†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the story of â€Å"Two Kinds,† a mother tries to make her daughter do things that she is not interested in doing. Jing-mei had always head her mother talking about â€Å"America† and how wonderful and different life would be once they arrived. Jing-mei never liked the plans her mother had for her. Her mother wanted her to be a perfect kid. (Or at least what her mother thought o perfect child ought to be like.) Jing-mei’s greatest challenge was to inform her mother that she wasn’t interested in being the perfect child. She simply wished to be accepted as herself. One day Jing-mei performed a musical piece on a piano at a talent show. After her horrible performance, father, mother, and Jing-mei drove home disappointed, especially mother. Jing-mei went to her room went they arrived home. Her mother went to Jing-mei’s room shouting and yelling at her about her awful performance. talked back and told her mother that is this wasn’t for her to be so controlling of her life. â€Å"Why don’t you like me the way I am?† exclaimed Jing-mei.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  As I mentioned previously, Jing-mei’s mother wanted her daughter to be a perfect child. She sent her to piano lessons with a retired piano teacher. Mother cleaned houses for a living. She would find magazines in the houses she worked for.

Death Foretold by Symbols

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the author of the very intriguing novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The chronicle â€Å"is very strange and brilliantly conceived,† and â€Å" a sort of metaphysical murder mystery in which the detective, Garcia Marquez himself, reconstructs events associated with the murder 27 years earlier of Santiago Nasar, a rich, handsome fellow who lived in the Caribbean town where the author grew up† (Michaels, P. 1). Marquez plays himself in the novel, interviewing people who remember the murder and studies documents assembled by the court. He gathers various kinds of data—dreams, gossip, philosophical speculation, weather reports—and creates a chronological record of what occurred. The data that is accumulated demonstrates that symbolism was very prominent in the story and essential to the death of Santiago Nasar. Symbolism is first set up when it is introduced to the readers that Santiago Nasar had dreamed the night before his death that he was flying: â€Å"He’d dreamed he was going through a grove of timber trees where a gentle drizzle was falling, and for an instant he was happy in his dream, but when he awoke he felt completely spattered with bird shit† (Marquez, P. ). Beginning with the place, Nasar was passing by timber trees which are evergreens. â€Å"Evergreens represent immortality, everlasting life or an undying spirit, ironically enough† (â€Å"Symbolism in Chronicle of a Death foretold†). This adds to the whole ironic theme represented in a symbolic way. What is also symbolic about this piece is that flying usually represents moving to the next level spiritually. So that foreshadows his death. Another related dream that Nasar had was the one in which he was alone in a tinfoil airplane and â€Å"’flying through the almond trees without bumping into anything’† (Marquez, P. ). These almond trees are a symbol of virginity, divine favor, and purity. Trees are also recognized as being feminine. This could be representative of Santiago Nasar flying through a grove of virginal Angela Vicario. His airplane did not bump into anything, leaving the trees fully intact. This could also represent the innocence of Nasar, saying that he did not touch Angela. His innocence could also be represented in a form of Jesus. Santiago and Jesus Christ can be direct parallels when Marquez writes: â€Å"Santiago put on a shirt and pants of white linen†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Marquez, P5). Since white is the color of innocence and purity, this choice of clothing promotes those attributes. Jesus wore a linen cloth before his death as well and was aware that they were going to kill him, much like Nasar. Not only is this symbolism, but religious also. The bishop coming to town also gives a slight symbolic feature. This is because a bishop could resemble god in the way when he blesses, hears sins and such (â€Å"Bishop†). So god coming to town could foreshadow something big occurring as well. As many Christians and Catholics would agree it’s a very big deal, so it being a very big deal, one would think that everyone would behave but the exact opposite occurs when Santiago Nasar is murdered in such a brutal way right infront of his home. This story is filled with irony. When Nasar tells his mother about the symbolic dreams it would have been ideal for her to decipher them and tell him that they meant death. But instead it is mentioned that she did not recognize anything ominous within them. It is also quite ironic when he mentions, the day of his death, that â€Å"it was a very beautiful day† (Marquez, P. ) when most people agreed that the weather was funeral, with a cloudy, low sky and the thick smell of still waters, and that at the moment of the misfortune a thin drizzle was falling like the one Santiago Nasar had seen in his dream grove. Another malicious omen ignored. In a certain way, it is understandable that a lot of omens and symbols are ignored because they are not facts. The work that Marquez does is supposed to be â€Å"journalistic and factual† (â€Å"Chronicle of a Death Foretold†) and symbols would be counter-productive because they are not very good evidence, so they become anecdotes. However, if the people in town would have interpreted the symbols and warned him, he would be alive. But then again, if that would have occurred in the interesting novel, it wouldn’t be called Chronicle of a Death Foretold. It would just be Death or something like that, which eliminates all the entertainment. Returning to the symbols, we also see that flowers are important. A day before the death of Santiago Nasar, he distinctively told Marquez that he did not like flowers because they remind him of a funeral. This is also ronic because usually flowers are meant to represent purity, love, happiness, etc. But in his case it was the opposite. Other prominent symbols are the knives that the Vicario brothers used to kill Nasar, because almost everyone had seen them. Not only did they see the knives but when they did the Vicario brothers even rubbed it more in by saying that they were going to kill Santiago Nasar. The townspeople were very ignorant by believing that they would not carry on with the malicious deed. So they had great reticence by doing this. The ending adds to the both ironic and symbolic theme of the story. Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman reconciliate and it is foreknowledged if one looks at how many letters Angela sends Bayardo in the years that they are separated. But the twist is that he does not even open them. Chronicle of a Death Foretold puzzles the reader by demonstrating many symbols that foreshadow the death of Santiago Nasar. Dreams, clothing, flowers, weather, knives, and letters are just a few that make the story more interesting by giving it a symbolic view. If they had been ignored the story would not be the story that it is. Therefore, symbolism and irony play a very significant role in the story.

The Importance of Government Explained

John Lennons  Imagine is a beautiful song, but when he tallies up the  things he can imagine us living without—possessions, religion and so on—he never asks us to imagine a world without government. The closest he comes is when he asks us to imagine that there are no countries, but thats not exactly the same thing. This is probably because Lennon was a student of human nature. He knew that government might be one thing we cant do without. Governments are important structures. Lets imagine a world with no government. A World Without Laws   Im typing this on my MacBook right now. Lets imagine that a very large man—well call him Biff—has decided that he doesnt  especially like my writing. He walks in, throws the MacBook to the floor, stomps it into little pieces, and leaves. But before leaving, Biff tells me that if I write anything else he doesnt like, hell do to me what he did to my MacBook. Biff just established something very much like his own government. It has become against Biffs law for me to write things that Biff doesnt like. The penalty is severe and enforcement is fairly certain. Whos going to stop him? Certainly not me. Im smaller and less violent than he is. But Biff isnt really the biggest problem in this no-government world. The real problem is a greedy, heavily armed guy—well call him Frank—who has learned that if he steals money then hires enough muscle with his ill-gotten gains, he can demand goods and services from every business in town. He can take anything he wants and make almost anybody do whatever he demands. Theres no authority higher than Frank that can make him stop what hes doing, so this jerk has literally created his own government—what political theorists refer to as a despotism, a government ruled by a despot, which is essentially another word for tyrant. A World of Despotic Governments   Some governments arent much different from the despotism I just described. Kim Jong-un technically inherited his army instead of hiring it in North Korea, but the principle is the same. What Kim Jong-un wants, Kim Jong-un gets. Its the same system Frank used, but on a larger scale. If we dont want Frank or Kim Jong-un in charge, we must all get together and agree to do something to prevent them from taking over. And that agreement itself is a government. We need governments to protect us from other, worse power structures that would otherwise form in our midst and deprive us of our rights. The Founders of America believed in natural rights held by all persons as espoused by English philosopher John Locke. These were the rights to life liberty and property. They are often referred to today as basic or fundamental rights. As Thomas Jefferson said  the Declaration of Independence:   We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That ​to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.