Titanic And The Titanic Disaster

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Introduction The tragic history of the Titanic, the sinking of the “unsinkable” giant of a ship shocked the entire world and contributed to important shifts in the mass consciousness of the people who lived at that period and assessed the achievements of new technologies and their role. However, one would have been hardly able to predict in 1912 that this tragedy, no matter how significant and meaningful, would leave such a deep imprint on the history of human civilization. The continuing interest in the fate of the great vessel has taken the form of various narrations and given rise to numerous myths enveloping the true history and, in this way, often obscuring the facts related to the tragedy. In recent years, this interest has been emphasized by the dramatic discovery of the wreck and examination of its remains. The recovery of artifacts from the Titanic and the exploration of the site where it had sank stimulated new speculations on different issues of the failure to rescue the Titanic and the role of different factors contributing to the disaster. These issues have been traditionally in the focus of discussions that caused controversies and ambiguous interpretations of various facts. They also often overshadowed other parts of the disaster story that were confirmed by statistical data and revealed the impact of social realities. The social stratification of passengers that reflected the social realities of the period and its class interests determined the chances of survival, with most of those perished in the Titanic disaster having been lower class individuals. The Titanic Disaster: Social Stratification and Class-Based Concepts The current interest of the general public in the disaster is often superfic... ... middle of paper ... ...on operating as the major principle impacting survival rates. Statistical data shows that rescued passengers and survival rates were very different for categories of passengers depending on their material and social status and directly reflected on the latter. Lower class passengers had very few chances of survival, whether they were male, female, or children. These facts reveal the power of social stratification in society of the period and demonstrate how social injustice strongly affects the issues of life and death of the people. The history of the Titanic highlights some of the most sensitive issues of social justice and social stratification that should be studied in more detail and cannot be overshadowed by the popular stories that level or underestimate the social and historical importance of the messages this disaster left to posterity.

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