For purposes of this discussion, it is the intent of this author to assess the plight of African Americans at a time when they were merely slaves, captives taken forcibly by rich white American merchants to a new and strange land called America. Right from the very beginning, slavery was a controversial issue. It was fraught with the constant reminder of man's inhumanity to man. This was evidenced in the literature as well as movements such as the abolitionists, and one most notably John Brown, who has been portrayed as a kind of maniacal character, who would stop at nothing to see this God given mandate carried out. Similarly, books such as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe did much to fuel the controversy that was slavery in the United States. Of course we now know that slavery as it was understood in the 19th century lasted up until the officiation of the Emancipation Proclamation, or slaves, or now newly pronounced African Americans were given their freedom, and their struggle assumes a new direction in attempting to gain equality for themselves. This is a struggle which continues today, and is not much less controversial. Nevertheless, for historical purposes, I should like to further attempt to dissect events as they existed at that time. Slavery was a practice which was much favored by the South. In the North, Americans were more industrial oriented, and had little use for slaves. They could afford to be more moralistic about the issue. However, when it came to the plight of land owners and Americans who lived in the Southern part of a very young country, that was America, they were highly preoccupied with their agrarian lifestyle. It is a fact that even George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson had slaves as did many of the forefathers of the new country. It is also true that many of these individuals had children with their Black slaves, and although it is similarly a matter of historical record that they did free their slaves, if not while they were alive, in their Last Will and Testament. What this means is that slavery was an issue of economics to the South, and a moral dilemma for those Americans who lived in the North. By the mid-1850's the spirit of accommodation had all but vanished. Northern interest in Emancipation pushed by abolitionists, eroded relations between families North and South.
Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" presents conflict on more than one level. The most important conflict in the story is between the subject matter and the way the story is told. From the beginning Jackson takes great pains to present her short story as a folksy piece of Americana. Slowly it dawns on us, the terrible outcome of what she describes.
For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.
Every great civilization or country has had at least one dirty little time in their history that all would rather forget. America knows this feeling well, especially within the 19th century, the slave era. America was divided, the North was generally against slavery and all for letting the African Americans roam free in a colony in Africa. The South on the other hand viewed African Americans as tools, essential to the economy and work, however still just tools. Tools to be bought a sold and driven until the breaking point just like every other implement in the shed. Fast-forward to the 21st century, slavery is gone from America and has become that dirty period of time that is spoken about in whispers. A question of immeasurable proportions arises, how were the incredibly difficult slave owners of the South get convinced that slavery was bad? The largest answer is the power of rhetoric, otherwise known as the written word. Two books played the largest role in molding of American society, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas by none other than Frederick Douglas himself. Important stylistic and rhetorical choices made by Douglas and Stowe greatly affected change in the major political and moral issue of slavery in 19th century America in two different ways, through politics via the male society (Douglas) and through the home front via religious and moral cases made to women (Stowe).
Participation in the lottery causes the villagers to lose the ability to be empathetic and their bonds of family and friendship suffer for it. The lottery encourages them to abandon ties of love and loyalty and tap into the deepest recesses of the darkness that hides in humanity. The lottery does not offer them prosperity, but strips them of all that is good in humanity. The villagers are masked behind the evil that awaits them each year on a sunny day in June. The other 364 da...
In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind stresses the importance of memory and how memories shape a person’s identity. Stories such as “In Search of Lost Time” by Proust and a report by the President’s Council on Bioethics called “Beyond Therapy” support the claims made in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
African Americans have overcome many obstacles throughout their journey to freedom. Slavery began in the United States in 1619, in Jamestown, Virginia. Although the Union’s victory in the Civil War ended slavery, it continues to be a huge part of history to the United States. The culture of African Americans has been greatly shaped by the tribulations their ancestors suffered throughout their journey to freedom. African American slaves lived lives in which they were consistently treated inhumanely on a number of different levels, yet they found methods to endure and overcome these cruel times (Facts).
This story was set in the deep south were ownership of African Americans was no different than owning a mule. Demonstrates of how the Thirteenth Amendment was intended to free slaves and describes the abolitionist’s efforts. The freedom of African Americans was less a humanitarian act than an economic one. There was a battle between the North and South freed slaves from bondage but at a certain cost. While a few good men prophesied the African Americans were created equal by God’s hands, the movement to free African Americans gained momentum spirited by economic and technological innovations such as the export, import, railroad, finance, and the North’s desire for more caucasian immigrants to join America’s workforce to improve our evolving nation. The inspiration for world power that freed slaves and gave them initial victory of a vote with passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. A huge part of this story follows the evolution of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment more acts for civil rights.
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” A Portable Anthology. Ed. Janet E. Gardner. Boston: New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2013. 242-249. Print.
Memories are works of fiction, selective representations of experiences actual or imagined. They provide a framework for creating meaning in one's own life as well as in the lives of others. In Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, memory is a dangerous and debilitating faculty of human consciousness. Sethe endures the tyranny of the self imposed prison of memory. She expresses an insatiable obsession with her memories, with the past. Sethe is compelled to explore and explain an overwhelming sense of yearning, longing, thirst for something beyond herself, her daughter, her Beloved. Though Beloved becomes a physical manifestation of these memories, her will is essentially defined by and tied to the thoughts, experiences and emotions of Sethe. Sethe's struggle is an intensely personal process of self negation; her identity is complicated, convoluted, and nearly consumed by her memory. Morrison suggests at least implicitly that Sethe's crisis is by no means unique. Rather than a positive or negative trait, memory (and the self destructive powers contained within it) may be an unavoidable part of the human condition.
From the tiny and cramped spaces of the slaves boats that traveled the seas, where the descendants of king and queens, but soon as these slaves made it to the new world they were devalued and dehumanize because of the rich melanin that was embedded in them. This new land that the boat people deemed as home, was strange and unfamiliar to the slaves, which forced the slaves to adopt and adapt to the ways of the new world. Forced into slavery, these slaves had no chose, since the day they stepped foot of the boat they were looked at as a commodity and not a human being. Furthermore, the slave was nothing but a laborer and all they knew for centuries was work, for generations they had no sense of freedom and was used day in and day out to help supply and build the world we know today. Today we live in the world that our ancestors built and for no longer will the story of the slave be silenced; their stories deserved to be told full out through anal and fabric of history itself.
Eating behaviour is a complex behaviour that involves a vast array of factors which has a great impact on the way we choose our meals. Food choice, like an other behaviour, is influenced by several interrelated factors. While hunger seems to drive our ways of food consumption, there are things outside of our own bodies that influence our food choices and the way in which we eat. The way we eat is controlled by and is a reflection of our society and cultures. I explore this idea through a food diary I created over a few weeks and the observations made by several anthropologists that I have studied.
Magical realism is clearly present throughout Gabriel-Garcia Marquez's novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Magical realism is the juxtaposition of realism with fantastic, mythic, and magical elements. A secondary trait was the characteristic attitude of narrators toward the subject matter: they frequently appeared to accept events contrary to the usual operating laws of the universe as natural, even unremarkable. Though the tellers of astonishing tales, they themselves expressed little or no surprise.
When looking through the topic of development, two drastically different ways to assess it arise. The majority of the western world looks at development in terms of per capita GNP. This means each country is evaluated on a level playing field, comparing the production of each country in economic value. Opposite this style of evaluation is that of the alternative view, which measures a country’s development on its ability to fulfill basic material and non-material needs. Cultural ties are strong in this case as most of the population does not produce for wealth but merely survival and tradition.
Globalisation is a broad term that is often defined in economic factors alone. The Dictionary at merriam-webster.com describes globalisation as “the process of enabling financial markets to operate internationally, largely as a result of deregulation and improved communication.” Also due to deregulation on the financial market, multi-national companies are free to trade and move their businesses to areas where a higher return or profit can be achieved. New technology also enables companies to relocate to areas where labour costs are lower, for instance movement of call centre jobs from the UK to India.
Huegel, Kelly. GLBTQ: The Survival Guide for Queer and Questioning Teens. Vol. 1. Free Spirit Publishing, 2003. 1 vols.