Artifact Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Artifact - Essay Example The object has an approximate height of 5 inches; the widest portion of its body has a width of 4 inches, and the three legs have equal height of 3.5 inches. The object’s width is much bigger than its height and one can inscribe it within a form of a rectangle. The primary raw material used to produce the object is wood. The top part is in a circular shape and is firm since it is of a thick wood material. The thickness of this top part is of approximately 2 inches. The surface area of the top part is big enough to allow for anybody sit comfortably on the chair. The legs are firm enough and forms a u-shape to enable them support the weight of the top part firmly and therefore if anyone sits on the stool no matter how heavy he or she is chances of the stool breaking are limited. The wood materials used to construct the object are curved smooth. The object’s top part has two-fit horizontal lines at the part where the top rests and joins the three legs and the other line is at the surface where an individual sits. When one views this object from a side the stool seems to present some V-shapes formed by each two legs. The objects legs are separate from one another at an equal interval and points downwards supporting the top surface. The legs are thick enough to ensure maximum support of the weight of the top part, which seems to be heavy. When one looks at the object from its top, the stool’s top surface seems to present a disc-shape. This means that much of the weight exerted on the stool is supported by the core and the central part of the stool and that why the legs are joined at the outermost part of the top surface for the purpose of maintain balance when an individual sits on the object. This object however consists of four distinctive parts, which include the top body and the three legs. While the legs of the object are in the form of a long rod, its upper portion is in a disc-shape. The top of the object is in

Organizational Plan for Dr. McDougalls Right Food Asian Entres Essay

Organizational Plan for Dr. McDougalls Right Food Asian Entres - Essay Example Further, a McKinsey 7-S Assessment would be applied, as required. For Dr. McDougall’s Right Food, the management team is comprised of the founder, Dr. John McDougall as chairman of the board of directors; Karen Alden, the CEO and board member; a Vice President and Operations Manager with expertise in natural foods production; a Finance Manager who takes care of accounting and finance; and a Human Resources Manager who takes care the administrative and personnel resources’ needs for the organization. All of the management team are members of the board of directors. The success of the team lies with Karen Alden, reported to have extensive expertise in the areas of strategic planning and marketing (Full Circle Fund, 2011, par. 1). Under the governance of Dr. John McDougall, known as an expert in healthy eating, his qualifications, as noted are â€Å"one of the founders of natural, or organic, wellness and is a board-certified internist. He is also a best-selling author who has been writing about the effects and benefits of good nutrition to health† (Grocery.com, N.D., par. 2). The rest of the team address production, finance and human resources requirements, as needed. The elements of the McKinsey 7S model are: strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff, and skills (Mind Tools, 2011). Applying this model in Dr. McDougall’s Right Foods Asian Entrà ©e, the following are revealed: Strategy: To produce and market Asian Entrees entirely on all natural ingredients to be targeted to health conscious people who are always on the go. Despite its premium price strategy, an extensive promotional campaign would assist to enhance product awareness to consumers and therefore, it would be available in all major supermarkets and groceries. Structure: The management team is structured as a lean and flat structure with limited members

Congo River In Heart of Darkness Essay Example for Free

Congo River In Heart of Darkness Essay The Meaning of the Congo River for Marlow, the journey on the Congo River is one of the most difficult and ominous journeys he will ever take. The fact that it takes him around and not completely into the jungle is significant of Marlows psychological journey as well. He never really goes on land but watches the shore from the outside. The only time he goes on shore he finds a wasteland. For Marlow the jungle of the Congo is representative of evil that man is capable of. In Heart of Darkness, it seems that the further Marlow travels into the jungle, the deeper he looks into himself. All this time is spent on the Congo River as he looks from the outside. This is symbolic as he is looking at his soul from the outside but never really sees himself until he goes on land to get Kurtz. When he arrives on land is symbolic of when he looks the deepest into himself. He goes to find Kurtz on his deathbed and is given he choice to take over for him as a god among an African tribe. Marlow is faced with the ultimate choice between good and evil. For a moment it is uncertain what choice Marlow will make. But, unlike Kurtz, Marlow picks the good over evil, as he rescues Kurtz back to the steamer. The fact that Marlow sailed along the Congo River, around the jungle, and not actually into the jungle is an important symbol also. Marlow never walks the path that Kurtz did to self-destruction. He went around the jungle to avoid getting captured by evil. Kurtz was a decent Englishman until he gave into the desires of his heart of darkness. Kurtz spent all his time in the jungle and eventually forgot all of his self-control, manners, and upbringing. He truly looked in the deepest part of himself and found that his evil desires would reign. This is symbolic because he was deep inside the jungle. In this respect Conrad uses to men to show the reader both the good and bad of humankind. He shows the true evil and good that man is capable of If proper restraints had been there would Kurtz have done things differently? The fact that no one was around to keep Kurtz in check helped him succeed in becoming capable of the immense evil he became. Marlow had his shipmates there to keep him responsible. When he left the steamboat there wasnt anyone to restrain Marlow. He was face to face with himself and his human desires, but as he looked at Kurtz and what the evil had done to him he saw the consequences of choosing evil. If Marlow hadnt seen the consequences would he have acted differently? In the beginning of the novel, Marlow talks of things as if they are happening far away from him and not actually happening close by which represents that he is on the outside looking in. He also talks about a fog that settles over the river. This fog represents a distortion of what lies ahead. As he makes his decisions based on what he thinks is right but really he has no idea of what will happen to him or his crew. As the novel progresses the reader will start to understand all of these themes and symbols that the Congo River represents. It represents the shedding of layers of the soul and taking a look into the desires of the heart. By the end it seams as though the reader has taken a look into their own soul to find out what ultimately dominates them. Will they find themselves to be a Marlow; a person who exercises their capacity for good, or will they find themselves to be a Kurtz; a person capable of an immense heart of darkness?

What is the marketing mix

What is the marketing mix What is the Marketing Mix The marketing mix of Product, Price, Promotion, and Place was introduced to marketing education by McCarthy (Yudelson 1999). First formulated as a pedagogical tool, the concept of the 4Ps represents a comprehensive way to describe the main tasks of marketing managers. (Goldsmith 1999). It is utilised to implement corporate planning after having researched and audited the marketing environment, identified and understood the customer, established a strategy and decided which market(s) or market segments to serve, or want to serve (Anonymous 2006). The Marketing Mix has its origins in the 60s: Neil Borden (1964) identified twelve controllable marketing elements that would result to a profitable business operation. Jerome McCarthy (1064) reduced Bordens factors to a simple four-element framework: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. Practitioners and academics embraced the Mix paradigm that soon became the established and essential element of marketing theory and operational marketing management. (Constantinides 2006) The 4Ps were a suitable framework for the 1960s environment which was characterised by profit making consumer manufacturing companies who were concerned with reaching their customers in an age of emerging mass media and national mass markets. (Anonymous 2006) Eventually the 4Ps of the marketing mix became an unquestionable paradigm in academic research, the validity of which was taken for granted. (Grà ¶nroos 1994). There are voices though from academics and researchers which shout that the Marketing Mix in the fo rm of the 4Ps is not able to face the latest marketing challenges. The components of the Mix Product Since its the consumers perception that should be the centre of product policy, the product should not be defined as just the set of its own physical properties. The perceptions are influenced by different parameters, such as any associated services, the image, the brand name, even the social and cultural connections, or the perception of its own differentiation from competition. A product is a mixture of tangible and intangible attributes, including functional, social and psychological utilities or benefits (Anonymous 2006). Price Price is the only revenue generating element of the marketing mix; the other elements consume resources. There are three basic pricing strategies that all organisations can pursue for existing products: pricing above the market (higher than similar competitve products), pricing below the market (lower than competition) and pricing at the market (almost at the price of competition) (Anonymous 2006). Promotion One long-term purpose of promotion is to influence and encourage buyers to accept or adopt goods, services and ideas. Potential buyers go through a psychological or behavioural process before purchasing a product. AIDA, which is an acronym for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action incorporates psychological processes: attention is a cognitive process, interest and desire are affective processes and action is a manifest behaviour process (Anonymous 2006). Place Place, or distribution strategy concerns the routes by which marketers of products and services can ensure that these reach their intended market. We normally refer to these routes as marketing channels, which include those intermediaries that products and services pass through from the point of production to the point of final use (Anonymous 2006). Criticism TQM and Relationships Management: Adaptation, not Revolution Yudelson (1999) identified six major marketing developments that challenged the 4Ps since the introduction of the Marketing Mix. Focus on the customer via the Marketing Concept (1960s); Broadening of marketing to include not-for-profits, services, causes, and even politics (1970s); Identification of the exchange transaction as the core of marketing (1970s); Introduction of Total Quality Management with its emphasis on customer satisfaction (1980s); Extension from transaction marketing to relationship marketing (1990s); Identification of the firm as a member of a complete value chain (1990s). Since the 80s, the definition of Product as anything offered is challenged due to the new perspective that organisations face: The success depends on the ability to transform satisfaction to delight. Customer satisfaction is identified as the new driving force, and that is one of the foundational ideas of TQM. Place is expanded to include the entire distribution system, which creates time and place utility and may incorporate specific systems such as just-in-time delivery as part of channel management. During the 1990s, another significant shift occurred. The role of relationships in the marketing activities of the organisation replaced the transaction perspective of earlier times. Price is no longer the amount of money paid to acquire a single Product but the lifetime costs associated with the acquisition, use, and ultimately disposal of the benefits attained during a period of time. Place is no longer just the point of exchange since that fails to communicate the interactions that occur as the product changes ownership and utility from conceptualisation to final disposal. Yudelson suggests that after nearly 40 years, the 4Ps need to let go because, as shown, the terminology has not managed to handle the challenges of developments in marketing thought and practice. However, no commonly agreed or satisfactory replacement has appeared and anyone who grew up on the concept of marketing mix (customers, marketing professionals and academics) would face significant dissonance if the key paradigm were dismissed. So, he suggests that the best strategy is Adaptation and not Revolution. His proposed adaptation focuses on the essential aspects of marketing as exchange driven behaviour, maintains the simplicity and familiarity of the 4Ps, recognises the concerns of past critics, and is capable of applying to both single instance transactions and long-term strategic relationships. Product should be redefined as all the benefits (present or anticipated) that the buyer or acquirer obtains from the exchange. It is recommended that Product be renamed as Performance to communicate the sense of benefit to the customer. Price should be redefined as everything that the acquirer gives up to obtain the benefits. It is suggested that we refer to the second P as Penalty to signify those things that the customer would have to give up or seek to minimize while obtaining the benefit or Performance associated with the exchange. Promotion should be redefined to include all of the information that is communicated between the parties to the transaction in keeping with the current thought on Integrated Marketing Communications. The purpose of the communication or information is to influence or encourage each party to enter into the transaction/ relationship. This is accomplished by providing information regarding the costs and benefits of the transaction-or better-the Perception of the Performance and Penalty. Place can be now defined as all that is done and required to facilitate or bring about the exchange and therefore, Yudelson proposes its redefinition as Process. Relationships Marketing A paradigm shift Grà ¶nroos (1994) believes that a paradigm shift is taking place in marketing. One of the main reasons lies beneath the nature of marketing mix. The marketing mix is a list of categories of marketing variables. A list never includes all relevant elements, it does not fit every situation, and it becomes obsolete. Moreover, the 4Ps represent an oversimplification of Bordens original concept, which was a list of 12 elements not intended to be a definition at all. This list would most probably have to be reconsidered in any given situation. Grà ¶nroos believes that McCarthy either misunderstood the meaning of Bordens marketing mix or his followers misunderstood McCarthys intentions. Probably Bordens original idea of a list of a large number of marketing mix ingredients that have to be reconsidered in every given situation was shortened for pedagogical reasons and a more limited number of marketing variables seemed to fit typical situations observed in the late 1950s and in the 1960s. T he 4Ps were never applicable to all markets and to all types of marketing situations. The development of alternative marketing theories (interaction/network approach to industrial marketing and the marketing of services, customer relationship economics) demonstrates that even from a management perspective, the marketing mix and its 4Ps became a problem. Gronroos concludes that in industrial marketing, services marketing, managing distribution channels and even consumer packaged goods marketing itself, a shift is clearly taking place from marketing to anonymous masses of customer to developing and managing relationships with more or less well-known or at least somehow identified customers. Other Reviews and Criticism Constantinides (2006) undertook a literature review on the status of Marketing Mix at the 21st century. He discovered that many researchers express serious doubts as to the role of the Mix as marketing management tool in its original form, proposing alternative approaches: adding new parameters to the original Mix (e.g. 7Ps for services) or replacing it with alternative frameworks altogether. Some of the weaknesses of the 4Ps identified in the study are domain specific: ignoring the human factor, lack of strategic dimensions, offensive posture and lack of interactivity. Two limitations however seem to be common in all reviewed categories: The models internal orientation: The lack of explicit market input in the framework which sources from the fact that the Mix was originally developed as a concept suitable for marketing of consumer products in the mass-oriented US manufacturing sector of the 60s The lack of personalisation: Significant shifts of consumer behaviour such as individualisation, diminishing brand preference, value orientation, increasing sophistication etc. have undermined the effectiveness of the impersonal one-way communication and the mass marketing approaches. Hyman (2004) undertook a similar study on the criticism of the Mix. According to that, some marketers contend that the scope of the 4Ps is insufficient from a pedagogical or applied perspective. To address this limitation, they updated the schema by refining the current Ps, adding new Ps, broadening its perspective, or adapting it to specific industries. Moreover, he summarised previously published criticism of the 4Ps: Inadequate theoretical grounding Not formally integrated into the exchange paradigm Fails three of the five requirements for a sound classification schema Overly focused on consumer goods, yet is production rather than marketing-concept oriented Cannot account for the full range of marketing management activities Ignores strategic marketing Focuses only on the acquisition stage of consumption Contains an increasingly catch-all (i.e. atheoretically focused) promotion category Fails to account for interactions between Ps or boundary-spanning topics Is incompatible with the relationship-marketing paradigm van Waterschoot and Van den Bulte (1992) in their own research identified five key limitations of the 4Ps model: It focuses on what marketers do to customers rather than for them. It is externally directed and ignores the internal market. It says nothing about interactions between the mix variables. It takes a mechanistic view about markets. It assumes a transactional exchange rather than a relationship. The Xbox 360 Marketing Mix The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft, and was developed in cooperation with IBM, ATI, and SiS. The Xbox 360 is the successor to the Xbox, and competes with Sonys PlayStation 3 and Nintendos Wii as part of the seventh generation of gaming systems (usually called next-gen) (Wikipedia 2007). Product Name and Concept The term 360 represents a circle and is inline with the concept of the product. The customer is placed at The centre of the experience. Its a videogame and an entertainment system that integrates music, picture, games and movies. Everything revolves around the customer.(Porcaro 2005) Classification Xbox 360 belongs to the shopping consumer products category, which includes products purchased after the consumer shops around to find the best deal based on comparisons of price, quality, style, durability and other product attributes that are felt to be important. Although due to shortage at its launch many consumers were making effort to find one and others were forced to buy from eBay at inflated prices, 3 months after the launch the console could be purchased with smaller effort. Therefore, a classification of Speciality is not justified. Product Mix The total set of products a company sells is called its product mix, which consists of its component product lines. The product mix of Microsoft regarding console gaming consists of the following product lines: Xbox 360 consoles, the Xbox Live Services (Marketplace, Video and Arcade), console accessories and Microsoft Games. Xbox 360 Product Line During launch only two configurations were available; the Core and the Premium versions. Over time, the product line length rose to 3, in an Up-Market Stretch move from Microsoft, by introducing a high end version (Elite). Product Positioning Microsoft targets both casual and hard-core gamers. The Core and Arcade versions seem attractive to the former, while Premium and Elite are more appropriate to the latter. Product Levels The five levels of customer value hierarchy are as follows (Kotler and Keller 2006): Core benefit: The benefit that the customer is really buying. The buyer of the Xox 360 is buying video gaming. Basic Product: The Xbox 360 includes a video games console and a controller. Expected product: A set of attributes and conditions the buyers normally expect. Gamers expect from the seventh generation of gaming systems good graphics and sound performance, a wireless controller, digital connection with the HD TV and the amplifier, online gaming with friends through the internet and the ability to listen to music and watch videos. Augmented product: The level in which the product exceeds customer expectations. The Xbox 360 through its Xbox LIVE service lets the customers download purchased or promotional material. This includes game demos, movie and game trailers, Arcade games as well as add-on game content (items, costumes, levels, maps etc). Potential product: All the possible augmentations and transformations the product might undergo in the future. Even before the launch of Xbox 360, Microsoft was researching ways to create a video store accessible through the console, as well as a TV service which would add IPTV functionality. One year after the launch of the console, the Xbox Video Marketplace was introduced in the United States, and the Microsoft TV service under development. Pricing The following table summarises competition pricing during their respective launch. Note that Playstation and Wii launched at November 2006, almost a year later than Xbox. The Xbox 360 was the first next-gen console to enter the market. Generally, if the product is an innovation, then the initial price is usually set quite high (Anonymous 2006), but this is not the policy that Microsoft followed. Microsoft used the strategy of Price penetration, in an effort to take as much market share as possible. In fact, it was reported that Microsoft was losing $126 per unit sold (Joystiq 2005). Robbie Bach, president of Entertainment and Devices Division, said that the Xbox 360 business will become profitable in 2008 and that the profit to make is not on the hardware itself, but rather on Live service subscriptions, accessories and games (Gamedaily 2007). In August 2007, Microsoft dropped the prices by à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬ 20 à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬ 50. In October 2007, they introduced the Arcade version and priced it exactly the same as the Wii, that is At the market. Odd-even pricing assumes product sales benefit from prices such as  £99.99 rather than  £100.00, because customers will think the product is a good deal (Anonymous 2006). As we saw, Microsoft followed this policy, as all next-gen competitors did. Promotion Microsoft utilized the following Marketing Communications Mix for the launch of the console system. Advertising The advertising campaign took place via television, magazines and internet sites. The tag line was Jump In, which was in complete accordance with the name and the concept of the product (the center of the experience). The ads were introducing the idea that its more fun to play when youre part of a community, that games have always been more fun when you play with friends (Porcaro 2005). Sales Promotion The sales promotion took place through online contests and websites. OurColony.net offered challenges to its community, rewarding solutions with cropped pictures of the console and game screenshots. OrigenXbox360.com was offering visitors an opportunity to enter in various contests for a chance to attend promotional pre-launch events. Hex168.com hosted a number of images that appeared to perpetuate obscure conspiracy theories, but sometimes contained oblique references to Xbox 360. The campaign was later revealed to be a U.S. contest that offered participants a chance to win one of three hundred and sixty Xbox 360 console bundles six days before the official launch (Wikipedia 2007). Marketing Public Relations In order to assist the launch and to increase awareness, Microsoft made use of Marketing Public Relations. The official unveiling of the Xbox 360 occurred on May 2005 on MTV in a program called MTV Presents: The Next Generation Xbox Revealed (Wikipedia 2007). Elijah Wood hosted the show which featured a musical performance by the band The Killers. Ten days later the Xbox 360 was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine along with an associated article. Obviously, the viewers of MTV belong to the target market, while the cover of TIME magazine was a huge boost to the hype. Events Microsoft is one of the major exhibitors in the annual E3 Media and Business Summit which is considered as the biggest annual event in the video game industry. The announcements regarding future development are taking place at the Microsoft keynote event, which is highly anticipated by the worldwide video game media and community. Microsoft is also a frequent sponsor to gaming events. In association with adidas and EA Sports, they sponsored the Xbox World Cup, which received a lot of publicity by the gaming community. Gamers who qualified through national preliminary rounds were given an all-expenses paid trip to Berlin to take part in the competition representing their nations in matches that took place in an 8,500 seat stadium. Microsoft managed to identify with the target market as well as increase awareness and express commitment to the community. Place (Distribution) As mentioned earlier, the product suffered from shortages during its launch, due to huge demand and slow production. However, three months later the problems had been bypassed and it is worth noted that in its first year on the market, the system launched in 36 countries, more countries than any console has launched in a single year. Microsoft chose to distribute the products through the Producer >> Wholesaler >> Retailer >> Consumer channel. For the countries where Microsoft has physical presence, the Wholesaler intermediary part was played by the regional division. The Xbox 360 is distributed intensively, which means that all available outlets are used for distributing it. Conclusion The marketing mix of Product, Price, Promotion, and Place was introduced to marketing education during the 1960s. Practitioners and academics embraced the paradigm that soon became the established element of marketing theory and operational marketing management. Eventually the 4Ps of the marketing mix became an unquestionable paradigm in academic research, the validity of which was taken for granted. However, many researchers and academics object. Yudelson believes that the Mix requires adaptation to the challenges of the era (TQM and the role of relationships) and proposes redefinition of the components. Grà ¶nroos argues the 4Ps was never intended to become a paradigm and started as a simple list which was an oversimplification of a larger list. He states that the 4Ps were never applicable to all markets and to all types of marketing situations, and that we have started to experience a paradigm shift towards relationships marketing. Other studies also conclude that the marketing m ix of the 4Ps is getting old and cannot address complex environment issues, such as management of personalisation. The application of the marketing mix model to the Xbox 360 gaming console system revealed that model managed to incorporate some of the major marketing planning activities of Microsoft under its 4Ps components. However, Yudelsons model seems to apply better. Xbox 360 is not just about the actual console product, but through its integration with other products and services its about the Performance of the entertainment experience. Its Promotion is inline with the current thought on Integrated Marketing Communications. And finally, its Place (distribution) is more about the Process of distribution, from which Microsoft actually suffered during the launch. Also, the marketing mix model failed to incorporate the personalisation component of the product. That is, through the LIVE services each user is uniquely identified. Microsoft has access to personal information, such as favourite games, music and movies and is able to propose similar content to the customers upon request. Unfortunate ly, the 4Ps did not manage to capture this aspect of Xbox 360 marketing. We conclude that the marketing mix is a tool which has performed well in the past and may still do in many cases. However, the increasingly complex environment demands adaptation and expansion. Personalisation for example is a very important component and should be incorporated under the umbrella of the new XPs, whatever number the academia decides that X should be. References Anonymous (2006). Strategic Marketing Module Book Edition 10, Management Centre, University of Leicester. Borden, N.H. (1964), The concept of the Marketing Mix, Journal of Advertising Research, June, pp 2-7 Constantinides, E. (2006), The Marketing Mix Revisited: Towards the 21st Century Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management 2006, 22, pp 407-438 Gamedaily, http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/bach-xbox-business-profitable-next-year/70371/?biz=1, [15 December 2007] Goldsmith, R. E. (1999), The personalised marketplace: beyond the 4Ps, Marketing Intelligence Planning 17/4, pp 178-185 Grà ¶nroos, C. (1994), From Marketing Mix to Relationship Marketing: Towards a Paradigm Shift in Marketing, Management Decision, Vol. 32 No. 2, 1994, pp. 4-20 Hyman, M. R. (2004), Revising the structural framework for marketing management, Journal of Business Research 57, pp 923- 932 Joystiq, http://www.joystiq.com/2005/11/23/microsoft-losing-126-on-every-sold-xbox-360/, [15 December 2007] Kotler, P. and Keller, K. L. (2006), Marketing Management 12e, Pearson Prentice Hall McCarthy, E.J. (1964), Basic Marketing, a Managerial Approach, Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, Inc.. Porcaro, J. (2005), Xbox 360 Marketing, http://www.johnporcaro.com/2006/03/xbox_360_market.html, [15 December 2007] van Waterschoot, W. and den Bulte, C. (1992). The 4P classification of the marketing mix revisited, Journal of Marketing 56 (October), pp 83-93. Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360, [15 December 2007] Yudelson, J. (1999), Adapting Mccarthys Four Ps for the Twenty-First Century, Journal of Marketing Education 21, pp 60-67

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic Essay example -- Health Medicine Diseases

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic The United States entered the War in 1918 and brought influenza to America that medical historian Roy Porter has called â€Å"the greatest single demographic shock mankind has ever experienced, the most deadly pestilence since the Black Death.†[1] In the late nineteen thirties, members of the Federal Writer’s Project (FWP) with the Works Progress Administration (WPA), interviewed people who remembered surviving the pandemic. [2] They described a world caught off guard. Newly established â€Å"base camps† became makeshift hospitals and morgues. Doctors, embalmers, laundresses and florists did a brisk trade. Public venues closed, and as entire families became ill, mothers, husbands and soldiers remember coping with quarantines and loss of family. Sufferers put great stock in their ability to treat themselves as doctors and other health officials struggled with ineffective prevention and treatment strategies. For them, the flu of 1918 marked a major life change but it also became a testament to their ability to survive. The flu came fast and it hit hard. Dr. Curtis Atkinson, then a First Lieutenant in the Medical Corps at Fort Riley, Kansas remembered the first military quarantines. â€Å"When the 'flu' epidemic struck Call Field, Sunday, December, 1918, the boys began to come down very rapidly. A foot ball game was in progress. The commanding officer immediately ordered the game stopped and sentinels posted at the gate of the field with orders that no one was to be admitted.†[3] Another soldier, Dr. William W. Wood remembered soldiers and civilians â€Å"dying like sheep.†[4] Melinda Parker remembers how fast she lost her husband. â€Å"My husband†¦ was workin' at the shipyards in Algiers an' he got the flu an' in four day... ...arolina Writer’s Project. [14] â€Å"J. D. Washburn,† Interview by Douglas Carter. [15] â€Å"History of Career (import) of J. H. Kimbrough,† Interview by Marie Reese. [16] â€Å"Mountain Sharecroppers,† Interview by Anne Winn Stevens. [17] Porter, Roy. 484 [18] â€Å"Dr. William W. Wood,† Interview by Miss Effie Cowan. [19] â€Å"Reminiscences centered around Call Field,† Interview by Ethel Dulaney. [20] â€Å"Dr. Wood†, Cowan [21] â€Å" Coal Fields to the Cotton Mill,† Interview by South Carolina Writer’s Project. [22] â€Å"J. D. Washburn,† Interview by Douglas Carter. [23] â€Å"The Influenza Epidemic,† Interview by Jane K. Leary. [24] â€Å"Note French Canadian Personalities,† Interview by Robert Grady. [25] â€Å"The Influenza Epidemic,† Interview by Jane K. Leary. [26] â€Å"Glenn Kanipe.† Interview with Ethel Deal. [27] â€Å"Melinda Parker,† Interview by Louisiana Folklore

Julius Caesar Essay: Loyalty and Chaos -- Julius Caesar Essays

Julius Caesar: Loyalty and Chaos In the play, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare suggests that a society without loyalty will inevitably find itself in chaos. Loyalty and similar traits of love and faithfulness arguably form the framework of societies present and past. Negative forces such as ego, greed and the quest for power continually attack this framework. Julius Caesar illustrates the rapid decay of a Roman society's law and harmony, until it finds itself in the chaos of civil war before concluding in an uneasy order. The absence of loyalty in a society does not necessarily constitute chaos; it is rather variants like extremism and shifting loyalties that are the problem. It is true that the assassination of Caesar was a clear example of disloyalty and betrayal. The relatively cool relationships that Caesar had beforehand with the other conspirators, made Brutus' betrayal clearly the most disloyal: "For Brutus as you know was Caesar's angel: Judge, O you Gods! how dearly Caesar lov'd him. This was the most unkindest cut of all". The sight of his beloved Brutus among the conspirators overcomes Caesar even more than his wounds- "Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, quite vanquish'd him: then burst his mighty heart". This is supported by the most climatic line in the play- "Et tu, Brute! Then fall, Caesar!" Mark Antony also demonstrates disloyalty as he takes intentionally takes advantage of Brutus' grace and goodwill, to turn the mob against him. From the moment Caesar is stabbed, the... ...d, faithful and just to me", and his promise to revenge Caesar's death. His theatrical well-timed words in his funeral oration incite the crowd to rampage through Rome, as he plays on the constantly changing loyalties of the citizens. In the play, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare suggests that a society without loyalty will find itself in chaos. Loyalty, love and faithfulness form the framework of societies while negative forces such as ego, greed and the quest for power continually attack this framework. Julius Caesar illustrates the rapid decay of a Roman society's law and harmony, until it finds itself in the chaos of civil war. The absence of loyalty in a society does not necessarily constitute chaos; it is rather variants like extremism and shifting loyalties that are the problem.

Irish English literature interaction

The notion of Irish literature is often the subject of much critical contention. For some people Irish literature is reserved for works in the Irish language. The fact that the Irish language was almost eradicated during the nineteenth century is still, however few people actually now speak or write it in contemporary Ireland, an inescapable fact of Irish history and Irish literary history. Its eradication was, in part, a matter of political compulsion and also, in part, a matter of the tragic history of the vast scale of emigration which followed on the Irish Famine of 1845-8.This is why, among Irish writers who write in the English language, language itself becomes the focus of their reflection. Literature in English in Ireland has been a literature in which ideas of Ireland — of people, community and nation — have been both created and reflected. To understand how it is true it is necessary to contemplate the conceptions of a distinctively Irish identity which have b een articulated, defended, and challenged. Another point to consider is how the perception of alienation, felt almost by all Irish writers, influences their choice of themes for literary works.For the material of my study I have chosen the works of two great Irish writers, prose writer Joyce and poet Heaney and American writer who nevertheless is regarded as English writer, Thomas Stern Eliot. The reason I choose to include Eliot in this essay is that he is much like Joyce and the comparison between those two geniuses with help to trace the ways of intersection and similarity of two cultural traditions. Another reason for choosing to study Eliot, together with Joyce and Heaney is that all three writers were exiles, the fact that influenced their literary style and themes.They knew and influenced each other.. Eliot founded new literary movement, and Joyce's technical innovations still occupy his followers like Heaney. The work of all three great moderns exhibits the characteristic fe atures of modern art in being difficult to the point of obscurity, complex, allusive, experimental in form, and encyclopedic in scope. The work of all three writers, especially Heaney’s, is imbued with the modern attitude to the past–that the past was radically different from the present but eternally haunts it and so is inescapably past-present.Of the three writers, Joyce was clearly driven into exile in order to write. Joyce wrote with scrupulous naturalism with its fidelity to detail and habit of naming names, and satiric vein. Outwardly rootless Joyce was not inwardly so. His life and art were transfixed, rooted in the Dublin he had known as a young man, which was the subject of all his work. Joyce constantly carried feeling of alienation in relation to his homeland. Joyce rejected his home, family, society, nation, and religion. Alienation is explicitly detailed in Dubliners, the collection of short stories focused on the exploration of Irish theme.One of those st ories Araby focuses on a vagrant boy energized by a desire for escape from the confinement of Irish culture. The desire for such escape appears already in the first story of collection, continues in the second and finally materializes in the third. The epiphanies at the end of first three stories metaphorize the promise of freedom. To gain clear understanding of this metaphor of the travel in quest of liberation we have to illustrate what was the place of Irish culture in the broader aspect of British literature and how it is reflected in Joyce’s literary work.This story is a metaphor for Joyce’s life too, for his search for place where he would have been able to work. Joyce's issue is to present the lives lived by his people and their characteristic and characteristically Irish ways of trying to make sense of them. The image of Dubliners illustrates more than the human condition; it illustrates the Dublin condition, which may be defined as an excessive degree of susce ptibility to decay and loss. It is a condition not of excess but of deprivation. The first three stories The Sisters, Encounter and Araby are connected by the common hero, a boy, who is looking for something that is not there.Araby opens with an inspection of the empty back rooms of an abandoned house on a blind street: An uninhabited house of two stories stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground (Joyce, 29), concludes with the lights going out in an emptied hall: The upper part of the hall was now completely dark. Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity (Joyce, 36), and in between tracks the narrator as his money and the dreams built on it come, by degrees, to nothing.The story gives much attention to detail. In the scene at the marketplace, the narrator offers vivid metonymic of the boy's world. The boy aspires to commence his journey to Araby, a journey which is metaphorized as chivalric quest. His destinati on is eastward, the East is even more important metaphorically to the boy: â€Å"The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me† (Joyce, 32).Because he had thought the East would be the proper place in which his desire might be realized, he is disillusioned, as readers, of Araby by his encounter with the actuality of the â€Å"empty† bazaar with its â€Å"magical name. † On arrival to the Araby the boy discovers absolutely discouraging scene which makes him describe himself, in this confrontation with the real world, in one of Joyce's most famous sentences: â€Å"Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger† (Joyce, 35).What the boy had expected as the completion of his traveling toward Araby, namely the validation of his mastery, ends by confirming, at least in his own eyes, his power lessness. The wanted to find what the priest, the dead father, has lost: faith in the ability to liberate himself and thereby to make at least the journey, into the unknown. Furthermore, he must find a means of bringing that â€Å"poetry† found in the books into touch with the â€Å"prose,† or reality of ordinary Dublin life. Eliot, like Joyce, was an exile.He left United States and found in England an organic society which satisfied his hunger for tradition and order; society, politics, and religion were more closely related and institutionalized in England than in the United States. Unlike Joyce Eliot’s poetry is universal but there is little specifically local attributions, Eliot's work is not as local as Joyce's is. When we look at his poems for physical evidence of his adopted country, we find little. Such images as there are of city, village, church, or stately home are universalized, made symbolic.Eliot in his poetry tends to touch upon unconventional phi losophical issues like what will happen if we lose the capacity to see the community between persons and lose the capacity to believe in any real community between persons. Such a hypothetical situation is exemplified in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock where the â€Å"eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase† (Eliot, line 56) have made the community between persons unable to be seen. The climax is in the middle of the poem, where we see most clearly what the theme of this poem is; it is the peculiar affliction of our age — metaphysical blindness.The middle is the most intricate one in the poem, but if we concentrate on what is essential, following Prufrock as he struggles up the stairs, as he wrestles with the dead lumber in his head, and as he draws near to the person he has come to visit, there is a moment of suspended thought, a moment when Prufrock is his experience, a moment typical of in Eliot’s works, where the door out of the corridor suddenly opens, and we are invaded by a sense of reality. The opening here is not much more than a crack: the flash of light to light as the lamplight is reflected from the brown hair on the woman's arms.But it is sufficient not only to throw Prufrock off his bent: â€Å"Is it perfume from a dress/ That makes me so digress? † (Eliot, line 65) but almost to bring him to act. His â€Å"Shall I say . . . ?† shows him on the verge of entering a real present. But then he falls back, and rejoins the arthropods, because he has nothing to act with, just as he had nothing to confront the streets with: here, for example, he did not see the light answering light. This scene illustrates what is meant by the theme of metaphysical blindness. The poetic collection Prufrock & Other Observations had made Eliot famous in the English-speaking literary world.The interplay between Irish and English literature is continued by Joyce’s follower Seamus Heaney. This divided tradition states the essenti al condition of the modern Irish mind. The Irish literary tradition proffered a sense of identity which became the preoccupation of Irish writers of the early twentieth-century like Joyce; that identity still confounds contemporary poets like Seamus Heaney. Modern poetry in general is haunted by the divided mind, a reflection of man cut off from his past, confused about meaning, and attempting to reconcile himself to his solitude.In the Irish literary tradition that reconciliation is defined in cultural and national terms. The struggle for reconciliation becomes embroiled in the question of identity. Heaney wrote in the early seventies, his poems have as their focus the relation of England to Ireland which tends to be that of domineering male to helpless female. His was a witness of cruelty in Belfast when Catholic student arranged civil rights marches. Heaney moved from Belfast at the peak of this conflict, but his poem Punishment presents his experiences: â€Å"I can see her drow ned / body in the bog, / the weighting stone, / the floating rods and boughs†.(Heaney, 1975) In this poem Heaney explores a theme of revenge for betrayal but admits his own feebleness when facing violence inculcated for ages: â€Å"I almost love you / but would have cast, I know, / the stones of silence. I am the artful voyeur / your brain's exposed and darkened combs†¦ † (Heaney, 1975) This poem as other in collection North, are Heaney's ‘bog poems', in which he disturbs very dark emotions and appeals to the political and social situation in his native Northern Ireland.Heaney's through the interpretation of the past gives his comments on the present in concealed yet strong manner. In conclusion, Heaney, Eliot, and Joyce all exemplify the case of the artist who due to various reason is forced to abandon his homeland. Eliot freed himself from America in order to transplant himself elsewhere. Joyce was trying to find a perfect place for his creative activity. D espite his love-hate relationship with Ireland Joyce remained faithful to Ireland in spirit. Heaney deserted North Ireland because of unstable political situation but often resorted to it in his works.Thus we see, beyond certain similarities in their work, striking contrasts in the lives of these three writers. Joyce preceded and prepared the way for Heaney, as an Irishman writing happily in English. These should enable us better to understand them and the general problem of the alienation of the modern artist. Works Cited List: Eliot T. S. â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock† in Prufrock and Other Observations. New York: Bartleby. Com, 2000 Heaney, Seamus. â€Å"Punishment† in North. London: Faber and Faber, 1975 Joyce, James. Dubliners. London: Penguin Group, 1996