Importance in the novel Essay Example for Free

Importance in the novel Essay Explore the portrayal of Serena Joy and the Commander in the early part of the novel. Also estimate their characters importance in the novel. Serena Joy is portrayed as a frustrated, hostile and rude woman who is full of hate; which in some respects you could say she is, but her character runs much more deeply than is first apparent to the reader. This is portrayed through her characters words, actions and pursuits in many different ways. An example of this is her frustration at the little amount of freedom she is allowed. Although when compared to a character like, Offred she has a lot of freedom, she feels she doesnt, It is a little thing, but in this household little things mean a lot. , Many of the wives have such gardens, its something for them to order and maintain and care for. By having a garden like this, and being allowed to take charge of it, and look after it, she feels this gives her some importance in the community. It is a distraction, a place of escape for her from the life that she leads, which is boring and she is not happy with. This is the only freedom she is allowed in the life she leads now, which although it doesnt mean a lot to her, it should be treasured because in Gilead to have freedom like that is unthinkable to most; this portrays Serena Joy to be a women who takes things and her status in the elite, for granted. The tulips are red, a darker crimson towards the stem; as if they had been cut and are beginning to heal there. The garden to Serena Joy is also something she can take her frustration out on, as she is not supposed to harm Offred. An aspect portrayed to us immensely about her character is her great longing for children; this is shown in many of the domestic pursuits she carries out, i. e. gardening and knitting, They arent scarves for grown men but for children. Although these are scarves supposed to be made for the Angels who are grown men, she makes the scarves in children sizes. This shows the reader how she is always thinking about children, and how she longs to have children of her own. Her garden also portrays these feelings she has about children of her own, Many of the wives have such gardens, it is something for them to order and maintain and care for. She treats her garden, like you would expect her to treat a child, by caring for it lovingly with great affection. She is rude and hostile towards Offred, because she hates the fact that she is there because she cant have children of her own, also it must be a humiliating experience for her, the thought of her husband making love to another woman, So, youre the new one, she said. She didnt step aside to let me in, she just stood there in the door way, blocking the entrance. She wanted me to feel that I could not come into the house unless she said so. This is where the reader, feels a little compassion for Serena Joy, as she is portrayed as an awful women, who really has bought this predicament on herself; but it must be humiliating for her. Her husband is sleeping with another women, and as far as she is concerned it is because she cannot have children. She also knows that this life that she has helped to promote, is awful and she hates the way in which she has to live now. Her name is also trying to portray an image of serenity and joy, which once she as a young woman had portrayed, but now with a new way of living, her nature has come to contradict her name, The woman sitting in front of me was Serena Joy. Or had once been. So it was worse than I thought. The Commander is portrayed as a man who will use his power and authority to get what he wants. He rebels against his own way of life that he has fought to promote, which portrays to us that he too is unhappy with the way he has to live his life, he isnt supposed to be here, He is violating custom. I feel that as we read further into the novel, the way he uses his power to get what he wants will be even more strongly portrayed as part of his character to the reader. We dont get vivid descriptions of the Commander at first. He is a character which you know is there but we dont get to meet or see at the beginning of the novel. This portrays him as a slightly mysterious, and you never quite know when to expect him to turn up, The commander stops, gets into the car, disappears, and Nick shuts the door. His clothes also gives an awe of uncertainty and mystery as he has to dress all in black, which is the colour closely associated to death. Hes a character of great importance in the society of Gilead, and we see this at the Ceremony. We see at the ceremony that he is a highly influential character too, We watch him: every inch, every flicker. Everyone watches him and wants to be him, which shows he is influential, this though is just because of the power, importance and freedom he has, which all the other characters can only dream about. The first description we get of the Commander portrays him as a very ordinary looking man, When you get down as far as the chin he looks like a vodka ad, in a glossy magazine, of times gone by. He looks like a friendly approachable man, which slightly contradicts the mysterious feel he has portrayed at the very beginning of the novel. As they are both characters of great power within the society, I feel they are very important in the novel as a whole, and as the book goes on their importance will increase. They are both very strong characters, and both feel that they are hard done by compared to how they used to live but they arent when compared to characters like Offred. This is also true of many people in the world today. They are two characters in the novel who care only for themselves and nobody else, even though they are very lucky with what they have.

Pain and Acupuncture in Eastern and Western Medicine Essay -- Acupunct

Pain and Acupuncture in Eastern and Western Medicine Acupuncture is an ancient medicinal art that has been practiced for thousands of years. Acupuncture today is mainly seen by Western medicine as a "new alternative" medicine (2). This basically means that while Western medicine acknowledges the value and positive medical research supporting acupuncture in many realms of medicine, for the most part it is not a practice that has been incorporated into 'modern' medical practices. One of the most consistently supported uses of acupuncture therapy is in pain treatment (14). Western medicine has often come up short when it comes to treatment of chronic pain. The dichotomy that is often suggested is that Western medicine is better at emergency situations and stabilizing patients in crisis, while Eastern medicine has more success with more long-term chronic issues such as pain (2). This difference mainly stems from the philosophy of both methods of practicing medicine. Eastern medicine, for the most part, is more interested in treating the wh ole person and finding the organic root of the problem instead of just treating the symptoms. While chronic pain is reaching epidemic proportions in Western society, few people are employing the benefits this type of medicine can bring. How does pain effect the nervous system? How does acupuncture help to alleviate this symptom? Is it possible to explain the effects of acupuncture through the language of Western medicine? Acupuncture Theory Acupuncture, very basically, is the insertion of very fine needles, sometimes in conjunction with electrical stimulus, on the body's surface, in order to influence physiological functioning of the body (1). At the basis of acupuncture, is the theory th... ...nism of Acupuncture http://www.acupuncture.com/Acup/Mech.htm 7)Neuronal Possibilities , Neuronal Diagram http://dubinserver.colorado.edu/prj/kcr/p07.html 8)Beyond Endorphins , Endorphins in Pain Mediation http://www.chiro.org/places/ABSTRACTS/Beyond_endorphins.shtml 9)Mechanism of Acupuncture: Beyond Neurohumoral Theory http://users.med.auth.gr/~karanik/english/articles/mechan.html 10)Dr. L. Soh , Beyond Endorphins in Acupuncture Analgesia http://www.ozacupuncture.com/drlsohs.htm 11)Pain Perception http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/ap/saladin/nervous/reading10.mhtml 12)Chronic Pain Solutions The Scientific Basis Of Acupuncture http://www.chronicpainsolutions.com/acupuncture.htm 13)Molecular Insights into the Problem of Pain http://www.painstudy.ru/pe3/molecular.htm 14)What We Know About Pain http://www.nidr.nih.gov/slavkin/pain.htm

Fill in the Blank Summer Final Exam

Sociology 101 Fill in the Blank Summer Final Exam Directions: This 50 question exam covers Chapters 1 through 15 and is due no later than noon Friday, 7/29. Each question is worth 3 points for a total of 150 points for this exam. There could be as many as 3 words necessary for the answer. The answer will be counted incorrect if all words are not exact and spelled correctly. This is an open book exam, but please do not share answers with your classmates. Remember that the integrity of the learning environment requires our honesty. Provide the number and the answer only and post in the message box located below these questions. Be sure to click on Submit when finished. 1. The ability to see how our personal troubles are connected to public issues and social structures is called the sociological imagination. 2. Structural functionalism addresses the question of social organization or structures of society and how it is maintained or functions. 3. Value-free sociology concerns itself with establishing what is, not what ought to be. 4. Empirical research is research based on systematic, unbiased examination of evidence. 5. Manifest functions or dysfunctions are consequences of social structures that are intended or recognized. . Conflict theory addresses the points of stress and conflict in society and the ways in which they contribute to social change. 7. Symbolic interaction theory addresses the subjective meanings of human acts and the processes through which people come to develop and communicate shared meanings. 8. The experiment is a method of research strategy in which the researcher manipulates indepen dent variables to test theories of cause and effect. 9. Social-desirability bias is the tendency of people to color the truth so that they sound more desirable and socially acceptable than they really are. 0. Replication is the repetition of empirical studies by another researcher or with different samples to see if the same results occur. 11. Content analysis refers to the systematic examination of documents of any sort. 12. The way of life shared by members of a community that includes language, values, symbolic meanings, technology and material objects is called culture. 13. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to judge other cultures according to the norms and values of our own culture. 14. Cultural relativity requires that each cultural trait be evaluated in the context of its own culture. 5. Cultural diffusion is the process by which aspects of one culture or subculture are incorporated into another. 16. Norms associated with fairly strong ideas of right and wrong that carry a moral connotation are called mores. 17. Counterculture are groups whose values, beliefs, interests, and lifestyles conflict with those of the larger culture. 18. Assimilation is the process through which individuals learn and adopt the values and social practices of the dominant group, sometimes giving up their own values in the process. 19. When one part of culture (usually technology) changes more rapidly than another, sociologists call this cultural lag. 20. The process of learning the roles, statuses, and values necessary for participation in social institutions is called socialization. 21. The process of learning to view ourselves as we think others view us is called the looking-glass self. 22. Primary socialization is personality development and role learning that occurs during early childhood. 23. An institution is an enduring social structure that meets basic human needs. 24. Dramaturgy is a version of symbolic interaction that views social situations as scenes manipulated by the actors to convey the desired impression to the audience. 25. The norm of reciprocity is the expectation that people will return favors and strive to maintain a balance of obligation in social relationships. 26. McDonaldization is the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurants–efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control—are coming to dominate more sectors of American society. 27. Anomie is a situation in which the norms of society are unclear or no longer applicable to current conditions. 8. Differential association theory says that people learn to be deviant when more of their associates favor deviance than favor conformity. 29. Stratification is the institutionalized pattern of inequality in which social statuses are ranked on the basis of their access to scarce resources. 30. The world-systems theory is a conflict perspective of the ec onomic relationships between developed and developing countries, the core and peripheral societies. 31. Environmental racism refers to the disproportionately large number of health and environmental risks that minorities face daily in their neighborhoods and workplaces. 2. Double jeopardy means having low status on two different dimensions of stratification. 33. Sexism is a belief that men and women have biologically different capacities and that these form a legitimate basis for unequal treatment. 34. The manufacturers of illness are groups that promote and benefit from deadly behaviors and social conditions. 35. Marriage is an institutionalized social structure that provides an enduring framework for regulating sexual behavior and childbearing. 36. Propinquity is spatial nearness. 7. Exogamy means choosing a mate from outside one's own racial, ethnic, or religious group. 38. The hidden curriculum is the underlying cultural messages that schools teach to socialize young people into obedience and conformity. 39. Tracking occurs when evaluations made relatively early in a child's career determine the educational programs the child will be encouraged to follow. 40. Secularization is the process of transferring things, ideas, or events from the sacred realm to the nonsacred, or secular, realm. 41. The Protestant Ethic refers to the belief that work, rationalism, and plain living are moral virtues, whereas idleness and indulgence are sinful. 42. Authoritarian systems are political systems in which the leadership is not selected by the people and legally cannot be changed by them. 43. The power elite comprises the people who occupy the top positions in three bureaucracies—the military, industry, and the executive branch of government—and who are thought to act together to run the United States in their own interests. 44. Capitalism is the economic system based on competition, in which most wealth (land, capital, and labor) is private property, to be used by its owners to maximize their own gain and profit. 45. Socialism is an economic structure in which productive tools (land, labor, and capital) are owned and managed by the workers and used for the collective good. 46. Alienation occurs when workers have no control over the work process or the product of their labor. 47. Collective behavior is spontaneous action by groups in situations where cultural rules for behavior are unclear. 48. A social movement is an ongoing, goal-directed effort to fundamentally challenge social institutions, attitudes, or ways of life. 49. Relative-deprivation theory argues that social movements arise when people experience an intolerable gap between their expectations and the rewards they actually receive. 50. Frame alignment is the process used by a social movement to convince individuals that their personal interests, values, and beliefs are complementary to those of the movement. Instructions: Enter or paste your written work and/or click â€Å"Attachments† to upload your files.

Can Establishment Be Consistent With Religious Freedom

Can Establishment be Consistent with Religious Freedom? In this paper, it will be submitted that some forms of establishment such as that in England and Scotland is consistent with religious freedom. While other forms of establishment such as that in Iran, which is noted as being an Islamic theocracy with the adoption of Sharia law is not consistent with religious freedom. However, before we go any further, it is important to define the term establishment and religious freedom as they relate to this essay. Establishment Defined In Attorney-General (Vic) (Ex rel Black) v Commonwealth, Gibbs J of the Australian High Court identified four examples of which religion could be established by law in relation to s 116 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900. The first example, of which Gibbs J said was the widest meaning was simply to protect the religion by law, an example of this, is that Queen Elizabeth II is the ‘Defender of the Faith’. The second example is to confer on a religion the status of state religion, for example the Church of England. The third example is to support a church a church in the observance of its ordinances and doctrines, for example, in New Zealand we observe publicly three holy days a year, namely Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Christmas Day. The final example is simply to set up a new church, as happened in 1534 when King Henry VIII established the Church of England. In Parochial Church Council of the Parish of Aston Cantlow andShow MoreRelatedAlabama V. Jaffree ( 1985 )1737 Words   |  7 PagesWallace, Governor of Alabama v. Jaffree (1985): Central Question: Does the Alabama statute 16-1-20.1, allowing a period of silence for meditation or voluntary prayer violate the First Amendment Establishment Clause that is applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment? Facts of the Case: The case of Wallace v. 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