Theme Of Sterility In Poem The Wasteland English Literature Essay

Theme Of Sterility In Poem The Wasteland English Literature Essay The Waste Land was first published in October 1922 in a magazine called The Criterion. The magazine was edited by Elliot himself in England till he closed it in 1939 on the eve of Second World War (Bloom p.19). A few weeks later the poem was published in America in a magazine called The Dial. Eliot began work on the waste land un early 1919 but much of the work was done in late 1921 as he was staying on the coast of Margate in England and later on at a sanitarium in Luassanne, Switzerland where he was taking a rest after suffering a nervous breakdown as a result of his fathers death in 1919. On two occasions Eliot passed through Paris, on the way to Luasanne and on the way back to London. On the two occasions Elliot and his wife stayed with his friend Ezra Pound and his wife. Ezra Pound looked at Elliots work on both occasions and edited it, cutting away half of it. The Waste Land combines overwhelming erudition of debased speech (Bloom p.20). Quotations from other languages from great literatures of the world and from pop songs and music hall are woven into one fabric making it possibly the greatest work of literature of the twentieth century. This poem can be said to be Elliots greatest work of literature. All through the five cryptic segmented sections of The Waste Land, confront the problem sterility and at the end tries to offer a solution, though of little help. In the poem Eliot asks a question what branches grow out of this stony rubbish. Through this imagery, branches and stony rubbish Eliot suggests that the poem examines the lives of people (branches) and the culture (stony rubbish) in which people live. The lives of people are interconnected to their culture. Like the ground where trees draw their life, the culture is a life stream of people. Branches can never grow if the roots cannot clutch if the soil is stony rubbish. The same way people cannot live well if their culture is broken, rough and can longer support them. It is also impossible to bring about a civilization worthy of mankind or better make mankind wholesome and create a worthy culture, if the environment in which the mankind grows undermines life instead of nurturing life (Blossom p.26). The Fire Sermon The tittle of this passage is taken from a Buddha sermon given to Buddha followers. It urges them to give up earthly rages symbolized by fire and instead look for freedom from earthly things. A turn away from the earthly actually occurs in this passage. Series of debased sexual encounters are depicted and finally closes with a river-song and religious conjuration. The passage opens with a desolate riverside scene. The speaker is surrounded by rats and garbage as he fishes and muses on the king my brothers wreck. Through this description the poet is able to develop the theme of sterility. Unlike the desert that is characterized by bareness, the riverbank that should be full of rejuvenation of life just but a dull canal that only rats a seen moving around. This shows the pessimism because what is hoped to bring about regeneration of the people only rats are found there. As the speaker muses in the king my brothers wreck, with the king my fathers grave before him, he thinks about the death of kings that leads to loss of significance of life. The sound of rats rattle personifies the lethal plaque ruining the human spirit. London according to Elliot had become so unreal in the sense that the dwellers of the city have lost touch with basic reality of olden pulse of germ and birth. Eliot shows sterility in a heterosexual encounter in London. The speaker is invited by a one-eyed merchant of Madame Sosostrilss tarot pack, Mr. Eugenides, to a meeting place for homosexual assignations. In this situation the speaker proclaims himself as Tiresias. Tiresias is an ancient mythology who possesses both male and female reproductive organs, old man with wrinkled female breasts. He is also able to see into the future. The speaker in this encounter as used by Eliot is only an observer of the events of this encounter as they unfold. The speaker witnesses an encounter between a typist and a small house agents clerk. After a long day of work, the typist returns to her house and prepares dinner. Her underwear is seen drying on the windowsill, and the divan on which she sleeps is strewn with other lingerie such as a stocki ngs. A young man, a small house agents clerks, who is described as having a bold stare, arrives in the typists house. On eating dinner, the young man starts making advances towards the typist which she does not resist. She readily gives in and they are involved in a sexual intercourse which the speaker sees as an alienated sexual exchange. After they are done the young man walks out of the house finding his way through the dark. This signifies the state of moral and vital darkness that he lives in. The typist on the other hand, adjusts her hair and says to herself glad its over. This sexual encounter symbolizes the degradation of the central model of love and fertility. It was neither an act of procreation, nor a rite performed ceremonially for a fertile earth. There was not even an expression of love. The sexual encounter is a conceited assertion of destitute self on the part of the clerk and an example of accustomed submission on the part of the typist. Sexual intercourse has been turned mechanical just like how machines work. The poem therefore represents the narrators consciousness of his anguish in relation to history, culture and even time. Throughout the poem infertility is felt with little hopes of the future. What the speaker sees in this encounter is one of the highest examples of barrenness, egotism and disaffection. A Game of Chess The title of this section is derived from two plays by an early 17th century dramatist Thomas Middleton the one in which the moves in a game of chess denotes stages in seduction. Two opposing scenes are depicted. One of the beau monde and the other of lower social class. The first part of the section exposes a wealthy, well groomed woman surrounded by recherchà © furnishings. The woman waits for a lover and in the process her neurotic ideas become frenzied with no meaningful cries. Her day then climaxes with plans for an outing and a game of chess. In the second part of this episode depicts a scene in a London barroom. Here two women discuss a third woman who is not in the barroom. As the bar is about to be closed, one of the women recounts a discourse with their friend Lil. Lils husband had been dismissed from the army. Lil has refused to get herself false teeth and she is told that her husband will seek the company of another woman as a result. Lils husband does not seem to appreciate her even on bearing five children for him which has led to current appearance. The narrator says that her husband wont leave [her] alone. The two women, Lil wealthy woman, represent the two sides of modern sexuality. One side of the sexuality is dry, barren interchange inseparable from neuroticism and self-destruction. Eliot likens this woman to Cleopatra in the manner of her luxuriance of language and surrounding. She is defeated, excessively emotional but lacks intellects. Eliots association of this woman with Cleopatra, who committed suicide due to frustration stemmed from love, shows her irrationality. However, unlike Cleopatra, this woman is not and will never be a cultural standard. Lil on the other hand represents sexuality as fertility associated with a deficiency of culture and speedy aging. Despite doing everything right; married right, supported her husband, bore him children, yet her body lets her down. She no longer looks appealing to her husband. Age had already set in and there was no way to reverse it, not even false teeth. This shows how possibility of regenerating sex both at the cultural and personal contexts diminishes further. The Burial of the Dead This is the first passage of the waste land. Eliot derived the title of this passage from a line in the Anglican burial service. It is constituted of four sketches, apparently from different speakers. The first is an autobiographical snipping from a childhood of an aristocratical woman called Marie. She tells the poet as they take coffee of her past in Austria and of her cousin, who was the Archduke Rudolph and the heir to be of the Austro-Hungarian throne. She also narrates to the poet in fondness how she used to go sledging in the mountains and sometimes Archduke would take her sledging. Marie mingles a meditation on the seasons with comments on the desolate state of her current being. She says I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. Marie claims to be a German and not a Russian. She is a member of the lately defeated Austrian royal family. The poem being written after the First World War it shows how peoples lives were disrupted and left desolate as a result of war. People, like Marie could no longer feel part or even enjoy being part of the social fabric as they did before the war. As the speaker walks through London which is populated by ghosts he faces a figure that he once fought with in a battle and this seems to mix the clashes of the First World War with the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. Both wars were futile and led to massive destruction. The speaker goes ahead to ask the ghostly figure, Stetson, on the fate of a corpse established in his garden. At the time Eliot was writing the poem, he had started gaining interest in Christianity. It was difficult for him to believe the Christian belief of resurrection. This shows the pessimism with which Eliot looks at degraded human culture of post-world war I. This hopelessness is depicted in the character Sibyl, a woman possessing prophetic powers who ages but never dies. This woman looks into the future and finds no hope in it and therefore prefers to die. Eliot sees himself in the same predicament as Sibyl. The culture in which he lives in has decayed and dried-up. The worst part of this culture is that it will not expire, and hence he is compelled to live with memories of its former glory. Through memory of the dead, a confrontation of the past and the present is created. Through memory, the past and the present are juxtaposed showing how things have worsened and decayed. Maries memories of her childhood are painful. The worlds of her cousin, and coffee in the park, and sledging on the mountains have since been replaced by complex political and emotional consequences of the war. She now prefers to read late into the night because there is not much she can do. In summing up, the poem The Waste Land is Eliots best work of literature. Written after the First World War which he describes as futile and cause of massive destruction, Eliot explores changes that occurred after the war. One of these changes involves the culture becoming sterile. Through different passages he has been able to develop this theme of sterility. Sterility is both in the culture and individual people. The culture has become so decayed that it can no longer support existence of a wholesome mankind. As a result people have lost touch with their culture and turned to doing evil things. Despite the sterility of the culture, human beings are forced to live in this condition. Just like Sibyl who despite seeing no hope in the future only ages and never dies thus forced to continue living in an already hopeless condition. Like Sibyl, Eliot sees little hope if any for the culture and the people to be regenerated.

Chinese Economic Reform :: Economics Economy China Essays

Chinese Economic Reform Two years after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, it became apparent to many of China's leaders that economic reform was necessary. During his tenure as China's premier, Mao had encouraged social movements such as the "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution" which had had as their bases ideas such as serving the people and maintaining the class struggle. By 1978, China’s leaders were searching for a solution to serious economic problems. Hua Guofeng, the man who had succeeded Mao Zedong as CCP (Chinese Communist Party) leader after Mao's death, had demonstrated a desire to continue the ideologically based movements of Mao. Unfortunately, these movements had left China in a state where agriculture was stagnant, industrial production was low, and the people's living standards had not increased in twenty years (Nathan 200). While the gross output value of industry and agriculture increased by 810 percent and national income grew by 420 percent [between 1952 and 1980] ... average individual income increased by only 100 percent (Shirk 28). However, attempts at economic reform in China were not solely due to generosity on the part of the Chinese Communist Party to increase living standards. It had become clear to members of the CCP that economic reform would fulfill a political purpose as well since the party felt that it had suffered a loss of support. (Shirk 23) This movement "from virtue to competence" seemed to mark a serious departure from orthodox Chinese political theory. Confucius himself had said that those individuals who best demonstrated what he referred to as moral force should lead the nation. Using this principle as a guide, China had for centuries attempted to choose its leaders by administering a test to determine their moral force. After the Communist takeover of the country, Mao continued this emphasis on moral force by demanding that Chinese citizens demonstrate what he referred to as "correct consciousness." This correct consciousness could be exhibited by the way people lived. Thus, by demonstrating their expertise in a more practical area of competence, the leaders of the CCP felt they could demonstrate how they were serving the people. Economic reform came about as a result of an attempt by CCP leaders to demonstrate, in a more practical way than Mao had done, their moral force. Chinese Economic Reform :: Economics Economy China Essays Chinese Economic Reform Two years after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, it became apparent to many of China's leaders that economic reform was necessary. During his tenure as China's premier, Mao had encouraged social movements such as the "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution" which had had as their bases ideas such as serving the people and maintaining the class struggle. By 1978, China’s leaders were searching for a solution to serious economic problems. Hua Guofeng, the man who had succeeded Mao Zedong as CCP (Chinese Communist Party) leader after Mao's death, had demonstrated a desire to continue the ideologically based movements of Mao. Unfortunately, these movements had left China in a state where agriculture was stagnant, industrial production was low, and the people's living standards had not increased in twenty years (Nathan 200). While the gross output value of industry and agriculture increased by 810 percent and national income grew by 420 percent [between 1952 and 1980] ... average individual income increased by only 100 percent (Shirk 28). However, attempts at economic reform in China were not solely due to generosity on the part of the Chinese Communist Party to increase living standards. It had become clear to members of the CCP that economic reform would fulfill a political purpose as well since the party felt that it had suffered a loss of support. (Shirk 23) This movement "from virtue to competence" seemed to mark a serious departure from orthodox Chinese political theory. Confucius himself had said that those individuals who best demonstrated what he referred to as moral force should lead the nation. Using this principle as a guide, China had for centuries attempted to choose its leaders by administering a test to determine their moral force. After the Communist takeover of the country, Mao continued this emphasis on moral force by demanding that Chinese citizens demonstrate what he referred to as "correct consciousness." This correct consciousness could be exhibited by the way people lived. Thus, by demonstrating their expertise in a more practical area of competence, the leaders of the CCP felt they could demonstrate how they were serving the people. Economic reform came about as a result of an attempt by CCP leaders to demonstrate, in a more practical way than Mao had done, their moral force.

Describe the attitude and values underlining beliefs of Mr Briggs and Mrs Kay in text 23 ‘Our day Out’

Text 23 is taken from ‘our day out' by Willy Russel. In the text it describes of a school trip where a class of students are taken on a day out. Two of the main teachers in the text Mr Briggs and Mrs Kay have conflicting ideas on the purpose of the trip. They also believe differently about the education of the children and the reality of their situation. The children are less interested in learning and more interested in enjoying their day out much to the dislike of Mr Briggs. Mr Briggs believes that even though the students are on a school trip they should still behave in an orderly fashion and that they should be learning at the same time as behaving themselves. Mr Briggs has much more stricter views and ideas on how a school trips should be conducted. Mrs Kay realises and is very aware that none of the children are interested in anything other than enjoying themselves and since the children are, in her words, ‘rejects since the day they came into the world' so what is the point in trying to make them learn. When Mrs Kay makes these views clear, Mr Briggs is horrified even though he most likely knows its true. The main difference between Mr Briggs and Mrs Kay is that Mrs Kay has accepted the truth that these children haven't learnt and aren't going to start on there big day out. Mrs Kay has much more realistic values and beliefs such as, it's too late for teaching the children anything and they aren't interested. In her opinion the children should at least enjoy there one day out they have although Mr Briggs thinks much more differently. She hides truths from the children so they are not disheartened such as when a girl asks her whether one day she could own a nice house she basically says you might do instead of being pessimistic like maybe Briggs might have been if asked a similar question. The attitudes of Mrs Kay and Mr Briggs are hugely different. Mr Briggs is constantly ignoring the fact that the children don't want to learn and in Mrs Kay's opinion it's too late for that now. In some ways Mr Briggs still believes that the children can be educated either that or he is just kidding himself. Throughout the text Mr Briggs is constantly trying to show his authority over everyone claiming â€Å"I was sent by the headmaster to supervise this trip†. Mrs Kay has a different attitude towards the children. She knows that they are troublesome but claims its too late for the children and that no one will teach them because no-one knows what to do with them. She also mentions that what the children are good for, or would have been good for, she uses the term ‘factory fodder' but mentions that the factories have closed down so what future do the children have. Overall Mr Briggs and Mrs Kay have totally different opinions and beliefs about the children. Ideally Briggs would like to see the children behaving and trying to learn but as both Mr Briggs and Mrs Kay knows it wont happen. Whereas Mrs Kay is more realistic and is looking out for the children's enjoyment instead of further making there lives a misery.

Crucible Newspaper Essays

Crucible Newspaper Essays Crucible Newspaper Paper Crucible Newspaper Paper The Salem Times ESTABLISHED 1684 WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM! SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS APRIL 11th, 1692 REVEREND PARRIS CLUTCHES HIS BEWITCHED DAUGHTER BETTY. DEMONS ON THE LOOSE BEtty Parris, daughter to Reverend Parris, fell ill last night with symptoms that speak to witchcraft. Betty lay inert in her bed, only to wake screaming for her late mother and attempting to fly out of her bedroom window. Doctor Griggs evaluation was witchcraft to the dismay of Rev. Parris. It is believed that he spotted Betty, her cousin Abigail, and many other girls dancing in the woods-one of them naked! They were chanting around a fire with Parriss maid Tituba! She may be questioned soon. Now poor Betty Parris is bewitched and the entire town of Salem fears for its life. WANTED! MAY 20th, 1692 PICTURED ABOVE LEFT TO RIGHT: ELIZABETH PROCTOR, REBECCA NURSE, MARTHA COREY, GILES COREY, SARAH GOOD MANY MORE HAVE BEEN ACCUSED AND ARE WANTED BY JUDGE DANFORTH WANTED FOR WITCHCRAFT Elizabeth Proctor, Rebecca Nurse, Martha and Giles Corey, and Sarah Good sound like the names of well-respected members of Salem. However, they and many others are anted for witchcraft. They have been accused by others in the community who suspect them of trucking with the devil. The accused will be arrested today and brought to the Jail where they will await their trial. Judge Danforth is quick with the pen on signing death warrants, to the dismay of the accused. Many fear that they too will be arrested and sent to Jail. No one is safe from Jail or witchcraft in Salem. JOHN PROCTOR A LECHER! COURTROOM MADNESS JUNE 28TH, 1692 John Proctor is a convicted lecher! A Salem Times source confirms that while in the ourtroom, Mr. Proctor divulged an alarming contession-ne is a lecher! He claimed to be romantically involved with Abigail Proctor, niece of Reverend Parris who began the witchcraft rumors in Salem. Proctor told Judge Danforth this to prove that Abigail accused Goody Proctor unjustly. To see if there was any proof to this statement, Danforth called in Elizabeth proctor from Jail and asked her if her husband was a lecher. She stated that he wasnt, contradicting her husbands confession. Proctor then erupted in a fit, startling everyone present in the courtroom.

Analysis of Wants by Grace Paley

Analysis of 'Wants' by Grace Paley Wants by American writer Grace Paley (1922 - 2007) is the opening story from the authors 1974 collection, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. It later appeared in her 1994 The Collected Stories, and it has been widely anthologized. At about 800 words, the story could be considered a work of flash fiction. You can read it for free at Biblioklept. Plot Sitting on the steps of the neighborhood library, the narrator sees her ex-husband. He follows her into the library, where she returns two Edith Wharton books she has had for eighteen years and pays the fine. As the ex-spouses discuss their different perspectives on their marriage and its failure, the narrator checks out the same two novels she has just returned. The ex-husband announces that he will probably buy a sailboat.  He tells her, I always wanted a sailboat. [†¦] But you didnt want anything. After they separate, his remark bothers her more and more. She reflects that she doesnt want things, like a sailboat, but she does want to be a particular kind of person and to have particular kinds of relationships. At the end of the story, she returns the two books to the library. Passage of Time As the narrator returns the long-overdue library books, she marvels that she doesnt understand how time passes. Her ex-husband complains that she never invited the Bertrams to dinner, and in her response to him, her sense of time collapses completely. Paley writes: Thats possible, I said. But really, if you remember: first, my father was sick that Friday, then the children were born, then I had those Tuesday-night meetings, then the war began. We didnt seem to know them anymore. Her perspective starts at the level of a single day and one small social engagement, but it quickly sweeps out to a period of years and momentous events like the births of her children and the commencement of war. When she frames it this way, keeping library books for eighteen years seems like the blink of an eye. The Wants in Wants The ex-husband gloats that he is finally getting the sailboat he always wanted, and he complains that the narrator didnt want anything. He tells her, [A]s for you, its too late. Youll always want nothing. The sting of this comment only increases after the ex-husband has left and the narrator is left to ponder it. But what she realizes is that she does want something, but the things she wants look nothing like sailboats. She says: I want, for instance, to be a different person. I want to be the woman who brings these two books back in two weeks. I want to be the effective citizen who changes the school system and addresses the Board of Estimate on the troubles of this dear urban center.  [†¦] I wanted to have been married forever to one person, my ex-husband or my present one. What she wants is largely intangible, and much of it is unattainable. But while it may be comical to wish to be a different person, there is still hope that she can develop some attributes of the different person she wishes to be. The Down Payment Once the narrator has paid her fine, she immediately regains the goodwill of the librarian. She is forgiven her past faults in exactly the same measure that her ex-husband refuses to forgive her. In short, the librarian accepts her as a different person. The narrator could, if she wanted, repeat the exact same mistake of keeping the exact same books for another eighteen years. After all, she doesnt understand how time passes. When she checks out the identical books, she appears to be repeating all her same patterns. But its also possible that shes giving herself a second chance to get things right. She may have been on her way to being a different person long before her ex-husbands issued his scathing assessment of her. She notes that this morning - the same morning she took the books back to the library - she saw that the little sycamores the city had dreamily planted a couple of years before the kids were born had come that day to the prime of their lives. She saw time passing; she decided to do something different. Returning library books is, of course, mostly symbolic. Its a bit easier than, for instance, becoming an effective citizen. But just as the ex-husband has put a down payment on the sailboat - the thing he wants - the narrators returning the library books is a down payment on becoming the sort of person she wants to be.

Explaining my scheme Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Explaining my scheme - Essay Example In this chapter, an overview is given in Section 4.2. Then, Section 4.3 illustrates how the initial labels are allocated and how the different relationships are determined. Section 4.4 describes how insertions are handled and how different relationships are preserved. A validation of the relationships using algebra is shown in Section 4.5. Finally, in Section 4.6, the chapter ends with a general conclusion that leads to the following chapter which discusses the scheme from the point of view of implementation. The proposed scheme is based on the parent-child grouping to facilitate the identification of parent-child and sibling relationships faster, based on a simple comparison. Parent-child grouping was also selected due to the high number of xml documents that come with this type of relationship (Goldman & Widom, 1997). Again, parent-child and sibling grouping facilitate smother insertions of new nodes, given the fact that in this form of grouping only a simple tree structure will be dealt with rather than the whole tree (Cohen, Kaplan & Milo, 2002). The advantage of allowing smoother insertion builds on the prefix GroupID labelling scheme but does not determine a fixed number of nodes to be inserted. Gusfield (1997) also observed that when dealing with parent-child groupings, labelling can be thought of as being easier, faster and more accurate as it deals with a simple tree structure. The simple structure has to do with a root node and its direct children nodes. Another critical characteristic of the scheme is that it uses two labels for each node in order to facilitate the processing nodes within the same group that uses their simple local labels. This is in contrast with multiplication-based scheme where the global label is used to connect a group to the whole tree which helps in identifying relationships between nodes belong to different group (Milo & Suciu, 1999). Based on existing schemes such

Contemporary responses by the criminal justice system towards victims Essay

Contemporary responses by the criminal justice system towards victims and witnesses of crime - Essay Example Because most of the documented crime reported to the police by victims and/or witnesses, they evidently have a crucial role to play in the process of dispensing justice, especially in those cases where in the accused denies any culpability. Maybe unexpectedly, considering its reliance on the eagerness of victims and/or witnesses to cooperate, the response of the CJS towards victims and/or witnesses has beforehand been described, at least in common law systems, by disregard and every so often by careless and unsympathetic treatment. Nevertheless, recently, a string of victim-oriented programmes has been launched in the United Kingdom. This essay argues that victims and witnesses nowadays enjoy a much greater role and importance in the criminal justice system than in the earlier periods. The investigation by the Victims’ Champion for the Ministry of Justice of the response of the CJS to the victims and witnesses emphasised in its statement: â€Å"A great deal of positive work h as been done to improve the support available for victims and witnesses but there is still a disparity between policy and reality for victims† (Easton & Piper, 2012, p. 188). ... n three phases: the years related to the growth of compensation, 1960-75; the years related to the growth of particular programmes to assist victims and witnesses, 1975-80; and the era from the 1980s when victim assistance initiatives were established and a greater participation of victims and witnesses in the CJS was called for (Easton & Piper, 2012, pp. 188-189; Hostettler, 2009). The support for victims and witnesses in recent times has had two quite distinct features: first, it may be considered a victims’ welfare model, while the other procedure is to grant victims importance to affect results. Victims’ needs were firmly highlighted in Criminal Justice: The Way Ahead. Victims have been granted the opportunity to give a personal report to the court describing the impacts of the crime on their lives. In April 2006, a Code of Practice for the Victims of Crime was ratified (Easton & Piper, 2012, p. 189; Wahidin & Carr, 2013; Dignan, 2005). Nevertheless, in order to dem onstrate how the response of the criminal justice system to victims and witnesses within the criminal justice system has improved in the contemporary period, it is important to look at the victims’ status within the CJS during the earlier periods. In particular, the ‘era of victim disenfranchisement’ emerged in the 19th century, roughly at the same time as the state started to take on the prime obligation for the trial of criminals instead of handing over the task to prosecution bodies, or to victims and witnesses themselves, as in the earlier period (Dignan, 2005, p. 63; Comwell, 2008). According to Comwell (2008), this reassignment of duties co-occurred with the launching of specialised law enforcement, whose duty was to investigate crimes and put alleged criminals on trial. Theoretically,