Friday, January 31, 2020

Greasy lake and the three immature teenagers Essay Example for Free

Greasy lake and the three immature teenagers Essay Greasy Lake by T. Coraghesan Boyle’s is the story of a group of adolescents, searching for the one situation that will proclaim them as bad boys and how their minds change. The greasy lake is a short story which the narrator uses details, imagination and language to describe and represent the moral condition of each character. Also, during the story the narrator shows us how each character becomes closer to maturity after facing a crazy and unexpected night in a local lake, where we are all witness to and extreme change in their lives causes by immature action. Three young men, who considered themselves bad, were out looking for trouble and excitement on their summer break. One of the most interesting things was the perception they had about being tough or being cool at the time. It is very interesting how the three young showed his toughness throwing eggs at the houses of their neighbors. They were acting irresponsibly, drinking too much alcohol and doing drugs, which caused errors in their decision. This was the way of thinking of the three young men â€Å"we wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue†. The bad choices they made would somewhere along the line cause their fate to step in, but no one knew what is going to happen that night. The boys must face their reality of becoming responsible adult men. For example, whether someone chooses to be responsible and do their homework that kind of actions determines if the three young men are capable to be responsible. The actions the boys took and the words they said eventually determined their immaturity. â€Å"On this, the third night, we’d cruised the strip sixty-seven times, been in and out of every bar and club we could think of in a twenty –mile radius, stopped twice for bucket of chicken and forty-cent hamburgers, debated going to a party at the house of a girl Jeff’s sister knew, and chucked two dozen raw eggs at mailboxes and hitchhikers.† If they would have chosen to go to the party at Jeff’s sister’s friend’s house then none of the trouble at Greasy Lake would have happened. The whole scene is dark to begin with the irresponsible choice they made to drink alcohol ultimately affected the rest of their choices and  actions. Alcohol may have distorted their judgments, which may have lead them to believe they saw Tony Lovett’s car, causing them to honk, flash their bights and press their faces on his window on the wrong car. Alcohol also may have affected the narrator’s agility, causing him to drop his keys in the dark. These actions leave them unprepared, when they end up in trouble with a big greasy character, as they call him. They begin to fight and one of them hits the guy with tire iron on the head while the adrenaline starts to rise in each of them, begin tearing the clothes off the girl in the car when they try to abuse of the young girl, they are interrupted by another car, which was approach to the scene they believe the other car have seen them. They start running away from the scene to avoid getting caught. The three boys were fri ghtened by the consequences that can bring them for their immaturity acts. During the story at this point At this point the narrator is not bothered about his moms car, because he is now safe in the lake behind trees where no one could find him. Once the narrator continues to find a safe place he runs into something that looks like something strange emerges from the lake and realize that it is a body of a man. Then the narrator thinks its very scary evil character found in lake and lifeless. The narrator is very scared by what he discovered runs where his friends were. Very afraid the only thing you want is to get home and forget everything that happened that night. Finally find the car keys and see that everything is in perfect condition, but have a final approach with two young girls who ask if they have seen the friend, who have not seen since last night they stay silent without express what really wanted and they lie and say no. During that time the one of the girls offers them to go home and have fun drinking alcohol and use drugs. After that episode t he three young men begin to experience inner change, to say no and see that they are not as bad as they believed or they could be, and all they want is to leave everything bad that experienced last night and be able to do positive things for their lives. In brief, Coming of age seems to be a problem. When I first felt the teenagers as adults and to take very risk decision to grab the tires iron and after trying to rape a woman every wrong decision have their consequences. However, they are very willing to face the adult outcomes.  Perhaps the lesson here is do not try to grow too fast. The point of view is in first person, from the point of view of narrative and Teenagers. The environment plays a role in the story. Also, during the story the narrator shows us how each character becomes closer to maturity after facing a crazy and unexpected night in a local lake, where we are all witness to and extreme change in their lives causes by immature action.

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Ironclads Of The Civil War :: essays research papers

IRONCLADS OF THE CIVIL WAR   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The book I read is called IRONCLADS OF THE CIVIL WAR. When you think of the Civil War you think of on land battles, but there were also many battles in the water. The Civil War introduced the Ironclads, which are huge ships made of iron with no sails and very destructive.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The first built and launched ironclad was in 1855 and it was named the Merrimac. Europe just starting building ironclads and sent her to Norfolk. The Merrimac was still there when Virginia seceded from the Union in April of 1861. The Union then sank the Merrimac and set her afire but the hull of the shop and the engines settled in the bottom of the river. The Confederates found it and raised the parts out. It took 1,500 men to work on the Merrimac. It was a very slow process because there was not many supplies or tools. The Merrimac needed needed on thousand tons of iron. It was difficult to get some because there was very few iron manufacturers anywhere in the South and there was just one able to supply enough. The Merrimac got a small share of iron and then went to work. It took over a year to get this ship finished. The captain was Franklin Buchnan and he had 300 men for a crew.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Most of the men were soldiers recently assigned out of artillery regiments. And there were very few sailors in the South, so most were clueless on where to go or what to do. When everything was done and she began to move it looked like the Merrimac was capable of doing what she was meant to do. The Northerners were warned about this ironclad â€Å"monster† and were waiting for this moment a long time. When the Merrimac came into view she fought the Cumberland and ended up destroying it. The shell burst into the rail and knocked down nine men of the Cumberland. In the end the Merrimac destroyed the Cumberland. But no ship in the navy ever fought as hard or as brave as the Cumberland did.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Once the word got around about the ironclad everyone started to make them. France built the Gloire and England built the Warrior. By the Civil War was a year old the navies were being complemented with ironclad. And the Union knew that they had to have an ironclad to ever beat the South Merrimac Captain John Ericisson

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Discuss Marxism and Functuionalism and Compare

Compare Marxist and Functionalist Perspectives Compare and Contrast Functionalist and Marxist Perspectives Sociology is a systematic way of studying the social world. It seeks to discover the causes and affects of intercommunication and interaction that arise in social relations. â€Å"The science of society† was developed as a discipline in the 19th Century by Auguste Compte, a French philosopher. For him, common sense and the obvious would not suffice; he wanted to build scientific theories based on critical awareness of society. The two main stems of sociological concepts are Positivism and Phenomenology. Both Functionalism and Marxism are Positivist theories. This means that philosophies are built by using scientific research methods to create structural perspectives. Positivism is called macro sociology because it looks at society holistically; it also emphasises the power of Society and how this effects man’s behaviour. Positivism was a philosophy from the Modern Era when society was industrial, England’s culture untolerating, the mass media conservative and pro-establishment. Role in society was extremely important; it was traditional and genders specific. Functionalism provided a static view of society. It was rooted in the work of Emile Durkheim, a French Sociologist and during the later stages, Talcott Parsons. Although functionalism was not a dominant theoretical perspective in sociology until the 1940s and 1950s, it first emerged during the 19th Century. Marxism was founded by a German philosopher, economist and sociologist, Karl Marx. Fredrich Engels also contributed to development the works. Marxism offered a radical alternative to the functionalism perspective and was developed in the 1970s. Both perspectives of Marx and Durkheim, aspired for a Utopian society. Functionalism views society like a biological organism. The parts or institutions of the organism or society function appropriately to ensure the whole structure works efficiently and effectively. The whole has greater power than the individual parts. The three main aims and objectives of functionalism are to maintain order, stability and equilibrium in society. Marxism became increasingly influential due to; the decline in functionalism, its promise to provide answers (which functionalism did not) and its mood reflected that of the times. It originally consisted of three related ideas: a philosophical view of man, a theory of history and an economic and political program. The basic principal was that production equals social enterprise. Man needs to produce food, materials, etc†¦ for survival, and in doing so; man enters into relations with other members of society. From a functionalist perspective, the main parts of society (its institutions such as education, religion and the family) are the foundations for social structure. These institutions have interconnected roles and interrelated norms to form a complete system. All of the institutions have a role to meet the functional prerequisites (society’s basic needs). Integration between the parts is necessary so therefor integration is a functional prerequisites in itself. Social relations are organised, in result of values providing general guidelines for behaviour. Functionalist, Talcott Parsons set out four functional prerequisites essential for society: Goal Attainment- setting goals, e. g. Government/Education, Adaptation- development of material world, e. g. Mass Media/Industry, Integration- promoting harmony and social solidarity, e. g. Religion/Family, Latency- meeting individual needs to satisfy demand, e. g. Family/Mass Media. From a Marxist view, the force of production is the collective term for all things needed for production. The means of production are those parts of production which can be legally owned (land, machinery, and slaves†¦ . Society’s infrastructure was made up of the forces of production plus the social relations. The Superstructure includes the institutions of society and is shaped by the infrastructure. This therefor means that the institutions are primarily determined by economic factors. Marxism relates class not to income or family like functionalism does, instead it is measured on how much land, mach inery†¦ is owned and controlled- so it depends on the means of production. The person(s) who had the most means of production are the ruling class. The ruling class produces the dominant ideas in society. Their domination relies heavily on the exploitation and oppression of others. The employer to employee relationship of exploitation is concealed by ideology. Some accept the ruling class conflict as natural and so are lulled into false consciousness. Functionalism relies on social stratification. Kingsley Davis, an American Sociologist and Demographer said â€Å"As a functioning mechanism society must distribute its members in social positions and induce them to perform the duties of these positions†. Without this casting of society’s members, the institutions would be unbalanced and equilibrium could not be reached. Functionalism sees this as a positive and inevitable aspect of society. In Marxism, the lower classes are exploited because they can be. Social change in Functionalism occurs when one of the institutions alters in some way. These changes only come about when society requests it. These changes in institutions cause society to behave, inevitably different. Marx believed all historical societies contain basic contradictions: the exploitation of one social group by another. Perhaps in a way, Marxism is perhaps a little more realistic than functionalism. Therefor, they cannot survive in the existing form. The major frictions are between the forces and the relations of production. A great deal of the wealth, produced by the workforce is appropriated in the forms of profit by the Capitalists- the ruling class. The wages of the workers are not equivalent to the wealth they produce and so the ruling class was exploiting and oppressing the working class. Marx predicted a new and final epoch. A society that would have complete equality. There would be no new force of production but the relations of production will be transformed. The ownership of production would be collective, as the members of society would share the wealth. The ruling class would no longer exploit or oppress the workers. It is interesting how Functionalists see people as unequal a positive thing and Marxists believe it a negative one. Functionalism fails to recognise social change, contrasting to Marxism which recognises and aspires to it. It is a conservative ideology which ignores the dysfunction’s and assumes every institution is positive for society. Marxism, on the other hand, accepts conflict and the arising social problems. The perspective tries to understand how to overcome societies problems by looking back over history and learning from past mistakes. Functionalists assume that everyone in society is in agreement and shares norms. It believes in the power of the institutions to socialise its members so well that deviance is rare. However, every society has deviants and so this statement is a little too confident. Functionalism shows us clearly the primacy of culture and socialisation via the social institution. Marxism underestimated the resilience of Capitalism, for example, Americas tragedy on the 11th September 2001.

Monday, January 6, 2020

Drug Use And Drug Related Public Health Concerns Essay

Dominique Cameron-Johnson Dr. K.H. Hall English 101 – Index 1293 14 December 2016 Persuasive Essay Countries all over the world are dealing with a rise of drug use and drug-related public health concerns. Many nations adopt vaguely similar methods of battling the â€Å"War on Drugs†, from strict border control to harsh criminal punishments for drug-related offenders, violent or not. Even with these efforts put in place, many places are not seeing the desired results. Drug use is mainly treated like a crime, and that may be the problem. Countries that have concerns with rising drug use among their citizens should follow Portugal in decriminalizing the possession and use of small quantities of all illicit drugs. Portugal was in the midst of a drug crisis. A large number Portuguese people that returned to Portugal after the military dictatorship that ended in 1974 were using drugs. (Thornton) Hard drugs were getting into the country easily due to open borders. The country saw a surge in numerous public health concerns such as drug abuse, addiction, overdosing, and new cases of HIV/AIDS. â€Å"In 1999, nearly one per cent of the population—a hundred thousand people—were heroin addicts, and Portugal reported the highest rate of drug-related AIDS deaths in the European Union.† (Spector) Initially, the government responded with traditional methods of drug control- policies that criminalized drug users harshly with prison and fines, (Aleem) but the policies weren’t working very well. TheShow MoreRelatedPublic Health Issues Are Concerns On How To Protect The1749 Words   |  7 Pages Public health issues are concerns on how to protect the health of the people in society . Public health communities focus more attention on the victim who has health issues related to drug addictions, alcohol, and mental and physical problems. Public health issues are more concerned with the health consequences related to these addictions, abuse, and problems. 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