Charles Dickens Hard Times :: GCSE English Literature Coursework

Charles Dickens' Hard Times When we think of hard times in today’s world, our thoughts might consist of the number of days before we get paid, an argument with our spouse, or simply that our car is not operating so great these days. Most people today can not begin to imagine what hard times were like during the Industrial Revolution. In nineteenth century England, hard times to the factory workers may have consisted of watching one’s nine-year-old child tied to a machine in the mill for fourteen hours a day. It is no wonder why the writers of this period protested society through the voices of their writings. One of the greatest of these writers was Charles Dickens, who made his voice of protest through a literary masterpiece known as Hard Times. There are many aspects of Hard Times, and Dickens manages to capture what life was like for all of the social classes of his day through each individual character with his protests against the horrible ways in which people were treating one another i n the times that truly were hard. Dickens put a great deal of thought and research into all of his works, just as he did in Hard Times. As one writer states, â€Å"He visited Preston to get material for the industrial and trade-union aspects of the novel; a few weeks latter he began to collect circus slang† (Collins 29). He latter obtained the Educational Board’s series of questions for the examination of teachers in schools. On April 1, 1854, Hard Times appeared in a weekly journal, Household Words, which Dickens edited. Some people believe that Dickens â€Å"was determined to create a means where he could communicate his ideas on social reform so in 1850 he began editing Household Words† (Ford 16). One author states that â€Å"by 1851 the twenty-four page Household Words was selling 40,000 copies a week† (Gray 2). The weekly journal included articles on politics, science and history. To increase the number of people willing to buy Household Words, it also contained short stories and humorous pieces. Dickens also used the journal to serialize novels that were concerned with social issues such as Hard Times. The scene is a factory driven English town known as Coketown. The novel begins in a classroom where we meet Mr. Gradgrind, a wealthy parliament member, to whom the school belongs. Charles Dickens' Hard Times :: GCSE English Literature Coursework Charles Dickens' Hard Times When we think of hard times in today’s world, our thoughts might consist of the number of days before we get paid, an argument with our spouse, or simply that our car is not operating so great these days. Most people today can not begin to imagine what hard times were like during the Industrial Revolution. In nineteenth century England, hard times to the factory workers may have consisted of watching one’s nine-year-old child tied to a machine in the mill for fourteen hours a day. It is no wonder why the writers of this period protested society through the voices of their writings. One of the greatest of these writers was Charles Dickens, who made his voice of protest through a literary masterpiece known as Hard Times. There are many aspects of Hard Times, and Dickens manages to capture what life was like for all of the social classes of his day through each individual character with his protests against the horrible ways in which people were treating one another i n the times that truly were hard. Dickens put a great deal of thought and research into all of his works, just as he did in Hard Times. As one writer states, â€Å"He visited Preston to get material for the industrial and trade-union aspects of the novel; a few weeks latter he began to collect circus slang† (Collins 29). He latter obtained the Educational Board’s series of questions for the examination of teachers in schools. On April 1, 1854, Hard Times appeared in a weekly journal, Household Words, which Dickens edited. Some people believe that Dickens â€Å"was determined to create a means where he could communicate his ideas on social reform so in 1850 he began editing Household Words† (Ford 16). One author states that â€Å"by 1851 the twenty-four page Household Words was selling 40,000 copies a week† (Gray 2). The weekly journal included articles on politics, science and history. To increase the number of people willing to buy Household Words, it also contained short stories and humorous pieces. Dickens also used the journal to serialize novels that were concerned with social issues such as Hard Times. The scene is a factory driven English town known as Coketown. The novel begins in a classroom where we meet Mr. Gradgrind, a wealthy parliament member, to whom the school belongs.

Summary on Mikhail Bakhtin’s “Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics”

FR 511 – Bakhtin (Day one) Summary The subject of our October 29th lecture was Mikhail Bakhtin and his text â€Å"Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. † To start the class, Dr. Wall reminded us that Laura talked about polyphony in her presentation the week before, and that that was where we would start the lecture on Bakhtin. To help the class better understand the concept of polyphony, we were shown a piece of music written by Bach: â€Å"No. 4 of 6 little preludes. † In the piece, the right hand was singing something completely different than the left hand. There were in fact two completely different melodies happening at the same time.We were told that, in Romantic music, there is one central melody, and the other instruments are there solely to accompany it. Their job is to reinforce the melody. But with older music, we see that it is possible to have more than one melody at a time, sometimes even four or five. You can listen to one melody at time or both at once, etc. This example of polyphony in music is basically a metaphor for the way that Bakhtin understood Dostoevsky. In classical literature, the text is dominated mainly by the voice of the narrator, and everything else simply reinforces what the narrator has to say.With Dostoevsky, this is not the case. That is the first important point to remember in understanding Dostoevsky’s poetics. According to Bakhtin (not Amy), Dostoevsky is the author of the first polyphonic novel. At this point Dr. Wall stated that Dostoevsky is really just a foil and that other authors could be substituted (Diderot for example). Again, coming back to the first main point in understanding Dostoevsky’s poetics (or Diderot, etc. ), one has to imagine a type of literature where the narrators voice is no longer all powerful and no longer dominates the entire text.Furthermore, Russian orthodox theology also had an influence on Bakhtin. In the same way that God created man to have free will, the author creates the literary character to have his own free will. In fact, one of the great splits in Christianity is over the doctrine of free will. Some believe that whether or not you will enter heaven after you die is not determined by you, but rather by fate or God, etc. On the other hand, there is the doctrine of free will which basically states that when God created man, he gave him the ability to be â€Å"bad† and to have his own free will, even if it destroys him.This is the same idea as the literary character being free to disobey the author. The underground man is an example of the free will of the literary character. He contradicts everything, he says one and one makes three. From there, we talked about the importance of multiple voices in a novel. These other voices in are just as significant as the narrator, and can even at times contradict what the narrator says. This is what Bakhtin calls the Copernican revolution. Evidently, Copernicus knew that the earth revolves around the sun.So what Bakhtin is saying is that the narrator is no longer the centre of the novel, but that there can be multiple centres. The second important point to know in order to understand Dostoevsky’s poetics is the concept of dialogism. Dialogism refers to the idea that in every utterance, there are other utterances that you may or may not hear, but that you have to learn to listen to. To illustrate this point, Dr. Wall started with the example of European languages such as German where you often use the second person to speak to yourself. An example is when Dr.Wall says, â€Å"Great move Anthony. † Bakhtin says that when we speak, there’s always a â€Å"tu† out there. Whether it is explicit or not, language is always a dialog. From there, we talked about how, for Bakhtin, language does not belong to anyone. The words we use to express ourselves are not our own, we are just one voice amongst the millions that language is. When we learn a language, we learn it from other people. When you express yourself, you are expressing yourself in a language that you borrowed from someone else. Naturally there will be traces of that someone else in what you say.It is crucial to remember that in your own desire to express yourself, there are other voices inhabiting your own voice. Not just the words, but the whole idea of discourse. It is in the flow and use of language. When you hear a single utterance, you can sometimes here the other utterances that are hidden, or the traces that were there before. And when you speak, all of these voices are going on at the same time, like an orchestra. So in a polyphonic novel, underneath the words you read, you have to learn to listen to the other voices that are hidden.So concerning this idea of dialogism, Bakhtin is interested in the interaction between voices, but not in dialog itself. For this reason, he hates theatre and lyrical poetry. He believes that they cover up what is really h appening underneath. Theatre for him is too explicit because the actor is given one specific role or one single voice to play. This takes away the resonance that you have in a polyphonic novel. Another important point is that, for Bakhtin, the coexistence of multiple languages is crucial for the birth of the modern novel.He grew up in Russia where about four languages were spoken in the same community, so he was very much interested in the phenomenon of periods of time where more than one language were spoken in the same community. After the break, we looked at specific examples from Bakhtin’s text. On page 197, he writes about the idea of hidden dialogicality. In other books he gives the example of a telephone conversation where you can only hear one half of what is being said. Even though you can only hear one person speaking, you have a pretty good chance of reconstructing what the other person is saying.There are an incredible amount of words out there, and the actual sou nd prevents you from hearing the invisible sounds. The second necessity for the birth of the modern novel according to Bakhtin is silent reading. The most important characteristic of polyphonic prose is that it is meant to be read silently. For Bakhtin, when you read out loud, you are obliged to choose only one voice. Therefore, the other voices get lost. He encourages you to read a passage multiple times in order to hear all of the voices that are present. Parody is also a prime example for Bakhtin.You think you are hearing a single voice, but there are actually at least two: the original and the parody. He says that that is what a great novel does all of the time, as opposed to theatre that he believes is more of a dialog. Of course, he was not familiar with modern theatre where actors play multiple roles. On page 187, Bakhtin writes about direct referentially oriented discourse. He explains that meaning for him (and Saussure as well) does not come from the referential relationshi ps of what we say, but rather because other people have said it. In other words, everything we try to think about has already been said â€Å"15 times† before.Then on page 195, we discussed the fact that when you hear a sound, it is physically not the same when you hear it alone as when you hear it with other sounds. It is the same thing with coulour. When you take it out of its context, it becomes artificial. Dr. Wall then gave the example of Obama versus Romney, and how they would twist the other person’s words to have a different perspective. The same thing is happening in the literary text and in regular discourse as well. For example, when someone says â€Å"the wall is such a beautiful shade of green† someone else might respond â€Å"beautiful shade of green!? The meaning of the utterance changes because of the question, but you hear the first statement at the same time. We concluded the lecture with this idea of the importance of the notion of the uttera nce. This helps us to understand that repeating utterances either adds or takes away from them. It is possible to repeat a word, but not an utterance. The repetition of madness for example, changes when you repeat it as an utterance (with the time period for example). The last thing mentioned was that, even with a machine meaning changes due to the simple fact that the utterance has been repeated. Joey Pihrag

The Relationship Between America And The 20th Century

The relationship between America and the government has changed drastically between the 19th century and the 20th century. It began as a power struggle with the American’s living under the hand of their government, wanting freedom from its upper hand. Over the years a progressive change in the everyday life of American’s evolved. There was no longer fear to government but a rebellion of shaping the country into something more than government ruled society. This progressivism gave Americans freedoms, shaping America into something different, a nation working towards an ultimate goal, Freedom. Unfortunately Freedom will never be a right or a finalized agreement, but instead a constant fight. America was a growing nation, while the war†¦show more content†¦America began her rein of control, she censored books and movies that were profane, knocking many of artists’ right off the shelves. Than came the draft, men were required to sign up for the draft, American’s refused to fight calling it a crime against the people. The Wilson administration created what they called public information to trick American’s in to thinking that they needed to fight for their freedom and their democracy. All of the war propaganda was sent out in every medium, war bounds were being sold in rally of support. The Twenties bought prosperity followed by turmoil to the surprised people in the United States. Economic growth soared through the roof, as mass production became available with Ford’s moving assembly line, almost half of America was able to own a car. The American dollar soon replaced the British pound; America produced most of the world’s goods. America was on a roll, she was on top and she was on fire. However not everyone in America was rejoicing with this great economic boom, almost half the population still remained in poverty, this boom in production cut many American’s out of jobs and farmer’s went out of business. Many American’s began to flee in hopes of something better. The early 1900, bought a corruption of government when Harding came into office, proposing the idea that if you had money you could get out of almost any crime imaginable. American’s began to charge against money they didn’t have, leisure

The Most Common Stereotypes - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1104 Downloads: 5 Date added: 2019/04/12 Category Society Essay Level High school Tags: Stereotypes Essay Did you like this example? Does anyone really like to be stereotyped in any way, shape or form? Does anyone want to be looked at and automatically judged just because of the way they look, by their skin color, their hair type, or even the type of clothing they choose to wear? Now, you might ask, well, what is even the correct definition of a stereotype? According to United Nations Human Rights, the correct definition of a stereotype is the generalized view or preconception about attributes or characteristics that are or ought to be possessed by members of a particular social group or the roles that are or should be performed by, members of a particular social group. According to United Nations Human Rights, a stereotype is harmful when it limits womens or mens capacity to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers and make choices about their lives and life plans. Throughout the film, Finding Forrester, directed by Gus Van Sant, based on my own personal opinion, it is a film that perpetuates a variety of different and even harsh stereotypes. It is quite clear throughout the majority of the film, the two shared their differences, there was quite a series of controversy based on Jamals race and his intelligence. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "The Most Common Stereotypes" essay for you Create order In the article, Sex and Temperament written by Margaret Mead, she describes how the roles of males and females are conditioned by that persons given culture. Mead describes the research done to see if cultures contribute to the shaping of a person. The research involves three primitive groups: the Arapesh, the Mundugumor and the Tchambuli. Through each of these groups with the roles of sexes, both male and female, they were based on the culture conditioning rather genetics or heredity; for example, culture conditioning is the way a newborn child is shaped or raised into its given culture. Race is a major issue throughout society today, but race is also a major issue in the film along with the many different other stereotypes that are created. Take for example Corey Stewart, a Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Virginia. Last year in September, Stewart used a well-known social media platform, Facebook, to further share his opinions regarding racial stereotypes pointed towards NFL players. As stated on CNN under the political category, Stewart said, A lot of these guys, I mean, theyre thugs, they are beating up their girlfriends and their wives, you know, theyve got, you know, children all over the place that they dont pay attention to, dont father, with many different women, they are womanizers. These are not people that we should have our sons, or any of our children look up to. We need to have our children look up to real role models. What does raising a child or even being a role model to a child have anything to do with playing football professionally? Stewart is obviously stereotyping black men based off the false stereotype of the general population of black men, lack of evidence and past history of racial incidences with people of color. It is also quite clear that Stewart is not acknowledging that other men or even women of different ethnicities have engaged in either the same or similar acts. Jamal Wallace is introduced in the film as a typical black teenage male who goes to a low-class high school in the Bronx, but very much so excels on the court as a basketball player. Jamal is dared by his friends to go into the apartment that they like to call The Widows House, of a recluse who watches Jamal and his friends play basketball through binoculars, but Jamal gets caught trespassing and runs away in fright. Not too many people thought of Jamal as being anything more than just that, especially due to the fact that Jamal was making second-rate grades at his high school in the Bronx, he simply just does what he can to get by and maintain a C average. Jamal did not push himself any harder in the classroom than he ever needed to. Jamals passion was always writing, so when Jamal broke into the mans apartment, he met an old famous writer named William Forrester, but he did not quite know exactly who he was yet until later on in the film and little did they know that when they first met what a great difference they each eventually made for each other. William is the first person who was genuine and sincerely cared to help Jamal on his writing by mostly teaching him discipline. Even though Williams main goal when it came to helping Jamal with his writing, he also helped Jamal find himself throughout each of his own personal writings. Throughout the film, you can see that Williams goal was accomp lished, and Jamal prospers into be quite a good writer. It is said that our parents, whether they were either right or wrong, shaped our lives into the human beings that we are all today and will be from our days moving forward. Each and every single one of us developed numerous habits that had eventually become apart of our daily routines in our everyday lives ever since the day we were all welcomed into this great, big world, and it helped us each to express ourselves within our world. I, myself, am no exception for the human being I am today, though in a much greater portion, because of my mother and father. As I grew up and even presently to this day, my own mind was nearly always on the same page as each of my parents: there is nothing I could not accomplish nor achieve; however, at this rather impressionable age, I began to notice certain habits only existed because of my parents and that certain tasks were not universally done by one another. As time went on, it became quite clear that my parents did not share the same roles or opi nions as I had once thought they always did, whether it was about duties being performed around the house or whether it was about the positions of being a role model when it came to guidance, senses of perspective and aspirations. If there is one thing I learned about this film, it is that, no matter where we go or what we do, there are challenges that lie ahead of us. You need to meet those challenges head on with your head held high and your heart open wide, because it is not enough to simply try and get by with your life. That does not move the world forward, nor yourself for that matter.

Essay on Life of Frederick Douglass Book Review - 1383 Words

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is written by the ex-slave Frederick Douglass and recounts his life as a slave and his ambition to become a free man. This edition is edited with an introduction by David W. Blight, an American History teacher. Blight was born in 1949 and raised in Flint, Michigan. After achieving his undergraduate degree he taught for seven years in a public high school, before he received his PhD at University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985. After teaching at Harvard and North Central College, Blight was a professor of American History at Yale University and Director of the Gilder-Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. Blight was also a professor of History at Amherst College,†¦show more content†¦Sophia and Hugh Auld become crueler toward him, but Douglass still prefers Baltimore and teaches himself to read with the help of local boys. Douglass becomes more aware of the evils of slavery and of the existence of the abolitionist, or antislavery, movement and resolves to eventually escape to the North. Over the years, Douglass is rented out to other owners, until he eventually returns to Balitimore to work for Hugh Auld again and learn the skills of ship caulking. Here Douglass experiences strained race relations and while white workers have been working alongside free black workers, the whites fear that the increase of free blacks will take their jobs. Douglass is just an apprentice, and still a slave, but he experiences violent intimidation from his white coworkers and must switch shipyards where he quickly learns the trade of caulking. Douglass turns over all his wages to his master, however he eventually receives permission from Auld to rent out his excess time, and begins to save up for his escape to New York. At the age of 20, he flees, and changes his name from Bailey to Douglass for fear of recapture. After, he marries Anna Murray, a free woman he met in Baltimore and they move up to Massachusetts, where Douglass becomes highly involved with the abolitionist movement, as a writer and orator. In his memoir, Douglass acts as both narrator and the protagonist, and comes across veryShow MoreRelatedAnnotated Bibliography Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass Essay858 Words   |  4 PagesAnnotated Bibliography Boxill, Bernard. Frederick Douglass’s Patriotism. Journal of Ethics 13.4 (2009): 301-317. EBSCO. Web. 19 Oct 2015. Bernard argues that Frederick Douglass always was a patriot even throughout slavery. He states that most Americans are patriots even if they do not agree with the politics, but rather just a love for their country. It talks about Americans who give selfless amounts of time toward the improvement of America. Buccola, Nicholas. Each for All and All for Each:Read MoreNarrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass1257 Words   |  6 PagesBook Review By Mary Elizabeth Ralls Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: An autobiography written by Frederick Douglass Millennium publication, 1945edition 75 pages Frederick Douglass whose real name was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey approximately birthdate is in1818, the month or day is not known, he died in 1895. He is one of the most famous advocates and the greatest leaders of anti-slavery in the past 200 or so years.Read More Response of Fredrick Douglass to Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe964 Words   |  4 PagesFredrick Douglass Response to Uncle Toms Cabin      Ã‚   Frederick Douglass was arguably the most prominent African American abolitionist during the mid-19th century. He established his notoriety through his narrative entitled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave published in 1845. Frederick Douglass also produced an African American newspaper, Frederick Douglass Paper, which highlighted the reception and critiques of Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin. FrederickRead MoreNarrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass1068 Words   |  5 Pages Frederick Douglass: Narrative Of The Life Of F.D Frederick Douglass wrote several books, but one of his best selling books was: The narrative life of Frederick Douglass. This book talks about how crucial Frederick’s life was since a child. His mother was Harriet bailey, a dark skinned women who was a pure breed African. His Father was a white man, rumors were circling that his master was his father. Since a newborn he was separated from his mother, which means that he couldn’t remember how herRead MoreThe Life of A Slave Girl by Harriet A. Jacobs Essay1272 Words   |  6 Pagesseparate books or articles most slaves were born in the last years of the slave regime or during the Civil War. Some Slaves told about their experiences on plantations, in cities, and on small farms. Slave narratives are one of the only ways that people today know about the way slaves lived, what they did each day, and what they went through. There are three famous slave narratives in history, Incidents in The Life of A Slave Girl by Harrie t A. Jacobs, Narrative of The Life of Frederick DouglassRead MoreNarrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave1251 Words   |  6 PagesJustine Boonstra Frey- Period 1 MAJOR WORKS REVIEW AP Lang Version GENERAL 1. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. 1845. New York: Fine, 2003. Print. 2. Autobiography STRUCTURE 1. Point of View: First Person, the narrator Frederick Douglass 2. Relationship of POV to meaning: 3. Plot Structure a. Exposition: Douglass describes that his mother was a black slave, and his father was a white man. Thus, he was born into slavery and was sent off toRead MoreRhetorical Analysis Of Douglass s The Great Gatsby 1208 Words   |  5 PagesMessage: Douglass wants his audience, the American public, to know that he earned his freedom. Freedom is something that each of us must look for in order to be truly â€Å"free.† Through the personal experiences of his own life as a slave and his perseverance to become educated, Douglass shows us that it requires persistence and bravery to look for freedom. He also illustrates to the audience that there is no real end in this search for freedom until slavery is fully abolished. Purpose: Douglass wroteRead More The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave1267 Words   |  6 PagesThe Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave was written by Frederick Douglass himself. He was born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland in approximately 1817. He has, †¦no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it (47). He became known as an eloquent speaker for the cause of the abolitionists. Having himself been kept as a slave until he escaped from Maryland in 1838Read MoreThe Autobiography By Frederick Douglass1632 Words   |  7 Pagesby Frederick Douglass is very interesting. It talks about his life and his contribution to the abolition movement. This is an incredible tell perseverance to be with his love that is free in the north and to help others that have been in captivity. Before the book starts he gives a pretty face by William Lloyd Garrison and a letter from Wend ale Phillips. He s done this because he wants people to know that he is a runaway slave that is smart and able to write in his book is his own book. AndRead MoreRay Bradburys Fahrenheit 4511020 Words   |  5 Pagesowning books is illegal, and the penalty for their possession—to watch them combust into ashes. Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, illustrates just such a society. Bradbury wrote his science fiction in 1951 depicting a society of modern age with technology abundant in this day and age—even though such technology was unheard of in his day. Electronics such as headphones, wall-sized television sets, and automatic doors were all a significant part of Bradbury’s description of humanity. Human life styles

Deception Point Page 43 Free Essays

Norah took a final look up the incline, grateful for the illuminated pathway home. As she looked out, though, something odd occurred. For an instant, one of the nearest flares entirely disappeared from view. We will write a custom essay sample on Deception Point Page 43 or any similar topic only for you Order Now Before Norah could worry that it was dying out, the flare reappeared. If Norah didn’t know better, she would assume something had passed between the flare and her location. Certainly nobody else was out here†¦ unless of course the administrator had started to feel guilty and sent a NASA team out after them. Somehow Norah doubted it. Probably nothing, she decided. A gust of wind had momentarily killed the flame. Norah returned to the GPR. â€Å"All lined up?† Tolland shrugged. â€Å"I think so.† Norah went over to the control device on the sled and pressed a button. A sharp buzz emanated from the GPR and then stopped. â€Å"Okay,† she said. â€Å"Done.† â€Å"That’s it?† Corky said. â€Å"All the work is in setup. The actual shot takes only a second.† Onboard the sled, the heat-transfer printer had already begun to hum and click. The printer was enclosed in a clear plastic covering and was slowly ejecting a heavy, curled paper. Norah waited until the device had completed printing, and then she reached up under the plastic and removed the printout. They’ll see, she thought, carrying the printout over to the flare so that everyone could see it. There won’t be any saltwater. Everyone gathered around as Norah stood over the flare, clutching the printout tightly in her gloves. She took a deep breath and uncurled the paper to examine the data. The image on the paper made her recoil in horror. â€Å"Oh, God!† Norah stared, unable to believe what she was looking at. As expected, the printout revealed a clear cross section of the water-filled meteorite shaft. But what Norah had never expected to see was the hazy grayish outline of a humanoid form floating halfway down the shaft. Her blood turned to ice. â€Å"Oh God†¦ there’s a body in the extraction pit.† Everyone stared in stunned silence. The ghostlike body was floating head down in the narrow shaft. Billowing around the corpse like some sort of cape was an eerie shroudlike aura. Norah now realized what the aura was. The GPR had captured a faint trace of the victim’s heavy coat, what could only be a familiar, long, dense camel hair. â€Å"It’s†¦ Ming,† she said in a whisper. â€Å"He must have slipped†¦.† Norah Mangor never imagined that seeing Ming’s body in the extraction pit would be the lesser of the two shocks the printout would reveal, but as her eyes traced downward in the shaft, she saw something else. The ice beneath the extraction shaft†¦ Norah stared. Her first thought was that something had gone wrong with the scan. Then, as she studied the image more closely, an unsettling realization began to grow, like the storm gathering around them. The paper’s edges flapped wildly in the wind as she turned and looked more intently at the printout. But†¦ that’s impossible! Suddenly, the truth came crashing down. The realization felt like it was going to bury her. She forgot all about Ming. Norah now understood. The saltwater in the shaft! She fell to her knees in the snow beside the flare. She could barely breathe. Still clutching the paper in her hands, she began trembling. My God†¦ it didn’t even occur to me. Then, with a sudden eruption of rage, she spun her head in the direction of the NASA habisphere. â€Å"You bastards!† she screamed, her voice trailing off in the wind. â€Å"You goddamned bastards!† In the darkness, only fifty yards away, Delta-One held his CrypTalk device to his mouth and spoke only two words to his controller. â€Å"They know.† 49 Norah Mangor was still kneeling on the ice when the bewildered Michael Tolland pulled the Ground Penetrating Radar’s printout from her trembling hands. Shaken from seeing the floating body of Ming, Tolland tried to gather his thoughts and decipher the image before him. He saw the cross section of the meteorite shaft descending from the surface down to two hundred feet into the ice. He saw Ming’s body floating in the shaft. Tolland’s eyes drifted lower now, and he sensed something was amiss. Directly beneath the extraction shaft, a dark column of sea ice extended downward to the open ocean below. The vertical pillar of saltwater ice was massive-the same diameter as the shaft. â€Å"My God!† Rachel yelled, looking over Tolland’s shoulder. â€Å"It looks like the meteorite shaft continues all the way through the ice shelf into the ocean!† Tolland stood transfixed, his brain unable to accept what he knew to be the only logical explanation. Corky looked equally alarmed. Norah shouted, â€Å"Someone drilled up under the shelf!† Her eyes were wild with rage. â€Å"Someone intentionally inserted that rock from underneath the ice!† Although the idealist in Tolland wanted to reject Norah’s words, the scientist in him knew she could easily be right. The Milne Ice Shelf was floating over the ocean with plenty of clearance for a submersible. Because everything weighed significantly less underwater, even a small submersible not much bigger than Tolland’s one-man research Triton easily could have transported the meteorite in its payload arms. The sub could have approached from the ocean, submerged beneath the ice shelf, and drilled upward into the ice. Then, it could have used an extending payload arm or inflatable balloons to push the meteorite up into the shaft. Once the meteorite was in place, the ocean water that had risen into the shaft behind the meteorite would begin to freeze. As soon as the shaft closed enough to hold the meteorite in place, the sub could retract its arm and disappear, leaving Mother Nature to seal the remainder of the tunnel and erase all traces of the deception. â€Å"But why?† Rachel demanded, taking the printout from Tolland and studying it. â€Å"Why would someone do that? Are you sure your GPR is working?† â€Å"Of course, I’m sure! And the printout perfectly explains the presence of phosphorescent bacteria in the water!† Tolland had to admit, Norah’s logic was chillingly sound. Phosphorescent dinoflagellates would have followed instinct and swum upward into the meteorite shaft, becoming trapped just beneath the meteorite and freezing into the ice. Later, when Norah heated the meteorite, the ice directly beneath would have melted, releasing the plankton. Again, they would swim upward, this time reaching the surface inside the habisphere, where they would eventually die for lack of saltwater. â€Å"This is crazy!† Corky yelled. â€Å"NASA has a meteorite with extraterrestrial fossils in it. Why would they care where it’s found? Why would they go to the trouble to bury it under an ice shelf?† â€Å"Who the hell knows,† Norah fired back, â€Å"but GPR printouts don’t lie. We were tricked. That meteorite isn’t part of the Jungersol Fall. It was inserted in the ice recently. Within the last year, or the plankton would be dead!† She was already packing up her GPR gear on the sled and fastening it down. â€Å"We’ve to get back and tell someone! The President is about to go public with all the wrong data! NASA tricked him!† â€Å"Wait a minute!† Rachel yelled. â€Å"We should at least run another scan to make sure. None of this makes sense. Who will believe it?† â€Å"Everyone,† Norah said, preparing her sled. â€Å"When I march into the habisphere and drill another core sample out of the bottom of the meteorite shaft and it comes up as saltwater ice, I guarantee you everyone will believe this!† Norah disengaged the brakes on the equipment sled, redirected it toward the habisphere, and started back up the slope, digging her crampons into the ice and pulling the sled behind her with surprising ease. She was a woman on a mission. How to cite Deception Point Page 43, Essay examples

Role of Colour in Impressionism Essay Example For Students

Role of Colour in Impressionism Essay In this essay, I shall try to examine how great a role colour played in the evolution of Impressionism. Impressionism in itself can be seen as a linkage in a long chain of procedures, which led the art to the point it is today. In order to do so, colour in Impressionism needs to be placed within an art-historical context for us to see more clearly the role it has played in the evolution of modern painting. In the late eighteenth century, for example, ancient Greek and Roman examples provided the classical sources in art. At the same time, there was a revolt against the formalism of Neo-Classicism. The accepted style was characterised by appeal to reason and intellect, with a demand for a well-disciplined order and restraint in the work. The decisive Romantic movement emphasized the individual’s right in self-expression, in which imagination and emotion were given free reign and stressed colour rather than line; colour can be seen as the expression for emotion, whereas line is the expression of rationality. Their style was painterly rather than linear; colour offered a freedom that line denied. Among the Romanticists who had a strong influence on Impressionism were Joseph Mallord William Turner and Eugne Delacroix. In Turner’s works, colour took precedence over the realistic portrayal of form; Delacroix led the way for the Impressionists to use unmixed hues. The transition between Romanticism and Impressionism was provided by a small group of artists who lived and worked at the village of Barbizon. Their naturalistic style was based entirely on their observation and painting of nature in the open air. In their natural landscape subjects, they paid careful attention to the colourful expression of light and atmosphere. For them, colour was as important as composition, and this visual approach, with its appeal to emotion, gradually displaced the more studied and forma, with its appeal to reason. Impressionism grew out of and followed immediately after the Barbizon school. A distinctive feature of the work of the Impressionists was the application of paint in touches of mostly pure colour rather than blended; their pictures appeared more luminous and colourful even than the work of Delacroix, from whom they had learned the technique. To the modern eye, the accepted paintings of the salon artists of the day seem pale and dull. Like the paintings of the Barbizon school, much of their painting was done outdoors, in an attempt to capture the fleeting impression of the play of light at a certain moment. The first Impressionist Exhibition was held in 1874. Prominent among the Impressionists were Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Paul Czanne, Eugne Boudin, and Gustave Caillebotte. Impressionism is thought to be ‘†¦the fruit of the scientific thought and research of the nineteenth century’ . One of the principles of the movement was that they substituted the natural chiaroscuro of the colour that was based on the solar spectrum for one that was based more on tones of black and white. It was this principle that has affected painting ever since and most profoundly . It was accompanied by the shock of discovering something new, although earlier paintings, such as those of the Barbizon School had been heading towards the same direction. Most people, even today, relate light with the colour white and darkness with black. Painters of the past have used black in an effort to dim a specific colour, and white to order to lighten it. Scientific knowledge has left us with a complete understanding of how the human eye works, and optics has given painters the opportunity to manipulate light more effortlessly. Thus, we have learnt that white light can be resolved into a scale of colours ranging from violet to red, that black is the reversal of the colour due to its ability to absorb all rays of colour, and that pure white and black exist only in theory . Even a surface that appears to be white to us has the slightest tint of yellow, purple or red; likewise, even the dimmest black has tints of colour in it. It was the awareness of all these details that led the Impressionists into excluding black from their