Monday, March 16, 2020

Definition and Examples of Polyptoton in Rhetoric

Definition and Examples of Polyptoton in Rhetoric Definition Polyptoton (pronounced  po-LIP-ti-tun)  is a  rhetorical term for the repetition of words derived from the same root but with different endings. Adjective: polyptotonic. Also known as  paregmenon. Polyptoton is a figure of emphasis. In the Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics (1996), Hadumod Bussmann points out that the double play of varying sound and contrasting meaning in many aphorisms is achieved through the use of polyptoton.  Janie Steen notes that polyptoton is  one of the most frequently employed types of repetition in the Bible (Verse and Virtuosity, 2008). Pronunciation: po-LIP-ti-tun EtymologyFrom the Greek, use of the same word in many  cases Examples and Observations I dreamed a dream in times gone byWhen hope was highAnd life worth living.(Herbert Kretzmer and Claude-Michel Schà ¶nberg, I Dreamed a Dream. Les Miserables, 1985)Choosy Mothers Choose Jif(commercial slogan for Jif peanut butter)To imagine the unimaginable is the highest  use of the imagination.(Cynthia Ozick, The Paris Review, 1986)I have no sharp taste for acquiring things, but it is not necessary to desire things in order to acquire them.(E.B. White, Goodbye to Forty-Eighth Street. Essays of E.B. White. Harper, 1977)The things you own end up owning you.(Brad Pitt in the movie Fight Club, 1999)[S]he now mourned someone who even before his death had made her a mourner.(Bernard Malamud, The Natural, 1952)Flattery is so necessary to all of us that we flatter one another just to be flattered in return.(Marjorie Bowen)To be ignorant of ones ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.(A. Bronson Alcott, Conversations. Table-Talk, 1877)By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of be coming idiotic oneself.(Gustave Flaubert) The young are generally full of revolt, and are often pretty revolting about it.(Mignon McLaughlin, The Complete Neurotics Notebook. Castle Books, 1981)[T]he signora at every grimace and at every bow smiled a little smile and bowed a little bow.(Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers, 1857)Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;To be understood as to understand;To be loved as to love;For it is in giving that we receive;It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.(Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi)Morality is moral only when it is voluntary.(Lincoln Steffens)Facing it- always facing it- thats the way to get through. Face it.(Attributed to  Joseph Conrad)A good ad should be like a good sermon: it must not only comfort the afflicted; it also must afflict the comfortable.(Bernice Fitzgibbon)Friendly Americans win American friends.(Slogan of the United States Travel Service in the 1960s)Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.(St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:51-54) His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars.(William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, December 1950)Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.(Norman Mailer, Cannibals and Christians, 1966)Shakespearean Polyptoton- ...love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove...(William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)- Shakespeare takes great interest  in this  device; it increases patterning without wearying the ear, and it  takes  advantage of the differing functions, energies, and positionings that different word classes are permitted  in speech. Schaar [in An Elizabethan Sonnet Problem, 1960] says that Shakespeare uses polyptoton almost to excess, using derivatives of more than a hundred stems in the sonnets.(The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms, 3rd ed., ed. by  Roland Greene and  Stephen Cushman. Princeton University Press, 2016)Polyptoton and the BeatlesPlease Please Me [a song by Jo hn Lennon recorded by the Beatles]  is a classic case of polyptoton. The first please is please the interjection, as in Please mind the gap. The second please is a verb meaning to give pleasure, as in This pleases me. Same word: two different parts of speech.(Mark Forsyth,  The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase. Berkley, 2013) Polyptoton as an Argumentative StrategyIt is sometimes the goal of an argument to take a concept accepted by an audience in one role or category of a sentence action and transfer it to others, an agent becoming an action or an action becoming an attribute and so on. This work is epitomized by polyptoton, the grammatical morphing of the word, as Aristotle explains repeatedly in the Topics... He points out, for example, how peoples judgments follow a term as it changes from one part of speech to another. So, for example, an audience who believes that acting justly is better than acting courageously will also believe that justice is better than courage and vice versa... [T]he Topics is not concerned with immutable rules of validity but with the patterns of reasoning that most people follow most of the time, and most people will indeed follow the logic of polyptotonic morphing as Aristotle describes it.(Jeanne Fahnestock, Rhetorical Figures in Science. Oxford University Press, 1999)

Saturday, February 29, 2020

Does Applying Early Decision Increase My Chances?

Students with their hearts set on attending a specific college often want to know how they can increase their odds of acceptance. Will attending summer programs give them a boost? How about contacting a local alumna? We hear these questions a lot, but there’s one we hear far more often than all the others—will applying early decision increase my chances? It was previously believed that applying early decision or early action offered no significant advantage to applying regular decision at most colleges. Is this still the case? Keep reading to find out how applying early decision can impact your odds of acceptance. It’s easy enough to look up acceptance rates, and anyone who does so will notice that most schools have higher acceptance rates for early decision applicants, sometimes significantly so. To the untrained eye, this might make it seem like early decision is an easier round of admissions, but this ignores a big piece of the puzzle. Students who apply early decision might be more qualified overall than those who apply regular decision. After all, they are the students who have decided months ahead of time where they want to attend college. Maybe this also means they are the same students who have been ahead of other curves throughout their high school years. While it’s hard to find statistics about the average SAT or GPA of early decision applicant pools, it’s safe to say that students who apply early are forward thinking planners who pay close attention to detail. Could this alone account for the sometimes very large discrepancy between acceptance rates? At , we have experience working with thousands of college hopefuls and we have access to thousands of other data points gathered through our own research. While we used to believe that the higher acceptance rates of early decision programs were accounted for by more highly qualified applicants, we now believe that the difference in acceptance rates between early and regular decision cannot entirely be accounted for by differences in the applicant pool. Our data shows that applicants across the board have a higher chance of gaining acceptance when they apply through early decision, even when differences in candidate strength are accounted for. This means that the average student is more likely to get in when he or she applies early decision than when the same student applies regular decision to the same school.    Estimating your chance of getting into a college is not easy in today’s competitive environment. Thankfully, with our state-of-the-art software and data, we can analyze your academic and extracurricular profile and estimate your chances. Our profile analysis tool can also help you identify the improvement you need to make to enter your dream school. Early decision applicants are a sure thing for colleges, many of which want to accurately predict their yield. Yield is an important factor for colleges. Essentially, it is the percent of accepted students who end up enrolling. Not only is this an important factor to predict accurately for financial purposes (since a full class brings more tuition), but it is also weighed by many college rankings. Early decision applicants help a college to more accurately predict yield because they have committed to attending even before they are offered an acceptance. As Karen Richardson, the dean of undergraduate admissions and enrollment management at Tufts says, â€Å"The biggest difference between ED and students is that those who apply ED have already decided that Tufts is the place that they want to be. As the ED pool has grown and gotten stronger, it’s difficult to say ‘no’ to good students who are good fits and who have made the commitment to attend if accepted.† Richardson goes on to note that Tufts specifically does not offer Early Action, because its non-binding nature makes yield projections difficult. With so many qualified candidates now applying through early decision programs, it’s easy to see why colleges are apt to favor them. In fact, at many schools, early decision applicants are accepted at rates 10-12% higher than regular decision applicants. While it doesn’t offer as significant a boost as early decision, most early action programs still provide some admissions advantage. For Single-Choice Early Action or Restrictive Early Action programs, the admissions benefits can be around 6-8%, while for normal Early Action, the admissions benefits hover around 4-6%. While these might seem negligible, keep in mind that the overall acceptance rate at many top schools is now below 10%. A 6 point advantage can be significant when we’re talking about such low acceptance rates. Early action programs probably don’t offer as big of an advantage as early decision because they don’t offer as big of an advantage to colleges, either. Early action, even single-choice or restrictive early action, still leave room for accepted students to change their mind and attend another school. While the applicant’s demonstrated interest is still seen as an advantage to admissions committees, it isn’t as significant as the sure bet that early decision applicants represent. Of course, to every rule there is an exception, and this is no different. While most colleges do accept early decision and even early action students at higher rates, this isn’t true of all schools across the board. Most notably, the early action acceptance rate at MIT is just 6.9%, compared to the regular decision acceptance rate of 6.7%. So, while most colleges do favor early decision candidates, the degree to which this occurs varies from one school to another, and at some schools, it can even be insignificant. To learn more about optimizing your chances of getting into your top choice school, consider enlisting the help of ’s Applications Guidance service. Here, you will be paired with a personal admissions specialist from a top a college who can provide step-by-step guidance through the entire application process.

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Exam Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Exam - Essay Example weighted-average cost of capital for a firm with the following sources of funds and corresponding required rates of return: $5 million common stock at 16 percent, $500,000 preferred stock at 10 percent, and $3 million debt at 9 percent. All amounts are listed at market values and the firms tax rate is 35 percent. 3- Firms A and B intend to merge and Firm A has calculated the NPV of the merger to be $2 million after paying $8 million for Firm B. If Firm A had a pre-merger value of $10 million and Firm B had a pre-merger value of $6 million, calculate the value of the merged entity, as well as the cost of the merger. 4- Circular File stock is selling for $25 a share. You see that call options on the stock with exercise price of $20 are selling at $3. What should you do? What will happen to the option price as investors identify this opportunity? Then you observe that put options on Circular File with exercise price $30 are selling for $4. What should you do? In the first case, I will be exercising the call option since it gives me the intrinsic benefit of $2 ($25 - $20 - $3). My total cost of the stock would be $23 however; I will still earn benefit of $2 as compared to market where the stock is selling at $25. When other investors would see this opportunity, there are two possibilities to happen. Firstly, the current share price is likely to reduce to $23 or secondly, the value of call option may increase to $5. In case of put option, I will be exercising the put option as it will allow me to generate the intrinsic benefit of $1 ($30 - $25 - $4). I would be purchasing the stock at a total cost of $29 i.e. $25 current price plus $4 the value of put option. I would then be selling the stock at $30, which would earn me $1

Saturday, February 1, 2020

Biblical Writings Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Biblical Writings - Essay Example "Torah" is a Hebrew term meaning 'teaching' or 'instruction', which is used to refer to the Five Books of Moses, otherwise known as Pentateuch, which include Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. However, the term is also used to refer to the entire Jewish bible and to the entire Jewish law and teachings, in its broadest sense. The Talmud may be realized as one of the central texts of conventional Judaism which incorporates the rabbinic teachings concerning Jewish law, ethics, customs and history, and it has two components: Mishnah and Gemara. The Hebrew term Mishnah (or Mishna), which means 'repetition', can be comprehended as the earliest written redaction of the Jewish oral traditions and it can refer to the entire tradition of the Oral Torah. The second component of the Talmud, known as the Gemara, is a collection of rabbinical commentaries and studies of the Mishnah. The terms such as Hebrew Bible, Jewish scripture, Old Testament, and First Testament are closely c onnected, because all these refer to the same scripture in different traditions. Thus, the Hebrew Bible refers to the books of the Jewish Bible (also known as Tanakh), which is known as the Old Testament in Christian Biblical canon. Similarly, First Testament is another term used for the familiar term Old Testament, referring to the first section of the Christian Biblical canon. Therefore, Tanakh, Torah, Mishnah, Gemara, Talmud, Hebrew Bible, Jewish scripture, Old Testament, and First Testament are important terms used to refer to the various Scriptures, books, traditions etc in the Jewish and Christian religion. A profound source criticism of the Bible refers to significant designations such as J (Jahwist), E (Elohist), P (Priestly), D (Deutoronomist), and Q (Quelle) and these terms denotes the major sources of the Old Testament and the New Testament. One of the major developments in source criticism of the Bible has been the "documentary hypothesis", according to which the first five books of the Old Testament ((known as the Pentateuch) were comprised of four major sources such as J (Jahwist), E (Elohist), P (Priestly), and D (Deutoronomist). The Jahwist (J), one of the four major sources of the Torah, is the oldest source according to the "documentary hypothesis" and it refers to God as Yahweh. The second source of the Torah, known as the Elohist (E), refers to God as Elohim and presents God as less anthropomorphic to Yahweh of the earlier Jahwist source. The most recent of the four chief sources of the Torah is the Priestly Source (P) emphasizes the laws of Moses and priestly duties. The fourth source of the Torah, i.e. the Deuteronomist (D), considers the texts of Scripture as products of human intellect. Therefore, the Jahwist, the Elohist, the Priestly, and the Deutoronomist are the four major sources of the Torah, according to the "documentary hypothesis". It is also important to recognize these four sources were in the long run combined into the Pentateuch to organize the first five books of the Old Testament. Source criticism of the New Testament introduces one to the term Q (Quelle), which refers to an earlier, lost source of the Gospels. Significantly, the German word 'Quelle' means 'source' and this lost textual source was central to the origin of the Gospels, especially the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. Part

Friday, January 24, 2020

Can there be a grand unified theory of Psychology? Discuss. :: essays research papers

Can there be a Grand Unified Theory of Personality? Bradley Templeton Scobie No single theory of personality can adequately explain the full function of human behaviour. Psychodynamic approaches often come under a lot of criticism as they fail to be explicit about the underlying bases of the theory. Cognitive theories are not very comfortable with explaining emotions and behavioural theories have difficulty explaining the mechanisms of improvements. It has become quite clear in the field of Psychology, and to some Psychologists like Windy Dryden (Individual Therapy) explicitly clear that there is a missing linkand that somewhere amongst the mass of theories on personality, the answer is staring them in the face. These Psychologists often practice a form of Psychology called Eclectism, which takes a little out of each theory and unites it during therapy with a client. You can’t use this sort of therapy as a theory however because all the Eclectic Psychologist is doing is ignoring the fundamental ideological underpinnings of the particular theories he is using and taking the parts relevant to their client in therapy This essay will explore one of the possible combinations of theories on personality and explain how it can be applied in practical therapy. Eysenkes theory of biological bases in behaviour is the base of this essays approach. It provides the rules within which the other two personality theories (Kellys Personal Construct Theory and Maslows Hierarchy of Human needs) can function. Using Eysenkes theory on extravert and introvert behaviour it is possible to determine from birth, very general traits about which a person is willing to work within (aggression, anxiety tolerance and sociability etc) which is where this essay believes Kelly slightly misunderstands this concept and defines it as his Range Corrollary. Really the person is experiencing a fundamental shift from Extravert behaviour or thinking to Introvert or vice versa which causes slight unease and can account for things like shyness etc. One of the major criticisms of Kellys Personal Construct Theory is that he finds it hard to explain why constructs are laid down in the first place and why one would rigourously defend the threat to a core construct. What kick starts the Construct system into defending itself when motivation is clearly and explicitly lacking in his theory? Eyesenkes theory provides an amicable solution. If we could assume that this information was genetically coded in to the cells at birth then this no longer becomes an issue and we can explain how’s and why the constructs are laid down to a loose genetic template i.

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Doris Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’ and ‘Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ by Robert Louis Stevenson Essay

The concept of Simone de Beauvoir’s myth of women discussed in ‘The Second Sex’ was still very much prevalent in the 1960s when ‘To Room nineteen’ was set and certainly at the time of ‘Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’. In the 1960s, in accordance with the second wave of feminism, women were thought to be more conscious and aware of their rights as a woman because of the media (Hanisch)1 and this is what we, as a reader could easily deduce from the beginning of Doris Lessing’s ‘To room nineteen’. This new- found consciousness however some would argue was not the case during the 1960s and is certainly not the case in the text. ‘The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ is a male dominated thriller where female instabilities are never exposed as females are hardly ever mentioned (Shuo and Dan, 2012)2. This Victorian marginalization of women was very common at the time and also links to woman being classified, according to Simone de Beauvoir in ‘The Second Sex’ as the ‘Other’ (de Beauvoir, 1949 p. 16)3 and not worthy of being the subject of the novella. Both texts involve the notion of a demon taking over the main character, whether this demon is a result of their own creation or a result of society. The following essay will attempt to draw similarities and differences between the two texts in relation to Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’. ‘The Second Sex’ is arguably one of the earliest attempts to tackle human history from a feminist perspective4 and expresses the idea that men fundamentally oppress women by characterizing them as the ‘Other’. It states, ‘the moment when man asserts himself as subject and a free being, the idea of ‘Other’ arises (de Beauvoir, 1949 p. 19). Although in ‘To Room Nineteen’ it would appear that both Susan and Matthew are making a joint, educated decision by Susan quitting her job to raise the children and tend to her house, it appears to be more of a decision according to social expectations instead of what Susan really wants. Without a second thought ‘Susan became pregnant [†¦] gave up her job, and they bought a house in Richmond’. This sentence structurally is placed in the middle of a  paragraph, not at the end or in a paragraph of it’s own. This would suggest that it is not a big decision that involves careful thought and planning but more something that was decided because it was the obvious decision. Susan made a ‘concession to popular decision’ or a decision that was implied by society to quit her job and a decision implied by society for Matthew to stay at work and earn an income to support the family. According to de Beauvoir, by Susan accepting her role as ‘Other’ this denies a great deal of her humanity thus culminating in her depression, hallucinations and eventual suicide. In ‘Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ as there is a distinct lack of female characters, this would imply that the males have taken the role of the ‘subject’ (de Beauvoir, 1949 p. 19) and free being as the Victorian culture would dictate. This would naturally then make the very few female characters mentioned in the novella assume the role of the object; constrained by the dominant male characters and being a type of humble, counterpart to males 5. The first mention of a female in the novella is the little girl that gets trampled. Enfield describes this encounter as â€Å"natural† (Stevenson, 1886 p. 9), which we as an audience know would clearly not be the case. The way in which Enfield blindly denies that this encounter was no accident highlights the solidarity of men 6and accentuates their power over helpless female characters. The little girl doesn’t come to great harm however does depend on others to help her this is because she is the ‘other’ (de Beauvoir, 1949); she is essentially seen as feeble and evil because men are unable to visualize themselves as such. The character of Susan, in ‘To room nineteen’ although seemingly independent and equal at the beginning of the text, becomes completely dependent towards the end. She relies on Matthew for comfort when she isn’t feeling herself and she eventually relies on him to give her the money so that she can rent out a room in a hotel; room nineteen. ‘She only had to run across and fling herself into them, onto his hard, warm chest, and melt into herself, into Susan’. This shows how Susan relies on Matthew to feel herself, without him she feels like a stranger: soulless, nothing. ‘She cannot think of herself without man† (de Beauvoir, 1949 p.16). At this point however she feels too  distant from him that that place in his arms isn’t hers any longer and she eventually feels like ‘[†¦] an imposter’. In addition, although being dependant on Matthew, Susan is given the freedom to essentially do what she wants. Matthew gives her the money for the room, allows them to have an au pair girl and is even accepting of Susan’s fabricated lover. This would, at the surface go against de Beauvoir’s view of the ‘Other’ being a person who is not free. On closer examination however this statement seems to be fundamentally flawed. To Susan, even when alone in the house with Mrs. Parkes, she still feels a certain restraint and unavoidable attachment to her life and worries. When she first rents room nineteen, the texts quotes ‘She was alone. She was alone. She was alone.’ The repetition of this highlights how unhappy she is around the distractions and obligations of real, family life. It also points out how women, without the input of men can be completely happy without them, by themselves. In this text however Susan obviously cannot find complete happiness as she is tied to her family and tied to the cultural expectations of the time. When she talks to Miss. Townsend she conveys genuine jealousy and want for a life in solitude, ‘I wish I was absolutely alone in the world, like you’. This draws on the traditional objective in life to marry and have children not actually being the ideal for some women. In fact, being alone for Susan is the ideal and what we can note from this is even today, this can be the ideal for other women too. Matthew would be seen to have freedom and is definitely not concerned with conforming to social expectations when he so openly discusses his affairs. This may be because his role as a man dictates that he can behave how he likes and other woman, as they are the ‘Other’ (de Beauvoir, 1949), will not question him. When Susan questions as to why Matthew does not feel the same depression as her it states, ‘The good marriage, the house, the children, depended just as much on his voluntary bondage as it did on hers. But why did he not feel bound?’ This could arguably be because there is an unspoken pressure on Susan, as a  woman from society, which is unknown to the couple. This makes all choices, seemingly decided by them both, actually decided by society. This unknown pressure on Susan is why Matthew doesn’t feel bound. The idea of freedom is also prevalent in ‘Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’. If the women detailed in the novella are of low social status, thus assuming the role of the object and other which is limited and oppressed then arguably Dr. Jekyll should be completely free and not restrained by these classifications. The monster that is Mr. Hyde however slowly takes over Dr. Jekyll until he is no more and nothing but the monster that remains. ‘This brief condescension to my evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul’, marks the point where Dr. Jekyll knows that the monster will soon completely take over and thus Dr. Jekyll will no longer have any control or freedom over his body and over his actions. The novella describes the duality of man and not the duality of women. The Victorian era in which it was written would suggest that this is because women are just pleasing objects to be viewed and do not have a complex nature about them; they are submissive creatures that will adhere to the role that men give them and are essentially unsophisticated. De Beauvoir states a woman’s function is, ‘simply what man decrees; thus she is called the sex’ (de Beauvoir, 1949 p. 16) by which we can deduce that in terms of the novella, the female characters are only there to serve the men, not having a brain of their own and to be complacent in all aspects of their lives. This quotation also has sexual connotations. If women are called ‘the sex’ then this could mean that women appear to men, chiefly as sexual beings. De Beauvoir states that there ‘is an absolute human type, the masculine. Woman has ovaries, a uterus; these peculiarities imprison her in subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature’, (de Beauvoir, 1949, p.15) meaning that women are discriminated against because of their sexual organs which, through physical and hormonal differentiation paves the way for female oppression. The character of Susan in ‘To room nineteen’ towards the end of the text doesn’t feel like a woman any longer. On thinking about  when all of her children are ‘off her hands’ during school term it states, ‘She would turn herself back into being a woman with a life of her own’. Her having children and her using her reproductive organs to produce children makes her feel like t hat is all she is; a mother, a womb but not a woman (de Beauvoir, 1949 p. 13). If having children then for Susan means that you are not a woman then this does pose the reader with the question, ‘what makes a woman?’ De Beauvoir states, ‘One is not born but rather becomes a woman’ (de Beauvoir, 1949). For Susan, this could mean that the qualities of a woman are not innate but rather learned either from society or from oneself. De Beauvoir believes that all beings have the right to define themselves however for Susan this seems to already have been done for her by society even though she appears seemingly free. Her decisions are always in accordance to society’s expectations. She wants desperately to become the woman that she was before she quit her job and had children however this is impossible for her, resulting in the loss of her voice as a character and the physical loss in voice from her suicide. This idea of voice is important, as although Susan is the main character of the text and her feelings and attitudes are foregrounded, this is not the case in her communication with others. She feels like she needs to lie to almost every other character in the text, most probably because she feels like her thoughts are too different than the social norm to be voiced. When Matthew knows that Susan is hiding something, Susan ‘[†¦] Understood that he hoped she did have a lover, he was begging her to say so, because otherwise it would be too terrifying’. This highlights how isolated she is feeling. Like the demon that eventually takes over Dr. Jekyll, a devil takes over Susan and she feels like her once loving, equal partner who she so carefully waiting longer than her friends to marry is now someone who she fears will ridicule her and be unaccepting of the devil voice that slowly takes over her. Lessing describes Susan’s devil as being ‘perhaps a middle-aged man pretending to be young’. The  characterization of the devil being a man, could be seen as a metaphor for the males and men in society, although not voicing their opinions out loud any more, their views have become rooted in women’s minds thus again highlighting this unspoken pressure. The comparison to the devil being a ‘middle-aged man pretending to be young’ could suggest how even though women’s suffrage is moving forward and men are becoming more accepting of woman’s rights, they are always going to have the slightly discriminative view of the older generation as they have been raised on these views. It could be suggested that it is the lack of a significant female voice in ‘Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ that drives men to become their dark side. Thus, Stevenson deliberately decided to foreground the voice of men and leave out any major details about the female characters. The novella ultimately illuminates the instabilities of men, which, in turn, highlights the stabilities of women. It was not a woman that led to the eventual downfall of Dr. Jekyll it was the monster that the man created or the monster that was always a part of the man. On the surface, ‘To Room Nineteen’ tells the story of an unfulfilled woman in 1960s suburbia and ‘Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ deals with issues about the duality of man, without mention of women however as previously stated there are deeper issues entailed in both. Both texts deal with the problems surrounding female identity and voice and the consequences when this voice isn’t expressed. ‘To Room Nineteen’, being written by a woman, questions the voice of women by letting the reader know her inner thoughts but not letting other characters know them. ‘Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ being written by a man cleverly underlines the questions around the position of women in society by hardly including them in the novella at all which was very common for literature in the Victorian culture. Both use different techniques however it could be argued that the main idea that can be taken from a feminist reading of these texts is that in order for equality of genders to progress and for females to be content, they must not allow their feelings to be suppressed by individuals or society as a  whole. The characters in both texts choose to ignore the suppression of women and Simone de Beauvoir in ‘The Second Sex’ chooses to bring them to our attention. In order to maintain a healthy and balanced existence, men and woman need to be equal and not be classed as the ‘other’ or the ‘object’. Without this, men and women are destined to fail.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Was Archaeopteryx a Bird or a Dinosaur

On the face of it, Archaeopteryx wasnt much different from any other feathered dinosaur of the Mesozoic Era: a small, sharp-toothed, two-legged, barely airworthy dino-bird that feasted on bugs and small lizards. Thanks to a conflux of historical circumstance, though, for the last century or so Archaeopteryx has persisted in the public imagination as the first true bird, even though this creature retained some distinctly reptilian characteristics--and almost certainly wasnt directly ancestral to any bird living today. (See also 10 Facts About Archaeopteryx and How Did Feathered Dinosaurs Learn to Fly?) Archaeopteryx Was Discovered Too Early to Be Fully Understood Every now and then, a fossil discovery hits the zeitgeist--that is, contemporary trends in prevailing thought--square on the head. That was the case with Archaeopteryx, the exquisitely preserved remains of which were unearthed barely two years after Charles Darwin published his masterwork, On The Origin of Species, in the mid-19th century. Simply put, evolution was in the air, and the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx specimens discovered in Germanys Solnhofen fossil beds appeared to capture the precise moment in the history of life when the very first birds evolved. The trouble is, all of this happened in the early 1860s, well before paleontology (or biology, for that matter) had become a fully modern science. At that time, only a handful of dinosaurs had been discovered, so there was limited scope for understanding and interpreting Archaeopteryx; for example, the vast Liaoning fossil beds in China, which have yielded numerous feathered dinosaurs of the late Cretaceous period, had yet to be excavated. None of this would have affected Archaeopteryxs standing as the first dino-bird, but it at least would have put this discovery in its proper context. Let's Weigh the Evidence: Was Archaeopteryx a Dinosaur or a Bird? Archaeopteryx is known in such detail, thanks to the dozen or so anatomically perfect Solnhofen fossils, that it offers a wealth of talking points when it comes to deciding if this creature was a dinosaur or a bird. Heres the evidence in favor of the bird interpretation: Size. Archaeopteryx adults weighed one or two pounds, max, about the size of a well-fed modern-day pigeon--and much less than the average meat-eating dinosaur. Feathers. Theres no doubt that Archaeopteryx was covered with feathers, and these feathers were structurally very similar (though not identical) to those of modern birds. Head and beak. The long, narrow, tapered head and beak of Archaeopteryx were also reminiscent of modern birds (though bear in mind that such similarities may be the result of convergent evolution). Now, the evidence in favor of the dinosaur interpretation: Tail. Archaeopteryx possessed a long, bony tail, a feature common to contemporary theropod dinosaurs but not seen in any birds, either extant or prehistoric. Teeth. Like its tail, the teeth of Archaeopteryx were similar to those of small, meat-eating dinosaurs. (Some later birds, like the Miocene Osteodontornis, did evolve tooth-like structures, but not true teeth.) Wing structure. A recent study of Archaeopteryx feathers and wings suggests that this animal was incapable of active, powered flight. (Of course, many modern birds, like penguins and chickens, cant fly either!) Some of the evidence vis-a-vis the classification of Archaeopteryx is much more ambiguous. For example, a recent study concludes that Archaeopteryx hatchlings required three years to attain adult size, a virtual eternity in the bird kingdom. What this implies is that the metabolism of Archaeopteryx wasnt classically warm-blooded; the trouble is, meat-eating dinosaurs as a whole were almost certainly endothermic, and modern birds are, as well. Make of this evidence what you will! Archaeopteryx Is Best Classified as a Transitional Form Given the evidence listed above, the most reasonable conclusion is that Archaeopteryx was a transitional form between early theropod dinosaurs and true birds (the popular term is  missing link, but a genus represented by a dozen intact fossils can hardly be classified as missing!) Even this seemingly uncontroversial theory is not without its pitfalls, however. The trouble is that Archaeopteryx lived 150 million years ago, during the late Jurassic period, whereas the dino-birds that almost certainly evolved into modern birds lived tens of millions of years later, during the early-to-late Cretaceous period. What are we to make of this? Well, evolution has a way of repeating its tricks--so its possible that populations of dinosaurs evolved into birds not once, but two or three times during the Mesozoic Era, and only one of these branches (presumably the last) persisted into our era and gave rise to modern birds. For example, we can identify at least one dead end in bird evolution: Microraptor, a mysterious, four-winged, feathered theropod that lived in early Cretaceous Asia. Since there are no four-winged birds alive today, it seems that Microraptor was an evolutionary experiment that--if youll forgive the pun--never quite took off!