Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Essay -- essays research papers

Defining a True Hero Is a hero the one who decides to stand up when everyone else is only thinking about it? Is a hero the one who retains integrity rather than give in to the world’s everyday temptations? Is a hero the picture of courage, or an example of morals? These are the questions that arise after reading the epic story of Beowulf by an anonymous author, and the romantic tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, also written by an anonymous author. The stories describe two very different heroes. Beowulf was undoubtedly a hero, but as time advanced and the world became more complicated, what constituted a hero became more shady; therefore, while he is not anything like Beowulf, Sir Gawain is also in fact a true hero. Beowulf is a hero. That is an undeniable fact. His heroic image stands out notably because Beowulf is what could be called an active hero while Sir Gawain plays the part of a passive hero, but still a hero nonetheless. Beowulf has one duty: he must fight and win. If he succeeds, he is a hero; if he fails he is simply a failure (except when he fails at defeating the dragon because he has already proved himself and goes with honor, which is different from initially failing). In the last lines of the story the author clearly acknowledges Beowulf’s overall triumph, "Telling stories of their dead king and his greatness, his glory, praising him for heroic deeds, for a life as noble as his name." Sir Gawain on the other hand ...

Orientalism: Defined and Shown Through The Work of Henry Kissinger :: Orientalism Said Kissinger Essays

Orientalism: Defined and Shown Through The Work of Henry Kissinger Edward Said first published Orientalism in 1978 and the book has continued to open readers' eyes to the true effects of biased thought. Said carefully examines what he calls 'Orientalism' in an attempt to show how different cultures view each other and depend upon other cultures to define their own. This essay will include a brief definition of Orientalism as well as how Henry Kissinger has an Orientalist view upon developing countries, shown through numerous examples from Said's book. Given on the first few pages of his book, Edward Said allows his readers to absorb the concept of Orientalism early on in his book, adding to the definition throughout. Said presents his definition of Orientalism in three "interdependent" fashions, the first shown through the Orient's place among Western European culture: The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. [pp. 1-2] Simply put, Said claims that Orientalism represents how Europe has defined themselves against Oriental characteristics. A second form of Orientalism comes from the academic world and is still prevalent in today's society. Said states that "anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient [regardless of field of study] is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism. In a more general sense, this can be seen when academics make the "ontological and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and (most of the time) 'the Occident'" (p 2). Said states that while this form is not as common as in years past, Orientalism will exist so long as these ideas are taught. As the first of the two definitions deal with the "academic and imaginative meanings of Orientalism," the third meaning is derived from the combination of the first two. Said believes that Orientalism can also be thought of as "the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient- dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style, for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (p 3). Orientalism: Defined and Shown Through The Work of Henry Kissinger :: Orientalism Said Kissinger Essays Orientalism: Defined and Shown Through The Work of Henry Kissinger Edward Said first published Orientalism in 1978 and the book has continued to open readers' eyes to the true effects of biased thought. Said carefully examines what he calls 'Orientalism' in an attempt to show how different cultures view each other and depend upon other cultures to define their own. This essay will include a brief definition of Orientalism as well as how Henry Kissinger has an Orientalist view upon developing countries, shown through numerous examples from Said's book. Given on the first few pages of his book, Edward Said allows his readers to absorb the concept of Orientalism early on in his book, adding to the definition throughout. Said presents his definition of Orientalism in three "interdependent" fashions, the first shown through the Orient's place among Western European culture: The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. [pp. 1-2] Simply put, Said claims that Orientalism represents how Europe has defined themselves against Oriental characteristics. A second form of Orientalism comes from the academic world and is still prevalent in today's society. Said states that "anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient [regardless of field of study] is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism. In a more general sense, this can be seen when academics make the "ontological and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and (most of the time) 'the Occident'" (p 2). Said states that while this form is not as common as in years past, Orientalism will exist so long as these ideas are taught. As the first of the two definitions deal with the "academic and imaginative meanings of Orientalism," the third meaning is derived from the combination of the first two. Said believes that Orientalism can also be thought of as "the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient- dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style, for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (p 3).

Historical inaccuracies in Ridley Scott’s film `Gladiator Essay

In recent years the emergence of filmmakers who expressed interest in adapting historical events as wide-screen presentations has revitalized public interest on historical events. But the usual problem is that the general public’s view usually gets distorted due to contemporary filmmakers’ nasty habit of utilizing their artistic license to its full extent More often than not, adaptations of historical events like Ridley Scott’s Gladiator offers a glimpse of early civilizations but neglects the aspect of historical accuracy which in turn cannibalizes scholarly efforts to reconcile public interest in the actual historical events. The glitz and glamour of commercial cinema is in large part responsible for the historical inaccuracies of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Martin Winkler (17) suggests that the reason behind a historical film’s departure from its origins is that the fiction which causes the inaccuracy is what sparks viewer interest in the first place. In accordance to Winkler’s theory, the elements incorporated in Gladiator contributes to the film’s historical infidelity; its principal characters, chronology, production design, and supposed intent of exhibiting the authentic life and culture of Imperial Rome, has been diluted by the filmmakers’ aesthetics. As per what the film entails, the structure of the Gladiator’s narrative appears to be drastically shortened. Commodus’ reign was marked by numerous assassination plots, including a scheme that involved her own sister Lucilla, all accounts of murdering the treacherous emperor have neither been established nor even mentioned in the film. Historical accounts further suggest that Commodus’ reign ended 13 years later upon his assassination (Boatwright, Gargola, & Talbert 405-406), the film, on the other hand, although the time frame of events were never actually mentioned or given much attention, it illustrated that Commodus reigned no more than two years (Ward 33). The film also depicts that Emperor Commodus died in a gladiatorial duel with Maximus, obviously in a coliseum, with the intent of bringing back democracy to Rome and re-establishing the country as a republic. While the 73rd book of Cassius Dio’s eye-witness account of Roman History imparts that a wrestler who popularly went by the name Narcissus choked the life out of Commodus, and the incident happened in the emperor’s bath. The film’s characters also share an extent of inaccuracy with the actual historical personalities from which they are derived from. Evidently, from appearance to characteristics, the film’s Commodus did not reflect the Roman Emperor whom history recognized. Primarily, Commodus’, in the film, is bequeathed as a dark hared man in his mid 20s who fights with his right hand and has an underdeveloped physique (Ward 33). While the historical Emperor Commodus was and 18-year old blonde with a well developed physique and fought with his left hand (Kyle 224-227). Likewise, the actual description of Commodus’ personal traits was inconsistent with the film as the historical Commodus was notorious for his corruption, violence, and lust for blood. The film shows the aforementioned characteristics through Commodus’ fixations on sports such as beast-hunting, chariot-racing, and gladiator combat as well as his claims to have won over 1,000 battles (Ward 32). However, Scott’s incarnation contradicts the true nature of the roman emperor as he is characterized by his guiltless lack of emotion and compassion, ruthlessness, cowardice, and mental instability (Hekster 53-56). Contrary to the film’s illustration that Lucilla had an 8-year old son named Lucius Verus, Allan M. Ward’s Gladiator in Historical Perspective entails that, historically, the son who went by the name Lucius Verus died during infancy. Also, Lucilla gave birth to three children during her marriage with Lucius Verus Marcus and only one of the three children survived and grew up, an unidentified daughter who became part of the assassination scheme against Commodus. Lucilla, however, bore a son but she did so in her marriage, with Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, and the boy’s name was Aurelius Commodus Pompeianus who was 6-years old during the time of the film’s events. Similarly, the reason behind the strained father-daughter relationship between Lucilla and Marcus was the latter’s arrangements of a second marriage for his widowed daughter. Apart from the disrespecting reality that the second marriage occurred only 9 or ten moths after Verus’ demisae as well as the tremendous gap between the couple’s ages (Lucilla was 19 while Claudius Pompeianus was approximately in his 50s), Lucilla also felt undignified by the fact that her new spouse came from a family of provincial equestrians in Antioch, Syria (Ward 33-34). However, the film did not took such event into account leaving the reason behind the cold relationships between the former emperor and former Augusta vague (Ward 33-34). The film’s central character Maximus Decimus Meridius, is a fictional character based on the archetypes of able-bodied men from the far reaches of the empire’s jurisdiction who served as the materialization of Marcus Aurelius’ persisting idea of using men beneficial to the imperial cause (Ward 38). To a similar extent, Maximus’s character is attributed to two recognizable Roman political and military personalities, Marcus Nonius Macrinus who was one of Marcus Aurelius’ closest friends and Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus who was partly responsible for the Roman triumph over Marcomannic War in the film’s beginning (Popham). George Depue Hadzsits (70) suggests that a film such as Gladiator is more likely to revive interest in the subject of history considering that scholarly efforts simply produce fragments of history which does not fulfil the human yearning for knowledge. Hadzsits furthers that despite such visual spectacles’ temporal didactic value and lack of attention on the angle of accuracy, at least the interest for the subject matter is roused (Hadzsits 71). The problem with Gladiator, conversely, is that its revival of interest in Roman History, or ancient world history for that matter, seems to delineate the supposed dissemination of ancient Roman culture and alters it with norms that the filmmaker deems right. In terms of production design, the armour and weaponry worn and yielded by the gladiators appear to have a medieval design rather than Roman. Allan Ward (39) writes that gladiators had already been placed under categories like eques or horseman, provocator which is believed to be the term for challenger, murmillo or what is considered as water combatants, hoplomachus or gladiators who wield heavy weaponry, retiarius the net fighters, and secutors or contraretriarius otherwise characterized as the light armed fighters. However, Ward (39) argues that the film does not seem to highlight the distinctions between gladiators as all of the competitors generally wore the same armour with little differences in weapons of choice. Ward furthers that each fighter category comes with a different set of weapons and armour as well as a different style in combat. The matches between two gladiators are dependent of their category and fighting abilities, a secutor, for instance was often matched with a retriarius, perhaps due to the resemblance in the nature of their weapons and battle skills. Moreover, gladiators within a similar category were not paired to pit against each other, with the exception of the horsemen and the challengers. As mentioned earlier, one of the premises tied with Gladiator is the tendency to rouse interest on the life and culture of ancient Rome, but in this context the film is also inaccurate. James R. Keller (88) implicates that Gladiator imposes the American devotion to the principles of democracy. Initially, the final confrontation between Maximus and Commodus should incite the cultural importance of gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome, however, the re-arranged plot of the film that caused the conflict between the former general and the treacherous emperor to fail in its attempt to do so. The conflict then suggests that Maximus represents every working class, freedom loving American while Commodus serves as the embodiment of the corrupt, insensitive, and inconsiderate aristocrat (Keller 88). In its inaccurate entirety, Gladiator has proven itself to be more of a costume drama adaptation rather than a re-telling of an antiquated historical tale. Despite the filmmakers’ efforts to conduct research and seek consultation for relevant information about the film’s source, the direction remained in the production people’s perspective and not with the scholarly one as the motion picture continued with the re-arranged biographical information of the characters and the reformatted events in the lives of the characters. In addition, the film simply delivered a visual spectacle rather than a knowledgeable historical fact. Martin M. Winkler (204-205) writes that film producers and other individuals concerned with marketing cultural products habitually call on scholars to guide them in marketing historical films. This is, in large part, brought about by producers’ beliefs that scholar credibility is enough to amplify the promised prestige and revenue of their product. Scholarly prestige according to Winkler is mainly vital as a marketing strategy, but a more appropriate term seems to be deceptive advertising as investing parties and supposed artists convince the public of the accuracy of their distorted historical documentation with the aid of renowned experts

101 Los Boxers and Masculinity Professor Ramos Blog

101 Los Boxers and Masculinity Masculinity vs Toxic Masculinity Quick Write You are at your funeral, or the funeral of a man you respect. They say, He was a good man. What does that mean? Write for a couple of minutes on what it means to be a good man. What words come to mind? Masculinity vs Toxic Masculinity What is the difference? Los Boxers (130) Lets break down the story. Characters, themes, plot points.

Valentines Day Quotes for the Single Person

Valentine's Day Quotes for the Single Person If you are single, then Valentines Day may not be the  best time of the year for you. In fact, some are calling it, Singles Awareness Day. Seeing other people celebrating their love can make you a little envious. Even if you have a great life and arent actively seeking a partner, its easy to start hating on the holiday and perhaps feeling sorry for yourself. However, dont be let down. Lift your sagging spirits by reading these Valentines quotes and by dreaming of your own happily-ever-after. It doesnt have to include a knight in shining armor or a princess to be rescued. Mike Primavera You are never alone on Valentines Day if youre near a lake and have bread. KushandWizdom.tumblr I am constantly torn between I dont need anyone and Hey you, please fall in love with me. Emily Heller Ive been single for a while and I have to say, its going very well. Like... Its working out. I think Im the one. Robert Burton No cord or cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread. Alexandra Penney The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands. Mignon McLaughlin No one can understand love who has not experienced infatuation. And no one can understand infatuation, no matter how many times he has experienced it. Anonymous A kiss is something you cannot give without taking and cannot take without giving. Theodor Reik The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods. Henny Youngman A kiss is the shortest distance between two. Mae West I have found men who didnt know how to kiss. Ive always found time to teach them. Marguerite de Valois It is the same in love as in war; a fortress that parleys is half taken. Todd Ruthman It is the things in common that make relationships enjoyable, but it is the little differences that make them interesting. William Shakespeare Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Aerosmith Falling in love is so hard on the knees. Anonymous True love is when you put someone on a pedestal, and they fall - but you are there to catch them. Mignon McLaughlin In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing. Jacques Benigne Bossuel The heart has reasons that reason does not understand. Philip Robinson And when the future hinges on the next words that are said, dont let logic interfere, believe your heart instead. Luciano de Crescenzo We are, each of us angels with only one wing; and we can only fly by embracing one another. Julius Gordon Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less. Aristotle Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

the things i carry Essay

the things i carry Essay the things i carry Essay Throughout the course of my life I have held on to personal memories as well as objects that hold emotional value. The Things I Carry are more than one can guess by just looking at me. At times in life, in all our lives, it seems that we carry things we would never imagine would weigh so much on us. I carry more than just my school supplies when I walk into the school every morning. I carry many thoughts about my past, present, and my future. I carry my conscience every second of the day. I carry 17 years of memories and experiences. I carry my backpack into school every day that I’ve had since fourth grade. Within the backpack I carry a dozen pen and pencils, scissors, glue, calculator, a five subject notebook, and a folder. I carry my English, trigonometry, and problems of democracy books. I carry my cell phone and wallet in my pockets. I carry my brownbag lunch that I make every night because I refuse to eat gross school lunch. I carry my basketball shoes to practice that I ’ve had for four years and have no grip left I carry more than just my school supplies when I walk into school. I carry all my drive to do well in school. I carry the dream of going off to college or elsewhere, and being successful in whatever I choose to do. I carry the determination to get good grades because I know I have it in me. With the good grades I also carry the laziness by ignoring my schoolwork. I carry a mindset that says B’s and C’s are acceptable, I can just skip a few assignments

Paraphrase Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 5

Paraphrase - Essay Example Some of them included: the American Standards Association, Crystal Eastman’ Work Accidents, and United Mine Workers. The era was marked by the perception that workers’ safety was necessary and that accidents at the workplace were mental. Safety concerns in the agricultural sector, the steel industry, and several other manufacturing industries had outstanding records. Of these industries, the Steel one led the way with the ideas by Fredrick Taylor making major contributions in creating a safe environment for the management. Taylor developed a favorable interaction between management policies, various processes, and worker schedule (McGerr, 2010). In addition, the researches in this period discovered that most accidents were psychologically made and that the only remedy was to create awareness and train individuals about the issue. However, the 1930s made it difficult for workers to sue those who violated the safety regulations due to the introduction of thoughts from the West. The Judiciary became stricter in ruling out cases, since they would consider the level of fault from both sides of the coin; the workers and the company in question. Following such challenges, there was little evidence that the psychological wa y of looking at safety was convenient. It was also a hard task for researchers to convince people that science and investigation would precisely solve the issue, thus the occupational approach became less popular. The Energy exchange theory consists of ideas related to modern science. It developed a connection between human injury and the various forms of energy. According to this theory, the first set of injuries meddles with the whole body. The energy exchanges establish the environment in which people’s fears, personalities, and goals play out. For example, when one kidney fails, the activities of the entire body are interfered with, since energy is not equally distributed or some chemical functions are not in order. In the