Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Death Comparison Essay Essay Example for Free

Death Comparison Essay Essay Editors play influential roles in literature. They can easily alter the overall atmosphere of literature or change the message behind it. Different versions of the poem â€Å"I heard a Fly buzz†¦Ã¢â‚¬  by Emily Dickinson demonstrate different caesura, capitalization and word usage. The 1955 edition by Thomas H. Johnson and the original version by Emily Dickinson portray almost identical ideas and emphasis through limited alteration of caesura and word capitalization in relation to death as somewhat unimportant event. Caesura is one of the most crucial elements in classic English poetry. It can either change the pace or the atmosphere of the work. Emily Dickinson uses caesura in her poem â€Å"Dying† to demonstrate death as a slow and unspiritual event. Both the 1955 edition and the original edition share the same style of caesura from the start to the end. In the original version, Dickinson uses a vast number of hyphens between sentences. For example, the first two sentences of the poem, â€Å"I heard a Fly buzz-when/ I died-†, depicts how the author uses hyphens between every phrase to portray short breaths of a dying individual. The author uses short breathed pace of the poem to describe the narrator’s slow process of death and nonspiritual side of death. In addition, the author implies how death does not contain any kind of sudden or spiritual endings. In the 1955 edition, Johnson places caesuras in almost identical places to preserve the original work’s perception of death. As a result, the 1955 edition successfully displays images of a dying narrator and the short paced poet structure. With the same style of caesura, the 1955 edition brings out the original version’s idea about death being a slow yet nonspiritual everyday occurrence. Often poets use capitalization as a tool to emphasize specific words. Two versions of the poem â€Å"Dying† capitalize overlapping words to express equal emphasis. In the original version of the poem Emily Dickinson constantly  focuses on incoherent words such as â€Å"room† and â€Å"fly.† The author uses emphasis on the room to create an illusion of an isolated space. Dickinson utilize this illusion introduce the emptiness of death. The constant capitalization of the word â€Å"fly† causes readers’ attention to move away from the dying narrator. This ironic emphasis on the fly, transforms this serious theme called death into something that is minor and insignificant. Two versions of the poem, the 1955 edition and the original edition, have minor difference in their capitalization style; the only difference is the capitalization of the word around. In the 1955 edition, Johnson capitalizes the words â€Å"fly† and â€Å"room† throughout the poem. As a result of this capitalization Johnson successfully creates an atmosphere that is identical to the original version. Johnson also inherits Dickinson’s original intention to minimize the importance of death and to make something miniscule, a fly, as the center of attention. The 1955 edition shares an incredible amount of similarities with the original version; the style of caesura and the capitalization of specific words. The 1955 edition places hyphens in the exact same places to preserve the original version’s ideas about death being a slow natural process. In addition, both of the 1955 edition and the original version emphasize significant words such as â€Å"fly and â€Å"room† to represent the insignificance of death, rather than portraying death as a major event in human lives. Bibliography I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died (591). By Emily Dickinson : The Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174972.

Monday, January 20, 2020

The Benefits of File Sharing Technology :: Internet Online Communication Essays

Napster: The Benefits of File Sharing Technology Napster. Never before has one word brought so much controversy and debate over technology and peoples' rights to information. Napster was co-founded by Shawn Fanning, a college student with a million dollar idea. His idea was to provide people across the world the ability to download information from other users’ computers. Although this technology was already available through local networks, Shawn envisioned a way to make this network technology possible for the average college student like himself. What Shawn didn't envision however, was the lawsuits and court injunctions that now plague his company. These lawsuits have stemmed from Napster allegedly violating copyright laws set forth by the music industry. Seeing that Napster has approximately 64 million users worldwide, the company is being charged with allowing "rampant music piracy" (Evangelista 2001). Although this may be true, I believe that Napster is doing more good to our society than bad. It's use of file sharing technology and expression is allowing new standards to be set for the future. A great misconception is that Napster provides its clients with illegally pirated music software known as MP3's. These MP3's are compressed CD quality music files that can be stored on any computer for easy listening, or can be copied onto an actual CD for listening on the go. In actuality, Napster does not provide any pirated MP3's; rather they act as a catalog for users to find certain songs (Magid, 2001). When you run the Napster program on your computer, Napster opens a direct link from your folder with MP3's files in it, to the catalog on the Napster server. Since Napster has over 60 million members, at any given time during the day hundreds of thousands of people have their files catalogued through Napster. So when I want to search for a song, Napster searches though the thousands of open directories of its users. When I find the song I want, I download the MP3 file directly from that particular Napster users computer. Napster as you can see is just acting as a search directory for MP3 files. Now that you know how Napster works, let me tell you why the program upsets so many people. Napster first made national news when many universities, including IU, started to ban the file-sharing program. College students having access to Ethernet and large bandwidths could not resist Napster's service.

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Living in Families Essay

How does the average person view the common family? In the picture of â€Å"a happy family† on commercials, conflict and hatred are replaced with sweetness and adoration – qualities that are apparent on the family members’ smiling faces. Pure happy days are simply not realistic. In real life, families have good reason to frown occasionally, which leads to a statement by the author Willa Cather about a family relationship. She comments that the seed of the family conflict is from the clash of each members’ individual personality, or identity. As one builds own identity, there is no choice but to struggle for appealing his or her ego to other family members; even though they are a family who is supposed to understand and concede to one another, ideally speaking. Cather also says that family members pursue the sense of security from mutual existence, and they want to eschew from the restraint and infringe on individual privacy at the same time.      Ã‚  Three works of literature which support Willa Cather’s idea about family relationships are: â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing† by Tillie Olsen, â€Å"Two Kinds† by Amy Tan, and â€Å"Sonny’s Blues† by James Baldwin. Through the eyes of these characters, we can see how the development of identity causes conflicts between family members. Ironically, they continue to pull away from each other even though they need each other. We should explore how the characters get over the â€Å"tragic necessity† (Cather 107-120).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Though the main conflict in â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing† doesn’t seem to appear on the surface the author shows that the conflict occurs inside narrator’s mind. When the narrator has Emily, her daughter, she â€Å"is nineteen and it is the pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression† (341).   Living in the new era as a nineteen-year-old single mother, she has to confront her new identity. In other words, there is a struggle between two identities inside her, as an individual who tries to survive in tough circumstance and as a mother who tries to love her daughter. As she confesses that she â€Å"was a distracted mother† (345), her unstable identity does not allow her to take superior care of Emily. This is the situation which Cather referred to as a â€Å"double life† (107-120). The narrator has suffered from â€Å"the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends† (Cather 107-120).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In laborious circumstances, her only family, Emily, is the reason why she is still alive, but also the burden from which she wants to escape. This is shown in â€Å"what was in my face when I looked at her,† the scene in which she realizes her frown face at her daughter saying â€Å"there were all the acts of love† (341). Because of her desperate fate, the narrator unconsciously tries â€Å"pulling away from† her daughter even though she â€Å"seeks† to feel (Cather 107-120) maternal affection for Emily. This irony is represented by Cather’s idea of â€Å"the tragic necessity of human life† (107-120).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   At the end of the story, the narrator shows her will to finish the conflict she has endured. According to Emily who never believed herself to be special, finds her identity and path, which concludes with her mother lightening the pressure about being a role of breeder by â€Å"letting her be† (345).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Contrary to â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing,† the main conflict between family members in â€Å"Two Kinds† is revealed clearly; it is about the relationship between a mother and daughter. The peculiarity of this story is that the basis of the conflict is a clash of two different cultures, which can be interpreted as a clash of two identities; the Chinese mother who wants â€Å"obedient daughter† and the Americanized daughter, named Mei, who wants to â€Å"follow her own heart† (353). Her mother’s wishful thinking is clear on this quote; â€Å"you can be anything you want to be† (346), which means actually â€Å"you can be anything I want you to be.† This attitude is very different from the mother’s attitude in â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing.† On contrary to â€Å"letting her be† (345), Mei’s mother keeps pushing her daughter to do what she wants, not what her daughter wants – this is Mei’s mother’s personality. Mei’s response is:   Ã¢â‚¬Å"I won’t be what I’m not† (348). As a result, the conflict in this story is caused by the clash of individual identities, as Cather describes.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Moreover, the trouble reaches a peak at their quarrel following the piano recital. In this scene, Mei pretends to â€Å"pull away† (Cather 107-120) from her mother by saying â€Å"the magic words† (353). What Mei says was not from the bottom of her heart: it could be seen when Mei gets the piano as â€Å"a sign of forgiveness† (353), she â€Å"feels proud, as if it were a shiny trophy† (354). In other words, she cannot deny that she misses her family even though she wants to get away from them. After all, the daughter seeks to get out of the â€Å"tragic necessity† (Cather 107-120) by realizing that the two piano pieces â€Å"pleading child† and â€Å"perfectly contented† (354) is one song, which means that the pleading child has become perfectly contented.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Compared to the other two works above, the conflict in â€Å"Sonny’s Blues† occurs between a sibling relationship, not between parent and child relationship as in the preceding examples. The origin of the conflict is the same; the clash of identities. At the beginning of the story, the fact that the narrator, Sonny’s brother, gets Sonny’s news from the newspaper shows that the relationship between two brothers is not secure; their relationship as a family has already been â€Å"pulled away† (Cather 107-120). The reason why they have been separated from each other for a long time was the lack of comprehension of the other’s individual personality. To overcome â€Å"the darkness outside† (384), which describes the discrimination in that era, both brother have to develop their identities which helps them as they endure hardships. Unfortunately, the identities they developed are very different; the narrator is practical and conservative, and Sonny is emotional and unconventional.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The clash of the identities has divided the brothers and causes Sonny to pursue â€Å"escaping, running away, and trying to break the net† (Cather 107-120) which leads to his addiction to heroin. In fact, Sonny â€Å"had always been a good boy† (377) as a member of the family. In his subconscious, he had â€Å"another secret, passionate and intense† (Cather 107-120). Though the narrator tries to care for Sonny in order to fulfill the promise made to his mother, He cannot understand Sonny’s â€Å"another† (Cather 107-120) aspect. This conflict is the reason why they keep pulling away each other.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Nevertheless, at the end of story, they get back together with perfect comprehension. Listening to Sonny’s play, the narrator â€Å"understands, at last† (398), his brother’s identity and why they were pulling away from each other; he realizes that the root of the conflict the brothers had was not because of Sonny’s rebellion but of his own misunderstanding of the suffering Sonny has endured. The brothers prepare to overcome the â€Å"tragic necessity,† which initially separated them, with â€Å"a Scotch and milk† (399) in the end.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In conclusion, through the analysis of the three works of literature, Willa Cather’s idea of â€Å"the double life† and â€Å"tragic necessity of human relationship† (107-120) can be seen as a universal theme in various stories. The development of identity causes the conflicts between family members, and the irony is that they continue to pull away from each other even though they need each. In Cather’s view, family members have a chance to overcome the conflicts they have had, as demonstrated by the narrator of â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing,† Mei from â€Å"Two Kinds,† and Sonny’s brother from â€Å"Sonny’s Blues†. Each character gets the better of his or her own conflicts to a certain extent. As they should; families are supposed to stick together. References Cather, Willa.   â€Å"Katherine Mansfield.†Ã‚   Willa Cather on Writing. Lincoln, NE:   University of Nebraska Press, 1988.   107-120. Schilb, John, and Clifford, John. Making Literature Matter. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006   

Saturday, January 4, 2020

Patterson Surname Meaning and Origin

The common surname Patterson  most often originated as a  patronymic name meaning son of Patrick. The given name Patrick derives from the Roman name Patricius, which meant nobleman in Latin, denoting a member of the patrician class or Roman hereditary aristocracy. In County Galway, Ireland, Patterson was a surname often taken by bearers of the Gaelic name Ó Caisà ­n, meaning descendant of Caisà ­n  from the Gaelic casà ¡n,  or little curly-headed one. ​Surname Origin: English, Scottish, Irish Alternate Surname Spellings: Patrickson, Paterson, Patersen, Pattersen, Batterson Famous People James Patterson - American best-selling authorCarly Patterson - 2004 Olympic All-Around Gymnastics ChampionJohn Patterson - American manufacturer who helped popularize the modern cash register   Genealogy Resources If youre interested in connecting with others who share the Patterson surname or in learning more, the following resources can help: Most Common U.S. Surnames and Their Meanings: Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, Brown... Are you one of the millions of Americans sporting one of these top 250 common last names from the 2000 census?Patterson DNA Project: An annual publication issued under the authority of the Barnes Family Association. Several volumes are available for free viewing from Internet Archive.Patterson Family Genealogy Forum: Search this popular genealogy forum for the Patterson surname to find others who might be researching your ancestors, or ask your own question about your Patterson ancestors.FamilySearch: Discover historical records and lineage-linked family trees posted for the Patterson surname and its variations.Patterson Surname and Family Mailing Lists: RootsWeb hosts several free mailing lists for researchers of the Patterson surname. Sources Cottle, Basil. Penguin Dictionary of Surnames. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1967.Menk, Lars. A Dictionary of German Jewish Surnames. Avotaynu, 2005.Beider, Alexander. A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia. Avotaynu, 2004.Hanks, Patrick and Flavia Hodges. A Dictionary of Surnames. Oxford University Press, 1989.Hanks, Patrick. Dictionary of American Family Names. Oxford University Press, 2003.Smith, Elsdon C. American Surnames. Genealogical Publishing Company, 1997.