Does the Pentateuch tell a good story Essays

Does the Pentateuch tell a good story Essays Does the Pentateuch tell a good story Essay Does the Pentateuch tell a good story Essay Essay Topic: Left To Tell Religion The Pentateuch the first five books of the Old Testament seems to be fundamentally fragmented in form. Genesis tells of creation and of the early history of Israel up until preparations to leave Egypt, the next three books consider Israels drift through the desert and the laws formed on these travels, while Deuteronomy exists for the most part as a collection of laws and legislative poetry by Moses. Can such fragments make a good story? However, while the Pentateuch is both divided into five parts and appears to be fragmented in style and subject, the Pentateuch manages to show a unity in narrative1. What do we today understand by the term a good story? I would suggest that a clear beginning, middle and end are essential to hold onto narrative meaning and coherence as a story. The beginning must be powerful, must be able to address universal problems and questions and must both set the scene and introduce essential characters. The middle must intrigue, excite and be meaningful, while the end must seek to wrap up any questions or problems addressed and wrap up the narrative. I believe that to some degree, the Old Testament manages to do this. Genesis 1 is most definitely a powerful beginning. Surely nothing can be more grand and universal in scale that the very creation of the universe? Genesis also acts to introduce the main character of the Pentateuch, God, and His creation of man and the world. The first chapters of Genesis have to be seen to act as a universal framework for the way that we are to understand God, and indeed the world. But the story of creation must not be literally interpreted, or thought of as myth. The use of the word myth to describe this section of Genesis is frequently used, but can be misleading. Myths are often based on fantasy and fiction, but the creation story must be seen as aiming to give a true portrayal of the world and of humanity in the world in relation to God. Genesis establishes Him as the fundamental base and character through which all is to be interpreted. Genesis aims to set the scene for the way in which we are to understand the relationship between man and God. The overarching theme is that even though mans disobedience seems to isolate him from God, darkness and potential death are turned around. It appears that, salvation is identical with creation. 2 The first story of this kind in Genesis is that of Adam and Eve. Their disobedience of God in search of the fruit of knowledge and hence the attempt to become gods themselves, is met with severe punishment through the Fall they are separated from paradise and are met with pain and suffering. God, however, dresses them in skins which shows that life with God is not totally broken. Similarly, the story of Noah and the Ark shows how the evil and disobedience of man is punished with obliteration. Yet still potential life with God can be seen through the relationship of God and Noah. Noahs obedience of Gods word saved him and his family. These two stories are stories of the human condition to disobey God and to act evilly. Each one, however, ends in a glimmer of hope that suggests life with God. This possible life with God is articulated in His relationship with Abraham which begins in Genesis 12. The relationship between God and Abraham shows the reader emphatically how God deals with the human condition described in Genesis 1-11. This relationship is the realisation of a new beginning with God at the helm, and although the relationship is with Abraham alone and therefore seems to narrow down the extent of Gods work, this relationship holds a universal importance. Gods covenant with Abraham (seen in Genesis 15) can be seen as turning the darkness of the evil of man into a true life with God. However, even though the central theme is that God is offering as the saviour of Israel, he tells of a dark and terrifying future; a future of slavery and oppression. Faith is therefore an integral part of the story of Abraham. This is best shown when God instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. The sacrifice of Isaac, his only son from his wife Sarah, would surely lead to an awful and dark place in his life. God rewards Abrahams faith by sparing Isaacs life, but also Abraham is to be blessed with offspring, as numerous as the stars of heaven and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves 3 God shows universally that, if you obey God and have faith in His word, then you be blessed and find life with God. The story of Joseph is, however, the first great masterpiece of the Pentateuch. The point of the story is that Gods will is being articulated even though the individuals who are involved in it may not be entirely conscious of it. It appears to be the most coherent story met yet in the Pentateuch. Indeed, G. von Rad writes that, the stories about Joseph are clearly distinguished from those about Abraham and Jacob, and are a real connected narrative and not a compilation of many previously independent traditions. 4 Coherence, it seems, appears to be integral to unifying the narrative of the Pentateuch. The most powerful, dramatic and coherent story in the Pentateuch, however, must surely be Israels escape from Egypt with Moses a story that is also of utmost importance for the remaining parts of the Pentateuch. Exodus, the second book of the Pentateuch, essentially traces the escape from Egypt and Israels stay at Mount Sinai. We are shown very early on that this story will be central to both the Pentateuch and the Old Testament, as it is here that the real name of God, Yahweh, is revealed both in Exodus 3:15 and 6:2. Through Moses, God works to save Israel from the Egyptians, most notably by sending ten plagues on Egypt. Eight of these plagues affected agriculture in ancient times society depended heavily on agriculture to trade and to survive at all. Therefore, eight plagues affecting Egypts agriculture must not be passed over as insignificant, but instead taken to be as deadly serious. As the Israelites exit Egypt, the story becomes sincere and soft in tone shown in Exodus 12:42, that same night is a vigil to be kept for the Lord by all the Israelites throughout their generations, followed by directions of how to act on this Holy day. This quiet, however, is shattered by the hugely dramatic pillars of cloud and fire, by which God lead the Israelites out of Egypt. The almost physical form of God here emphasises God integral involvement in the present and future of Israel, and that Moses liberated the Israelites through the power of God. The crossing of the Red Sea shows the reader both the great power of God working through Moses, and God wrath for those who are disobedient all the pursuers are drowned, showing that all those who act against His people, those who reject the word of God, shall die and themselves be rejected from a life with God. This coherent narrative, and the following story of the Israelites stay at Mt. Sinai, makes an important impact on the story of the Pentateuch as a whole. Much of the rest of the book of Exodus is of a legislative nature, as is Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. However, as extensive areas of these books are of a legislative nature, can they really be said to make the Pentateuch a good story or in fact help to give a sense of overarching unity to the work as a whole? A narrative unity can be traced in the Pentateuch, although it is not at all times clear. Genesis acts as a prologue, while Exodus begins the story of Moses and the Israelites, but the story is broken with legislation surrounding the stay at Mt. Sinai. The Book of Leviticus acts to show what the Israelites must do for God, after showing them in Exodus what he had done for them in fact the instruction-like form of much of the scripture surrounding the stay at Mt. Sinai stretches from Exodus 19 Numbers 10; a significant body of work. One may ask how such interruptions to the narrative strengthen the Pentateuch as a story. It is important to understand that, aw lay at the foundation of Israels religion 5 Those who were disobedient to God in the past had been severely punished (Adam and Eve for example) and therefore Gods law became fundamental to Israels life and society. However, while there is definitely a narrative unity in the Pentateuch, it is often extremely thin and loosely scraped together. 6 Deuteronomy seems to be quite a separate collection of speeches all together. It is distinct in form, literary style and language and most scholars accept that Deuteronomy dates from the 7th century BCE obviously a far later work than Genesis through to Numbers. I am of the opinion that the collection of such obviously separate sources in Deuteronomy has resulted in a very uneven and inorganic whole. However, the Pentateuch does not exist without Deuteronomy, and the book does display narrative similarity with the previous books. For example, the Ten Commandments are restated in Deut 5 and Moses, the key figure in Israels history, both reminds Israel that God has cared for them, and himself acts as a symbol of Gods work. Deuteronomy can be seen as an expression of Gods basic will for Israels future, and ultimately acts as the culmination of the whole Pentateuch story. The book acts to emphasise that the Pentateuch has become the foundation story of Israel, a story that shapes and regulates Israel ever after, and a story that has become the canonical story of Israel. So what, if anything, is the unifying and underlying base of the Pentateuch as a story? Is there a thematic unity alongside the narrative? If the narrative exists as pearls on a necklace, is there a string upon which the narrative rests? Gods covenant could indeed be this theme, as it is an important feature of Genesis, Exodus and Deuteronomy. 7 One may also argue that Moses is the key theme. Although not present in Genesis, Gods word and action is articulated through Moses in Exodus-Deuteronomy. Scholars such as D. Clines argue that, The theme of the Pentateuch is the partial fulfilment of the promise to or blessing of the patriarchs 8 Clines thinks that this partial fulfilment can be seen in three stages: Genesis deals with the promise of descendants and great future generations, Exodus and Leviticus deal with promises surrounding the two way relationship between God and man, while Number and Deuteronomy deal with the promise of a land for Israel. The third stage is left unfulfilled at the end of the Pentateuch; the story is left seemingly incomplete. However, this can act to show modern readers that they are not simply looking back at the past, but that the Pentateuch is not a closed story it looks forward and therefore involves the modern reader in a story that regulated the life of Israel. Perhaps, also, the apparent failure of the Pentateuch to wrap up the loose ends must be viewed in the light of the New Testament? The Pentateuch could just be a signpost of that which is to come ultimately the Messianic prophesy. For example, the sacrifice of Christ can be seen as being prefigured by the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. If the Old Testament can be thought of as inconclusive and thought to require a sequel, then surely the New Testament is exactly this. God worked through Moses in the Old Testament; therefore, perhaps the embodiment of God in Christ in the New Testament can be seen to conclude perfectly the story that the Old Testament told. I would argue that the Pentateuch does tell a good story, and that it has both a narrative and thematic unity. Criticisers of the Pentateuch often make no attempt to ask, ow stories or literary complexes from originally discrete sources were to be read and understood when combined with one another 9 Negative evidence that suggests the disunity of the Pentateuch can be used constructively. It can show that consistent works can have their integrity destroyed by editorial attempts to mould them together. The Pentateuch, in the form that it exists today, can be seen as not only a collection of narrative sources, but also as a collection of theological concerns set against and integrated with one another, which together act in the past and the present to shape the life of Israel a life with God.

The Top 100 Transportation Jobs to Look for Right Now

The Top 100 Transportation Jobs to Look for Right Now If you’re interested in a career in transportation, or in finding a new career in the field, the tides of the industry are on your side. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), jobs that fall under the category of â€Å"transportation and material moving† are projected to grow through the year 2024, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs. Jobs in transportation can fall under many umbrellas. Check out the most thriving jobs in the field and see if one might be a good fit for you.Air Asset ControllerAir Traffic ControllerAircraft CaptainAircraft Quality Control InspectorAirfield Operations ManagerAirfield Operations SpecialistAirfield Operations SupervisorAirline DispatcherAirport Grounds Operations WorkerAirport ManagerAirport TransporterAirworthiness SpecialistAmbulance DriverAviation ManagerAviation Safety InspectorBoat CaptainBoat OperatorBoom Truck OperatorBulk DriverBus DriverChauffeurClass A DriverClass B DriverConductorCopilotDeck OfficerDock MasterDrive rDriver HelperDriver ManagerDriver SupervisorDriving TeacherDump Truck OperatorEmergency Vehicle DriverEquipment MoverFlatbed Truck DriverFlight AnalystFlight AttendantFlight CoordinatorFlight EngineerFlight InstructorFlight NavigatorFlight SchedulerForklift OperatorGeneral Transportation DirectorHelicopter PilotHousehold MoverJet PilotLocomotive EngineerLog Truck DriverMapping PilotMarine OilerMedical Cylinder DriverMotor Coach OperatorOver the Road Driver (OTR Driver)Owner / OperatorPallet Jack OperatorParking Lot AttendantParking Services SpecialistParking Systems ManagerPassenger Service AgentPatient Transport DriverPick Up and Delivery DriverPilotRail Motor Coach OperatorRamp AgentRelief DriverResidential DriverRoute DriverSailorSanitation DriverService Station AttendantShip CaptainShip Chief EngineerShip NavigatorShip SuperintendentShuttle DriverSimulator InstructorSkycapStacker OperatorStreet Cleaning Equipment OperatorSubway and Streetcar OperatorTaxi DriverTest PilotTest Pi lot ManagerTicket AgentTolling SpecialistTow Truck DriverTrain ManagerTransit DirectorTransit ManagerTransit OperatorTransit PlannerTransportation AideTransportation AnalystTransportation Facility RepresentativeTransportation InspectorTransportation Mobility ManagerTransporterTruck DriverVan DriverWheelchair Van DriverYard HostlerAccording to BLS, the median annual wage for transportation occupations was $30,730 in 2016.Education requirements differ for professions within the transportation field- many ask for no formal education or a high school diploma, while some require a post-secondary degree.This is a varied fields with lots of opportunity nationwide- do some searching to find the perfect position for your career goals!

The power of the US Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

The power of the US - Essay Example The US is indeed an economic powerhouse with the US dollar being one of the world’s most stable currencies and has a very high exchange rate compared with most currencies. The US is a destination country for immigration, it has open policy for people who want to immigrate, and multiple nations come up because of its diverse culture. The USA works together with most of the other world powerhouses to help promote world peace and stability. It works closely with world organizations such as the U.N and N.A.T.O. The US Marines often work closely with other world countries that need assistance in military strategies and tactics. For a number of years, US has offered chances to those wishing to immigrate and stay as its nationals (Stealey, 2008). It also offers a "green card" program where it allows accredited foreigners to be able to become citizens of the United States after slow integration into the system. In addition, it offers resources to aid other nations of the world, especially the third world countries, should any international issues arise, which need attention. Many times it provides assistance in the form of finances, manpower resources, and consultancy services. Thus, the US is a destination country for

EMPLOYABILITY AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PowerPoint Presentation

EMPLOYABILITY AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT - PowerPoint Presentation Example ime tested advice, advice that have been rediscovered over a period of time often has a good deal of practical value (Hutchings, Sue, &Judy 2002, pg 189). Therefore, I think that this also applies to ways of improving social skill and building solid social network in the future. In summary, this paper will discuss on how to improve social skill and to build solid social network in the future. Improving social skill is significant because it builds a confidence interacting with people as well as, developing strong communication skills that would increase the chance for successful relationships, hence building a solid social network in the future. Social skills can be improved through good communication skills. It is evident that people are not born with good communication skills like any other trial; however, it is learned through error, trials and repeated practice. Presently, social skills have become an integral part of functioning both in communities and organizations. Therefore, displaying good manners, communicating effectively with others and expressing personal needs are all essential components of solid social skills. There are various ways in which social skills can be improved. These include being smart small. For instance, if talking to a crowd of people is a scary proposition, one can start small. This means that, one does not necessarily need to start out by having a long and a meaningful conversation with others, but he/she can simply share a smile with someone. Starting small is significant in increasing a persons’ confidence. The other way of improving social skills is through use and practice. Social skills may be practiced, however, people with anxiety may find this to be a scary prospect. In spite of all these, the good news is that any type of social interaction can help a person to develop his/her skills, which will help them in building a solid social network even in the future. The other way to improve social skills is through observing

Ethical Problems associated to Information Technology Essay Example for Free

Ethical Problems associated to Information Technology Essay Information technology has been continuously booming with new technological products that create a more diverse information environment. There have been dramatic changes associated with the IT, and these changes create ethical problems and upheavals that usually have something to do with ethics. True, there has been technological development in the arena—one that occurs â€Å"when either the technological paradigm is elaborated in terms of improved concepts, theories, and methods, or in instances of the paradigm are improved† (Moor, 2008, p. 27), such as in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and safety. This creates an enormous social impact, and it has led to a technological revolution that considerably takes time and is difficult to predict. Information technology has gone over the introduction stage and the permeation stage. We are on the power stage wherein the technology is readily available, affecting people directly and indirectly. This creates an impact that is superbly enormous; yet, there are always the ethical problems that springs forth in the arena. Ethical problems that surround the self-identity, anonymity, and privacy of a person are always attached when it comes to IT. The technological revolution has a large-scale effect that transforms the society, while affecting the manner in which the society functions (Moor, 2008, p. 29). It is evident that open technological revolutions in open societies still need some enhancements, so that the ethical problems would be controlled and maximized. Main Body There are a number of important issues that surround the technological paradigm of IT, especially in relation to ethics. Some of these are in the form of self-identity, anonymity, as well as privacy. There are also other unethical issues (e. g. , cheating, hacking, wardriving) that are attached to the technological paradigm of IT. Ethical problems in self-identity The self-identity is being constructed according to how the individual interacts with the society and with himself or herself. In the social landscape of modernity, there are numerous major changes in the external social environment that affects the individual during this social transformation. In the age of the IT, people get to have the capacity to reconstruct the universe through the everyday realities and circumstances that take place in their specific worlds. It is a continuous state of affairs that largely creates the self-identity and the personal feelings attached to this paradigm. This new sense of identity are being formed with the intrusion of the IT in a person’s life, and people get to have personal relationship even with people who are unknown to them—people who suddenly pop out in their computer’s screens, with names that may or may not be factual. Personal relationships help form the self-identity, offering opportunities for self-expression and the self-renewal. According to Giddens (1991), The modern world is a ‘runaway world’: not only is the pace of social change much faster than in any prior system, so also is its scope, and the profoundness with which it affects pre-existing social practices and modes of behavior. (Giddens, 1991, p. 16) With this, it is apparent that the IT becomes an active component in the continuous transformation of a person’s identity, as it creates and affects the social practices and the modes of a person’s behavior. Thus, problems that affect the personal life of the individual could affect not only the self-identity, but the social practices and the environment as a whole. Ethical problems in terms of anonymity and privacy, for example, can lead to an identity that is blemished because of unethical conduct. Despite the fact that people always carry discursive interpretations of their behavior, this practical consciousness drives the person into creating or destroying the ontological security of human activity in a culture. As an effect, people tend to write comments anonymously while hiding their true identities. Ethical problems in anonymity According to the article that Richard Perez-Pena (2010) wrote entitled ‘News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments’, it says that Internet users usually make use of the digital disguise, revealing their power and their sentiments without acknowledging their true identities to the viewers. This constitutes a sort of freedom for the digital users, and this is most typical in news sites, wherein the viewers are allowed to post comments without indicating their true identities, keeping their privacy in a world that is being presented in public. As indicated in the article, â€Å"Anyone could weigh in and remain anonymous† (Perez-Pena, 2010, p. 1), and this leads to the question on whether or not viewers of Internet sites should be allowed to remain anonymous when dictating their comments and suggestions. This is a very significant ethical problem associated to IT, since it has been ethically accepted that any type of idea or sentiment should be associated to the respectful person who has formed the idea. According to Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post, Anonymity is just the way things are done. It’s an accepted part of the Internet, but there’s no question that people hide behind anonymity to make vile or controversial comments. (Perez-Pena, 2010, p. 1) It has, therefore, been advised that viewers should indicate their factual names, especially when making a significant commentary about the society. They should use their real names, and this may be done by requiring people to register first before posting their commentaries. Ethical problems in privacy According to the article that Scott Rosenberg (2010) wrote entitled ‘Online Comments Need Moderation, Not Real Names’, there is also the statement that defines how newspaper website managers have been reacting in terms of anonymity and privacy keeping. As stated, â€Å"If only they could make people sign their real names, surely the atmosphere would improve† (Rosenberg, 2010, p. 1). Online conversation spaces make media outlets turn the common software on and then leave them as it is, as if the discussions would â€Å"magically take care of themselves† (Rosenberg, 2010, p. 1). The problem, however, is that the commenters should not be faceless and should carry identities that are open for the other viewers. This problem is in the identity system, with the Web having no identity system that would ethically reconnect the idea to the person who has declared it. As stated in the article, The Web has no identity system, and though the FBI can track you down if the provocation is dire enough, and if you get editors mad enough they can track you down, too, most media companies aren’t going to waste the time and money. (Rosenberg, 2010, p. 1) Ethical privacy problems can also be in the form of ‘hacking’ or â€Å"using unauthorized access to an information system† (Floridi, 2008, p. 43). This indulges privacy and confidentiality. Conclusion There are other ethical problems associated with the IT of the modern social world, such as using the new technology in order to cheat one’s taxes, or deviating the user from his or her true name or identity. It can also be in the form of wardriving wherein people try to connect wirelessly to other people’s networks (Moor, 2008, p. 33). All these unethical conducts can create an enormous social impact that leads to technological revolution that can contract IT in its power stage. With proper management, it can develop the IT into something that is more powerful and enormous, without the ethical problems that have large-scale effects on the society. It is evident, therefore, that open societies through the IT still need some enhancements, so that the ethical problems would be controlled and maximized. References Floridi, L. (2008). Information ethics: its nature and scope. In Eds. Jeroen van den Hoven and John Weckert’s Information technology and moral philosophy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Moor, J. (2008). Why we need better ethics for emerging technologies. In Eds. Jeroen van den Hoven and John Weckert’s Information technology and moral philosophy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Perez-Pena, R. (2010, April 11). News sites rethink anonymous online comments. Retrieved May 7, 2010, from The New York Times Company database: http://www. nytimes. com/2010/04/12/technology/12comments. html. Rosenberg, S. (2010, April 13). Online comments need moderation, not real names. Retrieved May 7, 2010, from Salon Media Group, Inc. database: http://www. salon. com/news/feature/2010/04/13/newspaper_online_comments_moderation_open2010.

Flannery OConnor Essay -- essays papers

Flannery O'Connor Flannery O’Connor and the Relationship Between Two of Her Stories Flannery O’Connor was born Mary Flannery O’Connor on March 25, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, as the only child to Edward F. O’Connor, Jr., and Regina (Cline) O’Connor. Later in 1941, Flannery O’Connor’s father dies of lupus while O’Connor is in Milledgeville, Ga. After her father’s death, O’Connor rarely speaks of him and continues to be active in school projects such as drawing, reading, writing, and playing instraments. Further, in the summer of 1942, O’Connor graduates and enters Georgia State College for Women as a sociology and English major. Moreover, O’Connor took on the name Flannery O’Connor, dropping Mary from her signature. When O’Connor graduates from college, she leaves for Iowa City and applies for several college teaching positions while attending the University of Iowa. Thus, she receives her Masters of Fine Arts in 1947. Although her first story, â€Å"The Geranium † was publised in Accent, during the summer of 1946, it was only the beginning of many of her works to be published. Like her father, O’Connor was living with lupus and her first major attack came in December, 1950. However, O’Connor did not allow the disease to keep her from writing and getting her works published. In fact, she got her nineth story , â€Å"A Good Man Is Hard to Find† published. Also, O’Connor has won many prizes and awards with her writings over the years. For instance, she was named the Honorary Doctor of Letters by institutions, was the first prize of the O. Henry award in 1957 and 1963 and had previously won second in 1954 and 1955. Moreover, O’Connor died on August 3, 1964 I a Milledgeville hospital. Nevertheless, her stories cont... ...g from these two stories, she uses the same style in the majority of her works. More specifically, O’Connor uses a lot of foreshadowing and irony, leading up to the catastrophe. Also, her subject matter is somewhat controversial since the settings of the two stories are in the South, she uses southern dialect and religion, and most of all, they have the strangest endings. Perhaps the greatest story she has to tell is not her forte, the short story, at all but maybe it’s her own story. Bibliography: Works Cited O’Connor, Flannery. â€Å"A Good Man Is Hard to Find.† Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1988. 137-153. â€Å"Good Country People.† Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 198. 263-284. Walters, Dorthy. Flannery O’Connor. Boston: Twayne Publishers, Inc. 1973.

Are teenage girls treated differently than boys?

Teenage girls and boys have long been known for their different interests, tastes, attitudes and past times, but is society now also treating teenage girls in a different manner than the boys. I believe that to be the case, because now through all aspects of their lives teenage girls are being managed different to way the boys are. The story starts at the home; parents seem to be far more protective of their teenage daughters than their sons. I believe this initially stems from the fact that girls do seem to naturally not a powerful physically as boys and that teenage girls are therefore much more at risk from predators than teenage boys and are less able to fend off an overpowering man. Teenage girls also have the ability to get pregnant where as boys do not, for this reason the girls need to be watched and cared for more by their parents by implementing more rules on them in terms of the times they are allowed out until and the people they can associate themselves with. In terms of household chores and responsibility you tend to see that the teenage girl would be helping her mother out in the kitchen, preparing food and washing dishes whereas teenage boys would be seen helping in more physically demanding jobs such as mowing the lawn and taking the bin out. This I believe is because parents, unfortunately, do to seem to give way to societies prejudices not because they want to but because they know it would be best for their daughters to learn how to work and cook in the kitchen for when they would most likely be cooking for their husband in the future. The media has a great influence on teenagers and it is the media that has the greatest ability to create stereotypes and depicts the way of life which everyone should be living but more often or not the media is wrong yet it still manages to pressures on teenagers especially as to how they should act. It is teenage boys though that have seemed to have pulled the short end of the stick in the medias plans and it is them are constantly being portrayed as being violent, dangerous and anti-social. This is unfair treatment to the vast majority of teenage boys who are none of these things. Teenage girls though are depicted in a more positive light; teenage girls in advertisements are more often than not seen to be playing, chatting and laughing with each other normally inside the house while boys are mostly show to been playing aggressive games, building toys or fighting. Teenage girls also get viewed in a much more positive light by the general public as it is them who are always being hailed for their academic achievements, and although tragically, it is teenage girls who are most commonly reported as victims in the news, which leads the public to view them in a much more sympathetic light. Finally teenage girls are given less opportunities in the workplace. Although jobs are obviously quite rare and far between for teenagers now days, we still do see an uneven spread across the genders. This is because those companies ready to employ teenagers will most probably be looking at them as a source of cheap and exploitable labour. The sorts of jobs that are normally available are those which involve manual labour and physical work such as cleaning the floor, taking rubbish out and transferring equipment. These sorts of jobs are most suited towards boys because of their superior physical abilities. Unfortunately this means the teenage girls are often left neglected in the early stages of their working life.

Drama and Play

————————————————- DRAMA Origin of Greek tragedy and comedy Drama, in the western world, begins with ancient Greece, where the two major forms of drama †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. tragedy and comedy †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.. were an aspect of religious ritual. Greek tragedy is believed to have begun in the sixth century B. C. with Thespis who introduced the first actor on the stage. The first dramatic dialogue lies in the conversation of this actor with leader of the satiric chorus. The dramatic element was subsequently added by Aeschylus in the fifth century B. C. and later by Sophocles of the same period.They added a second and third actor on the stage respectively. Euripides, a contemporary of Sophocles, used drama as a medium for dealing with the problems of human existence. As the Greek drama developed, the chorus was detached from the main action. Of these ancient Geek trage dies, thirty-two plays are now extant †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. seven by Sophocles, and eighteen by Euripides. Greek comedy originated from the humorous side of the Dionysian rites. A actual feature was the singing procession, or comos. Their song along with a kind of mummery or play-acting developed into comedy. Greek comedy passed through three stages †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦..Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. The Old comedy was the comedy of political and personal satire. The satirical plays of Aristophanes were directed against Euripides. The Middle comedy was a transition from this to the comedy of social life and manners. The satire became impersonal. In the New Comedy, the love intrigue became the dominant theme. The best known writer of the New Comedy was Menander who died in the third century B. C. His plays are now extant in Latin translations by Plautus and Terence. Drama and in Rome The Romans wrote comedies and tragedies in the manner laid down by the Greeks.The characters were mostly stock figures like the comic slave, the braggart soldier, the proud cook, the young lover, the hunch-back, the cuckold and so on. The outstanding writers were Plautus (200 B. C. ) and Terence (150 B. C. ). Twenty plays of Plautus are now extant, including the â€Å"Menaechmi†, from which Shakespeare took the plot for â€Å"The Two Gentlemen of Verona†. Only six plays of Terence are extant. The most important writer of Roman tragedy was Seneca, who was a statesman and philosopher in the Stoic School. His ten plays are translated into English during the Elizabethan period. Drama in EnglandLike other countries, the drama in England had its origin in the services of the church. In the Middle Ages, the services of the church used to be in Latin, and the Bible was therefore, beyond the comprehension of the common people. The clergymen started illustrating Biblical stories by dump shows in order to bring the religious doctrines within the comprehension of the laym en. They were enacted within the church and the actors were all clergymen and monks. In due course, dialogue, first in Latin, then in the vernacular, was introduced and thus the ritualistic representations in the church developed into full-fledged drama.Subsequently the place inside the church was found inadequate and so the representations were transferred to the churchyards. When this also proved insufficient, the drama passed from the church to the street, from the clergymen to the laymen. The mystery and miracle plays The Mystery and Miracle plays mark an advancement in the development of the medieval religious drama. The Mysteries dealt with themes taken from the Bible, whereas Miracle plays dealt with the lives of saints. The institution of the festival of Corpus Christi by Pope Urban IV in 1264 gave an impetus to the growth of these plays.Until the thirteenth century Miracle plays were annually performed at several important towns like Chester, York, Coventry, and Lancaster. Curiously enough, these religious plays combined serious theme with farce, buffoonery, and coarse humour. Devil and Vice were depicted in a funny manner. The Devil was represented as a hideous monster, hairy and shaggy with horns, hoofs and a tail. Vice appeared in a fantastic, variegated dress carrying a wooden dagger and indulging in mad tumultuous pranks and jokes. He continued to have a comic role in English drama for long.This sort of medieval religious drama reached its highest point of development in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The â€Å"cycles† presenting a series of plays containing a story of the creation of the world were popular in England in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Of these, four cycles †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Chester comprising twenty-five plays, York comprising forty-eight plays, Wakefield comprising thirty-five plays, and Coventry comprising forty-two †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ have been preserved. Monks and scholars generally wrote the plays. Their settings were elaborate.Heaven was presented in an awe-inspiring manner while Hell was presented as a dragon’s mouth. Theatrical effects were obtained by several devices as trap doors, pulleys, and the beating of drums. The aim of these was to instruct an entertain people. The Moralities and Interludes The end of the fifteenth century witnessed a parting between the serious and comic elements in these plays. The serious part of the story was treated separately in plays called â€Å"Morality Plays†. The comic or the lighter side was presented in â€Å"Interludes†.In the Morality Plays religious instruction was substituted by moral teaching and biblical figures were substituted by personified virtues and vices. Mostly the theme was the struggle for a man’s soul. The purpose of these plays was to inculcate virtue by showing the forces of Good and Evil in action. The characters were mostly personifications of abstract qualities like Sin and Repentance. The first known Moralities called â€Å"Paternoster† plays were performed in the latter part of the fourteenth century. It dealt with the conflict between the Seven Moral Virtues and the Seven Deadly Sins.The best Morality play is, however, â€Å"Everyman† published in the early sixteenth century. Humour was kept alive in the character of the Vice, who may be regarded as the forerunner of the Shakespearean clown. The term â€Å"Interlude† is applied to a species of professional performance carried out on special occasions like banqueting. It was used to fill intervals. It marks a definite advance in the art of comedy and forms a bridge of sorts between the Moralities and the Elizabethan drama. The characters were living human beings, and the aim was to amuse and entertain the audience.With the interlude, drama lost its didactic character and became a vehicle of secular entertainment. The most famous interlude is John Heywood’s â€Å"The Four Ps† printed in 1569. The characters in are a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Pothecary and a Pedlar vying with another in telling the biggest lie. The verdict goes in favour of the palmer who stated that of the five hundred women he had known he had never seen one â€Å"out of patience†. The five divisions of the dramatic plot The basic of every dramatic story is conflict. It may take different shapes.It may be between the hero, representing good, and the villain representing evil, it may of the hero against fate or circumstances, or against social conventions and customs. It may also be an inward war as in the case of Macbeth. In any case, a kind of conflict is the central element of the dramatic story. The plot begins with the opening of this conflict and ends with its conclusion. If we sympathise with the struggler, the play is a tragedy, and if laugh at him, it is a comedy. The theme of the play passes through five stages. They are exposition, complication, climax, denou ement, and catastrophe.This is called â€Å"the dramatic line†. Perhaps this five-fold structure of dramatic story accounts for the common division of play into five acts. The Exposition introduces the circumstances or situation from which the initial incident is to begin. Its aim is to give all the information necessary for the audience to understand the play. This is not an easy part of the play and its management may be regarded as a real test of a dramatist’s skill. Mrs. Stowe admits in her book â€Å"The Minister’s Wooing†, †When one has a story to tell, one is always puzzled which end of it to begin with.You have a whole corps of people to introduce what you know and your reader does not; and one thing so presupposes another that whichever way you turn your patchwork, the figures seem ill-arranged†. This is the experience of a novelist who can recourse to direct narrative and explanation. We can, then presume the difficulty of a dramatis t who is denied such privileges. The least dramatic among the methods adopted by the dramatists is that of speech given by one of the characters, or a prologue. An example is the dialogue in the Second Scene of Shakespeare’s â€Å"The Tempest†. A good exposition takes the form of a dialogue which is natural nd appropriate. It is brief, clear and dramatic. The first portion of the play after the initial incident comprises the Complication or the Rising Action or the Growth of the conflict towards the crisis. It should be characterised by clearness and logical consistency. Every incident should appear natural, and nothing that is essential should be obscured by unimportant details. The proper relation between character and action should be maintained. Every scene should have its role in the development of the plot or add to our knowledge about the characters should be indicated.If the conflict is between two persons, both the characters should be made familiar to the aud ience, and if it is within the mind of the hero, hiss qualities and conduct should be presented carefully. The foundation for the following action should be thus laid. In climax or Crisis, the story reaches a point at which the balance begins to learn decisively to one or the other side. This is therefore known ass the turning point also. The treatment of the crisis may vary according to the circumstances. It may consist of a single incident or a group of incidents.Generally the crisis is placed about the middle of the action, tin Shakespeare’s plays, it is generally towards the close of the third act or the beginning of the fourth act. In â€Å"Macbeth†, the Banquet scene, which comprises the crisis, occurs In Act III. After the appearance of Banquo’s ghost and the escape of Fleance, Macbeth’s fortunes are reversed. The dramatist should be careful that the event which determines the whole course of the action to its catastrophe comes out of the action it self and is not superimposed from outside.The crisis over, we enter upon the denouement which is the falling action. In comedy it implies the removal of the obstacles or the clearing away of the misunderstanding which has hitherto been hindering the good fortune of the hero and the heroine. In tragedy it lies in the removal of those resisting powers which have been holding the powers of evil in check. In any case, our uncertainty and suspense come to an end and we rejoice in the happiness of the hero and the heroine or sympathise with them. The denouement presents to the dramatist the difficulty of maintaining the nterest of the audience after they are able to forsee the fortune of the characters. Small wonder Fielding hated â€Å"the man who invented fifth act†: Oddly enough, in Shakespeare tragedies, our interest continues even after the ending of the play can be clearly foreseen. CatastropheI is the final stage of the plot. The dramatic conflict comes to an end. The play t o an end. The play usually ends with a sense of finality. But in modern plays and novels nothing is concluded and as Tennyson said, we seem to be poised on the crest of a wave which does not break.This inconclusiveness is supported by those who favour realism, for, in life, they say, there is no such things as an â€Å"end† yet we must bear in mind that drama is a series of incidents selected for dramatic treatment. Audience demand a story in which no loose threads are left. The dramatist has to make the catastrophe the natural outcome of the forces which have been at work in the play. Aristotle recommended that the unraveling of the plot must arise out of the plot itself, and must never be brought about by a dues exmachina.Though modern dramatists do not resort to a â€Å"God out of the machine† they employ such means as he timely removal of the villain by an accident, or the turning up of a will, or the discovery of a birthmark or something that reveals the real iden tity of the hero, or the unexpected arrival of an uncle long reported to be dead and so on. More common is the sudden change of heart of one of the characters to make the story end happily. The dramatist who employs such contrivances in a comedy may not do so when writing a tragedy. The reason is not far to seek. In comedy life is treated in a light and superficial manner..Criticism of life in the drama The drama is different from novel in being objective. The novel permits the writer to intrude often to express his interpretation of life. He can do it directly or indirectly while the dramatist is forced to confine himself to the indirect method alone. According to Henry James, an novel is a personal impression representation of life. It is not, therefore, easy to detect in a play, the writer’s philosophy of life. The dramatist throws on our shoulders the entire responsibility of finding his meaning and even explaining what he has merely implied. But occasionally the dramatis t escapes from the estraints imposed on him by making one of the characters in the play represent him. The Chorus of the Greek tragedies was thus a representative of the dramatist. He is often the mouthpiece of the dramatist’s philosophy of life. The modern dramatist no longer makes use of such a device. The main function of the chorus was to report the events that took place off stage and to make some comments on the morality of the actions presented on the stage. In modern plays, its place is often taken by one of the characters in the drama. Thus Enobarbus in Shakespeare’s â€Å"Antony and Cleopatra† is a kind of chorus.With his critical comments he serves to bring out the cause of Antony’s degeneration uner the spell of the â€Å"Serpent of old Nile†. In modern problem plays, we often come across a character whose principal function in the play is merely to move through it as a philosopher spectator. He expounds moral problems on behalf of the writer. The French critics call him â€Å"raisonneur†. But it is not always right to identify an out-spoken character with the dramatist. For instance some commentators hhave made the mistake of discovering in the melancholy Jacques in â€Å"As You Like It† the representative of Shakespeare.But Shakespeare makes all the other characters in the play laugh at him which indicates that he does not express Shakespeare’s views. The dramatist may very often find the Chorus –like character or the â€Å"raisonneur† inadequate to express his views on life. He often makes his view clear to the audience through the utterances of the various characters. Even while speaking in accordance with their personalities and situations, they may express the writer’s ideas about me and things. We can thus gain a clear idea of Shakespeare’s ideas and judgements from the utterances of his characters.The difficulty lies in discriminating the particular moments when they express the dramatist’s views. Canon Beeching holds the opinion that the sentiments put into the mouth of these characters with whom we are expected to sympathise invariably express the writer’s views. But we notice that even the characters unable to arouse our sympathy may sometimes express moral truths, defined by them on earlier occasions. For instance, when Edgar says at the end of â€Å"King Lear†, â€Å"The Gods are just and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us†,Edmund, the villain replies, â€Å"Thou hast spoken right; ‘tis true; the wheel has come full circle; I am here†. Shakespeare’s commentary upon the plot is provided more by Edmund than Edgar on this occasion. We should ,therefore, be careful in examining the sentiments expressed by the various characters in a play. In conclusion, we can say without any shadow of doubt that dramatist’s criticism of life is embodied in the whole spirit of the play. The world that the dramatist creates, with all men and women, their actions, passions and motives, their struggles followed by success or failure, is a world for which the dramatist lone is responsible.It goes without saying then that it is a projection of his own personality. The whole play, therefore, reveals the temper of his mind, the way in which he looks upon things, the line of hs thoughts, his interests, and his attitude towards life. Characterisation in Drama One of the differences between drama and novel lies in the exposition of character. Usually it is thought that drama is concerned with action and, therefore, characterisation is a secondary matter in it. According to Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, â€Å"The first demand of an average theatrical audience is always the same as the child’s †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Tell me a story†.But story in a drama is childish and unintellectual unless it is related to character. If the story is nothing more than a successio n of incidents, it is not much different from the adventures of a highway man. The story in a play should display the various aspects of human nature. As Hudson says, â€Å"Characterisation is the rally fundamental and lasting element in the greatness of any dramatic work†. This is illustrated best by Shakespeare’s plays. Centuries have passed since Shakespeare wrote them, but we are still interested in them, and our interest is by no means less than that of the Elizabethan audience.What keeps our interest alive are the men and women in them. The essential quality of â€Å"Macbeth† lies not in the murders Macbeth commits, but in the character of Macbeth. Even lago, the villain, can hold us spellbound with his villainous schemes, originated in his brain. â€Å"Hamlet† is nothing more than a revenge play when we consider its plot, but none of these revenge plays that hooked the Elizabethan audience can appeal to us now as â€Å"Hamlet† does. Shakespe are has worked miracle out of that raw material by developing the psychological element in it, and that accounts for the immortal appeal of â€Å"Hamlet†.The first condition in characterization in a lay is brevity. The dramatist has to portray the motive and conduct of a person within a few scenes. Since characterization and action cannot be divorced in a play, and the progress of the story has to be kept up, the task of the dramatist is not easy. This can well be illustrated with Shakespeare’s delineation of Macbeth. In the first act, the dramatist gives us an account of Macbeth’s courage on the battlefield, the evil fermenting in him, the confidence that others, including King Duncan, had in him, and above all, his superstitious nature.The essential qualities of Lady Macbeth are also portrayed with equal precision. Her moral courage, her singleness of purpose, her influence over her husband’s sensitive nature are all laid before us in the first act itse lf. Yet Shakespeare has allotted to Lady Macbeth less than sixty speeches in the whole play, and Macbeth speaks about 150 times, and none of the speeches is long. â€Å"Macbeth† thus illustrates Shakespeare’s skill in characterization. Concentration is another necessary condition in characterization in plays. The main qualities of a character should be emphasized.Every word of the dialogue may be used for this purpose, and supererogatory talk may be avoided. A dramatist sometimes commits the mistake of being absorbed in the development of the character to such an extent that those qualities which do not influence the action may also be mentioned. This is called over characterisation , characterisation in accused Shakespeare of this tendency.. Impersonality is another necessary condition in characteriisation. Unlike the novelist, the dramatist has to spend apart from his characters.He cannot take them to pieces and lay their soul bare before us or pass judgement upon th em. The plot and the utterance of the characters are the only means by which the dramatist can reveal his men, and women, their thoughts, their motives and passions. The dramatist, therefore, makes use of movement of the story, then crises and situations in it to display the intellectual and moral qualities of his characters. In the words of Hudson, â€Å"We know them by what they do, as the tree is known by its fruit†. In a good play, as in a good novel plot rests upon character.A number of men and momen of different dispositions, motivated by different passions asr brought together and the clash of their interests constitutes the plot. The evacuation of the story then reveals thir dispositions, their motives and passions. Dialogue plays an important role in characterization. The characters exhibit their passion and motives, feelings and conflicts in their utterances. When the interest of the drama is psychological, the plot concerns itself rather with the play of the forces behind action, and then dialogue becomes an adjunct to action or an integral part of it.Dramatic dialogue as a means of characterization can be classified under two heads. They are utterances of a given person and the remarks made about him by the other characters in the play. In the words of modern psychological playwrights like Ibsen, the utterances of the given person serves the purpose. Shakespeare generally reveals the fundamental qualities of his characters as soon and as clearly as possible. Though self-portrayal is the principal means of characterization by dialogue, the comments made by others about a person may be add to it. It is not correct to take every work uttered by a character as an indication of his nature.His situation, his sympathy, antipathy and similar aspects should be taken into consideration. Occasional phrases uttered by a man can never be a reliable guidance to his character unless they are reinforced by various other utterances scattered through the play . Shakespeare uses this method in his â€Å"The Merchant of Venice†. Antonio is praised lavishly by all the other characters in the play. Salanio speaks of him as â€Å"the good Antonio†, Lorenzo refers to him as a â€Å"true gentlemen†, Gratiano loves him abundantly, and the gaoler grants him special privileges.The same method is employed in revealing the character of Brutus inn â€Å"Julius Caeser† too. Soliloquy, which is a minor subdivision of â€Å"aside† is another means employed by the dramatists to take his audience down into the hidden recesses of a person’s nature. Certain aspects of a man’s character cannot be revealed in his action or his own word. Neither can the dramatist dissect his men and women as the novelist does. He, therefore, makes the characters themselves do ht work of dissextion, for we cannot understand them well unless we know the workings of their mind.They think aloud, and we overhear what they say. A man, especially a villain, cannot disclose his design to a confidant, and in such a case, he is allowed to reason then imagine, not that the man is talking to himself or to us, but only thinking, and that we are concealed spectators of his thoughts. Modern critics however, condemn the use of Soliloquy, especially in realistic plays,. It is now regarded not only as clumsy, but also as non-dramatic, and the play that contains it is stigmatized as â€Å"old-fashioned†.Modern critics accept the confidant, but also on condition that he has an essential part in the action. The different types of drama Drama has been divided broadly into two categories †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. Tragedy and Comedy, the former dealing with adversity and unhappiness, and the latter dealing with joy and mirth. Aristotle in his â€Å"poetics† defined tragedy as â€Å"artistic imitation of an action that is serious, complete in itself, and of adequate magnitude†. He gave importance to suffering or rather, â€Å"an incident of a destructive or painful sort, such as violent death or physical agony†.In order to evoke pity, he recommended a hero neither too good nor wholly vicious, but â€Å"brought low through some error of judgement or shortcoming† known as â€Å"hamartia† or tragic flaw. It existed within the character of the hero, but inn modern plays, the tragic law exists in the milieu more than in the hero who merely becomes a victim of external circumstances. The effect of tragedy, according to Aristotle, is to arouse the emotions of pity and fear in such a way as to effect that special purging and relief known as â€Å"catharsis†. It can be brought about by proper constructions of the plot, which must have a beginning, a middle and an end.Pity and fear are aroused not merely by the complete action but by salient incidents in the plot. Tragedy can be divided in the basis of form and content. From the point of view of form or structure, it is di vided into the classical and the romantic tragedy. The former is based on Greek conventions, and the latter follows it own rules. One of the main features of the classical tragedy is the Chorus. It is consisted of a band of singers and dancers. In Greek tragedy the men and the women forming the Chorus belonged to a lower social rank than the chief characters.Its main function was to report the events that occurred off stage and to make some comments from time to time. In the preface to â€Å"Merope†, Mattew Arnold explains the function of the chorus as to collect and weigh the impression which the action would at each stage make on a pious, thoughtful mind. It deepened the feeling aroused in the spectacular by reminding him of the past, and by indicating what was to come. To combine, to harmonize and to deepen the feelings excited in the audience by sight of the play was the function of the chorus.Its importance dwindled as Greek drama developed. In Aeschylus, it takes part i n the action, but in Sophocles, it becomes a mere commentator, and in Euripides, it is a lyric element. The Elizabethan dramatists in England reduced it to a single speaker, unrelated rest of the characters, who spoke the prologue or occasional interpretations of the plot. In modern plays it is rarely used as in Eliot’s â€Å"Murder in the Cathredal†. The Three Unities is another feature of the classical tragedy. The theory of unities was first propounded by Aristotle a Greek philosopher of the fourth century B.C. They are of time, action, and place. Actually Aristotle mentioned only two †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. Unity of time and unity of action. The unity of place was implied in the first, by the unity of action he meant that the story should be the imitation of one action, and of the whole of this , and that the parts should be so arranged that if any of them is transposed or taken away the whole would become different and change. By the unity of time, mentioned in â⠂¬Å"Poetics 5 â€Å"he meant that tragedy should confine itself to ne revolution of the sun, or slightly exceed the limit.His statement (â€Å"Poetics 17†) that, as contrasted with epic, tragic episodes are short and (â€Å"Poetics 26†) confined in less extended limits †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ crowded into a narrow compass, is the nearest he comes to any utterance regarding Unity of place. In short, Aristotle’s requirements were interpreted to mean that the action of the play should be a unified whole, the time should be limited to twenty-four hours, and the scene should be unchanged, or it should at least remain within the limits of a single city.According to some, Aristotle, insisted on the unity of action only, and the other two unities were added by critics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They argued that verisimilitude †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ an illusion of reality †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ could be achieved only by the observance of the three unities. In England romantic tendencies were stronger than academic precepts and therefore, the playwrights violated the theory of the unities came from Dr. Johnson who defended the romantic playwrights for following laws of nature rather than those of art imposed by the critics.It is universally admitted that more than Sophocles and Aeschylus, Seneca, the Roman dramatist, influenced the tragic writers of the renaissance in England. It happened so on account of the melodramatic elements in his plays and because he wrote in Latin which was treasured more than Greek then. His understanding of the working of human emotions commended itself to he Elizabethan playwrights in England. Moreover, Seneca showed in his plays a moral tone and system of philosophy popular in England. The moral purpose and the rhetorical methods of Senecan play appealed to them.While Aeschylus, Sophoclus, and Aristotle believed that man had some chance for happiness. , Seneca showed that man was sure to be beaten. But he introduced a stoical remedy that appealed to the Elizabethan dramatists. Senecan plays were immersed in honours, epigrammatial moralizing and stichomuthia or line repartee. The Senecan tradition also associated with supernatural arents like ghosts. Kyd’s â€Å"Spanish Tragedy†, and Shakespeare’s â€Å"Hamlet† and â€Å"Macbeth† show Senecan influence. The Neo-classical tragedy departed from the Senecan model in two points. They were the introduction of romantic love and the dropping out of chorus.The ancient playwrights held the opinion that the introduction of romantic love would mar the dignity of the hero and the high seriousness of the narrative. The Neo-classicists, however, trudged in the footsteps of the classicist in observing the Three Unities rigorously, and in making the drama basically narrative. Nearly everything, especially of a violent character, happens, in a neo-classical theory, off the stage and is narrated to the audience. The n eo-classicists as well as the romantic dramatists dealt with great legends of the past and were in this respect not different from classicist.The chief characters were all majesty, far above the ordinary human beings. The dialogues were stately, devoid of homely phrases, and mostly poetic. No attempt was made by the neo-classicists to mirror ordinary life. The romantic plays, though dealing with aristocratic character, were different in the method of treatment. The tragic hero is placed in a common world, among ordinary people. The dialogue had many touches of familiarity and even colloquialism. Realistic details like King Lear’s famous, â€Å"Pray you, undo this button† abound. Thus the romantic tragedy was a combination of the idealistic and realistic elements.To the romantic dramatists, unity of action meant not a single action, but organic connection among the various action presented in the play. Subplots, like the comic plot in Shakespeare’s â€Å"The Tem pest† were introduced, provided the two plots were independent. Moreover, the romantic drama is, unlike the neo-classical plays, a drama of action. Nearly, everything happens in the stage. Duels are fought, murders and suicides committed, and battles waged in full view of the spectators. The play of Shakespeare and his contemporaries thus satisfied the appetite of the Elizabethan audience for the action.The romantic dramatists differed from the neo-classicists in their attitude towards the theory of unities too. They ignored the unity of time and place. Even Shakespeare moved his scenes from town to town, and from country to country, and described the events of many years. Tragic comedy is a new form of play. The classical dramatists never allowed any comic element to enter their tragedies though they allowed serious element in their comedies. But the romantic playwrights disregarded this line of demarcation between tragedies and comedies. They freely mingled tragic and comic scenes in their plays.Addison calls it â€Å"One of the monstrous inventions that ever entered into a poet’s thought†. Dyrden agreed with him by commenting, â€Å"There is no theatre in the world which has nothing so absurd as English tragic-comedy†. Though considered a non-Aristotlean form, the trig-comedy was successful. Shakespeare’s â€Å"The Merchant of Venice† is an example for it. The important characters in tragi-comedies were drawn from both the high class and the low class. A serious action is introduced as threatening the protagonist who, by a sudden change of fortune, escapes and the play ends happily.The term â€Å"tragic-comedy† is sometimes applied to play with double plots, one serious and the other comic. On the basis of content, tragedy may be divided into various types. One of them is the horror tragedy, developed in England in the early part of seventeenth century by Ford and Wesbter. The appeal to the audience is made in these plays, not by characters, but by incidents. The aim of the writers who wrote horror tragedies was stage sensationalism. The inner struggle in these tragedies depends upon external events. Horror from situation dominates these plays. An example is â€Å"The Duchess of Malfi†.The Heroic tragedy was cultivated during the Restoration Period by a number of dramatists, the prominent among whom are Dryden and Otway. The subjects of these plays were love and valour and the themes were developed to epic magnitude. An air of exaggeration prevailed in them. Dryden himself said, â€Å"Heroic play is the representation of nature wrought up to a high pitch†. The scenes in them were laid in distant countries like Peru, India and Mexico. The characters were men of superhuman power and women of immortal beauty and unattainable virtue. The speeches were magnificent, marked by a declamatory style.The heroic meter, instead of blank verse, was employed in them. Its Artistic beauty a nd effect were marred by its artificially and exaggeration. Domestic tragedy was a type of play written in the eighteenth century. The term is also applied to some of Ibsen’s plays and some Elizabethan tragedies like† A Woman Killed with Kindness†. It is a serious play, realistic in style with its hero drawn from the low or middle class and its action concerned with personal or domestic matters. The domestic tragedies were written mostly in prose. They were devoid of emotional force and was based on pity and sympathy.An example is Lillo’s â€Å"The London Merchant†. Comedy, according to Aristotle, deals with â€Å" some defect or ugliness that is painful or destructive†. The characters, mostly from low classes were drawn from observation and experience. The writers were often satirical and the characters became caricatures of actual human beings. The plots were less complicated than those of tragedy. Misunderstandings and mistaken identities p layed a prominent role in them. Yet a good comedy can penetrate deeply into the roots of the human nature, and make the audience aware of man’s limitations.Aristotle believed that the play is rendered comic by making the characters in it worse than they are, thereby making them objects of merriments. Ben Johnson also believed that whatever is awry in men provokes laughter. A number of critics from Kaunt to Hazlitt have found that the source of laughter is incongruity. In sidney’s opinion also, â€Å"Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature†. Allardyce Nicoll traces the source oof laughter to a desire for liberation from the restraints of society.It goes contrary to Bergson’s view that the source is automatism which implies that the conditions of comedy are unsociability on the part of the object of laughter. The first regular drama in English in the form of a comedy was â€Å"Ralph Roister Doister† written by Nicholas Udall in 1550 or so. The writer seems to have been influenced much by Latin comedies of Plautus and Terence. The second English comedy was â€Å"Grammer Gurton’s Needle† of doubtful authorship performed at Christ’s college in Cambridge in 1552. Both these comedies had the classical division into five acts, and the action was limited to a single day and a single locality.On the basis of form, the comedy may be divided into classical and romantic comedies, which differ from each other in the same manner the two types of tragedies do. On the basis of content, comedy may be divided into various types. The comedy of Humours was written chiefly by Ben Johnson who used the term â€Å"humours† in the medieval sense in which it reffered to the four fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile in the human body. According to the theories of humours, a person’s physical, mental and moral conditions are determined by the state of his humours.A n imbalance in their proportion affected the behaviour of the person, and a perfect balance created an ideal man. The dramatists who adopted this theory designed â€Å"humourous† characters, whose behavior was determined by a single humour. Ben johnson’s â€Å"Every Man in His Humour†is the earliest play written in this way in 1598. Shakespeare has introduced â€Å"humourous† characters like the melancholy Jacques in â€Å"As You like it†. Johnson drew comedy down to real life, using it to present the follies of contemporary London. The comedy of humours disregarded humour as the term is used now.It depended on wit and satire. The comedy of Manners developed in the Restoration period. The writer were influenced by the French dramatist Moliere and the Spanish dramatist Claderson. It is realistic in nature, and concentrated on the activities, intrigues and amorous achievements of gay, frivolous men and women who used to meet in cafes, chocolate house s, clubs and gambling centres in London. Reputations were murdered and Clandestine love affairs were carried out by them. A lot of senseless prattle went on with scandal mongering in the air.This degraded life of the aristocratic classes of the day is presented in these comedies. Satire was an integral part of these comedies. It was the satire at the follies of those who strive to enter the elegant circle by plotting against their rivals and competitions in love. Besides satire, it made use of wit which is seen in the repartees that abound in these plays. It has been critised for its obscenity and immorality. The Genteel Comedy was developed by Colley Cibber in the middle of the eighteenth century. His â€Å"The Careless Husband† is regarded as the first genteel comedy in English.The term was first used by Addison for the type of comedy that portrays more artificial life than the comedy of manners. Affectations ruled the life of the upper class society then, and these affecta tions are presented in humorous manner in these comedies. Laughter arises not out of the playful fancies of intellectual men, but ou of the affectations of the high class society. The Comedy of Intrigue came into inception in the days of Fletcher and continued to be popular till the end of the eighteenth century. In this type of comedy laughter arises out of the disguises and the intrigues and complications of the plot.An important writer of this type of comedy is Fletcher. The play captures our attention with a series of situations leading to innumerable mistakes and amusing denouements. There is little wit, no humour, no satire, but there are several comic situations. Its laughter depends on external sources, and it provides little intellectual mirth. The Sentimental Comedy of the eighteenth century was a reaction against the comedy of manners of the Restoration period. The sentimental comedy was opposed to the light-hearted fun in the comedy of manners.In fact, it is opposed to t he spirit of comedy itself. Humour is driven out of it, and as Allardyce Nicoll says, it presented tears in place of laughter. The place of humour was taken by pathos. Wit or brilliance had no place in this type of comedy. The writer aimed at moral edification, for they felt that the taste of the readers had been degraded by obscenity and vulgarity depicted in the comedy of manners. Distressed middle class characters were presented in these comedies to evoke sympathy. The principal writers of this type of comedy were Richard Steele, Huge Kelly and Cumberland.It developed not only on account of the theatrical and social changes of the time, but also because the rising middle class demanded a different type of comedy. The sentimental comedies provided moral lectures and lacked emotional appeal. Hazlitt aptly says, â€Å"It is almost a misnormer to call them comedies; they are rather homilies in dialogue†. The One Act Play The origin of the one-act play can be traced back to the short farces that flourished in Italy from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries and the miracle and mystery plays of became a curtain-raiser. In 1903 when W. W.Jacob’s play â€Å"The Monkey’s Paw† was acted as a curtain-raiser, it appealed to the audience so much that most of the people left the theatre when the curtain descended upon this play became a series rival to the long play. The one-act play may be tragic as in Synge’s â€Å"Riders to the Sea†, it can be didactic as Willis Hall’s â€Å"The Day’s beginning†, it can be comic and satirical Houghton’s â€Å"The Dear Departed†, or oit can be a fantasy like Lord Dunsany’s ‘The Golden Doom†. It can be farcial too Arnold Bennet’s â€Å"The Stepmother†, or melodramatic like ‘The Monkey’s Paw†. It can be written in verse like Christopher Fry’s â€Å"A Phoenix too Frequent†.The outstanding cha racteristic of the one-act play is that it turns upon a single idea or situation, presenting a single mood or single aspect of character, though it presents a conflict like long plays. A few characters are introduced and the interest is concentrated on a single dominant character in whom a single trait is revealed in a flash. Dialogues are short, and the dramatist cannot unities of action, time and place are observed. It has an immense future because modern people have less time and inclination for long plays, it is cheaper to produce, and can be performed by amateurs.Above all, the growth of radio and television has made it popular. The importance of the opening scene of the play The Exposition as given in the essay on drama. Soliloquy and the Aside The aside like the soliloquy indicates that dialogue is not the only substitute for the dramatist for direct analysis and commentary of the novelist. Soliloquy is a convention by which a character, alone on the stage, utters his thought s aloud. The audience is thus provided with the information necessary to understand the character’s motives and the state of mind.Aside is another similar stage device in which a character, not necessarily alone on the stage, expresses his thoughts in a short speech which is supposed to inaudible to the other characters on the stage. Both these conventions, prevalent in the Elizabethan and later drama, were adopted by the dramatist to take the audience down into hidden recesses of a person’s nature. The dramatist, being denied the privilege o dissect his characters as the novelist does, has to resort to such means to enable the audience and readers to understand his characters well.In soliloquy and aside the characters are not supposed to be speaking to us or to themselves, but they are merely thinking aloud. The conventions, however, fell into disuse in the nineteenth century when realism was insisted upon. Melodrama â€Å"Melos† is a Greek term meaning â€Å" song†, and the term melodrama wass, therefore, applied to musical accompaniment was a characteristic of most of the plays, because â€Å"legitimate† plays were permitted only in the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres while musical entertainment had no such restrictions at all. In melodrama the hero and heroine were embodiments of virtue, and the villain was a monster of evil.The plot was centered round intrigues and violent effect and emotional excitement. Now the term â€Å"melodrama† is applied to any work that contains improbable events and sensational actions. Tragic Flaw / Hamartia In Aristotle’s view, tragedy should evoke pity. To do so he recommended a hero neither superlatively good and just or wholly vivious and depraved. He brought to misery through some mistaken act caused by an error in his judgement or some shortcoming in his nature. This error of judgement is called â€Å"hamartia† or â€Å"tragic flaw†. It exists within the character and causes the tragedy.In Greek tragedies a common form of hamartia was pride which tempts a man to disregard divine power. It moves us to pity because the hero is not an essentially evil man, and his misfortune is far more than what he deserves. In modern social drama the tragic flaw often exists in the milieu, and the hero becomes a victim of external circumstances. Catharsis â€Å"Catharsis† in Greek signifies â€Å"purgation† or ‘‘purification†. The effect of tragedy, according to Aristotle, is to arouse the emotions of pity and fear in such a way as to effect purging and relief, and this is known as â€Å"catharsis† in tragedy.Recently, Aristotle’s â€Å"Catharsis† has been interpreted as applying not to the effect on the audience, but to an element within the play itself. It then signifies the purgation of the guilt attached to the hero’s tragic act by demonstrating in the course of the drama that the hero p erformed this act without knowledge of its nature. Aristotle distinguishes the tragic from comic and other forms by this effect. In any case, he accounts for the extraordinary fact that many tragic representations of suffering, defeat and death leave on the audience a feeling, not of depression, but of relief and exaltation. Comic ReliefComic relief is the relief provided by a spell of fun between two serious scenes or just before a serious incident in a play. It is achieved by the use of a humourous characters and their speeches. This was common in Elizabethan tragedy. They are necessary to provide a sort of relaxation to the audience after witnessing a grave scene or to prepare themselves for a grave incident. Sometimes the comic relief is provided by an intrusive episode or dialogue. It not only alleviates the tension, but also adds variety to the play . in some plays they become an integral part of the play and serve to intensify the tragic note.An example is the â€Å"Porter S cene† in Shakespeare’s â€Å"Macbeth†. Dramatic Irony Dramatic Irony s an utterance by a character in a play when he is ignorant of the real significance of his words. It is a situation in which the audience shares with the author knowledge of something which the speaker in the play is ignorant of. The character acts in a way inappropriate to the circumstances or says something which turns out to be true later though he did not expect such a turn of events. Writers of Greek tragedy, who generally borrowed their plots of this device.For instance, in Sophocles’s â€Å"Oedipus†, the king (Oedipus) hunts for the evil-doer who has brought plague upon Thebes without being aware that the culprit is himself. The English Chronicle plays Chronicle plays are plays for which the source is the Chronicle, or rather, record of events in the chronological order preserved in a king’s court. These historical materials are dramatized into chronicle plays. In En gland, Marlow’s â€Å"Edward II†, and are taken from Holinshed’s â€Å"Chronicles†. They were popular in the Elizabethan period when patriotic fervor rising out of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 reigned supreme in English society.The early chronicle plays merely presented a series of events during the reign of an English King. The plays were effective on the account of the battles presented on the stage and the pageants and spectacles that accompanied the victory in battle. Marlowe, for the first time selected and rearranged materials from Holinshed Chronicles for his â€Å"Edward II†. The Elizabethan chronicle plays are often called history plays. Parallelism in drama Parallelism and contrast are two elements in the composition of the plot of a play.The central idea of one part of the action reappears in another part of it, and each serves to illustrates and reinforce the other. Shakespeare seems to have been very fond of this stage devi ce, for he often uses it to add to the dramatic interest of the story. However, the best example of parallelism in Shakespearean play is found in â€Å"King Lear†, the two plots of which correspond in every detail. Shakespeare has here worked upon two narratives from two sources. In one story we come across a father deceived in the character of his daughters, ultimately getting real love from the one he had spurned.In the other story, we have a father deceived in the character of his sons, finding love in the one he has tried to kill. The Shakespeare, each supplementing the other in tragical emotions. A sort of burlesque parallelism is found in the comic scenes in Marlowe’s â€Å"Doctor Faustus†. The tragic hero Aristotle recommended for the tragedy a hero who is neither too good nor too evil. This is best seen in Shakespeare’s tragedies. His heroes are all men of high rank and great eminence, but they are brought low by some weakness in their nature.In M acbeth, it was indomitable ambition, in Othello it was an over-credulous nature, and in hmlet, it was a wavering spirit. Tragedy proceeds from the character or the actions of the hero. But Fate or circumstances also plays a dominant role in bringing about the tragedy. The suffering and calamity that fall to the lot of the hero are not of the ordinary type. They are exceptional. Macbeth is pricked by a guilty conscience to such an extent that he feels â€Å"life is a meaningless tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing†.

Was Saxon justice harsh and superstitious Essays

Was Saxon justice harsh and superstitious Essays Was Saxon justice harsh and superstitious Essay Was Saxon justice harsh and superstitious Essay Essay Topic: Law Between AD500 and 1100 England changed form being a mass of small kingdoms into one united country. During these centuries, kings played a vital part in every aspect of government and especially in crime and punishment. A kings most important tasks were to defend his country from attacks and to make sure his laws were obeyed. Laws were made by kings after consulting nobles and bishops. At first, Laws had two main aims, to protect landowners property from damage or theft and to protect people from violence although freemen got more protection than slaves. Early Saxon kings allowed the victims of crimes to punish the criminal themselves. If someone was murdered, the family had the right to track down and kill the murderer. This right was known as the Blood Feud. There were two problems about this legal violence. Firstly, it often led to even more violence as families and their friends banded together to take revenge for an attack and then this led to another attack. Secondly, it did not protect people who did not want to use violence against those who had harmed them. Later kings abolished the Blood Feud and introduced money fines called wergilds for many crimes including some murders. The victims received compensation in money. The level of punishment was decided by the king, through his laws. This made further violence much less likely. Saxon laws were extremely detailed about fines that criminals had to pay. The wergild for killing a nobleman was 300 shillings. If the criminal could not afford to pay the fine, then he or she was sent into slavery. However, not all crimes were punished by fines. Some serious crimes carried the death penalty treason against the king, arson and betraying your lord. Reoffenders were also punished harshly if they were caught. Punishments for regular offenders included mutilation, for example, cutting off a hand, ear or nose or putting out the eyes. Any accused person who did not come to court was Outlawed. This meant he no longer had the protection of the law and could be killed by anyone as a punishment. Prisons were only used for holding accused people before trial. Imprisonment was rarely used as a punishment because it was expensive. Gaolers would have to be paid and criminals would have to be fed. This was impossible at a time when kings only collected taxes for wars or to pay for other out of the ordinary events. There was no police force in Saxon England. In the early Saxon kingdoms people relied on their families to help them catch thieves or other wrongdoers. By the tenth century, kings had set up a different kind of self-help system known as a tithing. A tithing was a group of ten people. All males over the age of twelve had to belong to a tithing. This meant that they were responsible for each others behaviour. If a member of the tithing broke the law, the others had to bring him to court or pay the compensation fine to the victim. In a modern trial there are lawyers to prosecute and defend, and jury members must have no prior knowledge of the accused. By contrast, at a Saxon trial there were no lawyers to prosecute or defend the accused person. The accuser was the person who claimed to be the victim of the crime. The jury was also different. It was made up of men from the area who probably knew the accuser and the accused. Both the accused and the accuser told their version of events to the jury. It was then up to the jury to decide who was telling the truth. If there was no clear evidence (such as a witness having seen the crime take place) they used their experience of people concerned. If the jury felt the accuser was more honest in general than the accused, they swore an oath that the accused was guilty. The jurys oath taking was called Compurgation. There were times when the jury members could not agree with each other. This was usually in cases of theft or murder when there was no witness. Trial by ordeal was the solution to this problem. A twelfth-century law said that the ordeal of hot iron is not to be permitted except where the naked truth cannot otherwise be explored. Then God was asked to decide whether the accused person was guilty and the accused had to undergo trial by ordeal. Human beings might not know the truth but God certainly would! There were different kinds of trial by ordeal but whichever one was used; a careful religious ritual was followed. The person taking the ordeal had to fast for three days beforehand and hear mass in the church. As the ordeal by hot iron began the priest said these words: If you are innocent of this charge you may confidently receive this iron in your hand and the Lord, the justice judge, will free you, just as he snatched the three children from the burning fire. Trial by hot iron was usually taken by women. The accused had to carry a piece of red-hot iron for three metres. Her hand was then bandaged and unwrapped three days later. If the wound was healing cleanly without festering everyone would know that god was saying she was innocent. But if the wound was not healing cleanly God was saying she was guilty. Trial by hot water was usually taken my men. The accused put his hand into boiling water to pick up an object and lift it out. This might not be so easy. One of the earliest accounts of this ordeal describes how the accused plunged his right hand into the cauldron. In the bubbling it was not easy for him to grasp the little ring but at last he drew it out. The arm was then bandaged. Three days later the bandage was taken off. Again, the person was innocent if the wound was healing cleanly. Trial by cold water was also usually taken by men. People believed that the water was pure and so would reveal the truth. The accused was lowered into the water (a river or pond as close to the church as possible) on the end of a rope. The rope was knotted above the waist. If the person sank and the knot went below the surface then he was innocent because the pure water had been willing to let this innocent beneath its surface. However, if he and the knot floated then they believed the water was rejecting him because he was guilty. Trial by consecrated bread was taken by priests. The priest first had to pray, asking that he be choked by the bread if he lied. Then he had to eat a piece of consecrated bread. If he choked then he was guilty because God would not let a sinner eat consecrated bread. This might seem a much more lenient ordeal but people believed that God was sure to punish a priest who lied and so it was seen as the most effective or all ordeals. I think that the Saxons used trial by ordeal as a means of finding out whether someone was guilty or not to deter other would be criminals from committing crime. In my opinion, Saxon trials were based on superstition rather than logic because the trials in order to ascertain whether the person was guilty were based on a chance result and were often biased of finding them guilty.

Mesohippus - Facts and Figures

Mesohippus - Facts and Figures Name: Mesohippus (Greek for middle horse); pronounced MAY-so-HIP-us Habitat: Woodlands of North America Historical Epoch: Late Eocene-Middle Oligocene (40-30 million years ago) Size and Weight: About four feet long and 75 pounds Diet: Twigs and fruit Distinguishing Characteristics: Small size; three-toed front feet; large brain relative to its size    About Mesohippus You can think of Mesohippus as Hyracotherium (the ancestral horse previously known as Eohippus) advanced a few million years: this prehistoric horse represented an intermediate stage between the smallish hooved mammals of the early Eocene epoch, about 50 million years ago, and the large plains grazers (like Hipparion and Hippidion) that dominated the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs over 45 million years later. This horse is known by no less than twelve separate species, ranging from M. bairdi to M. westoni, which roamed the expanse of North America from the late Eocene to the middle Oligocene epochs. About the size of a deer, Mesohippus was distinguished by its three-toed front feet (earlier horses sported four toes on their front limbs) and the wide-set eyes set high atop its long, horse-like skull. Mesohippus was also equipped with slightly longer legs than its predecessors, and was endowed with what, for its time, was a relatively large brain, about the same size, proportionate to its bulk, as that of modern horses. Unlike later horses, however, Mesohippus fed not on grass, but on twigs and fruit, as can be inferred by the shape and arrangement of its teeth.

Curriculum Documentation and Origins Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Curriculum Documentation and Origins - Essay Example The English curriculum focuses on promoting both thinking and language through interactive learning. In addition, the curriculum focuses on ensuring that students develop oral language and literacy skills. An additional focus of the curriculum is to ensure that students engage with literary from different genres, cultures, as well as periods. The American English curriculum also places emphasis on writing as a critical skill that helps students develop, clarify, and communicate ideas in different forms of writing. The English curriculum also exposes students to different forms of media, allowing them to review the media forms appropriately. The curriculum also seeks to impart students with both reading and writing skills at an exemplary level. The English curriculum also promotes certain strategies that ensure that students can acquire academic knowledge, meet their academic standards, and register a measure of independence in learning. In addition, the English curriculum seeks to bu ild on the English language as well as on the experiences and the interests of students. The curriculum is intended to give students an opportunity to develop distinctive writing or speaking voice, which helps them to achieve self-expression. Other parts of the English curriculum ensure that students are developed in order to become responsible American citizens, preparing them for active participation both in the school setting and in civic life (Stotsky, 2013). Worth noting is the fact that the English curriculum has numerous sources required for developing different skill in students. After identifying some texts required for the tenth-grade curriculum, there were challenges in photocopying the text. However, it was noted that many texts are available in the original version of different states (Stotsky, 2013).