Nineteen Eighty Four Essay Example for Free

Nineteen Eighty Four Essay Nineteen Eighty Four is George Orwells nightmare vision of the future. Written in 1948, at the end of World War II, Orwell simply switched numbers for his future view. The opening chapter is very effective in the way that it straight away lets the reader know the style of the novel. The opening is a description of post-war London, and the introduction of the main character. Orwell saw the evil in the war just passed, and wrote about it. The imagery used can all be linked to the war or London. The novel is not personal, with more reference to the party and regimes, Orwell was a political writer, an extreme socialist. He is criticizing any political regime, socialist or fascist. Right from the outset the author intends to draw attention to the setting. The chapter is typical of the book as a whole; describing Orwells dystopia. The main character we are first introduced to is Winston Smith. This is a common, English name, showing that Winston is in no way separate from the majority. The name Winston can be linked to Winston Churchill, who had just lead England through the war. Along with the name, Winston is not presented as a hero, as one would expect of a main character. Winston is thirty nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle and is incredibly unfit, resting several times on his way up the stairs. We are not, however, given a personality for our hero; we have to wait until part II of the novel to get personal detail. The opening passage introduces us to life for Winston. The settings described are not pleasant. Outside, there is a vile wind and a swirl if gritty dust. Inside Victory Mansions, where Winston resides, for it cannot be said that he lives, it is not much better. The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. This gives the impression of rotting and deterioration. Everything is rationed; this is a reference to the war. The present electric current was cut off during daylight hours. Winston uses blunt razor blades and coarse soap. There is no colour described in the opening, the picture of the settings in the readers mind are black and white, therefore giving a sense of a grey, unhappy world. The people of London are not free. There is an imposing poster everywhere one turned, bearing the caption, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. The man in the poster, the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features could very well be Hitler or Stalin, another reference to the war. There is a sense of being watched, the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. The notion of Big Brother is introduced to us in the first ten lines of the novel, this clearly shows us where Orwells intentions lie. We are introduced to the concept of Hate Week, although no further detail is given. Orwell writes of it as though it is an every day event and nothing obscure should be thought of it. Big Brother is the antithesis of Winston, strong and powerful vs. frail and weak. The reader gets the impression Winston could never overthrow the party, although we are not yet introduced to his rebellious side as he does not yet have a character. We are introduced to the party slogans. The set out of them is a triangle, representing hierarchy, authority. The words are oxymorons, War and Peace, Freedom and Slavery, Ignorance and Strength. The words are ironic when used next to each other. They are each the antithesis of the other. If you take away peoples knowledge, you can tamper with their minds, as shown in the last slogan. Once inside Winstons flat, we are introduced to the telescreens, furthering the notion that no one is free. There are helicopters that look into the houses and the telescreens that watch you. There is a description of a dulled mirror but mirrors cannot be dull, or the view would be distorted, this is another message from Orwell showing us nothing was clear. We get more description of Winston, still nothing personal, and still anti-heroic, a smallish, frail figure, the meagerness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. We get the impression he is not well. Everything he can see from his window is unpleasant, the world looked cold, it was torn and harsh. References to the war are frequent. The Ninth Three-Year Plan is ironic, because it would not be possible, and the Three-Year Plan relates to the plan Germany had after the war. The houses are describes as rotting, and their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron. This is war-torn London. The place Winston lives, Oceania is at war. Orwell suggests the war is just a tool used by the party to keep the people oppressed. We are introduced to the Ministries. Their descriptions are the antithesis of the houses described. They are described as startlingly different and they are a wonder to look at. The Ministries are of Truth, Love, Peace and Plenty. The irony lies in the fact that the Ministry of love was the frightening one. Things were done with military precision, even the time is in twenty-four hour clock. The Ministries were guarded by uniformed, armed guards, gorilla-faced guards. Orwell uses alliteration to emphasize how imposing and horrible they looked. Another war image. The opening chapter is very effective in making the reader wan to read on, as it makes you feel you are reading history. This is because we are reading with hindsight. The reader feels they want to get to know Winston better because of what they have so far read. Orwell is effective is his opening because the settings are so well described that you instantly get a mental picture and are intrigued by the contrast between the war-torn London so well known and the surreal idea of helicopters looking in windows. It makes the reader wonder what might have happened had the war turned out differently, and Orwells Big Brother, Hitler or Stalin, had been successful.

Mad About Science :: Personal Narrative Essays

Mad About Science    The trip to Singapore this summer was the most educational and most enjoyable trip I have ever taken. Weeks later, I still look back at my photographs, email several people daily from the US and foreign delegations, and tell my friends and family about the experience. I particularly enjoyed the lecture by the researcher from the Human Genome Project. Because I have had less interest in biology in high school, I had not been following the updates on the Human Genome Project very carefully, and he summarized the project and also explained its significance well. One of the aspects of the project that I found most intriguing was the ability to cure diseases through the project's research. The speaker said that by first reproducing diseases, scientists would be on their way to curing them, and I had not realized the significance of the Human Genome Project in that respect. The lecture from the Australian professor, while not always aimed at as serious an audience as he was dealing with, was also interesting, and the video I took of him was one of the favorites of everyone I showed it to when I came back home.    For me, the best part of the trip was the science and technology exhibition. Not many kids came to my exhibit, probably because it was just a computer screen without much on the board behind to attract attention. But I did talk to a group of maybe 15 students from a local school. They were interested at first in the contest I had participated in and in my web site and the process I had gone through to create it, but pretty soon they lost interest in that and became more concerned with my height. Like several other students I met, they all wanted photos to remember how much taller than them I was. But the most valuable part of the exhibition for me was walking around to other countries' booths. When I asked the students to tell me about their projects, they were always happy to describe their work. What really impressed me was the practicality and creativeness of their projects, and that so many groups of students from so many different schools could come up with such great projects. I tried to take a photo or video of each project that was described for

Keats’ Romantic Eco-Poetics

Ecocritics work to develop and demonstrate the connection between nature and humanity by expressing how places are connected to the people that live in them. Likewise, those places, or nature, affect the people that live within them and vise versa. John Keats’ eco-poetics often convey a Romantic adoration for nature by means of a self-conscious, philosophical imagination’s connection to nature. His enthusiasm for the philosophical as well as the corporeal scopes of nature plays an obvious fundamental role in his theory of consciousness and aesthetics. Keats has specific qualifications for truth and beauty.Truth is all inclusive, combining all experiences with nature in one’s life, whether they are affirmative or undesirable experiences, into one functional vision. However, Keats separates his poetry from nature in dominating way. He does not believe that nature only funds the aesthetics of his poetry, but rather that his poetry forces readers to recognize a deepe r meaning to existence. ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is an excellent example of Keats’ use of nature in developing the poet’s assumptions of consciousness and philosophy. The initial use of a bird singing, in its poetic aesthetics sense, portrays the beauty and concord within nature.Keats embraces the thought of a painless death only while listening to the nightingale’s song. This is because of the bird’s ability to be free, which wills Keats’ to want a similar freedom, apart from the suffering and pain within human life. He even speaks as though the nightingale is immortal and incapable of the sorrow of death. Within the same stanza, which can be found below, Keats speaks of a magic this nightingale holds. It is as if Keats firmly believes in the nightingale’s ability to transcend the natural world, into a world free of cares and lacking death. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness painsMy sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ‘Tis but through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness, That though light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. (Lines 1-10) Though wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown Perhaps the self-same song that found a pathThrough the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. (Stanza VII) Likewise, the seasonal transition depicts nature’s ability to change in spite of man’s inability to look past their monotonous and speculative life. Keats focuses on the phenomena of metamorphosis in regards to the conscious self. This pattern of c ycles which can be directly connected to the process of life and human existence can be seen in the fifth stanza of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ as well as in ‘to Autumn. Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves; And mid-May’s eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of lies on summer eves. (Lines 47-50 ‘Ode to a Nightingale’) Where are the songs of Springs? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river swallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; (Lines 23-29 ‘To Autumn’)Again, Keats’ implies a connection between human existence and the fact that there would be no meaning to life without the inevitability of eventual death to the seasons, life in spring and death in winter. Along with this rend ition of life and death, Keats creates a feeling of comfort in his ecological representation of death. In ‘To Autumn,’ Keats displays a world in which fruit is ripe and flowers are budding. Colors are alive and bright. However, each season brings the death of the one preceding it. In other words, every season, as with every human existence, has the capacity of life and death.The ecology behind this declaration appears within the recurring and inexhaustible rebirth of nature’s beauty. On the other hand, I do not believe that Keats’ sole intention was to display the beauty of nature. Keats often uses the exploration of nature and its imagery as a socio-political symbol of freedom, sovereignty, and harmony. Although autumn is beautiful and Keats uses this ecology to the political and personal strife found within every human being. I believe this to be true because Keats wrote ‘To Autumn’ in September of 1819, shortly after his brother, Tom, died in December of 1818 of tuberculosis.Also the Peterloo Massacre, which occurred in August of 1819, about a month before Keats wrote ‘To Autumn,’ may have influenced his language and aesthetics within the poem. Keats was obviously pondering the concept of death and his undeniable belief in an existence after death. It is important to consider the context, both political and social, in which ‘To Autumn’ was written. This is because â€Å"ecocritics enlarge the vision(s) of texts and their role and function in our lives while challenging, the readers, to investigate and grapple with our personal understanding of humanity, texts, and nature itself (Bressler). Our understanding of humanity, text, and nature is often greatly influenced by the experiences we face from day to day. Keats is able to use his poetry to address a number of reoccurring ideas: the relationship between art and existence, the limitation of that existence and how those limitations are embrac ed by people, and the inevitability of death and loss of everything that is capable of reproduction and beauty. Although his poetry is beautiful, his ideas are somewhat tragic.

Companies Don t Understand China, Says Kpmg - 1921 Words

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This essay will mainly talk about an article taken from The Australian titled, â€Å"Companies don’t understand China, says KPMG†. The main challenge faced by Australia in doing business with China is the cultural barrier, particularly the language difference. Additionally, Australia also has limited experience with and information on Chinese business customs, in comparison with other countries. Besides analysing the issues highlighted in the article, factors that also led to these issues will also be discussed. This essay will link some relevant theories learned from International Management subjects, such as Cross-Cultural Communications, Managing across Culture, and Conflicts of Cross-Cultural Communications. Strategies such as learning Chinese language and culture, joining the KPMG China Confidence program and increasing awareness of the ways China prefers to conduct business will also be discussed. In the last section of this essay, conclusion will be given. China has one of world’s largest populations and, in the last few decades, the world’s fastest economic growth. Large numbers of other major Western countries compete to invest and collaborate with China. However, due to the cultural differences and language barriers between Eastern and Western countries, issues often arise and can lead to conflicts if cautionary steps are not taken. This essay will discuss some issues, causing factors, theories and strategies related to an article taken fromShow MoreRelatedIkeas Organizational Behavior8907 Words   |  36 PagesThe large cash flow start coming in once Ikea enters the US in1985. By this time IKEA has 10,000 co-workers and 60 stores. Ingvar Kampard retires from Group Management and becomes an advisor to the parent company INGKA Holding B.V. 1990s In 90s IKEA expands in Eastern Europe as well as China. In 1990 the first environmental policy and social responsibility policy is introduced in IKEA. 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