Regeneration and Delusion

Explore how Pat Barker portrays the theme of escape in Regeneration and explain what this tells you about the effects of war. â€Å"In peace, children inter their parents; War violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children. † † Herodotus (484BC – 430BC) Regeneration is a novel that tells the story of soldiers of World War One sent to an asylum due to emotional tribulation. Regeneration connects as a â€Å"back door into the present†, particularly with the theme of escape; and Barker chooses to portray this through her faction novel.Inveterate indications of escape throughout the novel are masculation, sex, death and a sense of reality. It is genuinely hard to be sure what the majority of people in Britain knew about the war and battles like the Somme from the media of the day. The newspapers and their reporters offered a wide range of styles and opinions – as they still do – but often walked a difficult line between pa triotic support for the war and a desire to convey its terrible nature. An extensive atmosphere of patriotism was generated by insincere information such as the propaganda.The media were supercilious, dehumanising the Germans to attract more soldiers, promising them that they would gain rare pportunities such as travel. Men, as well as women, were disillusioned. The reality of war was distorted and no longer became a heroic affair. Sassoon may be disillusioned when he mentions that this war may have been Justified â€Å"†¦ when it started†¦ † (Pg. 13). The authenticity of world war one was erroneous to the world surrounding the war. What the world saw was a picture that was glorified by the continuous mendaciousness made by the government and the commanding officers themselves.In Regeneration the reader is presented with Sassoon's ‘Soldier's Declaration' (Pg. 3) written in July 1917 to declare that the war is futile. Sassoon's declaration, a â€Å"wilful defi ance of military authority', clearly and logically states his decision to stop fghting as a soldier in world war one and clearly paints a vision of escape in the readers minds. He believes that the purpose of war has changed; what was once a war of liberation and defence has become one of aggression. This is a historical document and is one that was not suppressed merely due to the fact that Sassoon was a commanding officer.Because he was a commanding officer his document truly revealed the ways his beliefs got him to escape the war but make a trong argument too.. In Regeneration mental escape is the only way to relieve yourself of the war for a second until the next gunfire, the next shell blows or the next person comes into your care. Burns is a character who seems to be incapable of escaping his mental trauma caused by the war. He would tell you that the images of dying men and being ‘inside the stomach of a half blown German soldier' (Pg. 19) with the stench of rotting inn ards devouring your nostrils would scar you mentally. eing wedged into a hole; and the heroic adventure was not nearly as heroic as the oldiers would have hoped for, Barker represented this through the struggle of men being sent to Craiglockhart and still never escaping the trenches as victims were immune to normal human life and trench life was still attached to their lives. The verisimilitudes of the characters of this novel conform to our sense of reality. Barker uses unadorned dialect and language which was not used at the time to maintain a sense of veracity. It seems as though every character has a need to escape and Barker presents us with this idea through her language.Barker changes her use of language by changing the tmosphere and stripping away the dialogue, to romantic and poetic. She does this to remind us that Sassoon is sensitive and has a poetic side to him and this makes the reader feel closer to him, particularly when Graves identifies him as â€Å"Sass.. † A technique in which Barker depicts escape is bird imagery. This could be linked with religion in a way that white doves were a major symbol in Christianity and were symbolic of freedom and peace. Just the idea of birds makes the reader wonder about how they fly so freely and Burns manages to grab hold of this by â€Å"drifting off to sleep† (Pg. ) He is entering a dreamful state in which â€Å"he could stay there forever†. His dream reminds the reader of the preciousness of escape â€Å"A shaft of sunlight filtered through the leaves (†¦ ) shone sapphire, emerald, and amethyst. † This is proof that he can in fact escape in his dream world. This shaft of light filtering through the leaves could be perceived as a motion of escape; Barker is hinting a glimmer of escape but not fully letting the light shine through representing the mental state of Burns. There is also a sense of escape though bird imagery again when Rivers is â€Å"under the spell of flickeri ng birds† (Pg. ) however this is in a different light. With Burns, his sense of escape was in a dreamful manner but with Prior's suffocation, the bird imagery sheds a new light, one of no escape. Even though Prior is out of war, his own problems still bother him and this shows that escape is Just an illusion. Another way Barker chooses to portray momentary escape is through the theme of sex and death. She chooses to depict her use of this type of escape through her creation of a character; Prior and her fairly new character, Sarah Lumb.Barker uses sensual language in the graveyard scene which is highly contrasting the general etting; sex in the midst of death. Generally, you are not meant to have this kind of interaction in such a holy place, this was a sign of disrespect. Barker could perhaps be commenting on how the war shook people's religious views. Living through the war and being surrounded by death must have changed people's views and no wonder attitudes towards sex cha nged as it was for some if only means of comfort and life affirmation. as Barker is subtly suggesting.However, the life ofa chick consists of living and dying in the hands of humans and this resembles the scene of the war; men were orn, sent to war, and slaughtered in the hands of human beings. It almost seems as though Barker is using allegory to describe the process of a hatching chick which ironically resemble the lives of the soldiers. (Pg. 1 52) â€Å"He remembered them struggling out of the eggs (†¦ ) curiously powerful (†¦ ) now the same chicks were scruffy, bedraggled things running in the coops. † Rivers escapes the environment of Craiglockhart however he doesn't escape his patients.He writes to â€Å"David Burns† which shows what a caring fgure he is. He also begins to address Burns as ‘David' and this shows how the relationship between hem is progressing. The perspective of escape changes when a female is finally given the opportunity to want to escape: Sarah Lumb. Barker being the omniscient narrator finally allows the reader to see how Sarah really feels. She needs to escape as she â€Å"began to feel distinctly green and hairy'. (Pg. 159) because the state of the men were too hard to handle.The irony of this is that men harmed man, but couldn't handle the sight of their destruction. Earlier Barker presented us with Sassoon's resentment towards the older generation for seeing the war as glory, and now Sarah Lumb also feels a sense of anger as â€Å"she trode on through the heat, not caring where she was going, furious with herself, the war†¦ everything†. She is angry at the country for sending all of these men to war as is Prior and this could represent a link between how men and women felt the same about war if you had been one of the very many to experience it.In a reader's perspective, this also shows and agreement between social class differences as Prior and Sarah are both of different class and shar e the same resentment which shows an escape of the social barrier and some sort of relief of the war. Herodotus' quote at the beginning sums up that in war there's no escape, you get hrown into a war torn asylum and spend the rest of your life, if any, trying to escape, through writing, through poetry, through art, Just like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.However there was a chance of escape if you were seriously injured, and even then you were seen as a shirker and a failure and never mentally escaped the torture of war. Propaganda lead to young boys wanting to go to the war to fght for their country, meaning the children did in fact inter their parents, and once theyd lived the reality and managed to get away and go home, their parents did inter their hildren. Older generations that didn't experience war saw it more as a playground of little toy soldiers they could fling around making it seem a lot more calm and fun than it actually was, but the reality was quite different.Men became so lonely in the trenches and at the hospitals that any kind of physical contact from women became precious and in Priors case, the feeling of war was â€Å"like sex† and euphoria. His escape was Sarah, and many other men would find sex through prostitutes and this shows through death; even then their souls would not be at peace and fully escaped as the ar would go on, but as one soldier departed the battle grounds, a new recruit would be put in his place allured by the propaganda and media.This displays a cycle of curtailed escape. There was no real escape in war as the pattern of death and new recruitment followed the cycle of life and even though this shows a great level of patriotism, futility is the only word to describe war. Bibliography Barker, Pat – Regeneration (England, 1991. Viking) Reusch, Wera – ‘A backdoor into the present' an interview with Pat Barker, Germany. Lolapress (Translated from German) Nixon, Rob – An Interview with Pat Barker (England, February, 1992)

How Belief Systems Effect Politics Essays - IslamicJewish Relations

How Belief Systems Effect Politics Essays - IslamicJewish Relations How Belief Systems Effect Politics The belief systems of the modern world have helped determine the policies and politics of nations around the world. For centuries before, and almost definitely for decades after now, there will be disputed between people and countries on account of their faith. Religions have started wars, ended them, impacted, and persuaded people. Needless to say, beliefs are very influential on the world today. People of different faiths dont only fight over their basic beliefs and land but they end conflicts. Making amends between religious groups greatly helps relieve the constant strain of division that we are all too aware of these days. The Lutheran religion began 482 years ago when monk, Martin Luther, attacked the practices of the Catholic Church. These who followed his ideas eventually into what we call Lutherans today. For those 482 years, Lutherans and Catholics have stayed divided on uneasy terms. Now the leaders of the modern Lutheran and Catholic churches both signed a document that laid to rest those many years of differences under the explanation that it was all a misunderstanding. Sometimes different faiths just dont seem like they want to even try to compromise on a conflict. The Jordanian Muslims and the Israeli Jews fighting over which side of the Jordan River Jesus was baptized on is a perfect example of this. The Muslims have invested over one million dollars t fix up the site. The site will bring in expectantly millions of tourists and with them billions of dollars that will be spent locally to boost the economy. Looking past the irony of the Jews and Muslims disputing over a Christian site, the focal point of the quarreling is that such a site will bring. The Pope and Prince Charles have already scheduled a visit, but as of now, no resolve has come about. These days its not always conflicts between two specific regions, but between regions occupied by faiths who disagree on certain topics. The two groups being the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the compromise on the rift in the settler movement conflict arising in those countries. To the Jews the West Bank is part of the greater Land of Israel, given by God to the Jews. To cement their control over the land, the Jews built forty-two hilltop encampments on the West Bank. They did this to prevent it from becoming a Palestinian state. The Palestinian government claimed that some of the outposts didnt have the necessary building papers and twelve of those sites were dismantled. This disagreement is, for the time being, settled peacefully despite the denounced accord from the Palestinians. In the future more outposts are likely to be taken down. Whatever the rhyme or reason, religions and belief systems have tremendous effects on the way things work in this world. Hopefully nations are learning from their past mistakes what not to do if such an occasion arise again. Whether the Lutherans and Catholics are putting years of disagreement behind them, the Jews and Muslims are settling their dispute, or Jewish outposts are being taken down, we are moving forward into a new and brighter future, and gaining information as we go along. Maybe in the future, more of the religious spats will be settled as the Lutheran/Catholic dispute was...peacefully.

Nietzsche essays

Nietzsche essays Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy The book I read on Friedrich Nietzsche was essentially broken down into four separate parts. Part one of the book consisted of Nietzsche as a child, schoolboy, and a student. The second part of the novel discussed Nietzsche and his life as a professor. The third and fourth parts of the book contained the turning point of his life and then his Many says that Nietzsches philosophy is very ironic because of the background from which he was brought up. His father, grandfather, and great grandfathers had all been Lutherans dating back to the beginning of the 17th century. Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15th, 1844 in Rocken. Pastor Nietzsche had named his son after the new ruler of Prussia, Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich spent his first five years of living in a patronage located on the countryside. After his father died at age 36, he left the nationalistic roots of his family and became a rootless cosmopolitan. This proved to be a huge event in Friedrichs life, and he recorded it in a sentimental piece known as Aus Friedrichs intellectual and artistic abilities had been evident ever since he was a little child, so when he received a full scholarship to the famous Pforta school, it was no surprise. He was finally exposed to Wagner by his boyhood friend Krug, but after leaving Pforta for Bonn and Leipzig, he never spoke with Krug again. In school Nietzsche became very interested in ancient Greek and Latin, as well as mathematics and the sciences. He was considered the best student in the school, but he failed the mathematics portion of the exam. Because of his excellence in classical studies, the examiners asked Gentleman, are we really going to fail the best pupil Pforta has ever had? So Friedrich passed. Nietzsche also studied Shakespeare and Lord Byron in school with a German ...

Meaning of Interpreted or Compiled in JavaScript

Meaning of Interpreted or Compiled in JavaScript Computers cannot actually run the code that you write in JavaScript (or any other language for that matter). Computers can only run machine code. The machine code that a particular computer can run is defined within the processor that is going to run those commands and can be different for different processors. Obviously, writing machine code was difficult for people to do (is 125 an add command or is it 126 or perhaps 27). To get around that problem what are known as assembly  languages were created. These languages used more obvious names for the commands (such as ADD for adding) and thus did away with the need to remember the exact machine codes. Assembly languages still have a one to one relationship with the particular processor and machine code that the computer converts those commands into. Assembly Languages Must Be Compiled or Interpreted Very early on it was realized that easier to write languages were needed and that the computer itself could be used to translate those into the machine code instructions that the computer can actually understand. There were two approaches that could be taken with this translation and both alternatives were chosen (either one or the other will be used depending on the language being used and where it is being run). A compiled language is one where once the program has been written you feed the code through a program called a compiler and that produces a machine code version of the program. When you want to then run the program you just call the machine code version. If you make changes to the program you need to recompile it before being able to test the changed code. An interpreted language is one where the instructions are converted from what you have written into machine code as the program is being run. An interpreted language basically gets an instruction from the program source, converts it to machine code, runs that machine code and then grabs the next instruction from the source to repeat the process. Two Variants on Compiling and Interpreting One variant uses a two-stage process. With this variant, the source of your program is compiled not directly into the machine code but instead is converted to an assembly-like language that is still independent of the particular processor. When you want to run the code it then processes that compiled code through an interpreter specific to the processor so as to get the machine code appropriate to that processor. This approach has many of the benefits of compiling while maintaining processor independence since the same compiled code can be interpreted by many different processors. Java is one language that often uses this variant. The other variant is called a Just in Time compiler (or JIT). With this approach, you dont actually run the compiler after you have written your code. Instead, that happens automatically when you run the code. Using a Just in Time compiler the code isnt interpreted statement by statement, it is compiled all in one go each time when it is called to be run and then the compiled version that it just created is what gets run. This approach makes it look a lot like the code is being interpreted except that instead of errors only being found when the statement with the error is reached, any errors detected by the compiler result in none of the code being run instead of all of the code up to that point being run. PHP is an example of a language that usually uses just in time compilation. Is JavaScript Compiled or Interpreted? So now we know what interpreted  code  and compiled code  mean, the question we next need to answer is what does all of this have to do with JavaScript? Depending on exactly where you run your JavaScript the code may be compiled or interpreted or use either of the other two variants mentioned. Most of the time you are ​running your JavaScript in a web browser and there the JavaScript is usually interpreted. Interpreted languages are usually slower than compiled languages. There are two reasons for this. Firstly the code to be interpreted actually has to be interpreted before it can be run and  secondly, that has to happen every time that the statement is to be run (not only every time you run the JavaScript but if it is in a loop then it needs to be done every time around the loop). This means that code written in JavaScript will run slower than code written in many other languages. How does knowing this help us where JavaScript is the only language available for us to run across all web browsers? The JavaScript interpreter itself that is built into the web browser is not written in JavaScript.  Instead, it is written in some other language that was then compiled. What this means is that you can make your JavaScript run faster if you can take advantage of any commands that JavaScript provides that allow you to offload the task to the JavaScript engine itself. Examples for Getting JavaScript to Run Faster An example of this is that some but not all browsers have implemented a document.getElementsByClassName() method within the JavaScript engine while others have yet to do so. When we need this particular functionality we can make out code run faster in those browsers where the JavaScript engine provides it by using feature sensing to see if the method already exists and only creating our own version of that code in JavaScript when the JavaScript engine doesnt provide it for us. Where the JavaScript engine does provide that functionality it should run faster if we use that rather than running our own version written in JavaScript. The same applies to any processing that the JavaScript engine makes available for us to call directly. There will also be instances where JavaScript provides multiple ways of making the same request. In those  instances, one of the ways of accessing the information may be more specific than the other. For example document.getElementsByTagName(table)[0].tBodies and document.getElementsByTagName(table)[0].getElementsByTagName(tbody) both retrieve the same  nodelist  of the  tbody  tags in the first table in the web page however the first of these is a specific command for retrieving the  tbody  tags where the second identifies that we are retrieving  tbody  tags in a parameter and other values can be substituted to retrieve other tags. In most  browsers, the shorter and more specific variant of the code will run faster (in some instances much faster) than the second variant and so it makes sense to use the shorter and more specific version. It also makes the code easier to read and maintain. Now in many of these  cases, the actual difference in the processing time will be very small and it will only be when you add many such code choices together that you will get any noticeable difference in the time your code takes to run. It is fairly rare though that changing your code to make it run faster is going to make the code significantly longer or harder to maintain, and often the reverse will be true.There is also the added benefit that future versions of JavaScript engines may be created that speed up the more specific variant even further so that using the specific variant may mean that your code will run faster in the future without you having to change anything.

Marketing Myopia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Marketing Myopia - Essay Example Petroleum industry was never been continuously a growth industry. When so ever products innovation took place industry has to face challenges. Customer Orientation: Most of the industries are still product oriented than customer oriented. They are preoccupied with their specific products and do not want to change their products or vary their products according to the wishes and need of the customers. Even best companies like Detriot or Ford who have adopted best practices in the industry are not customer oriented. Some of the companies like nylon and glass industry specifically E.I. du pont de nemours and Corning Glass Work are successful not due to technical competence and product orientation but due to throughout customer oriented policies. It is constant watchfulness for opportunities to apply their technical know - how to creation of customer satisfying uses that accounts for their prodigious output of successful new product. Myopic Vision: Industry failure attributed to their faulty, narrow, short term and temporary vision. Due to poor conceptualization companies may not be able to offer more value to their customers and become ineffective. Improperly defined purposes as in the case of railroads and Hollywood films prove fatal for the industry. This narrow vision always results in the stagnation of industries. Most of the industries that define its vision so narrowly, lack of imagination, lacking the will to survive, do not satisfy public inventiveness and skill results in premature demise. Product Innovation: industries which are pretty content with their growth moves into comfort zone and never been able to think imaginatively. They have never been able to develop new products and vary their product according to their customer needs. At times industries not bother to think about product innovation. Petroleum industry is the distressing example of how complacency and wrong headedness can stubbornly convert opportunities into disaster. Most of their product improvement came from outside of the industry. Research & Development: Industries, which are heavily dependent on research and development process and mass production, could not be able to pay more attention on customers need. The top management of the company is wholly transfixed by the profit possibilities of technical research and development. Company's top management heavy with scientist, researchers and technical people seldom knows the exact situation of the market and customer requirements. They are product oriented rather than customer oriented. Part-2 Now in the present situation where information flows across the globe and people are aware and connected with almost all parts of the World marketing management has taken newer dimensions. Marketing can simply be defined, as "meeting needs profitably". (Kotler). Management theorist Peter defined marketing, as "The aim of marketing is to make selling super flows. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or services fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy." (Drucker). "Marketing management is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and

Enron subverted within the structure of the rational business Essay

Enron subverted within the structure of the rational business organisation - Essay Example The book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkin (2005), talks of the way 'the hypothetical future value' of their investments were booked and profits shown for the shareholders to consume. Enron started with Oil pipelines and made it to the broadband and to a host of other services including electric distribution and power supply. While the core competency of the company lies in pipelines, they went into energy trading and broadband systems. They did not work out and build over their core competencies which are advocated by most of the management theorists (C K Prahlad & Gary Hamel, 1990). Enron was bankrupt on January 25th, 2002. Though there were number of fraudulent practices that the company and its executives practiced, it is also true that the society had a leading role to play in the making of the company and its debacle. Supporting an untrue situation arises when the people involved are greedy and tempt a crowd to be greedy as well. Enron became ambitious with the change in leadership and when the mantle was taken over by Jeff Skilling. Enron was ambitious even prior to that under the stewardship of Ken Lay. The growth was steady and the finances proved strong. But with Skilling taking over the leadership of the company, there was a subtle but a sure change in the approach of the management towards making money. ... It was just that Enron did not have time to reorient itself and plan for a classic change and none of the theories of change management seem to have been adopted (Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979). The company's executives were paid using the company shares which were traded freely in the market. The company maintained a high price for their shares and this resulted in their own staff having a larger value added to the share prices of the company. The company started benefiting by insider trading and ensuring that the company continued to have a high share price and the rate of growth of the company was well over 30 to 50% every year. This was too good to believe but then the share holders and the company employees too continued to believe in this performance. The company hid a number of facts about the debt status of the company and failed to show the right numbers on their reports. Hidden in numerous shell companies across the world were all these losses that was used by the senior execu tives of the company to hide and mislead the public and the share holders by giving them wrong information during critical times (Bethany McLean & Peter Elkin, 2005). This has also resulted in a gross violation of law by the company and its board. These hidden facts were so high that the company could not rectify these problems and come out of it unscathed. This in itself led the company to file for its bankruptcy. The senior executives were held for taking the country and its people for a ride and having misled them. The employees of the company and the share holders of the company felt cheated at the end of the game. This debacle led not only the company to bankruptcy but also took most of the senior people into the jail. Organisation Culture Organisation culture of any organisation

Functional Foods Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Functional Foods - Essay Example The most important issue about the functional foods is the disturbance they cause in the natural mineral balance of the food products. Nature has created the consumable food products in a balanced form and no single mineral or vitamin exists in the excessive form in ordinary food materials. However, when certain vitamins and minerals are added to these food products, the natural balance is disturbed which consequently changes the nutrition value of the food. As the nutrition value of the food product is changed the intake of such foods must also be varied accordingly. Unfortunately, FDA does not put any restriction regarding the addition of nutrients to food materials. Functional foods are not treated with drugs and they can be marketed as foods without any prior permission from FDA. The only restriction that FDA puts on the manufacturers of these functional foods is regarding their advertisement and labeling; the manufacturers are required to provide all the nutrients labeled on the packing in correct proportions. Since the consumers are not aware of the use of multivitamins and additional minerals in their diet, the increasing trend of using functional foods can be harmful to the health of consumers. Some of the physicians, trainers, and physiotherapists are also unaware of the use of dietary supplements and they recommend these products to athletes and other consumers for enhancing body performance and energy levels; no such effect of these products has been observed in healthy adults. Each supplementary mineral and vitamin has specific application in human body and additional amount of these products are required in specific scenarios. Therefore the unchecked and random use of functional foods can deteriorate human health and greater amounts of these minerals could result in toxic depositions in human body. Unfortunately mineral supplements and multi vitamins are added in ordinary and everyday use foods and consumers are forced to buy and use them, thus a check and regulatory mechanism is r equired in order to ensure safe use of functional foods and dietary supplements (Thompson and Manore 187). The United States Pharmacopeial Convention is a nonprofit organization