Notes

Arguments that center on cultural identity and power still retain their compelling nature even if they are placed in contexts that might be perceived as trivial. Discussions about cultural rights and identity are rooted in power.  These discussions focus on how culture is defined, where individual and social voice lies, and in how the homogenization of culture has been historically embedded. Such profound implications make these arguments quite compelling.   Some context is needed regarding the food examples. There has been a re-ignition of interest in "microaggressions."   According to Derald Wing Sue, PhD, microaggressions are "everyday insults, indignities and demeaning messages sent to people of color by well-intentioned white people who are unaware of the hidden messages being sent to them."  There has been renewed interest in discovering where these messages exist and their potential meaning.  Food-based cultural appropriation can be seen as an example of a mi...

For the most part, states in the South reacted with anger to Lincoln's victory in the election of 1860. The major issue of the 1860 presidential election was slavery.  For Southerners, expanding slavery was the critical issue.  Slavery was so pressing that the Democratic party put forth two candidates.  One of them represented the Northern Democrats and the other candidate was for the interests of the Southern Democrats.  Southerners knew that Lincoln and the newly formed Republican party were not going to be friendly to the expansion of slavery in the nation. The high voter turnout reflected the voting public's passionate intensity regarding slavery.  Lincoln did not win any electoral votes in the South, but carried the electoral votes in the Northern states.  This helped to enhance the sectionalist feel to the election. Sectionalist feelings became more pronounced with Lincoln's election. Southerners openly embraced secession, or separating from the nation.  South Carolin...

After Macbeth has performed the murder of Duncan, Shakespeare shows Lady Macbeth as the calmer, more rational of the two.  When Macbeth superstitiously panics because he could not utter the word Amen , she says, "These deeds must not be thought / After these ways. So, it will make us mad" (2.2.33-34).  In other words, she tells him not to dwell on what they have done or it will drive them insane.  Further, she realizes that Macbeth has brought the murder weapons out of the room with him, and she chastises him for being so thoughtless.  However, he is too emotional and refuses to return to the room with Duncan's body.  Disappointed in his cowardice, she says, "Infirm of purpose! / Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead / Are but as pictures" (2.2.52-54).  She returns the daggers to the room, smearing the chamberlains with blood, and when she returns, she calmly washes her hands, saying, "A little water clears us of this deed. / How easy is it, then!...

In Chapter 11, Phillip starts to wonder whether Timothy is perhaps going a bit crazy, out of his mind from the stress, when the old man suddenly claims that their pet and companion, Stew Cat, might be the cause of their bad luck . Timothy seems to sneak around with a knife, causing Phillip to be horribly worried. The boy tries to make sure Timothy doesn't harm Stew Cat, and it's a tense chapter as the animal remains missing. Finally, as the chapter comes to a close, Phillip realizes that Timothy has been carving an image of a cat out of wood and has placed nails in that image, trying to symbolically kill the bad luck that has plagued them. Even odder, Timothy has temporarily placed Stew Cat on their raft in the water while he did this task, so that the cat would be physically removed from the island while Timothy's work dispelled the "jumbi" (bad luck) caused by the feline. "Maybe all that had happened was beginning to work on the old man's mind. Maybe I...

The early Middle Ages in India (around the time of the fall of Rome in Europe) are sometimes known as the Gupta Age due to the fact that India was ruled at the time by the Gupta Empire. After the Gupta Empire collapsed, it was followed by the Pallava Dynasty which lasted well into the Middle Ages. During both the Gupta Age and the Pallava Dynasty, India colonized a large area in Southeast Asia, sometimes referred to as "Greater India" (though many scholars consider this term inaccurate). India was more technologically and economically advanced than most of its neighbors at the time, and as a result many local cultures were quick to adapt to India's customs in the hopes of sharing their prosperity. The spread of missionaries, scholars, and merchants to these colonies led to the spread of a number of aspects of Indian culture, including styles of food, styles of clothing, several Indian languages and writing systems (particularly Pallava Script), India's system of law a...

Cherry and Marcia are with Socs named Bob and Randy.  It is Cherry’s boyfriend, Bob, that Johnny kills.  Pony and Johnny meet two nice Soc girls at the movies.  At first they do not understand why the girls are being nice.  Socs never socialize with greasers.  Cherry is grateful to them for interfering when Dally was messing with them, and Marcia seems flattered by the attention.  Cherry doesn’t take the drink Dally offers, but Marcia does.  Oh, yeah, we found out why they were without a car. They'd come with their boyfriends, but walked out on them when they found out the boys had brought some booze along. The boys had gotten angry and left. (Ch. 2)  Cherry and Marcia left their boyfriends because they were drinking too much.  They decided to hang out with Johnny and Pony, but trouble ensued when they were leaving the theater and saw Bob’s car.  Bob and his friends would not be happy to see their girls with greasers.  Marcia was shifting nervously. "What are we going to do?...

If I was Juliet, I would have acted exactly as Juliet did act upon receiving the news that Capulet has schedule her wedding to Paris: with great grief and desperation. That being said, I probably wouldn't have been wise enough to escape the situation like she does. When Juliet learns from her mother that she is to marry Paris "early next Thursday morn," Juliet begs her to tell Lord Capulet that she will not marry him.  Lady Capulet tells Juliet to tell her father herself; Capulet enters and reacts with tremendous anger when he learns of his daughter's disobedience. He threatens Juliet and gives her an ultimatum: I tell thee what: get thee to church o' Thursday, Or never after look me in the face... ... I'll give you to my friend; And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee... Juliet, however, responds to these threats with a more level-headed approach than I could ever manage. She calmly asks her ...

Christianity and Judaism are two of the world's three largest monotheistic faiths (with Islam being the third). They have strong historical connections, as Christianity first emerged as a sect (or more accurately several sects) from Judaism in the first century A.D. Generally speaking, the most important theological difference between the two is that adherents of Judaism do not acknowledge Jesus to be the Messiah (a man sent by God to unify and deliver the people of Israel) or the son of God. They also do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus, which forms the foundation of Christian theology. But Christians and Jews otherwise believe many of the same things. In particular, they hold the Hebrew Old Testament as sacred, containing the word of God and many of the foundations of the relationship between God and man, including the covenant and the Ten Commandments. They believe, in short, in the same God, and share the same history until the life of Jesus. While Christians emerged fr...

Napoleon and the pigs achieve power through their leadership of the revolution that overthrows Jones, the human owner of Manor Farm (renamed Animal Farm under the pigs' leadership). The pigs are the smartest of the animals, and it becomes clear fairly early in the aftermath of the uprising that they will occupy positions of power and privilege on Animal Farm. For example, the pigs claim they need apples in their mash, a privilege not extended to other animals, because their minds are so essential to the organization of Animal Farm. Over time, Napoleon, with Squealer as his obsequious propagandist, purges his rival Snowball and begins to solidify his power with a combination of brutality and deception. They claim that Snowball is constantly conspiring to destroy the farm and that Napoleon, not Snowball, was the architect of the windmill. Using the dogs, Napoleon has dozens of the animals killed in front of the rest for allegedly committing treason. By the end of the book, the pigs a...

There are two well-defined sides to the argument over deriving morality from religion. Though there are many examples supporting the idea that one can gain morality from faith, this answer will argue solely against this notion. One way to understand how it is impossible to gain morality from religion is to examine the nature of morality and religion. Morality is a fluid concept throughout history, while religion is resistant to change. For example, Martin Luther argued against the morality of Catholic indulgences in his Ninety-Five Theses. At the time, Luther was not attempting to break away from Catholicism, but change it. Yet when the Catholic church did not listen to his ideas, Luther used his own morality to start the Protestant Reformation. Another way to argue against a connection between morality and religion is using historical examples of times when religion was used to justify immoral acts. For example, in the antebellum American South, passages from the Old Testament were co...

Actually, there are several ways you can look at this:  one question could be "According to the documents, who would you blame for the Cold War--the West or the Soviet Union?"  Another question could be, "How did each side justify its actions in the beginning of the Cold War?"  Still another question could be, "How did America and the Soviet Union see its responsibilities in maintaining a new world order after WWII?"  Yet another fine question could be "Given the rhetoric in Britain, the Soviet Union and America, do you think the Cold War could have been avoided?" although this question might require more external knowledge than you get from the primary source documents.   The Cold War is a fascinating study as historians over the years have come out as saying that it was primarily caused by the Soviet Union, primarily by the West, and primarily by the developing world who played one side against the other in return for maximum gains for their ow...

Jay Gatsby and George Wilson are both striving for the American Dream: the idea that any American, through hard work and perseverance, can attain prosperity.  Neither one is successful in achieving the dream, however, and this fact helps to explain how the dream is a fictitious, even corrupt, one in this novel.   Jay Gatsby has long desired to be rich, to run in the same circles as Daisy and Tom Buchanan.  However, unable to acquire this status honestly, through scrupulous hard work and legal means, he has resorted to illegal activities to earn his money.  Gatsby is a "bootlegger": someone who profits from the illegal production, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages during the era of American Prohibition.  He has made his money illegally, and this tarnishes it, producing only a corrupt version of the American Dream at best.  Gatsby has not achieved the dream; he only seems to have done so. George Wilson, on the other hand, seems desperately poor regardless of how har...

New Historicism, a term most associated with Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt, puts literary texts and history in dialogue with one another, both by placing literary texts into their specific historical (and, being cross-disciplinary, economic, sociological, philosophical, etc.) context(s) and by erasing boundaries between "historical" texts and "literary" texts. In other words, New Historians ask not only what we can learn about a literary text by embedding it as fully as possible in its historical moment, but what we can glean about a historical moment from a literary text. More than one critic has applied a New Historical lens to  Paradise Lost.  For example, in  Milton's Imperial Epic: Paradise Lost and the Discourse of Colonialism,  Martin Evans interpreted  Paradise Lost as a commentary on colonialism, in full swing at that time, arguing that England represented Paradise and the new colonies in America both "hell-America" (the place occupi...

John Steinbeck's depression-era novel Of Mice and Men is about two traveling ranch-hands named Lennie and George. Concerning the theme of social justice, Steinbeck's most important work would probably be the much longer novel The Grapes of Wrath . Whereas The Grapes of Wrath is concerned with the fate of a large group of workers and promotes social reform (some say even socialism), Of Mice and Men takes a more indirect approach. Lenny and George are itinerant workers, they move from ranch to ranch in search of work. To an extent, they have chosen their own fate, unlike the waves of sharecroppers who have been thrown off “their” land in The Grapes of Wrath. The social justice that George and Lennie need is of a more personal nature. Lennie is mentally disabled and would not be able to survive on his own without someone like George to watch over him. Unfortunately, Lennie's mental deficiencies land him (and George) in constant trouble: people are just not able or willing t...

In Chapter 16, Thacia, Joel, and Daniel are discussing how Thacia will disguise herself as Joel in order for them to fulfill Rosh's assignment. Thacia mentions that she would feel ashamed to meet Jesus while she is disguised as Joel because she doesn't "want to face Jesus with a lie." Daniel responds by saying that in war, a lie is considered a weapon. Thacia disagrees, then asks Daniel and Joel what makes them so sure Jesus wants war. They assume that when Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, he is referring to an upcoming war. Thacia challenges their beliefs by mentioning that Jesus might mean that the kingdom of heaven will come some other way without fighting. Thacia goes on to say that Jesus has helped her see that they don't need to wait for God to care for them because he already does. Thacia tells them, " Jesus says that God sees into our hearts and loves us. If everyone understood that---every man and woman--- " (Speare 178). The b...

In Act 2, Scene 3, just prior to Romeo's arrival at his cell, Friar Lawrence is working with his plants.  He says that within one "weak flower / Poison hath residence and medicine power" (2.3.23-24).  In other words, one plant has the ability to help or harm, depending on the dosage.  This seems to foreshadow the plan that the Friar will later make, where he will provide Juliet with a medicinal potion that will make her seem dead.  The plan is to use this distillation to allow Juliet to fake her own death and run away with Romeo. However, the Friar also says that the flower is also like a person because "Two such opposed kings encamp them still / In man as well as herbs -- grace and rude will; / And where the worser is predominant, / Full soon the canker death eats up that plant" (2.3.28-31).  He draws attention to humankind's ability to be both loving and hateful, and where hatred rules, there can only be destruction.  This seems to foreshadow that, althoug...