Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Wuthering Heights Essay Example for Free

Wuthering Heights Essay Heatcliff is an unusual center character, in that he can said to be both the hero and the villain of Wuthering Heights. Explain this statement fully. In the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, the heroic and villainous qualities play a significant role in understanding the character Heatcliff. Heatcliffs passion, his mysterious origins and his contrast between hatred and love helps the reader understand the character Heatcliff. As a hero he displayed his true and endless love for Catherine. But the personality that Heatcliff develops as an adult of super-human villain due to the deprivation of love, education and social statues that he received in his childhood days. Heatcliffs double character makes Wuthering Heights a strong tale of love and hatred. One side of Heatcliff is his heroic character. His eternal faithfulness and endless love for Catherine is not doubtful. Catherine feels that it would degrade her to marry Heatcliff because of his low social status in society and decides to marry the son of the aristocratic Lintons, Edgar. She is excited by the high standards of living of Lintons and for sure enjoys such an atmosphere. In the spite of her rejection to Heatcliff, his undaunted love remains for her forever in his heart. Heatcliff suffers much emotional rejection. He displays his heroic character by not taking revenge from Edgar immediately because of his genuine concerns for Catherine. The extent of Heatcliffs dedication and sense of desolation can be considered as form of heroism displayed by Heathcliff. The other side of Heatcliff is his role as a villain. His purpose of turning into a villain from a good character is to seek revenge from all those who troubled him from his childhood days. It is seen that Heathcliff suffered terrible torture at the hands of Hindley after Mr. Earnshaws death. Hindleys treatment of Heathcliff was enough to make a fiend of a saint. Hindley deprived him of an education and reduced his status to that of a servant. This horrible treatment of Hindley arouses deep and abiding hatred in the heart of Hindley and all-consuming passion for revenge. He fulfills his desire of revenge by encouraging Hindley to drink excessively, gamble and he also makes Hindley bankrupt by taking all his wealth including  Wuthering Heights that he owned. As Heathcliff seeks his revenge, he becomes devilish and is constantly associated with devilish feelings, images and actions. His revenge is also directed toward Edgar Linton, the son of aristocratic Lintonss, whom he sees as having stolen Catherine from him. To seek his revenge he devises series of schemes to wrest the ownership of the Grange from the Lintons family and secure it for himself. He knew that Isabella considered him or pictured him a hero of romanceand takes advantage of it by putting on a mask of love which Isabella tends to believe. His cruel treatment to Isabella is a source of enjoyment for him. He also capitalizes on poor Lintonss health by inviting the pity of Cathy so that her affection and sympathy would facilitate a marriage between them and leave him as the master of the Grange. At one point we see that Heatcliff regrets that he saved the infant Hareton. He indeed takes pleasure in the fact that Hareton was born with a sensitive nature which he has corrupted and degraded. Heathcliff s pleasure at this corruption is increased by the fact that: Hareton is damnably fond of me, his attitude is devoid of fatherly feeling. We can thus prove that Heathcliff is a many-faced character. In his early years he is characterized by his faithfulness and endless love for Catherine. The adult Heathcliff who returns to Wuthering Heights after a three-year absence is a super human villain distort by revenge, distorted by sense of wrongs done to him and made emotionally unstable by Catherines marriage. It can be thus said that Heathcliff is an unusual character. But personally I felt that he can be characterized as a villain than a hero.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

hera and Zeus :: essays research papers

Throughout the Greek mythology, Zeus has been involved with many women and has faced many resistances from them. Zeus has faced many hurdles not only on his way to become the "king of olympians" but also after that with his relationships with women. Hera, Zeus's last wife , has been directly or indirectly involved in placing most of these hurdles. Of Zeus's seven wives, Hera, also known as Judo, has been the most quarrelsome and mistrustful of her hurband. She was frequently angry and jealous of Zeus's other relationships. In many instances , she has been the source of hurdles in Zeus's relationships with other women.Although described as a sacred marriage, one which was intended to symbolize and promote fertility of crops on earth, since the sky, represented as male, must fertilize the earth through rain in order for life to begin there, thier marriage has never been a smooth one and they have had some bitter fights. In one instance, Zeus hung her out of Olympus with two great weights attached to her feet,and her arms bound by golden chains,as punishment for her having plotted against Hercules.Homer, the author has potrayed the relationship of Zeus and Hera very much like that between a man and a woman. Homer shows how like men and women, even God's lie and decieve and are gullable. In one instance, he shows how , in order to borrow sexual allure from Aphrodite, Hera lies to Aphrodite about going to visit Oceanus and mother Tethys, not telling her original plan of seducing Zeus and making him fall asleep during the war. Then Hera goes to Sleep and asks her for his help and in return of her daughter Pasithea. Since Sleep has always been in love with Pesithea, the greed makes him give in to Hera's request. In this episode, Homer has shown that like humans, greed makes the immortals do things they would not have otherwise done. When Hera finally reaches Olympos, she lies to Zeus too and Zeus gets duped and falls into the trap of her seduction, this epi sode shows how the king of olympians gets decieved and is not able to foresee Hera's plan. In one potrait which shows Zeus's paranoia towards Hera, Zeus is worried about the quarrel with his wife Hera and tries to resist Thetis's plea to help son Archillis and aid Trojans in the war against the greeks.

Monday, January 13, 2020

The Jamestown Fiasco Commentary

According to Edmund S. Morgan, the majority of problems faced by the first settlers who arrived to Jamestown in the year 1607 were caused by the poor organization within the colony. For example, the settlers were unwilling to grow their own food supply and establish a reliable foundation for future settlers. Despite the abundance of game to hunt, and perfect weather conditions to harvest crops, the settlers would instead dig up corpses, and in one case a man killed his wife and ate her in order to survive the starvation. By the year 1610, only 60 settlers had survived. Morgan’s portrayed the settlers as lazy, who were starving by mere choice. Another problem faced by the first settlers of Jamestown was, according to John Smith, one of the colony leaders, that there were too many men in the grain fields, yet very few of them were working to crop the field. Morgan also points out that since the settlers felt superior to the Indians, they believed it was not their job to harvest the crops for the colonies. Instead, they would spend their time raiding Indian territory, and burning down crops that could have been used to feed the starving settlers back in the colony. Their own governor once sent one of the settlers, George Percy, to destroy the town of the Paspaheghs where he believed Powhaten kept his runaway English man. It is obvious then, and as stated by Morgan, that the reason Jamestown failed to develop as it was expected was caused mainly by the unwillingness of the settlers to work, and to create an organized and stable order for their community.

Sunday, January 5, 2020

Non-Gradable and Gradable Adjectives in Grammar

In English grammar, gradability is the semantic property of an adjective that identifies different levels or degrees of the quality it denotes, such as small, smaller, smallest. An adjective that is gradable (or scalar) can be used in the comparative or superlative forms, or with words such as very, fairly, rather, and less. Although many adjectives are gradable, not all of them are gradable in the same way. The big divide, says Antonio Fabregas, is the distinction between qualitative and relational adjectives (The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology, 2014). Examples and Observations There is a vast difference between better and best. You may be better than the rest, but you are not a success until you have made the effort to become the best you can be.(John Wooden, Coach Woodens Pyramid of Success. Regal, 2005)I want to go on record right now, that this is the most stupid, dimwitted, idiotic, moronic piece of putrefied garbage that I have ever in my entire professional career had the displeasure of being involved with.(Richard Dreyfuss as Chris Lecce in Another Stakeout, 1993)Happy insect! what can beIn happiness compared to thee?Thou dost drink and dance and sing,Happier than the happiest king!(Abraham Cowley, The Grasshopper)Gradable/Non-gradableAdjectives fall into these two subclasses according to two criteria: (1) whether the adjective can have a comparative and a superlative form; (2) whether the adjective can be modified by an intensifying adverb (e.g., very). For example, big is a gradable adjective: it can form a comparative (bigger) and a superlative ( biggest), and it can be modified by an intensifier (very big). On the other hand, the adjective wooden (i.e., made of wood) is non-gradable; it fulfills none of the criteria.(H. Jackson, Grammar and Vocabulary. Routledge, 2002)Adjectives are often considered to be the prototypical example of a gradable category. Degree expressions such as too are restricted to adjectives and morphological comparatives. This has led several linguists to conclude that gradability is a distinctive property of adjectives, while others rather insist on the fact that gradability is found across categories.(Jenny Doetjes, Adjectives and Degree Modification, in Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse, ed. L. McNally and C. Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2008)The age is best which is the first,When youth and blood are warmer;But being spent, the worse and worstTimes still succeed the former.(Robert Herrick, Song)Gradability and Suppletion- Sometimes we find the phenomenon known as supplet ion, where word forms of different historical origins stand in the same sort of relationship within a grammatical paradigm . . .. Thus, worse and worst stand in the same paradigmatic relationship to bad as poorer and poorest do to poor. . . . Both forms go back to the Old English period (Old English wyrsa and wyrst), and they have been the antonyms of better and best (Old English betra and betst) throughout their history in English, but the adjective in the general sense bad to which they correspond (again suppletively) as comparative and superlative in Old English is yfel (modern English evil).(Philip Durkin, The Oxford Guide to Etymology. Oxford University Press, 2009)- Good, better, best,never let it resttill your good isbetter, and yourbetter best.(This early-20th-century dictation exercise illustrates the  suppletive  comparative and superlative forms of the adjective  good.)The Lighter Side of GradabilityGeorge Costanza: Youre gonna over-dry your laundry.Jerry Seinfeld: You cant over-dry.George: Why not?Jerry: Same reason you cant over-wet. You see, when somethings wet, its wet. Same thing with death. Like, once you die, youre dead. Lets say you drop dead and I shoot you. Youre not gonna die again, youre already dead. You cant over-die, you cant over-dry.(Seinfeld)One closing grammar note: I got several letters from people who informed me that stupidest and stupider are not real words.To those people, I say, with gratitude and sincerity: Oh, shut up.(Dave Barry, Hoosier Your Daddy. The Baltimore Sun, January 12, 2003)