Masque of the Red Death

While Most are familiar with the gruesome nature of Poe’s classic short story horror yarn â€Å"Masque of the Red Death,† most have a tendency to fixate on the action of the story and the grim proceedings that occur and do not carefully examine the role that nature plays in the short story and how the short story presents a cautionary morality tale warning people that no matter how they try, they can never escape the wrath of the natural world when it decides to wreck havoc. Poe and his contemporary authors of the 19th century presented a recurring theme in their work. This theme centers on the notion that society is inherently corrupt and that finding oneness with nature is a preferred choice. Of course, this does not mean that it was suggested that people abandon their homes in urban areas and head out to live in the forest, but it was a call to look skeptically towards the structure that society provides to them as it is not as flawless as they assume. This is seen in symbolic terms in the â€Å"Masque of the Red Death† and the environment in which the masque actually occurs. In the short story, Prince Prospero and his cronies lock themselves up in Prospero’s mansion so as to hide from the ravages of the Red Death that has destroyed much of the population. In order to entertain themselves and hide their paranoia of death, they turn the event into a grand masque. In a way, this is a strange attempt at distract and distance themselves from the ravages of the world outside. Eventually, Prince Prospero notices a hooded individual who has snuck into Prospero’s home. (He is noticeable in the manner that his masque guise stands greatly out) When confronted, the stranger reveals himself to be the human embodiment of the Red Death and Prospero and his minions are doomed to succumb to the same fate as the common people they had mocked. There is great symbolism in this tale as Prospero represents the privileged upper class and the masque that he promotes within a sequestered location represents the great cities that have seemingly insulated themselves from the ravages of nature. The use of the masques can even hint that the people are hiding their true nature of paranoia and fear of what lies beyond the wall of the castle. The insolence of Prospero and his minions is seen in the following excerpt: But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. In this situation, it appears that Prospero holds a bizarre arrogance that if he re-enforces his castle, then he can keep out the brutality of the Red Death. This is a small scale version of the use of society and urbanized areas to control, curb and detain the natural world. Of course, there are limits to society’s value in this regard as nature wields force that can easily overwhelm any city. The Red Death, while a disease, is a being of natural selection. Pestilence has one primary purpose: to thin the heard when the population of the heard grows to a dangerous extreme. When nature has decided on its course of action, often, it is unidirectional in its approach and next to impossible to deter. And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all. In other words, nature, taking the form of pestilence, will not be stopped nor will it be denied its primary purpose. To this end, Prospero is doomed as will anyone who believes they can curb or dominate or escape nature.

“Futility” by Wilfred Owen Essay

The poem titled â€Å"Futility† meaning uselessness or pointlessness. Owen is trying to say this war is the pointless war. The soldiers are useless that they’re dead. No matter how much the soldier work, it doesn’t worth it. The poem is written in fourteen lines and divided into two verses. The two verses are contrast each other. The first verse’s atmosphere is quite, soft, tender and peaceful and the second verse’s atmosphere sounds more desperate, frustrate, ridiculous and demanding for something to happen. In the first verse, three verbs that describe the action of the Sun, move, gently, and touch are quite soft and tender. These verbs describe that the sun move softly, gently and touch the soldier to wake him up. The sun here means the sun that shines everyday to wake the man and at the same time it may symbolize religious. The sun that used to wake him up and care for him. It’s metaphor that the sun moves the man into the light. The third line of verse one, it mentioned that the soldier was once a farmer. The word whispering is onomatopoeia meaning the sun is whispering to the man about the memories the man used to have on the farm. It’s a soft and tender plus pleading together. â€Å"Unsown† means that the field has not seeded but yet the sun is shining now to tell the man that it’s the beginning of the planting season now. In other meaning, the word unsown is metaphor that the soldier is still too young for them to join the war, as they haven’t start their adult life yet. The fourth and fifth lines, ‘Always it awoke him, even in France, until this morning and this snow.’ The sun symbolizes the warmth of life and the snow symbolizes the coldness of death. The sun always arouses him everywhere even he’s in France but this morning is different because snow has partially block the man so the man wasn’t able to wake up. The word morning has two different meaning. One is the everyday morning, which is the beginning of the day and the second meaning referring to the word mourning. Owen is mourning for the man who has die. The last two line of the last two line, Owen is pleading to god, please please if anything can rouse him now please do it and in this case only god who can do it. Only the old sun that used to be very kind can wake him up now. The sun here is personified by referring the sun as old and kind. Through the whole verse Owen create the sound by using assonance of the repetition of â€Å"ow† sound in woke, unsown, snow, rouse, now and know. Owen used an imperative verb, think, at the beginning of the second verse. It’s order the reader to think and at the same time Owen also make it sound more desperate. He is desperate to think on how the sun will wake the seeds. The seeds here give the image of growth and nature and it symbolized the beginning of life. He is desperate to ask how god wakes the soldier that is already died on the ground. The third line of the second verse mention the word â€Å"limbs†, it has two meaning. First a limb is a branch of a tree, which fit in with the nature. Second meaning means the pair of legs, arms and wings. Owen means that god create these nature and mankind. The line after this said â€Å"full-nerved, –still warm, — too hard to stir?† Owen means that he still don’t understand how the sun gives life to seeds, but not the warmness to these soldier. The fifth line â€Å"Was it for this the clay grew tall?† this refer to the war. Clay is mud and mud comes from Earth. The clay grew tall; in this case the clay symbolized man. In this line Owen was asked what was this war for? Do we do all this to kill? Is this why we put him on this Earth? So what is the point of life? The last two lines â€Å"—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil to break Earth’s sleep at all?† Owen ask this question starting with what made, he means what is the point of sending these men these men to the war and died there? It’s seems so silly that the sun create life for these him and then let them died with regret. The first verse focuses upon a dead soldier and second verse asked why the sun is shining at all. Why there is life when there is such a suffering, Owen is trying to say if the sun can wake up life on Earth but why can’t it wake up his soldier because what he thinks is that if anything could make the soldier it must be the sun.

An Acting Critique of Legally Blonde the Musical Essay

An Acting Critique of Legally Blonde the Musical On Friday night, May 3rd at & p.m., my mother and I attended the opening night of Legally Blonde in the Buena P.A.C. I must begin by saying that I am slightly biased towards one of the actors who just so happens to be my sister, so the roles of Chutney, the girl who accidentally murdered her father, and a Delta Nu sister have never been played more perfectly in my eyes. While I found the play both amusing and enjoyable, there were some big issues as far as opening night goes. Things like lack of projection (on top of some serious microphone issues, which I cannot blame the actors for), actors forgetting lines, and sloppy blocking, especially in many of the dances during the musical numbers, all took away from the overall experience of the show. However, there were definitely some things I absolutely loved, which were mostly specific characters. Also, the quality of the singing in all the musical numbers was very high, which is something you don’t see often in a high school mus ical production. That being said, I thought it was worth my five dollars, and a great way for Buena to end its 2012-13 season. Like I said before, technical aspects such as microphone malfunctions cannot be blamed on the actors. It is the job of the technicians to ensure all of the equipment functions properly. However, I believe that actors should not rely on such technical aspects alone to ensure that they are effectively heard by every member of the audience. Call me old fashioned, but I am a firm believer in projection; making your voice bounce off the walls of the theater. After all, theaters are geometrically designed to do just that. But I guess not everyone feels that way, and it was apparent Friday night when every time an actor’s microphone went out, it was as if they were whispering. This is often detrimental to the plot because if actors cannot be heard, vital pieces of information are lost upon the audience. This issue could have been non-existent if the actors had practiced their projection. Luckily, I saw the movie first, so I knew the plot before I even watched the play. Along with not always being able to hear the actors, line memorization seemed to cause a few problems on stage Friday night as well. I will admit, it was not as apparent of a problem as was the lack of audibility at times, but I did notice it quite a few times. The example that stood out to me most was the character of Paulette, the owner of Elle’s favorite salon and close friend to Elle. She was in the middle of a solo on stage and completely dropped almost an entire verse of her song. I will not judge her too harshly because I fully understand the pressures of opening night, and I am sure the pressure of a solo is equally as heavy. I am simply using it as an example. Any other line slips I noticed were fairly minor, and when they happened, the actors did a pretty good job of covering it up and going with the flow. The last big problem I had with Legally Blonde the Musical was the blocking. Call me crazy, but it seemed to me towards the end of the play that either the actors got extremely lazy with their blocking during the dances, or they simply did not rehearse the scenes enough. Either way, it was very obvious. Actors were off tempo, bumping into one another, and were also completely out of sync when they should not have been. The actors most guilty of that were the Delta Nu sorority sisters (except my sister, of course). I also noticed that it was not only the dance scenes that lacked blocking, but so did many of the conversational scenes. I love watching actors’ faces more than anything because I believe that’s where most acting is done. I wanted so badly to do that Friday night, but I spent the whole time craning my neck to try and get glimpses. Quite irritating, considering the fact that my mother and I showed up almost a half hour early to get seats in the center of the ho use. Acting is all about action, and action cannot be understood if it cannot be seen. Now that I have ranted and raved about what I really did not enjoy about the Friday night showing of Legally Blonde the Musical, I should probably talk about the things that I really enjoyed, which definitely outweighed the bad. My absolute favorite character (besides the ones played by my sister) was Enid Hoopes, played by senior Aubrie Bouchard. She was a women’s rights activist, as well as a full-blooded lesbian, your average tough girl with a lot to prove to the world. She was absolutely hilarious; her timing was great, her character development was awesome, and her projection was wonderful. She had me rolling with all of her perfectly timed quips, especially when her inner lesbian showed. My other favorite group of  characters was Elle’s three best friends from Malibu: Pilar, Margot, and Serena, who also came to be known as the Greek chorus. This was an extremely appropriate nickname because they served the same purpose as the original Greek choruses in the first plays. They always showed up in Elle’s times of need to provide her with support, and to provide the audience with information. They also happened to be hilarious and bubbly, as Delta Nu sisters should be. They also had wonderful projection, especially Serena, played by Jansen Morgen. I also enjoyed Professor Callahan’s character, played by Braxton Olgetree. He was not a very likable character as far as the plot of the play went, but I could tell the actor put a lot of work into his character, especially on the voice. He was drab and monotone, just like a law professor at Harvard should be, and his character work really shone through. I also must mention the most adorable and well-behav ed character of the entire show, the part of Rufus, Paulette’s dog, played by an American bulldog named Sarge. He was both cute and flawless. The other thing I loved about this play was the overall quality of the singing. I was very pleased with all the musical numbers; all the songs were cute and catchy, no one made my ears bleed, and I could hear everyone fairly well even with all of the microphone issues. Usually, from my personal experience, most high school musicals consist of two groups of people: choir kids and theater kids. Not all choir kids can act, and not all theater kids can sing, but I am pleased to say that this musical was not that way. Everyone was able to sing and act quite effectively. My favorite musical number was the song â€Å"Gay or European†, which was performed in the courtroom scene when they were trying to figure out whether or not the pool boy, who claimed to be Brooke Windam’s lover, was gay. It was very light-humored and entertaining. I also enjoyed the opening number, â€Å"Ohmigod†, which was performed by Elle and her Delta Nu sisters in the very beginning. Like I said from the start, I was a little biased towards this play from the beginning simply because my little sister was in it. However, even when I put my bias aside, I can honestly say I was thoroughly pleased with my experience as an audience member as a whole. While I must admit there were various issues with things like actor projection, lack of proper blocking,  and lack of line memorization, the overall quality of acting was quite enjoyable. The character work done by most of the actors was very apparent and applaudable. I loved all of the main characters, as well as the minor ones. The singing was also fantastic; I did not find myself cringing at any of the musical numbers. Instead, I actually found myself tapping my feet and sometimes even singing along with the catchy songs. I know the showings of Legally Blonde the Musical are all over now, but I would recommend it to anyone to go and see that show. It was definitely an â€Å"A† performance.

Part One Sunday

6.11 A casual vacancy is deemed to have occurred: (a) when a local councillor fails to make his declaration of acceptance of office within the proper time; or (b) when his notice of resignation is received; or (c) on the day of his death †¦ Charles Arnold-Baker Local Council Administration, Seventh Edition Barry Fairbrother did not want to go out to dinner. He had endured a thumping headache for most of the weekend and was struggling to make a deadline for the local newspaper. However, his wife had been a little stiff and uncommunicative over lunch, and Barry deduced that his anniversary card had not mitigated the crime of shutting himself away in the study all morning. It did not help that he had been writing about Krystal, whom Mary disliked, although she pretended otherwise. ‘Mary, I want to take you out to dinner,' he had lied, to break the frost. ‘Nineteen years, kids! Nineteen years, and your mother's never looked lovelier.' Mary had softened and smiled, so Barry had telephoned the golf club, because it was nearby and they were sure of getting a table. He tried to give his wife pleasure in little ways, because he had come to realize, after nearly two decades together, how often he disappointed her in the big things. It was never intentional. They simply had very different notions of what ought to take up most space in life. Barry and Mary's four children were past the age of needing a babysitter. They were watching television when he said goodbye to them for the last time, and only Declan, the youngest, turned to look at him, and raised his hand in farewell. Barry's headache continued to thump behind his ear as he reversed out of the drive and set off through the pretty little town of Pagford, where they had lived as long as they had been married. They drove down Church Row, the steeply sloping street where the most expensive houses stood in all their Victorian extravagance and solidity, around the corner by the mock-Gothic church, where he had once watched his twin girls perform Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and across the Square, where they had a clear view of the dark skeleton of the ruined abbey that dominated the town's skyline, set high on a hill, melding with the violet sky. All Barry could think of as he twiddled the steering wheel, navigating the familiar turns, were the mistakes he was sure he had made, rushing to finish the article he had just emailed to the Yarvil and District Gazette. Garrulous and engaging in person, he found it difficult to carry his personality onto paper. The golf club lay a mere four minutes away from the Square, a little beyond the point where the town petered out in a final wheeze of old cottages. Barry parked the people-carrier outside the club restaurant, the Birdie, and stood for a moment beside the car, while Mary reapplied her lipstick. The cool evening air was pleasant on his face. As he watched the contours of the golf course disintegrating into the dusk, Barry wondered why he kept up his membership. He was a bad golfer: his swing was erratic and his handicap was high. He had so many other calls on his time. His head throbbed worse than ever. Mary switched off the mirror light and closed the passenger side door. Barry pressed the auto-lock on the key-ring in his hand; his wife's high heels clacked on the tarmac, the car's locking system beeped, and Barry wondered whether his nausea might abate once he had eaten. Then pain such as he had never experienced sliced through his brain like a demolition ball. He barely noticed the smarting of his knees as they smacked onto the cold tarmac; his skull was awash with fire and blood; the agony was excruciating beyond endurance, except that endure it he must, for oblivion was still a minute away. Mary screamed – and kept screaming. Several men came running from the bar. One of them sprinted back inside the building to see whether either of the club's retired doctors was present. A married couple, acquaintances of Barry and Mary's, heard the commotion from the restaurant, abandoned their starters and hurried outside to see what they could do. The husband called 999 on his mobile. The ambulance had to come from the neighbouring city of Yarvil, and it took twenty-five minutes to reach them. By the time the pulsing blue light slid over the scene, Barry was lying motionless and unresponsive on the ground in a pool of his own vomit; Mary was crouching beside him, the knees of her tights ripped, clutching his hand, sobbing and whispering his name.

Strategic Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Strategic Management - Essay Example This resulted into deforestation. In Autocratic or Authoritative management style, the senior managers take all the important decisions without considering the involvement of workers. Senior managers do not trust their workers; they simply give orders to them. The disadvantage of Autocratic style of management style is that there is only one way communication, and this creates â€Å"them and us† attitude in between managers and workers. In FC, the organizational structure was hierarchical too. So, there was a wide gap between top to bottom order. Due to this kind of command and control system, workers just did only what they were told to do because of fear. Centralization is a system in which the concentration of decision making lies in few hands only. All the important decisions are subjects to the approval of top-level management and other levels can implement these decisions as per the directions of top level managers. On the other hand, decentralization means systematic de legation of authority to all levels of management and to all departments of an organization. In 1995, David Bills was appointed as the Director General of FC. One notable point about him is that he is an outsider from Australia. Environmental concern is one of the big issues in front of FC. Few groups raised environmental issues against FC; they accused FC of lack of awareness in various environmental and animal right issues. It became very crucial to FC’s economic survival. Nowadays, the term 'corporate social responsibility' is much closer to all organizations. Corporate social responsibility refers to the way companies integrate environmental, social and economic concerns into their values and operations in an accountable and transparent manner. It is related to long term growth and success of the organization. It plays an important role to contribute to the sustainable growth of communities. It became a responsibility of any organization to foster and promote corporate so cial responsibility. Another problem in front of David Bill is to change the FC’s culture. It is more difficult to change the existing culture than create a new culture in a new organization. When an organizational culture is already there, it is difficult for people to forget their old behavior, beliefs and assumptions and to adapt a new behavioral pattern. In business world, one thing can be least assured, which is change. If any organization experiences changes, resistance among employees is common. Executive support and training are most important elements to create a cultural change. When David Bill joined the organization, he found a very challenging task in the organization and that was to boost the morale of employees, who had a very low morale and they considered the organization to be a ‘sinking ship’. For him, the most important task was to raise the morale of the employees and to employ them as profitably as he could in the organization. The main aim of the FC was to rebuild and maintain the timber reserves. But the organizational structure was highly influenced by the â€Å"hierarchical military systems of the time and the use of military language† (McCann 2004, p. 949). Hierarchical system in an organization allows for understanding the direct line of authority. There should be a line of authority.

Interview a leader Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Interview a leader - Essay Example This whole idea of him providing an innovative style of freedom to his employees has resulted in a fine rapport between the employees and their superior heads as well as ranking the Admiral Group 4th in the top 40 companies of the United Kingdom (Frobes, 2011). Henry Engelhardt, is the most encouraging CEO in whom the employees have a great deal of conviction and faith, he meets all the newly hired staff, takes initiative in being available for live online chats and is usually found communicating with his staff at all levels when he is at the Cardiff headquarters. He also believes that an organization should not only give the employees a good working environment but should also give them a pack of activities to keep them fresh, that’s why he has set annual competitions for his staff. All in all Henry Engelhart is an innovative leader with a vibrant spirit to keep his employees motivated, he gives them a sense of free will while also keeping certain authorities to himself only. This new leadership style and charisma which he has attracted me towards taking his opinions on the new divergent leadership styles and the dynamism a leader needs in this new business world. The questions asked are in the appendix section of this paper. The interview responses made it clear to me that leadership is now all about adapting to new roles and ideas and is no longer a set of rigid traits and thinking capabilities, like it was many years ago. Most of the questions dealt with the acquisition of information regarding the many roles that Mr. Henry has played during his career, the conclusion to which, derived by the responses of him, determined that even staying in only one department for a couple of years requires many interpersonal and professional leadership roles to be entertained by a leader (Rothwell et al, 2001). There was more information possessed when Mr. Henry was asked about the leadership strengths that he has developed in the so far tenure of his career, and i t was surprising to know that his leadership strength came from the attainment of these different leadership roles. He explained them as an observational journey in the world of leadership, making him earn strength at each and every check post he crossed. He also added that the journey was not easy as there were many nerve wrecking times when he thought he would not be able to deliver as required but he managed to overcome all such obstacles through the use of an open mind. Open mind, he added, is the basic criteria to transform you into the many diversified roles of leadership required at different stages of one’s leadership career. Motivation of employees, as explained by him, is all a matter of making a need assessment of all employees at different organizational levels and stages as the need patterns are often the product of an unsatisfactory working environment which takes employees away from attaining job satisfaction. Employee needs are loosely satisfied at the bottom of organization and the satisfaction meter moves up as we travel upwards in the chain of command of an organization; this makes the upper management attain job satisfaction, leaving the labor class away from this fruitful accomplishment, leaving them unsatisfied. An unsatisfied workforce, he said, leads to slower growing organizations, this is where leadership roles need changes

Customer Relationship Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 1

Customer Relationship Management - Essay Example CRM thus involves efficient handling at all stages. The role of the customer relationship manager begins even before the company purchases the software. The manager should be well conversant with the technology, the process, its benefits and application. This would enable him to derive the maximum benefit from the implementation of the CRM system. Merely knowing how to use the system and be able to generate information is again insufficient. Utilization of data is equally important or rather the most critical part of the system. Dissemination and analysis of information about the customer helps an organization to take effective steps in segmentation. This segmentation is valuable because the company knows where to lay its focus and how to maximize benefits. The customer relationship manager also has a role in empowering and keeping the key personnel motivated because it is the team work and cohesion that matters. The organizational environment is important for the success of the CRM system. Customer information helps to apportion the budgets when the key areas have been identified. Consistent flow of information has to be maintained from the point of origin to the point of action. The manager acts as the bridge between the IT and the marketing department and on him depends the success of the system. It is his responsibility to ensure that all operations with the organization are integrated and functional boundaries do not become barriers to implementation.