Electoral systems in the UK and US

Electoral systems in the UK and US The United States of America and Great Britain have a lot of in common but the same times have a number of differences. The electoral systems of the UK and the US differ a lot. The United Kingdom uses different electoral systems and among them we could mention.  First Past the Post, which is used for the whole national elections and also when the local government is elected in England and Wales (earlier it was used in Scotland too). Additional Member System was invented after submission of the regional devolution in 1999 for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh meeting and London meeting.   It is rather modern invention, which was undertaken after electoral system reform.   Single Transferable Vote system is used for the election into the Assembly of the Northern Ireland and also is used for the Local administration.  Party Lists are used for the elections to the European Parliament and that is also rather modern invention and applied as the UK is the member of the European Union. And finally, Supplementary Vote, is used for the mayors election in the different cities, for example London. We see that the electoral system of the United Kingdom is rather complicated and strongly depends on the territorial division of the country. It should be noted that the United States is also dependent on the territorial division and each state has its constitutional and the elections to the local governmental organs are held due the legislation of the each state. But if we speak about electoral system globally we should mention about the Primaries, which are used for the President elections. This the first type of the election, when one candidate from the party is elected. Between the chosen candidates the general election is held and the core idea of the Primaries is in the fact that candidates from different parties should not take the votes of each other on the main elections, as their electorate is quite the same target group. Sometimes those who have lost the primaries took part in the president elections, but as independent candidates, without support of their party. Primaries could be opened, when everyone could take part in the elections and closed, when the members of the party, holding the primaries, could vote. The Primaries are the core peculiarity of the United States electoral system. It should be noted that a number of states refused from primary use of the Primaries. The different system are used for counting the votes and different schemes. A number of southern states have a tradition to support the candidate, which would take the arithmetic majority of the votes. In southern states the break between the winner and the nearest competitors. It should be noted that the both systems differ a lot and the United Kingdom has developed the electoral systems suitable for their political structure and the United States for theirs. I think that the core role in the difference between these states is that they have different political structure and this causes so severe difference in their electoral structure.   References: Michael Thrasher and Colin Rallings. British Electoral Facts. W. Wormell:London,UK, 2010 Bibby, John, and Holbrook, Thomas. Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis, 8th Edition. Ed. Virginia Gray and Russell L. Hanson.WashingtonD.C.: CQ Press, p. 62-100. 2004

Principal Leadership: Diversity, Development and Distribution Essay

The principal is the de facto leader of the public school. With this role comes no small degree of pressure and responsibility. And as the nature of education changes and evolves, so too does this role and that which is implied by it. In many ways though, there remains a great philosophical divide on how principal leadership is to be pursued. To the perspective of this research endeavor, this divide is based on varying conceptions of how leadership and education might best be integrated for the office. Therefore, the research seeks to appeal to the conceptions of those most directly effected. This proposal is intended to serve in a preliminary capacity for a broader survey study which would engage principals on matters of their experience with modern political realities, with career development and mentoring and with theoretical division on the matter of centralized versus distributed leadership. Findings and recommendations will be directed toward the warranting and fashioning of an effective survey and survey study design. Rationale: This study is designed to explore the various career development aspects of becoming and being a public school principal that contribute to the effective ability to serve in a leadership capacity. The principal has a unique role in both the lives of teachers and students, serving as both a figure of authority and as an advocate in the face of administrative and political demands. This makes the principalship a deeply complex position, imposed upon by the challenges of organizational stewardship, economic constraint and political imposition. The experience of developing into and serving in the position of the principal is of importance to those aspiring to evolve to the role. For individuals viewing the principalship as a career path, firsthand accounting of the obstacles, opportunities, demands and distinctions there associated might be an invaluable source of verification for that which one might expect. This serves as the rationale for the approach taken in this research report, which contends that the administering of surveys to individuals who are serving today in the role of principal should help to effectively yield data which can be of value to individuals desiring to follow in their footsteps. The primary thesis of this research is that a consideration of existing studies both which help to define terms for this investigation and which provide precedent for the use of survey-based data-gathering should help us to establish a clear course for the format and content of a survey for distribution. The study proposed in this investigation would be designed as a primarily qualitative study which focuses on the beliefs, attitudes and perceptions of principals on both their careers and the path of their career development. The method being proposed in this study is qualitative and descriptive research using the combination of a literature review on the topic and a survey of school principals. A descriptive design, according to Gigliotti (2001), is to provide an accurate profile of a variable, group, individual and/or phenomenon. It is a design that involves making careful descriptions of phenomena—particularly educational, which has greatly increased knowledge about what happens in schools. The issues which will be considered in a survey instrument will have been gleaned from the literature review which is to follow. This review indicates that the responsibilities of the principal as a leader in various capacities must be heavily considered, particularly in light of such issues as the heightened demanded for leadership in the face of new and permeating political realities. Issues such as the need to answer to various sectors of the community, the demand to establish a rapport with faculty that induces support and the overarching presence of such all-encompassing frameworks as the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy all have the effect of shaping the leadership responsibilities and experiences of the principal. This literature review is justified as a means to clarifying the relationship between these conditions and the perspective of the principal on such issues as career development and leadership distribution and will touch upon the above-noted issues in shaping the focus of its research instrument. Literature Review: Principal Leadership Theory: That schools in the United States in particular have generally experienced a decline in standards, in performance and in personnel commitment is evidenced throughout the field. To many theorists in the last decade, this is indicative of a core problem relating to the orientation and distribution of leadership. This is especially a challenge for the principal, whose leadership responsibilities are inherent but who faces myriad obstacles to the effectiveness of this leadership. Overly centralized ways of designing curriculum, of engaging students and of evaluating performance of teachers and students, some will argue, has had the impact of disassociating school leadership from the environment which it impacts. This is why â€Å"in the view of many analysts, the task of transforming a school is too complex for one person to accomplish alone. Consequently, a new model of leadership is developing. † (Lashway, 2002, p. 6) This new model is something that developing school principals and serving principals alike must prepare for. The leadership of the school administration or principalship is often looked upon as the sole determining factoring the curricular standardization and approach which pervades a learning institution. As Graseck’s (2005) article reveals, the perceived singularity of this leadership is both a product of a fundamental misapprehension of the opportunities for in-school leadership and may be a contributor to a negative educational experience all around. At the heart of Graseck’s model for administrative leadership is the notion that too much vested authority in this position will tend to create what he refers to as a ‘wall,’ which reinforces an improper notion that administration exists above principalship and teaching on a hierarchical scale. A perception which may be shared by both parties, it is likely to cause an improperly aloof administrative approach to leadership which is more dominated by bureaucracy than a true and inquiring interest in the improvement of education. Equally as destructive, such an attitude imperils the security of the teaching faculty, which tends to respond to being undervalued with resentment, occupational antipathy and diminished morale. As we enter into this discussion, it is important to recognize that this is a dilemma which centrally impacts the authority and leadership opportunities for the principal. The presumption that more effectively distributed leadership will ultimately produce positive performance outcomes for a school is underscored by heretofore existent positive evidence as to the impact of effective leadership overall as a determinant of student outcomes. According to Spillane (2003), â€Å"over the past few decades researchers have consistently reported that school leadership, principal leadership in particular, is critical in developing and sustaining those school-level conditions believed essential for instructional improvement. (Spillane, 2003; p. 343) According to Lumby (2003), it may be accurate to state that an evolution in our appreciation for classroom level ingenuity inherently incites the need for a more distributed approach to leadership as pertaining to the relationship between principal and teachers. As his research claims, â€Å"leadership is embedded in the activities of staff and students, including delegated management, and can be understood to be both distributed and systemic. (Lumby, 2003; p. 283) This is to indicate the natural process of educational development will require this type of dynamic contribution where the relationship between the principal and teachers facilitates a sense of leadership determination for the latter which can help to stimulate their invaluable support of the former. Indeed, for educators, the heightened emphasis on the opportunity for contribution at the highest levels can improve motivation and individual ingenuity. To this end, according to a study by Harris (2004), there is cause to infer that the outcome of this leadership approach for the principal will be to improve the quality of a school overall. Accordingly, the author notes that such â€Å"forms of leadership can assist capacity building within schools which contributes to school improvement. † (Harris, 11) For teachers and other staff members who are given the opportunity to offer their skills at the leadership level, the framework will accommodate greater innovation, personal stake and perspective variance. All of these may be argued to promote the advancement of school quality as an experience for both student and educator. This review uses an extensive number of studies available on the subject of principals in education. Some of the research directed the fix of our attention toward the external pressures which denote the need for a principal to develop a clear base of support from within the school. The challenges inherent in the No Child Left Behind legislation, according to the findings of most survey studies considered here, have compromised the ability of principals to lead effectively. The implications of externally shaped standards and performance consequences are undermining to the capacity of the principal and his or her faculty to lead in the shaping of curriculum, philosophy and evaluation. Some of the research available on the subject demonstrates the need to develop a clear strategic approach to leadership in the face of such pressures. To this end, according to Crum & Sherman (2008), the heightened emphasis on standardized testing and other practices related to No Child Left Behind has created a condition wherein the principal is found to be largely at the center of an array of very inflexible demands. The result is that the principal’s performance evaluation is directly connected to the capacity of the school and its students to comport with the standards created by such legislation. Therefore, principals are increasingly finding it necessary to take a hands-on approach to providing leadership in public schools. As Crum & Sherman indicate, â€Å"the burden for school improvement in a time of accountability falls squarely on the shoulders of principals as new requirements demand that they act as instructional leaders. † (Crum & Sherman, 562) This study is of particular value to our discussion both for its association to the inherent case for a more widely distributed approach to leadership and to the establishment of our core methodology. The study in question is largely based on the data-gathering process of surveying those with measurable experience in the areas of principalship discussed. The issues of leadership and the distribution of authority are both recurrent in the self-reports gathered by Crum & Sherman, which focus in useful detail on the aspects of the position which demand the intimate leadership oversight of a highly involved principal. According to the data gathering process which the researchers undertook, â€Å"the principals provided valuable insights into their daily practices that foster an environment which is supportive of high-student achievement. These practices are categorized in the following themes: developing personnel and facilitating leadership, responsible delegation and empowering the team, recognizing ultimate accountability, communicating and rapport, facilitating instruction, and managing change. (Crum & Sherman, 563) Here, the principals who served as key respondents would generally come to an agreement on the crucial importance of using one’s leadership to invoke leadership initiative and the command of responsibilities amongst those who are theoretically subordinate. This means developing, maintaining and feeding a set of healthy relationships betwixt the principal and teachers and faculty. The principal must cultivate an atmosphere where trust and a sense of value allow teachers to e ffectively carry out the message, mission and pressures of the principalship. At the core of a data-gathering process such as this is the finding that the principal cannot act alone. Though accountability will typically be closely associated with the job of the principalship, the support which the principal enjoys from the teaching staff will be tantamount their willingness to support him or her. In turn, this support will translate into an effective staff which maintains the principal’s vision and standards of efficacy. Self-reporting proves here to be an illuminating process, driven by observations made by principals operating under the provisions of No Child Left Behind. Though the No Child Left Behind is not the core focus of this investigation, its mention here denotes another aspect of the survey which makes it valuable to our purposes. A wide array of subjects in survey make voluntary mention of No Child Left Behind. With no connotation, the issue remains a relevant one today for its pervasive impact on the way that schools and students alike are assessed. The use of evaluative testing as a means to enforcing a universal standards for academic competence holds all members of the academic community under a microscope. Whether responding positively or negatively to its implications, a great many respondents to the research surveys which this source review encountered recognized that its provisions are a significant factor in shaping leadership strategy. Ferrandino (2001) wrote about the subject of the principalship over the transition into the 21st century, which saw the inception of our current policy approach. Ferrandino analyzed the job itself and noted that being a principal today is far different than it was even 20 years ago. Principals work longer hours, have responsibility for a much broader community of pupils and staff (that is, pupils and staff from a diversity of cultures), are required to be far more politically savvy, and have to meet a much broader range of demands. Ferrandino’s (2001) research addressed the claim that too many principals are soon due for retirement and there are insufficient numbers of teachers and educators with the training, education, and qualification to replace this aging workforce. (p. 441). The author posed and addressed the question as to why there appears to be shortage of qualified candidates for such positions. In resolution, the article finds that many potential candidates do not want to cope with the inherent pressures of leadership and the requisite long hours of the job. According to the survey research gathered in the Ferrandino essay, the politicization of the academic process has become a deterrent for many serious and qualified candidates. The issues provoked by No Child Left Behind are played out today in the administrative conflicts which shape education as we know it, with the principal at the center of disputes. And quite indeed, as pedagogical approaches clash with each other (constructivism versus traditional teaching, for one example), more in the way of direct leadership is expected of principals than ever before. To some extent, this is causing many to shy away from even applying for the position. Ferrandino (2001) notes that this is not simply a problem of a shortage of candidates, but implies that which is at the crux of research, that there are institutional shortcomings which have disinclined a proper pool of candidates. The complexity of leadership demands in the position are dominant in either disinclined candidates or rendering the position too exclusive. The research by Langer and Boris-Schacter provides a model for consideration as we meditate on the notion of using the survey methodology to produce a data set on the selected subject. In the research of Langer and Boris-Schacter (2003), it is confirmed that Ferrandino’s perspective that the role of the principal is one that leaves many of its beholders feeling frustrated and uncomfortable with the constantly changing demands of the job. Their study showed that most of the principals surveyed experience poor job satisfaction, that the job has a negative affect on their personal lives, that they have less and less leisure time, and that the constant demands on their time are often unreasonable. (Langer & Boris-Schacter, 14) One of the primary concerns noted by the principals surveyed in their study is the intrusiveness of new state and federal legislation. Surveyed subjects expressed the concern that there is a movement towards an emphasis on standardized test scores over quality of education in the classroom.

Bullying And Its Effect On Society - 1059 Words

Bullying If you bully, you are a piece of crap and you are not worth anything. Now that I got your attention, lets get started. What bullying is pretty much broken down to is being mean to someone else. Bullying can be done many ways, whether it be verbally, mentally or it can be done over the internet, which is considered cyberbullying. One basic essential is the recognition, by the harasser or by others, of an irregularity of social or physical power, which recognizes tormenting from struggle. Justifications for such conduct now and again incorporate contrasts of social class, race, religion, sex, sexual introduction, appearance, conduct, non-verbal communication, identity, notoriety, heredity, quality, size or capacity. In the event†¦show more content†¦Verbal bullying is using words and insults to hurt someone else. It is normal for individuals to experience some type of verbal bullying sooner or later in their lives. many youngsters we talk to hear insults once a day when they are in school or socially. Whatever age you are being called names or offended can affect your well being. Many victims of verbal bullying are affected pretty bad. It can hurt someones self esteem, or it can affect them mentally and/or physically. It can lead to severe depression, self-harm, and possibly suicide. This type of bullying can add problems to the ones that the victim may already have at home or anywhere. One way to deal with verbal bullies is to tell on them, ignore them, tell a friend, or in my opinion, beat the ever living crap out of them if you are able to do so. In the end, it is quite difficult to stop verbal bullying. However, you can set a good example for your children by speaking kindly of others, and not resorting to rudeness yourself. This is quite important, since many verbal bullies first learn to dominate others with words by listening to their parents, and how they interact with others. Cyberbullying is when a child or teenager is harassed, humiliated, embarrassed, threatened or bullied using digital technology, or as others know it the internet. Kids who are being cyberbullied are often bullied in person asShow MoreRelatedBullying And Its Effect On Society1060 Words   |  5 PagesWhat is bullying? Google’s online dictionary defines bullying as using superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone), typically to force him or her to do what one wants. Many define bullying as physically, mentally, emotionally, and psychologically degrading another living being. Bullying has become a growing issue around the world. The act of bullying can begin with a small eye roll, but within a short period of time it can escalate to abuse. Bullying is an issue that cannot be takenRead MoreBullying And Its Effects On Society983 Words   |  4 Pagesother countries. Today’s youth have experienced nearly twice as much bullying than past generations. In the United States it is shown that forty-eight percent of junior high and high school students have been bullied. Seventy percent of all grade school students in the United States say they have bullied or have seen a fellow classmate bullied. The types of bullying in today’s schools include: physical, social, verbal, and cyber bullying. This is a problem that has been brought to the attention of schoolRead MoreBullying And Its Effects On Society1546 Words   |  7 Pages13, 2014 Bullying Continues to Worsen Rudeness can be defined in many ways, but the definition most fitting for this topic would be, lack of manners, discourtesy. It’s been around since the beginning of time, but it’s become increasingly popular in today’s society. There are infinite ways someone could be rude to others, for example not holding a door for the next person, making fun of someone, or even disrupting someone. One big problem in today’s generation is bullying. THESIS: Bullying has increasedRead MoreBullying And Its Effect On Society1633 Words   |  7 Pagesmay be exploited is through the familiar conviction of bullying. Bullying has been entrenched in American society as a relevant issue for quite some time. The word â€Å"bully† derives back from as far as the 1530’s. In 1838, the novel, Oliver Twist, exhibited the first use of bullying within literary work. Years later, in 1862, the first account of bullying was reported. Over one hundred years following this, th e first proposition of an anti-bullying law was constructed. As time has persisted, the issueRead MoreBullying And Its Effects On Society Essay1298 Words   |  6 PagesBullying, or being bullied, was once thought of as a normal process of growing up that had little to no impact in life. Now, it has become lethal enough to even go as far to convince one to end their life or commit a felony. The action of bullying a person has increased not just physically but also through the cyberspace world. As the world’s internet continues to expand with more social media and entertainment pages like Facebook, WorldStarHipHop, video blogging website, music video promotersRead MoreBullying And Its Effects On Society1313 Words   |  6 PagesBullying is defined as a use of superior strength or influence to intimidate someone, typically to force him or her to do what one wants. The bully and those who are bullied can be of any age; bullying does not discriminate. There are a number of ps ychological causes and effects that can cause bullying and also the lasting effects of. However, in order to understand the psychology behind bullying, one must understand the reasons that influence one to become a bully and the effects it can have onRead MoreBullying And Its Effects On Society1957 Words   |  8 PagesBullying is defined as â€Å"unwanted, aggressive behavior among people that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both persons who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.† In this day and age, there are so many places advertising a no bullying sentiment or trying to get people to donate money or read about how to stop the bullying that goes on in high school. These websites and foundations areRead MoreBullying And Its Effects On Society2270 Words   |  10 PagesBullying is arguably one of the most common vices in our contemporary society that affec ts individuals across different settings in the society. Most people associate bullying with schools and teenagers, but the practice cuts across almost all institutions in the modern-day American society. People get bullied at workplaces and even in public institutions when seeking for public services. Bullying entails the use of perceived superior power by an individual to intimidate, threaten, or harm anotherRead MoreBullying And Its Effect On Society Essay2475 Words   |  10 PagesIt seems bullying has existed since the beginning of humanity. As we saw in the video during class, Competitiveness was first to arise before cooperation. The dynamics of bullying however are ever-changing and pose an even larger threat to society than ever before. From elementary school to high school, even in college and beyond. The various environments, the internet, work place and even at home. The variables of bullying have changed so dramatically over a considerably short passage of time,Read M oreBullying And Its Effects On Society1932 Words   |  8 PagesAbstract Bullying, a social issue that has been most associated with adolescent aggressive behavior from one to another, has expanded from the realms of the school halls to the Internet. But as laws have been passed and legislation enacted, are these adolescent populations still vulnerable? This paper describes the definition of bullying, power imbalance or struggle, public reaction, policies, public laws or administration rules, implementation of social welfare programs, actual impact, legislative

Rhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King Jr s Letter...

Persuasive writing is most effective when all three rhetorical appeals, Logos, Pathos, and Ethos, come together to form an indisputable argument. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X are two of the most influential figures of the past few decades; similarly, their work is summarized as some of the most persuasive and controversial of all time. The audience of both of their pieces, â€Å"Letter from Birmingham Jail† and â€Å"The Ballot or the Bullet† include oppressed African Americans and the white oppressors themselves. Each man takes full advantage of the three rhetorical appeals to influence their audiences to support their radical theories about racial inequality in the 1960’s. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s â€Å"Letter from Birmingham Jail† is the most effective because of its hopeful emotions, irrefutable facts and, of course, the respected author. In â€Å"Letter from Birmingham Jail†, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr extensively establishe s his ethos and proves his authority on the matter of racial injustice. â€Å"I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights† (King 1). King was the focal point of the Civil Rights movement and continues to symbolize the equality of all races to this very day. His authority to advocate on theShow MoreRelatedRhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King Jr s Letter From Birmingham Jail1499 Words   |  6 Pagesgenre, and rhetorical situation. When reading critically we become acquainted with these concepts therefore become better writers ourselves. While learning about rhetorical writing and composition we have analyzed Billy Collins â€Å" Commencement Address at Choate- Rosemary Hall† , Martin Luther King J r’s â€Å"letter from Birmingham Jail† and Lloyd Bitzer’s essay on â€Å"Rhetorical Situation†. In this paper I will analyze and make connections between the concepts of audience, genre and rhetorical situationRead MoreRhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King Jr. s Letter From A Birmingham Jail873 Words   |  4 PagesAfter criticism from eight Alabama clergymen for his nonviolent demonstrations, Martin Luther King Jr. was compelled to enlighten them on the current issues plaguing the African American community. During his confinement in a Birmingham jail, King wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail to address most of the clergymen s concerns about his protest. In his letter, King emphasized why his actions were not unwise or untimely and explained that now was the perfect moment to act. His studies and sermonsRead MoreLetter From A Birmingham Jail972 Words   |  4 PagesRhetorical Analysis: Letter from a Birmingham Jail Racism is part of America’s history. Historical leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. brought the Injustice problems to the light. King, Jr. â€Å"Letters from a Birmingham Jail confronts racism in the United States of America through his response letter to the clergymen criticism, while he is in jail due to holding a protest in Birmingham, Alabama. King, Jr. wrote â€Å"Letter from a Birmingham Jail† to defend the non-violent protest. He claims that the protestRead More Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter From a Birmingham Jail Essays1088 Words   |  5 PagesDr. Martin Luther King Jr.s â€Å"Letter From a Birmingham Jail† In King’s essay, â€Å"Letter From Birmingham Jail†, King brilliantly employs the use of several rhetorical strategies that are pivotal in successfully influencing critics of his philosophical views on civil disobedience. King’s eloquent appeal to the logical, emotional, and most notably, moral and spiritual side of his audience, serves to make â€Å"Letter From Birmingham Jail† one of the most moving and persuasive literary pieces of the 20thRead Moreâ€Å"Letters from a Birmingham Jail† Analysis of the Rhetorical Appeals1182 Words   |  5 Pagesemotion in the audience that compels them to leap out of their seats and take action. Martin Luther King Jr. attempted to do this when he wrote an open letter while in his jail cell after a peaceful debate against segregation. His lettered response was guided at a statement by eight white Alabama clergymen saying that segregation should be fought in court and not on the streets. King uses a combination o f three rhetorical appeals to accomplish his rhetor; ethical, logical and emotional. The three appealsRead MoreAnalysis of Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter from Birmingham Jail962 Words   |  4 Pagesintangible, it is still necessary. Some forms of inspiration come as passionate love while others appeal as injustice. Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter from Birmingham Jail was a response to A Call for Unity by eight white clergymen. His inspiration for writing the letter was the clergymens unjust proposals and the letter allowed him to present his rebuttal. Martin Luther King Jr. effectively crafted his counter argument by first directly addressing his audience, the clergymen, and then using logosRead MoreCivil Disobedience By Henry David Thoreaus Letter From A Birmingham Jail1605 Words   |  7 Pagesand The Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and taking a closer look at their rhetorical devices and strategy’s. In Civil disobedience by Henry David Thoreau shows us the need to prioritize some one’s wellbeing over what the law says. American laws are criticized mostly over slavery and the Mexican-American war. In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s â€Å"Letter from a Birmingham Jail† was written in response to a letter written by clergymen criticizing the actions of Dr. King and theRead MoreRhetorical Analysis Of Letter From Birmingham Jail1052 Words   |  5 Pagesracial discrimination is? A Rhetorical Analysis of Letter From Birmingham Jail It is known to all that Martin Luther King is a famous person in America, who strongly goes against the racial discrimination all the time. Here, in this letter, Letter from Birmingham Jail, it is easy for us to realize that racial discrimination appears and the non-violence action is still serious at that time. As a matter of fact, this letter is coming from the people in the Birmingham jail, stating their inner thoughtsRead More Martin Luther Kings Letter from Birmingham Jail Essay1241 Words   |  5 PagesRhetorical Analysis of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter from Birmingham Jail In his essay Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. disproves the assumptions of people that believe racism is acceptable when he compares the maltreatment of blacks to the inhumane treatment of the Jews by Hitler. King establishes a relationship with his audience by connecting on a level that is larger than the exploitation of African Americans rights. He forces his readers to think aboutRead MoreCritical Analysis: Letter from Birmingham Jail1191 Words   |  5 PagesCritical Analysis Essay â€Å"Letter from Birmingham Jail† In arguing, writers use different techniques to effectively convey their message to their intended audience. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter from Birmingham Jail was a response to A Call for Unity by eight white clergymen in which King’s presence in Birmingham and his methods of public demonstration were questioned. King’s letter was not only a response to his presence in Birmingham, but he also used the opportunity to address the

Rena’s Concept of Nation Building Based on Chavez and Morales

Ernst Renan’s concept of nation is about a proposal that urges people to come together in order to have consciousness about the process of building a nation and to forget about the differences in geography, language, race, and religion. He insists on telling that a nation is composed of people’s collaboration and agreements to stay together and be governed by mutual approval because they shared a common past. Based on this concept, we can say that Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales were trying to build a nation by using history to unify the nation and to challenge the notion of geography and in the case of Morales the language and race. Nikolas Kozloff’s Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S express the concept of nation in†¦show more content†¦Similar to Chavez, Evo Morales contributed to the concept of geography as part of making a nation because Bolivia is divided into two races groups: European and Indigenous. It was difficult for Evo to be able to unify Bolivia for being an Indigenous person. He can be seemed as one of the men that Renan mentioned who are â€Å"healthy in mind and warm of heart† because he was creating a kind of moral conscience based on the coca leaf which he defended to be a form of food supply for the poor. As well, he said that the growing of coca was a job for the peasant community (based on the film Cocalero). In addition, we can see that the contact with the people by playing soccer games with the local miners demonstrate the moral consciousness that he wanted to implement. The fact that Evo spoke demonstrated that the language as Renan said need to be forget, even though, there was a great percent of people who spoke Quechua. He wanted to reach everybody by speaking the primary language. Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales had similar and different contributions about Rena’s concept of nation building. Chavez supported the ideas that geography was important to unify and to have progress in the nation. While, Morales was challenging this characteristic because Bolivia is a perfect example of how difficult is to govern when a nation is divided. Both Presidents were fighting for agrarian reform and this made the poor to enforce the agenda of each president. They tried to reach everyone and to

The Loons Free Essays

string(178) " a Metis through the social rejection which characterizes Manawaka’s view of her family:   Ã¢â‚¬ËœI bet you know a lot about the woods and all that, eh\? ’ I began respectfully\." Journal of the Short Story in English 48   (Spring 2007) Varia †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Jennifer Murray Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢ € ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Electronic reference Jennifer Murray,  «Ã‚  Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons†Ã‚  Ã‚ », Journal of the Short Story in English [Online], 48  |  Spring 2007, Online since 01 juin 2009, Connection on 01 avril 2013. URL  : http:// jsse. revues. We will write a custom essay sample on The Loons or any similar topic only for you Order Now org/index858. html Publisher: Presses universitaires d’Angers http://jsse. revues. org http://www. revues. org Document available online on: http://jsse. revues. org/index858. html Document automatically generated on 01 avril 2013. The page numbering does not match that of the print edition.  © All rights reserved Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 2 Jennifer Murray Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† : p. 71-80 1 2 3 4 5 â€Å"The Loons† belongs to Margaret Laurence’s story-sequence A Bird in the House which is built around the character Vanessa MacLeod and her growing-up years in the fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba. Following on from the collection’s title story which has the death of Vanessa’s father as its central event, â€Å"The Loons† is set in a time prior to the father’s death and is the first of three stories which deal with Vanessa’s progressive opening up to the world around her and her increasing awareness of the suffering, poverty and forms of oppression outside of her family circle (Stovel 92). More specifically, â€Å"The Loons† gives u s Vanessa’s perception of a young girl called Piquette Tonnerre who is of Metis descent and who accumulates the social disadvantages of poverty, illness, ethnic discrimination and being female. The story has been taken to task for the questionable values attached to its use of Piquette as the stereotype of the doomed minority figure, most notably by Tracy Ware who asks: â€Å"To what extent [does this short story] confirm a debased master narrative that regards Natives as victims of a triumphant white civilization? † (71). At the same time, Ware recognizes the â€Å"enduring sense of [the] aesthetic merit† (71) of this story which so clearly has its place within the canon of Canadian literature. Evaluating the text against its depiction of the Metis can only lead to the negative conclusions that Ware arrives at, namely, that Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† falls ideologically short of the expectations of today’s politically-conscious reader. What this reading of â€Å"The Loons† does not take into account is that the â€Å"aesthetic merit† of the story is situated elsewhere—not in the portrait or role of Piquette as such, but in the story’s treatment of loss and in the central role of the father in the symbolics of this particular knot of meaning. In the context of the full story-sequence, loss and the father would seem more naturally associated in â€Å"A Bird in the House,† where the death of the father is the central event. In â€Å"The Loons,† the death of the father is recalled and reactivated as an informing event related to other moments in Vanessa’s life and to her relationship to others, Piquette bearing the weight of this role as ‘other’. On one level—that of Vanessa’s childhood perception of Piquette2—the story is about incomprehension, misconstruction, defensiveness and the impossibility of communication between the two girls. But the entire history of this failed relationship is revisited through the narrating voice of the adult Vanessa; in the telling of the story, she reshapes past events through the experience of loss provoked by her father’s death and invests them with symbolic value. Like the dreamer and the dream, Vanessa’s story is more about Vanessa than about those around her; it is her attempt to fit her own sense of loss into a world which is, more than she knows, beyond her. The father’s role in giving Vanessa access to symbolic values is central to the story; indeed, the first ‘event’ in the story is the father’s announcement of his concern (as a doctor) for the health of the young Piquette, who is in his care. After having prepared the ground briefly, he asks his wife: â€Å"Beth, I was thinking—what about taking her up to Diamond Lake with us this summer? A couple of months rest would give that bone a much better chance† (110). This act of social generosity, which is to involve his whole family, introduces the reader to the father’s values; it also inaugurates the continuing association in the text between the father and Piquette. The father is a reference point for Piquette; she invokes him to justify her refusal to accompany Vanessa on a short walk: â€Å"Your dad said I ain’t supposed to do no more walking than I got to† (113), and in later years, Piquette tells Vanessa, â€Å"Your dad was the only person in Manawaka that ever done anything good to me† (116). This positive assessment of the father is Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 3 6 the only shared ground between the girls. In response to the comment above, Vanessa â€Å"nodded speechlessly [†¦ ] certain that [Piquette] was speaking the truth† (116). In the name of her love for her father, Vanessa will make several attempts at approaching Piquette: these attempts are regularly met with rejection, leading to a moment of hurt for Vanessa: ‘Want to come and play? ’ Piquette looked at me with a sudden flash of scorn. ‘I ain’t a kid,’ she said. Wounded, I stamped angrily away [†¦]. 112) 7 8 This pattern recurs twice on the following page, with Piquette’s â€Å"scorn† taking on other forms —â€Å"Her voice was distant† (113); â€Å"her large dark unsmiling eyes† (113)—and her refusals becoming more verbally aggressive: â€Å"You nuts or somethin’? † (113); â€Å"Who gives a g ood goddamn? † (114). The impossibility of sharing between the girls is seen both from the perspective of the child Vanessa, who is mystified, â€Å"wondering what I could have said wrong† (113), and from the more experienced perspective offered by the narrated construction of events. This double vision allows the reader to see the misperceptions and involuntary insensitivity on which Vanessa’s attempts at communication are based. Where Vanessa fantasizes Piquette into â€Å"a real Indian† (112) and projects onto her the knowledge of the ‘secrets’ of nature, Piquette lives her identity as a Metis through the social rejection which characterizes Manawaka’s view of her family:   Ã¢â‚¬ËœI bet you know a lot about the woods and all that, eh? ’ I began respectfully. You read "The Loons" in category "Papers" †¦] ‘I don’t know what in hell you’re talkin’ about,’ she replied. [†¦] If you mean where my old man, and me, and all them live, you better shut up, by Jesus, you hear? ’ (113) 9 While the child cannot understand the defensiveness of Piquette, as readers, our knowledge of Piquette’s social conditions, outlined in the opening paragraphs of the story, leads us to a pos ition of empathy with the offended girl. Similar effects are produced by Vanessa’s enthusiasm about her summer cottage, —â€Å"‘I love it,’ I said. We come here every summer,’† (113)—expressed in the face of Piquette’s poverty, which habitually excludes her from the world of lakeside summer homes. Just as much as Piquette’s social disadvantages, Vanessa’s self-absorbed immersion in the comforts of middle-class Manawaka is the source of the girls’ mutual wariness. As the narrator of the story, the older version of Vanessa puts forward expressions of regret at the failure of the relationship between herself as a child, and Piquette. This regret, however, is not distinct from childhood, but a part of it, recounted in the past tense: â€Å"Piquette and I remained ill at ease with one another. I felt I had somehow failed my father, but I did not know what was the matter, nor why she would not or could not respond† (115). The linguistic markers â€Å"somehow† and â€Å"did not know† suggest that the emotional experience of failure remained confusing for the child, but the ability to formulate this metadiscourse indicates that things have become clearer to the adult Vanessa. This acquired comprehension allows the narrator to develop the expression of failure once again, two pages further on, including, this time, more details about the possible expectations of the father: Yet I felt no real warmth towards her—I only felt that I ought to, because of that distant summer and because my father had hoped she would be company for me, or perhaps that I would be for her, but it had not happened that way. (117) 10 Through the voice of the more experienced Vanessa, the regret of the past is understood to have been intimately related to a sense of having failed not herself, nor Piquette, but her father. The focus is on the father’s symbolic role in attributing potential value to the possibility of their friendship. Along with the father’s generosity towards Piquette, a series of other values related to the father are offered in the short story. The father’s name, MacLeod, is also the name which designates the family cottage (111), which itself is associated with nature and authenticity: it Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 4 11 s the father who comes and sits by the lake with Vanessa to listen to the loons (114); the lake, the nighttime, the loons, all come to signify intuitive communication (â€Å"we waited, without speaking†), mystery and transcendence (â€Å"They rose like phantom birds†), a reproach to human civilization (â€Å"Plaintive, and yet with a quality of chilling mockery, those voices belonged to a world separated by aeons from our neat world of summer cottages and the lighted lamps of home†) (114). The idea that the loons belong to a separate world is reinforced by the father’s comment that the loons had been there â€Å"before any person ever set foot here† (114). The loons are both a form of access to the continuum of natural time as opposed to civilized time, and a reminder that man cannot bridge that gap; there is therefore a form of retrospective loss attached to the image of the loons: the imagined loss of what came before and is now inaccessible. However, the birds also prefigure future loss—the enduring presence of the loons is endangered, as Vanessa tells Piquette: My dad says we should listen and try to remember how they sound, because in a few years when more cottages are built at Diamond Lake and more people come in, the loons will go away. 114) 12 We can also see the metonymic association between this loss and the approaching end of the permanence of Vanessa’s world; her father, associated with the loons in Vanessa’s childhood, is soon to disappear: â€Å"Neither of us suspected that this would be the last time we would ever sit here together on the shore, listening† (115). The symbolic charge of the los s of the loons is therefore great for Vanessa, but meaningless to young Piquette, who, on learning of the precarious situation of the birds, says: â€Å"Who gives a good goddamn? (114). For Piquette, they are literally, â€Å"a bunch of squawkin’ birds† (115). Meaning is to do with symbolic construction and â€Å"The Loons†, for all of its focus on Piquette, is about Vanessa’s construction of personal meaning. Coral Ann Howells notes that Vanessa’s choosing to write about Piquette is a way of â€Å"silently displacing her own feelings into [Piquette’s] story† (41). This process is clearest in the paragraph which announces the father’s death: That winter my father died of pneumonia, after less than a week’s illness. For some time I saw nothing around me, being completely immersed in my own pain and my mother’s. When I looked outward once more, I scarcely noticed that Piquette Tonnerre was no longer at school. (115) 13 14 The words which tell of the loss of the father are almost immediately followed by words which tell of the disappearance of Piquette. This is given in the form of a negation: â€Å"I scarcely noticed†¦,† but what the young Vanessa had â€Å"scarcely noticed,† the narrating Vanessa gives weight to by placing it in verbal proximity to the death of the father, obliquely associating the two events. Through indirection, therefore, Vanessa speaks of her own loss. But the process is not entirely parasitic; in the telling, she also constructs Piquette. Piquette is, in some ways, a difficult character for today’s reader to take on board: like Pique, the daughter of Morag Gunn in the final Manawaka story, â€Å"The Diviners†, she â€Å"suffers from the weight of too much thematic relevance† (Howells 51) since, as I noted earlier, she accumulates an extraordinary number of handicaps, all of which are seen to be indirectly related to her Metis origins. In spite of the older Vanessa’s gentle mocking of her earlier self in her desire to ‘naturalize’ Piquette into a folkloric Indian, the story does imply that part of Piquette’s tragedy is that, like the loons, she belongs to a more ‘authentic’ heritage which has been/is being destroyed. 3 The romanticism which the narrating voice mocks is nonetheless supported by the story’s symbolism, as is the attempt to fix Piquette into a sterile, stereotyped role of ‘representativity,’ something that Piquette’s direct discourse has violently rejected. Yet, we do have access to a more tenacious Piquette; in her silences, rejections, and refusals, she is a character who is fighting for her own survival in a world clearly divided along class lines and this tenacity is seen principally in her rejection of Vanessa’s self-satisfaction. Vanessa’s sense of superiority over Piquette is implicit in the narrator’s comments about the Metis girl’s invisibility to her younger self; at that time, Piquette was but â€Å"a vaguely embarrassing presence† who â€Å"moved somewhere within my scope of vision† (109). Moreover, Piquette can drop out of sight for years without notice: â€Å"I do not remember seeing her at all Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 5 until four years later† (115). It would seem to be the total separateness of their social worlds that creates and sustains what might be experienced as a ‘lack of affinity’. Whereas these social differences remain unformulated to the child Vanessa, they are close to the surface for Piquette whose discourse refuses to endorse the smugness of the well-off Vanessa: ‘Do you like this place,’ I asked [†¦] Piquette shrugged. It’s okay. Good as anywhere. ’ ‘I love it,’ I said, ‘We come here every summer. ’ ‘So what? ’ (113) 15 Other details suggest a Piquette who has dreams of her own, but who cannot allow herself to expose them to others: â€Å"When she saw me approaching, her hand squashed flat the sand castle she had been building, and she looked at me sulle nly, without speaking† (113). For Piquette, the child Vanessa is a potential enemy, someone to guard oneself against. Dreams cannot be shared, and cannot even be envisaged within the society of which Vanessa is a part. Indeed, even in her later teenage years, Piquette holds no hope of improvement for herself within the confines of small-town Manawaka: â€Å"Boy, you couldn’t catch me stayin’ here. I don’ give a shit about this place. It stinks† (116). Piquette knows that Manawaka holds nothing for her in the sense that no one there believes in her chances for a better future. When she becomes engaged to be married, she remarks that, â€Å"All the bitches an’ biddies in this town will sure be surprised† (117). The implication that the town gossips have nothing good to say about Piquette is underscored by Vanessa’s own reactions. On seeing Piquette several years after the summer at the cottage, Vanessa is â€Å"repelled† and â€Å"embarrassed† by her, and although she is â€Å"ashamed† at her own attitude, she gives way to an emphatic outpouring of animosity towards the teenage girl:   Ã‚  Ã‚  I could not help despising the self-pity in her voice. I wished she would go away. I did not want to see her. I did not know what to say to her. It seemed that we had nothing to say to one another. (117) 16 The force of this expression suggests a negative identification with Piquette on Vanessa’s part. It is as if Piquette represents the photo negative of Vanessa’s life; the result of poverty, illness, and lack of education made flesh and standing there as a threat to the integrity of Vanessa’s identity as a middle-class, reasonably well-educated girl with a future. There is no indication in the story that Vanessa ever overcomes this violent rejection of Piquette during the Metis girl’s lifetime. This moment of intense emotional confrontation is followed by what may be seen as the story’s signature moment: For the merest instant, then, I saw her. I really did see her, for the first and only time in all the years we had both lived in the same town. Her defiant face, momentarily, became unguarded and unmasked, and in her eyes there was a terrifying hope. (117) 17 These last two words encapsulate the relative positions of the two girls. Where Piquette ‘reveals’ her most guarded treasure—hope, arguably the most positive emotion which exists, Vanessa reproduces the condemning judgement of the town; with the word â€Å"terrifying,† she declares this hope to be without any ground. It is therefore coherent with Vanessa’s view of Piquette’s life that the Metis woman should be left as a single mother, follow in the drunken path of her father, and finally die in a house fire along with her two children. Vanessa’s reaction to this news is, â€Å"I did not say anything. As so often with Piquette, there did not seem to be anything to say† (119). It is not that there is ‘nothing to say’ about Piquette, but rather, that what there is to say would involve a questioning of community values which would also have to be a form of self-questioning. The narrative does not take the direction of a critique of human and social relationships; it deals with the vague sense of guilt expressed by the narrator—â€Å"I wished I could put from my memory the look that I had seen once in Piquette’s eyes† (119)—by sublimating Piquette into the symbol (along with the loons) of something lost. The ground is prepared through the falling action of the story which lists the avalanche of losses which Vanessa experiences after having heard about Piquette’s death: â€Å"The MacLeod cottage had been sold after my father’s Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 6 death†; â€Å"The small pier which my father had built was gone†; â€Å"Diamond Lake had been renamed Lake Wapakata†; and finally, â€Å"I realized that the loons were no longer there† (119). These different elements reinstall the triad of the father, the loons and nature as the paradigm of loss and the narrator then brings Piquette into this sphere of symbolism: I remember how Piquette had scorned to come along when my father and I sat there and listened to the lake birds. It seemed to me now that in some unconscious and totally unrecognised way, Piquette might have been the only one, after all, who had heard the crying of the loons. (120) 18 19 â€Å"Piquette,† â€Å"father,† â€Å"lake,† â€Å"birds,† â€Å"loons†: all of these words are given a place in the final paragraph. The narrator too, is present amongst these elements, and her place as the one who reconstructs meaning is affirmed: â€Å"I remember how [†¦]. † But it is affirmed, finally, as a process of questioning: in the phrase, â€Å"It seemed to me now that in some unconscious and totally unrecognised way,† (where it is uncertain as to whether it is the narrator’s unconscious or Piquette’s which is being invoked), the narrator seems to romanticize Piquette’s Metis status into the ‘natural’ world and confer on her the positive charge of nostalgia related to loss. In this statement of restricted awareness, it would seem that the narrator is trying to resolve the problem of her own position in relation to Piquette; the irreconcilable distinction between how she felt towards Piquette and how she felt she should have felt, if only for her father’s sake. The solution to this is to transform Piquette from the living girl—judged by so ciety, including Vanessa and her mother—as â€Å"sullen and gauche and badly dressed,† â€Å"a real slattern,† â€Å"a mess† (118), into a symbol: a young girl, representative of an oppressed minority, with a tragic destiny, doomed to die. In this form, the loss of Piquette can be associated with both the death of the father and the disappearance of the loons; the desire to bring Piquette into this association suggests an unresolved sense of guilt—towards the girl character, on the level of the diegesis, but also towards the Metis people, whose â€Å"long silence† (108) is echoed in the â€Å"quiet all around me† experienced by Vanessa (119) as she becomes aware of the disappearance of the loons. Silenced by death, Piquette’s ‘otherness’ can be neutralized and romanticized into nostalgia. The contradictions which structure â€Å"The Loons† give the story its force. In spite of the control of the adult narrator in the choice and ordering of memory, there is no attempt to beautify the emotions of her childhood self. The limited, often egocentric aspects of her childhood perspective are rendered, so that the reader’s sympathy goes out towards the other girl, Piquette. This construction of perspective may be een as a form of generosity, whereby, in spite of Vanessa’s statement that â€Å"there was nothing to say,† the narrator’s rendering of the past has allowed the reader to achieve an awareness of Piquette’s specificity as a character: she has moved from the general sense of absence which characterizes her in Vanessa’s memory, to a form of visibility in which the reader may see her as the victim of multiple ve ctors of oppression; in this context, her ‘defiance’ and ‘sullenness’ become the marks of a fighting spirit, and her ‘hope,’ the sign of her humanity. Through these effects constructed by the narrating voice, the earlier generosity of the father is ultimately echoed and loss takes on its complex human dimension. Bibliography Howells, Coral Ann. Private and Fictional Words : Canadian Women Novelists of the 1970s and 1980s. London: Methuen, 1987. Laurence, Margaret. A Bird in the House (1970). Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Stovel, Bruce. â€Å"Coherence in A Bird in the House,† in New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence : Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism, and Feminism. Ed. Greta McCormick Coger. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996. Vauthier, Simone. â€Å"‘A Momentary Stay Against Confusion’ : A Reading of Margaret Laurence’s ‘To Set Our House in Order. ’† The Journal of the Short Story in English vol. 3 (1984): 87-108. Ware, Tracy. â€Å"Race and Conflict in Garner’s ‘One-Two-Three Little Indians’ and Laurence’s ‘The Loons. ’† Studies in Canadian Literature vol. 23:2 (1998) : 71-84. Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons† 7 Notes   I am grateful to my colleagues in Besancon who participated in a discussion on â€Å"The Loons. † 2   See Vauthier (96-99) for a detailed analysis of Vanessa’s function as narrator (based on the short story â€Å"To Set Our House in Order,† but equally valid here). 3    Indeed, Tracy Ware argues that the associat ion of Piquette with nature, on the basis of her Metis origins, â€Å"den[ies] Piquette her full humanity, [and it also] makes a tragic outcome inevitable. We will never be able to imagine a future for people whom we regard as separate[d] from us ‘by aeons’† (80).   Margery Fee’s comment, quoted in Ware, that â€Å"Native people [†¦] are so rarely depicted as individuals, because they must bear the burden of the Other—of representing all that the modern person has lost† (Ware 82), seems relevant to the construction of Piquette as a character who comes to bear the symbolic weight of the very idea of loss. 5   Ware declares that this symbol is â€Å"a misrecognition because it ignores the historical struggles of both Natives and Metis† (79). References Electronic reference Jennifer Murray,  «Ã‚  Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons†Ã‚  Ã‚ », Journal of the Short Story in English [Online], 48  |  Spring 2007, Online since 01 juin 2009, Connection on 01 avril 2013. URL  : http://jsse. revues. org/index858. html Bibliographical reference Jennifer Murray,  «Ã‚  Negotiating Loss and Otherness in Margaret Laurence’s â€Å"The Loons†Ã‚  Ã‚ », Journal of the Short Story in English, 48  |  2007, 71-80. Jennifer Murray Jennifer Murray is an associate professor at the University of Franche-Comte. Her research is focused primarily on Canadian literature and on American writers from the South. Ms. Murray’s publications include articles on Margaret Atwood, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor and Tennessee Williams. She is currently working on the short stories of Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro. Copyright  © All rights reserved Abstract Je me propose ici d’etudier l’impact symbolique de la disparition du pere dans â€Å"  The Loons  Ã¢â‚¬ , une nouvelle de Margaret Laurence. Au niveau de l’intrigue, l’histoire est celle d’une amitie impossible entre la narratrice, Vanessa, fille de medecin, et une jeune metisse, Piquette, soignee par le pere de Vanessa. Les differences de niveau social, d’education et d’origine ethnique creent une incomprehension fondamentale entre les deux filles et vouent a l’echec les tentatives de Vanessa de sympathiser avec Piquette. Cet insucces attriste Vanessa  ; elle pense avoir decu son pere qui esperait que le sort de sa jeune patiente serait adouci par le contact avec sa famille. Devant son incapacite a transformer la realite et le remords qu’elle en eprouve, la narratrice transforme son souvenir de Piquette, l’exclue, en symbole. Ce symbole se developpe autour d’un noyau d’elements semantiques associes a l’authenticite, la nature, et la nostalgie du passe  ; des concepts valorises par le pere, et qui, pour la narratrice sont lies au sentiment de perte occasionne par sa mort Journal of the Short Story in English, 48 | Spring 2007 How to cite The Loons, Papers

Standard Operating Procedures

Question: Describe about the Standard Operating Procedures (sop) for Forensic toxicology laboratory (laboratory manual)? Answer: Forensic toxicology is a science that deals with the application of toxicology in the situations that may involve medicological review and as a consequence the results may be subject to scrutiny in a court of law. The standard operating procedures or SOP describes all the routinely used analytical and administrative procedures. It basically serves as a document for the purpose of training. The field of forensics is such that it ay frequently demand deviation from the routine SOPs and may require modifications of the same. For an instance conditions that may involve accommodation of an unusual sample type or multiple, condition or unusual analytes. In toxicology, if any toxin is suspected, a specific analysis should be requested and the laboratories can simply just not check for poisoning. This calls for a complete description of epidemiological and clinical findings that may help in differentiating between infectious diseases and poisoining. The most common samples that are colled ar e the stomach contents, whole blood, kidney, liver, serum or urine. In some cases even the cerebral tiisues may also be collected for cholinesterase analysis. According to SOP, the tissue or fluid samples should be as fresh as possible and must be kept refrigerated. Freezing is essential for some analysis as it helps in preventing degradation of volatile chemicals. In rare circumstances a chemical preservative might also be required. The packaging and handling of the samples should be done very carefully. When there is a possibility of any legal action, the containers for shipment should be either sealed so as to enable detection of any form of tampering or be carried manually to the laboratory and the receipt of the same be recorded. There should be proper documentation of the chain of custody as well. When the suspected source of poison is feed or water, these samples, along with the samples of any feed tags should be sent along with the tissue samples (Merck manuals 2013). All the incoming samples must be registered by the laboratory, Before signing the receipt, the samples are checked for their completeness, suitability and intactness for the testing purpose. If any sample is unlabelled or insufficiently marked, they are not processed and are sent back where appropriate. In any case the applicant must be informed and the details must be properly recorded in the laboratory files. The samples are assigned a laboratory internal code and ar clearly marked (using a barcode sometimes). The regulations of the Data Protection Act should be observed. In case of sample unsuitability or availability of less volume of sample for research or damaged sample, the laboratory immediately informs the applicant (Paul, L. et al. 2009). It is important to identify the sample and the derivates produced by labeling the sample at every stage of analysis. After the completion of labeling process and analysis and the final report, the remains of the sample and the original containers should be kept or stored based on the administrative regulations. The samples other than blood samples can be stored atleast for six months while the blood samples can be stored for 2 years. Body fluids should be refrigerated as soon as received in the lab. If there is no possibility of extracting serum or plasma then a part of the full blood sample should be kept for deep freezing (-15oC) to prevent ageing of the sample matrix and any loss of the analytes. In case of the original blood withdrawal system that consist of the remaining blood, the measure of how much blood has been removed, should be accurately indicated with a mark. Urine samples or their aliquots should be deep frozen and stored after the receipt (Paul, L. et al. 2009). The investigations can be divided into two major types: indicative and confirmatory (evidential) analysis. The former are the immune chemical test procedures that are simply based on the chromatographic techniques. The only drawback of indicative analysis was that the positive results of this test cannot be used as an evidence in court and should be confirmed by a second independent specific confirmatory method. The important point to be noted is that an immune chemical assay cannot be confirmed by second immunoassay. It is important for every laboratory to check if the cut off values of the immune chemical methods are properly calibrated and adequately chosen to differentiate between the positive and the negative results. The samples that are authentic give a positive result in the immune chemical pre testing procedure at the concentrations of the analyte in the limit that is required in the forensic toxicologic studies (Paul, L. et al. 2009). After the processing of the samples is completed, the tedious job of compiling the results is next. According to the SOP guidelines, the forensic toxicology lab requires every procedure to be documented properly in order to maintain a co-ordinated record in relation to every sample or every case that is analysed. The records should contains enough details to allow identification of the factors that affect the uncertainity and also enable the scientists to repeat the whole test procedure, if required. This repetition of the experiement might be necessary in order to reproduce results as close as the original observations. Wherever needed, the results can be preserved in form of photos but photography is not allowed in every case. Sometimes electronic scanning is also a good option (eg. Thin layer chromatography results) (Swiss Confederation 2013). The SOP guidelines consider that digital images and photographs can provide importance evidence in criminal investigation and then prosecut ion. Some laboratories allow only the use of departmentally approved and issued digital cameral for official photography purpose. Right from the number of photographs, clarity of photographs, time of exposure, condition of the camera, time of issuing the camera to the type of photos that can be clicked, the assignment of responsibility of supervising the entire duration of photography coverage, every uideline or rule is mentioned in the Standard Operating Procedure manual. A special officer is allocated the task of managing and maintaining the confidentiality of the images that are clicked or taken and ensure safe transfer of the images into the laboratory database (Division of Criminal Justice 2013). References Division of Criminal Justice, 2013, A standard operating procedure for the use of digital images cameras by the First Responding Officer, viewed on 21st February 2015, www.nj.gov/oag/dcj/njpdresources/pdfs/digital_imaging%20_sop.pdf Merck manuals, 2013, Overview of collection and submission of laboratory samples, viewed on 21st February 2015, https://www.merckmanuals.com/vet/clinical_pathology_and_procedures/collection_and_submission_of_laboratory_samples/overview_of_collection_and_submission_of_laboratory_samples.html#v3297560Paul, L. et al., 2009, Guideline for quality control in forensic toxicological analysis, GTFCh- Scietific Committee Quality Control. Quest diagnostics, 2014, General guidelines, viewed on 21st February 2015, https://www.questdiagnostics.com/home/physicians/testing-services/specialists/hospitals-lab-staff/specimen-handling/general.html Swiss Confederation, 2013, Guidelines for Accreditation of the Swiss Laboratories Performing Forensic Toxicological Analyses, Document No. 315 e.