Marriage in Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour”

In Kate Chopping â€Å"The Story of an Hour, the author uses irony and symbolism in order to emphasize her argument: even the kindest and most loving of marriages can be oppressive. In this short story, Mrs.. Mallard, who Is the main character, is a middle-class woman who has just lost her husband In a terrible accident. Her sister and one of her late husband's friends are there, and It Is they who break the news to her, being careful about It since she has heart problems. â€Å"Knowing that Mrs.. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. (p. L). Knowing about her husband's death, she (Mrs.. Mallard) locks herself in her room to apparently mourn and instead realizes that she has escaped from the grasps of marriage and is â€Å"free, free, free! † at last. She embraces her newly found freedom and triumphantly gazes at the life ahead. Near the end, she comes out of her room and walks arm In arm with her sister down the stairs to find her late husband at the door, which causes her heart to give way, in what the doctors proclaimed â€Å"of heart disease?of joy that kills. When she is first told of her husband's death, she retreats into her room and locks the door behind her, biding to be left alone. Once on her chair, she starts to let her feelings flow through her, at first, there is sadness and mourning, but later on she realizes that she doesn't feel all that bad about her husband passing away, Instead, she feels happy and rejoiced, and starts to look forwards to those days she had dreaded the day before. â€Å"She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long.It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. † She looks out of the open window in her room and sees the permitting in its bloom, with birds flying about, sparrows singing softly, patches of clear blue sky showing here and there. All of these are symbols for hope and freedom. Birds are creatures without boundaries, without limits and unbound to the ground, which we could take to mean marriage. She now feels Like a bird, able to fly off into the sky, leaving her grounding marriage behind.It is basically a symbol of freedom and hope for the future. This also tells us that her marriage, even though it wasn't a violent and unloving marriage was an oppressive one. † She knew that she loud weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. † And â€Å"And yet she had loved him?sometimes. Often she had not. What did It matter! † These unable to do as her heart desires, bound to an unloving marriage forever.Now, she has been given the chance to be free, to choose herself what she truly wants and the open window is the symbol for that. Outside of it lie all of her possible futures. Finally, she finishes by accepting her freedom and whispe rs the words she dreaded o much to say â€Å"free, free, free! † Finally, the cause of her death is her failing heart. She dies when she realizes that all of her dreams of freedom and independence have been shattered by the appearance of her undead husband. There is a kind of sick irony in this.First off, we thought it was he who had died, but at the end their roles are reversed and it is she who ends up dying. Next, the doctors assume that she died of â€Å"Joy that kills†, in other words, she was too happy of seeing her husband well and alive that is was too much of her heart. The reader, who has had access to ere thoughts and desires, knows that she dies of sadness of not being able to carry on living freely and independently without him. She dies because he shatters her dreams, not because he fulfills them.This takes us to Chopping second argument, that death is the only way out of the confinements of marriage. For all we know, Mrs.. Mallard stays at home quite a w hile, since her chair is â€Å"sunken in† which leads us to believe that it is frequently used and therefore she spends most of her time at home. This confinement is what she can't stand of marriage, unable of doing the thing she wants when she wants to do them. The only way she is able to escape this imprisonment is by the death of her husband, which sets her free.Chopin is basically arguing the old saying â€Å"The truth shall set you free†. Knowing that her husband has died, she lets the truth take hold of her, realizing that she's finally going to be happy. But when Mr.. Mallard strides unknowingly through the door, she collapses on the floor and dies. The truth, that he wasn't actually dead has set her free, has parted her from her oppressive marriage. At the very beginning of the story, in fact, the very first thing we know about Mrs.. Mallard is that she has heart problems â€Å"Knowing that Mrs.. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble†¦ In this short story, Mrs.. Mallard's heart disease is a symbol for her marriage and marriage in general in the technetium, in which marriage lies at the heart of society. Marriage is the beating heart of society, what binds it together, and is therefore an unbreakable bond, if you were to go against it you would go against society itself. This, from Chopping (Kate) point of view is unacceptable; marriage should be kept only if there is love, unlike Mrs.. Mallard and her husband. â€Å"And yet he had loved him?sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! The author makes the heart represent marriage, and to show that it is a broken institution she gives Mrs.. Mallard heart problems. This is a clear statement against marriage, telling us that it has lost its meaning and has become a sickly form of binding people together. In the story, it also foreshadows the events that happen later on, namely, her death due to a corrupt and broken marriage. In her short story, Kate Chopin tells us that wome n feel oppressed by marriage whether it is a loving marriage or not, and hey crave for freedom and independence.She does this with the help of symbols such as the open window, representing spring, freedom, hope, independence, and the possibilities of her new life and breaking the bonds of an oppressive marriage, the heart problem that afflicts Mrs.. Mallard which represents how marriage is â€Å"sick† only way a woman can escape marriage by having her die instead of him who supposedly died at the beginning of the story. All in all, she tells us that all marriages confine women and deprive them of their freedom and independence, that oppression is in the very nature of every marriage.

A Reflective Observation on Global Warming

Elizabeth Kolbert’s chapter 2 entitled â€Å"A Warmer Sky† in her book â€Å"Field Notes From A Catastrophe† is basically about the discovery of global warming and the developments in its awareness. It also shows relevant data about certain factors that affect global warming.John Tyndall’s discovery of the ratio spectrophotometer in 1859 was the advent of the awareness in global warming.The function of the said device is to differentiate absorbance and transmittance of their radiation exhibited by the gases. Results of the tests showed that the gases commonly found in the air such as nitrogen and oxygen did not absorb nor transmit any radiation. However, other gases such as carbon dioxide and water absorbed visible and infrared radiation (p.36).With these results, Tyndall stumbled upon a baffling and shocking truth that will cause a worldwide sensation and concern in the following generations. Tyndall concluded that these gases contribute largely to the wa y the earth radiates and absorbs radiation from the sun. He thought of the atmosphere as a barrier that regulates the amount of radiation that enters the earth which affects its overall temperature. This notion was later known as the â€Å"natural greenhouse effect† (p.36).The sun, earth and many hot bodies emit radiation and the amount of radiation is directly proportional to its temperature. This is further explained by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law which sates that the temperature raised to the fourth power is directly proportional to the radiationemitted by the body. The role of the greenhouse gases is to absorb selectively the radiation from the sun and allow visible radiation to penetrate the atmosphere. The earth’s infrared radiation, on the other hand, is absorbed by the greenhouse gases and is emitted partially into space and partially back to earth.This phenomenon regulates the temperature on the surface of the earth. After Tyndall passed away from an overdose of a sleeping drug, Arrhenius continued what Tyndall left unfinished. Arrhenius studied the effects of altering carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and he found out that rising carbon dioxide levels will increase the earth’s temperature, hence, he coined the phrase â€Å"to live under a warmer sky† to the next generations (p.42)Interest in the climate change mellowed down after the death of Arrhenius. However, in the mid 1950’s, there was a rebirth in the awareness of global warming and this was due to Charles David Keeling, a chemist. The results of his research in the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere or the â€Å"Keeling Curve† showed that the carbon dioxide level increases as time increases.The results were devastating as years pass by. The Keeling curve also showed that the carbon dioxide level in 2005 was 375 parts per million and with this terrifying rate, it will increase to 500 parts per million by the middle of the century whi ch will greatly affect the temperature of the earth and will make us feel the full effects of global warming (p.44)Global warming threatens us to extinction. This is caused mainly by industrialization and we must stop, or if not, control the rise of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to save the future generations. Global warming will cause the polar and ice glaciers to melt that constitute to a rise in sea level. This rise will flood coastal regions and other land masses. There is also an expected change of rainfall patterns across the globe that will greatlyaffect food crops and will be a major setback in food production in many nations. With the increase in temperature, plants and animals will be forced to live in cooler areas and those who are unable to adapt will be doomed of extinction.   (Global Warming, Encarta)

Many software systems employ graphical user interface. What sorts of Essay

Many software systems employ graphical user interface. What sorts of user interface were employed before GUIs was available How - Essay Example On the other hand, liveware refers to the users i.e. human beings, who operate the systems by issuing commands to be executed by the system (Anderson 2001). However, for these users to be able to input data and commands, which instruct the system to perform various actions, there must be a way through which they can interact with the computer, which is commonly referred to as human computer interface (HCI) (Stephenson 2001). For example, if a user wants to open an already existing document, he must issue an ‘open’ command to the system through the computer interface available in his system. Currently, there are two major HCI i.e. command line (CLI) and the graphical user interfaces (GUI). Command line interfaces were the most widely used before technological advances in programming resulted to the designing of window based operating systems, which enabled users to interact with their computers through GUI. In a command driven interface, the user uses the keyboard to type commands, which are acceptable to the computer, after which the results are displayed on the screen in form of text. This type of interface came in to use in the early 1950s, an invention which was motivated by the introduction of teletypewriters, which demanded instant display of results (Stephenson 2001). Before this, batch interfaces were used, which are considered to have been non-interactive as they only required the user to input all the data in order for processing to begin, after which there was no opportunity for inputting more data until after all the data was processed and output was given (Stephenson 2001). The disc operating system (DOS) is one of the environments that make use of the command line interface. In order to be able to operate such an interface, it is a must for one to have excellent skills and understanding of the various internal and external commands, which follow predetermined syntaxes (Gookin 2004). For example, if a user intends to view files located in the hard drive i.e. the hard disk, he would have to type a command, which would order the system to display all the files as per the user’s request. The syntax in such a context would appear as follows; c:\dir after which you press enter to display the contents. To access a removable storage media named drive E, one has to type a special command designed for that purpose. This would appear as follows; c:\e: then press enter. C:\ in this case is the root directory, while e: is the destination drive. This implies that command driven interface is tedious to use as one must follow the exact syntax and path in order to get results, which may be the reason why it is widely used by programmers and other IT specialists, who are well conversant with the commands (Gookin 2004). The graphical user interface as opposed to command line interface uses images, which are event driven. This means that once the user clicks on the image, a predetermined action is triggered and as such, click ing becomes a command executor in contrary to CLI where one had to type a specific command on a command prompt (Anderson 2001). However, it is important to note that GUI enables the user to use both the keyboard and the mouse to execute commands. Images in this context are for example; radio buttons, windows, icons, menus among others, which are designed in a

Budget Management Analysis Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Budget Management Analysis - Research Paper Example Thirdly, the research paper will state the primary stakeholders of the hospital and their views towards redesigning of the facility and its associated budget. In the last section, the research paper will state the risks involved in pursuing the redesigning of the facility and the risks of not redesigning the hospital. Facility redesign According to the studies conducted by Sawyer (2009), facility is the space whereby employees of an organization carry out their respective duties while design refers to the layout or the architecture of the mentioned space. Sawyer (2009) further stated that facility’s design is an integral component of the operations of an organization because it determines the results of the production process and it goes a long way in meeting employees’ needs. Designing of a facility is usually aimed at ensuring that there is smooth flow of information, and work material within an organization’s space to enable operations to proceed smoothly. Saw yer (2009) stated that a good design of a facility is usually able to integrate employees’ needs, work materials, as well as machinery in a single and effective system. The designing and redesigning of a hospital facility usually takes into consideration various factors such as safety within the facility, the ease of movement and communication, space utilization, material handling, and the impact on employees’ satisfaction and morale. ... he estimated budget for redesigning the facility is presented in the table below: Item Estimated cost($) Architecture’s fee 1500 Constructor’s fee 2000 Construction materials 3000 Purchase of new items 4000 Total 10,500 It is assumed that the facility to be redesigned is the general ward that holds patients with less severe medical cases and therefore the facility does not entail numerous complexities. Moreover, the nurses’ lounge is also located in this general ward. The construction fee is only $2000 and it includes the cost of labor. The amount is considerable small because the work involved will be less, as it will just involve a makeover. The hospital will separately purchase the construction materials listed by the constructor in order to avoid an excess or exaggerated budget arising from the inflated prices by the constructor. The materials will include things such as paints, timber, nails, pipes, cables, and cement, among others. Redesigning the facility will also involve putting in place new items that support the new design, and hence the $4000 budget, which will cover for items such as curtains, beddings that match with the new wall paintings. Other items that will be purchased include new computers, furniture, and communication systems that will be installed at the nurses’ lounge. The total budget for the entire project will be $10,500, which is a considerable amount but it is likely to give the hospital good returns on their investment. Management goals that will be supported by the expenditure It is of essence to note that the redesigning of the facility was implemented because of a management decision that was earlier made. Therefore, redesigning of the facility supports certain management goals that also have an impact of the financial

ETHICS, LAW AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

ETHICS, LAW AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT - Essay Example Although, the augmenting complexity of business, because of the extensive transformations and developments of the technologies and globalization offers an apparent indication that now we have in an extremely complex business environment and is turning out to be more complex due to novel ethical, cultural, social and legal transformations (Maniam & Teetz, 2009). Business and corporate â€Å"Ethics† is an everyday incidence in the business world as well as in someone’s life. Business ethics is the similar to a normal ethics. These both kinds of ethical practices offer us to identify, what is wrong or right, or else we are in process of discovering what is wrong or right in the environment in which one is concerned. An ethical matter can not have a tangible response; therefore a persons preference can rely on that persons state of affairs. This can take place for the reason that "business and corporate ethics is a large and murky area as well as the place of work is full o f ethical problems and issues. As a result, workers reaction to force to perform can resort to unprincipled decisions so as to convene the objectives they experience are difficult. This can take place at some level of administration (Tutor2u, 2009). This report presents the detailed analysis of the Wal-Mart business and its associated ethical factors. The Wal-Mart is acknowledged as the king of marketplace because of its huge size. It has driven lesser retailers out of commerce; forced companies to be well-organized, frequently leading these suppliers to move industrial jobs overseas; and changed the method that up till now large and established productions do business. Wal-Mart has existence or death decisions over all the customer supplies industries that survive in the US, for the reason that it is the number-one supplier-retailer of the majority of our customer goods, not still toys, clothes, shoes but home applications, electronic goods,

Securitization as a System of Pooling Resources in the Area of Banking Essay

Securitization as a System of Pooling Resources in the Area of Banking and Finance Law - Essay Example This paper illustrates that non-liquid assets are resources, which could be freely traded in its present form and needs to be converted into another form of instrument for it to be accepted in the capital markets. A popular form of non-liquid asset is the mortgage loans, which could not be readily disposed but may be converted into securities through sale to Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) that issue bonds. Conversion of non-liquid assets to tradable securities such as bonds will allow banks to free some capital, which is tied up in the loans portfolio and allows for diversification of financial sources for business operations. Issuance of ABS also allows the originator to remove the non-liquid assets from its books of accounts in cases of true sale transactions, which in effect improves the financial ratio of the originator most especially in cases where it is bound to comply certain risk-based capital standards such as bank reserves. As a general rule, all the risk connected to the securities traded and purchased is transferred to the buyer. Unlike regularly issued bonds where security is based on the financial soundness of the issuing company, asset-backed bonds depend primarily on the funds or cash flows generated by the pooled assets which makes it less risky than the regular securities. This means that since the securities are backed by a specific pool of assets, ABS investors are, to some degree, protected from losing money if the originator of the bonds suddenly goes bankrupt. However, the very nature of ABS would not protect the buyer or investor when the transaction is flawed or vitiated. The degree of the risk involve shall be mitigated or aggravated by the system adopted in the transaction whether it is a true sale or a synthetic securitization.

Understanding Argument Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Understanding Argument - Essay Example The author’s argument can be summarised in one sentence as follows; Guns should be banned for civilians in the United States because they are too dangerous and kill too many people to be safe for non-professionals to use. She goes about supporting this point firstly by arguing that the Second Amendment of the American constitution does not confer upon American civilians the right to own a gun. Ivins quotes from the Second amendment, which states that guns can be kept by ‘members of a well regulated militia’. (4) This, she argues, does not mean that the average man on the street automatically has the right to own a gun, but rather that this right is specifically limited by the Second Amendment to the police and security forces. In Ivins’ view, ‘fourteen-year-old boys are not part of a well regulated militia. Wacky members of a religious cult are not members of a well regulated militia.’ (4) The licensing of guns to members of the public, therefo re, goes against the Second Amendment. Thomas Jefferson, quips Ivins, surely wasn’t aiming to uphold the right of gangs to kill innocent members of the public in drive-by shootings. Ivins then moves on to the argument that things other than guns kill people, but they are not made illegal. Her example is the car. A car, so the pro-gun lobby argument goes, is just as likely to kill you as a gun. There are many irresponsible drivers who kill people in traffic accidents, just like there are irresponsible gun owners who go out and shoot people, but the car hasn’t been outlawed. Ivins’ response to this line of attack is that we ‘licence them [i.e. cars] and their owners, restrict their use to presumably sane and sober adults and keep track of who sells them to whom’. (8) She argues that at the very least the same should be done for guns. In Ivins’ argument