Nathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown - 1186 Words

In â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hawthorne uses anticipation and mystery to grab the attention of the reader. From the start of the story to the ending, Hawthorne leaves the reader asking the question â€Å"What does all of the witchcraft and double-sides lives of the characters have to do with anything? What do they mean?† The reader cannot look at â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† as just any suspense short story, but they also have the see the different forms of symbolism. Hawthorne shows the reader that having a strong faith is the greatest asset of any man or woman, but when faith is compromised, the effects can be devastating. It can cause someone to be filled with doubt toward the world. Before Brown enters the forest, he has a strong sense of faith, even as he is making his journey to the black mass. Hawthorne uses Brown’s wife’s name, Faith, as a symbol of his own faith throughout the story. Brown’s faith can be seen th rough his description of Faith: â€Å"And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (Hawthorne, 619-620). In this quote, Hawthorne suggests she is innocent and pure, as is Brown’s faith. The reassuring replies Brown gives his wife suggest that his faith cannot be broken: Amen! cried Goodman Brown. ‘Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee (Hawthorne, 620). Goodman Brown sets off on his journey with a strong willShow MoreRelatedNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown1543 Words   |  7 PagesIn Nathaniel Hawthorne s short story of Young Goodman Brown, the author uses symbolism and allegories in order to showcase the Puritan faith as well as man s conflict between good and evil. This analysis will break down the techniques that the author uses to critique the puritan society and to show the difference between how people appear to be in society and the true colors that they are hidden inside of them. There has been a lot of great authors in our time, but none more interesting thanRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown1065 Words   |  5 PagesWhen it comes to the topic of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown, most of us will readily agree that duplicity is a major theme in the piece, or the idea of different versions of reality. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of whether Hawthorne is implying that man is inherently evil. Whereas some are convinced that Young Goodman Brown was good until tainted by the Devil, others maintain that he was evil from the beginning and was completely aware of the evil heRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown905 Words   |  4 PagesThough Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author of many great works, his short story â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† still stays relevant because it has themes and subjects that are relatable in today s world. In the story â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† Good man Brown leaves his wife Faith, to go into the woods near Salem to have a meeting with the devil. Appearance vs. reality is shown in â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† through the plot, the character of Goody Cloyse, and the symbol of the maple staff. The characterRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown1312 Words   |  6 PagesWithin Nathaniel Hawthorne s short story Young Goodman Brown (p.317), Young Goodman Brown travels through a dark and mysterious forest late at night. Ignoring the pleas of his pure wife Faith, he ventures deep into the woods with many dangers around him, only to emerge in the morning a changed man with bewildered views on his own Puritan life and the Puritan community around him. At the cause for this change in mindset, the dream of an old man symbolizing the devil appears, showing him the communityRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown Essay1274 Words   |  6 PagesIn Nathaniel Hawthorne’s â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† the devil says, â€Å"Evil is the nature of mankind† (â€Å"Young† 627). Since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and attempted to hide conceal their sin from God, humans have tried to hide their sin from others. Although ever yone sin is human nature, everyone has a different reaction to sin. While some acknowledge sin, others ignore it. In Hawthorne’s other short story, â€Å"The Minister’s Black Veil,† Father Hooper wears a black veil to represent the sin heRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown Essay1449 Words   |  6 Pages â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† is a short story that is filled with symbols and mystery. Nathaniel Hawthorne provides plenty forms of symbolism for readers to digest. Hawthorne displays strong faith as the greatest virtue for a man or woman, and when the faith is compromised, one can be filled with skepticism and uncertainty towards the rest of the world. The story begins as a conventional allegory, creating the expectation that the characters will be able to consistently display the abstractions they symbolizeRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown1695 Words   |  7 Pagesstory, Young Goodman Brown, by Nathaniel Hawthorne is set in Puritan New England. Hawthorne uses symbolism, description, scenery, and Goodman’s journey to illustrate and symbolize the battle of good versus evil. In the first scene, we see how Young Goodman Brown leaves his wife, Faith, to start on his â€Å"evil† journey through the woods. Though Faith asks him to stay with her, he chooses to continue on even though he knows the evilness lies ahead. As the story continues, we see how Hawthorne uses FaithRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown1492 Words   |  6 PagesIn Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story of Young Goodman Brown, the author uses symbolism and allegories in order to showcase the Puritan faith as well as man’s conflict between good and evil. This analysis will breakdown the techniques that the author uses to critique the puritan society, and to show the difference between how people appear to be in society and the true colors that they are hidden inside of them. There has been a lot of great authors in our time, but none more interesting than NathanielRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown2532 Words   |  11 PagesNathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† demonstrates how Goodman Brown leaves his wife, Faith, to do an errand within the woods with a man that is believed to be the devil. During the time period in which this took place, the 1620’s, many of the people from the village were practicing Puritanism. Puritanism is an intense practice of religion retrieved from Protestants, only removing its Catholic influence. When Goodman Brown entered the woods to meet the devil, he soon turned intoRead MoreNathaniel Hawthorne s Young Goodman Brown894 Words   |  4 Pagesread. In â€Å"Young Goodman Brown†, I found several romanticism characteristics to be in this story. One being, the emphasis on feelings and emotions. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes, â€Å"The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing through the night, when the unhappy husband held his breath for a response.† The cry of anguish and pain are very applicable to the protagonist idea in this story. Brown also expresses feeling when he doesn t want to leave his wife Faith, but he feels that it s his role to

Warm Bodies Step one wanting Free Essays

I am dead, but it’s not so bad. I’ve learned to live with it. I’m sorry I can’t properly introduce myself, but I don’t have a name any more. We will write a custom essay sample on Warm Bodies Step one wanting or any similar topic only for you Order Now Hardly any of us do. We lose them like car keys, forget them like anniversaries. Mine might have started with an ‘R’, but that’s all I have now. It’s funny because back when I was alive, I was always forgetting other people’s names. My friend ‘M’ says the irony of being a zombie is that everything is funny, but you can’t smile, because your lips have rotted off. None of us are particularly attractive, but death has been kinder to me than some. I’m still in the early stages of decay. Just the grey skin, the unpleasant smell, the dark circles under my eyes. I could almost pass for a Living man in need of a vacation. Before I became a zombie I must have been a businessman, a banker or broker or some young temp learning the ropes, because I’m wearing fairly nice clothes. Black slacks, grey shirt, red tie. M makes fun of me sometimes. He points at my tie and tries to laugh, a choked, gurgling rumble deep in his gut. His clothes are holey jeans and a plain white T-shirt. The shirt is looking pretty macabre by now. He should have picked a darker colour. We like to joke and speculate about our clothes, since these final fashion choices are the only indication of who we were before we became no one. Some are less obvious than mine: shorts and a sweater, skirt and a blouse. So we make random guesses. You were a waitress. You were a student. Ring any bells? It never does. No one I know has any specific memories. Just a vague, vestigial knowledge of a world long gone. Faint impressions of past lives that linger like phantom limbs. We recognise civilisation – buildings, cars, a general overview – but we have no personal role in it. No history. We are just here. We do what we do, time passes, and no one asks questions. But like I’ve said, it’s not so bad. We may appear mindless, but we aren’t. The rusty cogs of cogency still spin, just geared down and down till the outer motion is barely visible. We grunt and groan, we shrug and nod, and sometimes a few words slip out. It’s not that different from before. But it does make me sad that we’ve forgotten our names. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I miss my own and I mourn for everyone else’s, because I’d like to love them, but I don’t know who they are. There are hundreds of us living in an abandoned airport outside some large city. We don’t need shelter or warmth, obviously, but we like having the walls and roofs over our heads. Otherwise we’d just be wandering in an open field of dust somewhere, and that would be strangely horrific. To have nothing at all around us, nothing to touch or look at, no hard lines whatsoever, just us and the gaping maw of the sky. I imagine that’s what being full-dead is like. An emptiness vast and absolute. I think we’ve been here a long time. I still have all my flesh, but there are elders who are little more than skeletons with clinging bits of muscle, dry as jerky. Somehow it still extends and contracts, and they keep moving. I have never seen any of us ‘die’ of old age. Maybe we live for ever, I don’t know. The future is as blurry to me as the past. I can’t seem to make myself care about anything to the right or left of the present, and the present isn’t exactly urgent. You might say death has relaxed me. I am riding the escalators when M finds me. I ride the escalators several times a day, whenever they move. It’s become a ritual. The airport is derelict, but the power still flickers on sometimes, maybe flowing from emergency generators stuttering deep underground. Lights flash and screens blink, machines jolt into motion. I cherish these moments. The feeling of things coming to life. I stand on the steps and ascend like a soul into Heaven, that sugary dream of our childhoods, now a tasteless joke. After maybe thirty repetitions, I rise to find M waiting for me at the top. He is hundreds of pounds of muscle and fat draped on a six-foot-five frame. Bearded, bald, bruised and rotten, his grisly visage slides into view as I crest the staircase summit. Is he the angel that greets me at the gates? His ragged mouth is oozing black drool. He points in a vague direction and grunts, ‘City.’ I nod and follow him. We are going out to find food. A hunting party forms around us as we shuffle towards town. It’s not hard to find recruits for these expeditions, even if no one is hungry. Focused thought is a rare occurrence here, and we all follow it when it manifests. Otherwise we’d just be standing around and groaning all day. We do a lot of standing around and groaning. Years pass this way. The flesh withers on our bones and we stand here, waiting for it to go. I often wonder how old I am. The city where we do our hunting is conveniently close. We arrive around noon the next day and start looking for flesh. The new hunger is a strange feeling. We don’t feel it in our stomachs – some of us don’t even have those. We feel it everywhere equally, a sinking, sagging sensation, as if our cells are deflating. Last winter, when so many Living joined the Dead and our prey became scarce, I watched some of my friends become full-dead. The transition was undramatic. They just slowed down, then stopped, and after a while I realised they were corpses. It disquieted me at first, but it’s against etiquette to notice when one of us dies. I distracted myself with some groaning. I think the world has mostly ended, because the cities we wander through are as rotten as we are. Buildings have collapsed. Rusted cars clog the streets. Most glass is shattered, and the wind drifting through the hollow high-rises moans like an animal left to die. I don’t know what happened. Disease? War? Social collapse? Or was it just us? The Dead replacing the Living? I guess it’s not so important. Once you’ve arrived at the the end of the world, it hardly matters which route you took. We start to smell the Living as we approach a dilapidated apartment building. The smell is not the musk of sweat and skin, but the effervescence of life energy, like the ionised tang of lightning and lavender. We don’t smell it in our noses. It hits us deeper inside, near our brains, like wasabi. We converge on the building and crash our way inside. We find them huddled in a small studio unit with the windows boarded up. They are dressed worse than we are, wrapped in filthy tatters and rags, all of them badly in need of a shave. M will be saddled with a short blond beard for the rest of his Fleshy existence, but everyone else in our party is clean-shaven. It’s one of the perks of being Dead, another thing we don’t have to worry about any more. Beards, hair, toenails . . . no more fighting biology. Our wild bodies have finally been tamed. Slow and clumsy but with unswerving commitment, we launch ourselves at the Living. Shotgun blasts fill the dusty air with gunpowder and gore. Black blood spatters the walls. The loss of an arm, a leg, a portion of torso, this is disregarded, shrugged off. A minor cosmetic issue. But some of us take shots to our brains, and we drop. Apparently there’s still something of value in that withered grey sponge, because if we lose it, we are corpses. The zombies to my left and right hit the ground with moist thuds. But there are plenty of us. We are overwhelming. We set upon the Living, and we eat. Eating is not a pleasant business. I chew off a man’s arm, and I hate it. I hate his screams, because I don’t like pain, I don’t like hurting people, but this is the world now. This is what we do. Of course if I don’t eat all of him, if I spare his brain, he’ll rise up and follow me back to the airport, and that might make me feel better. I’ll introduce him to everyone, and maybe we’ll stand around and groan for a while. It’s hard to say what ‘friends’ are any more, but that might be close. If I restrain myself, if I leave enough . . . But I don’t. I can’t. As always I go straight for the good part, the part that makes my head light up like a picture tube. I eat the brain and, for about thirty seconds, I have memories. Flashes of parades, perfume, music . . . life. Then it fades, and I get up, and we all stumble out of the city, still cold and grey, but feeling a little better. Not ‘good’, exactly, not ‘happy’, certainly not ‘alive’, but . . . a little less dead. This is the best we can do. I trail behind the group as the city disappears behind us. My steps plod a little heavier than the others’. When I pause at a rain-filled pothole to scrub gore off my face and clothes, M drops back and slaps a hand on my shoulder. He knows my distaste for some of our routines. He knows I’m a little more sensitive than most. Sometimes he teases me, twirls my messy black hair into pigtails and says, ‘Girl. Such . . . girl.’ But he knows when to take my gloom seriously. He pats my shoulder and just looks at me. His face isn’t capable of much expressive nuance any more, but I know what he wants to say. I nod, and we keep walking. I don’t know why we have to kill people. I don’t know what chewing through a man’s neck accomplishes. I steal what he has to replace what I lack. He disappears, and I stay. It’s simple but senseless, arbitrary laws from some lunatic legislator in the sky. But following those laws keeps me walking, so I follow them to the letter. I eat until I stop eating, then I eat again. How did this start? How did we become what we are? Was it some mysterious virus? Gamma rays? An ancient curse? Or something even more absurd? No one talks about it much. We are here, and this is the way it is. We don’t complain. We don’t ask questions. We go about our business. There is a chasm between me and the world outside of me. A gap so wide my feelings can’t cross it. By the time my screams reach the other side, they have dwindled into groans. At the Arrivals gate, we are greeted by a small crowd, watching us with hungry eyes or eye sockets. We drop our cargo on the floor: two mostly intact men, a few meaty legs and a dismembered torso, all still warm. Call it leftovers. Call it takeout. Our fellow Dead fall on them and feast right there on the floor like animals. The life remaining in those cells will keep them from full-dying, but the Dead who don’t hunt will never quite be satisfied. Like men at sea deprived of fresh fruit, they will wither in their deficiencies, weak and perpetually empty, because the new hunger is a lonely monster. It grudgingly accepts the brown meat and lukewarm blood, but what it craves is closeness, that grim sense of connection that courses between their eyes and ours in those final moments, like some dark negative of love. I wave to M and then break free from the crowd. I have long since become acclimatised to the Dead’s pervasive stench, but the haze rising off them today feels especially fetid. Breathing is optional, but I need some air. I wander out into the connecting hallways and ride the conveyors. I stand on the belt and watch the scenery scroll by through the window wall. Not much to see. The runways are turning green, overrun with grass and brush. Jets lie motionless on the concrete like beached whales, white and monumental. Moby-Dick, conquered at last. Before, when I was alive, I could never have done this. Standing still, watching the world pass by me, thinking about nearly nothing. I remember effort. I remember targets and deadlines, goals and ambitions. I remember being purposeful, always everywhere all the time. Now I’m just standing here on the conveyor, along for the ride. I reach the end, turn around, and go back the other way. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy. After a few hours of this, I notice a female on the opposite conveyor. She doesn’t lurch or groan like most of us; her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her, that she doesn’t lurch or groan. I catch her eye and stare at her as we approach. For a brief moment we are side by side, only a few feet away. We pass, then travel on to opposite ends of the hall. We turn around and look at each other. We get back on the conveyors. We pass each other again. I grimace, and she grimaces back. On our third pass, the airport power dies, and we come to a halt perfectly aligned. I wheeze hello, and she responds with a hunch of her shoulder. I like her. I reach out and touch her hair. Like me, her decomposition is at an early stage. Her skin is pale and her eyes are sunken, but she has no exposed bones or organs. Her irises are an especially light shade of that strange pewter grey all the Dead share. Her graveclothes are a black skirt and a snug white blouse. I suspect she used to be a receptionist. Pinned to her chest is a silver name tag. She has a name. I stare hard at the tag, I lean in close, putting my face inches from her breasts, but it doesn’t help. The letters spin and reverse in my vision; I can’t hold them down. As always, they elude me, just a series of meaningless lines and blots. Another of M’s undead ironies – from name tags to newspapers, the answers to our questions are written all around us, and we don’t know how to read. I point at the tag and look her in the eyes. ‘Your . . . name?’ She looks at me blankly. I point at myself and pronounce the remaining fragment of my own name. ‘Rrr.’ Then I point at her again. Her eyes drop to the floor. She shakes her head. She doesn’t remember. She doesn’t even have syllable-one, like M and I do. She is no one. But aren’t I expecting too much? I reach out and take her hand. We walk off the conveyers with our arms stretched across the divider. This female and I have fallen in love. Or what’s left of it. I remember what love was like before. There were complex emotional and biological factors at work. We had elaborate tests to pass, connections to forge, ups and downs and tears and whirlwinds. It was an ordeal, an exercise in agony, but it was alive. The new love is simpler. Easier. But small. My girlfriend doesn’t talk much. We walk through the echoing corridors of the airport, occasionally passing someone staring out of a window or at a wall. I try to think of things to say but nothing comes, and if something did come I probably couldn’t say it. This is my great obstacle, the biggest of all the boulders littering my path. In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses. So far my personal record is four rolling syllables before some . . . thing . . . jams. And I may be the most loquacious zombie in this airport. I don’t know why we don’t speak. I can’t explain the suffocating silence that hangs over our world, cutting us off from each other like prison-visit Plexiglas. Prepositions are painful, articles are arduous, adjectives are wild overachievements. Is this muteness a real physical handicap? One of the many symptoms of being Dead? Or do we just have nothing left to say? I attempt conversation with my girlfriend, testing out a few awkward phrases and shallow questions, trying to get a reaction out of her, any twitch of wit. But she just looks at me like I’m weird. We wander for a few hours, directionless, then she grips my hand and starts leading me somewhere. We stumble our way down the halted escalators and out onto the tarmac. I sigh wearily. She is taking me to church. The Dead have built a sanctuary on the runway. At some point in the distant past someone pushed all the stair-trucks together into a circle, forming a kind of amphitheatre. We gather here, we stand here, we lift our arms and moan. The ancient Boneys wave their skeletal limbs in the centre circle, rasping out dry, wordless sermons through toothy grins. I don’t understand what this is. I don’t think any of us do. But it’s the only time we willingly gather under the open sky. That vast cosmic mouth, distant mountains like teeth in the skull of God, yawning wide to devour us. To swallow us down to where we probably belong. My girlfriend appears much more devout than I do. She closes her eyes and waves her arms in a way that almost looks heartfelt. I stand next to her and hold my hands in the air silently. At some unknown cue, maybe drawn by her fervour, the Boneys stop their preaching and stare at us. One of them comes forward, climbs our stairs, and takes us both by the wrists. It leads us down into the circle and raises our hands in its clawed grip. It lets out a kind of roar, an unearthly sound like a blast of air through a broken hunting horn, shockingly loud, frightening birds out of trees. The congregation murmurs in response, and it’s done. We are married. We step back onto the stair seats. The service resumes. My new wife closes her eyes and waves her arms. The day after our wedding, we have children. A small group of Boneys stops us in the hall and presents them to us. A boy and a girl, both around six years old. The boy is curly blond, with grey skin and grey eyes, perhaps once Caucasian. The girl is darker, with black hair and ashy brown skin, deeply shadowed around her steely eyes. She may have been Arab. The Boneys nudge them forward and they give us tentative smiles, hug our legs. I pat them on their heads and ask their names, but they don’t have any. I sigh, and my wife and I keep walking, hand in hand with our new children. I wasn’t exactly expecting this. This is a big responsibility. The young Dead don’t have the natural feeding instincts the adults do. They have to be tended and trained. And they will never grow up. Stunted by our curse, they will stay small and rot, then become little skeletons, animate but empty, their brains rattling stiff in their skulls, repeating their routines and rituals until one day, I can only assume, the bones themselves will disintegrate, and they’ll just be gone. Look at them. Watch them as my wife and I release their hands and they wander outside to play. They tease each other and grin. They play with things that aren’t even toys: staplers and mugs and calculators. They giggle and laugh, though it sounds choked through their dry throats. We’ve bleached their brains, robbed them of breath, but they still cling to the cliff edge. They resist our curse for as long as they possibly can. I watch them disappear into the pale daylight at the end of the hall. Deep inside me, in some dark and cobwebbed chamber, I feel something twitch. How to cite Warm Bodies Step one wanting, Essay examples

Sports In Society Essays - Applied Psychology, Sport Psychology

Sports In Society Laura Ann Giraldi Sports in Society Sports Psychology: Self -- Confidence in Sport Activity November 21, 1996 (1) Sports Psychology is one of the most up and coming sciences of the present time. This practice focuses on training athletes to use their mental capacities along with their physical talent to reach what is known as peak performance. Sports Psychologists analyze the performance of athletes and use motivational, cognitive, and behavioral principles to teach them peak performance levels. Sixty to ninety percent of success in sports is due to mental factors and psychological mastery. Sensing the importance of mental training in recent years, scientists have developed mental training programs. These programs all vary in technique, however, they all include skills focused on mastering the art of self-confidence. There are considerable amounts of evidence in sports literature that there is a direct correlation between self- confidence and peak performance. Self-confidence exists in all walks of life. It is defined as: the strong relationships between a person's thoughts, feelings, and behavior which if motivated correctly can help an individual excel with confidence in anything they try to do. Most of the time self-confidence is viewed in accordance with how well an athlete performs at a certain sport activity. To examine this further one must look at how an athlete prepares themselves before the task in order to understand how their self-confidence reigns so high when it comes time for them to actually compete. An athlete must trust what enables them to build their self-confidence. (2) To start, an athlete needs to know themselves and what their limitations are. Through personal experience an athlete will know what they are capable of doing, and also what challenges them. From such personal experiences an athlete can recall past success as well as past failures. Therefore, an athlete must strive off that knowledge of past success to reassure themselves that they have done it once, and that they can do it again. All is easier said then done. Building self-confidence can be one of the hardest things an athlete has to do. This involves a great deal of mental awareness and self-discipline. For it could take only one negative experience to destroy an athlete's ego. This is when the process of filtering comes into play. Filtering involves using negative experience in a positive way. More specifically an athlete must look at such experiences carefully and learn from them. They must not focus on the bad, but how it can help them in the future. For example, a basketball player who missed a foul shot that could have won the game must not view the experience as I am a loser; he must say My foul shooting needs a little help. In turn, this athlete should take a little time before and after practice to drill this technique. By doing this he is not focusing on the negative he is building towards a positive. This technique is very important to the athlete who is looking to strive for peak performance. For an athlete who dwells on the negative aspects (3) of their performance will never appreciate or accentuate their positive aspects. This in the long run will not allow them to develop to their full potential. A second technique in gaining self-confidence is a skill called self- talk. This is indeed a skill. This should be done when the athlete is spending quiet time with themselves. This is the time when an athlete must throw out all modest tendencies and falsehoods. This is a time when the athlete must be completely honest with themselves and their performance. This is also the time when the athlete must allow themselves to be their own best friend. These self- talks should be very detailed and taken seriously. They should include statements about past success, hard work, team cohesion, uniqueness, talent, endurance, persistence, and determination. This list may vary greatly, however it is these positive reinforcements that make all the difference. Self-talk is also a time when an athlete may reflect on compliments he has received and success up to this point. This technique is as important as any in the road toward peak performance. A third technique in gaining self-confidence is imagery. Imagery if done properly does build confidence. Imagery or mental rehearsal is the process of creating mental images of yourself performing at optimal levels. Confidence increases because you avoid dwelling on the past, where you could find experiences of failure. Confidence is further enhanced when you maintain focus in (4) the present time rather than letting your imagination drift into the future, where the possibilities

Wernickes Area in the Brain

Wernicke's Area in the Brain The function of a part of the human brain known as Wernickes area is to enable us to comprehend written and spoken language. It is located posterior to the primary auditory complex in the left temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain where information processing of all kinds takes place. Wernickes area  is connected to another brain region involved in language processing known as Brocas area. Located in the lower portion of the left frontal lobe, Brocas area controls motor functions involved with speech production. Together, these two brain areas help us to speak as well as to interpret, process, and understand spoken and written language. Discovery German neurologist Carl Wernicke is credited with discovering the function of this brain region in 1873. He did so while observing individuals with damage to the posterior temporal lobe of the brain. He noticed that one of his stroke patients, while able speak and hear, was not able to comprehend what was being said to him. Nor could he understand written words. After the man died, Wernicke studied his brain and discovered a lesion in the rear parietal/temporal region of the left hemisphere of the patients brain, located close to the auditory region. He concluded that this section had to be responsible for language comprehension. Function Wernickes Area of the brain is responsible for multiple functions. According to various studies, including the 2016 publication The Role of Wernicke’s Area in Language Comprehension by Alfredo Ardila, Byron Bernal, and Monica Rosselli, these functions seem to contribute to language understanding by allowing us to interpret the meaning of individual words and using them in their proper context. Wernicke's Aphasia A condition called Wernickes aphasia, or fluent aphasia, in which patients with damage to their temporal lobe region have difficulty comprehending language and communicating ideas, bolsters the thesis that Wernickes area primarily governs word comprehension. While they are able to speak words and form sentences that are grammatically correct, these patients cannot form sentences that make sense. They may include unrelated words or words that have no meaning in their sentences. These individuals lose the ability to connect words with their appropriate meanings. They are often unaware that what they are saying does not make sense. Processing the symbols that we call words, encoding their meanings into our brains, and then using them in context is what forms the very basis of language comprehension. A Three-Part Process Speech and language processing are complex functions that involve several parts of the cerebral cortex. Wernickes area, Brocas area, and the angular gyrus are three regions vital to language processing and speech. Wernickes area is connected to Brocas area by a group of nerve fiber bundles called the arcuate fascilicus. While Wernickes area helps us to understand language, Brocas area helps us to accurately communicate our ideas to others through speech. The angular gyrus, located in the parietal lobe, is a region of the brain that helps us to utilize different types of sensory information to comprehend language. Sources: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Aphasia. NIH Pub. No. 97-4257. Updated June 1, 2016. Retrieved from https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/aphasia.National Aphasia Foundation. (n.d.). Wernickes aphasia. Retrieved from aphasia.org/aphasia-resources/wernickes-aphasia/

The Shailendra Kingdom of Java

The Shailendra Kingdom of Java In the 8th century CE, a Mahayana Buddhist kingdom sprang up on the central plain of Java, now in Indonesia. Â  Soon, glorious Buddhist monuments flowered across the Kedu Plain - and the most incredible of them all was the massive stupa of Borobudur. Â  But who were these great builders and believers? Â  Unfortunately, we do not have many primary historical sources about the Shailendra Kingdom of Java. Â  Here is what we know, or suspect, about this kingdom. Like their neighbors, the Srivijaya Kingdom of the island of Sumatra, the Shailendra Kingdom was a great ocean-going and trading empire. Â  Also known as a thalassocracy, this form of government made perfect sense for a people located at the linch-pin point of the great Indian Ocean maritime trade. Â  Java is midway between the silks, tea, and porcelains of China, to the east, and the spices, gold, and jewels of India, to the west. Â  In addition, of course, the Indonesian islands themselves were famous for their exotic spices, sought after all around the Indian Ocean basin and beyond. Archaeological evidence suggests, however, that the people of Shailendra did not rely entirely upon the sea for their living. Â  The rich, volcanic soil of Java also yielded bountiful harvests of rice, which could have been consumed by the farmers themselves or traded to passing merchant ships for a tidy profit. Â   Where did the Shailendra people come from? Â  In the past, historians and archaeologists have suggested various points of origin for them based on their artistic style, material culture, and languages. Â  Some said they came from Cambodia, others India, still others that they were one and the same with the Srivijaya of Sumatra. Â  It seems most likely, however, that they were native to Java, and were influenced by far-flung Asian cultures through the sea-borne trade. Â  The Shailendra seem to have emerged around the year 778 CE. Interestingly, at that time there was already another great kingdom in Central Java. Â  The Sanjaya dynasty was Hindu rather than Buddhist, but the two seem to have gotten along well for decades. Â  Both also had ties with the Champa Kingdom of the Southeast Asian mainland, the Chola Kingdom of southern India, and with Srivijaya, on the nearby island of Sumatra. The ruling family of Shailendra does seem to have intermarried with the rulers of Srivijaya, in fact. Â  For example, the Shailendra ruler Samaragrawira made a marriage alliance with the daughter of a Maharaja of Srivijaya, a woman called Dewi Tara. Â  This would have cemented trade and political ties with her father, the Maharaja Dharmasetu. For around 100 years, the two great trading kingdoms in Java seem to have peacefully coexisted. Â  However, by the year 852, the Sanjaya seem to have pushed the Sailendra out of Central Java. Â  Some inscriptions suggest that the Sanjaya ruler Rakai Pikatan (r. 838 - 850) overthrew the Shailendra king Balaputra, who fled to the Srivijaya court in Sumatra. Â  According to legend, Balaputra then took power in Srivijaya. Â  The last known inscription mentioning any member of the Shailendra dynasty is from the year 1025, when the great Chola emperor Rajendra Chola I launched a devastating invasion of Srivijaya, and took the last Shailendra king back to India as a hostage. It is terribly frustrating that we do not have more information about this fascinating kingdom and its people. Â  After all, the Shailendra were quite obviously literate - they left inscriptions in three different languages, Old Malay, Old Javanese, and Sanskrit. Â  However, these carved stone inscriptions are fairly fragmentary, and dont provide a very complete picture of even the kings of Shailendra, let alone the daily lives of ordinary people. Thankfully, though, they did leave us the magnificent Borobudur Temple as a lasting monument to their presence in Central Java.

Efficient Markets Hypothesis(Financial Economics) Essay

Efficient Markets Hypothesis(Financial Economics) - Essay Example The random movement argument of weak form of efficiency may not be valid argument as research studies have clearly outlined a positive correlation between degree of tending observed in prices as well as the time period. This therefore clearly outlines that the prices do not follow a random path but rather show certain trends. It is however, critical to note that these period are not relatively long but trends do emerge over certain period of time. Behavioral economists argue that markets are imperfect because of the behavioral and cognitive biases. Imperfections in the market emerge as a result of these cognitive behaviors and as such markets may not efficiently operate. These cognitive biases emerge as a result of overconfidence, information and representation bias and other human errors result into errors in judgments. These biases and human error does not allow investors to value the stocks properly and as such, markets show inefficiency. These errors often result into investors buying the growth stocks and ignoring value stocks and those who can reason correctly can profit out of this situation and hence can beat the market easily. Studies conducted on the Indian Stock Exchange outlines the weak form of inefficiency and suggested that the prices actually do not follow random prices. Various local studies in the developing countries have consistently shown the same results that the markets are weak form inefficient at least in the local developing markets. These studies have clearly shown that the markets may not be efficient in any form of efficiency. These arguments have also been supported by other empirical studies indicating that even the strong form of efficiency does not exist. Stocks having low P/E ratios tend to provide higher returns and thus can allow investors to earn abnormal returns if chosen wisely. Investors developing their studies based upon choosing the stocks on P/E ratio can beat the market. It

Labour Rights Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Labour Rights - Essay Example Indeed, every person is entitled to freedom of speech, but this should not make such rights take precedence over economic and political concerns. In the modern world, there is respect for Charter of Rights and Freedoms but does not give a pass to equal rights for people from different races, religion, color, sexuality and the likes. Even so, not everyone adheres to these guidelines; rampant discrimination continues in private. People get different treatments based on their appearances and sexuality, with bosses hiring based on the looks and beliefs of the prospective employees. This does not mean that it would always be the case, but that the prejudice is rife in the modern world. The rights of individuals would be put behind their backs because, in spite of acceptance of such rights, seniors in the workplaces determine how such rights are reinforced in the organization.  Even so, these rights are determinate and are well stipulated in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and thus cr itical for consideration. All the rights listed in the statement are basic to every employee:1. The right to organize free from interference refers to the right given to every worker to undertake their tasks without meddling from any quarters. This is a significant right to all workers as it fosters their productivity and promotes a healthy workplace environment.2. The other right is the right to bargain collectively and to be bargained with in good faith. This right to collective negotiations is a useful tool when seeking mutual agreements. It is a crucial right in promoting participation thus allowing an organization to benefit from the diverse views of the different members. Participation allows people to adjust accordingly and adapt to issues they would previously not be comfortable with. Contribution from different people to an idea and the subsequent infusion makes people own a proposal, an important outcome for collective bargaining.3. Finally, there is the right to strike wi thout putting one’s job in jeopardy. This right allows workers to fight for their wants without putting their jobs on the line. Thus, workers should be allowed to voice their concerns without being victimized. This could be undertaken through a strike, thus the importance of this right.The critical part in the statement is the consideration of the other rights as overriding economic and political considerations. Whereas the enlisted rights are essential to all humans, the different classes in the society together with the existence of specific representations set some people above others politically and economically. The rights are important in a workplace setting but only manage to hold for a while in the society at large.