King of the castle tension Essay Example for Free

King of the castle tension Essay ?â€Å"I’m the King of the Castle†: Literature Coursework Investigate the ways in which Susan Hill uses language to create tension and a sense of foreboding in â€Å"I’m the King of the Castle† Susan Hill implements several writing techniques to create tension in the novel. Tension in this sense simply means mental strain or excitement in the readers. One of the techniques used is shown when she uses a third-person narration to narrate the story. This narrator is omniscient and implies that he/ she is not one of the characters in the novel, and yet at the same time knows everything that is running through the characters minds. Hill uses this technique to bring the readers on a journey of moving freely in time and space to allow them to know what any character is doing or thinking at any one point of time. This is only possible because the narrator is not a character in the novel and is allowed to be anywhere, anytime. Susan Hill uses many different techniques to put a point across, the most important being her use of imagery. However her writing also has many other qualities such as good structure and her ability to think like her characters. In addition she manages to build up tension and uses different ways of emphasising words or phrases. All of these factors contribute to her unique evocative style and add to her reputation of being a very talented writer. In chapter eleven, she describes vividly how Kingshaw feels sick with fright when Hooper locks him in the shed. He retched, and then began to vomit, all over the sacks, the sick coming down his nose and choking him. It tasted bitter. He bent forwards, holding his stomach. When it finished he wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. He was shivering again. This passage is an example of her excellent use of imagery. She conjures up a picture of the scene as well as expressing Kingshaws fears and senses in an evocative style by using a scene that we can all relate to and understand. An example of Susan Hills good structure is at the very beginning of the novel, when Hooper and Kingshaw first meet, Hooper sends Kingshaw a note saying I didnt want you to come here. This sets up the story line from the beginning, leading us to expect events to come. Then at the very end of the novel before Kingshaw commits suicide, Hopper sends him a final note saying Something will happen to you Kingshaw. She shows the ability to be able to think like a child, which adds to the overall affect of the book because the main character is Kingshaw who is a child. This process of her thoughts gives us a wider understanding of Kingshaws character and his thoughts. Examples of her thinking like a child appear in many forms in the novel. One of them is her use of childish language and grammar. Now, he thought, I know what Hooper is really like. Hes a baby. And stupid. And a bully. Notice in this particular phrase that she uses childish words like baby, stupid and bully. The use of short abrupt sentences emphasise the words and adds to the childish theme, because it is grammatically incorrect to start a sentence with a conjunction, which is what a child may do). Another form of her childish thinking is how she shows an understanding of childrens fears and their reactions. An example of this is Kingshaws fear of moths. There are a lot of moths, Hooper said softly, there always are, in woods. Pretty big ones, as well. Kingshaws stomach clenched. In his nostrils, he could smell the mustiness of the Red Room. This passage shows how Hooper taunts Kingshaw with his fear (childishly). She shows Kingshaws reaction to his fear by saying his stomach clenched. She then continues with his memory of the Red Room, where he had been scared by the death moths, using her evocative style to describe how he associates moths with the musty smell of the Red Room. She uses the example of moths throughout the book, along with Kingshaws other fears such as birds. To keep the reader alert Susan Hill tended to change from one scene to another very abruptly. A Classic example is in chapter sixteen, when every one was in the Breakfast room on the day of Mrs. Helena Kingshaw and Mr. Hoopers wedding announcement. Suddenly the scene changes to them being in a muddy field. This can be quite confusing for the reader but it does keep them alert. It was also in this scene where Susan Hill showed her ability to build up tension. This was done by Kingshaw expressing his fears about something that we do not know about, and Mrs. Helena Kingshaw talking about how he was scared by this thing when he was little. As the passage continues the writer gives us a clue that the unknown fear is of a certain place and finally (after a page of writing) she tells us that the place in question is a circus. Susan Hill uses many different techniques to build up an atmosphere. In my opinion the most effective atmosphere that she created was in chapters twelve and thirteen, when Hooper falls off the castle wall. When Kingshaw reaches the top of the castle (without Hooper) he feels a sense of power. He shouts out â€Å"Im the King of the castle† which relates to the title of the book. To make us understand how Kingshaw really does feel King, she repeats the phrase I am the King thrice. He felt so powerful that he thought he could kill Hooper. When Kingshaw is in a rage with Hopper, telling him to come down, he swears at him, this shocks the reader, as he is only a child. When Hooper is falling off the castle wall Kingshaw commands TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF THE WALL, HOOPER. The use of capital letter creates the effect that what he is saying is important. When Hooper falls and is carried off on a stretcher, thunder rumbles in the back ground which gives the ironic affect that it is not going to be a good thing for Kingshaw. Kingshaw is then made to get down from the castle, which can be classed as an example of his life. Every time he reaches the top he is always forced to go back down which is, once again, ironic. The whole book gives an immense sense of tension to the reader. The atmosphere is one of suspense and danger. The overall use of abrupt, simple dialogue accentuates the feeling of incoming peril. Susan Hill writes the novel in a way which causes the reader to constantly be alert, and to expect the sinister and foreboding to occur. Arsalan Abdullah

Fairness of the SAT :: Standardized Tests ACT SAT Essays

The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was created to test college-bound students on their mathematical and verbal aptitudes and to thus predict their ability to succeed academically in college. In the United States, the SAT is the oldest and most widely used college entrance test. It was first administered in June 1926 to only 8,040 high school students and is now taken by over 2 million students. Over the years, the SAT has become one of the most important tests of a teenager's life for admission to college. The test is administered seven times a year at thousands of testing centers throughout the United States. Most colleges consider the SAT to be a reliable predictor of academic success in college and is therefore used as a critical tool when selecting applicants. However, the question that has to be confronted is whether the test is fair to all students. Educators have been questioning the validity of the SAT to determine college admission or to predict academic success because the test appears to be discriminatory and biased against women, minorities, and the poor (low income). The Educational Testing Service (ETS), which produces and administers the test, claims that the SAT in its current form "is an impartial and objective measure of student ability" (Owen 272). However, critics of the SAT argue "that tests like the SAT measure little more than the absorption of white upper-middle-class culture and penalize the economically disadvantaged" (Owen 10). The statistical reality of SAT scores is that: students who take coaching/prep courses do better than those who are not coached; men do better than women; whites do better than blacks; and the rich do better than the poor. Based upon my research, the SAT appears to be discriminatory against women, minorities, and the poor, and a test this flawed should not be used as a key factor in c ollege admission or as a predictor of academic success. In March 2005, a "new and improved" SAT will be introduced to theoretically eliminate any questions deemed biased and discriminatory. This revised SAT would appear to be a concession to the out-cry of criticism against the current test. However, since the new test will emphasize achievement rather than aptitude, it will once again favor the student who can afford coaching and attends a high school with a superior curriculum, i.e. the rich and white. An "equal opportunity" college entrance examination is virtually impossible because someone will always have/obtain an advantage.

Understanding Man’s Power

In recent years, we have come to understand that relations between men and women are governed by a sexual politics that exists outside individual men's and women's needs and choices. It has taken us much longer to recognize that there is a systematic sexual politics of male-male relationships as well. Under patriarchy, men's relationships with other men cannot help but be shaped and patterned by patriarchal norms, though they are less obvious than the norms governing male-female relationships. A society could not have the kinds of power dynamics that exist between women and men in our society without certain kinds of systematic power dynamics operating among men as well. Men do not just happily bond together to oppress women. In addition to hierarchy over women, men create hierarchies and rankings among themselves according to criteria of â€Å"masculinity. † Men at each rank of masculinity compete with each other, with whatever resources they have, for the differential payoffs that patriarchy allows men. Men in different societies choose different grounds on which to rank each other. Many societies use the simple facts of age and physical strength to stratify men. Our society stratifies men according to physical strength and athletic ability in the early years, but later in life focuses on success with women and ability to make money. In our society, one of the most critical rankings among men deriving from patriarchal sexual politics is the division between gay and straight men. This division has powerful negative consequences for gay men and gives straight men privileges. But in addition, this division has a larger symbolic meaning. Our society uses the male heterosexual-homosexual dichotomy as a central symbol for all the rankings of masculinity, for the division on any grounds between males who are â€Å"real men† and have power, and males who are not. Any kind of powerlessness or refusal to compete becomes imbued with imagery of homosexuality. In the men's movement documentary film Men's Lives, a high school male who studies modern dance says that others often think he is gay because he is a dancer. When asked why, he gives three reasons: because dancers are â€Å"free and loose,† because they are â€Å"not big like football players,† and because â€Å"you're not trying to kill anybody. † The patriarchal connection: if you are not trying to kill other men, you must be gay. Another dramatic example of men's use of homosexual insults as weapons in their power struggle with each other comes from a document which provides one of the richest case studies of the politics of male-male relationships to yet appear: Woodward and Bernstein's The Final Days. Ehrlichman jokes that Kissinger is queer, Kissinger calls an unnamed colleague a psychopathic homosexual, and Haig jokes that Nixon and Rebozo are having a homosexual relationship. From the highest ranks of male power to the lowest, the gay-straight division is a central symbol of all the forms of ranking and power relationships which men put on each other. MEN S POWER WITH WOMEN The relationships between the patriarchal stratification and competition which men experience with each other, and men's patriarchal domination of women, are complex. Let us briefly consider several points of interconnection between them. First, women are used as SYMBOLS OF SUCCESS in men's competition with each other. It is sometimes thought that competition for women is the ultimate source of men's competition with each other. There is considerable reason, however, to see women not as the ultimate source of male-male competition, but rather as only symbols in a male contest where real roots lie much deeper. Second, women often play a MEDIATING role in the patriarchal struggle among men. Women get together with each other, and provide the social lubrication necessary to smooth over men's inability to relate to each other non-competitively. A modern myth, James Dickey's novel Deliverance, portrays what happens when men's relationships with each other are not mediated by women. According to Heilburn, the central message of Deliverance is that when men get beyond the bounds of civilization, which really means beyond the bounds of the civilizing effects of women, men rape and murder each other. A third function women play in male-male sexual politics is that relationships with women provide men a REFUGE from the dangers and stresses of relating to other males. Traditional relationships with women have provided men a safe place in which they can recuperate from the stresses they have absorbed in their daily struggle with other men, and in which they can express their needs without fearing that these needs will be used against them. If women begin to compete with men and have power in their own right, men are threatened by the loss of this refuge. Finally, a fourth function of women n males' patriarchal competition with each other is to reduce the stress of competition by serving as an UNDERCLASS. As Elizabeth Janeway has written in Between Myth and Morning, under patriarchy women represent the lowest status, a status to which men can fall only under the most exceptional circumstances, if at all. Competition among men is serious, but its intensity is mitigated by the fact tha t there is a lowest possible level to which men cannot fall. One reason men fear women's liberation, writes Janeway, is that the liberation of women will take away this unique underclass status of women. Men will now risk falling lower than ever before, into a new underclass composed of the weak of both sexes. Thus, women's liberation means that the stakes of patriarchal failure for men are higher than they have been before, and that it is even more important for men not to lose. Thus, men's patriarchal competition with each other makes use of women as symbols of success, as mediators, as refuges, and as an underclass. In each of these roles, women are dominated by men in ways that derive directly from men's struggle with each other. Men need to deal with the sexual politics of their relationships with each other if they are to deal fully with the sexual politics of their relationships with women. MEN'S POWER IN SOCIETY At one level, men's social identity is defined by the power they have over women and the power they can compete for against other men. But at another level, most men have very little power over their own lives. How can we understand this paradox? The major demand to which men must accede in contemporary society is that they play their required role in the economy. But this role is not intrinsically satisfying. The social researcher Daniel Yankelovich has suggested that about 80% of U. S. male workers experience their jobs as intrinsically meaningless and onerous. They experience their jobs and themselves as worthwhile only through priding themselves on the hard work and personal sacrifice they are making to be breadwinners for their families. Accepting these hardships reaffirms their role as family providers and therefore as true men. Linking the breadwinner role to masculinity in this way has several consequences for men. Men can get psychological payoffs from their jobs which these jobs never provide in themselves. By training men to accept payment for their work in feelings of masculinity, rather than in feelings of satisfaction, men will not demand that their jobs be made more meaningful. As a result, jobs can be designed for the more important goal of generating profits. Further, the connection between work and masculinity makes men accept unemployment as their personal failing as males, rather than analyze and change the profit-based economy whose inevitable dislocations make them unemployed or unemployable. Men's jobs are increasingly structured as if men had no direct roles or responsibilities in the family–indeed, as if they did not have families at all. But paradoxically, at the same time that men's responsibilities in the family are reduced to facilitate more efficient performance of their work role, the increasing dehumanization of work means that jobs give men only the satisfaction of fulfilling the family breadwinner role. The relative privilege that men get from sexism, and more importantly the false consciousness of privilege men get from sexism, play a critical role in reconciling men to their subordination in the larger political economy. This analysis does not imply that men's sexism will go away if they gain control over their own lives, or that men do not have to deal with their sexism until they gain this control. Rather, the point is that we cannot fully understand men's sexism or men's subordination in the larger society unless we understand how deeply they are related. Ultimately, we have to understand that patriarchy has two halves which are intimately related to each other. Patriarchy is a dual system, a system in which men oppress women, and in which men oppress themselves and each other. At one level, challenging one part of patriarchy inherently leads to challenging the other. This is one way to interpret why the idea of women's liberation led so soon to the idea of men's liberation, which ultimately means freeing men from the patriarchal sexual dynamics they now experience with each other. But because the patriarchal sexual dynamics of male-male relationships are less obvious than those of male-female relationships, men now face a real danger: while the patriarchal oppression of women may be lessened as a result of the women's movement, the patriarchal oppression of men may be untouched. The real danger for men posed by the attack that the women's movement is making on patriarchy is not that this attack will go too far, but that it will not go far enough. Ultimately, men cannot go any further in relating to women as equals

Hesses Siddhartha as it Parallels Maslows Hierarchy of...

Hesses Siddhartha as it Parallels Maslows Hierarchy of Needs Several parallels can be drawn between the psychologist Abraham Maslows theoretical hierarchy of needs and the spiritual journey of Siddhartha, the eponymous main character in Herman Hesses novel. Maslows hierarchy of needs is somewhat of a pyramid that is divided into eight stages of need through which one progresses throughout ones entire life. During the course of his lifetime, Siddharthas personality develops in a manner congruent with the stages of Maslows hierarchy. Siddharthas progress from each of the major sections of the hierarchy is marked by a sharp change in his life or behavior. Siddhartha is the story of a young mans journey in search of†¦show more content†¦He specialized in the study of human personality and development. One of his major contributions was the development of a theoretical hierarchy of needs as a model for understanding the development of an individuals personality. The eight steps in Maslows hierarchy of needs, from the most basic requirements for survival to the most abstract, are as follows: Group One ˆ Physiological needs: hunger, thirst, bodily comforts, etc ˆ Safety/security: out of danger ˆ Belongingness and love: affiliate with others, be accepted ˆ Esteem: to achieve, be competent, gain approval Group Two ˆ Cognitive: to know, to understand, and explore ˆ Aesthetic: symmetry, order, and beauty Group Three ˆ Self-actualization: to find self-fulfillment and realize ones potential ˆ Transcendence: to help others find self-fulfillment and realize their potential Not every individual, according to Maslow, will progress through every stage, nor will an individual necessarily work through each stage in sequence or only once. Siddhartha rose through the early stages of development early in life. In fact, the book begins with Siddhartha already having mastered the first four stages. Because Siddhartha was born into a well-to-do upper caste family, he was able to satisfy such