Modern Day Hero Essay

H. English 12 February 27, 2013 Hines Ward as a Modern Hero There are very few people in the world today we can consider heroes. These people are almost always brave, honest, compassionate, and smart. These qualities can all be found in Hines Ward. The things that make him a modern hero are his outstanding football career, dedication to charity, and perseverance for equality. Hines Ward would have never been able to achieve any of his goals or aspirations without his football career. It is the vessel that carried him forward in life, and it is what put him on top.Ward started out at a small high school in Atlanta, and then he went to The University of Georgia where he was drafted to the professional football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. Ward was easily one of the best receivers to play in the NFL by far. In an article written about one of Wards hits where he broke Keith Rivers jaw, Larry Brown says â€Å"Lesson be learned: always go hard and stay on your toes when you’re oc cupying the same space as Hines Ward. Otherwise you’re going to wind up hurt. † (Brown).Just the idea that other players would have to pay attention to a singular player shows his ability. Even if Wards big hits weren’t enough, he is also one of eight people in NFL history to achieve a landmark 1,000 receptions. Hines is also the second player to have 1,000 receptions while also having multiple Super Bowl wins. Ward has been in multiple Super Bowls. In Super Bowl XL, he was recognized as the game’s MVP. Ward caught five passes for 123 yards, and had a touchdown. Even though he won this, he was still as humble as ever.Ward dropped a pass, and in an interview his teammate and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said â€Å"Hines was going to kill himself because he dropped a touchdown pass. But you know what? He came out and made plays when he had to and that's what he does. † (Super Bowl XL MVP). Ward is and forever will be one of the best players to play the game. There will never be many players who can match his intensity and ability. Although Ward ended up in a not so obscure place, he started very close to the bottom. He was born in Seoul, South Korea to his African American father nd his Korean mother. They moved to Atlanta, and his father left their family. Ward worked his way up from the bottom and had to deal with many obstacles along the way. Ward is very dedicated to helping other people overcome the same obstacles he himself overcame. In South Korea, Ward had to deal with discrimination due to being a mixed race child. After Ward became a professional football player, he was compelled to start a charity that would help deal with the issue of mixed-race discrimination in Korea and everywhere else.Ward called his charity The Hines Ward Helping Hands Foundation. Ward not only donates money, but much of his time to his foundation. In an interview about his charity Ward said â€Å"When I went to Korea and saw, firsthand, the biracial children, I could easily identify with them and they embraced me, like a hero. I do not want to let them down. I want to encourage them by providing them with resources and programs that will enhance their lives and chances for success in life. † (Interview with Eric Kuhn). Ward clearly wants to do his best to help these kids.He shows perseverance and helps to provide these underprivileged children with hope for their future. Other traits that make a modern hero are humility and a positive attitude. Ward is a player that demonstrates both. He is one of the hardest hitting players in the NFL, and one of the most humble. Ward says that â€Å"It's like my mother still tells me, ‘Always be humble, and never forget where you came from. My story is kind of a perfect story, of how I was able to overcome all that. Maybe some other kids can use that as motivation. † (Hines Ward).Ward knows how lucky he is to have all the opportunities he was granted, and he doesnà ¢â‚¬â„¢t take these opportunities lightly. Ward also has a very positive attitude. Many players recall after hitting him, or being hit by him that he always had a smile on his face. In a play against the Seahawks, Ward caught a pass and ran into the endzone for a touchdown. It wasn’t the play that was extraordinary, but it was how Ward made the play. He ran the ball in the whole way, smiling. The NFL even took the picture taken of him making the play and made it into one of their go to advertisement pictures for the next year.The NFL put it on a raft of official publications the next year; it was that iconic, that unusual. â€Å"The NFL put it on a raft of official publications the next year; it was that iconic, that unusual. † (Collier). This one picture shows off Wards entire football career. Ward is just a regular guy, playing the game he loved every day, and doing it all with a smile on his face. He is an inspiration and a role model for all young people to look up to. Ward is easily one of the best people to ever play football, both on and off the field.His positive attitude mixed with his humble upbringing and overall ability is what makes him a modern day hero. Ward retired from the NFL with an unparalled dedication to his team. â€Å"Hines Ward believes he can still play football. The longtime Pittsburgh wide receiver known for his high-wattage smile and his bone-crunching blocks just couldn't stomach the thought of doing it in some strange uniform on some strange field with nary a Terrible Towel in sight. † (Hensley). Ward retired with dignity as an all-time best Steelers receiver, and he is a person that everyone can find some inspiration in.

Pride of Intellect Punished in the Short Fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Pride of Intellect Punished in the Short Fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne Free Online Research Papers From the first date of their publishing, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works have never been dismissed as purely entertaining, or fodder for the masses. Both his earliest writing under pen names and his accredited later works have always been respected; early admirers include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allen Poe. Poe said of one of Hawthorne’s short stories that â€Å"Every words tells, and there is not a word which does not tell.† Each word â€Å"tells† because the stories are packed with symbols of the day and allegories for our lives- he saw in his own work what he frankly described as â€Å"an inveterate love of allegory† (Arvin xii). While never representing himself as a moral authority or openly espousing traditionally Protestant values, Hawthorne’s short fiction reads as a series of illustrations about human joy and human folly. The allegories are quite clearly understandable in his stories involving science and scientists, particularly Aylmer in â€Å"The Birthmark† and Rappaccini in â€Å"Rappaccini’s Daughter.† Both stories portray men of secular learning who use their knowledge not to cure or truly heal, but to alter that which they deem unworthy, and with disastrous results. In â€Å"The Birthmark† and â€Å"Rappaccini’s Daughter,† Hawthorne condemns mankind’s prideful idolization of science as damaging to all that is good in humanity and spirituality. Both fascinating to ponder and very relevant in any examination of Hawthorne’s work is the environment that spawned both his genius and his values. Repetitive themes and tendencies can be better understood by exploring what Hawthorne was exposed to as a youth. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, into a culture still strongly influenced by its Puritan ancestry, and few aspects of his writing can be described as untouched by it. Peter Conn characterizes the relationship in his article â€Å"Finding a Voice in a New Nation† by telling us that â€Å"the Puritan ancestors who provided Hawthorne with his amplest materials also gave him his angle of vision and instructed him in his technique† (83). Maintaining a morally pure lifestyle was for centuries surrounding his lifespan of paramount importance in New England- ample material indeed, for works very much centering on sexual morality, such as The Scarlet Letter. His â€Å"angle of vision† and †Å"technique,† while subtler, are still products of a Calvinist set of ideas, where mankind is generally undeserving, and many of the stories illustrate our various failings. Certainly â€Å"The Birthmark† and â€Å"Rappaccini’s Daughter† do nothing to praise human efforts, with one scientist killing off his lovely wife and the other his pretty daughter. In discussing Hawthorne’s studies of human nature, Newton Arvin describes the state of mind that gave birth to such tales: What he found made it impossible for Hawthorne to share the great glad conviction of his age that, as Emerson had told it, ‘love and good are inevitable, and in the course of things’; he came closer to feeling that guilt and terrible wrong are inevitable; that at any rate, they are terribly deeply meshed in the texture of human experience. (Intro XV.) Humanity and their efforts seemed more generally apt to failure than success, for Nathan; considering this, and the nonexistence of any higher considerations in his upbringing other than God’s sovereignty, it is unsurprising that we should read two short stories about tragedy and failure resulting from scientists attempting to alter Creation. More specifically, Hawthorne condemned human efforts and endeavors that he saw as prideful or self-superior. â€Å"To pride himself on one’s intellectual powers or attainments, to cultivate the intellect at the expense of the sympathies†¦ this was for Hawthorne the deadliest form that human guilt could take† (Arvin XVI). What could be more ‘intellectual at the expense of human sympathy’ than one person performing dangerous cosmetic procedures on another, harming that person’s body and mind? This is the picture that Hawthorne paints in â€Å"The Birthmark,† with the main character, Aylmer, pridefully failing his young wife in several ways. We are told that â€Å"he had devoted himself†¦ too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weaned from them by any second passion.† The author that we have met cannot possibly approve of his hero loving his science more than his wife, and he goes on to set us up for a powerful out come later: â€Å"Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral.† Whatever happens will be remarkable and bring home to us a â€Å"moral,† which is no less than we would expect from the New Englander. Aylmer almost immediately shows us how he feels about God’s creation, telling his young wife that her birthmark â€Å"shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection.† The husband hurts his wife here, declaring a feature of her body unattractive and goes on to declare an intention of removing the shocking mark. A mark of earthly imperfection would not be appropriate for humans to try and alter, but he makes the attempt. Knowing what we do about Hawthorne’s disapproval of â€Å"pride of intellect,† Aylmer’s arrogance must be condemned. He exhorts his wife â€Å"doubt not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest thought- thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a being† (152). His belief in his own abilities is continually set up for us, even to claims of being able to create life- surely God’s province alone- with no consideration for his wife’s true welfare. Barbara Eckstein comments that science has become religion for Aylmer, and so surely attempting to modify his wife through his science is akin to worship for him (Eckstein 511). The scientist Rappaccini in â€Å"Rappaccini’s Daughter† is even less kind than misguided Aylmer, railing against one who condemned the turning of his own daughter to poison, in the name of science, â€Å"Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman†¦?† (209). Even prior to learning of his daughter’s impending death, we cannot like or sympathize with this man who used his daughter as a scientific experiment. Humankind is not perfect- Biblically, since the sin in Eden, perfection is out of our reach, and considering the two men of science that strive to create perfection in their subjects adds another element to Hawthorne’s condemnation of such practices. Leland S. Person Jr. distills the point that examining these characterizations brings up: â€Å"Hawthorne depicts character after character who destroys what is human† (Person 437). Our two examples, Aylmer and Rappaccini, bear this out dramatically. Early in the story, we learn that Dr. Rappaccini creates an incredibly beautiful garden, but is not content to cultivate for medicine the fruits and flowers that he finds; rather, he engineers new and terrible breeds, as another story character tells: It is his theory that all medicinal virtues are comprised within those substances which we term vegetable poisons. These he cultivates with his own hands, and is said even to have produced new varieties of poison, more horribly deleterious than Nature, without the assistance of this learned person, would ever have plagued the world withal (186). The scientist who uses his learning to alter nature is suspect already, but Rappaccini deliberately creates harmful plants, perverting the earth’s bounty. He has gone farther, however, in changing his young daughter according to his purposes: she has â€Å"been nourished with poisons from her birth upward, until†¦ she herself has become the deadliest poison in existence† (201). Natural, unaltered flowers wither at her touch. Butterflies fall dead from the sky when she breathes on them. At this point in the tale, Rappaccini has already destroyed his daughter, although she lives. He claims that he has improved on what God created, but his version of perfection deprives the girl of all human contact, and ultimately results in her death. â€Å"The Birthmark† also depicts a scientist seeking the perfection that is denied to humans, inevitably failing. Hawthorne repeatedly describes Aylmer’s view of his wife’s birthmark as an â€Å"imperfection,† and the only thing holding Georgiana back from being the ultimate physical specimen. The cure takes her young life, but that is a risk that the husband/physician declared that he was willing to take, by applying his admittedly imperfect science to a piece of his wife- science that the â€Å"large folio† wherein he records all experiments shows to fail as often as it succeeds (158). But when Georgiana says that she worships her husband, he demonstrates that he has not learned from earlier failures, telling her that if he succeeds in removing the birthmark, she can â€Å"worship me if you will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it† (159.) This arrogance is offensive even to a modern reader, and would have read as nearly blasphe mous when it was published; nowhere is Hawthorne sympathetic to his learned characters: â€Å"mechanists like Aylmer [and] Rappaccini sinfully assume that knowledge of mechanism gives them power over life† (Person 437). Examination of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s early environs has shed light on his disdain for personal pride in human endeavors and his creation of characters that meet tragedy once they committed this sin, but the short fiction considered herein more specifically showcases the grievous punishments meted out to men of science who got beyond themselves. Interestingly, the America of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not one likely to produce writers with immense respect for the fields of scientific research; only in the 1840s did the term â€Å"scientist† come into popular usage, as a descendant and variant of ‘philosopher’ or ‘chemical experimenter.’ Glen Scott Allen describes the state of American science in these decades by telling readers that â€Å"many university professors of the time moonlighted as ‘consultants,’ offering their services as soil analysts, patent advisers†¦ and the like.† He goes on to quote a European naturalist’s characterization of the state of science in the US, that neither a man of the day â€Å"’nor any other American have a mind for purely scientific researches; they look for practical result† (Allen 6). Few favors were done for the indifferent reputation of scientists by the hawking of pseudosciences such as phrenology and mesmerism. The great Puritanical inheritance of dependence on the will of the Almighty, coupled with the perception of a narrow distinction between unregulated charlatans and ‘men of science,’ was enough to produce a nation with little adoration for the profession. In the eyes of his first readers, contemporaries, Hawthorne’s blaspheming scientists may very much have deserved their punishments. While science and medical treatment are not condemned wholesale as flouting God’s will in the twenty-first century, traces of the attitudes of Hawthorne’s ancestors can be found today. A unique perspective on two old short stories recently surfaced in American politics: George W. Bush’s President’s Council on Bioethics began their first meetings with a reading of â€Å"The Birthmark.† The executive director of the committee, created to address moral and ethical (even Biblical) questions surrounding cloning and stem cell research, is a zealous Christian and selected the tale for his fellow committee members to examine. Discussing the story and its likely applications in the meetings, Fred Edwords elaborates: Here we have an image of science as inadequate because it fails to consider the supernatural- and an image of scientists as prideful and self-defeating perfectionists who should be satisfied with nature. Such was a common literary view in 1843. But the advance of both time and science hasn’t helped much†¦ biological research continues to suffer from a negative literary image (Edwords 2). Modern Americans, in a culture far more permissive, less devout, and more centered on self esteem- a form of that deadly pride- love to consume tales wherein people who manipulate biology fail miserably; Jurassic Park and The Island of Dr. Moreau come to mind. Certainly Hawthorne found no less sympathetic an audience in his day. Our close examination of language, setting, plot and nearly any other elements of â€Å"The Birthmark† and â€Å"Rappaccini’s Daughter† yields a condemnation of worshipping science and of the arrogance of humans who do so, neglecting what is human and what is spiritual. Men who use their superior scientific knowledge to pervert, but not to heal, are painted as selfish and punished; concurrently, the notion of ‘perfecting’ humanity is destroyed. They got beyond themselves and suffered for it. Stepping back from these two short stories and considering other major works of Hawthorne’s bears out this conclusion. The Scarlet Letter is more commonly recalled as a moral tale, where the mores of Puritan New England and human frailty are masterfully portrayed, but it also speaks of the dangers assuming â€Å"life is strictly a function of ‘mechanism; and that having knowledge of the mechanism is to have power over life itself† (Trepanie r 317). Chillingworth is the vehicle for this lesson in the novel; he too feels the pride of the scientist, and Hawthorne does not reward him for it. While admittedly removed from our lives by the span of a century and a half, the author’s personal views and fiction defining them on science, human failings, pride and the necessity of respect for nature (creation) are still fascinating today. Our own political system today echoes with the uniquely American struggle to define what is important and acceptable, and what is crossing the line of what is divine: congressional committees are making decisions on biological research and bioethics with a dead advisor, born two hundred years ago, and this policy is cheered on by many. Certainly Hawthorne never foresaw an outcome like this, but a reading of his work from this frame of reference is modern and relevant, whatever the personal beliefs of the reader. Allen, Glen Scott. â€Å"MASTER MECHANICS AND EVIL WIZARDS: SCIENCE AND THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION.† Massachusetts Review, Winter 92/93, Vol. 33. Academic Search Elite. EBSCOhost. 1 March 2007. . Arvin, Newton. Introduction. Hawthorne’s Short Stories. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Random House, 1946. Conn, Peter. â€Å"Finding a Voice in a New Nation.† Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Eckstein, Barbara. â€Å"HAWTHORNE’S ‘THE BIRTHMARK’: SCIENCE AND ROMANCE AS BELIEF.† Studies in Short Fiction, Fall 1989, Vol 26. Academic Search Elite. EBSCOhost. 1 March 2007. . Edwords, Fred. â€Å"GETTING STARTED ON THE WRONG FOOT.† Humanist, March/April 2002, Vol 62. Academic Search Elite. EBSCOhost. 1 March 2007. . Hawthorne, Nathaniel. â€Å"The Birthmark.† Hawthorne’s Short Stories. Ed. Newton Arvin. New York: Random House, 1946. . â€Å"Rappacini’s Daughter.† Hawthorne’s Short Stories. Ed. Newton Arvin. New York: Random House, 1946. Person Jr., Leland S. â€Å"HAWTHORNE AND HIS CULTURE: THREE RECENT VIEWS.† Studies in the Novel, Winter 1992, Vol 24. Academic Search Elite. EBSCOhost. 1 March 2007. . Pfister, Joel. â€Å"Hawthorne as a Cultural Theorist.† The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ed. Richard Millington. Cambridge, UK: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 2004. Trepanier, Lee. â€Å"THE NEED FOR RENEWAL: NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S CONSERVATISM.† Modern Age, Fall 2003, Vol. 45. Academic Search Elite. EBSCOhost. 1 March 2007. . Research Papers on Pride of Intellect Punished in the Short Fiction of Nathaniel HawthorneMind TravelBook Review on The Autobiography of Malcolm XHonest Iagos Truth through DeceptionThe Masque of the Red Death Room meaningsHip-Hop is ArtComparison: Letter from Birmingham and CritoCapital PunishmentPersonal Experience with Teen PregnancyRelationship between Media Coverage and Social andArguments for Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS)

Writers of Term Papers

Writers of Term Papers Writers of Term Papers Writers of Term PapersA term paper is rather a complicated research project that requires sufficient experience in analyzing, writing, and presenting the project. That is why writers of term papers should develop a certain set of qualities and abilities. Do you want to know which ones? Then go ahead reading. Do not forget to read article on The Stolen Party term paper writing, how to write term papers, as well as guide on college entrance essay outline writing and how to write a good college essay .Writers of term papers should practice building sentences logically. One of the possible and rather effective methods to do it is to tape-record what you have written and then listen to the record made. You can also ask someone to read your paper to check whether your writing is consecutive and logical enough. Writers of term papers should be well informed on their research area. That is why it is important for writers of term papers to read as much information relevant to their research topic as possible. So, if for example, you are to write a term paper on hurricane Katrina, read all the possible information about hurricanes, watch videos and documentaries, listen to CNN reports, etc. Your professor will certainly appreciate your awareness of the subject, thus, you will have more chances to get an A+ grade.Writers of term papers should learn to be persuasive. The art of persuasiveness is not easy to learn, still, possible. To sound persuasively, it is important for term paper writers to avoid emotions while writing. Besides, emotions are inadmissible in academic writing, and if you want to master in the use of scientific language, you have to keep it in mind. The best and the most important tool that all writers of term papers should use to sound persuasively is argumentation. Make your argumentation reasonable and logical. Provide the reader with enough evidence to prove that your point of view is the only right.Writers of term papers should be able to develop strong and catchy thesis statements. Some writers of term papers confuse a thesis statement with a well known fact. The main difference between a generally known fact and a thesis statement is that a thesis statement is something that you personally consider to be truth while a commonly known fact is something that does not leave grounds for debates. This mistake can make a paper sound unskillfully and become the cause of a low grade. That is why it is of a great importance for writers of term papers to understand the difference between these two notions.Striving at self-perfection is the best way to success. That is why writers of term papers should strive at it.

Ban of DDT in the US Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Ban of DDT in the US - Essay Example The book listed the negative impact of pesticides on the environment, particularly wildlife and birds. It also argued that DDT was hazardous to the human health, causing cancer. The book was widely read causing an uproar in the general public, apart from already frowning scientists fraternity. The result was that in 1962, President Kennedy ordered the Science Advisory Committee (SAC) to probe into Carson’s claims and establish their validity. SAC in turn agreed with Carson’s claim and recommended phasing out the DDT from usage. DDT has the property of getting accumulated in the animal tissues, particularly in animals that are higher in food chain. Thus apex predators (such as bald eagle) and marine animals( such as crayfish, sea shrimp) were majorly poisoned due to DDT. It was also found out that DDT causes long term reproductive problems in birds (such as birds of prey, waterfowl) as the shell thins down. As per Environmental Defence Fund studies, even low doses of DDT on a continuous bases might result in pre mature birth and low birth babies( for the babies who were exposed to DDT before birth) and decreased duration of milk supply in nursing mothers (Environmental Defense Fund). Studies also show that prevalence of diabities increases with serum DDT level (Jones, Maguire and Griffin 287-8). Food webs represent the predator-prey relationship between the species in earth’s ecosystem. Scientists claimed that DDT and its residuals were carried from the warmer regions of the earth to the Arctic, through global distillation, causing accumulation of the toxic elements in the Arctic food web. When DDT is used in much larger quantities, than required for controlling Malaria carrying mosquitoes, the mosquitoes become resistant to the pesticide , thus greatly reducing its effect. In agriculture , usage of large quantities of DDT led to the problem of mosquito resistance. DDT ban is seen as a major

Give me at least 3 question to discussion after your reading. then Research Paper

Give me at least 3 question to discussion after your reading. then answer the following questions - Research Paper Example It is of much importance that organizations venture the global markets fast but in a realistic manner. When seeking employment, such will be the issues to consider on how best you can help the organization achieve and maintain a global profile. It is evident that organizations need global managers. Do you think that it is the sole responsibility of managers to achieve the objective, or leaders have a role to play in achieving the objective? Can the role of managers and leaders be quantified to establish which one has the greatest significance? What would be your role as a manager, leader, or both, in realizing the objective of global recognition? Kotter convincingly argue that management and leadership roles are complementary, despite them being different. The major difference between the two is that, while managers promote stability, leaders drive change derived from the complex issues that managers solve. The difference is enough to explain that both cannot work independently. In the contemporary world, technological advancements are attributable to the changes in how organizations are run. In the past decade, the internet did not have a significant role in organizations. In addition, smartphones have increasingly been a part of the accessibility of information with the help of the internet. The organizational culture is constantly changing to accommodate the technological advancements and maintain a competitive advantage. In my opinion, I have strong leadership skills, bearing in mind the distinctive characteristics of managers and leaders. Leadership skills are not innate; they are acquired. The working environment shapes individuals to become leaders. On the contrary, management skills are influenced by personal traits. It is evident that leaders focus on the vision and adjust their skills in a manner that is suitable for the team and the organization as a whole. On the other hand, managers set the vision, but it may not be achieved

What are Swifts aims in A Modest Proposal and how does he achieve them Essay

What are Swifts aims in A Modest Proposal and how does he achieve them What are Joyces aims in Araby how does she achieve them - Essay Example Many people were fed up with the government in place as it did nothing to alleviate the life of the common person in the country. The rich were always getting richer while the poor became poorer (Swift 23). Swift aims to target Ireland’s politicians, the falsehood of the English plus the degradation which she saw on the Irish People. Swift was fed up with the many empty promises posted by their leaders in power to help those needy in society, something that never materialized (Swift 24). In his book, Swift uses satire in representing her grievances in regard to the matter. She provides her own solution that can be equated to mockery too. Her solution was to end poverty by reducing the population of the poor. This can be done through eating of poor children under the age of 1 year by the rich. Her solution was absurd adding to the mockery on the many solutions that never materialized (Swift 27). Swift manages to address issues like poverty, famine, overpopulation and homelessne ss in this paper. In contrast, Joyce’s Araby aims at portraying Dublin life at its realistic point through a young boy that lived in it (Norris 45). Describing every sense and environment in which the boy lived, the author managed to bring out the parallels of life between the rich and poor in the society. The poor had to succumb through poor living condition and struggled to make ends. In addition, Joyce adds a theme of discovering of love through the innocent young boy (Norris 46). The young boy had a crush on Manga’s sisters and did what he can to please her, something which in the end did not go as he had planned due to lack of money. A situation which most people expect to turn into happiness, ended up in a sad note when the boy missed to see the show and get to please a girl. Joyce aimed at portraying the implication of poverty of social, economic and spiritual well-being of people

Keep up the Trainspotting Essay Example for Free

Keep up the Trainspotting Essay Escaping has been the main focus of many pieces of literature. Escaping from an actual place, reality, or even ones self. In each case the person who is trying to escape is in reality escaping from some sort of underlying persecution. The idea of escaping is very comparable to many peoples drug habits. The journey of finding an escape is prevalent in two major themes in Irvine Welshs Trainspotting. In Trainspotting Welsh tells the story of a group of friends in a run down Scottish town that are addicting to heroin. Their heroin use is not only an escape from reality but also serves as a metaphor for them trying to escape from their town. Renton, the main character in Trainspotting, (Irvine Welsh) and his group of friends wander in their neighborhood causing trouble and trying to find a fix. In their lives the trains passing was a sad reminder of them being stuck. Their dream of finally escaping is very similar to another group of people from another generation, The Merry Pranksters. Ken Kesey was the founder of the pranksters. Kesey along with friends bought a 1939 International Harvest school bus. They traveled the country experimenting with acid and video taping their journey. The Pranksters were Hippies. Hippies came after Beatniks. Jack Kerouac, who coined the phrase Beat Generation (Kesey) was not on the bus. However, Beat Neal Cassady, was on the bus, in fact, he drove the bus. Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor who garnered recognition as the LSD Guru when he coined the phrase, Turn On, Tune In Drop Out, (Online Database) was not on the bus. Many Hells Angels were on the bus and the rock group the Grateful Dead was on the bus. The Pranksters hoped the Beatles would get on the bus, but they never showed up. Kesey and the Pranksters lived out the dream of escaping. An escape, is how many drug users see their habit as. To get away from reality by taking one more hit. But what are they really escaping to a high that they will just come down from leading to an endless cycle of emptiness. They lie to themselves by saying that they just need one more hit. This lie just reveals an existential honesty, which is that they are trapped. This honesty is very prevalent in Irvine Welshs Trainspotting. Trainspotting was written in several separately published chapters. The book is more of a collection of related characters, motifs and schemes. At first I thought that this might dilute the focus of the story however, it was quite the contrary. The chapters featured different points of view, which gave the book a higher-level insight. Train spotting is a British pass time where people stand around a railroad station for hours, in all kinds of weather, writing down numbers of passing railroad cars. In one part of the story, Renton and his friend Begbie are standing in an abandoned train-station. The trains are a metaphor for getting away. Just as the train station has no trains anymore, neither do Renton and his friends have a way to escape their lives. As they are looking at the empty railroad tracks, an old wino says, Keep up the Trainspotting. (Welsh, 167) In other words, keep looking for an escape. This hobby of noting down numbers on trains in notebooks is another metaphor for the pointless lives of Britains young working class. In Trainspotting Mark Renton, the main character is addicted to heroin, which results strictly in depravity. This is Rentons escape. His four friends Spud, Sick Boy, Tommy, and Begbie are a group of crooks, liars, and psychos. Spud, is a shy, inoffensive junkie. Sick Boy, is a vicious, duplicitous con artist whos obsessed with Sean Connery. Tommy, is a virtuous young man fighting the temptation of heroin who eventually is convinced to do it by Renton. Lastly, Begbie, is a nutcase whose escape is not drugs, but beating up other people Begbie didnt do drugs he just did people (Welsh, 32). In the end, Renton chooses life against anything else. However, during the story its a struggle. When Renton is on heroin it is almost like an illusion, an illusion of happiness, much like a LSD experience. Images fill the mind, sometimes images of despair and hopelessness. Especially when Renton is off of it and struggling with coming down from his high, much like a bad trip.