Customer service Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Customer service - Assignment Example jectives of the internal customers with that of the external stakeholders such as, supply chain, in order to significantly contribute towards satisfying expectations of the final consumers. The paper evaluates the case of WalMart, a global retailer, where it would focus on the way in which the company meets needs and expectations of the internal customers. WalMart as a global retailer operates on the basis of a total workforce of around 2.2 million. In the United States alone, the company employs approximately 1.3 million people. The company operates through a large number of stores located worldwide, which function based on empowering the people to work for enhancing the status and position of the social communities (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 2014). Internal customers related to a business organization constitute the different members and stakeholders that contribute in effective accomplishment of the business objectives. Relating to a retail organization, individuals that help in running the business are identified as the potential internal customers. The management is required to properly understand and meet the expectations and needs of the internal customers such that internal individuals or the staff related to the different departments and the supplier groups are largely motivated to satisfy business objectives of the retail organization. Furthermore, the management is also required to generate effective service delivery standards, thereby designing the training and evaluation programs so as to help in assessing and enhancing performance level of the staff so as to generate greater retail productivity (Wrice, 2004). Internal customers are identified as individuals or groups in an organization who manage the product or ser vice in order to make the same ready for external customers. Hence, the staff operating in the production line or the sales staff dealing with semi-processed products and services is recognized as internal customers. Similar to external

Female Authors and the Novel Essay Example for Free

Female Authors and the Novel Essay The contribution of female authors towards the development of the novel is significant. Indeed it can be argued that feminine sensibility plays a key role here. G K Chesterton describes the novel as a feminine art form, and he explains that it is the female eye for homely detail, as well as the talent to depict the intricacies of relationships, that make it so (39). These qualities are important because they serve to counteract the male tendency towards philosophy and idealism. Such tendencies must be overcome because the novel is aiming for an individualistic and democratic voice which is beyond all factionalism. The search for an individual voice had been the aim of literature since the Protestant Reformation. It was the aim too of the Enlightenment; but the practical effect was only to introduce the rigid formality of classicism. So the constraints of the Church had been replaced by just another form of constraint. Such constraints were overcome in the end by the female prose writers, and gradually over a long period. In this respect we will examine the two writers Aphra Behn and Mary Shelley, separated by a century and a half. The former presages the advent of the novel, while the latter perfects the form and paves the way for the great Victorian age of the novel. Classicism was the key barrier to the development of the novel. All efforts towards informality were frowned upon by the stalwarts of Augustan literature, led by Dryden and Pope, so the novel was perforce directed underground. Here it flowered in the hands of the women writers, who were mostly ignored because they concentrated on sentimental romance, and appealing to woman readers alone. Daniel Defoe is now regarded as the first proper novelist, but it is plain to see that he has adopted a form established by the female writers, who produced mostly trifling and salacious romances. Such a description may be applied to Aphra Behn’s Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister, but it is also notable for being the first epistolary novel. Her reputation, however, rests on Oroonoko, a love story involving an African prince captured by slave traders. Though not yet a proper novel, it contains many innovations that point in that direction. Behn assumes a conversational tone with the readers in places, inspiring familiarity. It also contains an omniscient voice of narration, which was to become the most distinctive characteristic of the novel proper. However, she feels obliged to explain her omniscience, and so the narrator is tangentially involved in the story itself. She knows all the incidents in Africa because she has lived the slave plantation and has conversed with the African prince. By the time Mary Shelley writes Frankenstein, the novel form has almost come into its own element, and its history boasts such great novelists as Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollet and Austen. Nevertheless, Shelley’s original contribution in not insignificant. The voice of the novel reflects ‘individual expression’, and this has been largely perfected by this point. Shelley goes on to tackle the theme of individualism itself. It is the story of a mad scientist who cuts himself off from the world in order to create a being from assembles and inanimate organs. We discover similarities between the project of the mad scientist and the project of the novelist giving life to his fictional creations. The novelist functions as an individual, and his is probably the loneliest occupation of all. At the same time it is his task to create individuals, purely from the imagination. Shelley’s theme is at heart the mutual dependency of creator and creature. Though she is outwardly concerned with the misuse of science, and of the terrible consequences of mechanization, the underlying theme remains that of individualism. In this sense we may interpret her novel as an exploration of the limits of the novel. In conclusion, female writers can be said to be largely responsible for the development of the novel from the Restoration onwards. The evolution of the novel has avoided the limelight, yet the novel has been the primary vehicle for the advance of individualism. Only with the Industrial revolution and the rise of democracy does the novel burst forth as the principal mode of literature. Aphra Behn and Mary Shelley were key proponents in novel’s development. Works Cited Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko. Ed. Janet M. Todd. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. The Victorian Age in Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Collectors Library, 2004.

Comparison of SMEs in India and the UK

Comparison of SMEs in India and the UK Chapter 1: Introduction: Background of study: Small businesses have been the soul of every economy in the world. India and UK have also been thriving on the performance of this sector. The performance of the sector is highly influenced by the government policies and the availability of finance. Purpose of Study: In this study, the author investigates the performance of the Small and Medium Enterprises in India and UK. The contribution of this sector to the society on the whole. This study focuses on the importance of the SME sector in both the countries from the point of view of its contributions to the economy. This study evaluates the importance of financing activities and the Government policies in order to support and nurture the growth of this very powerful sector. Overall Aim and Objectives of Research: The overall aim of this study is to evaluate the role of Government and financial institutions in the development of the small and medium enterprises in India (Developing country) and UK (Developed country.) Objectives: Problems faced by the SME sector in India and UK. Role of Government policies in India and UK. Role of financial institutions in providing better financing options to the sector. Background of SMEs: Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are one of the principal driving forces in economic development. This sector has been recognised as growth engine around the globe. A healthy and vibrant SME sector contributes in a high and sustainable economic growth. They encourage private ownership and entrepreneurial skills, they are flexible and can adapt quickly to changing market demand and supply situations. They provide employment opportunities to the masses, help diversify economic activity and make a significant contribution to exports thereby increasing foreign trade. Small and medium enterprises have been defined in various ways in different countries. In India, it is known as the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) which is defined in terms of investment required. The MSMEs include all the enterprises in which the total investment does not exceed more than Rs. 50 million. The European Commission defines SMEs on the basis of the work force employed, total turnover of the business and the balance sheet total. In the US, the criteria for recognition is based on the work force employed. The main factors which give a firm the status of SME are employment and investment in fixed assets. Many economies have acknowledged the need for growth and development of SMEs for industrial restructuring and have formulated national SME policies, programmes and enterprise development policies. Enterprise helps boost productivity, increased competition and innovation, thereby creating employment and prosperity, and revitalizing the communities. SMEs contribution to the foreign trade has been ever increasing. During the last decade, there has been a considerable increase in the foreign trade arising from the products of these SMEs. The open trade policy has been a great success. The policy makers in developing countries like India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and many other South Asian countries have been continuously reviewing their policies to help the functioning of these SME units. Chapter 2: Research Methodology: Research is defined as an activity which is undertaken in order to find out things in a systematic way, thereby increasing knowledge (Saunders, et al, 2003). As the definition says, it is important that the study is carried on in a systematic ways which means the study should be logical and should be carried by systematic interpretation of data. (Ghauri and Gronhaug, 2002). According to Saunders, et al, (2003) the research should highlight the following features: Data used for study should to be collected systematically. Data should be interpreted systematically. The research should be carried out with the intension to draw a conclusion. According to Williman (2001), research is not merely collection of facts or information without any purpose. The research should relate to collection of facts and information with a specific purpose. The reassembling or restructuring of facts and figures without any interpretation also is not termed as research. A proper research should be a mixture of facts and figures being interpreted and should provide an answer to the research question. The data is of two types depending on the source from where it is obtained. Primary data is the data which is obtained by the researcher for some specific questions. It includes interview of the object of study. The answers are then observed closely to draw a conclusion. Secondary data is the data which is obtained from literature review and the internet. The gathering and analysis of primary data adds value to the dependability of the results of the research, in my chosen topic of study there are not enough opportunities within the time and reach of the researcher to resort to research methods of interviews or survey through questionnaires, since the firms are widely scattered and the small and medium enterprises in India dont disclose their secrets to anyone. Hence, the data used is secondary data which is available through internet and through various government publications. There is a lot of literature on the selected topic; they can be treated as trusted source of data to carry on the research. The essential research principles while using the secondary sources are Qualitative and Quantitative approach to research, out of which this research paper uses the qualitative and descriptive approach to conclude the research question. Therefore the secondary research has been used for completing the study. Limitation of Study: I have tried my level best to produce this report to be as fruitful as it can be but there are some serious limitations that this study suffers. There is a lack of study and not many scholarly articles are available on the problems faced by the Small and Medium Enterprises in India and UK. There are many articles which describe the importance of this sector. I had to take the use of various print media and internet sources of government portal in order to draft down the problems faced by them. Also, the grants and government policies that are provided are in exhaustive; hence the study focuses on only the main grants and policies which have contributed largely to the sector. The small and medium enterprises sector is very huge and widely scattered, which comes as a constraint to collect primary data for the study. Chapter 3: Literature Review Role of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs): SME have an important role in a countrys economic development and growth and also have been achieving the same kind of progress over the last couple of years. India as an example shows the importance of SMEs towards the growth of the economy and the employment generated with the help of labor intensiveness and thus, bringing efficient distribution of resources through labor intensive production. This segment also helps in lightening poverty and sustaining growth. Equal distribution of income also comes into picture thereof. And all this happens when the scarcity of capital exists. (Das, K. (2006)) Some of the characteristics of this typeof policy include formation of multi-storied and flatted industrial estates for micro industries, liberal floor spaces index in plotted development of 1.5 to 1.75 for industrial sheds and 2.5 for multi-storied industrial units, 50% rebate on stamp duty and registration charges for micro and small enterprises in industrial estates and industrially backward areas. Globalization has made possible the fragmentationof all forms of production of goods and servicesacross countries and enterprises. Where large players go for a different form of business models which includes bringing alongtheir traditional partners, suppliers or distributors at a different level, SMEs are experiencing a new form of functioning in the value chain byevolving from a traditional manufacturer in the domestic market to that of an international partner. SMEs undergo the effects, both positive and negative, of outsourcing led restructuring of production at the international level. Because of the advantage of their flexible nature of operations, SMEs face lot many opportunities in the form of the demand for new products and services. But the things get a little nasty when theinadequate availability of managerial and financial resources, lack of working capital, innovation and personnel training come into picture. (Das, K. (2006)). The Indian Small Scale Sector- An Overview: A SSI in India is defined as a unit where investment in plant and machinery, either in the terms of ownership or lease, does not exceed Rs. 10 million. In the same way, micro enterprises or the so called tiny units does not have investment in them to be exceeding more than Rs. 2.5 million. The Small Scale Industries of India have a fortune of have been built through enterprise, dynamism and renewal. Since the end of the colonial rule, India has re-established itself and has transformed itself from 80,000 units to 3.3 million. The last decade of the 20th century showed steadiness. This sector of SSIs alone contributes 7 % of GDP in India. (Sahu, P.P. (2005)). Market liberalization and de-regulation are the two forces behind SMEschanging their business strategies for survival and growth. These changes have particularly been in the terms of acquiring quality certifications, creation of e-business modules, diversification to meet competition, etc. SMEs involvement in the foreign trade has to be supported by Globalization, Liberalization and WTO for the benefit of access to markets, technology, skills, finance infrastructure and tax-friendly environment. (Ecotec Research Consulting (2004)). Production and Investment in SMEs: There has been an extraordinary 18% growth in the production at current prices of SMEsin FY07 as compared to the previous years15.8% thereby bringing a rise to Indias GDP to 15.5% during the year. The growth in the production has been there because ofconducive policy measures, growing domestic consumption, export market, improving production methods, technology, etc. SMEs did maintain equal growth rate in respect of the industrial sector during the FY03-07 with a growth of CAGR of 17%. (Sahu, P.P. (2005)). The SME sector has also reported growth higher that the overall manufacturing sector. The sector does not only provide output in the form of final goods but also capital goods which further form the input to heavy industries. The table below is indicative of the growth of SMEs in the Indian economy. The SMEs in India: Present Scenario: As quoted by Business World, Jan. 2007, small companies seems to have been performed much better as compared to their larger equivalents as between 2001-06, net companies with net turnover of Rs. 1 Crore 50 Crores had a higher growth rate of 701 per cent as compared to 169 per cent for large companies with turnover of over Rs. 1,000 Crore. (1 Crore Rupees is equal to 10 Million USD). The all time high of Rs. 1, 89,200 Crores of total SSI production reached in 1989-90 dramatically dropped in the next 10 years and increased later only 2001-02. After that, the production growth increased at a much greater pace in terms of units, production, employment and exports. (Ecotec Research Consulting (2004)). Currently, some of the SMEs, mostly ancillaries and export-oriented, are acquiring companies abroad as part of the Globalization process, catering to the needs of global manufacturers and suppliers like in Auto Industry. Some of these units have also invested in RD globally and taking help of outsourcing, in the fields of manufacturing and services, to emerge as a global leader because of the factors such as labor-intensive manufacturing, lower transport costs, lenient labor policies of the small scale sector. The next step to this would be a government initiative providing a risk-free environment, start-up capital, technology and training updates. No matter the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Act, 2006, which has been passed by the Government with the help of 300 industrial associations, many government departments and lot many stake holders, is a legal framework for providing capital investment to this sector, but the implementation of it involves a lot many agencies to come to gether and achieve it jointly. (Government of India (2005) The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Act, 2006: The Government of India passed The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Act in June 2006 after wide consultation with more than 300 industry associations, different government departments and multiple stake-holders across the country. The Act is geared towards promotion and enhancing the competitiveness of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. The Act tries to accomplish many long standing demands of multi stakeholders in the MSME sector. Another issue was the lending facilities to SMEs but as the mindset of the banks seems to change because of entry of large no. of private banks, which in turn led to increased competition and multiple financial options, the increased lending to the SMEs is actuated because of the compulsion from the market and the expansion of the companies. The lending to SMEs from the banks grew by 69% between 2000-01 and 2005-06. (Government of India (2005)). The UK SME Sector: The UKs SME sector forms the business backbone no matter it may be the restaurant or the web designer, by providing over 33% of the GDP and over 50% of employment. There are 3.6 million SMEs but 99.5% employ less than 200 people. Every year around 175,000 businesses register themselves for VAT and most of them survive by the end of the first year but, then onwards mortality rate takes hold and by the end of the third year approximately one third have failed. As per R3, the association of Business Recovery Professionals, as on one case, the worst places to start business would be Peterborough, Sunderland, Manchester, Bolton and Belfast with the highest failure rates, on the other hand, Llandrindod Wells, Truro, Southwest London, Guilford and Carlisle had the lowest failure rates. The failures occur because of the management failing to protect margins thus increasing its responsibility to 50%. Because of this Academy of Business Consultants believe that the founders of these businesses need the best assistance. (Sandesara, J.C. (1993)). The Qualitative Challenge: The World Banks `Doing Business 2007 Report places UK in the ninth position out of 175 in the world for starting a business. But when it comes to enforcing contracts, employing workers, and dealing with licenses, then it is not a rosy picture, as they are ranked as 22nd, 17th and 46th respectively. This led for a need of change in the current status of SMEs. (Kondaiah, C. (2007)). SME growth: the stylized facts: The international data available also claims that smaller and younger businesses experience wider variations in growth as compared to their larger and mature counterparts. However, only a bunch of these smaller and younger businesses account for bulk of employment, output or sales and producing spectacular growth fighting through the competitors. Keeping a sense of proportion: Apart from all this, the factors like innovation and economic activity still forms to be a disadvantage for the SMEs side. In the European Union it has recently been estimated that the mean share in activity of the largest four enterprises across a large sample of industries and countries was 20% with a maximum of 87%. These ratios appear to have been rising rather than falling in recent decades. (Kondaiah, C. (2007)). SMEs are generally backbone of the Industry. Napoleon said that British are a nation of shopkeepers. He was right much as Britain and a nation small and Medium sized enterprises.(Sandesara,J.C 1993) In the UK the Large enterprise consist of 1% and the rest 99% is small enterprises. If we consider the total working population that is 30million out of that 14.3 million is employed by SMEs. The GDP growth of U.K is 7.4% which would be impossible without the growth of the SMEs as disclosed by BERR. U.K SMEs account for 1.8 trillion pound GDP despite being half the picture of the whole industry. The UK Public sector which contributes up to 1/3rd of the total UK economy attracts strong political focus. This makes the UK SME sector to be considered as fragmented and also at times ignored. But the SME sector is of vital importance as it provides to be the stepping stone for the other large enterprises to be. According to the BERR statistics for 2007, the Small and Medium Enterprises which employ more than 100 employees but fewer than 200, employs 4.4% of the total working population but contributes 5.6% of the total UK GDP. The small enterprises are outperformed by the medium enterprise s in this context. Also, the enterprises that employ more than 50 employees but less than 100 also employ 4.4% of the workforce with an overall contribution of 5.7% to the total UK GDP. There is a lot of evidence that proves that the UK economy thrives on the performance of the SMEs and that with an improvement in the performance of this sector will benefit the improvement of the UK economy on the whole. There is a need for the Government to work closely with the sector to develop the sector and also for rapid growth of the UK economy. The SMEs, mostly ancillaries and export-oriented, are acquiring companies abroad as part of the Globalization process, catering to the needs of global manufacturers and suppliers like in Auto Industry. Some of these units have also invested in RD globally and taking help of outsourcing, in the fields of manufacturing and services, to emerge as a global leader because of the factors such as labor-intensive manufacturing, lower transport costs, lenient labor policies of the small scale sector. The next step to this would be a government initiative providing a risk-free environment, start-up capital, technology and training updates. No matter the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Act, 2006, which has been passed by the Government with the help of 300 industrial associations, many government departments and lot many stake holders, is a legal framework for providing capital investment to this sector, but the implementation of it involves a lot many agencies to come together and achieve it jointly. (Government of India (2005) Measuring innovation: Any attempt to assess innovative activity and performance must begin with the definition of suitable metrics. These usually fall into the two categories of input and output measures. Inputs usually include expenditure on RD, and measures of the staff employed in RD. Output measures include patents and measures of the incidence of product, process and logistic innovations. Distinctions can also be drawn between innovation new to the firm, (which may be diffusing from a de novo innovation activity in another firm), and more novel innovation which is new to the firm and to the industry. Each of these may lead to measures of innovation intensity in terms of innovation counts, as well as measures based on the distribution of sales by novelty of product or service innovation. Broadly speaking there are two approaches to obtaining data on innovation outputs. There is evidence to suggest that the object approach underestimates the innovative activity of smaller firms, in particular diffusion or incremental activity which the object approaches may overlook (OECD (1992)). The CBR has pioneered the subject approach in relation to UK data for SMEs and consequently its work directly complements UK Office for National Statistics data collected for CIS2, which has along with many EU countries limited coverage of the smallest firms (Cosh, Hughes ands Wood (1998)).The discussion in the rest of this paper draws on data based on the subject approach. Innovation in the EU In reporting innovation activity in the EU this paper relies on the results of the second Community Innovation Survey (CIS2), of 1997/1998, from which charts 1 to 6 are drawn (Cosh and Hughes (2001)). Twelve European States took part in the survey (all EU Member States except Denmark, Greece, Italy and Portugal, plus Norway). The survey was intended to cover allenterprises in manufacturing with 20 or More employeesand all service enterprises with 10 or more employees. These can be split into three size bands small (10 to 49 employees), medium (50 to 249 employees) and larger (250 or more employees). This allows a comparison of innovation activity by broad sector and size over the three-year period 1995-7. The results of CIS2 reveal that innovation activity rises with enterprise size in the EU as a whole which also shows that the result holds for both Manufacturing and Services. In the specific sense that the proportion of enterprises reporting one or more product or process innovations rise with size classes it seems that bigger is better. These results are at an aggregate EU level; it is instructive to disaggregate them by country, as well as size. To do this and to illustrate the relative innovative activity of the small firms in the UK the following charts 2-6 rank countries in terms of innovation performance of small firms, weaker countries are at the left and performance rises as we move to the right. Successive charts report on the proportion of product or process innovating enterprises in manufacturing, and the proportion of product innovators in manufacturing. The same measures are then shown for services, and then the final two charts report on the proportion of novel product innovators in manufacturing, and the proportion turnover due to new or improved products. Taken together these charts reveal that UK small firms are ranked in the top 4 in Europe in Manufacturing, and in the top 5 in Europe in Services. Moreover an inspection of the column pattern for medium and larger firms also reveals that UK small fir ms do better relatively than UK large firms and especially better than medium firms. In that comparative sense smaller is better. Analysis of innovation constraints and the innovation/ performance link using CBR survey results In order to probe behind these results and in particular to examine patterns of innovation constraints and the innovation/performance link we can use the results of the regular CBR biennial survey of SMEs in the UK. These cover 2500 enterprises in Manufacturing and Business Services employing between 1 and 500 employees. The latest results are based on the 4th survey of 1999. The surveys generate subject-based data on innovation inputs and outputs and over 200 company specific variables on enterprise structure and performance. (A full discussion of the dataset and the results summarized here can be found in Cosh and Hughes (1998) and Cosh and Hughes (2000a)). To conclude, we have substantial matter to prove that UK economy is supported by SME and that encouraging them and working with them will bring a positive effect on the UK economy. Chapter 4: SMEs: An Overview Contribution of SMEs: SMEs are the backbone or the key drivers of the industrial economy. They can also be described as the engines of growth of the industrial sector. Although they are individually small, collectively they play a multiplayer role in the development of an economy. They have a multiplayer impact in developed as well as developing economies. The main USP of SMEs is low cost production i.e. the ability to manufacture low volumes profitably, meet niche requirements, capitalize on local skills and resources, provide outsourcing opportunities and most importantly create jobs. The sector has been consolidating over the years. What is new is the articulation and recognition of this process and its pump priming role. Therefore national SME policies, programmes and enterprise development policies have been formulated to support smooth working of SMEs and to overcome major obstacles such as lack of legislation, promotion and infrastructure. This can be done in the form of promotion programmes, positive discrimination hand holding and advocacy. Policy initiatives seek to highlight basic SME skills in low cost production. SMEs have an impressive presence in service industry ranging from the simple and traditional organisations to the most modern and hi-tech ones. SMEs contribute not only in terms of quantitative factors such as output, employment, income, investment or exports but also in terms of qualitative factors viz the synergies they promote with large industry, their contribution towards balanced regional growth, their contribution in nurturing entrepreneurial spirit, innovation and in providing a nationwide pool of skilled and trained manpower. While the comparative advantage of SMEs are well acknowledged, SMEs also have their share of pros and cons which prevent them from realising their full potential. They have to face some problems such as lack of proper guidance in the initial stages, lack of funds in the times of crisis, lack of proper marketing strategies, stiff competition from big players, lack of access to latest technology, no proper infrastructure etc. Therefore, although new SMEs are emerging very rapidly worldwide, the number of SMEs closing down every year is also very high. Also because of the twin forces of globalization and free trade policy of WTO, there is a serious threat to the SMEs sector. It will have to reorient and reinvent itself to overcome these challenges. This can be done by restructuring the small scale organisations, and if nothing works, they have to be closed down. Closures are undesirable but sometimes they are advisable from the resource allocation point of view. Thus the high rate of entries and exits reflect the dynamic nature of this sector and also explains why it is seen as an industrial incubator. As mentioned earlier, SMEs play a very important role in the development of an economy, especially from the employment point of view. They are very effective for the generation of employment for both skilled as well as unskilled workers. Therefore labour extensive countries should opt for SMEs. Even the underdeveloped or developing countries which are capital intensive and labour extensive, SMEs can be a great help. There has been increasing growth of SMEs worldwide in the recent past. The government of the developed and developing economies have been formulating policies which promote smooth working of the SMEs. SMEs have contributed significantly in the developed as well as developing countries. In the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland there are more than 16 million enterprises; of which less than 1% comprise large companies while the rest are SMEs. Two thirds of the job opportunities are provided by SMEs in this region and the remaining one third of the job opportunities are by large companies. SMEs are considered the backbone of Asia Pacific region as they account for 90% of enterprises. They provide around 32% 48% of employment and their contribution to Gross Domestic Product is around 60% 80% in individual Asia Pacific economies. Even in the United States, SMEs contribute greatly. It contributed at around 43% of the net employment opportunities from 1990 1994.SMEs are considered the engine of economic growth in both developed and developing countries not only because of low cost production but also because of low unit cost of persons employed as compared to large scale enterprises. Thus they provide a significant share of overall employment. Also SMEs assist in local and regional development by regional dispersion of economic activities, thus helps achieving fair and equitable distribution of wealth. SMEs not only contribute towards the GDP but also towards the export revenues. Although SMEs are at a disadvantage in terms of finance, technology, human resource development and networking; SMEs involved in foreign trade are very dynamic. This may be due to its low-cost labour intensive nature of its products; and since these units generally use indigenous raw-materials; they have a positive effect on the trade balance. For example, SMEs in OECD member states produce about 26% of OECD countries exports, and about 35% of Asian exports. Also SMEs increase flexibility in the provision of services and the manufacture of a variety of consumer goods and competitiveness of the market place and thereby curb monopoly of large enterprises. All this leads to fostering of self-help and entrepreneurial culture by bringing together skills and capital through various lending and skill enhancement schemes. Thus SMEs not only enables an economy to maintain a reasonable growth rate but also imparts resilience to withstand economic upheavals. Chapter 5: Indias SME scenario: The Indian Small and Medium enterprises sector formally known as the Small Scale Industries (SSI) has had a notable importance since the period of Mahatma Gandhi. SSIs were set up in the rural parts of India with a view to inculcate the habit of self reliance amongst the people. Later on, after independence, the SSI units were an important source of income to the people of India. Indian policy makers had noticed the importance of this self reliant industry and had always been striving hard for their progress. After achieving independence in 1947, India drafted and adopted the Industrial Policy of 1948 which meant that the government would act as both an entrepreneur and also as a governing body. With the beginning of the planning of a free India in 1951, the role of SMEs has been earmarked specially. In its industrial policy, the government started announcing special schemes for the growth of the SMEs in India. It was in 1956, during the Second Five Year Plan that the government announced the Second Industrial Policy, clearly stating the importance of the SME sector. This gave an impetus to the development of SMEs in a manner that made it possible for them to achieve the objectives of: High contribution to domestic production. Significant export earnings. Low investment requirements. Operational flexibility. Low intensive imports. Capacity to develop appropriate indigenous technology. Import substitution. Technology-oriented industries. Competitiveness in domestic and export markets Today, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the ladder of progress for a nations economy, especially in case of developing countries. They contribute handsomely to the exports, the industrial base, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Gross National Product (GNP) of the nation. Small and medium enterprises help provide employment and various facilities to the society. In 2006, the Government of India passed an Act known as the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Act (MSMEDA), 2006 to define SME sector of India. This Act defines micro, small and medium enterprises in India on the basis type of sector namely manufacturing and the service sector. In case of manufacturing sector, the size of the enterprise is decided on the basis of investment in plant and machinery. In case of service sector enterprise, the size is decided on the basis of investment in equipment required to set up the industry. Strategic Importance of Indian SMEs: In Indian economy, the SMEs occupy a place of strategic importance due to its contribution to the overall output, exports and employment. The total number of SMEs has been increasing rapidly. The total number of registered enterprises has been around 3million and has been increasing at an even fas

Animal Imagery in Timothy Findley’s The Wars Essay -- Timothy Findley

Animal Imagery in Timothy Findley’s The Wars Sigmund Freud once argued that "our species has a volcanic potential to erupt in aggression . . . [and] that we harbour not only positive survival instincts but also a self-destructive 'death instinct', which we usually displace towards others in aggression" (Myers 666). Timothy Findley, born in 1930 in Toronto, Canada, explores our human predilection towards violence in his third novel, The Wars. It is human brutality that initiates the horrors of World War I, the war that takes place in this narrative. Findley dedicated this novel to the memory of his uncle, Thomas Irving Findley, who 'died at home of injuries inflicted in the First World War" (Cude 75) and may have propelled him to feel so strongly about "what people really do to one another" (Inside Memory 19). Findley feels a great fondness for animals, and this affection surfaces faithfully in many of his literary works. The Wars is a novel wrought with imagery, and the most often recurring pattern is that of animals. Throughou t the novel, young Robert Ross' strong connection with animals is continually depicted in his encounters with the creatures. Findley uses Robert to reveal the many similarities between humans and animals. The only quality, which we humans do not appear to share with our animal counterparts, is our inexplicable predisposition to needless savagery. In his video documentary, The Anatomy of a Writer, Findley describes his affinity for animals when he says that he has "always been in awe of . . . animals. [He has] never understood where [humankind] picked up the idea that [animals] are less than [people] are-that man is everything". In The Wars, Findley stresses his belief that humans are "no better and... ...s of humankind and the hostile environment we create. Although a common assumption is that animals are vicious and wild, there is no evidence of this in the novel. Malice appears to be solely attributable to humankind. This is the truism that Findley depicts in his telling of the tragic story of Robert Ross. Works Cited Cude, Wilf "Truth Slips In: Timothy Findley's Doors of Fiction" The Antigonish Review, Spring 1996, vol 27 pp75. Findley, Timothy. Inside Memory: Pages From a Writer's Notebook. Harper Collins, Toronto: 1990. Findley, Timothy. The Wars. Penguin Books, Toronto: 1996. Macartney-Filgate, Terence. Timothy Findley: Anatomy of a Writer. National Film Board of Canada, Toronto: 1992. Myers, David G. Psychology 6th ed. Worth Publishers, New York: 2001. Roberts, Carol. Timothy Findley: Stories from a Life. ECW Press, Toronto: 1994.

What is sociology, anyway? Why bother to study it?

The aspect of sociology mainly relates to the study of the human behavior, existence, and individual characteristics based on the collective perspective of the society. The importance of this field in science generally manifest in many ways varying from the views and interpretation of the person involved. In reply to the read article regarding a personal reflection towards sociology, this writer clearly understands that the author of the said article greatly appreciates the value of the aspect of sociology with its manifestation towards the said author’s life. Read also  Sociology and Social Integration. Parts of his realization are greatly inclined towards the aid of sociology for understanding the human behavior in the society and discovering the individual characteristics of each person in a collective perspective. By the inclusion of the sociological concepts, the author of the article was able to understand the individual differences in terms characteristics, behavior, intellect, and others relevant to his successful merge in his society. In agreement to the ideas presented of the author of the read article, indeed, the aspect of sociology explains that the individual differences of each person is rooted on the influence of numerous factors in the person’s development. Realizing this fact, it is important to acknowledge these factors in understanding the personal characteristics of each individual such as his or her opinion, values, perspective, behavior, and actions. Among these influential factors are the concepts of family background and culture wherein the former has changed significant in the present. Other than the traditional type of the family unit, new structure have already emerged in the present namely the extended and nuclear or modern type which also have significant influences in the personality development of the person involved in these family unit. The dominant culture existing inside the family also becomes a fundamental factor in the individual characteristic thus, should also be considered in the sociological analysis and understanding. Indeed, the factors of family background and culture significantly affect the development of individual personality and characteristics relative to understanding the differences of each person inside the collective group of their respective society. Being part of the broad field of sociology, indeed, it is important to consider this scientific field towards achieving development in the aspect of understanding social relationship and individual differences inside the organization of human society.

Intro to The Romantic Period Essay

At the turn of the century, fired by ideas of personal and political liberty and of the energy and sublimity of the natural world, artists and intellectuals sought to break the bonds of 18th-century convention. Although the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau and William Godwin had great influence, the French Revolution and its aftermath had the strongest impact of all. In England initial support for the Revolution was primarily utopian and idealist, and when the French failed to live up to expectations, most English intellectuals renounced the Revolution. However, the romantic vision had taken forms other than political, and these developed apace. In Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800), a watershed in literary history, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge presented and illustrated a beneficial visual: poetry should express, in genuine language, experience as filtered through personal emotion and imagination; the truest experience was to be found in nature. The concept of the Sublime strengthened this turn to nature, because in wild countrysides the power of the sublime could be felt most immediately. Wordsworth’s romanticism is probably most fully realized in his great autobiographical poem, â€Å"The Prelude† (1805–50). In search of sublime moments, romantic poets wrote about the marvelous and supernatural, the exotic, and the medieval. But they also found beauty in the lives of simple rural people and aspects of the everyday world. The second generation of romantic poets included John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron. In Keats’s great odes, intellectual and emotional sensibility merge in language of great power and beauty. Shelley, who combined soaring lyricism with an apocalyptic political vision, sought more extreme effects and occasionally achieved them, as in his great drama Prometheus Unbound (1820). Lord Byron was the prototypical romantic hero, the envy and scandal of the age. He has been continually identified with his own characters, particularly the rebellious, irreverent, erotically inclined Don Juan. Byron invested the romantic lyric with a rationalist irony. The romantic era was also rich in literary criticism and other nonfictional prose. Coleridge proposed an influential theory of literature in his Biographia Literaria (1817). William Godwin and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote ground–breaking books on human, and women’s, rights. William Hazlitt, who never forsook political radicalism, wrote brilliant and astute literary  criticism. The master of the personal essay was Charles Lamb, whereas Thomas De Quincey was master of the personal confession. The periodicals Edinburgh Review and Blackwood’s Magazine, in which leading writers were published throughout the century, were major forums of controversy, political as well as literary. ————————————————- Although the great novelist Jane Austen wrote during the romantic era, her work defies classification. With insight, grace, and irony she delineated human relationships within the context of English country life. Sir Walter Scott, Scottish nationalist and romantic, made the genre of the historical novel widely popular. Other novelists of the period were Maria Edgeworth, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and Thomas Love Peacock, the latter noted for his eccentric novels satirizing the romantics. The Romantic period The nature of Romanticism As a term to cover the most distinctive writers who flourished in the last years of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th, â€Å"Romantic† is indispensable but also a little misleading: there was no self-styled â€Å"Romantic movement† at the time, and the great writers of the period did not call themselves Romantics. Not until August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s Vienna lectures of 1808–09 was a clear distinction established between the  Ã¢â‚¬Å"organic,† â€Å"plastic† qualities of Romantic art and the â€Å"mechanical† character of Classicism. Many of the age’s foremost writers thought that something new was happening in the world’s affairs, nevertheless. William Blake’s affirmation in 1793 that â€Å"a new heaven is begun† was matched a generation later by Percy Bysshe Shelley’s â€Å"The world’s great age begins anew.† â€Å"These, these will give the world another heart, / A nd other pulses,† wrote John Keats, referring to Leigh Hunt andWilliam Wordsworth. Fresh ideals came to the fore; in particular, the ideal of freedom, long cherished in England, was being extended to every range of human endeavour. As that ideal swept through Europe, it became natural to believe that the age of tyrants might soon end. The most notable feature of the poetry of the time is the new role of individual thought and personal feeling. Where the main trend of 18th-century poetics had been to praise the general, to see the poet as a spokesman of society addressing a cultivated and homogeneous audience and having as his end the conveyance of â€Å"truth,† the Romantics found the source of poetry in the particular, unique experience. Blake’s marginal comment on Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses expresses the position with characteristic vehemence: â€Å"To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the alone Distinction of Merit.† The poet was seen as an individual distinguished from his fellows by the intensity of his perceptions, taking as his basic subject matter the workings of his own mind. Poetry was regarded as conveying its own truth; sincerity was the criterion by which it was to be judged. The emphasis on feeling—seen perhaps at its finest in the poems of Robert Burns—was in some ways a continuation of the earlier â€Å"cult of sensibility†; and it is worth remembering that Alexander Pope praised his father as having known no language but the language of the heart. But feeling had begun to receive particular emphasis and is found in most of the Romantic definitions of poetry. Wordsworth called poetry â€Å"the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,† and in 1833 John Stuart Mill defined poetry as â€Å"feeling itself, employing thought only as the medium of its utterance.† It followed that the best poetry was that in which the greatest intensity of feeling was expressed, and hence a new importance was attached to the lyric. Another key quality of Romantic writing was its shift from the mimetic, or imitative, assumptions of the Neoclassical era to a new stress onimagination. Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw  the imagination as the supre me poetic quality, a quasi-divine creative force that made the poet a godlike being. Samuel Johnson had seen the components of poetry as â€Å"invention, imagination and judgement,† but Blake wrote: â€Å"One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination, the Divine Vision.† The poets of this period accordingly placed great emphasis on the workings of the unconscious mind, on dreams and reveries, on the supernatural, and on the childlike or primitive view of the world, this last being regarded as valuable because its clarity and intensity had not been overlaid by the restrictions of civilized â€Å"reason.† Rousseau’s sentimental conception of the â€Å"noble savage† was often invoked, and often by those who were ignorant that the phrase is Dryden’s or that the type was adumbrated in the â€Å"poor Indian† of Pope’s An Essay on Man. A further sign of the diminished stress placed on judgment is the Romantic attitude to form: if poetry must be spontaneous, sincere, intense, it should be fashioned primarily according to th e dictates of the creative imagination. Wordsworth advised a young poet, â€Å"You feel strongly; trust to those feelings, and your poem will take its shape and proportions as a tree does from the vital principle that actuates it.† This organic view of poetry is opposed to the classical theory of â€Å"genres,† each with its own linguistic decorum; and it led to the feeling that poetic sublimity was unattainable except in short passages. Hand in hand with the new conception of poetry and the insistence on a new subject matter went a demand for new ways of writing. Wordsworth and his followers, particularly Keats, found the prevailing poetic diction of the late 18th century stale and stilted, or â€Å"gaudy and inane,† and totally unsuited to the expression of their perceptions. It could not be, for them, the language of feeling, and Wordsworth accordingly sought to bring the language of poetry back to that of common speech. Wordsworth’s own diction, however, often differs from his theory. Nevertheless, when he published his preface to Lyrical Ballads in 1800, the time was ripe for a change: the flexible diction of earlier 18th-century poetry had hardened into a merely conventional language. Poetry BLAKE, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE Useful as it is to trace the common elements in Romantic poetry, there was little conformity among the poets themselves. It is misleading to read the poetry of the first Romantics as if it had been written primarily to express  their feelings. Their concern was rather to change the intellectual climate of the age. William Blake had been dissatisfied since boyhood with the current state of poetry and what he considered the irreligious drabness of contemporary thought. His early development of a protective shield of mocking humour with which to face a world in which science had become trifling and art inconsequential is visible in the satirical An Island in the Moon (written c. 1784–85); he then took the bolder step of setting aside sophistication in the visionary Songs of Innocence (1789). His desire for renewal encouraged him to view the outbreak of the French Revolution as a momentous event. In works such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–93) and Songs of Expe rience (1794), he attacked the hypocrisies of the age and the impersonal cruelties resulting from the dominance of analytic reason in contemporary thought. As it became clear that the ideals of the Revolution were not likely to be realized in his time, he renewed his efforts to revise his contemporaries’ view of the universe and to construct a new mythology centred not in the God of the Bible but in Urizen, a repressive figure of reason and law whom he believed to be the deity actually worshipped by his contemporaries. The story of Urizen’s rise was set out in The First Book of Urizen (1794) and then, more ambitiously, in the unfinished manuscript Vala (later redrafted as The Four Zoas), written from about 1796 to about 1807. Blake developed these ideas in the visionary narratives of Milton (1804–08) and Jerusalem (1804–20). Here, still using his own mythological characters, he portrayed the imaginative artist as the hero of society and suggested the possibility of redemption from the fallen (or Urizenic) condition. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, meanwhile, were also exploring the implication s of the French Revolution. Wordsworth, who lived in France in 1791–92 and fathered an illegitimate child there, was distressed when, soon after his return, Britain declared war on the republic, dividing his allegiance. For the rest of his career, he was to brood on those events, trying to develop a view of humanity that would be faithful to his twin sense of the pathos of individual human fates and the unrealized potentialities in humanity as a whole. The first factor emerges in his early manuscript poems â€Å"The Ruined Cottage† and â€Å"The Pedlar† (both to form part of the later Excursion); the second was developed from 1797, when he and his sister, Dorothy, with whom he was living in the west  of England, were in close contact with Coleridge. Stirred simultaneously by Dorothy’s immediacy of feeling, manifested everywhere in her Journals (written 1798–1803, published 1897), and by Coleridge’s imaginative and speculative genius, he produced the poems collected in Lyrical Ballads(1798). The volume began with Coleridge’s â€Å"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,† continued with poems displaying delight in the powers of nature and the humane instincts of ordinary people, and concluded with the meditative â€Å"Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,† Wordsworth’s attempt to set out his mature faith in nature and humanity. His investigation of the relationship between nature and the human mind continued in the long autobiographical poem addressed to Coleridge and later titled The Prelude (1798–99 in two books; 1804 in five books; 1805 in 13 books; revised continuously and published posthumously, 1850). Here he traced the value for a poet of having been a child â€Å"fostered alike by beauty and by fear† by an upbringing in sublime surroundings. The Prelude constitutes the most significant English expression of the Romantic discovery of the self as a topic for art and literature. The poem also makes much of the work of memory, a theme explored as well in the â€Å"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.† In poems such as â€Å"Michael† and â€Å"The Brothers,† by contrast, written for the second volume of Lyrical Ballads (1800), Wordsworth dwelt on the pathos and potentialities of ordinary lives. Coleridge’s poetic development during these years paralleled Wordsworth’s. Having briefly brought together images of nature and the mind in â€Å"The Eolian Harp† (1796), he devoted himself to more-public concerns in poems of political and social prophecy, such as â€Å"Religious Musings† and â€Å"The Destiny of Nations.† Becoming disillusioned in 1798 with his earlier politics, however, and encouraged by Wordsworth, he turned back to the relatio nship between nature and the human mind. Poems such as â€Å"This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,† â€Å"The Nightingale,† and â€Å"Frost at Midnight† (now sometimes called the â€Å"conversation poems† but collected by Coleridge himself as â€Å"Meditative Poems in Blank Verse†) combine sensitive descriptions of nature with subtlety of psychological comment. â€Å"Kubla Khan† (1797 or 1798, published 1816), a poem that Coleridge said came to him in â€Å"a kind of Reverie,† represented a new kind of exotic writing, which he also exploited in the supernaturalism of â€Å"The Ancient Mariner† and the unfinished  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Christabel.† After his visit to Germany in 1798–99, he renewed attention to the links between the subtler forces in nature and the human psyche; this attention bore fruit in letters, notebooks, literary criticism, theology, and philosophy. Simultaneously, his poetic output became sporadic. â€Å"Dejection: An Ode† (1802), another meditat ive poem, which first took shape as a verse letter to Sara Hutchinson, Wordsworth’s sister-in-law, memorably describes the suspension of his â€Å"shaping spirit of Imagination.† The work of both poets was directed back to national affairs during these years by the rise ofNapoleon. In 1802 Wordsworth dedicated a number of sonnets to the patriotic cause. The death in 1805 of his brother John, who was a captain in the merchant navy, was a grim reminder that, while he had been living in retirement as a poet, others had been willing to sacrifice themselves. From this time the theme of duty was to be prominent in his poetry. His political essay Concerning the Relations of Great Britain, Spain and Portugal†¦as Affected by the Convention of Cintra (1809) agreed with Coleridge’s periodical The Friend (1809–10) in deploring the decline of principle among statesmen. When The Excursion appeared in 1814 (the time of Napoleon’s first exile), Wordsworth announced the poem as the central section of a longer projected work, The Recluse, â€Å"a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society.† The plan was not fulfilled, however, and The Excursion was left to stand in its own right as a poem of moral and religious consolation for those who had been disappointed by the failure of French revolutionary ideals. Both Wordsworth and Coleridge benefited from the advent in 1811 of the Regency, which brought a renewed interest in the arts. Coleridge’s lectures on Shakespeare became fashionable, his playRemorse was briefly produced, and his volume of poems Christabel; Kubla Khan: A Vision; The Pains of Sleep was published in 1816. Biographia Literaria (1817), an account of his own development, combined philosophy and literary criticism in a new way and made an enduring and important contribution to literary theory. Coleridge settled at Highgate in 1816, and he was sought there as â€Å"the most impressive talker of his age† (in the words of the essayist William Hazlitt). His later religious writings made a considerable impact on Victorian readers. No other period in English literature displays more variety in style, theme, and content than the Romantic Movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Furthermore, no period has been the topic of so much disagreement and confusion over its defining principles and aesthetics. Romanticism, then, can best be described as a large network of sometimes competing philosophies, agendas, and points of interest. In England, Romanticism had its greatest influence from the end of the eighteenth century up through about 1870. Its primary vehicle of expression was in poetry, although novelists adopted many of the same themes. In America, the Romantic Movement was slightly delayed and modulated, holding sway over arts and letters from roughly 1830 up to the Civil War. Contrary to the English example, American literature championed the novel as the most fitting genre for Romanticism’s exposition. In a broader sense, Romanticism can be conceived as an adjective which is applicable to the literature of virtually any time period. With that in mind, anything from the Homeric epics to modern dime novels can be said to bear the stamp of Romanticism. In spite of such general disagreements over usage, there are some definitive and universal statements one can make regarding the nature of the Romantic Movement in both England and America. First and foremost, Romanticism is concerned with the individual more than with society. The individual consciousness and especially the individual imagination are especially fascinating for the Romantics. â€Å"Melancholy† was quite the buzzword for the Romantic poets, and altered states of consciousness were often sought after in order to enhance one’s creative potential. There was a coincident downgrading of the importance and power of reason, clearly a reaction against the Enlightenment mode of thinking. Nevertheless, writers became gradually more invested in social causes as the period moved forward. Thanks largely to the Industrial Revolution, English society was undergoing the most severe paradigm shifts it had seen in living memory. The response of many early Romantics was to yearn for an idealized, simpler past. In particular, English Romantic poets had a strong connection with medievalism and mythology. The tales of King Arthur were especially resonant to their imaginations. On top of this, there was a clearly mystical quality to Romantic writing that sets it apart from other literary periods. Of course, not every Romantic poet or novelist displayed all, or even most of these traits all the time. On the formal  level, Romanticism witnessed a steady loosening of the rules of artistic expression that were pervasive during earlier times. The Neoclassical Period of the eighteenth century included very strict expectations regarding the structure and content of poetry. By the dawn of the nineteenth century, experimentation with new styles and subjects became much more acceptable. The high-flown language of the previous generation’s poets was replaced with more natural cadences and verbiage. In terms of poetic form, rhymed stanzas were slowly giving way to blank verse, an unrhymed but still rhythmic style of poetry. The purpose of blank verse was to heighten conversational speech to the level of austere beauty. Some criticized the new style as mundane, yet the innovation soon became the preferred style. One of the most popular themes of Romantic poetry was country life, otherwise known as pastoral poetry. Mythological and fantastic settings were also employed to great effect by many of the Romantic poets. Though struggling and unknown for the bulk of his life, poet and artist William Blake was certainly one of the most creative minds of his generation. He was well ahead of his time, predating the high point of English Romanticism by several decades. His greatest work was composed during the 1790s, in the shadow of the French Revolution, and that confrontation informed much of his creative process. Throughout his artistic career, Blake gradually built up a sort of personal mythology of creation and imagination. The Old and New Testaments were his source material, but his own sensibilities transfigured the Biblical stories and led to something entirely original and completely misunderstood by contemporaries. He attempted to woo patrons to his side, yet his unstable temper made him rather difficult to work with professionally. Some considered him mad. In addition to writing poetry of the first order, Blake was also a master engraver. His greatest contributions to Romantic literature were his self-published, quasi-mythological illustrated poetry collections. Gloriously colored and painstaking in their design, few of these were produced and fewer still survive to the present day. However, the craft and genius behind a work like The Marriage of Heaven and Hell cannot be ignored. If one could identify a single voice as the standard-bearer of Romantic sensibilities, that voice would belong to William Wordsworth. His publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is identified by many as the opening act of the Romantic Period in English literature. It was a hugely successful  work, requiring several reprinting over the years. The dominant theme of Lyrical Ballads was Nature, specifically the power of Nature to create strong impressions in the mind and imagination. The voice in Wordsworth’s poetry is observant, meditative and aware of the connection between living things and objects. There is the sense that past, present, and future all mix together in the human consciousness. One feels as though the poet and the landscape are in communion, each a partner in an act of creative production. Wordsworth quite deliberately turned his back on the Enlightenment traditions of poetry, specifically the work of Alexander Pope. He instead looked more to the Renaissance and the Classics of Greek and Latin epic poetry for inspiration. His work was noted for its accessibility. The undeniable commercial success of LyricalBallads does not diminish the profound effect it had on an entire generation of aspiring writers. In the United State, Romanticism found its voice in the poets and novelists of the American Renaissance. The beginnings of American Romanticism went back to the New England Transcendental Movement. The concentration on the individual mind gradually shifted from an optimistic brand of spiritualism into a more modern, cynical study of the underside of humanity. The political unrest in mid-nineteenth century America undoubtedly played a role in the development of a darker aesthetic. At the same time, strongly individualist religious traditions played a large part in the development of artistic creations. The Protestant work ethic, along with the popularity and fervor of American religious leaders, fed a literary output that was undergird with fire and brimstone. The middle of the nineteenth century has only in retrospect earned the label of the American Renaissance in literature. No one alive in the 1850s quite realized the flowering of creativity that was underway. In fact, the novelists who today are regarded as classic were virtually unknown during their lifetimes. The novelists working during this period, particularly Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, were crafting dens ely symbolic and original pieces of literature that nonetheless relied heavily upon the example of English Romanticism. However, there work was in other respects a clean break with any permutation of Romanticism that had come before. There was a darkness to American Romanticism that was clearly distinct from the English examples of earlier in the century. Herman Melville died penniless and unknown, a failed writer who recognized his own  brilliance even when others did not. It would take the Modernists and their reappraisal of American arts and letters to resuscitate Melville’s literary corpus. In novels like Benito Cereno and Moby Dick, Melville employed a dense fabric of hinted meanings and symbols that required close reading and patience. Being well-read himself, Melville’s writing betrays a deep understanding of history, mythology, and religion. With Moby Dick, Melville displays his research acumen, as in the course of the novel the reader learns more than they thought possible about whales and whaling. The novel itself is dark, mysterious, and hints at the supernatural. Superficia lly, the novel is a revenge tale, but over and above the narrative are meditations of madness, power, and the nature of being human. Interestingly, the narrator in the first few chapters of the novel more or less disappears for most of the book. He is in a sense swallowed up by the mania of Captain Ahab and the crew. Although the novel most certainly held sway, poetry was not utterly silent during the flowering of American Romanticism. Arguably the greatest poet in American literary history was Walt Whitman, and he took his inspiration from many of the same sources as his fellows working in the novel. His publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855 marked a critical moment in the history of poetry. Whitman’s voice in his poetry was infused with the spirit of democracy. He attempted to include all people in all corners of the Earth within the sweep of his poetic vision. Like Blake, Whitman’s brand of poetics was cosmological and entirely unlike anything else being produced at the time. Like the rest of the poets in the Romantic tradition, Whitman coined new words, and brought a diction and rhythmic style t o verse that ran counter to the aesthetics of the last century. Walt Whitman got his start as a writer in journalism, and that documentary style of seeing the world permeated all his creative endeavors. In somewhat of a counterpoint to Whitman’s democratic optimism stands Edgar Allen Poe, today recognized as the most purely Romantic poet and short story writer of his generation. Poe crafted fiction and poetry that explored the strange side of human nature. The English Romantics had a fascination with the grotesque and of â€Å"strange† beauty, and Poe adopted this aesthetic perspective willingly. His sing-song rhythms and dreary settings earned him criticism on multiple fronts, but his creativity earned him a place in the first rank of American artists. He is credited as the inventor of detective fiction, and was likewise one of the  original masters of horror. A sometimes overlooked contribution, Poe’s theories on literature are often required reading for students of the art form. The master of symbolism in American litera ture was Nathaniel Hawthorne. Each of his novels represents worlds imbued with the power of suggestion and imagination. The Scarlet Letter is often placed alongside Moby Dick as one of the greatest novels in the English language. Not a single word is out of place, and the dense symbolism opens the work up to multiple interpretations. There are discussions of guilt, family, honor, politics, and society. There is also Hawthorne’s deep sense of history. Modern readers often believe that The Scarlet Letter was written during the age of the Puritans, but in fact Hawthorne wrote a story that was in the distant past even in his own time. Another trademark of the novel is its dabbling in the supernatural, even the grotesque. One gets the sense, for example, that maybe something is not quite right with Hester’s daughter Pearl. Nothing is what it appears to be in The Scarlet Letter, and that is the essence of Hawthorne’s particular Romanticism. Separate from his literary production, Hawthorne wrote expansively on literary theory and criticism. His theories exemplify the Romantic spirit in American letters at mid-century. He espoused the conviction that objects can hold significance deeper than their apparent meaning, and that the symbolic nature of reality was the most fertile ground for literature. In his short stories especially, Hawthorne explored the complex system of meanings and sensations that shift in and out of a person’s consciousness. Throughout his writings, one gets a sense of darkness, if not outright pessimism. There is the sense of not fully understanding the world, of not getting the entire picture no matter how hard one tries. In a story like â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† neither the reader nor the protagonist can distinguish reality from fantasy with any sureness. As has been argued, Romanticism as a literary sensibility never completely disappeared. It was overtaken by other aesthetic paradigms like Realism and Modernism, but Romanticism was always lurking under the surface. Many great poets and novelists of the twentieth century cite the Romantics as their greatest inspirational voices. The primary reason that Romanticism fell out of the limelight is because many writers felt the need to express themselves in a more immediate way. The Romantic poets were regarded as innovators, but a bit lost in their own imaginations. The real problems of  life in the world seemed to be pushed aside. As modernization continued unchecked, a more earthy kind of literature was demanded, and the Romantics simply did not fit that bill.

Nutrition essays

Nutrition essays Throughout the history of mankind science has searched into the realms of the unknown. Along with it bringing new discoveries, allowing for our lives to become healthier, more efficient, safer, and at the same time, possibly more dangerous. Among the forces driving scientists into these many experiments, is the desire to preserve the one fuel that keeps our lives going; FOOD. As early as the beginning of the 19th century, major breakthroughs in food preservation had begun. Soldiers and seamen, fighting in Napoleons army were living off of salt-preserved meats. These poorly cured foods provided minimal nutritional value, and frequent outbreaks of scurvy were developing. It was Napoleon who began the search for a better mechanism of food preservation, and it was he who offered 12,000-franc pieces to the person who devised a safe and dependable food-preservation process. The winner was a French chemist named Nicolas Appert. He observed that food heated in sealed containers was preserved as long as the container remained unopened or the seal did not leak. This became the turning point in food preservation history. Fifty years following the discovery by Nicolas Appert, another breakthrough had developed. Another Frenchman, named Louis Pasteur, noted the relationship between microorganisms and food spoilage. This breakthrough increased the dependability of the food canning process. As the years passed new techniques assuring food preservation would come and go, opening new doors to further research. Farmers grow fruits and vegetables and fatten livestock. The fruits and vegetables are harvested, and the livestock is slaughtered for food. What happens between the time food leaves the farm and the time it is eaten at the table? Like all living things, the plants and animals that become food contain tiny organisms called microorganisms. Living, healthy plants and animals automatically control most of these microorganisms. But when the pla...

Lagosuchus - Facts and Figures

Lagosuchus - Facts and Figures Name: Lagosuchus (Greek for rabbit crocodile); pronounced LAY-go-SOO-cuss Habitat: Woodlands of South America Historical Period: Middle Triassic (230 million years ago) Size and Weight: About a foot long and one pound Diet: Meat Distinguishing Characteristics: Tiny size; bipedal posture; long hind legs About Lagosuchus Although it wasnt a true dinosaur, many paleontologists believe Lagosuchus may have been the genus of archosaur from which all dinosaurs subsequently evolved. This tiny reptile certainly had plenty of dinosaur-like characteristics, including long legs, large feet, a flexible tail, and (at least some of the time) a bipedal posture, giving it an uncanny similarity to the first theropods of the middle to late Triassic period. If you doubt that a mighty race of dinosaurs could have evolved from a tiny creature that weighed about a pound, keep in mind that all of todays mammalsincluding whales, hippopotamuses, and elephantscan trace their lineage back to comparably tiny, shrew-like mammals that scurried under the feet of huge dinosaurs a hundred million years ago! (By the way, among paleontologists, the genus Marasuchus is often used interchangeably with Lagosuchus, since its represented by more complete fossil remains.)

Linguistic Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Linguistic - Assignment Example In most cases, nouns and pronouns perform the grammatical functions of subject. Because of this, nouns and pronouns should appear at the beginning of a sentence (Lyons, 75). Again, the same rules apply to the use of adjectives, since adjectives or adjectival phrases may also perform the grammatical function of a subject. Because of this, it is expedient to have a preposition or a prepositional phrase coming after the adjectival phrase functioning as the subject. It is for this reason that the sentence below may be correct. The converse of the foregoing is also true that in most cases, content words do not only serve as the subject, but also as the object. Since the object appears at the ultimate position of an active sentence, it is sound that a sentence is completed with a noun, a pronoun or an adjective. For this reason, it may be grammatically correct to say: In a different wavelength, Winston Churchill’s sentence: This is something up with which I will not put is wrong because it splits the to-infinitive. Prepositions are always combined with verbs to form the to-infinitive. Therefore, splitting the to-infinitive may make understanding the sentence difficult because it ignores the short-dependency that the to-infinitive put-up should

Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 2

Philosophy - Essay Example While there is a general dictionary understanding of a gadfly, when examining the lives of Socrates, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, one can view their thematic similarities and come to understand the definition of gadfly incarnate. In these regards, all men share a similar propensity towards upsetting the status quo. In the case of Socrates it was through his influence on the Athenian youth that upset the upper level powers that ultimately put him to death. In the instances of Dr. King and Malcom X they work towards upsetting the status quo through fighting, albeit in different ways, for equal rights. In letters from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. speaks of a creative tension that must exist for true social progress to occur. In discussing this creative tension, King has been addressing criticism he has received for protests in which took part in with which he has been imprisoned for. The general theme of his letter is addresses the reasons for this non-violent protest . When he reaches the part that refers to creative tension, he is actually referring to the necessity of protest to bring individuals to the negotiating table. This is in essence the creative tension that king is referring to; it is not a violent way of sparking negotiation or change, but a non-violent yet direct means of creatively producing tension in the social environment so that political powers will take notice and engage in meaningful discussion. C) Creative tension is demonstrated in both the lives of Socrates and Martin Luther King Jr. As is noted above, Martin Luther King’s understanding of creative tension is non-violent protest that leads to the implementation of social change. In ‘Letters from a Birmingham Jail’ King brilliantly elucidates his stance on this issue as he demonstrates the reasons behind his engaging in the non-violent protest, One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham (King). Here King is demonstrating that the protest was necessary to so that the mayor would agree to negotiate. In Socrates, one sees a slightly different incarnation of creative tension. Both Socrates and Dr. King demonstrate a willingness to challenge society based on a belief that there are aspects of the social order that must be overturned to enact a more fair and balanced means of existence. In the Apology, Socrates states, For know that this is the command of God; and I believe that no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul (Plato 30a). In these regards, Socrates version of creative tension is much more closely linked to a belief in a higher state of consciousness that must be followed rather than the constructs of the social order. While Socrates is speaking to society at large, his message of creative tension is ultimately a more personal one. Socrates is indicating that one should improve their soul and follow this path to genuine existence and knowledge even at the cost of death. D) When considering Malcolm X, one notes that his ultimate goal is similar to Dr. King’s in that both men desire equal rights for the races. With Malcolm X, the main difference is his extremity, as he believes this should be achieved at all costs, even violence. His rational for this is related to historical precedent, as he points to the bloodshed that was lost in the Re volutionary War over achieving equal rights, and argues that similar steps must be

O-zone Depletion Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

O-zone Depletion - Research Paper Example In this context the problem of ozone depletion can be explored. The ozone layer can be thought of as a giant sunshade that covers around 9 to 19 miles above Earth surface protecting the plants and animals of the earth from the harmful ultraviolet B rays (U.V B) radiated by the Sun. Stratosphere contains Ozone (O3) in the form of a layer surrounding it. The stratospheric span is around 30 miles above the surface of the earth. The harmful U.V rays are absorbed by the ozone layer that prevents it from entering the earth surface. However, if and when ozone is found on the earth surface, it can act as a very harmful pollutant. Moreover, ozone is responsible for the greenhouse effect. (Ozone Depletion  Losing Earth’s Protective Layer, n.d.) This paper attempts at discussing the underlying causes and effects of Ozone depletion and tries to make a comparative study of the various environmental policies taken to combat the problems related to ozone layer depletion and its possible so lutions.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Causes and Effects of Ozone Depletion: In recent years, ozone layer depletion has been a subject of concern for the scientists. Ozone layer depletion was first discovered in the 1980s with Antarctica being the earliest of the victims. Ozone depletion in stratosphere is being considered the foremost problem regarding environmental degradation, which threatens the very existence of life on the planet. A large stratospheric hole had been discovered just above Antarctica which is increasing everyday letting the harmful U.V B rays to enter the earth surface which is resulting in elevating the risk of skin cancer, immunological and genetic damages and cataracts in the eyes. It is also causing skin burns in whales and massive damage to essential food crops such as wheat, rice etc., and increase in production of harmful vitamin D. Moreover, impact of anthropocentric activities in the troposphere and stratosphere ha s been on the rise, which also results in depletion of ozone layer. This has allowed Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS) like halocarbon refrigerants (CFCs, halons, freons) emanated from man made cars and factories to reach the stratosphere and degrade it further. The halocarbons are chemically photo dissociated and enabled to release halogens, which through a series of chain reactions destabilizes ozone and converts it to oxygen (Melott & Thomas, 2011). In the past one and a half decade some measures have been undertaken in terms of international protocols and policies in order to combat this environmental threat.  To understand and improve upon these measures an evaluation of these policies and protocols might help. International protocols and their evaluation    Kyoto Protocol:   The Kyoto Protocol treaty comprises of a set of rules by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiated at Kyoto, Japan in 19th of December 1997 agreed five years back at th e Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and have been operational since 16th of February, 2005. It is a legally binding protocol according to which the industrialized nations would have to make a cut in their collective emissions of Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases by 5.2%  and were expected to reduce emissions by 29% within 2010.The aim was to reduce overall emissions of six main harmful greenhouse gases including methane, CFC and nitrous oxide, calculated over a 5- year period average of

The Negative Social Psychological Impact of Overdependence on and Long Essay

The Negative Social Psychological Impact of Overdependence on and Long Exposures to Computers - Essay Example Bordia, P. (1997) â€Å"Face-to-Face versus Computer-Mediated Communication: A Synthesis of the Experimental Literature† The Journal of Business Communication, 34(1), 99+ Bullinger, H. & Ziegler, J. (1999) Human-Computer Interaction: Communication, Cooperation, and Application Design. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ellul, J. (1967) The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books. George, J. (2004) Computers in society: privacy, ethics, and the Internet. The University of Michigan: Pearson Prentice Hall. Morley, D. (2010) Understanding Computers in a Changing Society. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. O’Brien, J. (1991) Introduction to information systems in business management. The University of Michigan: Irwin. Sanders, D. & Fry, R. (1981) Computers in society. The University of California: McGraw-Hill. Shotton, M. (1989) Computer Addiction? A Study of Computer Dependency. London: Taylor & Francis. What dangers are there for a society which depends on computer screens rather than face-to-face contact for its main means of communication? Introduction Present-day societies are becoming more and more dependent on technologies. ‘Internet’, ‘Google’, ‘Skype’, and ‘Facebook’ have become widely popular terms. The assumption is that computers can give instant knowledge or answers to almost all kinds of questions and, lately, provide adequate or, at best, lucrative employment. Since computers seem to offer an immediate access to knowledge or information, they have turned out to be substitutes for traditional knowledge-acquisition techniques, the pure knowledge foundation desired by classical Greece (Sanders & Fry 1981). Moreover, since computers are unrestrained by human eccentricities, their application sidesteps an array of ordinary... Present-day societies are becoming more and more dependent on technologies. ‘Internet’, ‘Google’, ‘Skype’, and ‘Facebook’ have become widely popular terms. The assumption is that computers can give instant knowledge or answers to almost all kinds of questions and, lately, provide adequate or, at best, lucrative employment. Since computers seem to offer an immediate access to knowledge or information, they have turned out to be substitutes for traditional knowledge-acquisition techniques, the pure knowledge foundation desired by classical Greece (Sanders & Fry 1981). Moreover, since computers are unrestrained by human eccentricities, their application sidesteps an array of ordinary activities and issues in putting in order everyday endeavours. Putting in order human affairs based on computer technologies give social institutions rationality and consistency. Emphasising this drive to transfer to computers task for setting up a strong social order, a number of scholars, like Jacques Ellul (1967), claimed in the past that ‘technological slavery’ would eventually emerge. This argument proposes that the current overdependence on computers has become dangerous to contemporary societies. The Negative Social Psychological Impact of overdependence on and Long Exposures to Computers.

Using the first person In research writing Coursework

Using the first person In research writing - Coursework Example For this reason, using a first person pronoun improves a researcher’s writing style. The third benefit for the first person pronoun is that it makes the researcher position himself in the study. In certain researches, one needs to explain how the ideas or research build on or departed from other people’s work, in this case the researcher will say â€Å"I†. For this reason, when one needs to claim some authority, on a given topic, then first person pronoun might help. There are few disadvantages of using first person pronoun in a research setting. It is always recommended that the researcher need to see the entire research from a third person perspective, this is because the first person pronouns is less professional. Additionally, it much difficult to for one to analyze the whole situation from the perspective of a first person, compared to the third person. The above named disadvantages provide the same reason why institutions do not allow the use of these pronouns. I do not agree the decision that the institutions hold against using the pronouns. This is because despite the named disadvantages, first person pronouns enable a research paper to have that assertiveness and clarity in their discussion, thereby providing a unique argument and

In Raymond Carver's, short stories, How does one reach enlightenment Research Paper

In Raymond Carver's, short stories, How does one reach enlightenment - Research Paper Example The purpose of this paper is to analyze how one reaches enlightenment in Raymond Carver’s short stories. Thesis of the paper can be put as enlightenment is reached through spiritual transformation of an individual who becomes capable of valuing his/her own self, others, and relationship with others. Writer’s short story Cathedral, which was published in 1983, analyses the issue of human ignorance. Cathedral belongs to literary subgenre called psychological realism. Carver’s literary device is narrator’s passing from the state of insecurity to complete openness. The main character is sure about what he does and what he needs to do. However, as the story unfolds the narrator gets enlightened with the help of a blind person. Such order of events has rather symbolic meaning. Ironically, the thesis of the paper can be sated as, in Carter’s Cathedral enlightenment is reached through blindness. This short story can be described as a journey into oneâ€℠¢s inner self or one’s enlightenment. ... Narrator’s wife and the blind man were exchanging tape recordings which they both were fond of (Carver 100). The narrator is actually the main character of the story. He is rather narrow-minded personality lacking self-confidence. He cannot communicate well with other people and feels himself as outsider. Only after meeting with the blind man, the narrator begins his inside transformation. In the process of communication with Robert the narrator discovers that there is another side of human relationships and communications. He begins to understand that openness makes both relationship and communication easier and much more valuable. The blind man place role of discoverer and his task is to discover the narrator’s hidden positive traits of character. Unlike the narrator, Robert seems to have very good relationship with narrator’s wife. Moreover, he seems to understand the woman better than her own husband. It might be because of woman’s former psychological trauma when she attempted suicide (Schuman 259). One of the turning points of the story is the narrator and the blind man’s drawing of the cathedral. After watching some historical program about the Middle Ages, Robert expresses an unusual idea to draw a cathedra together. Moreover, the narrator had to lead the drawing to make Robert better present and understand the notion of cathedral. Schuman stresses that the catharsis of the events in the story is the narrator’s spiritual transformation (Schuman 263). The reader also feels a kind of invitation to open up spiritually and to better comprehend oneself. In fact, the narrator feels some new sensation, intimacy,

The Negative Social Psychological Impact of Overdependence on and Long Essay

The Negative Social Psychological Impact of Overdependence on and Long Exposures to Computers - Essay Example Bordia, P. (1997) â€Å"Face-to-Face versus Computer-Mediated Communication: A Synthesis of the Experimental Literature† The Journal of Business Communication, 34(1), 99+ Bullinger, H. & Ziegler, J. (1999) Human-Computer Interaction: Communication, Cooperation, and Application Design. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ellul, J. (1967) The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books. George, J. (2004) Computers in society: privacy, ethics, and the Internet. The University of Michigan: Pearson Prentice Hall. Morley, D. (2010) Understanding Computers in a Changing Society. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. O’Brien, J. (1991) Introduction to information systems in business management. The University of Michigan: Irwin. Sanders, D. & Fry, R. (1981) Computers in society. The University of California: McGraw-Hill. Shotton, M. (1989) Computer Addiction? A Study of Computer Dependency. London: Taylor & Francis. What dangers are there for a society which depends on computer screens rather than face-to-face contact for its main means of communication? Introduction Present-day societies are becoming more and more dependent on technologies. ‘Internet’, ‘Google’, ‘Skype’, and ‘Facebook’ have become widely popular terms. The assumption is that computers can give instant knowledge or answers to almost all kinds of questions and, lately, provide adequate or, at best, lucrative employment. Since computers seem to offer an immediate access to knowledge or information, they have turned out to be substitutes for traditional knowledge-acquisition techniques, the pure knowledge foundation desired by classical Greece (Sanders & Fry 1981). Moreover, since computers are unrestrained by human eccentricities, their application sidesteps an array of ordinary... Present-day societies are becoming more and more dependent on technologies. ‘Internet’, ‘Google’, ‘Skype’, and ‘Facebook’ have become widely popular terms. The assumption is that computers can give instant knowledge or answers to almost all kinds of questions and, lately, provide adequate or, at best, lucrative employment. Since computers seem to offer an immediate access to knowledge or information, they have turned out to be substitutes for traditional knowledge-acquisition techniques, the pure knowledge foundation desired by classical Greece (Sanders & Fry 1981). Moreover, since computers are unrestrained by human eccentricities, their application sidesteps an array of ordinary activities and issues in putting in order everyday endeavours. Putting in order human affairs based on computer technologies give social institutions rationality and consistency. Emphasising this drive to transfer to computers task for setting up a strong social order, a number of scholars, like Jacques Ellul (1967), claimed in the past that ‘technological slavery’ would eventually emerge. This argument proposes that the current overdependence on computers has become dangerous to contemporary societies. The Negative Social Psychological Impact of overdependence on and Long Exposures to Computers.

In Raymond Carver's, short stories, How does one reach enlightenment Research Paper

In Raymond Carver's, short stories, How does one reach enlightenment - Research Paper Example The purpose of this paper is to analyze how one reaches enlightenment in Raymond Carver’s short stories. Thesis of the paper can be put as enlightenment is reached through spiritual transformation of an individual who becomes capable of valuing his/her own self, others, and relationship with others. Writer’s short story Cathedral, which was published in 1983, analyses the issue of human ignorance. Cathedral belongs to literary subgenre called psychological realism. Carver’s literary device is narrator’s passing from the state of insecurity to complete openness. The main character is sure about what he does and what he needs to do. However, as the story unfolds the narrator gets enlightened with the help of a blind person. Such order of events has rather symbolic meaning. Ironically, the thesis of the paper can be sated as, in Carter’s Cathedral enlightenment is reached through blindness. This short story can be described as a journey into oneâ€℠¢s inner self or one’s enlightenment. ... Narrator’s wife and the blind man were exchanging tape recordings which they both were fond of (Carver 100). The narrator is actually the main character of the story. He is rather narrow-minded personality lacking self-confidence. He cannot communicate well with other people and feels himself as outsider. Only after meeting with the blind man, the narrator begins his inside transformation. In the process of communication with Robert the narrator discovers that there is another side of human relationships and communications. He begins to understand that openness makes both relationship and communication easier and much more valuable. The blind man place role of discoverer and his task is to discover the narrator’s hidden positive traits of character. Unlike the narrator, Robert seems to have very good relationship with narrator’s wife. Moreover, he seems to understand the woman better than her own husband. It might be because of woman’s former psychological trauma when she attempted suicide (Schuman 259). One of the turning points of the story is the narrator and the blind man’s drawing of the cathedral. After watching some historical program about the Middle Ages, Robert expresses an unusual idea to draw a cathedra together. Moreover, the narrator had to lead the drawing to make Robert better present and understand the notion of cathedral. Schuman stresses that the catharsis of the events in the story is the narrator’s spiritual transformation (Schuman 263). The reader also feels a kind of invitation to open up spiritually and to better comprehend oneself. In fact, the narrator feels some new sensation, intimacy,