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¶ … Death
Human beings appear to be fascinated with death. Throughout history, whether observing men in staged battles, lynchings, or executions, people have gathered to witness the end of another human life. At first glance, there is no explanation for this macabre behavior. However, upon closer examination, it is clear that the very human need for dominance is behind the fascination with watching people kill each other.
The fights in the gladiator arenas reinforced dominance in two ways. The first way was that the spectators were separated from, and dominant to, the men fighting in the arena. In addition, the spectators gained dominance over each other when their gladiator caused the death of the gladiator someone else was supporting. Mankind continues to do this on a regular basis; however people do it with feigned death matches, sporting events, rather than actual deaths.
Executions worked in a different way; those killed were criminals, and the people in the crowds felt superior to them because of that fact. This feeling of superiority was reinforced when the spectators could watch the executioner, who stood in their place, end the accused's life. In this way, the spectators had actual and vicarious authority over the accused.
Like executions and fights in the gladiator arena, lynchings were done to make a dominant group feel superior. Lynchings, while allegedly done to avenge a particular incident, generally had a broader motive: to reinforce the concept of white superiority. By showing the extra-legal ability of whites to end black lives, without fear of punishment or reprisal, whites could demonstrate their feeling of racial superiority.
It is very clear that publicly sanctioned murders, whatever their setting, serve as society's way of asserting dominance over certain segments of society. The segments that are targeted reflect the values and mores of the dominant society. Therefore, a dominant society that tolerates racial discrimination or other caste-like divides has public murders in the form of the gladiator arena or lynchings. In contrast, dominant societies that claim to be based on equality require something, such as a criminal conviction, to justify relegating someone to the status of "other" and causing the end of his life.
Death and Dying in "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" and "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" Death is a common theme in poetry and has been written about and personified throughout history. Among some of the most recognizable poems that deal with the subject are "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," by Dylan Thomas (1951), and "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," by Emily Dickinson
Toni Morrsion Beloved Is murder a better alternative than slavery for your children Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved" presents readers with a terrifying account involving a mother having to choose whether to have her children become slaves or whether to have them dead. Torn between these two options, the central character in the novel, Sethe, makes a hasty choice and decides to kill her own daughter. The protagonist is obviously tormented by her
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He is just as surreal as Palahniuk's Tyler Durden, and yet he is not freeing any hero from consumerist enslavement but -- on the other hand -- burying the reader behind a false and deluded masculine mythology -- namely, that a masculine hero is virile not because he "knows himself" and seeks virtue but because he knows how to drive fast cars, win at cards, be physically fit and
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Death Penalty is the most severe forms of punishment that can be accorded to a criminal who has committed a crime and deserves to be punished. The brief history of death penalty shows that this is nothing new, because it was something that was practiced right from the eighteenth century BC, in Babylon, and thereafter in Athens, and in Rome, and in Great Britain. The death penalty methods of punishments